A haunted artifact and an investigation that shook two veterans in the paranormal field. That’s the subject of the new documentary, The Unbinding, by Greg and Dana Newkirk. They join us to discuss this case that changed the way they look at the paranormal, forever.
You can find The Unbinding on many streaming services and at the Planet Weird website here: https://www.planetweird.tv/the-unbinding
Thanks, Greg and Dana!
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-TRANSCRIPT-
Jim:
A chilling haunted artifact and the investigation that ensued are the topics of today’s show. Our guests are Greg and Dana Newkirk, and we’ll talk all about the terrifying case of The Unbinding.
Announcer:
This is the Paranormal Podcast with Jim Harold.
Jim:
Welcome to the Paranormal Podcast. I am Jim Harold and so glad to be with you. And I have two people with me who are really just kind of superstars at the paranormal field and fellow Ohioans. And man, I thought I was busy. They do a little bit of everything. They have Planet
Weird. They have the Newkirk Museum of the Paranormal. They have their Haunted Objects podcast, and they also have a new movie out called The Unbinding. And I’m talking about Greg and Dana Newkirk and they are the chief cooks and bottle washers of everything that Planet Weird does. And today we’re going to talk about the Unbinding, the Haunted Objects podcast, and a lot more good stuff. Guys, thanks for joining us today. And man, you guys have to be exhausted.
Dana Newkirk:
We are!
Greg Newkirk:
Perpetually! But never too exhausted to come talk to you, Jim.
Dana Newkirk:
Never!
Jim:
Well, excellent, excellent. And I will mention this real quickly, a little promo, everybody out there, if you are within driving distance of Kent, Ohio on Friday, October 6th at 7:00 PM I will be there. Greg and Dana will be there. And also Lindsay Brisbine from the Chilling Podcast for something called Webcast A Night with Paranormal Podcasts that will be at the Kent stage in Kent, Ohio, Friday, October 6th at 7:00 PM And you can get all the details@kentstage.org. And guys, I’m really looking forward to meeting you both there for the first time in person.
Greg Newkirk:
I know, it’s crazy. We’ve known each other for so long, this’ll be the first time we get to actually hang in person.
Jim :
It’ll be very cool. But even maybe cooler is this new film you have out, The Unbinding and I watched it. I found it very chilling, very fascinating. And we’ll get into some of it today without spoiling it, but tell us a little bit about the Unbinding.
Greg Newkirk:
Well, the Unbinding really covers one of the strangest cases that we have been part of. It’s about an object that was discovered in a cave in the Catskill Mountains by a couple of hikers. And it’s not something that looks like something you should remove wherever it’s left. They clearly didn’t watch enough horror movies.
Dana Newkirk:
We’re always learning that, that people need to watch more horror movies and have a little self care.
Jim:
Yeah, exactly.
Greg Newkirk:
When all kinds of terrible things started happening to them, they started seeing manifestations of this crone like-entity. They sent it to us. And most of the time people that send us things that they call haunted objects, I believe them when they say that they’re experiencing strange phenomena around them. But most of the time we never experienced the same thing they do. This is one of the rare exceptions, and it really set off a journey to return this item to the cave it was stolen from. And really the process of it changed the way that I look at ghosts.
Jim:
Interesting. Now, let me ask you this, I mean, and I’m not going to spoil it or get into any specifics, but there was some pretty dramatic stuff that happened around this object. Do you believe that some objects, is it right to say that some objects are evil or you’re just, is it right to say that some objects are powerful?
Dana Newkirk:
So what’s really, like Greg mentioned, what’s really kind of fascinating is that more often than not, when people send us things, we really don’t experience anything with them. And it is like a very small percentage of objects that really we have those types of experiences with. And in this case, I definitely wouldn’t use the word evil. I think that one of the goals of our museum is always curiosity over fear. So our direction is always trying to get to the bottom of something. And I think that it’s a very surface, when you look at the paranormal kind of television space, there’s often kind of a quick instinct to move towards thinking something’s evil or something’s demonic. And so what we’re always trying to do is really dismantle a lot of that and normalize the idea that we need to be doing deeper levels of research and coming at these things from a little bit more of a logical perspective. And so in the case of the crone, I think it would’ve been very easy for us initially to have responded that way, but because of the amount of time and energy that went into this investigation, the amount of research, the amount of experiments that we’ve done, we came to a different conclusion, or at least it feels like we did. And so I think that you kind of have to approach things from that kind of angle a little bit more.
Greg Newkirk:
You say something in the documentary where basically what you’re saying is we very easily like to equate scary with evil. Yeah, and scary just means complex, not evil.
