M hm. He was cold cold. That was the nam he was cold. Mine. What's going on up there? Could be the most important event in history? Now I'm the cold the destroyer worlds, I said. I hope this is close to hell. It's all ever again. Hello and welcome to the Tailsman Dark Podcast. I'm your host Bob here with my co host Brittany. Hey guys, what's up Brittany? How is it going? Is are you doing? Okay? I hope so you hope? So? I hope so you poison me? So moving on? Okay, I want to
give it a quick shout out to Dustin Nice. Um was it last week of the week before I had this epiphany, this random you know memory if my childhood popped up? About all I gave you guys to go. One was a stinky toy like skunk kids. Yeah, when you squeeze it, it smells like a skunk. I gave you guys nothing really to go on and then has it? What happened? I get a stink Blasters package in
our po box. Yes, So the kid's name ended up being skunk Punk and it was part of the stink Blasters universe, which was a late nineties early two thousand's toy they had like toe Jam Ta God on Patreon. When we do the top episode, I will go through all the names and it just progressively gets worse. Yeah, they had no rules for kids. Yeah, but it's it's amazing. I definitely appreciate you sending then, And if anyone wants to send any stuff to our PO box, you can find the
information on our Facebook group, in our website. In the website, yeah, we put it we Tail from the Dark dot net. Yes. Yeah, We've had some really cool stuff into the PO box over the years, like we had the Bobbles our sign poster, we had some fan arts and in it's just it's always a fun time as long as it's not a furbie in the fucking PO box. Yeah. I was gonna say, we're not gonna talk about the whole box of fur because I have sitting beside me.
Oh my god, I'm gonna burn those. At some point, I say, I gotta get up the courage to look him in the eye and tell them what they're done. And we need like thirty microwaves in a row. Thirty microwaves. If you guys want to send us microwaves. The po box. Please don't. That would be the best my product ever of the show. We just have a thousand microwaves unopened for me Amazon for no reason. Oh. So, for that being said, Barty our guest today. He's
a good buddy of ours. He was in the movie Fandom Farm with us. We had him on the show what we're now funding to be like two years ago. Yeah, I can't believe it's been that long. It's crazy how fast time flies when you're talking about UFOs. Yeah. So that being said, the only other thing I've an announcement for is we're going to be doing the Listener Stories volume something. I'm not sure the exact volume at some point this week. So I'm going to say tonight they cut off midnight or
no, I'm sorry, yeah, tonight's cut off midnight. Send in your stories. We have quite a few to get through. But I know some people are like, hey, I'm not sure if I'm gonna send this in or if I'm gonna wait, go ahead and send it in and then if you change your mind, too bad. No, I'm totally kiddy. If you change your mind, we can always take it back out of the it's already written. Stone we can't take it back. Okay, So Britney's in charge. It's all folks. So with that being said, Britney, do
you want to give Austin Lawrence a phone call? Let's call the most haunted man in America, in the world and the world. All right, let's give him a call, all right, Britney. So I don't use this term very often haunted, right right, but we might be going by the most haunted man in America. Austin Lawrence. How are you doing, sir? I'm doing great. How are you guys doing doing well? Excited to have you back when it's been like a year, right, yeah, it's
it's been a long time, man, it's been a long time. Yeah. I think the last thing we had you on was at the release of your book Taylor Mill Horror. If I remember correctly, we're right around that time. Yeah, that might have been been like two years. God, I think it was two years. Holy crept. Okay, hey, time flies when you're chasing demons. Man, I'm telling you, I just got one question for you, Austin. What's up? Why are we in Charleston?
Would you send me that message the other day that you guys are going through Charles. It literally like made my life. I was just busting out laughing. So that's forever gonna be one of the best moments of my life. Did distaste Did we tell this story on the podcast? I don't know, but I want to hear Austin's rendition at this Yes, I think you kind of hit or talked about it a little bit, but I mean I do. All as I know is we're all tired, We're in the car.
I don't know where the hell we're going, but apparently we're going through Charleston, which told me is no big deal, but to Brittany is like the end of the world, like zombies are coming, We're all gonna die. This is not okay. And so she's just like, why are we going through Charleston? And Bob's like, I don't know, it's where it's taking us. Two seconds later, so why are we going through Charleston? Brittany, I don't know, it's where it takes but why are we going
through Charleston. It was one of those things that, like, after you say the words so many times at so many that was the case of Charleston, West Virginia, I'm like, I'm like, I don't, I don't know why we're going through Charleston, but that's where it's fucking taking us. We had spent the whole day like shooting guns and just being menaces. At the Point Pleasant, I'm being tier yea, And it was just one of those things where I had I still do this day. Don't know why it
took us through Charleston. And every time I hear that word, it's just like like a sensory deparation bell. It's a trigger. Yeah, it hits, and I'm like, yeah, I'm just looking for the nearest rock to throw through a window. I don't, I don't understand. Drove us off the bridge. It was fantastic. I remember we passed one building. Britney was like, but what what is what is that building? Bombs like, I don't know, maybe it's the Charleston Daily News, brittany where we were
in Charleston, right, I usually don't get that. I don't get that frustrated usually on road trips, but something about that trip Point Pleasant can either bring out the best or the absolute worst beings. That's very true. Yeah, You're absolutely right, all right, Austin. So for those who may not you know, be aware of your immaculate presence. Why don't you give us an Usually I would introduce the guests, but you know, in this case, you can just do it your damn self, all right. Wow.
Um, I would not use the term immaculate, but I am present. Um. So you know, I've just been investigating the paranormal for probably about I don't know, twelve thirteen years or something like that. Now, yeah, Um, a couple of years ago put out Taylor Millhore about the worst case that I had been on, um some years back, and uh, you know, got lucky enough to be in Fantom Farm and uh,
now we're here. I what what Austin loves to leave at it? So I met Austin over a decade ago at this point, Yeah, and Austin was in a band called the Card Throwing Machine and we were we kind of played shows like adjacent. Yeah, Like he was in a town like thirty minutes north of me, and every now and then I would like come to S and S skate shop and Lama. Austin's become a player. He would come down to the Sydney Boat Club. We would play a show together.
