Paranormal Yakker

America’s Most Haunted Places

• Stan Mallow

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“Haunted Housewife” Theresa Argie and journalist Eric Olsen dig into the research, fieldwork, and protective practices behind their book, “America’s Most Haunted: The Secrets Of Famous Paranormal Places” in their interview with host Stan Mallow on “Paranormal Yakker”. From the first spark—paranormal TV turning into a writing project—to boots on concrete in places like the Waverly Hills Sanitarium, the Queen Mary, and the Ohio State Reformatory, we trace how legends evolve and how careful investigation separates spectacle from substance.

Theresa and Eric walk us through their selection process: pick sites where history matters, access is possible, and firsthand accounts are credible. Waverly Hills’ “death tunnel” becomes a case study in correcting inflated death counts while honoring the deep sorrow that still lingers in its halls. The Queen Mary’s dual life as luxury liner and wartime workhorse reveals a web of haunt reports tied to documented tragedy, from engine room accidents to the Curacoa collision. At Ohio State Reformatory, personal experiences collide with theory, as the pair explore how attention, expectation, and even geology may amplify phenomena.

We also test famous claims. At Bobby Mackey’s, the “portal to hell” fizzles under scrutiny, yet real activity remains. The Lemp Mansion’s string of suicides and underground caves justify its reputation, but the popular “Zeke” story likely stems from a psychic’s impression rather than records—proof that hauntings can be real even when identities are wrong. Throughout, Theresa shares why protection matters: prayer, mental grounding, and post-investigation cleansing aren’t theatrics; they’re survival tools learned the hard way. Ready to hear how serious investigators think, work, and stay safe while letting history speak? If you are you’ll definitely want to watch this interview.

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Hi everyone, I'm Stan Mallow. Welcome to Paranormal Yakker. My guests on today's show are paranormal investigator, Theresa Argie, who is also known far & wide as the haunted housewife,& Eric Olsen, an outstanding journalist in the field of paranormal investigations. I'll be talking with them about America's Most Haunted, the Secrets of Famous Paranormal Places, the book they co-authored that gives you the reader a chance to tour America's Most Famous Haunted Places from the comfort of your own home. Theresa Argie & Eric Olsen, welcome to Paranormal Yakker. Thank you. Nice to meet You. Nice to be with you. I'm sure Theresa, that there has to be a backstory about when & how it came about that you became the haunted housewife. Could you share that backstory? That was a moniker given to me by my husband. When I really started getting deep into the field of the paranormal & investigating & research& things like that, our children were younger& he was getting a little perturbed with me because I was spending almost all my free time doing this kind of thing, investigating, going to haunted places, researching.& at one point he said to me, You're like a haunted housewife. There's a whole lot of haunted, but not a lot of housewife in it.& I just thought that was great.& I just ran with the name & I copyrighted it& here it is, here I am. What were the circumstances, Eric & Theresa, that brought the two of you together& led to the co-authoring of America's Most Haunted? I was watching TV. I was doing a lot of writing at the time about, in particular, the various paranormal TV shows. In fact, that was kind of the door I went into. I had been very interested in ghosts& had some personal experiences. When I was quite young, teenage & young adulthood, but had kind of put it to the side& done all kinds of other things.& then we were running a website, First Blog Critics& another one called The Morton Report& doing a lot of TV coverage.& then I kind of ran across these shows, I didn't even really know they existed, where they were taking seriously the idea of investigating paranormal locations& all the various shows, Ghost Hunters , Ghost Adventures, et cetera.& then a show came on that Zak Bagans put together. So I watched it & then here was this group, Haunted Housewives.& there were three of them & they were in Waverly.& they're from Cleveland, amazing, fascinating.& Theresa's team was really good & wow, very knowledgeable& brave.& they went into all these dark, scary places& they won the competition. I said, ah, I wanna interview them. So I did.& then it was really fun & interesting.& I liked the combination of kind of vivid personalities, but taking it very seriously.& boy, I really was out of my depth, certainly at the beginning, because I had no idea it was that serious.& there were so many levels& that it was something that was done with a lot of rigor & there was equipment involved.& personal experience as well.& so kind of one thing led to another& I'm always looking for new projects, especially about writing.