From Ghosts to Bestsellers: Author, Betsey Kulakowski

AOTP EP:15 Tonight, I welcome award-winning paranormal thriller author, avid investigator, and co-host of The Unfreakingbelievable Podcast, Betsey Kulakowski, who shares her journey from a young storyteller, inspired by her grandfather's tales of Bigfoot, to becoming a prolific writer with multiple published works, including the best-selling Veritas Codex Series.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:43

Welcome to the show. Tonight, I welcome award-winning paranormal thriller author, an active paranormal investigator, and co-host of the Unfreaking Believable Podcast, Betsy Kolakowski, who shares her journey from a young storyteller inspired by her grandfather's tales of Bigfoot to becoming a prolific writer with multiple published works, including the best-selling Veritas Codex series. Betsy, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00 1:13

Hi, thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

I'm so happy to have you here. Thanks for being on. When I read your email, I got so excited. You just have so much going on with you. Where do I start? Uh best-selling award-winning uh paranormal thriller author, avid paranormal investigator. Uh you've done numerous uh investigations, uh including uh Fort Rain, Oklahoma, the Scribbin Hotel in Oklahoma City, Rock Island YMCA in Iowa, the May Strength House of Florida. You've done some Bigfoot investigating as well in several states. I cannot wait to uh dive into that. You were also uh uh previously a safety professional and building inspector, which gave you access to a lot of places where a lot of most people uh couldn't go in some uh notable places too, so we'll hear about that. And you're also a fellow podcaster with the Unfreaking Believable Podcast. Um so you just got a lot going on. I'm just gonna turn my mic off and sit back for about an hour and let you talk, all right?

SPEAKER_00 2:11

So we can tell some stories for sure.

SPEAKER_01 2:14

Yeah, absolutely. But um, you know what I like to do, I like to just I like to first go back um in into people's lives and to kind of where it started for them. So in your case, um, what came first for you? Was it the paranormal? Was it the writing? Where did this all start for you?

SPEAKER_00 2:31

Um, you know, it they kind of run together. I had a grandfather who was a wonderful storyteller, grew up in a poor rural farming community in Oklahoma, became a landman for oil and gas companies. And so we traveled all over the country uh with him when I was very little. And for a while we were in um the Pacific Northwest up near Bellingham, Washington. And I was probably two and a half, three years old while we were there. And that's probably the first place I ever remember hearing him tell stories about Bigfoot. And so I was immediately intrigued because it was unexplained, it was exciting, it was different. And it was one of my granddaddy's yarns, he would come up with these wonderful stories about Bigfoot. He he told other yarns about growing up in Oklahoma and he had a horse and you know, the the adventures that he and his horse went on and the things that he did. And so I love story from the get-go. And I love stories about the unexplained, fairly young. I don't remember learning how to read. Uh, my brother was three years older than me. So while my mother was teaching him to read, she was also teaching me to read. Uh, and my grandmother was a teacher, so you know, she kind of reinforced that. So I knew pretty early on that I wanted to write. Uh, probably six years old, I did my own book where I made, you know, for Christmas presents, I did cardboard covers and string binding and illustrated them myself. And I was already writing books by the time I was six. Uh, not anything of any uh literal, you know, literary fame or anything like that, but um, just really enjoyed the storytelling. And sometimes it was regurgitations and reinventations of stories my grandfather told. I wrote my first poem when I was seven in second grade, and it was actually about the Loch Ness monster. So I have evidence that, you know, my fascination in the paranormal goes back fairly young, but so does my love of story. So when I started writing, you know, became more serious about writing, I decided that I wanted to write a paranormal book uh for practice just to see if I could do it. And it it happened that, you know, this is in probably 2005. You know, my kids are little and I'm working full-time, and you know, I'm up one night and my daughter couldn't sleep, and so I was watching a paranormal show on TV, and I'm like, we're seven seasons into this, and they never find anything. But then it occurred to me, well, what if they did find something, but it was a truth they could never tell? And that kind of became the nexus for uh the Veritas Codex series, which is my paranormal thriller series, my first one. Uh and so I began writing that kind of quietly in the background, just for practice. I didn't think anybody would ever read it. Uh, in fact, I intended that nobody would ever read it because I could be as outlandish as I wanted to be. Uh, and it was all about a paranormal investigation crew as they went on the hunt for Bigfoot in the Pacific Northwest. And in the middle of the investigation, the lead investigator disappears. She's gone for 10 days, she has no memory of what happened to her, but there's evidence that she was abducted by Bigfoot. So was it Bigfoot? Was it aliens? Well, it's a pity she can't remember. And so I wrote that book, and it took me, you know, maybe seven, eight months to really kind of flesh out the story. And then I started editing, and I had a critique group that I went to where I would kind of read parts of the story and get my fellow writers to give me input on how to make it better. And I started going to writers' conferences. And in the middle of all that, you know, I put that story away, but those characters wouldn't leave me alone. They wanted to tell more stories, so I thought, okay, well, let's see if I can write a sequel. So it was 2012, it was about the time everybody was going crazy about the whole Mayan apocalypse thing. Um, so I thought, okay, well, we'll make this about the Mayan apocalypse. And so the Jaguar Queen was born, which is the second book in the series. And I enjoyed writing that, and it was great. And I put it away, and I'm going to writers' conferences, and I'm working a day job and raising my family. But the story, there was more to it. So I started writing a third book, and then I wrote a fourth book. And I so I had all these books just sitting, you know, in a computer file, not really knowing what to do with them. And so I was at a writer's conference in Oklahoma City called WriterCon. Uh, it was Labor Day weekend in 2019, and I had written in my notes, you know, within the next year, I'm going to do one thing that's going to get me invited to be a speaker at this writer's conference because I was already speaking at safety conferences. It was something I love to do. I'm a natural trainer. I like to teach people things, taught occupational safety for years. So I put that in my notes and quietly forgot about it until they announced that that was the year that they were going to do a writing cruise. And that was going to be in February of 2020. So I went home and I told my husband, I said, Look, I think if I'm really serious about this writing career that I want to have, I feel like this is where I need to be. He's like, Well, do I get to go? And I'm like, Yes, you get to go. He's like, sign up, we're out of here. So we signed up to go on this writing cruise and we had to send in a manuscript. Um, and I thought, okay, well, I have to send in the one that scares me the most, the one that nobody was ever supposed to read. So I sent in what would become the Veritas Codex. And we had daily classes. We, you know, while we were at sea, we did things at port where we were, you know, going out on excursions and things like that. And we actually went to Chichenitsa on one of the excursions, which is where the the Jaguar Queen was set. Uh, so here I am pitching this book to an agent. I'm actually pitching the second book to a, I'm sorry, to a publisher. Um, we've already talked about the first book, he's seen it, but I'm talking about the second book while we're walking through, and finally the tour guide turned to me and said, You know as much about this place as I do. Do you want to lead the tour group? Which I really think is what sold my series because we got back from that cruise just as the pandemic hit, and I thought, well, this is it, you know, nobody's gonna be publishing any books this year. And boy, I couldn't be wrong because within a couple of weeks I had an email saying, you know, we would like to publish your series, not your book, your series. And uh that's really kind of how my my writing finally took off was because I got out of my own way and had the courage to say, you know, yes, my stories are wild and outlandish, but there's a market for this. People are interested in it, people want to believe. So that's kind of how the writing started. That's a long answer to a short question.

