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Hello, I am Joshua P. Warren, and this is Joshua P. Warren Daily. And my new book has finally been released. It is called Ghosts, UFOs, and Legends of Death Valley, The Ultimate Guide. And it has a bonus section tips on how you can investigate. Now, you probably know if you follow this podcast that earlier this year I spent some time investigating the area around Death Valley, California, and I was amazed by the spectrum of bizarre stories that had never really been captured properly and put together properly in my opinion. This is the very first book of its kind, Ghosts, UFOs, and Legends of Death Valley. The stories are so varied and so wondrous and creepy and thought provoking and all that that I knew I had to go to my favorite illustrator, Mr. Sam Sheeran, to do the cover and to illustrate each chapter of the book. And I'm telling you, when you open this book, it's like you step into some kind of a dream land. When I got the illustrations back from Sam, immediately I started buying picture frames so that I could put some of these up around my condo. I'm telling you, like he is just the best. He is the best. So let me read to you the back of this book, Ghosts, UFOs, and Legends of Death Valley. You know it's hot, but do you know how haunted it is? Do you know how many strange things have been seen in Death Valley zipping through the skies or found hidden below the hard baked ground? Aside from spooky ghosts and breathtaking UFOs, some things are even too weird to easily categorize, like time warps, ancient mummies, and interdimensional spirits. You won't believe some of these stories, and yet they are true. Why do some people report phantom camels wandering the desert at sunset? Why do heavy stones truly slide across the racetrack playa? Death Valley is a place of extremes. It's a special portal where your reality sometimes warps into other realities. In this book, seasoned investigator Joshua P. Warren gives you the freshest, rawest, groundbreaking tales about the many bizarre and wonderful things in Death Valley. Better yet, he tells you how to easily investigate and witness these things for yourself. Filled with rich history, trivia, and eerie stories you won't find anywhere else, you won't stop turning the pages of this easy read. Welcome to the many strange and colorful facets of Death Valley. Sounds pretty kick ass, don't you think? And uh, you know, I I wrote this bearing in mind the the people who visit Death Valley and go into the handful of gift shops that are around there. And because when I have gone all around, you know, Death Valley, not just in Death Valley, but like Perump and Beatty and places like that, you don't walk into a store and see any information about the paranormal and Death Valley. And so I wanted to write a light, uh, fast-paced guide. This is uh less than 70 pages long. Okay, easy, easy read. It's great for all ages, as a matter of fact, as well. Uh and I mean you can just blow right through this, and you will have a complete education in the scary stories surrounding Death Valley. Um, my when I I just sent a copy to uh some family members, and uh at least one or two of them said I as soon as I got it, I opened it and I was done reading it in one night. I mean, they just couldn't stop. So I have put together a package where you can get this book plus the ebook, meaning you get that instantly. So we mail you a physical copy of the book, but when you make your order, you make your purchase instantly, you get the ebook sent to you as a PDF. So you can start reading the PDF ebook as soon as you make your order, and you also get the complete audiobook of me reading the whole book to you. You get that whole package with the physical copy and instantly receive the ebook and the audiobook, and that is less than $20, and that includes shipping and handling anywhere in the world. Yeah, you heard me right. And I'm hoping that you'll take advantage of this between now and Halloween because it's just such a great thing to enjoy when you know Halloween's on the horizon, and here you have all these stories about bizarro spirits and creatures and UFOs and time warps and all this kind of stuff. I mean, it captures it all right here. So, right now I am taking orders from retailers around Death Valley and in Death Valley. But if you are not going to be near Death Valley, there's only one way you can get a copy of this book. And there's only one way you can get that combo that includes the ebook and me reading the whole thing to you as an audiobook as MP3s, you've got to go to this website, deathvalyghosts.com. Okay, ghosts is plural. Deathvalleyghosts.com. And when you go there, there's a section at the top where if you are a uh like a retailer, if you own a bookstore or you're some type of, you know, you don't have to be a bookstore. I mean, if you're any kind of a retail outlet and you think that you have an audience, a customer base for a book like this, you can click that link and it will give you information about ordering them wholesale. Otherwise, just scroll down the page and you will see the spot where you can click the button and you can buy the combo and the book will go into the mail while you are. I mean, by the time you get the book, you'll already have read the ebook and then you've you'll probably have listened to the audio book, at least one of those. So when you get the book in the mail, physically, it'll almost be like the bonus, okay? And of course, these books are already printed, so I mean, when you order, like boom, it goes straight into the mail. You should get this as quickly as possible. And you know what? I am going to play for you right now the first two chapters of the book. Chapter one and chapter two to give you a taste. Here we go. