Bert (2:00)

So is there a whole industry that caters to this specific cause where they're creating electronics and, you know, it's not.

Patrick Burns (2:11)

Really an industry, Bert. It's 99.9% of the people that do this. It's a hobby, you know, we do it for our own curiosity, our own interest. There really is. It's very difficult to make any money at this unless you happen to be on a TV show or you happen to write a book or something like that. Most of the equipment that we use is off the shelf electronics and we sort of modify it in Some way to use it for what we need to use it for.

Bert (2:38)

Where do you find the most paranormal activity in Atlanta?

Patrick Burns (2:42)

In Atlanta, within the perimeter, Believe it or not, there's not as much activity within the city itself as you start to get into the burbs. Stone Mountain, Marietta, Roswell, Lawrenceville, Gwinnett county, the surrounding areas seem to have more activity than the city itself does. There are a couple of theories about why that might be. Probably the most popular is the fact that the city was burnt down and then reconstructed and reconstructed again. So nobody really knows where things are from a historical perspective. You know, we don't really know where to go and concentrate. Okay, well, here's where Something significant happened back in history. We can go and concentrate our efforts there. Everything is sort of scattered around.

Bert (3:28)

Is it true that you find more paranormal activity around graveyards, or is that just a cliche?

Patrick Burns (3:33)

You know, we find now there are some investigators out there that will disagree with me. And there are some that think that cemeteries and graveyards are not haunted. I believe that they are active. We have recorded a substantial amount of activity in cemeteries. And yeah, I think there is activity in cemeteries. Usually the older ones are the more active.

Bert (3:55)

Melissa loves this.

Melissa (3:56)

I do. Patrick, why did you get interested in this field, this hobby that's now become a career for you with your television show? But what was the first thing that happened to you where you said, I have to get into this?

Patrick Burns (4:11)

Well, you know, I tell everyone it probably started when I was a wee little child and watching Casper the Friendly Ghost. And of course, I was reassured by my parents when I was a child growing up, there's no such things as ghosts. And about the time I was seven or eight years old, the woman who had purchased my grandparents house, after they had both passed on, we lived in the house right next door. And we moved away. And my grandparents house was purchased by a husband and wife who lived down the street from us. And she called my mom sometime after they had purchased my grandparents house. And they said, I don't know quite how to tell you this, but I was fixing breakfast in the kitchen this morning. I turned around and your mother was standing there looking at me. And she just faded away. And my mom was like, you know, big skeptic, right? Okay, whatever. Until she described what my grandmother was wearing. She said it looked like she was wearing a purple house coat or a purple or a lavender robe. And my mom's jaw, she had to pick it up off the floor at that point because that was my grandmother's favorite thing to wear around the house on the holidays. And I think that my, that made my mom a believer. And of course, you know, how cool is that for me, my own grandmother's been seen as a ghost. You know, complete topsy turvy, you know, 180° turn. Ghosts don't exist. Well, yes they do. And your grandmother has been seen as one. Unreal. So it just sort of became a lifelong hobby and lifelong curiosity of mine.

Bert (5:33)

I've told these guys I believe. I mean I lived up in old town Alexandria, which is kind of a hotbed for activity for this kind of thing. And we lived in a townhouse and had no idea where the land was really. I mean what happened or the history of the land.

Patrick Burns (5:47)

Sure.

Bert (5:47)

And I would be up in my office in the attic and from time to time I would see the kind of just silhouette of a boy that was between 8 and 11 years old, kind of a bowl cut in a black suit with like a white or a black really skinny tie. And every time I would see it, I would, I would turn to look at it. Sure. It was gone.

Patrick Burns (6:06)

Yeah.

Bert (6:06)

And it happened half a dozen times.

Patrick Burns (6:08)

Out of your peripheral vision. Right. That is where, where most, most apparitions that you are going to see are going to occur out of your peripheral vision. I tell people when they're getting into this, when they're starting to become an investigator, I say pay attention to what's going on in the corner of your eye, you know, and don't turn to look at it right away. Let it, let it sort of sit there for a little while and just sort of keep an eye on it out of the corner of your eye and see what it does. And sometimes you'll see this stuff manifest into, into what we refer to a full bodied apparition in fba.