SPEAKER_01 9:13

No, but that's that's fantastic. What an awesome story on on how that began. Uh I didn't know it was so recent.

SPEAKER_00 9:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:21

Just a few years back. And you're very prolific uh looking at your website. Yes. So many.

SPEAKER_00 9:25

Well, when you have four books already done.

SPEAKER_01 9:28

I guess, yeah, you were kind of ahead of the game though, but um, and how many have you published uh since that began?

SPEAKER_00 9:34

Uh book eight comes out tomorrow. That is the Sultan's Stone. It's book eight of the Veritas Codex series, and it's set at the Stanley Hotel in Colorado. Uh, and then I have a second series called the Manifest Destiny series that launched in July of last year, and book three will be out in March of this year. And then I have various other novellas and small compendiums that have been put out that I just are short stories that I have been able to get published uh through various publishers. And uh I have already written books 9, 10, and 11 for the Veritas Codex series because I don't wait for the publisher. Uh, I already know how 12 is gonna go, and then I will reevaluate what's gonna happen with that series and see if I want to pivot with another character or if I'm ready to move on and do something different. Uh, and I don't really have any plans for the Manifest Destiny series. I co-write that with my fellow author, JB Kane, who's also on the podcast with me. And uh, we really wanted something that was kind of a short little airplane read. It's it's technically a novella, it's under 50,000 words, and uh follows two sisters who are hunting down cursed artifacts as part of a secret society, so it's very much the librarians meet warehouse 13.

SPEAKER_01 10:50

You started off speaking about when you were younger in the Pacific Northwest.

SPEAKER_00 10:55

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 10:56

Let's touch on that real quick.

SPEAKER_00 10:57

We were there for such a short period of time, and I was so very young that we didn't really, you know, I didn't get to go paranormal investigating. It wasn't a thing back in, you know, 1970, whatever. And uh so, you know, but we hiked, we hiked all the time. We were always outdoors. We go camping and fishing and hiking, and you know, my my grandfather loved all that kind of stuff. We we'd take the ferry up to Vancouver, and so we were always in the woods. Um, now as I got older, you know, I was a little more intentional when I was out in the woods. I was always looking for what might be out there, and I never really had anything specific in mind, but I always thought, you know, there's so you know, such a big world. How could there not be something that people have never found? You know, if you think about the great apes, they didn't find them until the 40s, and everybody thought they were just a myth. Um, so you know, I was always kind of you know aware that there might be something out there. Of course, you know, the six million dollar man had Bigfoot in it, so I I knew about it from them, and then Harry and the Hendersons came out.