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. Chapter one. As I write this, Death Valley, California is the hottest, driest place on earth. Now you probably knew that, but do you know how haunted it is? Do you know how many truly strange things have been seen there zipping through the dark, clear skies or found hidden below the hard baked ground? Why is this place so unusual? It certainly is a land of extremes. Let me tell you about it. It is the largest US national park south of Alaska, barren and unforgiving, surrounded by stark, brown, naked cliffs, the lowest point in North America, Badwater Basin, and the heart of Death Valley, is two hundred and eighty-two feet. That's eighty-six meters below sea level. There, on Thursday, july tenth, nineteen thirteen, Death Valley officially broke the record for the hottest place on the surface of Earth, one hundred and thirty four degrees Fahrenheit, that is fifty six point six degrees Celsius. Oscar Denton, the caretaker of the nearby Greenland Ranch, which is now called the Ranch at Death Valley, was there that day. He said, It was so hot that swallows, that's birds, in full flight fell to the earth dead. When I went out to read the thermometer with the wet Turkish towel on my head, it was dry before I returned. Nearby a scientist named Fred Corkill operated a mining laboratory, and that day the temperature inside his lab was one hundred and seventy three degrees Fahrenheit. That's seventy eight degrees Celsius. And yet the ground in Death Valley often sizzles at over two hundred degrees Fahrenheit. That's ninety three point three degrees Celsius. Tourists used to easily fry eggs on the ground for fun. Eggs cook at one hundred and fifty eight degrees Fahrenheit, which is seventy degrees Celsius. Park rangers grew so tired of scraping eggs off sidewalks they now implore tourists, if they must, to fry the egg on the hood of their own car. Fresh bread will usually turn into toast if held in the air for one minute. The humidity is often less than five percent. Early settlers would hang their washed, wet clothes out to dry. The fabric was bone dry in just a few minutes. The small population of people who live there today only get warm water from their faucets. Ironically, they may have converted water heaters into tanks to store and cool water before drinking it. In the 1800s before the invention of modern air conditioning, which was around 1902, miners digging for gold, silver, and borax would often sleep in a creek at night to stay cool, propping up their heads to prevent drowning. And yet, despite all this, the Death Valley National Park, over three million acres and three thousand square miles, host a variety of amazingly durable wildlife. In addition to coyotes, bobcats, bighorn sheep, jackrabbits, foxes, gophers, badgers, bats, birds, snakes, ringtail cats, and the occasional mountain lion, there are even some small fish and snails that can happily live in the nearest scalding, salty puddles. One small creature, the kangaroo rat, is about five inches long, and it can live its entire life without actually drinking a drop of water, getting all the moisture it needs from seeds and grasses, and yet this tiny, powerful rodent can spring and hop up to six feet away. The desert tortoise can live up to eighty years, yet ninety-five percent of their lives are spent in shade underground, and they only drink water once per year, storing it up in a special bladder. If you are lucky enough to see a desert tortoise, don't approach. As you can see, even on a normal day, Death Valley is an abnormal place. Thus you should not be surprised to learn there are even more amazing things that live in those odd mountains. Death Valley is full of surprises. According to the book Death Valley Trivia by Don Lago, Death Valley is not even truly a quote valley. He says a valley is carved by water, and this place was created by massive tectonic forces. It is truly a special place, and some spooky things have been there for untold eons. For centuries, Native Americans by campfire have told of the wondrous and eerie spirits that reside among the rocky, shadowy cliffs and steamy pools. Some spirits are good. Some are wicked. I'll tell you all about them and a whole lot more. Chapter two Why is it called Death Valley? You know the name Death Valley because of tragedies that befell pioneers traveling westward in the eighteen hundreds. The story really begins in eighteen forty six. That year a group of eighty-seven ambitious pioneers roared out of Missouri on wagons to follow the famed Oregon Trail. Like many others, they sought riches, freedom, and adventure around untamed California. One of their leaders, George Donner, originally from North Carolina, gave rise to their name, the Donner Party. After a long, mostly successful journey, they were shocked when a terrible early blizzard hit