He recently took a few minutes to answer a few of our questions about the book via e-mail. 

Wicked Bridgeport is available from Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble, as well as in bookstores across the state.

What inspired you to write Wicked Bridgeport?

Thanks for the opportunity to discuss my book, Wicked Bridgeport, and Connecticut’s paranormal history. It’s a pleasure being interviewed by Damned Connecticut. You have a fascinating and incredibly well-researched website.

Every New England town, every village green, every harbor, owns a litany of legends and folklore. Bridgeport is no exception. I grew up right on the shores of Long Island Sound, in both Bridgeport and the Lordship peninsula of Stratford (the place had actually once been an island separated by a creek on one side and a massive saltwater marsh on the other). Sure our towns are documented in history books; Colonial days and the Industrial Revolution, especially about the armament factories and how Bridgeport workers helped win both World Wars. But when I was a young teen I’d walk down to the beach, stare out at the waves and wonder. Whatever happened to our local folklore? Once there were pirates and paddle-wheelers and oystermen. What happened to the stories, which I was positively sure, were whispered at night near the chimney or around old-time bonfires?

My research started with a love of pirate lore; which, in turn, introduced me to a love of reading. Edward Rowe Snow wrote a story entitled, “The King of Calf Island.” I stumbled upon it when I was in 5^th grade… it was all about his search for a lost treasure. Secret codes and old ruins on an island; how could an 11-year-old not be hooked? Later, visiting the Stratford [CT] Library I found an entire shelf of Snow’s books. (Who would have thought that a library could be so “boss”?) Years afterward I discovered that Stephen King haunted the same library when he was a kid, too. Strange karma.

Let me backtrack a little; maybe there’s a reason for connecting with the unknown. I was born in the Mohawk Valley, in the old mill town of Amsterdam, New York. The Iroquois, Black Robes, Revolutionary War, Erie Canal… a lot of history right on the surface of things. Years later I would mull over the mystical spirits at work in the Valley. Shakers started here. Joseph Smith founder of the Mormons, too. I associated the Mohawk River region with the same mind-expanding beliefs and fringe religious groups that folks nowadays associate with the West Coast during the 1960s. It all started in the Mohawk Valley and moved west to California. It was only later, much later, I found out that this region of New York State is referred to as the Burned Over District. The name came about because of the burning spiritualism experienced by everyone being converted by evangelists.

Perhaps being born into this realm’s inherent mysticism, or maybe because once I did move to Bridgeport at 3 years old I took to traveling with my grandparents back and forth from the Connecticut shore to the Mohawk Valley… gazing out through the car’s back window thinking about all those little villages and hills and forests off to side of the road. One couldn’t help but imagine what took place in those woods and fields and abandoned farm houses and factories… or what phantasmagoria might be taking place just a few paces from the car. My grandfather was great at entertaining me with ancient fables and mythical creatures on all those drives through the New England and Berkshire countryside. We here in New England have our own decidedly rich folklore. I decided to grasp, or at least attempt my best to preserve, the stories around my Connecticut home that might otherwise be forgotten.

Why did you choose to focus on the era [late 17^th through the late 19th century,] that you did?

While outlining Wicked Bridgeport I had a lot of material to choose from. I consciously focused attention on the most bizarre, and frightening, stories while keeping in mind the preservation of our maritime heritage. Bridgeport has had a huge impact on the nation’s history as a whole. The stories I selected show, just a little, Bridgeport’s far-reaching influence. The characters in this book were household words over a century ago.

What was the most surprising story you discovered during your research?

It’s a tie. First is Captain George M. Colvocoresses’s strange demise. The man is a naval hero. He was found shot dead over on Clinton Street. The little lane doesn’t even exist anymore; it’s now buried under I-95. Some say his death was a suicide, others state that the poor fellow was murdered. Witnesses, medical reports and legal shenanigans create a fascinating whodunit. The Captain’s story is definitely a Victorian Sherlock Holmes tale; with a touch of the supernatural.