SPEAKER_01 11:58

I remember that episode. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:00

The legend of Boggy Creek, you know, that's that wasn't very far from us in Oklahoma. It's actually over here in Arkansas now. But um, so I was always out in the woods and I have pictures of myself, and I had had actually gone in and labeled I'm looking for Bigfoot on the on pictures when like 10 to 11 years old. Um, I've become more intentional now as an adult. I'm still out in the woods hiking all the time. We go camping quite a bit, we've traveled the country, uh, and I've been much more intentional now as I'm older, and it's led to some really interesting findings, not anything that I can qualify or quantify, but I've had what I call my three near misses as an adult. Um, we had gone down to southeastern Oklahoma. I had a friend that was an author who wrote similar stuff to what I write, and he lived in an area called Honubby, which is uh the Bigfoot capital of Oklahoma, believe it or not. It's very mountainous, it's very rugged, it's rural. Uh, and we had gone down to see him and gone for his book signing. And he said, Well, you know, if you take the highway down towards where my house is, he said, There's a sign that says, you know, home of the Bigfoot Highway. He said, You should stop there, take some pictures before you head back. You can use it for your marketing, whatever. He's he was a genius. So we did, and we stopped, and I'm under the under the sign getting my picture taken. My husband's taking it for me, and just this horrible smell came out of nowhere. Just this awful, horrific, you know, cat litter, dead animal, foundry. I mean, think of all the nasty things you can think of. That's that's what it smelled like. And so my husband's like, Yeah, that's not very pleasant. Let's get out of here. I'm like, Yeah, I've got what I wanted, let's go. So while we're driving home, I text my friend who had sent me down there and I said, Um, do you have a rendering plant or a paper mill in that area? Because you know, I'm thinking occupational safety, those are the stinkiest places I can think of that I've been. And uh he texted me back, he said, What did you smell? And I told him exactly as I've told you, and he said, Ah, that's the booger. And I'm like, the what? He said, That's Bigfoot. He said, They stink, they're horribly smelly. And I'm like, Wow. Okay. And so I've smelled it. That's that's different. I had not expected that. That was not something I was anticipating. Didn't see anything, didn't hear anything, but certainly got a good whiff of it. Um, a couple years after that, we had gone to Blue Ridge, Georgia on a girls' retreat and had stopped in a little town called Ella J, Georgia, which is home of Expedition Bigfoot, which is a museum. I highly recommend if anybody ever gets anywhere near Blue Ridge, Georgia, it's just north of Atlanta, stop in Ellijay, say hi to Amanda, the Bigfoot lady. She works there. And uh, she had given us a tour and told us all about some of her experiences. And her mother was a paranormal investigator and into ghost hunting, and she did genealogy and stuff like that. So I was very interested in that because I'm a genealogist too. And so they had recordings where you could put on headphones and you could listen to recordings that had been captured in the area, and so we did all that, and the next day, one of my fellow podcasters that was with us, we had decided to go take a hike that morning. And it had stormed the night before, and it was still kind of cold and kind of wet, and there were trees down. So there were crews out clearing down the trees on one of these trails that we were hiking, and he had gotten his chainsaw caught up in the tree and had had to go back and get another one. He was just getting ready to set up to start trying to cut out the first chainsaw. Um, and so he was asking us, you know, how far are you going? What are you doing? He said, I like to kind of keep an eye on guests when they're out here just to kind of make sure everybody's okay. And, you know, so we kind of told him, he said, well, if you get to the waterfall, that's probably a nice place to turn around. Sounds like that's right up your area, you know, the kind of level that you're looking for today. And so, you know, we said our goodbyes and he helped us over the fallen trees, and we went on our way. And we get out to this beautiful valley, and you can see out over a river, and there's trees, and you know, it's just gorgeous up there. Everything was so green. And about that time, he fired up that chainsaw, and it was very loud, even from you know, we were probably a mile away at that point. But this blood curling scream, this howl came out across the valley, and it was one of those you couldn't tell which direction it came from. But my partner and I, we just looked at each other and we both knew that was the booger. We had heard the same recordings the day before at the museum, so we've heard it. And then uh had gone to the Pacific Northwest, I'd gone back to um Seattle, I had a friend that lived up there and we had gone a couple years ago. Um, and I wanted to go back to up to Mount St. Helens, which is where the Veritas Codex is set. I wanted to see how I did. Did I get anything wrong? Did I get anything right? What could what were my takeaways? What could I have done differently? And in truth, the only thing I think I could have done differently is I didn't factor in the fact that there is a road. I made them hike everywhere. They could have just gotten in a truck and driven, but no, I made them hike everywhere. But we're up walking uh and hiking on one of the trails uh north of the volcano, which was where most of the damage was done after Mount St. Helens. And it's it's new forest growth, it's you know, it's recovering quite well. Beautiful country. And I'm, you know, looking around at the ground. My husband's looking at the birds and you know the views and the vistas, and I'm watching the ground looking for footprints, and I didn't find any. But the next day in the newspaper, there was a report of footprints that were found on the trail we had hiked just hours after we had left. So we missed the footprints by you know, maybe hours, maybe less. So those are my three big big foot near misses.

SPEAKER_01 18:06

That is so cool when you were talking about that stench. Boy, yeah, I've I've heard about that. I I definitely understand the association with uh people. Uh maybe they had the sighting, maybe they didn't, but that smell would be there. So you definitely that is a very common thing.

SPEAKER_00 18:22

It is an unmistakable odor. Once you smell it, you'll never forget it.

SPEAKER_01 18:26

I can imagine.

SPEAKER_00 18:27

Vile.

SPEAKER_01 18:28

And the Oklahoma area is very, you know, people may not think about or associate Sasquatch with that, but boy, there are a lot of sightings out of Oklahoma.

SPEAKER_00 18:36

And you'd be surprised how many of them are in the Oklahoma City metropolitan area.

SPEAKER_01 18:41

Yeah, it's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 18:42

There, yeah, there's a there's a nature preserve just west of Oklahoma City. It was a mile and a half from our house. And I had no idea it was there until I started hearing from the local Bigfoot investigators that they had sightings at this national preserve, at this national park. So we had gone out there and hiked and looked. Uh, there were reports that came through the news in northwest Oklahoma City near Edmund of daylight Bigfoot sightings in the city. And, you know, we think about all the rural places, but you know, we've encroached on their territory. They've almost got nowhere to go. And the trails and pathways that they've used for centuries, eons, whatever the case may be, um, have changed and they're still trying to find their path through.

SPEAKER_01 19:27

Yeah. I think they follow the um the waterways. I believe even the finding Bigfoot guys, Matt Moneymaker, Cliff, uh uh Bo. I think they've been down there to Oklahoma investigating and recorded some sounds and stuff. There's just a lot of action there. You wouldn't think that, but that is so cool.

SPEAKER_00 19:44

And you know, I just moved to Arkansas a year ago, and I have been meeting with some of the local paranormal investigators here and asking about their experiences, and and there are a lot in this area as well. Of course, we live out in the woods. I've got deer in my backyard, you know, every day. So, you know, I'm always on the lookout.

SPEAKER_01 20:01

Yeah, get those trail cams up.

SPEAKER_00 20:03

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 20:04

You just never know. But yeah, if you're in a wooded area, you've got a chance for some action for sure.