as they crossed the treacherous Sierra Nevada Mountains, with peaks soaring over twelve thousand feet. That's three thousand six hundred and fifty eight meters tall. Trapped in snow packed over twenty five feet, which is seven point six meters deep, for four horrible months, they began to slowly, painfully starve to death. Eventually, in order to survive, some turned to cannibalism, humans eating each other in order to survive. When the first rescuers arrived, only forty eight of the eighty seven had survived. Those who made it suffered so miserably that death may have been a better option. The gut-wrenching ordeal of the Donner Party became sensational national news of the day. It scared other pioneering parties so badly that they wanted an alternative route to California, one that would not include passage through the snowiest parts of the Sierra Nevada range. In 1849, a new fever swept the country. The national media announced that a sawmill operator named James W. Marshall had discovered a huge amount of gold at Sutter's Creek, California. As stories of tremendous gold deposits continued to sparkle and entice in newspapers, over 300,000 people stormed to California, each seeking a fortune. This is known as the 1849 Gold Rush, and the pioneers who threw caution to the wind and barreled west are now known as the 49ers. But of course, since no one wanted to relive the Donner Party experience, a more southern route and warmer weather away from the blizzards was in high demand. A new cottage industry blossomed almost overnight, guiding and giving guidance to 49ers. It seemed any hunter or trapper who'd ever been out west was selling maps and advice on the easiest routes along the old Spanish trail. And though it looked enticing on a map, pioneers were horrified to finally reach what we now call Death Valley and discover it offered little resources for life. There is almost no plant growth of any kind. Despite people excited to reach what we now call Badwater Basin, these desperate people were quickly filled with dread to find the pools of water are saltier than the ocean, undrinkable, hence the name Badwater. In fact, the ground there is covered in ninety five percent table salt, and if you touch a little to your tongue, you'll quickly realize that. Aside from the occasional rainfalls, the puddles at Badwater Basin are the product of underground aquiers, natural tunnels that drain snowfall and rains from the higher elevations, many miles all the way down to the basin. Today, if you stand at Badwater Basin and gaze up at the stark cliff next to you, you may notice a small sign mounted high above that says quote sea level. Even those who persevered were horrified to encounter a vast stretch of land we now call the Devil's Golf Course. As far as the eye can see, the floor of the valley is covered with huge, jagged, hard, dry, crystallized mineral protrusions, like the surface of another planet. Geologists say this ancient layer in some places is well over one thousand feet, that is to say, three hundred meters deep. It is almost impossible for a careful human to walk across some spots, and also almost impossible for many horses, oxen, burrows, etc. And of course wagon wheels would quickly break, requiring a laborious fix in the blazing sun. Those who made it near one of the passes to better land, like Walker Pass, were apparently so delirious they sometimes simply rolled by it, never even noticing it, finding themselves in an endless, confusing purgatory of suffering. One of the first groups to attempt passing through the valley, a party of thirteen, all died miserably. This scenario would repeat itself again and again, with details usually lost to history. No one lived to tell the tale. One group, the Bennett Arcane Party, was lost for weeks. They were fortunate enough to find some small fresh springs, though they had to eat several of their oxen, and destroyed their wagons for firewood. Eventually their prayers were answered when they were discovered and rescued by some Mexican Californios cowboys. Only one of their party had died. Just before riding away from the site of their unrelentless misery, one ragged, sunburned woman turned back, took one last glance, and said Goodbye, Death Valley. Against all odds she had defeated the grim reaper. That moment was reported in the press and the name Death Valley stuck. Over the centuries we will never know how many doomed nameless travelers have actually died in that harsh land. To this day, unfortunate hikers still perish from poor planning or just bad luck. You never venture, even as a tourist into Death Valley without a full tank of gas and a reliable vehicle and plenty of water and sunblock. You don't usually have a cell phone signal, so you're on your own to survive. All of Death Valley is haunted by ghosts of those who have not survived. During the day, phantoms seem to shy away from the burning radiation of the sun. But at twilight, when the land glows with magical colours, the spirits slowly reawaken and gradually roam again, all through the night, still lost, trying to find a way out. One man, T Beckett Scotland, travels the country in an RV with his wife. They have stayed in every single state, but they only stayed one night in Death Valley. It was the year twenty fifteen. He said he turned in kind of early around nine