And then Austin and I were in a band a few years ago. And what's funny about this is this entire time iknew Austin for again, over a decade, he never once said, Hey, you know I do paranlem one investigation. I'm also a fucking weirdo. It never back then, it was still even though the TV shows, it was still kind of taboo, right, like you just didn't know people that, like it just wasn't something you
talked about. But it was so weird because it just like never came up all the times we spent like in the studio at practice and each other's vehicles at shows, it just never came up that like, hey, I also talked to myself in the dark, and it's not weird because I'm talking to dead people, Okay, right, yeah, no, you're absolutely right. It's crazy because even when we got into that band together the second time,
I had no idea you were in it. Someone just hit me up like, hey, come charalaha, this band's like all right, cool, yeah, look, and I'm like, is that Bob, Like I hadn't seen you for like how long, like ten years at that point. Yeah. It was this is after I was out of the army, so it was it was quiet, it was quite a while, and it was I mean, it was fun. You know, we played some cool shows. You know, don't call me Shirley. Is still that that just hits me in
a weird spot every time I hear that term. But uh yeah, yeah. Like I said, I've known Awuestome for a long time and only recently we kind of come back together. And it's it's weird how that seems to happen in the pair of community where the weirdos always seemed to find one another. And that's something that I've noticed that people you lose touch, like Tyler Terry is a great example, who's part of the Fantom group. You know, I've known Tyler same deal. We played music together in high school.
I uh, you know, I investigated with him, investigating with him in high school. I was in the same grade as a sister. We fell out completely. I forgot the guy existed. Then he like suddenly comes and applies for a job where I work, and then everything is brought back together
this very weird synchronistic way. And that's why I think Phantom Farm worked so well, Because you have Brittany, who had no interest in the paranormal She's like, hey, right, I'm just here from North Carolina because we played Legal Legends and you didn't like totally suck, and then everyone else had these like weird little synchronistic ways that just lined us all back up into this group.
So I want to talk Phantom Farm with you a little bit because we were going to have this big roundtable as soon as Swhenom Farms are kind of going on the down from Amazon. Thankfully it has not gone on the downturn. We're still getting downloads every month, new commoners, new people joined in the group. So the Phantom Farm roundtable is still coming. But what kind of went through your mind when I approached you for Phantom Farm? Yeah,
so you know, here's here's the thing about working with Bob Um. He will hit you up and by hey, so what are you doing this day? You're like nothing, like, oh okay, cool, let's hang out. The next thing you know, you're in a fucking asylum filming a documentary. Because that's exactly what happened to me. I don't even think I told you we were filming when you came up for I think I think we had like floated the idea, hey, we might record if something happens, we're
gonna record it. I think was the way that I approached you, and that was it. Well, when you first when you first approached me, you said, you guys think about doing a video. You're like, you know, you just want to come help out. And then like the day before when you finally told me where you were going, You're like, oh, yeah, by the way, there's like this demon squid monster. I
just need you to catch it for me. Yeah, And I'm like what You're like, yeah, demon squid monster in the basement, Like, would you not understand? I'm like, okay, I get it. I got the assignment. All right, let's go. I understand. Well, see, I'm super glad to have you because you you were the only one with me. We can finally talk about this candidly. The Phantom Farmers went out
for a while. If you haven't seen it, skip four, I'd say seven or eight minutes here because because I want to talk to you about this. You were with me during the footsteps. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I didn't know if we're going there, if we're going to when you got tacked by a drone, both good stories. We're gonna we're gonna we'll
hit that at the end. But you were with me during the footsteps, which which in my paranormal career, as weird as that is to say, that is the best evidence I've ever personally caught, And I wanted to kind of float it to you, as someone who on the regular seas apparitions and
I'm pretty sure has some kind of like a specter girlfriend. What was going through your mind when we heard the footsteps, because I mean, up to that point, we were kind of getting fucked with on that floor a term, So I want to hear it from your perspective when you heard those footsteps
directly in front of us, What were you thinking? I mean, you know, like you said, it was one of those things where we were getting frustrated because we were chasing this thing around, and we got to a point where I remember, we had the women's side and the men's side. We would be on the men's side, we hear from the woman's side, we'd be on the woman's side. Here from the men's side, So we split up and we stayed on you know, obbosite ends, and then we'd
hear it like in another area, like in between us. Yeah, so you know, at the point where we heard the footsteps, we were kind of just like, dude, I don't know what's going on. We were kind of defeated, and then the footsteps just go buy and it's just like, okay, there. It is like, I don't know what you think other than Okay, that just happened. You know. It's just it was so unexpected. But it's one of those things where like after you're like beat
down for so long. I don't want to say, it loses its hype, but it's like, Okay, finally there we go, Okay, now we know you're here. Well, because in that instance, what's kind out of the film is we were up there for what thirty five forty minutes Brittany something like that before that happened, I think, so I think we had our rotations not remember correctly, and this was close to the end of that
hour. It was so weird because we had discussed this like Trickster with the paranormal, because that seems to just follow every investigator that we talked to that like I don't want to say, like really does it, but you know what I mean. We have the weekend Warriors who go out to the group events, and that's really all they do. Then there's the guys like us
who will do solo investigations with us. Do just me and Brittany, you'll go out on your own like those are the people who do this enough that they all can identify this same phenomenon, this trickster that just seems to you know, for lack of a better term, or get off by fucking with you. And in this instance, we were upstairs and we knew a good bit of the history, but not enough to just say other than I think
it was Noah. I think it was a little boy's name. Who was You know nothing about Noah before we That's right, none of us did, except Tyler Maiden Nathan. But we didn't know anything about no We knew about Doris, So sorry, Doris, that's was and I and it was yeah, yeah, you came in completely blind. I remember that because we specifically
did not tell Austin anything except for the demon Squid. So now we have to there's an elephant in the room that I'm gonna I'm not even sure Brittany knows, but there's this growing group of people who think I was being mean to you when it came to the the cat ball on the floor. Did
you feel like I was being demeaning towards you at all? When when because you said, hey, that thing's pretty sensitive, Mike, are you sure because it doesn't seem to be did you take that in the moment or did you kind of understand like, oh no, this is just frustration that came
to the surface. I mean, after I got done in grind in the bath, like twenty minutes, I came to the realization that, you know, it was just now, I mean when when the weird thing about, like you said, we hadn't seen each other for so many years, we came together, we did this and for some reason, like we instantly picked up on each other like if that makes sense in our investigative style and everything else. So everything just kind of clicked with you and I. So yeah,
I mean I totally understood where that was coming from. And it was just I don't know, it was really strange, just how we just quickly like figured each other out, for a lack of better terms, picked up on a other's cues and things like that. So I wonder knew where you were coming from there. Well, one thing I do want to add is we're all kind of sarcastic assholes, and that's our humor. So that's how
we interact with each other. And it was actually pretty hilarious when we all sat down, and I think when we all sat down in the couch downstairs for the like watch party for us, Yeah, the cast watch party. We were all like dying laughing when you said that, because it's hilarious.