SPEAKER_00 20:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:10

The paranormal investigations, let's talk about that. And um where did you finally take that leap and say, yeah, I'm gonna do some investigating? And what was that about?

SPEAKER_00 20:20

Yeah, it it really started. My mom uh was always interested in this kind of thing. So she always encouraged me. She encouraged me to write, she encouraged me to, you know, explore the world with a sense of wonder. And so she had found a place in Oklahoma called the historic Fort Reno. They were doing uh public ghost hunts that you could go to, and they do them like around Halloween, and they got to the point where the paranormal investigators were finding, you know, the actual real paranormal investigators were finding so much evidence that there was a big demand to be, you know, they wanted to come back out. Well, well, if they're gonna let them in, just let the public come in and they'll take a tour around. And so my mom and I got to the point where we did that almost every month and just really kind of followed the paranormal investigation teams, asked a lot of questions. Um, my mom and I are both genealogists, so they're, you know, we made friends with the folks there at the fort. Uh, and there were a couple of historical records they were looking for, they could not find. And so my mom and I said, well, you know, we'll let let us let us help. What can we do? We'll volunteer. And so they had a couple of things that they were trying to prove or disprove, and they turned us loose. And of course, Oklahoma has a wonderful historical center. So I went to the historical museum, pulled up old newspapers from the era, old records, land grants, uh, newspaper clippings, anything we could find to provide them with the evidence they were looking for. And we actually found exactly what they were looking for, uh, which was the documentation of a suicide that happened on the fort, where the bullet hole is still in the wall. Um, so we were out there so often that we kind of became the de facto. Safety team while they were doing the tours, we would just kind of walk around with the groups. We'd already heard the stories. We knew where to go, what to look for, things like that. But they we just made sure people didn't wander off into places they didn't belong. And one of the things I do, I'm trying to be very scientific because I'm a federally trained investigator. I try to follow the same methods I would use with a fatality investigation when I'm doing a paranormal investigation. I do my research, I try to know the location. I go out, I do a physical visual inspection before it gets dark because I'm horrible with uh vision at night. Uh night blindness is a horrible curse for a paranormal investigator who likes to be out in the woods. I'll just say that. So I had done, you know, I had gone out there on one evening and done a complete baseline, you know, before it got dark, walked around a couple of the buildings that I knew we were going to stop and talk about because they don't let you go in the buildings anymore. Um, knew where all the potholes were, where people could trip and fall, you know, where I wanted to take pictures. I took pictures of the old Victorian is probably the most notable building on the premises. And, you know, look at the windows, look at the structure, you know, that kind of thing. That night while we're walking through with the group, I paused at one of the windows that just kept calling to me. And I took several snapshots in rapid succession, and I'm looking down at my digital camera. This is before iPhones, even, and there is very clearly a face in the window, hand up by his face, like it, like an old man leaning out. What are you kids doing on my yard? kind of thing. And you can see the outline of the eye sockets, he had a beard, could make out the mouth, and you could just see this face in the picture. And I'm like, well, that's interesting. And of course, everybody wanted to come over and see it. And even the paranormal, the real paranormal investigators, because at the time I still didn't think of myself as a real paranormal investigator, came over to look at those pictures, and she's like, Good catch, you're one of us now. So, you know, that was my first, that really kind of inspired me. I was like, I was gung ho after that. I wanted to go to every old building, every haunted location, every haunted hotel I could stay at. I wanted to. Um, so that was really kind of where that started for me, and and it's not slowed down any at all.

SPEAKER_01 24:22

That is awesome. And I'd love to see that picture if it still exists.

SPEAKER_00 24:26

It is. Actually, I have it out on my social media, so I'll I'll send you a link to that.

SPEAKER_01 24:31

What's kind of your favorite evidence you've you've had?