PM after a long day of travel and a dinner of grilled ribeyes and baked potatoes. He was good and ready for sleep when something started banging on the outside of the RV. Obviously alarmed, he went outside with a flashlight, only to find no tracks. Trace of anyone or anything remotely near his camper. Afraid of thieves, he even looked for footprints but found nothing. As he settled down to bed again, he heard the distinct hair raising sound of a woman's voice right outside his thin wall. She was crying, sobbing, begging. Again he rushed outside with his flashlight, but there was nothing to be seen. All night long he and his wife woke up to these sounds, banging followed by sickening sobbing. After a restless hot night, he felt something icy cold touch his foot around seven in the morning. Quote, it felt like someone poking at me, he said. Finally that was enough. They'd had it. Scotland and his wife got up, broke down their camp, and drove to Perump, Nevada, one hour and fifteen minutes away for the remainder of their stay in the region. He said he will never again go back to Death Valley. I talked to a lady named Pam who said she'd come to Death Valley to stargaze in twenty eighteen. As she sat on a hill at two AM on a dark night, in the distance she saw a faint blue ball glowing. At first she thought it might be a vehicle, but then was shocked to see the ball expand into a wide blue form moving across the desert like a giant fuzzy cloud. She zoomed in with her camera and said, quote, it was a caravan. I could see people and horses and they all glowed blue, end quote. Pam started taking pictures with her Sony Digital, but every time she pushed the button, the camera would shoot it would shut off. She said quote, when I got back to the hotel room, my batteries were gone. I had charged them to one hundred percent all day long, she said. Now I carry two cameras with me, but I don't know if it will make a difference. I've never experienced anything like this. To those who study paranormal activity, it is no surprise that Death Valley is filled with apparitions. These ghosts are sometimes imprints, recordings from past tragedies burned into the environment, that simply replay from time to time, over and over, like images in a big movie. In other cases, we seem to be dealing with intelligent, aware, disembodied spirits, entities, truly lost souls, searching for something very real like Walker Pass. Maybe someday some of these ghosts will find peace, but for now, they haunt many who visit Death Valley. Is there something about Death Valley that makes ghosts when they appear even more clear, visible, and frightening? Is it the electrostatic charge and the dry air crackling from the intense winds that whip through the mountains? It seems certain places on Earth have always been what some call a thin place, where our dimension is closer than usual to others. It certainly seems that Death Valley could be a thin place when you hear what the Native Americans have been telling us about the eerie spirits of Death Valley for centuries. It almost seems like a playground for the otherworldly. Is it I think so? I'll explain in the next chapter. I hope you enjoyed that free treat, the first two chapters of Ghost UFOs and Legends of Death Valley. So here, and again, that's Death ValleyGhosts.com. DeathvalleyGhosts.com. The first printing is actually kind of small. Um if you happen to be around Perump, Nevada, you can go into like the Perump Museum there and ask them if they have copies left. Or you can go to, if you're around Beatty, Nevada, you can go there to the Beatty Museum and ask them if they have copies. Um if you are in Death Valley, of course, you can go to the Death Valley bookstore and ask them if they have copies, or you can go to the gift shop at the Death Valley Ranch and ask them if they have any copies. But otherwise, you you got to go to Death ValleyGhost.com. Here is the table of contents. And uh, chapter one, welcome to death. Okay, that's sort of a basic overview of what makes this place so extreme and weird. Uh, chapter two, why is it called Death Valley? Great history there. Number three, otherworldly spirits of Death Valley. I remember when I first wrote and read this chapter to Lauren, she said it reminded her of something out of Harry Potter. Number four is the Armaghosa Opera House. That is a very creepy spot that you may have seen featured on an episode of Ghost Adventures about 10 years ago there on the Travel Channel. Number five is Devil's Hole and the Underworld. Yeah, there's this big hole in Death Valley that goes down so deep they've never found the bottom. They've never found, and it's full of water. It's beautiful down there when people dive. And it has one of the rarest species of fish in the entire world in there. You'll have to read about that. Next we have chapter six, giant mummies. Giant mummies. Yeah, some weird ass mummies were found in caves under Death Valley, so they say. Number seven, spectral camels. Now, why in the world would there be ghost camels roaming Death Valley? Well, you'll find out. And number eight, here we have UFOs at the racetrack playa. You know, the racetrack playa is that uh big sandy plain where these gigantic rocks are moving around at night, and they leave these big trails behind them. And it was a mystery what was