Dana Newkirk:
Yeah. There’s so much more nuance there and I think that’s something that often is really, really missing from paranormal research is really approaching these things with a nuanced perspective. And hopefully this documentary is a good example of why you should do that.
Jim:
Now you kept using the word investigation there, and actually it kind of anticipated one of my questions. It occurred to me that with this object, you had to do a lot of detective work and bring in a lot of experts, people that we hear of throughout, in the documentary that you bring in for their comments and expertise. I mean, what does that look like, I mean, and it just doesn’t have to be this object, but any object when it comes across your hands, do you immediately know that it’s got some kind of energy to it? Do you know that it is, there’s haunted objects and then there’s haunted objects, and when do you know that it really has something going on? And what does that investigative process look like?
Greg Newkirk:
I mean, with the Crone, it was very obvious very quickly. As you see in the documentary, we immediately were a little tweaked where we’re like, oh, this isn’t like the other things people send us. So sometimes it’s easy and sometimes you do, you just get a vibe. One of the things that we tell people that we feel is very important in this field is trusting your gut, trust what your gut is telling you about something. And again, something scary is just complex. Maybe it just wants to be listened to. But whenever a new item arrives, if it’s something that someone has sent us that specifically is supposed to be haunted, the first thing we do is we sit it down, we take photos of it, and then we just let it sit in the space. Our space is already kind of weird because of all of the weird stuff that we have around the house.
So we just let it sit and we see what happens. A lot of the times people are looking for closure when they send us things and we do what we can to try and provide closure. Sometimes it’s as simple as them sending it to us because they’ve attached a strong emotion. Usually fear, sometimes it’s sadness, sometimes it’s hatred and they put it into a piece and they send it to us. And then in that way, it’s almost like they’re putting it in a lockbox and putting it in a closet and forgetting about it.
Dana Newkirk:
They can kind of compartmentalize a lot of that. I think more often than not, that’s what we experience is people have some sort of trauma or they have some sort of frightening experience with an object. And the act of just giving it to us in a way kind of severs a lot of that for them and they don’t really experience things afterwards. And so there’s an element there of sort of compartmentalizing that and being able to let go of it. And so when we receive those objects, it’s really, I think it’s a case by case basis. We kind of have process, but we look at every single one of them differently. So if there’s something that requires us to reach out to an academic that might know a little bit more, maybe it’s a piece of art or something like that, it’s usually kind of a case by case basis. But you’re right, the first phase is documenting it and then just sort of observing it without necessarily interacting too much with it.
Greg Newkirk:
And sometimes that process of providing closure happens when we figure out where the object actually comes from or what the culture behind it is, or an event that it’s been through. With the Crone, we talked to a lot of people, and I think that sometimes there’s a hesitancy for paranormal researchers to involve academia in their research because I think they feel like it’s not going to be taken seriously. But I don’t think that’s always the case. I mean, at least that’s not our experience.
Dana Newkirk:
You just have to put out the feelers. You can find people to collaborate with all the time. You just sort of have to be willing to put yourself out there a little bit. And not everyone’s interested in talking about this kind of stuff, specifically in academia, but there are a lot of people who really are fascinated by it and they’re happy to lend their opinion.
Greg Newkirk:
We never want to be the smartest people in the room.
Dana Newkirk:
Never.
Jim:
I don’t have that. I like being the dumbest, I don’t have that problem. That never happens to me.
Greg Newkirk:
Neither do we.
Jim:
So kind of the Erone, the object is kind of spooky looking, I guess. But let me ask you this in a broader sense. I mean, I assume that most people when they send you haunted objects, they’re spooky looking things like, Ooh, that’s creepy looking. Do you ever find that maybe some of the most innocuous things are actually haunted, like a haunted toaster or something that is just a regular household item that you wouldn’t take a second look at, but it’s highly haunted. Does that ever happen?
Greg Newkirk:
Oh yeah. We’ve got books. Books, just like regular books that people have sent us that people have tried to get rid of, they’ve thrown in the trash and then it shows up the next day. One woman that sent us a book threw it away, moved across the country and then looked at her bookshelf and the book was there again.
Jim:
Oh, geez.
Greg Newkirk:
So there’s stuff like that that we get, and I think it just depends on, you can attach a strong emotion to anything, anything can go through a really psychically impactful event. And then I think that creates that haunting in a lot of ways. And so we’ve got strange stuff that people have sent us.
Dana Newkirk):
We literally have boxes of hair.