Well, there's there's few things because because I'm I'm usually a pretty reserved person in public, and even in private, I don't I don't like to be the center of attention at all, which is weird when you factor in the documentary where it's just like, I'm Bob Hicks, this is my story. Like that was never supposed to be the point, and I was I almost asked it when I realized that's where Tyler was going with it, like, hey, I'm Bob, I am Tales from the Dark. This is fanom
fucking far. I was like, man, we're not We're not doing this, Tyle. But then when you see it and it's entire do you realize that it wasn't just one person. Every person. I don't think what happened at Randolph Asylum that night could have happened if Nathan wasn't there, or Brittany
wasn't there, you weren't there. I feel like it was this melding of the paramanormal minds that enabled it to happen, because you had the skeptics, you had the true believers, you had the people that are like, there's definitely something, but I don't want to put a label on it. And
I think it was a beautiful combination. Again, not just because it's our film, but it's because you and I over the years have consumed probably more paranormal content than the majority of people, and we kind of knew what we didn't want it to be going into it, and then, like you said, we kind of just build off each other really well as someone who we
had never investigated with one another. That's something that really didn't make it into the film that you and I have never done this together, but we knew what to do. We knew how to work with one another in a way that would still be a entertaining to the camera, but it wouldn't influence the evidence, because you and I have talked off camera a hundred times about influencing evidence when people are allowed, you know, they're running through the hallways,
roman stuff around. You don't know. You know, if you threw the ball down the hallway and it bounced off the door, if that door was partially open. You have no way to know. Because you were showing your ass for the past hour and a half on TikTok. You don't know what you cause then nine times out of ten, it's not paranormal. And I wanted to kind of pick your brain with Phantom Farm versus Taylor Mill horror because one thing you said in the talking head segment the interview segment was when you
go into these locations, it's okay you say it's haunted. I'm going to prove you wrong. Or I'm going with the expectation that there's a specter here.
I'm going to show you what else it could be. Can you kind of walk us through how you approach this versus Taylor Mill, which is a much from what I said, it was just you and one other investigator, correct, right, correct, Yeah, so in this case we had five or six five of us, right, how do you approach something is as large as an a sane asylum versus a residential home, which is one of the investigator I mean, honestly, it's it's all the same. You know.
The big thing when you're going with the group that you got to figure out is, Okay, if a group's gonna be here, and we're gonna put a group here, how does them moving around sound? How does them talking sound? Because it's even an odd thing. Um, I think back to um we investigated Moundsville Penitentiary a long time ago, and when I was going through evidence, I could have sworn that I caught this class AEVP on my digital recorder. But then I started listening to the audio on our lapel
mics and stuff like that. Then I realized it was our voices. But because of you know, the we were in one of the wheelhouse is the way that our voices reverberated off the concrete around it. It made it sound like a completely different person. And you know, that's something you got to pay attention to. So when you're in a big scale situation, really what you're worrying more about is contamination, but everything else is essentially the same.
Just go in there, be open minded, you know, be respectful, and go with the intention. And you know, I think that's just the way that you do every place you go in the same but it's just you gotta figure you get the more factors you gotta kind of take into consideration when
you do possibly capture something. No, I completely agree with that. So with Phantom Farm, is there anything that you wished we had done, any experiments anything like, because again you've watched it probably three or four times now,
we've watched it together once. There's a few things I wish we had done differently, and you know, but that's that's the creative mindset, right Like, you're always like, oh, well, we could have done this better, we could have got this shot, or we could have done this experiment. But was there anything seeing the footage, knowing what we captured if we go back for a night too, whether it's to film or a live sham or whatever, is there anything that you would want to try at Randolph
County? You know, I try, you know, I mean, when we create something, when we look back at it nine times out of tible, we're going to absolutely hate it. And so I tried to kind of stay away from that. So is there anything I would have changed? No, because I think it laid the groundwork. I think it was a solid first attempt. Yeah, I don't think it was perfect by any means,
but your first attempt isn't supposed to be. But going back there, honestly, I don't know what more we would try because to me, I feel like we accomplish what we set out to do. I feel like we we took in what that place could offer us, and I don't really think that it has much more to give us. So I don't see doing anything differently.