& I had already done a couple books a few books at that point.& I looked around& I thought, you know, there's no real serious, but fun book that looks into what the best, most interesting paranormal locations. I think there was one that had like a hundred locations& it was super breezy, just too short. I wanted to get into a lot more depth. So Theresa & I talked about it. I thought she would be a really great partner, someone with a lot of expertise & experience.& we worked very hard& we did some original investigations. We relied a lot on Theresa's previous investigations& her experience& her perspective.& I think that comes through in the book very well.& I, anyway, I'm very proud of the result. Since each state has a myriad of haunted hotspots, how did you go about deciding which of those sites would be included in your book? That was easy since Eric actually came up with the name, the title, America's Most Haunted, which gave us a direction to go. So what are the most haunted places in America?& that was really easy because they were the haunted places that I decided were the most haunted places. But I stand behind every single one that's in the book. There were so many, like Eric said, there had been books written about places which would give a little blurb or a couple paragraphs of the story or maybe a little anecdote of something that happened. But there really wasn't anything that went in depth.& besides my expertise or experience in investigating, I also consider myself a historical researcher. So I wanted to focus on places that had interesting history, places that had maybe a haunted reputation, but was that reputation really, was it called for? Was it just rumor or were there facts behind it? Does the history really support those allegations of hauntings? So I kind of looked for a little bit of that. Was it well-known? Although there are actually one place in the book that is not very well-known, but it still deserved to be there. But what is the history behind it? What is the legend of the history behind it?& what is the true history? Like what could we back up with not just stories? Oh, somebody said this& somebody saw that. So that's how we narrowed it down.& I wanted to kind of give a little sprinkling of places across the United States& places that I had either been personally or ones that I could go to, Eric & I, we did investigate together, one of them, or places that I knew somebody that I trusted with all my being & their firsthand experiences. So that's how we narrowed down the 10. I would stand behind every single one of them as being extremely haunted under any sort of microscope that you would look at these places. The infamous death tunnel, also known as the body shoot, is in the abandoned Waverly Hill Sanitarium, located in Louisville, Kentucky.& it's considered by many paranormal investigators to be one of the most haunted hospitals in the eastern US. Why is that? Waverly Hills was a place that we were sent to on Paranormal Challenge, the story that's where Eric had seen me on TV.& when we were contacted by the production company, they didn't tell us where we were going. We were selected, we were personally selected, supposedly, by Zak Bagans, since he was the one who was producing the show. He had heard about us, & he had asked for The Haunted Housewives to be on the show, which was great.& they didn't tell us where we were going.& it was interesting, because the first place they were going to send us, logistically, it didn't work out. My partner couldn't be there, & that was going to be a place that's in Ohio.& I was really glad we didn't get that place, because we had been there so many times. So they ended up sending us to Waverly Hills& we didn't know until literally the day before we left, we were like, well, we need to know where we're going,& we need to tell our families. But Waverly has such a long history, starting off as a tuberculosis hospital,& it went through a lot of changes.& if you know anything about tuberculosis hospitals, they had to be away from the general public. They were usually somewhere up on a hill where you could get a lot of fresh air. They were self-contained communities, because the people who worked there really couldn't leave, because tuberculosis was so contagious. So when you think about not just the people that were there as patients, but the doctors& nurses& custodians & people who worked there also were kind of confined to this place.& so over several decades, the rumor was there were 50, I think they said 55,000 deaths, which, of course, during our research, we found that was absolutely not true. It wasn't even possible for there to be that many deaths. There were plenty of deaths. There were well over 5,000, but there were not 50,000.