Greg Newkirk:
Hair people sent
Dana Newkirk:
Polaroids, all sorts of, I think it’s funny too, you’re right, because most often than not, I think people think of dolls and they think of things that are very kind of human looking, but we do, we have boxes of human hair. We have Polaroids,
Greg Newkirk:
Haunted sweatshirt somebody sent us,
Dana Newkirk:
We have a sweatshirt, we have Christmas ornaments, all sorts of, everything you can imagine.
Jim:
Can something be haunted in a good way? I mean, we kind of think of it as always a negative, but let’s say, let’s take your example, a Christmas ornament. It may be that belonged to a loved one who passed. Could it be “haunted” in a very positive and loving way? That’s a comfort to the person who owns it?
Dana Newkirk:
We’ve got a set of earrings that, it’s funny because that’s sort of the angle we’re often trying to take with a lot of people because we have a set of earrings that belong to someone, they were someone’s grandmother’s and they moved around the house after their grandmother passed and they were really weirded out by it and they didn’t want them anymore. And I always think of it as like, that’s such a lovely thing. It’s someone maybe reminding you that they were there or…
Greg Newkirk:
It almost makes you feel bad that we have them.
Dana Newkirk:
Yeah, bringing it up into their memory. So we definitely have a lot of those types of things.
Greg Newkirk:
And I think that happens more than we hear about because just by the nature of what we do, we only really see the scary things. People don’t want to part with the things that remind them of their loved ones that have passed.
Dana Newkirk:
They don’t want to let those things go often.
Greg Newkirk:
And everybody knows that there’s something that maybe belongs to their grandmother, like the set of earrings. And whenever they see them or they wear them, they feel their grandmother there.
Jim:
Yeah, that’s my granddad. I have a pocket knife of his.
Greg Newkirk:
Yeah, exactly!
Dana Newkirk:
Those are things that are haunted in the best way possible. They’re just tethers and memories to people and they reconnect you to them immediately when you see them, when you touch them. I think that we hear a lot of those types of stories, and it can be things as big as houses and as small as pocket knives. There’s a lot of really great haunted things too.
Greg Newkirk:
We just wouldn’t call them haunted because the term haunted has such a negative connotation.
Jim:
Right, they’re more spiritually imbued, I guess. There you go. Now here’s one for you. When my wife and I first got together, I used to love to go thrifting. I used to love buying old radios and stuff. Even in the background, there’s a bunch of old stuff behind me. I like for those listening, because we’re just on video on Zoom here. But the point is, is that I love old stuff and I like to go to garage sales or whatever, thrift stores, whatever to pick up stuff. And I’ve really reduced that for two reasons. First of all, my wife started saying, stop bringing all this junk in my house.
Greg Newkirk:
Gee, that sounds familiar,
Dana Newkirk:
Relatable.
Jim:
Then secondly, secondly, I still do it, but I worry a little bit, what am I going to bring with me? Let’s say that there’s a thrifter out there who loves to collect vintage stuff just for, they love vintage stuff. Are there any precautions we can take before we bring something into the home to make sure that we don’t bring in any unintended visitors?
Greg Newkirk:
We can probably give you two perspectives on this.
Dana Newkirk:
Yeah. I think that, unlike what TikTok would tell you, I think that it’s very difficult to truly come across objects that have that kind of a connection or that kind of attachment to them. I think it’s after having done this for this much time, it’s very rare that you’ll come across something like that, but you do come across things that have vibes and people ask us this question all the time, and I always tell people, I will never tell you not to be an antiquing, thrifting person. I love antiquing and thrifting more than anything in the world. If you get something that has a weird kind of vibe to it, it’s really just a matter of changing the way that you think about that thing. Maybe there’s a ritual that you can do, a simple thing that you can do to kind of remove some of that energy, but for the most part, when it comes to something you’re going to have a terrifying experience with, it’s really very, very rare. But yeah, things come with vibes, specifically older things. So spray it with a little bit of lavender, give it a little bit of a different perspective, and you can probably change the vibes pretty quickly.
Greg Newkirk:
I think Dana nailed it by saying change the way you think about it, because I really do think that the key to a haunted object is the story that you’ve either heard about it or that you’ve experienced around it or that somebody else has experienced around it and told you, and I mean, it sounds kind of reductive, but reprogramming that story in your head, thinking about it differently, I think will change the experiences that you’re having around it. So I just have a hard time believing a lot of the time that somebody has gone to a thrift store and found something and they find a doll and they’re like, this is haunted by the spirit of Sally and she did this in 1840, which we see a lot on eBay because I feel like, well, you’re just attaching your own preconceived notions to it and you’re haunting yourself, because if you don’t know the story I think it’s hard for that generalized activity to manifest, but who knows? Maybe I’ll think something different in five years.