See, I completely agree with that. And there's there's a growing statement that you're hearing in psychedelic fields consistently, which is when you have the answer, hang up the phone. And that's that's what I feel like, isn't happening enough In the paranormal field where you'll see these groups, they'll get one piece of evidence, that is that once in a lifetime shot. Now,
whether it's real or not, that's up for the viewer to decide. But in our case, I feel like we caught the holy grow, we caught the light in the bottle. Why go back and ask for more? Because again, if we're approaching this as the these are the disembodied spirits of deceased people, they've already given you something immaculate. Why would you go back and say, hey, I need more and know last time we had footsteps,
but can you do something cooler? Can you juggle like you don't really want to push that button in my opinion, because then you start towing that line between a disrespectful and B you're looking at gift horse in the mouth exactly. I definitely agree with you. And it goes back to you know, there's so many I mean, I had to say, there's so many groups out there that go out there, and for example, I saw someone post them on the groups Together day they were at the Axe Murder House and they said,
we're not a guinea activity. What can we do to make them give us activity? And I was like, whoaa, hold on, you're going into their house, yeah, that they lived in all this time. Not only are you trying to go into their house and disrespect them. If we are talking about disembodied spirits, then you're also talking about disrespecting the dead,
which is just it blows my mind. And you know, I understand there's certain places that I feel like you go there and you're like, Okay, I didn't get what this place has to offer, So I'm going to go back. I think that's okay. That's more than okay. But like you said, if you go in there and you ask for something and they get to you, just just let him be, unless they request you to come back. Just you know, just let him be. That's how I feel. Least, no, I agree with that. So I know Britney's gonna
have some questions for you in a moment. But before we can get everyone back in, tell us the drone story. I think only Patreons heard this so far. Walk folks through it. It was like seeing me meet that drone face to face in the basement of Randolph County. Literally, oh man, it was wild. Still. I remember we go on the basement and Bob's like, oh, there's no satellite saying down here, this is probably
a bad idea. So whenever we say this is probably a bad idea, you know we're gonna do it. So he fires up the drone and it's literally just it's just hovering right there, and then the drone just says fuck this guy in particular and comes backwards and just cracks him in the face. Well, so it was so frustrating because I had this idea for this shot and what's funny is the shot is used in phantom Ful. That's the that's my favorite part of the whole situation. And I'm like, we're gonna get
this really cool fucking shot. It's gonna be this like down into the darkness. It went to the end of the hallway, no problem. And I walked down the hallway and it's hovering some I'm like, okay, I'm gonna try and land it. Well, there's no satellite, it doesn't want to land it then shoots into the ceiling, bounce it off and smacks me in the face yep, And so I'm bleeding everywhere, and then you're free. Austin. You're like, is this a hospital or is this a bathroom?
What do we what do we have to do? And I'm like, I uh, because your face is bleed a lot, so you don't really know how bad it is until you kind of clear some of that blood away. And fucking poor Brittany is on a pizza run was a pizza your she's on a walmut Runch comes back and I think I texted you and I'm like, hey, now you called me. You're like, hey, just just so you know, don't freak out, and I'm like, I'm already freaking out. What the fuck's going on? I'm bleeding profusely out of my face.
Yeah, but I'm fine, don't freak out. What do you mean you're bleeding? Zetikum and literally scrub the blood, your blood off the kitchen floors, the kitchen floors, the basements. There was. It was a huge trail a blood. Yeah, yes, it was everywhere, even places that I don't even think he went to, like the ceiling. I don't know how it got there, player it is. Maybe that's why we had so
much activity. You had a blood sacrifice. My thing is weak. We could have done something with that, but like, hey, the ghost is bleeding, okay, right right, all right, Zach Paggin's calmed down. Yeah, we we had a missed opportunity there, for fucking sure, we did Jesus. So, now that everyone's kind of back and joining us, I want you to walk us through why Jay Robert Oppenheimer is actually the topa that in that that is also a It wasn't a Japanese scrypted ghost something that
I didn't pronounce. It was okay, so for folks, you know, So Brittany Austin and I have a group chat. This group chat is fucking popping twenty four hours a day. Because Austin works third shift, I don't sleep very well if it's it's if it's close. At the end of the overwatched season, Brittany's up for six or seven days on average. This group chat's always popping. And every now and then also be like, hey, I went down a weird rabbit hole, and that's when I stop what I'm
doing. Well, tell me about it, because this is gonna be the weirdest shit I've ever heard in my life. And this one Oppenheimer being at Tibetan topa that may or may not have inspired this. This eighteen nineteenth century Japanese demon was not what I you know, I didn't have that on my bingo chart this week, but either this is. You know, so my brain goes from point A to point A to point to Z in two seconds and it doesn't really make sense. So I was just watching something on the
and I forget what it was. But then they showed the infamous photo of him, the one where he's wearing the hat and he's smoking the cigarette that you know, I think most people know and something just kind of struck me
as odd, like, I know that man, you know Um. So I started just kind of like looking around then of course his um famous quote UM yeah, yes, yes, And so I was looking at other quotes from him, and he was has another quote where he's talking about how UM, children had this like extra perception, UM, that they can perceive certain things and that's why it makes them better thinkers and stuff like that. And it's just like a lot of the stuff he's saying, it's just odd.
And so I looked at the photo again. I was like, you know what he kind of looks like what we know is hat Man. Yeah. So I started looking into these hat Man sidings and the first reported one that I could find was recorded around two years after he passed away. Now, obviously the internet wasn't really a big thing in sixty nine or sixty seven,
so who knows what else people could have seen. And when you look at the whole legend of you know, the hat Man and his obsession with um, you know, standing over children and stuff like this, you know the quote about children having in this extra perception, it just kind of stuck with me in a weird way, and it just kind of made me connect the dots from there, so you know, I had to keep digging deeper.
And I was thinking, you know, if this had a possibility of being this tupa because like I said, you know, they look the same. Some of the things he says just seems odd. Then as we look at different areas of the world or whatever, whether it be a different religious area or you know, political, geopolitical, whatever it is, then you would
think that this tulpa would change. And so I started to try to look at the hat Man sightings in Japan because I figured if anyone has a different opinion of Oppenheimer, then you know, the rest of the world Japan might have strong feelings, right, And I, oddly enough couldn't find any hat Man sightings in Japan, which I found weird because that's supposed to like the most well known entity you know, all around the world, really, yeah,
especially in this day and age, right exactly. But I did find one that kept popping up, and it's this story of this I'm not even gonna try to pronounce, but it's supposedly this eight foot tall woman who wears a dress and a hat looks very much like the one that we know top
Hat to wear. Yeah, and it just it shocked me as odd because once again, this creature or demon, whatever you want to call it, has a lot of the same characteristics you know, swim and figure, you know, the same type of clothing that you know, the clothing sounds similar to what top Hat wears or hat Man, but it's claim to be addressed,
which I'll get into here in a second. And you know, I just keep diving into this and the one difference that it has, because you know, my whole theory was that it should be slightly different in a more menacing way in Japan that is in US. And the one difference is that this entity is said to bring death to man. So now I'm thinking, okay, World War two round that era, death to the men in Japan, Okay, this might be something. Yeah, And then I got into
looking into where did this ridge name? Um, A little fun fact is the Resident Evil game that came out with the you know, the woman with the big mommy maker. Yes, yeah, Lady Truce based off of this character. Okay, that's fucking cool, which I thought, Yeah, I never knew that, and I thought that was amazing. So the way that
this originally was this little girl who was nine years old. She went over to Japan to visit her grandparents and um this was in nineteen ninety eight, and she's inside and she claims that she sees this entity um inside, and it's making this weird mechanical sound, and it has his hat on, and she thought it was wearing a dress. And she goes to her grandparents and they're like, who is who is this lady outside? And her grandfather's like, get inside, just go into hiding. I need to call people.