& that was the legend,& that's one of the reasons we put it in the book, because I wanted to find out exactly how many there were. But it was closed after the introduction of antibiotics that really made tuberculosis a non-entity in Western cultures. It's still very prevalent in other parts of the world,& then the building itself became like an old age home,& the sadness continued there. I mean, it was just another place of despair& death after that. So it was a very famous place because of everything that happened. It was supposed to be a place of healing& hope,& it became a place of despair & loneliness for many, not just the patients, but even the people who worked there. So it had an interesting history,& I think that attracted everyone, everybody who's interested in history& anybody who's certainly interested in the paranormal or ghosts. So it was definitely on my bucket list,& I was thrilled that we were sent there to investigate on national television. It was wonderful,& it absolutely ended up in the book because of it.& don't forget, Theresa, you were actually in the death tunnel. On TV, that was one of the we did three days of shooting for about 20 minutes of what you actually see on TV, but I actually went into the death tunnel by myself without a flashlight. They didn't give us any flashlights, which was crazy. I'm like, we can't see where we're going. I thought I was going to die. The tunnel is like 495 feet going down steps,& luckily, I had been down there during the day. I saw it in the daylight, so I actually counted how many steps there were per station, so I wouldn't trip & fall & kill myself. But the death tunnel was interesting. Again, we sorted rumors from facts about the death tunnel,& I did have an incredible paranormal experience there, which was really, really interesting. So yeah, that was very memorable for sure. Spirits of hundreds of lost souls are sent to walk the decks of the majestic Queen Mary& haunt certain specific areas on the ship which is now docked in Long Beach, California& operates as a hotel. Could you tell me about some of those restless spirits? This is the one location that besides the place that Eric & I went to ourselves to investigate, Eric actually had an experience there himself. So it was really cool that we could both put our experiences together on this. & the Queen Mary, it was a luxury liner that was taken the wealthiest of the wealthy all across Europe.& it was, think Titanic, it was a beautiful, beautiful place. But then during World War II, it was commandeered into become a ship for troops. & they painted it gray & they took out most of the luxury amenities& it became a warship. & it did have, unfortunately, one collision, one little accident where the boat that it ran into was the worst for wear for that one. The Queen Mary being the bigger ship had minimal damage, but the ship that it ran into the Curacoa unfortunately had many, many deaths. & since this was during the war, they were told not to stop for anything because that would make them a target of Japanese torpedo submarine. So they knew they hit the ship. It was an accident, how they hit it, both allied ships, but they couldn't stop. So imagine that just leaving, I think, 270 something men dying in the water that were on the Curacoa. Those deaths, I think, are still attached to the Queen Mary, even though it happened on another ship. Then there were deaths that happened in the ship. One was a soldier who worked in the engine room & he's one of the famous ghost on the Queen Mary. They call his nickname is Half Hatch Harry, but his real name, I believe, is John Petter.& he was caught between the watertight doors as they were closing & unfortunately got smushed & smashed. But there are also spirits that roam it from when it was the luxury liner. There's supposed to be a child spirit that haunts the swimming pool area, which is one that my haunted housewife partner & I investigated when we were there. & we did end up hearing a little girl's voice in the pool area, which was really, really interesting. Although we could not find any documentation that a little girl had actually drowned in the pool, but we did get some paranormal evidence, as you would say, about that happening. So it's hard to know because not everything gets documented. You don't know, but just besides the passengers, the soldiers, they brought a lot of war brides back after the war, towards the end of the war,& a lot of sad stories. So a lot of opulence & happiness& a lot of sadness on the Queen Mary.& I'm glad that they've preserved that history & that it's still open to the public because it was in danger of being closed down for good. Eric & I had a podcast too leading up to the release of the book& we interviewed people that were heavily involved in trying to save the Queen Mary,& they did, at least for now. It's another one of those haunted attractions that has a haunted attraction & as the Reformatory & that's, it's a real moneymaker. So what I envision, because I get interested kind of in the layers of these things & the philosophy is, so when you're going through there, you're encountering scare actors & all these scenarios, is any of it ever real? The city of Willoughby, Ohio has a number of haunted sites, one of the most famous being the Willoughby Coal Building where several spirits have been seen roaming its halls & visitors reporting strange & eerie experiences. Can you expand on some