SPEAKER_00 24:34

That by far is my favorite evidence because that's the most solid piece of data that I've been able to collect. I've had other experiences that I can't quantify quite so well, but I would not trade them for anything because they they they tell the story of these locations. And that's again, as an author, I want to know the story. I want to know the history, I want to know the legends. Um haunted hotels, I have I have a very uh unique fascination with those. I've stayed at the Skurvin Hotel in downtown Oklahoma City, which is 1920s era, one of the first really nice hotels in Indian territory after the state, even before the state was founded. Um the NBA players have been sent running out of that place in the middle of the night because it's so haunted. I've stayed there, I've investigated there. Um, I have a set of spirit dice that I have taken in there and used in my investigation. I'm I'm usually pretty hands-on. I want to, I want senses and visual, you know, data, but to to use that, that was kind of a new technique for me the last time I was there. You just kind of roll, you ask a question and then you roll the dice, and it works kind of like a tarot or a Ouija board without being so spooky. And had some very interesting results from that. So I've stayed at the Skurvin. I've stayed there several times. I've stayed at the Stan, I haven't stayed at the Stanley Hotel. That that is one place that I have been to the Stanley Hotel. I've stood in the parking lot no less than six times, and I can't bring myself to go inside, and I can't explain why. There's something there, there's something there that doesn't want me to come in. And I think it's because it knows I know it's there. So when I'm writing the Veritas Codex, I threw that in as one of the scariest things that happens to my characters. Something happens in the Stanley Hotel, and we're circling back to that in book eight. So it's gonna come full circle. Um, so I have not stayed there, but I keep telling myself, I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna go there, I'm gonna at least go inside. I may not stay here, but I'm gonna at least go inside, have a drink at the bar, have lunch, something. I'm gonna go into there and get past this fear, but I just I the last time I was there, I still couldn't do it. Um, I've stayed at the Stratter Hotel in Durango, I've stayed at um, there's one in Louisville, Kentucky that's blank, my blank and I don't know the name of it. Um, but I've stayed at multiple hotels that are haunted just because I think they're so fascinating. May Stringer House in Florida, that was less than two years ago. Um, we had gone uh on one of the public tours and we had a couple of pieces of equipment. We had an audio recorder, we had the um, it was basically the multimeter, the electric meter, yeah. Um, and we were going around and we they have one room that had like military history of the area. It wasn't things that had necessarily been in the house, it had been brought in because it was the county museum. So all the military stuff had been put in one small room. And so we were we were asking, you know, the spirit questions like, you know, can you tell us who you are? Is this your gun? Uh what's your name? Things like that. And we kept getting Bob. And we say, Bob, is this your gun? No. Bob, is this your coat? No. Bob, is there anything in this room that is yours? No. Are you in this room? No. You know, the answers kept saying no. And we'd say, you know, can you tell us more about you? And it would just say, Bob. And so we thought that was just really interesting. And then later, after the investigation was done, I was walking around outside because I always try to do an outside sweep afterwards. I'm I'm basically kind of clearing my energy before I get in the car to go home. And there were gravestones leaning against the wall, right outside the wall where we were. And they clearly didn't belong there. They, the gravestones, you know, don't sit in people's yards. So I'm, you know, I'm wondering why are these here? And I get to noticing one of them was for Robert. And so I went back inside and I asked one of the docents who were there, and I said, Tell me about the gravestones outside. And he said, Yeah. He said, Um, those were found in a uh pawn shop. Somebody had stolen them and then pawned them, and the pawn shop couldn't sell them, so they were just sitting around in this pawn shop. So uh, because they were stolen goods, they they were remanded into the custody of the historical society, and they had come from various cemeteries, they didn't know where Bob belonged. So I started doing my genealogy research, and I found everything about Bob, where he was supposed to be buried, where his gravestone belonged, and all the history on how he died. And he died um right at the beginning of the Civil War in Florida, less than a county away, and his gravestone just simply needs to be returned back to where it belongs because we've identified where that goes now. So, you know, being able to help in that aspect is really kind of icing on the cake because that the story is what I really enjoy.

SPEAKER_01 29:54

Awesome. You're a talented investigator there to be able to um trace um what many have tried and and weren't able to do, and then you go in there with your uh your talent and you're able to do that. That is really cool.

SPEAKER_00 30:07

You have to think outside the box, I think. And I think a lot of people are only focused on the paranormal. And I always tell people when I'm investigating, I look for the normal, and then I'll look for the paranormal. Um, so I always look at it from a historian standpoint as well as a genealogy standpoint, because if somebody lived, there's a record of them. It may not be a good record, it may be hard to find, but somebody somewhere kept a record on that person when they were born, if they owned land, when they got married, when they died, where they're buried. You just have to know where to look.

SPEAKER_01 30:42

Well, if I ever need a like an investigator, I know who to reach out to. That is really cool. Tell me about the buildings you you investigated.

SPEAKER_00 30:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:53

Tell me about when you went to those places and what that was like and what that what that felt like for you.