She said. He went out, he called people, and they would never tell her what this entity was. But here's the interesting thing, she said,
it has a male voice. And the way I think about this is is a nine year old girl who catches a glimpse of this figure, she's gonna try to make sense of it, you know, of course, and in the mind of a nine year old girl, I could see when you look at hat man who has this long flowing jacket and a hat, how you might mistake it, especially as you know, a young girl who has, you know, a mindset like young girls do, thinking that's someone wearing
a dress. And she even comes back and says it could have been a male, but this was what I was wondering now. Right now, the legend still goes on as it is this female, and there's been a huge uptick in sidings. And oddly enough, this story came out just a few months before Project hat Man came out in two thousand and eight, So these are lining up and the sightings are lining up and increasing popularity. So it
wasn't report on until two thousand and eight. She get this description. Then we start seeing these drawings and stuff this figure, and it leads me to wonder, if you guys remember back to season one is Supernatural, they had Tolpa episode, and if you remember back that, the way that that episode went was these teenagers broke into a band place and they drew these sigils on the walls and they end up basically created a tulpa and people would keep going
in there and seeing this topa. But the issue was that they were posting about this on their website, and as the post, you know, they wanted more and more clicks. They started to say crazier things about this tope, like he kills people. And then a woman goes in there and she gets strangled to death. And sam Adine are like, you gotta shut this down. Like what who are typing into here is giving this tulpa new powers
into existence exactly. So my thought is if this girl saw hat Man and says, I think it was a woman, and now this is on the internet, Now we have all these drawings. Now they have this figure who exactly like hat Man but likes to kill people, but it is now a woman. Could it be that this tulpa changed, it changed from hat Man into this woman figure now, because that's what everyone you know had an existence. Because the whole thought at the start of this to me was when the
stomach bomb went off. This was in the newspaper everywhere, and people would be looking at the picture in the newspaper, and no matter what side you're on, you have a deep, deep feeling and emotion about what just happened. And I don't I don't know any other time in the world where we've had the entire world looking at one image with some sort of intense emotion and
feeling at the exact same moment. It was like the world said standstill at that point exactly, and either you were on the side of this had to be done or this was the worst man in history. And you know, it was either he was, you know, a good man, or he was death. So when we look in the area that would probably perceive him more as death. Now we have this entity that's very similar to the one here in the US, which is very similar to Oppenheimer himself, but it
brings death. And it starts out as a figure with a male voice that she said may have been mistaken as a female, or she may have mistaken as a female, but it was actually a male. And now after all these images stuff surface, now we have this eight foot tall woman who is said to be like the girlfriend of top Hat or slender Man, because they look so similar. It's just it's just a really wild thought and rabbit hole to go down. No. Absolutely, so for those who are wondering,
it's uh, I'm going to attempt to pronounce this here. It's the hatchi chaku sama h A c h I s h A k U s A m A. I was solid. If you don't know how it's pronounced A one hundred percent, I was right. That's how this works. Right. No one watched a video on the scene. No, But here's the thing. I love these types of rabbit holes because I'm currently going down one of them. I'm going to do an episode one at some point. I'm trying to
plan it now. Uh or I'm calling this a mass exposure syndrome. It's it's a it's a term that I'm slowly coining when it comes to uphology, where the reason we have so much exposure happening right now, and it's happening so consistently, we're becoming numb to it. But we're also noticing more UFO
activity. When you apply that to the paranormal here where you like you said, when it comes to topal creation, it's not that different of a you know thought, Yeah, right, And I love these little rabbit holes because it's not really being done right now. What's being done as can I catch that apparitional camera that gets me the ten million clicks on YouTube. That's it's
weird. That's kind of where the paranormal community is still stuck. And and I find it hilarious that, like, we've come so far from the og taff stays to where we are now where ghost hunting is now accepted and it's not it's not just weird kids in the attic anymore. It's it's multimillion dollar television shows, and yet we still have these weird correlations of keeping us kind of stuck in the dark ages of PARANLELM one investigation because at the end of
the day, these shows especially are here for entertainment. And it's funny you and I talked about those at length. We have this, uh, this review for Phantom Farm on Amazon and it just says, uh, this was this was okay at best and no no, but there was no jump scare, And like, this person right here has no idea who this documentary was
for, because it wasn't for the run of the mill paranormal crowd. Who's just yes, it was for the people who want to see this and its entirety what it usually is, because ninety percent of the movie it's just us sitting in the dark and talking to one another with a little bit of comedic
relief here and there, with a history lesson. That's that's ninety percent of your paranormal investigations you go on. And I think that that's something if you only approach because I mean, you and I talk about this in the groups all the time, people like, Hey, I want to go my first investigation, what camera do I need to catch a full wided apparition? When you find that out, let us know so we can buy twelve Yeah, we'll actually buy the company, thank you very much. Where you can just
get the SLS and point at a copyright. Okay. Well, so that brings me to my my next topic of conversation. So we're you know, my thoughts. Apps they're all bullshit, none of them. None of them are real. End of discussion. I won't even entertain because Brittany and I went to an event not too long ago and someone was like, Yeah, the reason I trust this app is I can put it on my Phone's an airplane mode, Bob, there's nothing. It's not connected to the internet.