of the ghostly happenings that have occurred there? So Willoughby Coal is the one place that's the most local place to us in Ohio, although the House State Reformatory is still in our state. Willoughby is our local haunt. It is such an iconic building. It is such a great history& I decided to put it in the book & Eric agreed. It is not one of the famous places. Again, that's the one place that, unless you're from the area, you probably had never heard of, but does it deserve to be on the list of the most haunted places in the United States? Absolutely. I believe it absolutely does. I've had incredible experiences there. I actually work for local ghost walk, the Willoughby Ghost Walk that is run by my ghost hunting partner, Kathy Weber. & we have been doing this for 17 years. I've been with her for 14, almost 15 years as a guide, but we have investigated that place hundreds of times. It's iconic. & we actually had our book release party there for America's Most Haunted, which was incredible because things were happening even during the party because it's a place by a railroad track. & I think a lot of it has to do with the comings& goings of the area. It seems to be like a byway for spirits. There's also a river that runs right outside of it, but the coal company was so important to the area that relied on coal for fuel & for heat & for cooking& for everything. So it was the heart of the community. & even though they don't sell coal anymore, it has kept the name Willoughby Coal as a tribute to how important it was for the community.& I believe that most of the spirits there have been there since the property was up, maybe even before the coal building itself was there.& there was a suspicious death that we believe was a murder that happened in the building. & that is the most prominent spirit there. & that is the spirit of Don Norris, who was thrown or fell out a third story window. & if you knew the layout of the building, you would see it would be almost impossible for him to accidentally fall out that window. But that was the official account. & my many, many, many, many investigations of Willoughby Coal, I believe I've encountered the spirit of Don Norris many times. & we have asked him what happened to you & the response we got was murdered. & even when we asked him, who is responsible for your death? We got an EVP back that said, it was Henry& Henry Windes was his partner, who we believe had something to do with his death. He's not alone there. Don Norris has a lot of company with different spirits in there. & we talk about several of them in the book, we're piling up more & more every year, there just seems to be more spirits coming & going in that place. It's amazing. It's absolutely amazing. A local treasure for Did we decide that the underground railroad was involved had gone through there? because they don't keep documentation. But we did have two different psychics comment on another spirit at Willoughby Coal that is the spirit of a dog.& what's interesting is the dog that actually did pass away there was in the 80s, 1980s. But the one psychic said that there were an African American slave, older man& a younger boy that were hiding in the building. & they were afraid of the dog, which was from the 1980s, not the 1880s. So these spirits supposedly could see this other spirit from 100 years difference.& they were aware of our presence because on the ghost walk, we dress up I wear, it looks like Civil War attire with a lantern & the long poofy dresses& all that. So we don't know for sure. But we, we wouldn't be surprised considering its location & its proximity to not only the railroad, but the river & how close we are to Canada. There's a very good chance it was part of the underground railroad. But again, we cannot prove that. Ohio State Reformatory is a historic prison in Mansfield, Ohio,& it has been said a number of trapped souls remain in prison there. Can you explain a bit about those trapped souls? Ohio State Reformatory is definitely the most famous & most haunted place, in my opinion, in Ohio. I've been there many times. I actually worked as a volunteer in the archives office for two seasons. Eric has been there several times as well. We did extensive research for the book on different happenings there. I believe that there are plenty of souls there, not just prisoners, but I believe there's a the spirit of the one of the warden's wives who was accidentally shot& ended up passing away while she was living there. I don't know if I actually believe in the idea of a soul being trapped. I believe maybe some of their energy is left behind. I think that maybe it's some of these, especially the souls or the spirits of these prisoners, it's their unwillingness to move on, maybe because they don't want to go towards what's next after they die. Maybe they're afraid of their judgment. I don't know, but we've had so many experiences there & that is definitely one of the few places I can honestly say that there is something very, very negative, evil even. I don't want to say demonic, but definitely very bad, very scary, not to be taken lightly. It is also the place I had one of my very most profound paranormal experiences where I actually was grabbed, my hair was grabbed & pulled because of the location of where I was at at the time. This spirit, I believe, that pulled my hair back. If it had decided to push me forward instead of pulling me back, I could have fallen down a set of stairs & easily been very, very hurt. So that was kind of a wake-up call. That was very early in my formal investigation years& that really made me think twice about places I go & things I do.