Bert (6:38)

It jacks with you. Like you start talking yourself out of it. Like you know what you're seeing out of the corner of your eye. But then when you look at it and it's gone, you just talk yourself out of it. Then after it happens like five or six times in the same place, like I found myself trying to talk to it.

Patrick Burns (6:51)

Right.

Bert (6:51)

Dude, I know you're there. Dude, what's up?

Patrick Burns (6:53)

Yeah, right.

Bert (6:54)

Not I've been gone.

Melissa (6:55)

Don't be mean to me.

Bert (6:56)

Don't be meant me. I'm good. I'm good to you. You're good to me. You don't charge for this.

Patrick Burns (7:01)

No, no, no. When we go out to do an investigation, you know, it's always done free of charge. If we have to travel, you know, a real long distance, we might ask you, you know, hey, can you, you know, provide us with gas money? Can you give us a Florida crash on for the night so we don't have to drive back at, you know, 3 o' clock in the morning? But I believe that when you start charging money to go into somebody's house and, you know, perform a paranormal investigation, first off, your results are always going to be inconclusive. You can never go in and say, hey, this place is haunted, because you can't prove the existence of ghosts from a scientific standpoint. You know, it just doesn't work that way. So when you start charging money for something that you can't prove, what really are you charging for? Just, just your presence there, just, you know, you, you can't sign off on it and say it's, it's haunted. So I think anytime, you know, money becomes involved in it from that angle, there's a possibility of fraud. You know, maybe somebody's gonna give somebody more, you know, more activity, more results than, you know, so that they feel like they're getting their money's worth.

Bert (8:03)

I see. So that, so you could charge every time you come out to the house. You could really milk it if you're.

Patrick Burns (8:07)

A bad ghost and there are a few people out there. Exactly, exactly. There are a few people out there. And I won't mention any names, but there are a couple of people out there that have sort of alienated themselves in the paranormal community for doing that sort of thing. And we'll never do it.

Bert (8:23)

Well, they don't charge at all. You can go to the website. There is a link up to it from ours right now at all the hits q100.com to ghost hounds.com so we asked Patrick to come to all of our homes. Nobody wants a ghost in their house more than Jen Hobby.

Melissa (8:36)

I really, really, really want to would think that was so cool because I was telling Patrick, I've had a couple experiences in my past. One place that I worked when I was growing up in high school, I worked at a bed and breakfast in downtown St. Petersburg, Florida. And it's just this old, old house, probably built in the early 1900s. And they converted it into this tea room. It's called the Bay Gables Tea Room and bed and breakfast. And both the tea room and the bed and breakfast had strange things happening all the time. And everyone who worked there experienced something or another, whether it was just a weird feeling, feeling like things were actually moving out of place, things would be missing. You know, the cooks reported all kinds of things happening in the kitchen constantly. So that was kind of an interesting thing. And then there's always lore in my sorority house at Florida state. And, you know, Florida state was unfortunately the site of where Ted Bundy committed all of those murders.

Patrick Burns (9:30)

Right.

Melissa (9:31)

And so there was a lot of lore around the sorority houses all throughout Florida state. Even though one of them didn't happen in my house, I still, you know, went through rush and went through all of the houses, and there was one in particular where the murders happened at Florida State. So there's just a couple of different things, and I'm just fascinated by the possibility of it. I'm fascinated by the unknown. And so I just think that would be so cool to have. I just think it would be so cool to have something in my house, But I really don't think that there. I really don't think it's my house. That's why I'm like, come on, come on.

Patrick Burns (10:05)

But you're in the minority. Most people don't, you know, if they have activity, they want to know how to get rid of it or at the very least, learn how to live with it. It's. It's not something that people say, yeah, I want my house to be haunted.

Bert (10:16)

Can you get rid of them?