How's it getting it? Like? Okay? He does it have access to your microphone? Well yeah, it needs it. Okay. So the way that coding works is it's as simple as as the people who use Excel you know this that, if this, then that that's a common you know coding technique US. It's the same way with these apps. If if your voice from Brittany equal send scary voice back every thirty instances or whatever it may be, it doesn't matter that it's an airplane mode. There's no app that fucking
works. The coding and the files are already on your phone, regardless of if you have Internet connection or not. Yeah. Yeah, that's funny because I was just listening to a podcast episode a couple of days ago and they had this guy on and he was talking about the SLS camera and he was talking about how it's a really good tool. You just gotta know when it's giving you false positives. First of all, I thought, is, how
do you know it's a false positive? Yeah, But his thing was that he said he went somewhere and every time that they put on music, these apparitions would appear and start dancing. And I'm like, do you know how much someone codes those? Like that's a thing that happens before you can have
them in your hands ready to go. Yeah, And the person on the other end knows what you want to get out of that, so they're going to give you what you want so that you'll then promote their product because every single piece of quote unquote evidence you catch is good business and good publicity for them. Yeah. Oh, when we discussed this on a reason investigation that
we all went on where we had the rempod. The re pod was giving us very interesting results and now, yes, what we ended up doing was saying, Okay, there has to be another environmental factor that's not just the rimpod. Because the temperature gage is going down, but the temperature gum we're using is having the exact same reading. It's not even changing by a quarter
of a degree. Then we can assume that it's not a ghost touching the rimpod, that there is something happening mechanically with this device that is causing it to fail. And you know as well as I do, a lot of this year, not the rimpod specifically, And you have to be very giftful
where you buy this equipment from. Most of it, especially in twenty twenty three, is a three D printed shell with six cents worth of filament that goes into it that if you hit it too hard, and we see this with a couple of new meilmeters, if you hit the casing too hard, it's off forever. You cannot get it to recalibrate. Which is why I love the old school stuff we all used to have to rely on, where like a barometer, for example, that was a very common thing two thousand
and eight two thousand nine ghost hunters would use. No one's bringing a fucking barometer anymore with him because you have it in your trifield meter. The problem with all this equipment, and it's something that I think we did exceptionally well in Phantom Farm. They have to be a I want your opinion, but they should be a tool, not a crutch to carry your investigation. You were absolutely right, um, And you know, going back to the whole
rimpod thing. I remember we were pretty pleased with ourselves because we had figured out what the environmental factor was. Yeah, until we realized, no, we don't. And you've never seen a group of people so defeated because of they might have just caught evidence before. We so badly wanted to disprove it
because we knew it. And then we're like, oh crap, okay, yeah, and shout out to Brittany during this investigation because this this is a location that you had warned us about before, said hey, this is the real deal. Take it seriously. Brittany hadn't slept. She had something like an hour before the investment. She fucking just goes to sleep alone in the base. We're in the basement and we're, you know, doing our thing down there. And then maybe way through Tyler was like, hey, do
you think Britney's actually asleep? And I'm like, if she wasn't, she'd be down here. She's asleep and in this place that you know, Austin, who doesn't get zero fear with these locations, is like, hey, this place has fucked me up in the past. Britney, He's like, yep, great place to take a nap. Yeah, yeah, it was a good nap. I slept pretty well. They had a nice fan in there. They had a nice fan. Southern thing, most southern thing I've
ever heard of mindself. Know. It fucking reminds me. There's this viral clip going around where, um, the guy is like a content creator from like North Carolina or something. He meets this girl and they're like I think they're like third or fourth day. She's back at the house and she's like, hey, do you sleep with your fans? And he's like, yeah, of course yes. She's like, oh no, that's a problem.
And it goes through and she's like, well, if it's a problem, I won't sleep with I won't sleep with my fans when you're here, I guess if it's that big of a problem, I could buy an air conditioner. And it was so fucking hilarious because that's a Brittany Clark conversation where you're not looking at it as anything else. But of course I sleep with a fucking fan, right, this woman when she moved up, she because you know, you had told me like, oh, even in the winter,
I sleep with this fan. I'm like, no one sleeps with a fucking fan with three feet of stone. Oh I was. I've never been so wrong. She I've turned on the air conditioner in the winter before the majority of last winter, you had the air conditioners on. I don't. I don't understand it. But that's that's a Southern folks just must run hot. That's that's how this works apparently. Oh it's always good stuff. But now, so the other thing I want to kind of get into with you,
Austin, what we kind of covered the gear we don't trust. What gear do you trust? Like, what's in your go bag every investigation, with the exception of your film cameras, which we're gonna we'll talk about that next. What's your paranormal specific equipment that you have to have. I mean honestly, when people ask, I say, number one, dude, just just get a good camera, um, because then you know, a good and fred camera. I hate using um flashlights, yeah and stuff like that.
I I one percent just don't use them. Um. I remember the clip when we were doing our solos and uh, it didn't make it into the dock. But um, I was walking down the hallway where um I think the one we got the footsteps right, and I had the chair that moved on me, and UM, I asked you, iway was like, did that chair this move? You're like I don't know. Can you shine your light on it? Like what light? And you're like from your LANDERD.
I'm like what LANTERD. You're like, wait, did you seriously not take a light with you? I'm like, know what it was? I supposed to, um, but you know it just it's for me night vision camera. Just that's that's all I need. UM. A little bonus would probably be you know, um the what do they call it? Is it the ghost meter? The look at one? She looking one that's like the orange and it's the most accurate one on the fucking market for thirty dollars for no
reason. And then you just can't go wrong with an SB seven as long as you know how to use it um and you know you can't. Yeah, no, I I completely agree. The the SP seven has got to be one of the most controversial items and any ghost hunter's backpack. Yes, I mean you've been to the locations where, especially if you're in in a populated area with a bunch of radio towers, you're getting non stop bleed through
an interference. What Brittany, Brittany and I absolutely love doing is going into mine shafts or caves where there hasn't been service down there since the dawn of time, nor will there ever fucking be. So if you're down there, you you're doing a fifteen twenty minutes sweep and then all of a sudden something comes through as a voice. You're like, oh, this suddenly has merit right better. If you ever get like a cuss word that comes over the
I don't think they say the F for it on this. You know what's funny is I had never encountered that pre Brittany and Brittany, I want to know what is it about you that makes spirits just hate you with a fucking passion? Oh, I forgot about that. Oh the Prospect place stuff. Yeah, that also happens in Eastern Kentucky. I don't know. They hate
me. I was hilarious because I felt like I was like watching like about to be domestic violence thing going on, because Bob was under for you know, the SS method and he's just yelling brit I'm like, just the ghost. Yeah. They were calling me a horror. They told me to shut the fuck up. I mean they really. I'm never disrespectful either, Like I'm not. You're the most level headed and calm out of everybody, and
they're the first I tell you guys to calm down. I'm like, hey, that's enough, right, I'm like, hey, what's going on? What are we doing here? And then they're like, fuck you, Brittany, And I'm like, okay, all right, yeah, but like if I would have questions talking, it was okay. But as soon as you opened your mouth, it's just every single time. Yeah, it's not wild,
it's not everywhere we go. Prospect was definitely. They didn't do it again this last time we went, No, but Prospect was intense, and then Eastern Kentucky We've had a half a couple of times like out in the woods and things like that when we've used the STI method, and I think there was a cave we went to that got cussed out in I don't remember.