& also there was a very nasty spirit that attached itself to my partner, Kathy, & followed her for years. & he was a very bad soul. & this is all, we talk about this extensively in the book, but we did a lot of research. We found out more rumors & facts & things.& Eric has been there many times. I'm sure he can talk about things he knows about the place because there's no shortage of stories for sure. Yeah, it's a fascinating place & it brings up one of the concepts that we got into. We were trying to, while we were going along, telling the stories, giving the background, trying to dig into the actual historical, looking at newspaper accounts, etc., while we were trying to give a well-rounded, kind of holistic view of these places. One of the theories or one of the concepts we came across is this idea of kind of like a critical mass being reached where that once there are spirits attached or there's energy attached to a place, then that seems to function in some ways like a magnet & draw others to it.& then on top of that, when you have people coming through, so these are all the places in the book are either public or at least semi-public, so that there are people coming through.& once these places get these reputations, & in many cases it literally becomes a business to bring people in to tour or do investigations or both, then I think you also start drawing from people who visit. & I think, in my mind anyway, there's definitely something to the notion of psychic energy building upon itself, growing, feeding, drawing more to it. & it's basically a physical, it's some sort of physical activity. & it reminds me of yet another concept we looked into, I think in conjunction ith the Stanley, which is the piezoelectric effect.& that is physical, but usually it's in geology, rocks, various substances, natural substances, can actually store energy, be like a battery, store energy within them.& then at some point they are triggered & put that energy out or release that energy. So I think that's one of the things going on also at the Ohio State Reformatory, because it is so well known. There are so many people coming through& possibly even from the seasonal, the Halloween haunted attraction aspect of it. People come in, they expect to see things, their minds are geared towards seeing things.& I think that not only does that make you more susceptible to seeing things that perhaps you are projecting, but it also makes you more susceptible to seeing things that really are there or that drawing out. So we don't know these mechanisms. Remember magic is just science before we know what the underlying mechanisms are. & I think we're at a point where it's a very interesting phase early on in the trading the paranormal as a science. & that was one of the things we really did try to tap into. Sure, these stories are great. We love stories. We're storytellers. We love stories. Stories are very fundamental, mythic, fundamental part of human, being human & human communication. But we were also really trying to get into the actual scientific, where we could find it, objective reality of these things. & that's why we tried to interview as many different people as we could, besides our own personal experiences. & we tried to document the actual history of these places via newspaper accounts, contemporary interviews, et cetera. So yeah, so Ohio State Reformatory, we picked that as number one. I don't know if we ended up giving any sort of home state advantage to it. Theresa could probably tell you that. But it is certainly worthy of it. My main experience there, it's a lot of kind of creepy things. Just that feeling, that back of your neck, which I've actually kind of come to trust. There's something that causes that. It's different from just anticipation. It's different from dread. There is something that actually triggers a physical reaction. My most vivid experience there is when you're standing in the cell blocks & you're looking up how high is it? Like five levels? It is overwhelming to see it. & I was there in the day by myself one time, just looking around, poking around. & I looked up & there's a whole block, a whole wall of windows. & they're all half of them, at least when I was there. They're broken, they're dirty, they're whatever. But they're certainly shedding kind of a creepy light on all of this, this huge massive five-story layer of cell blocks. & at the very top layer, super, super distinct, vivid humanoid shape, very dark shadow figure appeared on the railing. & I saw, could see it move from the railing. Super vivid, very much darker than the surrounding shadows of the place. & then kind of disappear into literally one of the cells. When I think about it now, it reminds me of Theresa's experience, the one we really did do together pretty extensively, which was the now, I guess it's shuttered, which is very sad, Bobby Mackie's Music World, which is just almost in Ohio. It's just south of Cincinnati. Theresa, you should tell us about that. Oh, yeah, Bobby Mackie's. It's a shame they closed down. But when we were down in the basement area of Bobby Mackie's, which was a honky tonk, so it was a bar.