Jim:
I think I may have had a very young, as a kid, a haunted object experience. I don’t know. And actually this came to light. I was interviewing John Zaffis and I was talking to him. My parents, when I was about 10 or 11 years old, bought a very modest small house in West Virginia where they were originally from or where my mom was originally from. And we would go back every summer and believe me, it’s not like, oh, we had our summer home. I mean, my dad was a steel worker. It was a very modest little house. So anyway, they had this little house and it had a lot of the stuff from the people that lived before. And there was this huge, in the room that I slept in, there was this huge ornate diploma like from a teacher’s college or something with a very ornate script and so forth, probably from the teens or the twenties, I think. That thing scared the hell out of me, terrified me. It just terrified me. And I thought it was because of just the typography and it scared me because I had a similar reaction to my dad had a Burl Ives record with the disembodied head of Burl Ives that terrified me when I was a kid, but if you’ve seen it, then actually I later went back and found another copy of it and bought it. They had thrown it out because it scared me so much when I was a little kid. But anyway, this diploma, and I was telling John about it and I said, oh, it’s just because of the script and stuff. And he said, don’t be so sure. Maybe there was something attached to that. So I don’t know if I had a haunted object story with that huge diploma with that creepy writing on it. If I was just afraid of the typography or if there was something attached to it, I don’t know.
Greg Newkirk:
Well, what I would say is, I mean, my opinion on that, just hearing that story is what means more to people than sometimes than the education they worked really hard for.
Dana Newkirk:
Yeah, I mean, you have to think about the amount of time and energy that was put into just receiving this one document. It doesn’t necessarily mean that it, again, kind of redirecting the language around what hauntings mean. I think so often we immediately go to, it’s a bad thing, it’s a scary thing. And I think sometimes even as kids, maybe we don’t understand what we’re feeling from something. So maybe it was something that someone spent so much time and energy and money and what do you get at the end of all of that? You get a piece of paper that documents, that shows that you’ve achieved this great thing. So all of that energy gets focused in the focal point, which is this object.
Greg Newkirk:
And you can feel the vibes on that stuff. You know that something, like, look at religious objects,
Dana Newkirk:
Look at old documents. There’s always a vibe from them. You can feel it. So much attention, so much energy is poured into the thought of them, looking at them that it makes sense that we would feel a strangeness around them for sure.
Greg Newkirk:
So I say you did have a haunted document.
Jim:
Maybe, maybe, maybe we’re having a great time with Greg and Dana Newkirk talking all about the Unbinding and we’ll be back right after this. The Paranormal Podcast is brought to you by Nuts.com. Cashews, almonds, pecans, pistachios, dried mango, crystallized ginger, dates, jelly beans, jawbreakers, root beer barrels. Oh yum. The variety is vast and delicious at Nuts.com because Nuts.com is your one-stop shop for freshly roasted nuts, dried fruit, sweets, pantry staples like specialty flours and more. Their wide selection means there’s something for everyone. At Nuts.com. Well, they offer plenty of gluten-free options, organic choices and other diet friendly products. Whether you are looking for something sweet, savory, or need to stock up on everyday cooking essentials, you’re bound to find something to try. And at Nuts.com quality is their top priority. They roast their nuts and pop their corn the same day it ships, so they reach you deliciously fresh and satisfaction is guaranteed.
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Announcer:
If you love the Paranormal Podcast, be sure to check out Jim Harold’s Campfire where ordinary people share their extraordinary stories of ghosts, UFOs, cryptids, and terrifying encounters. Find it for free wherever you listen to this podcast. Tune into Jim Harold’s Campfire today. Now we return to the Paranormal Podcast.
Jim :
We are back on the Paranormal Podcast. Our guests today are Greg and Dana Newkirk. You know them from Planet Weird. You know them from the Newkirk Museum of the Paranormal. You know them from their Haunted Objects podcast. Hellier! Of course, we haven’t even mentioned Hellier. I’ve got a question about that. And now their latest film project, The Unbinding guys, something you talked about in the documentary that I really enjoyed was a little bit about how you guys got together and dare I say, a little bit of a love story. Tell us how you guys came from different worlds and kind of have made this dynamic paranormal duo?
Dana Newkirk:
We really did. Well, I’m Canadian, so it was very early 2000s. I was with my friends ghost hunting in Canada, and Greg obviously is from America, and so he was doing the same thing. And we met each other sort of online back in the day
Greg Newkirk:
And me and my friends, we had an all boy team called Ghost Hunters Incorporated. We didn’t even know what Incorporated meant, but it sounded cool. And we were just traipsing around abandoned houses in rural Pennsylvania and Dana and her friends, they were the Kitchener Waterloo Paranormal Research Society. And I’m pretty honest in the documentary, I had a crush on Dana immediately, but when I was 15, 16 years old, Dana was like 18, 19, so it wasn’t going to happen
Jim :
Ooooh, the older woman.