SPEAKER_00 30:57

Right. So I worked for the State Labor Department in Oklahoma for 28 years. I was 18 years old when I started. I was a temp, started out as a clerk typist doing asbestos abatement licenses, worked my way up to asbestos inspector, uh, and then later become a safety consultant and then an enforcement. I was the assistant director of the public sector enforcement. So I did fatality investigations for police, firefighters, city workers, county workers that were killed on the job. Um, also investigated other accidents and near misses and things like that. And as an asbestos inspector, we typically were the last people to inspect a building before it got torn down. So a lot of the old historic buildings that got torn down in Oklahoma City, you know, we'd have to go in, a contractor would take the asbestos out, and it was our job to verify that they got everything, that it was clean, you know, before the building was torn down. But sometimes we did investigations like that when the building was just being renovated. So they would have to do an asbestos abatement or removal before they could do the renovation. And the Scarvin Hotel uh downtown Oklahoma City was one of those buildings that I inspected. I was primarily there focused on worker safety for the contractors who were doing the asbestos, but also to make sure the asbestos didn't get out of containment and into like the ventilation systems or the public building, public parts of the building that weren't being affected. So I would get calls from the contractor saying, uh, we're gonna have to breach containment because the water got turned on behind the poly where they've sealed it off with plastic. And there's no physical way anybody could reach the faucet to turn the water on. But they're gonna have to turn it off, otherwise it's just gonna keep running and it could flood, or who knows what else could happen. So we would have to go back out there and reinspect every time they had to breach containment. So that happened rather frequently. Uh, I got stories of power tools being turned on when they weren't even plugged in, and I still can't explain that because that's not physically possible. Um, they had one near Miss a bench grinder. The worker had unplugged it and set it down. And he said it had stopped rotating, but when he set it down, it kicked back at him and he had an injury as a result of it. So, just you know, some of those things where the public was not allowed in those areas while that work was being done. Um, and the contractors required that we be there because they're doing the work and we're there to keep them safe. Um, when the Murrah building happened, when the bombing happened in Oklahoma City, I was less than a mile away. Um, I was on my way to do an inspection on northwest in northwest Oklahoma City, uh, on the other side of town. But my coworker who had taken the government car the day before had not filled up the gas tank and it needed gas. So I had gone to the motor pool to fill up the gas tank, and I was actually at the gas station when the building exploded. And even the the glass doors and plate glass windows a mile away undulated. I mean, it wasn't just like it vibrated. You could see the rolling glass as that pressure force went by and it blew everybody's eardrums, you know, it popped your ears really bad, whole pressure shift. Uh, I knew something had happened. My first thought was, oh my gosh, a plane has crashed in downtown Oklahoma City because there's an airport not very far from where the Murray building was. I didn't even have it in my paradigm that anybody would want to, you know, explode a box van in downtown Oklahoma City. So I got my gas and went on my way to go do my inspection. And while I'm in containment, they called me to the, there's like a window where you can view in and out. They called me to the window, and the supervisor, I always give them my pager when I go in in case there's an emergency, and he held up my pager to the window and it had call the office 911, which was our code for emergencies back when we had pagers. Um, so I had to shower out, you know, finish my inspections, shower out, find a phone, because that was back before everybody had a cell phone, um, and call the office. And they're like, there have been threats made against government employees. We're sending everyone home. You need to come, turn in the state car, don't go inside, take your equipment and go home. You know, do not pass go, do not collect$200, go home. Well, when I got home, this is like three o'clock in the afternoon. It happened at nine. So at three o'clock in the afternoon, I get home. And of course, the traffic was snarled, you couldn't get gas anywhere at that point. Um, everybody's freaking out. I'm listening to it on the radio, and they're talking about what's happened and how horrid it is. And I'm like, oh my gosh, my parents were supposed to be in downtown Oklahoma City that morning to get their Social Security taken care of. They just retired, and they would have been in that building. So I don't go home. I go to my parents' house because I'm, you know, I'm assuming they're home. Please let them be home. Well, I get home and there's nobody there. Uh, my mom had been cleaning the mini blinds the day before, and the mini blinds were blown out of the window and laying in the living room floor, which I thought was really odd. I was like, why are the mini blinds on the floor? That's not like my mother. She's like Martha Stewart. Her house is immaculate. So I get home, I start calling, can't get through to anything. All the phone lines are bogged down with emergency calls coming in and out, people trying to reach each other. Uh, I'm watching the news, I have no idea where my parents are. Finally, get a call from the boss saying, you know, we're we want everybody to stay home the rest of the day and don't come to work until we call you and tell you it's safe to come back to work. So I have nothing to do for three days but sit and watch the news and not know where my parents are. Um finally got a call from my aunt in Denver. My mother had gotten a call into her. She got a call to me to let me know that my mother was at the hospital working, she was a nurse. They had not gone downtown that morning. She decided to get another cup of coffee and he took another lap at the track. And they had not gotten down there, but they had been for the last three days. She'd been working at the hospital helping with the emergency response, and my dad was shuttling people back and forth to the blood bank so that they could get blood donors for the victims. So after three days, I finally knew what was going on with my parents. Well, then we got the call that we're going back to work and to be prepared to go work at the site. We'd have to go through security clearance, we'd need all the protective equipment because all the buildings around the Murrah bombing uh had damage to the insulation and the asbestos that was in those buildings. So I spent months working downtown in the buildings around the Murrah building. And I stood at the corner of that building while they're doing body recovery. And I kind of could get a feeling where they might find somebody, but I never was able to confirm or deny where those bodies were recovered from until many, many years later when they started to release some of that information. And I had a couple of them that I was actually pretty accurate with. And it could have just been educated training, you know, could have been my safety skills kicking in. Um, but I still have a very hard time going down to the memorial, which is a beautiful tribute to those that we lost and those that were changed forever, which our city was changed forever after that. Um, and so many of them were children, which is the worst to me. I mean, it's people at work, it's awful, but when it's children, you know, as a mother and you know, safety professional, those are two of the hardest things for me to accept. So I have to approach that location with a bit of standoffishness. I I just I have a hard time going down there. Um, so not long after that, when the World Trade Center happened, because of my experiences at the Murrah bombing, they sent me to the World Trade Center to help with the safety effort for the workers in the pit. Um, that happened in September of 01, and I was there in March of 02. And they were all the way down to the bottom of the pit and still removing bodies from the parking garage. And there were times where I would see a worker and not know for sure if that was an actual physical person or a memory of a person. Um, so that was that was very difficult, as you can imagine.

SPEAKER_01 39:31

Describe that what you just stated.

SPEAKER_00 39:33

Yeah, just you know, it there were so many people that had worked there that, you know, they lost their co-workers. The firefighters that had been there from the beginning, from day one, were there every single day looking for their friends, their brothers, their sons, and just the hollow look on their face, the hollowness in their eyes. I was never sure if life had left them or if they were physical presences. You know, it was so hard to know. There was so much tragedy in that place that it was present every single day walking through the site, going through the process of doing the work, watching for hazards to make sure people didn't get hurt. Um, they did so many wonderful things right at that location and so many awful things wrong. Uh, I'm not judging because they did what they had to do in the moment, but there were so many workers who had been there from the get-go that had no protective equipment the day it happened. They breathed in the worst of the hazards the first few days of the disaster. Um, and by the time, you know, I got there, they were they were tired, they were worn out, and they were mentally exhausted, spiritually drained. And, you know, it almost was like they were walking ghosts, they were shells of themselves. Now, Katrina, I went down for Hurricane Katrina with OSHA's national disaster response team, and that was that was a that was a different feel. You know, New Orleans already has kind of a vibe. You know, there's a lot of ghosts that lived there long before Katrina. Um, the first assignment they gave us was to, I was partnered with an industrial hygienist out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, delightful lady. We're still really good friends, we still keep in touch. And they sent us to Charity Hospital, which is the oldest public hospital in North America. It's just outside the quarter. Uh, it's right down the street from the Superdome. Um, it's where all the city's indigents are treated. Um and when the disaster happened, they knew they knew several, you know, they knew enough time to they could evacuate the people who could be transported. But there were a lot of patients who could not be moved. And when they when the when the hurricane actually hit, of course, they lost all power. The the basement and the first floor flooded, which the emergency room was on, it was on the first floor, but it was a higher level. It's it's it's an old building, so it's it's not exactly flat on the on the base levels, but the the morgue flooded, the engine room, the the backup generators all flooded. I mean, it wasn't there's some security things that we could probably uh break down in a hazard assessment now, you know, looking back, but they hadn't thought about it then. Um and they had they had stayed in that building for 10 days with no flushing toilets, no electricity, no air conditioning. It was 107 degrees when we were there. And I don't even want to venture what the humidity was. It was miserable. And here we are in Tyvek suits, respirators, rubber boots, rubber gloves, in the dark. We had to walk the whole building, which is 27 stories, it's a whole city block, with none of these things, no air conditioning, no lights, uh, no elevator. So we had to climb stairs, which is uh not a lot of fun in the heat. Um, but that was one of those buildings where you could feel eyes on you. We would see things out of the corner of our eyes. I heard my name called. My partner is to my left, and my my name comes from my right. And I'm like looking for Ann, and she's like, Um, I'm over here, Betsy. And I'm like, uh, I heard you over here call my name. And she goes, uh-uh, that wasn't me. And she she had the same thing happen to her on one of the stairwells. I hadn't made it to the stairwell yet, and she'd started up without me. Um, and I she said I called her name from below, and I'm like, uh-uh. I hadn't even got to the stairwell yet. I was looking for you, but I didn't know where you went, and I was not calling your name. Um, so you know, just there were a lot of things like that in New Orleans, and that I write a lot of of my more horror themed novels or novellas are typically written in uh New Orleans. If I'm looking for a great place for a setting, um, that's one of the first places I think of because there's so Much history and so much tragedy in New Orleans that uh it always lends itself well to a good spooky story.