& that was the one that we wanted to go to, to decide if it was going to be in the book, because I had heard all the rumors& all the stories.& I wasn't sure I believed it because the reputation was so extreme that I wasn't sure I believed it. But it was definitely within travel distance & it was worth checking out. I had heard from people that I trust that yes, it's haunted. & then I had heard such crazy stories from other people. I was like, I don't know. We ended up putting in the book because of our personal experiences we had there. & the one we had was when you were in the basement, we were getting a little tour & I saw a black. It was like a black man looked like he had a hat stepped out of the shadows. & it looked like he was looking right at us. I mean, it was clear, yet not clear because I couldn't make out a face or anything. It was just the image of this black man or black outline of a man. But I could distinctly see that he had a hat, I could see his size.& we knew for a fact that there was nobody in that area.& that did correspond with reports that other people have had down there. Now, their main story was that there was a portal to hell in the basement, which was very disappointing. We actually saw it. It was basically a big hole that was a couple feet deep.& it was it was cordoned off with a little wooden barrier, but it was kind of like, well, so I'm not wasn't buying into the story that it was a portal to hell. But is it haunted? Absolutely. I truly believe that it was haunted, just because that was just one of the experiences we had on top of the people we personally interviewed& talked to face to face what Matt told us about Matt was a gentleman who worked there.& he had worked there for years & he was a big man, not a small guy. & he said he was like thrown across the room by something. & when he was telling us, when you look in their eyes, I think I'm pretty good about can telling people are BSing me or if they're telling the truth.& I believed him. He was scared. He was scared retelling story. So they're going to rebuild Bobby Mackie's. I don't think it's going to be on that site. So it'll be interesting to see what happens. I'm wondering where all the artifacts from that place are because it was before it was a honky tonk. It was a like a supper club. It was a speakeasy & a gambling joint. & they had some of the original artifacts there. So it'll be interesting to see. But that was one where the rumors were so extreme.& even though we pretty much debunked a lot of the stories that make the place well known, there was no doubt that there was still paranormal activity happening there. Countless reports of ghostly activity has been reported at the 1860s 33-room Lemp mansion in downtown St. Louis, Missouri. It has even been said that the mansion is cursed & possessed. What happened there that resulted in it getting that reputation? The Lemp Mansion, one of my very favorite places to go.& once we got the book deal, this is what I spent my advance on. I took a trip down to the Lemp Mansion with Kathy because I so wanted it to live up to its reputation because it was so interesting to me& it did.& it definitely made it in the book. The Lemp Mansion was basically a home for the Lemp family.& there was a family of German immigrants who had come over to start a brewery to make long story short, they started a brewery. It was very, very successful.& it was handed down from father to son.& by the second generation, going into the third generation, prohibition hit.& after prohibition hit, the place, it never recovered from it basically. But the reason it was so successful,& while there's a lot of breweries in St. Louis, Missouri, is because of the geological delights that they have in that area. There is a cave system that is actually under the Lemp Mansion. In fact, they built a tunnel from the mansion, which is where the family lived, to these huge,& I'm talking huge caves, not like a cave you crawl into, one that you could build different, you could build a ballroom in a church& a dance. You could drive cars to it, big underground caves. The beauty of the cave was that it was at a set temperature& it was perfect for storing the beer. So beer was no longer just a seasonal drink, they could store it.