Patrick Burns (10:17)

Like, you know, that is the. The classic definition of a ghostbuster is something. There's a difference between a ghost hunter and a ghostbuster. The ghost hunter is one who just goes in and tries to document this activity. The ghostbuster, quote unquote, or cleanser is somebody who goes in and actually tries to drive this activity out. And I do not do the later. We. We simply go in and we try to document this and present people with evidence and say, you know, look, you're not losing your mind. We got this activity as well. And, you know, maybe. Maybe there's something going on here, you know, try to live with it if you can.

Bert (10:54)

But there are legitimate companies, legitimate in your mind, companies that will kind of, for lack of a better word, scare the ghosts off.

Patrick Burns (11:02)

Well, they don't normally scare them off. They usually sort of reason with them. You know, basically, we make a distinction between a ghost and a spirit. There is actually a difference. A spirit is somebody who has died and crossed over to the other side and is able to come back. Okay, if you're talking about the definition of a ghost, this is someone who has died and is trapped between our existence of the living and the next life, okay? And they are stuck Here they are either stuck here because they are confused. Maybe they died in a very sudden, traumatic way and they're sort of wandering around in a. In a day, in a daze, in the afterlife. And they're confused about their condition. Exactly.

Bert (11:45)

The other end of the aisle.

Patrick Burns (11:45)

Perfect example. Or they feel like they have unfinished business. Like Patrick Swayze in the movie Ghost. You know, he had to solve his. His murder or his death to cross over before he felt ready to cross over. Then maybe there are some people that weren't exactly honest people in their lives, did a few questionable things, and they are afraid of crossing over and being judged. So they hold themselves here out of fear. What's waiting for them on the other side?

Bert (12:18)

So in the bigger picture then, if you're telling us that what you're telling us is true, then you are confirming to us that there is a heaven and a hell.

Patrick Burns (12:26)

I think there's at least some type of afterlife. There's definitely something waiting for us. And what is on the other side of that is, of course, the big mystery to mankind.

Bert (12:36)

And once you go over, you can't come back.

Patrick Burns (12:38)

No, no, no, no. That the spirit. The spirit can come back and visit. Okay, but a ghost, if you're talking about a haunting, yeah. Usually they're. They're someone who is stuck in a. In a specific location, either by their, you know, their. Their own free will or because they're confused.

Bert (12:56)

And you've communicated with these. I mean, they have told you their story, why they're still around.

Patrick Burns (13:00)

Well, we don't normally get a direct communication with that. If. If you want wanted to establish a two way communication, you need to employ the use of a medium, a trance medium, someone who will actually go under into a hypnotic trance. And they basically allow their body to become temporarily possessed for a short time. And you can establish a two way communication.

Melissa (13:25)

Like Whoopi Goldberg.

Bert (13:26)

Like Whoopi Goldberg.

Patrick Burns (13:28)

Very, very rare. It's very difficult to find a medium that will actually allow themselves to go under. I mean, and who can blame them? That's. That's kind of a scary thought to allow yourself to become temporarily possessed by another being for a sport, a short period of time. So I'm still looking.

Bert (13:45)

Patrick Burns on with us from Ghost Hounds. He will go to your house, he will look for this kind of activity, and he will tell you if you have somebody or something living in the house there with you. He has gone to our homes. He has found that one of our homes has some activity going on, and he'll tell us which One of our homes next here.

Melissa (14:00)

And Katie Jo just called me and was freaking out. Please. No, no.

Bert (14:05)

Hey, Michelle. Good morning. You're on Q100.

Melissa (14:07)

Good morning.

Commercial Narrator (14:08)

Question is for Patrick. I've heard him say that he can.

Patrick Burns (14:12)

See out of the peripheral vis the ghost or admiration.

Melissa (14:19)

Are you also able to feel their presence?

Patrick Burns (14:24)

Yes, actually. Usually the way we detect a spirit or a ghost in a location is not through direct observation. Usually we infer their presence by the way they affect the environment. Everybody's heard of the cold spot when a ghost is present when the temperature drops. The theory there is that a ghost consume is energy. They need energy to continue to exist, and they basically pull the heat out of their environment, the kinetic energy, and they're able to feed off of that, and in doing so, the temperature will drop in a highly localized area that's only a few feet in diameter. There are other things that can happen. The Earth's magnetic fields, which, of course, a compass will align to for magnetic north. If you have a compass in the presence of what we believe to be a ghost, sometimes that compass will sit there and spin. It will refuse to align to magnetic north. So we usually. We infer their presence with our equipment. It's. It's very rare that you actually observe them directly.