Then there is Dr. George Porter. After the Civil War he relocated to Bridgeport. His story is so incredible it wouldn’t even be believed if it was labeled fiction. But it’s one hundred percent fact! Porter, a battlefield surgeon, had a direct connection to a White House cover-up in 1865. What’s more, later in life he was involved with attempts to reanimate the dead. It’s New England gothic at it’s best; very dark and very real. I love symbolism and hidden meaning and such things in what I read and what I write. With “The Strange Notebook of Dr. George Porter, Reanimator” I wanted to celebrate H. P. Lovecraft and how he painted themes of New England horror, so I had fun with the title of one of his novellas, but with a twist, “Herbert West—Reanimantor.”

Yes, one of the most morbid and bizarre stories is that of Dr. George Porter, who experimented in human re-animation—can you talk about that chapter a bit?

It’s strange just how this chapter came about. There was a brief article in an 1888 Bridgeport newspaper mentioning how police officers at the local jail were afraid of patrolling the prison yard at night. Seems they sensed something lurking in the dark. Scary stuff.  Those few paragraphs are what led me to research (or rather, re-remember Dr. Porter’s story… I can’t claim to have discovered what was already once so well-known) Doctor Porter’s galvanistic experiments. Additionally, the man was a scholar, war hero, explorer, gifted orator and patriot entrusted by Secretary of War Edwin Stanton with a secret mission, dealing with the disposal of John Wilkes Booth’s corpse. What a story! I’d love to expand Porter’s tale into a novel.

Talking about the craft of writing, how much time did you spend researching Wicked Bridgeport?

I am always happy when people who’ve read the book come back and tell me how impressed they are with the variety of sources I was able to uncover (oh, and they like the stories too!!). A lot of books nowadays, especially ones dealing with the paranormal, lack original research. They merely beat an old broken drum reusing material that was already hackneyed 20 years ago.

It’s a love of researching, thinking like a detective, that allowed me to apply a lot of information that was never, or hardly ever, mined. Back in the early 1970s… wait, probably even earlier. I remember the phone company put out a phonebook one year when they listed Connecticut towns and included a few sentences highlighting a strange fact about the place. I was a kid and wanted to learn more about these bizarre locales. I clipped the little squares (I hope after my parents were done with the phonebook) and read and re-read the paragraphs. I started collecting strange stories from newspapers and pouring over brittle histories. It was just a little bounce from that point to start interviewing older folks from around town, or visiting/calling Historical Societies.

When I was about 15-years old I called the police department to discuss skeletal remains found on Ferry Boulevard in Stratford. I could hear the little beep emitting from the recording device they were using. After 30-plus years of this kind of leg-work I’ve collected and collated a lot of bizarre information. I store it in an old-antique wooden chest, a pirate chest of stories. I contacted The History Press with my idea for the book. I was lucky. The editors loved the concept. It was merely a matter of 10 months to get the finished manuscript on paper.

Why do you think there were so many unusual murders in the Park City?

Every murder, I suppose, is naturally unnatural. Why so many slayings in Bridgeport? Rail lines, the old Post Road, a vast harbor full of ships… folks coming and going. Back in the day there were lots of transient factory workers. Bridgeport is definitely one of the largest cities in New England. The Park City owns a lot of love stories as well as business opportunities (legal and otherwise), so emotions run high. Sadly, shake these ingredients together and the result will sometimes beat a path to serious crime, luckily, only once every now and then.

Would you consider Bridgeport a haunted hotspot?

The Bridgeport area is one of New England’s greatest haunted hotspots. The place is a portal to another dimension. Hey, the city’s down county neighbors merit mention in Rod Serling’s original Twilight Zone. But another way to see Bridgeport is to step back and consider our town’s long-standing familiarity with Spiritualism. We are a lightning rod for New England Romanticism.

Was the first rule of The Suicide Club “You don’t talk about The Suicide Club”? Have you heard of anything else like it in the years since the story in your book?