SPEAKER_01 44:08

I imagine uh any other notable uh buildings uh that you inspected?

SPEAKER_00 44:14

No, most of the ones I had had inspected were relatively small. Um nondescript. I I will take that back. There was one in Oklahoma City that was the old Continental Baking Company, and it was where all the kids used to go on their school field trip where they had little mini bread pans that you could get a little your own little loaf of bread when you got done. And um, it was just a really neat place because they made all the bread for pretty much central Oklahoma. And it had closed down for many, many years, and they had talked about, you know, what are we gonna do with it? And so they decided they were gonna put a basketball arena there. They were gonna put a hockey arena at first, and because we had a hockey team, and then uh when the the arena got done, then basketball moved into Oklahoma City and took over the arena and ran the hockey team out. Um, but I had to inspect that building before they got ready to tear it down, and that's when I swear I'm writing a murder mystery with the big penultimate scene. You know, the showdown with the killer is going to be in that building because it was so terrifying. Uh, it had been vacant for so long that the the homeless population had moved in. Um they had you know barrels that they would set fires in for warmth, and they would hunt pigeons and cats and anything they could catch to cook and eat. Uh so we find carcasses and things like that in there. There was needles and uh all manner of nasty things in there. And of course it had flooded. So there was water standing in the basement that was about knee deep. You'd have to wear hip boots to go in. Um, jark, no power, filthy, nasty, just a horrible place. So when they when they tore that down, it's like, you know what? That's going in a book, but I will I will never forget that building. And it was it was one of those where you could feel eyes on you in there as well, and you didn't know if it was, you know, a homeless person watching you or if there was a spirit there, because I'm sure people died in that building as well. Um, but that's now where the the thunder uh play basketball.

SPEAKER_01 46:16

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 46:17

Yeah. I I've had a couple of premonitions too about weather, which is very helpful when you live in Oklahoma. Uh, I'm not as accurate as the National Weather Service, but I've had two or three really good, I guess I don't know if I call them good, but I've had very strong premonitions before a storm hit. Um, May 3rd, 1999 is a day that lives in infamy in Oklahoma City because the largest tornado ever recorded was on the ground for over an hour in central Oklahoma from all the way from Lawton, Oklahoma up I-44. It came into Oklahoma City on the southwest side and then turned right into more. Multiple fatalities, miles of destruction, whole neighborhoods wiped out completely, uh, took out part of I-35, it went on to Tinker Air Force Base, it went up into eastern Oklahoma. I mean, it was a long track tornado, and we'd known days ahead that it was coming. And the night before that tornado hit, I had a very vivid dream about where I was, what was happening. I mean, down to what people said in the dream. So we're on the way to the we we had season tickets for the hockey team. And so we're on our way to the hockey game because it was a championship playoff game. And I'm telling my mother this dream. And I said, and we're sitting at the hockey game, and the PA announcer comes on and says, folks, there's bad weather in the area. So we're gonna take this party downstairs to the parking garage and stay there until the weather passes, and then we're gonna come back upstairs, play some hockey, and get this season wrapped up, you know, whatever else he said. And so, you know, my mom she's hearing me tell her the story while we're driving to the hockey game. She goes, you know, your grandmother used to do this kind of thing to me all the time. I hate it when you're right. And all the way home, she's like, I hate it when you're right. I hate it when you're right. Because I was right. I exactly almost exactly what the PA announcer said is what happened, you know, in real life. So I've had that. Um, I did safety consultations for businesses, and I would go out and help them with things like their emergency action plan, their chemical safety plan, things like that. And I had one company that I'd had a dream about weather, and it just so happened that the next day I was out in their neighborhood working with them. And, you know, I asked them, I said, Do you have a plan for severe weather? Where would you go if a tornado was coming and you couldn't get people home in time? You obviously don't want to wait till the last minute, try to send somebody home in this weather. You don't want to be in a car, you want to be in a building. And he said, Well, we really don't have a shelter location. It's a big metal building with metal tools and metal things. He said, I don't even know where we'd begin. I said, if you're open to it while we're walking through, maybe we can identify, you know, a best case scenario where you can make do with what you have. And uh so we did that. And I said, okay, now what we need to do, you know, we picked out a break area that was a concrete reinforced structure within the building. I said, we need to communicate to all the employees at least verbally so that you have an interim protection in place. You know, let's tell everybody where they need to go, what they need to do. So if anything were to happen today, they would be prepared. And he said, Okay, we'll do that. And he was a wonderful employer because he was so open to it. And as we were going through, he's telling all his employees, here's what we're gonna do if the weather gets bad, and we we could have some bad weather this week. And the next day, the front of their building got taken off. That happened after hours. There's only a few people there at the shop when the tornado hit, but they were able to get into shelter, they were protected, and nobody got hurt. So I've had a couple of things like that happen, and again, I hate it when I'm right.