Dana Newkirk:
I don’t think I was that much older, but I was…
Greg Newkirk:
Well, it is when you’re 16.You know what I mean? It’s a big deal.
Jim:
That’s like 20 years then. I mean, yeah, now it’s like we’re the same age.
Dana Newkirk:
So we lived in two very different worlds, but at the time in 1999 or 2000, it was hard to find other people that were sort of the same ages as us that were doing this kind of stuff. This was back in the old GeoCities days,
Jim:
Oh yeah, GeoCities.
Dana Newkirk:
We had GeoCities websites and we contacted each other and we kind of got to know each other a little bit.
Greg Newkirk:
And then Dana and her friend said, we want to come visit you guys and go ghost hunting with you guys. And this tells you what kind of just hopeless nerds we all were. We all got scared to hang out with girls. And we always joke about how that weekend, all of our grandparents died.
Dana Newkirk:
We were like, what is going on in this town?
Greg Newkirk:
And then that kind of soured, that kind of soured the relationship. And then Dana and her friends got a television show called The Girly Ghost Hunters, and we were so upset about it. We were so jealous that the relationship just broke down.
Dana Newkirk:
It dissolved pretty quickly
Greg Newkirk:
And we became nemeses
Dana Newkirk:
We were arch enemies or rivals for years.
Greg Newkirk:
And this is the part that I can’t ever say without sounding kind of creepy, but years later, years and years later, I was getting ready to move from Pennsylvania to Washington to Seattle, and I felt so bad about how things ended because I always had a crush on Dana that I tried to contact, her emails would bounce, I couldn’t find phone numbers. All I knew was kind of where you lived. I knew you guys lived in Kitchener. And so I grabbed my friend Jason Gowan and we rented a car and we drove to Canada and I had pictures of them.
Jim:
Oh man.
Greg Newkirk:
I know. I walked around Kitchener, which is the second largest city in Ontario.
Dana Newkirk:
Yeah, it’s a huge city. The fact that you found us within 40 minutes
Greg Newkirk:
Within 40 minutes!
Jim:
Wow, meant to be!
Greg Newkirk:
We went ghost hunting that night.
Jim:
What was your reaction? You’re like, what is up with this guy? You’re like, oh, what is up with this guy?
Dana Newkirk:
We definitely didn’t, we definitely chose a distinct location away from our homes to meet.
Jim:
The central location.
Dana Newkirk:
Exactly. A central location. We were a little nervous about it and we took all precautions, but I
Greg Newkirk:
Don’t blame you
Dana Newkirk:
Now we’re married. So I guess it turned out okay.
Greg Newkirk:
See everyone, stalk your
Dana Newkirk:
No!
Jim (26:34):
No, don’t do that. I didn’t say that. Kidding. These opinions are not necessarily those of Jim Harold Media LLC or our assignees. Thank you.
Greg Newkirk:
No, I mean it was kind of creepy in hindsight, but…
Jim:
I would agree. Yeah, I would agree. But well that ends well. And I think since we talked last time, you guys have also become podcasters. Welcome to the party. Tell us a little bit about the podcast. I know it’s had a great reception out there.
Greg Newkirk:
One of the things is we have so many cool stories to tell behind so many of the pieces in the museum and not all of them necessitate a documentary like The Unbinding does. And we wanted to have a cool outlet to tell these stories. So we started the Haunted Objects podcast, and every episode revolves around a different piece in the museum and the themes and stories that are attached to that piece. So we do a real deep dive on different subjects that that piece can lead us into. And my favorite part about it is we have a video version of the podcast that has really well produced artifact segments. We’ve got a super cool voiceover guy, Chuck Fresh, who does the voiceover.
Dana Newkirk:
He’s our disembodied voice.
Greg Newkirk:
He makes it sound like an old seventies documentary. And we just try and bring a high level of research and a high level of fun to the idea of haunted objects. And we have a loose definition of what haunted means. IAnything that’s haunted by a story.
Dana Newkirk:
Oh, I was just going to say, I think that people are so used to seeing us in Heller, they’re so used to seeing us be very serious because we’re often in very serious situations that the podcast is sort of an outlet for a lot of humor. And so we get to laugh a lot and be goofy, and there’s a lot of costume changes and drinks and all sorts of things, but it really is sort of based around our love of research and really diving deep into the history of a lot of these objects, and it’s been so much fun
Greg Newkirk:
And to show people are not always paranoid or scared.