Sadly, throughout the Nineteenth century, Suicide Clubs were whispered about more than one might think. Life was beyond difficult. Crushing physical labor in the fields and factories, the lack of good medical care, financial burdens, poverty, over-crowding… debilitating stress was the norm. Ironically, suicide was a fact of life. The newspapers were filled with sensational suicides. Maybe Yellow Journalism subconsciously empowered readers to fight the good fight, struggle and survive. Bridgeport’s secret Suicide Club was divulged so the story became better known than the other morbid organizations. It’s one of the few instances when such a thorough study of a “13 Club” has been made public.

The exploits of P.T. Barnum while he was alive are well known, but lesser known is what happened to him after he died—why do you think there were attempts to steal his body?

People all over America, the world, know P. T. Barnum. Everyone hears about his connection to the circus. The Grateful Dead sing about him. There is much more to the Barnum story. A political figure, a fervent Abolitionist, a temperance man, a newspaper editor, Barnum did it all. Fact is, his work in New York preserving the marvelous in his expansive “museums” has a greater history than the circus. With all his fame, and business and individual interactions, he was bound to have detractors. When Barnum died in 1891 his own voice was silenced and his enemies had the upper hand, and their hands picked-up a graveyard shovel. Hardly anyone remembers the attempt to steal Barnum’s corpse. Wicked Bridgeport provides an in-depth examination of the events surrounding the cemetery desecration.

What’s your favorite story from the book?

As I became engrossed in writing each story, that particular one became my favorite. Maybe it’s that way with most writers. To fulfill that one narrative, you have to really delve into the research, your notes, thoughts, and place all your creativity into the specific material you’re pounding away on. Then after an outline and two re-writes I usually found the story to my satisfaction. It’s a long process. I had to wrench myself from one piece in order to begin composing the next. It was like starting over from scratch. Eventually the next chapter began coming together. Focusing total attention on the page in front of you… I had to force myself to step forward from that chapter, in order to begin the next, and on and on.

So, with all that said, each of the stories in Wicked Bridgeport became “favorites.” Still, in thinking over your question, I’d have to say I devoted a lot of research to lending a possible solution to the unsolved James Beardsley murder. Beardsley is one of Bridgeport’s many heroes and another reason why we’re called the Park City. James donated a sizeable amount of his landholdings to ensure Connecticut residents would have a beautiful natural setting to enjoy. He was brutally killed during a robbery in December 1892. During my research in Bridgeport, Hartford and Great Barrington, Massachusetts, I believe I uncovered those parties responsible for Beardsley’s murder. Certainly this is theoretical. But the facts now printed in Wicked Bridgeport, I feel, may finally help solve a century-old murder.

Is there a story you would’ve liked to include in the book that you couldn’t?

Dutch Schultz, the gangster. Good Lord I drove my wife Janice and brother Matthew crazy with my stories about the Dutchman! Matt even went so far as to say “I’ve never seen you so animated about a subject, and you get totally hyper about everything about history.”

During Prohibition Schultz had been one of the most powerful crime barons in America. He’d also collected millions of illegal dollars overseeing the numbers racket out of Harlem. During the waning years of his empire, in the mid-1930s, he set up headquarters in Bridgeport, CT. Why not? He had friends here; the city was near New York. There was nightlife. It was a perfect place to call the shots.

Well, Dutch started calling for the assassination of New York prosecutor Thomas Dewey (as in that mocking “Dewey Defeats Truman” photo). The rest of the country’s crime bosses couldn’t tolerate that kind of notoriety. So they ordered Schultz to be taken care of; in a permanent way. Dutch left Bridgeport, I don’t know why he’d ever leave his safe haven, and next thing you know, he’s collecting lead in a New Jersey chophouse. Murder Incorporated caught-up with him and that was the end of Dutch.

