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And welcome back to Coast to Coast George, Norie with you. Steve Gonsalz Back with us has been a public speaker and educator about paranormal phenomena for more than two decades. He helped pave the way for a worldwide paranormal explosion as a main cast member of the hit television series that you may remember, ghost Hunters, as well as Ghost
Hunters Live, Ghost Hunters Academy, and Ghost Nation. Steve has started his work in paranormal studies at a very young age and has investigated more than fifteen hundred reportedly haunted locations. Along with his multiple appearances on a variety of television, radio, and paranormal series, he is the executive produced and co directed the hit documentary films The House in Between One and Two. In his book We're Talking about Tonight is called The Life with Ghosts. Steve, welcome back.
How have you been, Hey, George? I've been really good. Thank you for asking. I hope you've been well.
Yes, sir, fifteen hundred hundred locations was at school? Were any of them scary?
Yeah?
Some of course, can be quite i'd say startling.
For sure.
You definitely get you know, your blood pumping. But there have been a few that, you know, you really look at your fellow investigator and you kind of say, God, I'm glad I'm not in here alone.
I'd be quite scary.
Yeah, how did you get interested in the supernatural?
For me, it was really an interest early back. I remember a movie called The Entity that really kind of threw me for a loop and.
Scared me quite honestly.
I was terrified and started crying towards the end of it a bit. My mom was like, with you watching and you know, certainly shut the TV off or whatever. And I remember right before that seeing it's say based on true events, and that really kicked off my love for it. But I've been going ever since, really, and I was maybe eight or nine years old then maybe even a bit younger.
Tell us about the metamorphosis of the new book, A Life with Ghosts.
Yeah, we you know, I spent quite some time just thinking of all the different places we've been and experiences that were poignant to me, and really stories that I connected to in terms of the people behind them and the people even behind the ghosts that we were chasing after. And that really was my turning point, saying, I want to start writing all of this down and getting it out to people.
And you've got about a dozen locations that you pick. Was I got the horne in on them?
It was Actually it took quite some time really just thinking, because I didn't want to put together, you know, a list of here are my favorite haunted spots in the country, or here are the haunted places in the country you need to check out. There are plenty of those types of books out there, and those are great, but I wanted each story in there to be poignant to me and things that meant a lot to me, and even things that I thought people might not realize when it
comes to haunting. So it really did have to fit some criteria.
You know, my favorite.
Haunted place may not even be the most active place I've been. It can be a lot of other things, like the history, the aesthetic of the building. I don't mean aesthetic like you know fashion. I mean if you find beauty in the decay and you really want to absorb the building and the house in and figure out
what it was like, that sort of thing. And it was hard but we did, the co writer and I Mike Galwezy, we did narrow it down to a dozen or so places, and every story in there really means a lot to me, and I think to the reader as well.
I hope we'll see.
Well, you did a great job with it, Steve, you really have. And it's fascinating to read. It's almost like one of those pull the covers over your head.
There are a few stories in there that are very scary that they really can be, especially for someone who is not an investigator, you know, if you're not used to these types of experiences or the fact that people can really have these intense experiences. There are stories in there that are a little more on the horror side. And even when you dig into the history now I mean horror like.
A horror movie.
I just mean the horror that can be other people's death and trauma and sadness in what happens in life, and.
It really can't.
But the experiences in there, there are some that are really scary. There was one I talk about a place in there where it was the scary, you know, the most scared I'd ever been on a case. For me, Luckily, the paranormal doesn't really scare me all that much. I get very startled, but it quickly translates to excitement. But this time I did find myself really clutching onto somebody else and making my way.
Through this place.
A pioneer in the area of poltergeist research, doctor William g Rohl You mentioned him prominently in the book.
Yeah, that was quite an honor for me to even spend time with him. And when I met him, I didn't even know that I was going to have that opportunity. I went to the Ryan Research Center. I had to do a talk on paranormal phenomena, and they had gotten in touch with me just prior to me getting there, and they said, hey, do you know who doctor William g Rohl Is. I said, well, gosh do I. Of course, he's a bit of a hero of mine. And then she said, well, he'd like to come to your talk,
and he just wants to make sure it's okay. And I did two days in a row. He came to both and sat through the whole thing, and then at the end of that we went and spent a few days together in this haunted mansion in North Carolina there and it was I play amazing that we did a lot of study on energy.
He taught me a lot about, of.
Course EMF and how it really works truly, and how to discern through different types of energies within a building and a structure, and it was quite fascinating. It was really awesome.
How did your investigating ghost lead to television shows and the documentaries? How did that happen?
I was in the paranormal field researching. Of course I'm investigating, and I had joined forces with Jason Hawes, and then quickly thereafter we had there was a team, and that team was called Rhode Island Paranormal, but that became TAPS and we started to get through different cases of ours that got some notoriety. We started to have production companies getting in touch with it with us and saying, hey,
this should be a TV show. We didn't realize people necessarily did this like this like you guys do, and we were hesitant for a little bit, but you know, Jay and Grant, myself and the other task members decided it would probably be a good idea and we went with it, and then you know that we still do that show to this day. So here we are almost twenty years later, the documentary was something I saw that that place needed to be investigated at a higher level that.
It was being.
And the story there, it was so fascinating to me, and such a lovely team of people over there, the investigators and Alice, the main person behind the story, and just different things that I never thought even new existed, like a ten year controlled study on a one paranormal event, or not one but one location. I thought that was quite fascinating the fact that they thought that the house.
In some way was learning how to communicate.
Back and not necessarily that the house had an intelligence, but what was ever occupying the house with them using the house as a conduit, you know, learned a bit to how to communicate through time. A lot of really fascinating things in there.
And then the book.