Dana Newkirk:
We’re not always sweaty in the woods terrified.
Jim:
Well, the cool thing about it I think is the idea that with podcasts, everything at this point has been done, and I think it’s kind of a unique take on it. It’s something different. It’s something unique, and it’s something that really plays to your expertise. So congratulations on it. I think it’s great.
Greg Newkirk:
That means a lot coming from the OG, man.
Jim:
OG. When people say OG, I’m like, back in my day you had to hook your iPad up to a computer, which you cranked. No, but hey, I’ll take it. I’ll take it, thank you. Heller, I mean, that was such a great success. How do you compare and contrast the Unbinding with Hellier?
Dana Newkirk:
Wow, it’s hard. I mean, it’s…
Greg Newkirk:
Hellier, it requires a level of participation. It’s 15 hours of content. And sometimes, I know there’s a lot of people who do the first season not realizing the first season really is the prequel necessary to understand everything that happens in the second season and they bow out because they’re not willing to do the…
Jim:
To take the journey.
Greg Newkirk:
Yeah, Exactly. It is an investment for sure. So it’s participatory that way, and that’s not really for everybody. And so one of the things that we wanted to do when we were making The Unbinding, we had very intentional discussions with our director, Carl Pfeiffer, about how we could tell this story in a way that takes the best parts of what we’re doing with Hellier, but presents them in a more linear fashion. Because a 98 minute investment is a little bit easier for people to do and hopefully it’ll be a gateway drug into something like Hellier, and unlike Heller, we have in The Unbinding what feels like a pretty definitive endpoint, at least for that part of the investigation. And so we can lead people through that journey and they’re out in 98 minutes and they kind of understand what we are all about and the type of stories that we think are important to tell. Hellier’s still going. It’s an ongoing thing. So it’s a little harder to get into if you just want to kind of dip your toes in the water
Jim:
And what an effort it’s been, and people just seem to love it. So congratulations on all the success on that. Now, something you talked about in the documentary, which I’m interested in, I have mixed feelings on, but you talked a little bit about the Estes method and some different things you did, and I don’t want to get too deeply into it why people need to watch the documentary, but just in general, can you talk about things like spirit boxes and so forth and how much stock you put in them? Because on one hand I think it’s really cool and you do hear things that sound like direct communication, not just in your case, but in other cases. But then the radio part of me, the guy who used to work in radio and so forth, has been playing with electronics my whole life. I’m like, while you’re sweeping across a dial of radio active radio stations, and let’s say I want to talk to my uncle, and you flip through and it says Boston, it’s like, oh, your uncle lived in Boston? No, that was W B Z. So I mean, I always worry about intervening variables with that kind of thing. Can you talk about the Estes Method spirit box, those kinds of things, and when do you think it’s appropriate and useful?
Greg Newkirk:
I mean, I’ll tell you, I agree with you 100%. I’m on the page with you where it’s like this is all coming from radio stations. I hate ghost boxes personally, I don’t mind saying it. They bring an aggressive vibe to a paranormal investigation too. When you’re sitting in a room and you’ve got that thing cranked and you’re just hearing (static noises) it’s aggressive. It’s unsettling. I don’t like the energy it brings.
Dana Newkirk:
There’s a ton of confirmation bias with it where you have it in a room with a bunch of people and you’ll hear someone say, like it said, run, and then everyone hears the same thing. So there’s a lot of issues with it, and we’re pretty open with or kind of dislike.
Greg Newkirk:
It’s quite elite for me to believe that ghosts are manipulating radio hosts across the country to say a word at a certain time. That’s difficult for me to believe, which is why when I saw what our friends Carl Pfeiffer and Connor Randall had developed with the Estes Method, I was fascinated because they got rid of that confirmation bias.
Jim:
Can you explain that to people, what the Estes method is? I think there’s a lot of confusion on that.
Greg Newkirk:
Connor is a drummer. He’s a drummer in a punk band. And so he has these special headphones. They’re Vic Firth headphones, and they’re meant to, they’re noise isolating headphones. A lot of people like to think that it’s noise canceling, noise canceling. That’s not the case. They’re noise isolating. They’re made for drummers so they can drum along with the track without hearing their own drumming too loud. So what they did to get rid of that confirmation bias is they would plug a set of those headphones, those Vic Firth headphones into their SB 7 spirit box, into the out jack, which normally most ghost hunters plug a big external speaker queue, and then they put a pair of, an eye mask on.