My questions concern the very real cache Schultz was said to have on-hand during his summer in Bridgeport. Every treasure hunter in America is aware of the ongoing search in New York’s Catskills. Supposedly that’s where the Dutchman hid his multimillion dollar bankroll. Maybe someone found something? Maybe not. But I keep wondering why a wanted criminal would take a chance and cross state lines to bury trunk-loads of loot when securing them right here in the Bridgeport area would be a smarter move. I’d like to throw some light on the Dutchman’s treasure in my next book about Bridgeport.  

Which leads to the next question… Do you have any plans to write another book? On what subject?

Wicked Bridgeport has attracted a really strong following. I enjoy meeting individuals and audiences and discussing history as well as ghost stories. Lots of people ask about the art of writing. It’s all good. From the get-go people were interested in a city where true crime meets the paranormal. There are so many creepy and fascinating stories about Bridgeport that a second volume, a “Wicked Bridgeport: The Sequel” is already in the works. Ghosts and gangsters and murders, oh my.

Thanks again to Mike for taking the time to answer our questions!

Again, Wicked Bridgeport is available from Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble, as well as in bookstores across the state.

Thanks again to Len Fasano, Fletch and the entire “Forum” crew for having us on the show to chat about Connecticut Curiosities as well as haunted places around the state. We had a great time!

Some of the subjects discussed:

• Gillette Castle
• The Glass House
• Holy Land USA (not designed by Granderson)
• The Frog Bridge
• Dunnellen Hall
• Skull and Bones
• The State Capitol
• Mansfield Training School

Thanks again to Len, Fletch and everyone for inviting us down, taking the time to talk with us!

In the comments for that article, the paranormal investigation group P.R.O.O.F. were at the center of controversy regarding their investigation of the house in question, as well as for the evidence that was gathered and what was presented on the show. The comments got a little chaotic and heated, so P.R.O.O.F. politely asked us if they could try to sort it out here and try to answer all the questions coming at them in one place, and in more detail than a comments section would allow.

For the record, Damned Connecticut is in no way affiliated with P.R.O.O.F., SyFy, Raw TV, the Moore family or anyone involved with this case. We’ve never met any of those parties, and have only come into contact with P.R.O.O.F. via e-mail. We also have never been out on a formal paranormal investigation at MTS (although we have visited the part of the former campus that now belongs to UConn). We just felt that since our readers were so interested in this subject, we should pursue this opportunity to learn more about what happened, both at MTS and with the production of the show.

In short, we have tried to give P.R.O.O.F. the best chance to explain their experiences since there were so many questions regarding the situation. P.R.O.O.F.’s founder Joseph Gallant took the time to answer our questions, and we have presented it all here.

After reading this, if you have more questions, please feel free to contact P.R.O.O.F. at their website. If you want to comment here—and of course, we always welcome that—we ask that you be respectful and refrain from personal attacks.

So how did PROOF get involved with the Mansfield Training School (MTS) and Mansfield Mansion?

In the early wintery months of 1994 the Moore family purchased what they initially thought would be a great starting point for their growing family. The historic seven bedroom colonial mansion which sat on ten acres of wooded land sold for an astonishing hundred thousand dollars. The Moore family pondered the question; why so cheap, could something have taken place in the home or on the property that perhaps could have decreased the selling price value? The county real estate agent informed the Moore family that there was very little information about the property’s history in their documents. Mrs. Moore and family decided to forget the past and move forward with the future, buying the historic home in late 1994.

In January of 2002, the Moore family began renovating the home’s interior, as it was out of date and ridged inside. Following two months into renovations, the Moore family began experiencing strange occurrences throughout their home. The homeowner and her two children expressed being woken up at all hours of the night due to night terrors, such violent and vivid dreams that prevented the family from sleeping for two or three days at a time. The more work that was done to the home’s interior, the more frequent and disturbing the night terrors became. The Moore family explains an incident wherein, they were awoken at 2:22am and witnessed what appeared to be a tall dark man standing at the foot of their bed than vanishing.