& the breweries of St. Louis took advantage of this, which is why it became so successful. Now the Lemp family was said to be cursed because of all the tragedy that seemed to follow them. There were several suicides & one suspicious death, all in two generations of the Lemp family. The son of the original owner of the Lemp Mansion, he committed suicide. He was distraught over many things, over business & things like that,& also the death of his best friend, yet rival, was the Anheuser-Busch, the head of that brewery, was a very, very good friend of his.& when he died, he kind of slipped into a depression, plus things that were happening. So he shot himself& killed himself in the Lemp Mansion. His son, years later, committed suicide the same way in the same room. A daughter also committed suicide, also in the mansion.& then there was another one, the only one that left a note,& this was the last one, Charles Lemp,& he said, he left a note saying, Blame no one but me for my death. But the tragedy just continued. I think after the prohibition, when prohibition was lifted,& they tried to get back to their former glory, it was just impossible. Techniques had changed. Other breweries had adapted where the Lemps did not adapt to different ways of brewing & different ways of running their business.& when Billy Lemp, the grandson, took his life, it was because he failed. He failed to keep the business going. Plus, there was a lot of issues with his wife. It was a big scandal with his wife. So they all had personal reasons for committing suicide, but it's strange for one family to have that many deaths, unexplained deaths, suicides, within just a couple generations, all on the same property. Now, with the Lemp Mansion, the big rumor for the Lemp Mansion was the story of Zeke, who was supposed to be the illegitimate son of Billy Lemp, who was hidden away in the attic. Because back in the early 1900s, to have someone who had any sort of a mental or physical disability was thought shameful, & those people were hidden away.& the big ghost there was supposed to be this Zeke,& he had terrible nickname. They called him the monkey face boy,& all these horrible thoughts.& that's what fascinated me about the Lemp Mansion.& when I went down there, I wanted to find out the story of Zeke, because I couldn't find any documentation that I couldn't find a birth certificate, or a death certificate, or schooling, or I couldn't find anything.& when Kathy & I went down there to spend a weekend to investigate & to talk to people about it, I tracked the origin of the story of Zeke to a psychic who said she was told by the ghost of Billy Lemp that Zeke was their son.& I was like, OK. There was another incident in the book that that happened. The story started from a psychic's impression. But there was no evidence at all that this child existed, except for the fact that people see him, that people hear him. They communicate with him. Her version of how she could prove that Zeke existed was she took us up in the attic & showed us the place where the floor was kind of worn.& she said, well, that's from him walking back & forth, trying to get people's attention, looking out in the street.& I'm like, that's not enough for me. She also said that there was an unmarked stone in the Lemp graveyard in their personal burial plot.& I think that that is just a stone in the cemetery. I don't even think it's a grave. But that's what she insisted. Now, maybe there was a Zeke. I couldn't find any evidence at all. But there have been so many paranormal investigators that have either seen something that resembles the description that they get about Zeke, or they've picked up EVPs, electronic voice phenomenon of voices, saying, I am Zeke. So something's going on. Was there a Zeke? I don't think so. But are there spirits that are like, you want to talk to Zeke? I'll be Zeke.& they just answer to this. So that's what I think is going on. But that place was just amazing. The Lemp family were incredible.& the family that has fixed up the mansion, they saved it. After the brewery closed down & the Lemps moved out, it became like a boarding house.& it fell into disrepair.& now it's beautiful. It's like a little inn, like a bed & breakfast, a little hotel. They have lots of different events there. They have a wonderful restaurant. It's absolutely beautiful.& you could see the eccentricities of the family from the furniture & some of the things that they have there. There's a glass shower, glass & gold, in the middle of a bathroom. Whereas if you were to shower in this bathroom, you would be on public display because it's right there in the middle. Amazing things. But that was such a joy to investigate, to find out, to actually track down. Is this true? Is this not true? What's really going on?& that was like our whole purpose with this book, to separate fact from fiction. But still, is it haunted? Oh yeah, it's haunted. It's definitely haunted. We had some crazy experiences there. So I believe it's haunted. Is it haunted by an illegitimate child of the Lemps? I don't believe so. But there's something there for sure. When Theresa & Eric, you investigated a site that is reputed to be haunted, how do you go about protecting yourselves& others who might be with you from malevolent spirits? I learned by trial & error how to prepare to go into a haunted location because at first it's been around me all my life.