Dana Newkirk:
So you’re basically trying to create, create a sensory deprivation situation where the person who’s on the box or the person who’s listening to the radio has no idea what’s happening outside of the sound that they’re hearing in their ears. They can’t see anything. They obviously can’t hear anything. They’re only hearing the radio static. They’re only hearing that sweeping radio static. And the idea is with them isolated, the people outside of that begin asking questions. And if there’s something there, if there’s some sort of answering, which often cases there are, and that’s when things start getting very interesting, is when you have someone who’s again, completely isolated just listening to the sound, who’s starting to give answers to questions that are being asked without realizing that those questions are being asked. Again, that’s sort of when things sort start getting interesting. And that’s sort of where the approach that we’ve taken
Greg Newkirk:
When I’m watching somebody in the Estes method start having a two-way conversation with somebody and they can’t hear the questions that are being asked. To me, that’s fascinating.
Dana Newkirk:
And even for, we’re still fascinated with it in general and just theorizing how it works. And I think at this point, we don’t really have any answers, but I think that the place that we’re sort of comfortable at being at is that I think in our opinion, there’s an element of technologically assisted mediumship that’s going on. So I don’t know whether it is that the person who’s doing it, hearing the sounds, gives them sort of unconscious permission to say the things that they’re hearing. And maybe that’s helping them make those connections, or whether they’re actually hearing something we’re not exactly sure, but it’s the act of separating them from the group and allowing them to have this isolated experience, I think cuts off a little bit of that confirmation bias. And again, like Greg said, when you start getting two-way conversations, which doesn’t happen all the time, but when it does happen, it’s pretty startling. It’s pretty incredible.
Greg Newkirk:
I think the secret sauce in the essence method, I think the real key to understanding what’s happening when someone’s doing it and it’s working well, is the fact that one of the most common complaints that we hear about the Estes method when it’s used on a show like Kindred Spirits, apparently they’re doing it on Ghost Adventures now, is people want to hear what the sitter is hearing, what the actual medium is hearing. But Carl and Connor have done about every variation of this is possible. They’ve done Estes method sessions where the sitter is on one side of the country and the other person’s on the other. They’ve
Dana Newkirk:
Recorded the audio, they’ve done everything,.
Greg Newkirk:
They’ve played the audio. What I think is the most interesting thing about the Estes method and what leads me to believe that there is a psychical component to what is happening is if you do have the audio spouted out so that everyone else can hear it, you don’t hear the same words that the sitter is saying, you just don’t. So I think that Dana’s right when she’s saying that some of those words on those radio frequencies that you’re listening to, your isolation, I think gives a subconscious part of your mind permission to say words that it’s hearing that aren’t actually on the radio. And I think that what it’s doing is it’s just helping you be a better conduit, a better medium for wherever that’s coming, whether the words are coming from your subconscious, whether they’re coming from an externalized intelligence, we don’t know, but I think it gives you permission to be a psychic.
Dana Newkirk:
Yeah, there’s an element of trance to it. We’ve noticed, and I mean at this point, I’ve done hundreds of hours of listening and just being the sitter for this, hundreds and hundreds of hours. And one of the things that a lot of people will do that they don’t realize they do are a lot of things that people do in trans work. There’s a lot of rocking, there’s a lot of kind of being very stimulated and feeling the sounds very intensely. And so I think also there’s an element of even just the sweeping sounds themselves kind of help people move into that trance state a little bit more, which is sort of lubricant for that psychical experience to be able to happen.
Jim:
No, it’s fascinating and I’m glad you were able to clarify that because it’s just an interesting subject. I love tech, so if there’s a way that we can use tech in a responsible, smart way, why not do it? I mean, Edison was building supposedly the telephone to the dead, so why not?
Greg Newkirk:
I think the next logical step for the Estes method is white noise only.
Dana Newkirk:
Yeah, we’ve experimented with white noise. It’s one of those things that I think it’s a fascinating jumping off point for a lot of people, and it’s been cool to see how people add their own spin to it and shape it and change a little bit, but it’s a fascinating experiment.
Jim:
Now without giving anything away, and please both answer for yourselves, can you talk about how The Unbinding impacted you? I know Greg, you said it changed the way you think about ghosts, so tell us what you can, without giving up anything, how this project impacted you.
Greg Newkirk:
Personally. I have a difficult time even watching the first half of the documentary these days because that journey changed me so much in terms of how I approach cases that involve ghosts, how I think about ghosts, what I think ghosts are. I don’t believe ghosts are dead people anymore. That’s not to say I don’t think that those people, our loved ones can’t come back and send us messages. But I have a very hard time believing that spirits can be landlocked because they have unfinished business. I think a lot of the times what we’re doing is we’re impressing upon something. We can’t understand our own traits and personalities in order to try and put them in a box. What we do, we’re humans. We try to understand things that way.