causing that for a long, long time. And scientists said they finally solved the mystery, and yet there may be another mystery there that still has not been solved. Number nine, we have dark skies in Death Valley. Death Valley, of course, is one of the uh dark sky preserves, meaning it's so dark that you can go there and see the best view you're gonna get of the stars. It's at the highest tier of the dark sky um category, uh categorization. And in fact, uh NASA uh teams up with some other groups, and they usually go there every year and have a big astronomy festival. But guess what happens when they look up at the sky? Yeah. You you I think you can figure out what happens. Uh number 10, we have Portal, a Time Warp and Death Valley. You'll just have to read that one to see what it's about. And then number 11, the last chapter is bonus tips on how to investigate the paranormal yourself. These are tips that can be applied to any paranormal situation, and uh they're practically free, and they're especially good for young people who want to get out and get involved in paranormal investigations. So um, Death ValleyGhosts.com. Or you also actually can go to joshua pwarren.com and scroll down my Curiosity Shop. You know, I have a little little link there at the top of the page that says Curiosity Shop. You can scroll down there and uh you'll also find a link to it there. But my first printing of this is I mean, it's a limited printing. I decided to publish this through my own company, Shadowbox Enterprises LLC. And you know what, over the years, I have published books in many different ways. I have published books this way through my own company, and I've also published with all kinds of different publishers. I published two books with Simon and Schuster, the largest publishing company in the world. I've published with regional uh publishers like uh the Over Mountain Press or Alexander Books, uh, or you know, some that are kind of mid-range, uh new page books. I mean, I've I've published with a lot of different publishers over the years. And frankly, I've gotten to a point now where I've been writing and publishing for so long that uh my books are kind of fragmented and all over the place, and some of them are getting harder to find than others. So I have a little project going on in order to gradually try to get the rights back to as many of my books as possible and bring them together under my Shadow Box Enterprises publishing uh company, and and that way, you know, you'll have all of it in one spot. So I just succeeded in getting the rights back to my best-selling book, Use the Force, a Jedi's Guide to the Law of Attraction. So if you go to joshuapeewarren.com, you can also click the link to that book, and it will take you to a page where you can order that book, you can get it a physical copy of that, or you can listen to me read the audiobook on audible, or you can um you can download the ebook instantly as a PDF. So I'm trying to give people all these options who want to go back and read some of my older work. I'm bringing some stuff back into print that's gone out of print, some of the really rare stuff. I'm just and if nothing else, turning some of my older stuff into ebooks, getting all that scanned in and updated. So I'm in the middle of a publishing project. So uh, because what you find nowadays is technology makes it so much more efficient to uh publish your own stuff. If you can do that and you have an audience like I do, that's usually the way to go. And then you have 100% creative control over your own content. So I hope that you will go right now to deathvalyghosts.com. I think it's $19.97 to again get the combo with the physical book mailed to you wherever you are in the world, shipping included, and then you'll instantly get the ebook and the audiobook, Deathvalyghosts.com. Or visit me there at joshuapeewarren.com Curiosity Shop. I know you're gonna like this. I can't wait to get your feedback. All right, I have to run here, packed day, and uh hey, I'm still being told that my new podcast is going to be debuting any day now, and so I will get back to you ASAP and let you know. Uh what a week! I just got back from Death Valley where I was out of touch for a couple days. I was promoting the book there. Now I'm leaving this message for you, and now it looks like the new podcast is about to kick in this week. Whew! 2020, but you know, it's one of those, it's one of those years we'll never forget for a lot of reasons, but this week is a really good week for me. All right, my friends, stay tuned. You know I have a lot more coming for you soon. I even have a new product coming out very soon, and this one you'll never guess what it is. So, I hope that you will visit me at joshuapee.com. Sign up for the free e-newsletter at the site, takes you two seconds. Uh, check out the Curiosity Shop, all the amazing stuff there, and then also click the link to this podcast called Joshua P. Warren Daily. Always short, always free, commercial free, independent, uncensored. You can subscribe through various means, or just follow me on Twitter at Joshua P. Warren at Joshua P. Warren, and I will usually tweet when a new one is available. So that is it for today. Thank you for listening. Thanks for your interest and support. Thank you for staying curious, and I will talk to you again soon.