Bert (15:28)

These ghosts that you talk about, you say they're just kind of, like, stuck in this limbo phase.

Patrick Burns (15:32)

Mm.

Bert (15:33)

That when you say stuck to me, that means that they don't want to be here. Or any ghosts are just like, you know what? I'm pretty cool here.

Patrick Burns (15:37)

I think I'm gonna hang out here forever. You know, I've often wondered that. And my mentor in this field is a gentleman by the name of Han Holzer, and he's the one that actually coined the term ghost hunter back in the 1960s. And he says, no, it's unnatural. It's an unnatural condition for someone to become a ghost. It's a rare condition. And he said, once you realize, once you reveal to them, you know, you're dead, and there's something waiting for you beyond this. He said, no one really wants to stay around, really, because, like, if it.

Bert (16:10)

Happened to me early and I didn't get to watch, like, Hayden grow up or something, I'd want to stick around and see, like, what he turned into. You would be there on his wedding.

Patrick Burns (16:16)

Day and all that. I don't necessarily agree with everything that Dr. Holzer says, and I think there might be exceptions. You know, there are no such things as paranormal experts. I mean, people refer to Me, Patrick Burns, our paranormal expert. I'm flattered, but there's no such thing. You can't be an expert in a field that is almost entirely theoretical in nature. Again, like I said, there's so little hard scientific evidence of what we're studying, because science demands repeatability, repeatable results under controlled observations. And this is called paranormal activity for a reason, because it falls outside the norm, because it doesn't repeat on command. So it's difficult to observe and substantiate, but doesn't necessarily mean it's not real.

Melissa (17:00)

Now, I have a question that may be outside of the realm of what you do, but of course, it's Halloween, so you start thinking about all these different things about people becoming possessed and exorcisms and that sort of thing, Right? Are you familiar with any of that? How does somebody become possessed and in need of an exorcism?

Patrick Burns (17:17)

You know, we really. The ghost towns organization doesn't really deal in cases like that. If we get a case where someone, you know, they believe that they may have a case of possession, I usually refer that onto somebody who specializes in that field. That's admittedly a little bit over my head and a little bit further into it than I want to get.

Melissa (17:39)

But you feel like that definitely can and does happen.

Patrick Burns (17:43)

You know, I'm open to all possibilities. I really am. And certainly, you know that the Catholic Church, they don't administer exorcisms very often, but they do. There are documented cases where the. And, you know, the Catholic Church is very objective, very, very skeptical. You know, they go in. They have to see actual proof before they will. They will condone an exorcism. And they don't do it very often. But when they do go in, you know, when they actually send somebody in and say, yeah, something's going on here, you know, it's. It's. It's pretty interesting. There might be something to it.

Bert (18:21)

Got a whole bunch of people that have questions for you. So we'll run through some commercials, and when we come back, we'll spend a couple more minutes with you, take a couple of calls, and then we'll find out which Birch show member's home has some paranormal activity going on. And we've got audio from the home. Patrick found something. We'll play it for you next year on Q100, the vert show.

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Melissa (19:17)

Aww, for me, Anna?

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Patrick Burns (19:44)

Oh hey.

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Melissa (19:45)

Whoa.

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So is Saldana.

Saldana (19:47)

Hey, can you wrap these please?

Patrick Burns (19:48)

Wow.

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I'm the worst. I only got my mom a robe.

Saldana (20:00)

Well, it's better than socks.

T-Mobile Salesperson (20:02)

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Saldana (20:04)

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T-Mobile Salesperson (20:10)

Incredible.

Saldana (20:10)

In fact, wrap up my old phone too for my aunt Rosa. Forget that. Aunt Liz will be jealous.

T-Mobile Salesperson (20:15)

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Saldana (20:16)

Oh, I got it. I'll give it to my abuela. I'll take reindeer paper with. Hey, where are you going?

Melissa (20:20)

To T Mobile.

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