So for those who maybe I'm familiar with, the ASTI method was coined by Carl Peiffer and Connor Randall and S. S. Park, Colorado, And what it is is you'll use an SB seven, SP eleven and S box, a spirit box of some sort. You will blindfold the conduit or the channel er they'll put on in our case. So I've seen this done with earbuds. I don't like the earbuds. We'll put on Vic Firth drummer headphones that Austin can attest. You don't hear anything with these headphones on.
And the goal is to get completely uninfluenced answers from the spirit box because the conduit has no idea what it is that you're asking. They don't even know if when you're asking a question. So the results are usually a little bit more believable. But what I wanted to ask you, Austin, as phantom Farmers, the first time you'd done they asked this method, you started out very skeptical and it was clear on your face, like, this is fucking
bullshit. Yeah, this is stupid. What are your thoughts now that you've done it a few times, you're familiar with the method and you've had some very interesting results, has your opinion changed at all on this particular methodology? So no, and yes, I will never watch another group do one and say wow, that was wild, because it'd be so easy to fake.
Yeah, and not only that would be so easy to manipulate, because if I'm sitting there and I'm asking one hundred questions, chances are one of those answers is going to somehow line up, even if it's in a very vague way, you know, um, But when I am there to witness it, then I can attest to you know, Okay, this is crazy, especially you know the one we're talking about where it was cussing out Brittany.
The craziest thing about that was, I don't know if you remember it, not Brittany, but when there's there's this area that this entity likes to hang out at, and whenever we would turn the light towards that direction, light light off, Yeah, every single time, and there's no way he could see it. Yeah, And that was just mind boggling to me. Also, one of the most horrified moments that I've had was when we asked where it was and it said, I'm in the walls and can you make it
knocking down on the walls, and instantly every single wall around us. It just was getting beat from the inside and Me and Britney were like, um, what do we do? Yeah, me and Austin during that session, we had all the lights off, but we were standing shoulder to shoulder because I was not about to get fucked up by this whatever. We were talking to you. Yeah, I remember the light. It lets you know you're
being surrounded, and it was it's wild. So you know, it's kind of a roundabout answer to say yes and no. It's changed for me. If I can experience it, not necessarily as the one being under but the one from the outside end, or even phantom of arm where I got to watch all the raw footage back, you know, then I could say Okay, because I was there, I remember that I can vouch for that seems legit, but I can't personally take it as evidence from an outside group.
That's just me. I mean, that's fair, and that's the problem. I think with being an investigator, is you are ten x more critical in these other groups and what they're doing, because again we have to acknowledge that there's there's two brains when it comes to investigation. If you are filming it, you have to have the idea of entertainment somewhere in your content just mind. But you also don't want to ruin the authenticity, which is where I
think we towed the line very close with Fantom Farm. But we also did that this past an investigation where we weren't filming. We went in with the expectation of not filming. We had some fun, but we never got it to the point where it's like, oh, this is just a game. And I feel like there's a lot of groups out there who they kind of take it as like this is just a fun night away from the wife and the kids, and I can go and hang out with my buddies and conjure
up a fucking demon. Yeah. Yeah, And when you guys actually left me, Nathan and Tyler are out there and we were kind of talking about that, and we were talking about how, you know, maybe we take things too seriously. Maybe we go in there investigating. And it was like three in the morning. You guys already left, and I was like, you know what, why don't we just go inside and let's just have fun.
Let's just talk to each other, let's just you know, play a game whatever, and let's just have fun for a little while and see what happens. And instantly things started to pop off to the point where Tyler was like, Okay, there's something going on here. There's someone in here, there's someone doing this. And it was an interesting experiment where, you know, I don't know, it's it's weird. I like how you know,
we constantly learn from our investigations and learn new approaches to different places. You know, not every's the same, and you know, it just goes a whole being an open minded thing. No, I one hundred percent agree. So before we go, I have a couple more quick questions. You've been in this field for quite a long time. You've been on the social media side of this field, because you send me clips from like ten years ago of you on investigations. How do you feel like the field has changed in
the past let's say five ten years. Oh man, Um, Well, it's like you said, now people can make money off of it and whenever someone can make money off of something, it's not who does it better necessarily, it's who does it more extreme? Who what's that I said? Or faster? Yeah, it's like a news outlet, whoever can get the story first exactly. So it's either going to go to that extreme of who's gonna be the first one to capture this full body apparition in this place or who
can do it while you know whatever. And so the problem is with that is that it gives people more incentive to be fake, and um, you know, I think there's part of its increasing fakery, but there's also a subset of people who back when this was still taboo and people were like wanting to know about it, wanting to learn about this field, people came in with more of an open mind. I feel like now we have investigators who say this is evidence, and you'll say, well, I think it's this,
No, you're wrong, this is evidence. And it's also encouraging people to whatever you think is evidence is evidence because your group of one hundred thousand life minded people who are going to agree with you. So, you know, I mean with technology, it's it's gonna be like with anything else. People like to get in their little groups that are going to promote their ideals,
and I think that that's had kind of a bad impact. But I will say I think the best thing to happen is, you know, suppose is Zach Baggin's controversy where he is canceling the shows and stuff like that, and people are moving back to YouTube. I think maybe we can finally get this great reset where people are starting to make the content that they want to put out, not controlled by a network, and we can get back to our roots like it was years ago. I hope. No, that's something
I completely agree with it. And it is weird because you kind of touched on it back in the day when we were begging to get into these places. Back before we can go on Facebook into a group and find twenty locations. Back then, you had to know somebody whose cousins, sister's dad work in this place in the nineties, who still knows the owner of the building. Now let's hey, let's go to the website, we pay our fee,