It really a lot of people were saying, hey, you should, you know, write a book. We'd love to read about what you've been up to in the panel world and your thoughts behind things and your personal beliefs, and and then I thought it was, you know, a good time to really let people who love the shows and what we do to be there in a bit more of a first person perspective, like, oh, I'm investigating with him.
I'm here looking through his eyes and getting his thoughts at what's going on in his head in the moment while things are happening. And that's really you know, from from A to Z there and a quick but that's how it all sort of came about.
Of all the places you've been, Steve, and you've got a handful in the book, is there one that stands.
Oh, that's a good question. I think there are a few that stand out, and there are different reasons.
You know.
Waverley Hills, for me, is always the most amazing place, and that's in Louisville, Kentucky Tuberculosis Hospital and every time I go there there is some sort of activity and that's very rare in this field that every time you go to a place there is activity, and to me that is quite amazing. And only the staff there fosters the haunting, and not in a way of but you know, they really are respectful to the spirits that might still be there and they want other people to respect them
as well, and I think that's quite important. But then you know, there are cases where you're looking more towards the client and the sensitivity and the humility that comes along with that, and the beautiful relationships that you you know, developed with some of the people that you are able
to help. And so some places have different meetings, but I'd say, all in all, Waverly Hills just you know, I get teary eyed every time I come up to that building and you see it sprawling out and it's so big and gorgeous, and you just can't help but wonder what happened inside those walls throughout its history, and it's just such a magical place.
It is truly indeed, what causes a place, in your opinion, Steve to be haunted, I.
Think personally, and I think a lot of other investigators will probably hold this this thought as well, that there probably isn't just one singular sort of spark or but I do think there are a lot.
Of different things. There can be that unfinished.
Business that it seems to be a common thread and pattern where you just and it doesn't mean unfinished business like you know I need, but it can be just unfinished business in a relationship, unfinished business at a property. And it's also I think a very strong emotional attachment to a place or an object, and it doesn't have to be a terrible emotion. It can be a beautiful emotion. It can be, but it has to be a strong one. It seems that it is, you know, a place that
somebody really really loved. That may be where you find a haunting, a place where a tragedy happened, and maybe that gentleman or that lady is still there or whatever reason, or maybe they've decided to return. The mechanics I think are still unknown, which is one of the things that make this field so fascinating. But I think there are a few differ things that can work as a catalyst, and I think devotion as well, your devotion to people
and to a place. There is a story in the book a place Alexandria Zoo in Louisiana where it's most certainly a haunting of a place where there's a gentleman who is so devoted.
To his work and what he did.
And this is in the zo little logical field, and he loved these animals, and he didn't want to leave this zoo. And there's you know, in my opinion, everyone else that's been there, there's quite a good deal of evidence to show that he never did leave that zoo. So that's a haunting not necessarily of tragedy, but of devotion and love.
And that's really off too.
When you did the television show and you still do. Of course, are you under any pressure to make this haunting pop up or anything like that?
No, No, I think that, you know, there's always a general sense and excitement when things are happening, you know, even among us as investigators. If you know, Jay and Sherry or Tango or me would come out and just had a really amazing experience in there. It just is a much different vibe and feel of domestigation.
And I think the production company.
And the networks and everybody likes that, you know, it does. But to be honest, some of our highest rated shows where some of the ones where we figured most of the stuff out, it seems that the audience just really loves going on that ride and loves that experience, and so we never really got any pressure to you know, make things more scary or more exciting, or to have anything happen that wouldn't otherwise. In fact, it's quite the opposite.
Of course, you know, everybody would want every single show to have a ghost and all this crazy activity happening. But the fact of the matter is is that it's just isn't that way. You just really never know. But being in the television world and having a great production company and network behind it, you do have the opportunity to
tilt the odds in your favorite bit. You can really pick cases with a higher frequency activity, cases where the chances of going and having an experience happen while you're there for that short week or two are heightened, so you're in a better position. But no, never really any pressure that I can remember saying, Hey, come on, guys, like, can't you pull.
A ghost out of here? I think the.
Mystery, the scare, the fright, what if of it is really just as important as what we experience or captured.
You knew the rock singer meat Loaf, who passed away a year and a half ago.
Yes, yeah, meet Love a great guy, Michael and meet as he told his friends to call him, and we were very fortunate to have that honor bestowed upon us that we were able to call him. Meet He and Jason on our show there became very very close, and we investigated with him many times over the years. I know you know his daughter quite well. She's a dreamboat of a person. And it. Yeah, his enthusiasm for the paranormal and the investigation and his love for us and what we did was so amazing.
He really was a great person.
But he had this way of investigating that I had never really a scene before that I quite admired, where he just would lay himself out there as an open book and tell him and when I say that, I mean whatever spirits might be around that'll talk to him all about his upbringing, his childhood, his aspirations, and just his thought was, if I can get them to be so comfortable around me that I'm like an old friend, maybe they'll open up and come around and be more
willing to talk. And I think it worked for me. He definitely got some evidence where maybe some of us who weren't doing that technique would have, but he was, you know, the first time we ever investigated with him, he was so excited to go. He just grabbed equipment, didn't know what he grabbed, turned around, ran into the house and just tripped up the stairs, busted up his knee.
The camera goes flying into fifteen pieces. But he was so excited he just took off and we were able to investigate with him again for a recent episode of Ghost Hunters just a few months before or he passed, And it was awesome to be with him and you know, through our lunch break, and for us, our lunch break is at you know, nine pm, but just to sit there for an hour and listen to his stories and let him, you know, tell you about music and you know,
paranorm experiences he had and how he tried to start a ghost huming club when he was in college but it didn't work out so well.
And yeah, he was quite a special dude.
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