Out of pure fear the Moore family sought out answers to what, if anything is haunting their home. Mrs. Moore’s curiosity sent her digging through local newspapers to see if there was anything that would provide her with answers. After weeks of researching and coming up with nothing, Mrs. Moore came across an article, an article written five years before her purchase that explained everything. The article read that 1308 was the home of the superintendent of the Mansfield Training School, a hospital for the feeble minded and insane. Mrs. Moore read article after article that talked about the abuse of patients at the facility and from within her now-home. Mrs. Moore and family stopped the renovating and let things calm down for a while until a resolution could be devised.

Nearly four years had passed with very little incident. This was until December of 2008, when John Hevic, an electrician was phoned to 1308 Stafford Road, in order to fix the Moore family’s broken furnace. The electrician was in the basement for not more than 10 minutes before running out and taking off. Leaving all of his equipment behind, Mr. Hevic complains that he was pushed to the floor by something that couldn’t be seen or heard. Evidently, whatever was here is back, said Mrs. Moore. The house began to feel dreadful again and the activity became increasingly productive. Mrs. Moore states an incident where she was asleep and awoken by the feeling of someone holding her hand, followed by a deep growl in her right ear.

“This of course was the end of what I was willing to withstand. There is something evil here and there’s very little I can do to protect my family. Enough is enough,” said Mrs. Moore. The Moore Family began their search for someone out there that could provide them with the protection and guidance they so desperately needed.

P.R.O.O.F was initially contacted by Amy Moore in early February of 2009. In our initial visit, P.R.O.O.F spent 48 hours on site, investigating the property. The interior and exterior of the home was covered from top to bottom. In addition to our full scaled investigations, we also spent a considerable amount of time and energy researching the background and history behind the Mansfield training school and hospital.

How did P.R.O.O.F get involved with Raw TV and how involved were you?

Following an exclusive radio interview with Paranormal-Underground concerning events recorded at the Mansfield residence, I [Joseph Gallant] received a telephone call from Mark Lewis, a producer with Raw TV, an independent film company based out of the U.K. Mr. Lewis informed me that Raw was in the preliminary stages of developing a reality TV series that would be focusing on the paranormal and the unexplained. Mr. Lewis was interested in learning more about the “Mansfield Haunting” and excited of the possibility of telling the Moore families story. I do want to mention however, that the phrase “Mansfield Mansion” was coined by the television network. P.R.O.O.F, the Moore family and the community refer to this house as the Greenlawn Mansion.

Following repeated phone conversations and back and forth emails, P.R.O.O.F founder myself [Joseph Gallant] and Amy Moore were cordially invited to Massachusetts wherein, we would be introduced to the filming crew and prepped for interviews. The filming was set to last no longer than two hours and would entail nothing but the discussion of accounts at the Greenlawn Home. During the interview process I [Joseph Gallant] was informed by the Line-Producer that I should throw a few tears out there for the dramatization effect as well as a few minor white lies, thus, providing viewers with a “good show” I declined the producers “acting” recommendations and preceded to tell my side of the story as it was, versus what the production company requested. With this being said, we feel that this could have played a significant role in why our piece was cut out of the episode.

Did you personally experience anything that you felt was odd?

Each and every P.R.O.O.F member who partook in the case had a personal experience. The house is extremely active. It would take forever to go through each individual experience but we’ll highlight some of the most significant occurrences.

On night one, while in the process of setting up our survallience feeds and pre-placing investigators in their posts, Amanda DeVivo radioed base and reported having seen an apparition or shadow person walking from the attic storage room into the unfinished bathroom. She explained that although this account took her by surprise she did not feel as though that the entity was that of a malevolent or diabolical nature. She stated that the entity simply was passing by and then vanished as if he were never there.