It’s not really a secret that we go to the mountain and we travel up the mountain to do a ritual. That’s The Unbinding. I’m not the same person that I was when I went up the mountain. I came down the mountain a different person. And I think that people who watch The Unbinding will probably have a similar experience when it comes to how they view these things. I think that the idea of the supernatural is far more complex. I think that it’s supposed to be scary. Dana has a conversation in the documentary about how things like that are things that are going to change us. They’re supposed to be scary to start an initiatory journey. And because of what we experienced and because of what we discovered about this item, I will never be able to approach the subject of ghosts the same way again. It’s probably the best way I can say it without spoiling it.
Dana Newkirk:
I mean, I really don’t have much else to add. I think you said it perfectly. I think the only thing that I might add is this, again, this investigation deeply changed me as a person, and it changed the way that I observe the phenomena. It changed the way that I interact with it. And I think that for the most part, probably what I walked away with, there were a few things that I walked away with, but just absolutely the idea that we have to approach these things with nuance and we aren’t, and it’s so reductive and it’s limiting in its scope. And I think just approaching, observing things, hopefully with that nuance, allows us to have different relationships with it and to have different modes for observing it. And I think that that is something that is really important in the tool chest of the paranormal investigator.
Greg Newkirk:
I think it also really emphasized something that I guess never really occurred to me. Hellier did a little bit of this too, but they kind of overlapped some of that, the Hellier too in this you see in the documentary. But it really emphasized to me the importance of the stories that we tell, the ghost stories that we’re telling and how we’re telling ghost stories. Because story is how we as human beings appreciate and interact with the world. When you tell someone how your day was, you tell them a story. We know what good stories are, we know what bad stories are. We know what the effect a story that circulates widely can have on people, it can have on a whole community. And I think this is a really great example of why it’s very important to try and tell the right kind of story, the right kind of way.
Jim:
Very interesting stuff. Greg and Dana Newkirk bring the goods with The Unbinding and everything else that they do. So guys, where can people find the unbinding and at risk of repeating myself, everything else you do,
Greg Newkirk:
The Unbinding comes out on September 8th. We thought it was going to be exclusive to Amazon on the 8th, but it looks like it’s going to be everywhere. So international.
That’s brand new information that’s happened. Yeah, so I think it’s going to be everywhere on the 8th, Apple TV, Google Play, Amazon Prime, YouTube, and it should be at least on one of those outlets just about everywhere in the world so people can find it wherever they rent or purchase films. If they’re curious about the Haunted Objects podcast, they can find that at the Planet Weird YouTube page. They can subscribe to it anywhere. They subscribe to podcasts, and if they’re interested in any of the other projects that we’re working on, they can go to PlanetWeird.TV.
Jim:
Very good. Greg and Dana Newkirk, it has been a pleasure. All the best with The Unbinding and all of your other great work and see you everybody on October 6th, the Kent stage event, kentstage.org. I hope you’ll be able to join us in person. Thanks so much, guys.
Greg Newkirk:
It’s always great talking to you, Jim. Thank you for having us.
Jim:
Well, that was a lot of fun. Check out Greg and Dana Newkirk’s latest project, the Unbinding. You can find it on YouTube, Amazon Prime, Google Play, Apple TV, their own website. It is out now. Do check it out. And one other thing I would hope that you would check out is our new mausoleum of merch because Dar has taken this project over and she has knocked it out of the park. It’s a great way to get the books of our guests. Now, when we have a guest on the Paranormal Podcast, we’re putting the books right up there at the mausoleum of merch, which you can find at jimharold.com/merch, M E R C H. Also, we have things like limited edition stay spooky and campfire gear, which we just came out with. We’re only, this particular design we’re only going with through the Halloween season of this year.
So it’s exclusive and limited. You can find that at jimharold.com/merch. We have fun Halloween ideas. We have our regular stay spooky merch. We have my books. We have links to podcasting equipment that you might want to use if you’re a burgeoning podcast or campfire essentials, things for your real life campfire, our coloring book. Just a lot of stuff. I’m really proud of what Dar has done with this. It’s really cool. It’s so much of an upgrade and you can find all this stuff and all of it supports us and that we’re part of the Amazon Affiliate and Influencer Program. So please do check that out, jimharold.com/merch. The link to the store will be there. And again, you help us so much and you get some cool gear and don’t pay anything more. It’s just a win, win, win. So hope you check that out. Thank you so much for joining us today. As always, stay safe and stay spooky, and we’ll talk to you next time. Bye-bye.
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