SPEAKER_01 50:04

Yeah, when it's like that.

SPEAKER_00 50:06

Yeah, but I mean it made some good out of it.

SPEAKER_01 50:09

100%. Do you have dreams? Do you ever have like uh dreams where you you wake up and you're like, okay, write this down?

SPEAKER_00 50:16

Not very much so. Um sometimes the theme for my books will come from a dream like that too. I had uh I was writing what became book four of the Veritas Codic series. I didn't write them in order because I kind of write in circles. And uh I was kind of thinking about what this book needed to be about, and the line came to me in my dream, the devil had it coming. And that was the only thing I knew. And so when I started putting the story together, I wrote to that theme, and I wrote that book in 23 days because I knew the theme. I knew the historical facts, I did my research while I was writing, you know, everything just fell into place, and I love it when that kind of thing happens. So I do I do kind of keep some notes, usually on a sticky note. I've got sticky notes all over my desk. Um, you know, and the devil had it coming was one of those sticky notes that was on my desk for for the whole time I was writing that book.

SPEAKER_01 51:10

We were talking about your podcast, the uh unfreaking believable podcast.

SPEAKER_00 51:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:15

I think it's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 51:16

We also call it the UFB podcast, because let's face it, Unfreaking Believable is hard to spell and it takes too long to say it all multiple times. So the UFB podcast is all about we have guests come on and tell the story of the moment that made a difference in their lives because of that one inciting incident. As an author, we always look for that inciting incident, the moment where they go from the status quo to something changes, something happens, and then it changes that person forever. And so we've had, we're just now starting our third season, we've had over 50 episodes. Uh, we have had everyone from Hollywood actors to uh movie producers, directors, authors, everyday people, paranormal investigators, because we don't just cover the paranormal, we cover those moments of truth, the um act of faith, you know, the act of courage, or you know, sometimes even near-miss experiences. We we try to cover the gamut, we try to balance out um the stories that we tell every every episode, and we publish ours twice a month. Um, our episodes drop on the 11th and the 27th of every month. So we've been really lucky. Um, the the guest train has not ended because everybody has an unfreaking believable moment of some kind. It's just how you tell it that really has impact. And we've had we've had episodes where we have been sitting there, we only do audio too, which I really love, um, because video can be problematic in editing. But we've had episodes we're literally just sitting there with tears rolling down our eyes trying to get the questions out because the stories are so heart-touching and so relevant to everyone. Um, you know, it's it's it's wonderful when we have an episode. You know, we have a lot of them where we laugh and joke and cut up and we have a good time, but to have one that really tugs at the heartstrings is is really something special.

SPEAKER_01 53:08

100%. And I am gonna start uh digging into that show for sure. Starting with that episode we were talking about, you and I.

SPEAKER_03 53:15

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 53:16

That is so interesting. Yeah, so yeah, I'm gonna get into that, but I don't know where you find time, but I'm glad you did to come on this show. That's for sure. You got so much going on. But yeah, I do appreciate you making the time to come and speak on my little show here. I really appreciate that.

SPEAKER_00 53:32

Oh, absolutely my pleasure. It's always nice to visit with other podcasters and investigators and even people who are just curious about the unknown. I love that.

SPEAKER_01 53:41

Absolutely. It makes two of us. Thank you again. And the prolific writer you are, all the wonderful books uh you have. Where can people find you? Find your show, anything, any information you want to give.

SPEAKER_00 53:52

Absolutely. The best place to start is my website, and it's w dot authorbetsikulikowski.com. And I hope you have show notes that you can put that up there on because it's usually my it's usually my first name that people spell wrong because I spell it differently. It's B-E-T-S-E-Y. And then Kulikowski, it's spelled just like it sounds K-U-L-A-K-O-W-S-K-I. Um, but I'm also on social media as authorbetsy k. So I'm on Facebook, I'm on Instagram, I'm on TikTok, I'm on Pinterest, I'm on Threads, I'm on X. I don't like calling it that. It's Twitter, it'll always be Twitter. I'm on Blue Sky. I mean, I'm out there. You can find me. But my website has everything, including there's a link to the podcast, um, to our podcast website, which is UFB UFBpodcast.com. So I'm out there and I love connecting with readers. I'm always happy to talk craft and books and you know all that fun stuff. Uh also, same with the paranormal community. I am gonna be a VIP speaker at the Arkansas Paranormal Fest or Cryptid Fest, uh, which is June 6th in Little Rock, Arkansas. I'm really excited about that because my local paranormal community is coming together and uh I'm gonna get to meet some folks, and I'm excited about that.

SPEAKER_01 55:09

That's awesome. Betsy, thank you again. I truly appreciate you coming on, spending the time.

SPEAKER_00 55:14

I've really enjoyed it. I'll stay in touch. Thank you. We'll do.

SPEAKER_01 55:20

Thank you for listening. I appreciate you being here. If you have an account to share and would like to be on the show, email me at show at accounts of the paranormal.com and tell me what you saw. You can catch the show wherever you listen to podcasts, as well as our website, accounts of the paranormal.com, where you can access full episodes and links to all our socials and our YouTube channel, where you can listen and watch along with visual images. And if you're a fan of what you heard here, please like, share, follow, subscribe. I appreciate the support. I'll see you next time.