Ruben Velazquez our tech coordinator, recorded the image of the same apparition, described previously by Amanda, pacing from one room to another and in doing so, making his presence known by slamming the door behind him before vanishing. Velazquez and our lead investigator Patricia Fedorshak, were in the bird room, when they heard a women humming. Ruben and Pat stated in their reports that the humming was in harmony and sounded as if it traveled through the walls and within, a matter of minutes just stopped.

All of these experiences did not occur during our initial 48 hour investigation. We have been actively investigating the house since mid 2009 so we have been to the site on several different occasions with many different incidences.

Have you personally witnessed any demonic hauntings? How do you determine if a haunting is demonic or not?

Yes, P.R.O.O.F has conducted numerous in-home demonic hauntings with the Mansfield mansion falling forth on our list. I do, however, want to point out that during our preliminary investigations of the Greenlawn home, P.R.O.O.F did not consider the residence to fall within, the “diabolical-Category.” Upon conducting our investigations of the site, there were absolutely no configurative or confirming indications that what was haunting the Moore family was in fact demonic. The phrase Demonic (ancient Greek) refers to a non-human entity with whom carries a rash of symptomatic and malevolent characteristics, this term is also referred to as a diabolical spirit with prime intention of attaching to tragedy and causing grave havoc for its host or person(s) of interest. Generally when speaking in terms of a classic case of demonic haunting such characteristics as;

• increasingly strong odors often resembling sulfur or decaying caucus
• an overwhelming sense or feeling of dread and fear are present
• high EMF readings are present throughout the house with no mechanical explanation
• occupants of the residence often come down with sudden mysterious illnesses that seem to defy diagnosis or medical treatment
• occupants generally complain of being physically attacked and/or sexually stimulated/penetrated by unseen and violent forces
• nocturnal attacks and night terrors

These just mentioning a few are the classic symptomatic signs of their being a demonic presence in the dwelling, nevertheless as stated previously, in our initial investigative assumption of the haunting, none of the above had been experienced . This was of course until and following the banishing ritual and demonic attack.

How much liberty did “Paranormal Witness” take with the case as you investigated it?

“Paranormal Witness” was given testimonies of paranormal phenomena inside the Greenlawn home by the Moore family, their friends and P.R.O.O.F Paranormal. They took what was given to them and they simply ran with it. During filming, as stated above, I [Joseph Gallant] was asked to tell minor white lies and to act as sad and scared as possible. We can’t say for sure, if those requests were asked of the Moore family as well but our assumption is that they were.

Pretty much, what I’m trying to say is that “Paranormal Witness” is simply out for ratings and viewer reaction. We feel they took as much liberty as they could in making the show as dramatic and scary as possible. P.R.O.O.F does not believe all the re-enactment scenes to have been portrayed correctly.

Another thing P.R.O.O.F read was a “follow-up interview” with Casey Moore. (It’s a written interview on SyFy’s website.) It quotes her as saying “Supposedly one of the guys had a pentagram burned into his leg when he was in the basement.” That simply never happened. P.R.O.O.F believes Mrs. Moore to have never said that. Never once, in any of our meetings with the family, did the discussion of a pentagram ever come up as it’s something P.R.O.O.F doesn’t use. But, a body burn of a pentagram sounds pretty dramatic and entertaining, huh?

What kind of evidence did you have?

Upon signing the contract with Raw Television, we were advised that any and all evidence obtained at the Greenlawn home and during our investigation was under strict release. What this means is that our rights to material gathered at the Greenlawn home (i.e. photos, video, audio, written) was under the rights of the production company and we would have no access to its release. Nevertheless, the contract is no longer in effect, so with this being said P.R.O.O.F will be releasing everything in the next couple of weeks.

Why do you think SyFy didn’t share the evidence that you gathered?