& since I was a little girl & wasn't formal investigating, it was more snooping around& looking into things& being places I wasn't supposed to be & things like that. But as I got older & I realized it wasn't just interesting & thrilling that it could actually affect me, it could be possibly harmful. Like when I had my hair pulled at the Ohio State Reformatory & even before then, before I had hooked up with Kathy Weber, before I met Eric, when I was part of a paranormal investigation team & they were Christian& they believed in the power of prayer.& I was Christian, I was Catholic, I still am.& I believe in the power of prayer. But it was when we did a, just a residential investigation, just people had contacted us. We were part of the Taps family, which was the Ghost Hunters, their home team in Rhode Island. We would get calls to do, when they would get calls to do a home investigation in our area, they would tell us about it because they're not going to come from Rhode Island to Ohio unless it's going to be on TV. So it was that kind of relationship. But we did a home investigation& it was really unremarkable. It wasn't that interesting. We really couldn't find things that were going on.& the family insisted that there was something bad, something really evil & they were having nightmares & they were hearing voices & all these things. We couldn't capture any evidence or any experiences that happened, but you know, you just got a feeling, you got this horrible feeling.& I didn't prepare. I didn't cleanse. I didn't do any sort of ritual before, which is just praying& just cleansing yourself of negative energy & negative thoughts& asking for protection.& sometimes you can use holy water or anointed oil or salt or different things before & after.& I didn't bother to do that because I thought, I'll just say prayer later.& I came home the next day & from that time I was tormented. Something followed me home from that investigation. I was having not nightmares, night terrors. I was physically ill. My personality changed. My husband was so upset with me. He didn't know what was happening with me. He said I was a totally different person. I felt sick. I had a run of bad luck that cannot be explained with things happening with my car & losing things & getting hurt. The kids were affected& I was hearing voices. I was hearing what I thought to be horrible demonic voices. It was absolutely horrible.& I was terrified.& strangely enough, when we contacted the family whose house we had investigated, they said it's really weird. After you guys left, nothing happened. Everything's been really quiet. So I think whatever was negative there hooked on to me & followed me home.& it took me forever to get rid of it.& I prayed it away, but it took forever.& I really had to come back to my faith strong & really ask God for protection & promise to never take it for granted again.& so now I will prepare myself before I go into any haunted location, whether it's benign or something that could be happy.& like we have beautiful haunted places here, a place called the Steel Mansion, which is gorgeous, beautiful. Nothing negative happens there, but it's haunted. Even before I go into a place like that, I still, I make sure that I'm prepared& make sure that I'm in the right frame of mind that I don't have anything negative that's weighing me down.& I pray for protection because it's no joke between that what happened to me at the Ohio State Reformatory& another place that we had a negative experience was the Trans Allegheny Lunatic Asylum. You can't take that for granted. I brought that home to me & I had two children at the time. I didn't have my third, but I had two young children at home with me at the time.& it put a wedge between me & my husband for a while. It was terrible. So you can't take it for granted. I lean on my faith. Other people have other rituals, but for me, it's my faith & different rituals, but they're not like witchy rituals. They're just rituals that I do to make sure I'm in a frame of mind, meditation, praying, cleansing. But yeah, you can't take that stuff for granted because it's not, it's fun & games until someone gets hurt. Should viewers of Paranormal Yakker wanted to

buy America's Most Haunted:

The Secrets of Famous Paranormal Places, how can they do that? You can get it on Amazon.com. Yes, Amazon.com it's still in print, which is great. We're excited about that. After what, 11 years, that's very unusual. It was also, we'll pat ourselves on the back when the Travel Channel did a survey of the highest rated in paranormal book of all time. America's Most Haunted was rated number one. That was a big deal. Any of the online sites, obviously Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble.com, Walmart.com, it's still in print. It's available there. Theresa Argie& Eric Olsen, I thank you for being my guests on Paranormal Yakker. Yakking with the two of you has been a wonderful experience. Thank you. Thanks, Stan.