we show up. So you wanted to be very careful back then with what evidence you produced and showed the public and showed the homeowner or the location owner as evidence. Because if you show them some bullshit that can't be backed up and they say, hey, this is nonsense, you kind of shot yourself in the foot as both an investigator and also a procure of these locations. And it's very weird now that people are just completely okay with here's an
orb. It's definitely the spirit of my dead grandfather who's never been here and as also still alive exactly. Another issue run into is the fact that some of these locations they will give you free you know, visits, free overnights if you give them evidence and they don't care what it is. Most of the people who own these places, at least the start, don't own them because they're haunted. They just find out, oh okay, I can make
money off a haunted attraction. Yes, so they will will gladly chill out stuff is it's not evidence. They don't care it's faked or not. It's getting them money. Yeah. That's not all occasions, it's some of them. Yeah, And it's so weird now that we're seeing these pair of attractions. This is something that you know, yeah, ten years ago, we would have begged for this more places to let us in because, like I said, it was. Right. Now, you can easily book up an
entire year if you have enough money to do so. Back then you were lucky, lucky to get three investigations a year, and one of those three is somewhere that you've been a thousand times most likely, right, So that's wild. And these places are charging more and more, so there's obviously, you know, a huge demand for it and they're booked up months out. So that's that's it's it's wild to see what's been going on. Well, yeah, and it's nuts to see places that two years ago cost three hundred
dollars now costs nine hundred dollars. That's what's insane. So all right, well before we jos coming up on our hour walk folks through, where can they get a copy of Taylor mill Horror if they want to see more of your photography? Austin did all of the I can when all the still photography in fantom form was done by Austin in this crazy mobile fucking film ring, where can people find more Austin Lawrence? You can pick up Taylor Mille Horror
on Amazon right now. You can check out some my photography over on Instagram, slash, Facebook, if you look up Chasing Happiness and it should have a couple of new books coming out this year, is the plan, So stay tuned on Amazon for those. Hopefully do we gain stippets any any teasers for that? Yeah, I mean so this is gonna be a photography books. Not much to say there, um other than you know, it's it's a lot of people like to get on Ohio and uh, you know,
I have lots of pride for being from Ohio. So I've been traveling Ohio for the past about two years photographing some of my favorite places to show why I think Ohio is a great place to be. Yea. And my other one is going to be my first horror novel, fiction Base, because when Terrill Horror came out, although horrors in the title, it was not a horror novel and I did everything I could not to make it one. But people are still like, oh yeah, that that that can me up at
night. So I'm like, you know what, I'm gonna give you something that will hopefully keep you up at night. So I'm working on a very kind of graphic novel that's based on a reoccurring nightmare I've had from probably about age five, I've until current day, and it's something that's always stuck with me, and so I decided to take it and just make it into an entire book. So I'm hoping that will be out here soon. Working title for Nowa's Devil's Carnival. We'll see. I love it, and I also
love the little Ohio pride thing there. That's something Brittany and I have talked about. You if you are not from Ohio and do not bleed fucking scarlet and gray. Yeah, you cannot shoot on Ohio without consequences people getting pissed off. Now, Ohio Wands, natives, we'll talk shit about everything ohioh Yeah, it's the most it's the most disgusting place. I hate it here.
No, I'm not leaving nine times. That's most Ohio Wands. There's a certain pride attached with the state of Ohio that I'll never be able to fully. You know, I've been here thirty years. I do not know what it is about Ohio. This is hey, it's all fights you for the motherland. And you know, it's like I to tell everyone who's like from the outside of Mike, the thing that is awesome about Ohio is if you're willing to travel two hours in any direction, you're an entire another world.
Like you can go from farm fields to beaches, to hacking hills to you know, mountains. I mean, it's it's so diverse, it's insane. And I don't think that people realize that. And that's part of what gives us our pride is because Ohio isn't all you know, lime Ohio. Now that that would be depressing. It sucks, that's for sure. So Britain, do I want to have a rebuttal about what you hate about Ohio so we can jump, you know, gang up on you yellows drinking the
kool aid. That's all I gotta say. I mean, we didn't all grow up in the Apple Wusha mountains. All Right, that's it. He's done. Yeah, nope, you're done. Friendship provoked, it was bound anyway. I'm all right, Austin, Well, we definitely appreciate it. Man, Thank you so much for joing, for coming on. It's been way too long. Austin has become a staple and the Tails from the Dark Family. You guys can see him in the Facebook group. He is always
willing to talk to anyone with with a weird fucking story. He's a great friend to have, and in my opinion, if we had more investigators in the field like you, who came at it from a scientific perspective but also open to the fact that some things can't be applied to science, we beat in a much fucking better world right now. When it comes to the Parriside,
I appreciate the same to you guys. You know, you have pretty much the same mindsets and that's why we work together so well, for sure, So we definitely appreciated Austin and uh, we will talk to you later, buddy. Thanks again for coming on, Thank you, thank you. Yes, Brittany, it's always fun to sit down and talk to someone equally as weird as you are, right, yeah, and see Austin touch. But there's something about organic chemistry and again it's it's like weird, it attracts
weird. And it's so funny that Austin and I kind of found our way back to one another after all these years. And it's always just fun to sit down with some like minded folks and just talk about fucking ghosts. Yep, not fucking them, but you know, I mean, it's Austin so you never really know. You never really know. He's also grounded for that little stunt. He added at the end, Oh the Ohio Mountains. Yeah, I looked over. I could see you were like about, Oh,
did you not hear what he called Appalachia? I did, That's why you were so upset? No, yeah, I could like feel that. The studio table storted to shake when started gusting in the studio, the fire pits start smelling sweet teaft sulfur was just a sweet tia roma. The fucking the Appalachian hellscape opened up and started to move a little closer to the studio. It was that that we were Honestly, I'm glad no one else is here
because our lives were in danger. Yeah. Yeah, So with that, with that being said, that Miss Brittany, is everything else that you'd like to add before we go? I do not well with that being said. I think we'reant to add this episode of Our Strange World but Special guest Austin Lawrence to our never ending but are Always Growing Tales from the Dark to