I am truthfully uncertain as to why exactly the SyFy network and Raw Television Productions excluded P.R.O.O.F’s involvement in the “Haunting of Mansfield Mansion”. Although I do have my assumptions, there isn’t enough space or time for me to validate suspicion or speculate on the networks poorly chosen production decisions. From what I have been told however, SyFy made the cut due to the vulgar nature of the E.V.P’s. As for the photos and video evidence, SyFy reported that their just simply was not enough time in the episode to add anything in addition to what testimony they had already collected. If the production company would have provided viewers with evidence, backing up the Moore’s testimony, I feel as though her story would have generated a better response and even more so, with validity to what claims she had presented.

There also seems to be a question of actual history versus what was portrayed on the show—MTS was definitely a facility used to treat the mentally challenged, but was there an actual murder in the superintendent’s house?

The Mansfield Training School and hospital was a secure residential institution for individuals with dual diagnoses “Mental Retardation and developmental disabilities”. The grounds were comprised of several different buildings or units that were “guided” in providing a stable environment with cognitive behavioral treatment for both children and adults of all ages.

In a provisions report provided by the state of CT and the Department of Mental Retardation (DMR) the facility was under constant investigation for the excessive use and misuse of physical and chemical restraint and seclusion. This report also included provisions behind the hundreds of abuse and neglect allegations made against facility staff. There is not however, any such report or evidence thereof, that would suggest or implicate that a murder or “murder-cover-up” was committed at MTS or from within, the previous Superintendent’s residence.

Now, when speaking in terms of what “paranormal Evidence was gathered throughout our initial investigations, there was mention via a franks-box session of a girl that represented herself as a murdered child from MTS. The girl whom identified herself as “Jessica” repeatedly broke through the static and omitted that she had been murdered while a patient at the former facility. There were several different entities that brought the subject of murder to discussion; nevertheless, paranormal evidence and criminal evidence are two entirely different spectrums.

Unfortunately at this time, there are very few things that I can say about the public’s assumption of murder at MTS, I can only comment on what information I do have which does not include the discussion of murder. Making false or unsubstantiated accusations of something as serious as accusing the State of Connecticut of murder or covering-up violent crimes is a serious liability for the person(s) delivering such information. In this case SyFy is the responsible party and P.R.O.O.F is working on recovering this issue and clearing MTS’s name.

Are you still in contact with the Moore family? Have you talked with them since the show aired, and if so, what was their take on it? Are they still having unusual experiences?

P.R.O.O.F remains in frequent contact with the Moore family and besides our quarterly re-evaluation of the Greenlawn home; we have maintained a respectable and personal friendship. Amy Moore has stated that she is disappointed in the outcome of the airing “The Haunting of Mansfield Mansion.” She complains that SyFy and the production company took her story out of context and turned it into a 3rd-rate horror flick verses a story of a family that simply wanted to be understood.

What do you say to those who claim that no one who lived in the house before the Moore family reported any sort of paranormal experiences?

I would say that these statements are incorrect.

Former resident Brett McNamara lived in the house from 1974 to 1985, when his father, Roger McNamara, was superintendent of Mansfield Training School . In a 2010 press meeting, Brett McNamara released this statement to a reporter for the Reminder News; “I remember growing up here. I felt a presence. I would close a door and find it open again, hear strange creaks and knocks. I had odd feelings, particularly when I was home alone. This was the original institution. Patients lived here, some died here. Maybe their spirits were trapped,” he said. Although Brett McNamara has recently denied having any sort of unexplained or paranormal experience in the Greenlawn home, the facts speak for themselves.

Please follow this link for the full article and for verification of its authenticity.

Again, Damned Connecticut wants to thank Joseph Gallant and P.R.O.O.F. for taking the time to answer these questions and hopefully clear up some of the issues resolving this situation.

To help promote the book, Carol graciously took the time to answer some questions from us via e-mail about her book and demons in general.

What was the inspiration to originally write this book?
My daughter and I had completed our M.A. degrees, mine in Religious Studies, hers in Cultural Anthropology, and to celebrate we planned a camping trip. Our plan ended with a terrible heat wave and all forests closed and so we decided to go to the coldest places in NYC. Our first stop was the Morgan Library. Freezing. And they had an exhibit of the 7 Deadly Sins which inspired a huge conversation about global concepts of “evil” and curiosity about how various cultures imagined demons and the heat wave subsided as our exploration began.

What’s new in this edition?
We’ve added vampires and a zombie and an afterword and tweaked/edited a few wings here and there.

Why is there such a fascination with demons (and angels)?
Well it takes our mind off the headlines! At least we know these are only stories and when we close the book or leave the movie theatre, it’s really over and we can walk away.

Many demons seem to be manifestations of our own fears and evils—what is the nature of that relationship?
Yes, we think that common human traits such as greed, envy, etc. are universal and then by looking at them as creatures with powers in tales, we get a good idea of the damage they can do.

Why are there so many different kinds of subversive spirits?
Humankind has a wonderful imagination. And the spirits were here long before us, according to lore, and guarded sacred portals of nature before humans entered the territory. That irritated the demonic guardians

What should people know about dealing with demons?
Our book has a disarming and dispelling section for EACH demon so that people will know what to bring along should they travel in various parts of the world and encounter various demons. Also laughter and compassion melts all of them.

So here in Connecticut, for what kinds of demons should we be on the lookout?
Hmmmm. Well we do have Domiciles, a great section in the book, and we also have water and forest quite nearby. There may be quite a variety of spirits about!

In the guide, demons are broken down by category (water, mountain, forest, desert, domicile, psyche)—is there much crossover? As entities that live on the edge of reality, how hard are they to define?
Their habitats have a great deal to do with their behavior. All quite different! The fairies for example, all live in a parallel universe and won’t bother you unless you mistakenly eat their food, or join their dance, and the house demons can be helpful or not depending on how one treats them. Their habits are closely related to their habitats…

How do you define a demon?
They are shape-shifters, bestial by habit, powerful and enchanting (at first) and can transform themselves into neighbors, shimmering lights, animals, attractive strangers, who knows?

Do you have a “favorite” demon?
I do like the Kappa from Japan and Madame White from China, also Lilith, and the Russian Leshii and I think the fairies rock.

In the Information Age, what roles do demons play? Is there still room for them?
There should be a LOT of room for the global creatures now that we can share ideas and stories and are so interconnected that it is very important for us to recognize the universal themes of good and evil and how much we have in common. It is also a good time to enjoy our imagination.

With so many demons included from various cultures and geographic areas, what was the research process for this book like?
Fascinating! Many libraries and wonderful folktales sent by friends from around the world.

Did you have any unusual experiences while researching and writing this book?
Not that I remember.

Have you personally ever encountered any demons?
Not that I know of.

Thanks again to Carol for taking the time to answer our questions. Now let’s hope we don’t run into any computer demons from posting this!

Again, A Field Guide to Demons, Vampires, Fallen Angels and Other Subversive Spirits is available from Amazon.com and other online retailers. A fun addition to any damned book shelf.

When did you first get interested in The Old Leatherman?

I remember when I was a kid, reading about him in a magazine at home. Then in 2002 we were driving through Hamden and saw the street named “Leatherman Trail” and it jogged my memory, so I got on the computer and started reading everything I could find. A couple of years later, we moved, and now I go by that street all the time.

I read you are a teacher; do you do anything with the OLM in your curriculum?

Yes, I teach world history, and I use the story of the Old Leatherman as an example of the enduring power of oral traditions. He regularly travelled through the town I teach in, and likely walked right by the present location of our school, so his story has a real world connection to my students. Other teachers have learned of my interest in him, and they have in turn incorporated elements of his story into Language Arts, Math and Science. For example, the Math teacher on my team had his students use the data from his route to determine that in the years he traveled his 365 mile circuit passing through our town, that he could have walked almost 25,000 miles, roughly the circumference of the earth at the equator!

We have read many different opinions on why the OLM made his trek. And why he didn’t interact with others on a personal level, do you have any theories yourself?

I have never really settled on any one theory, I prefer to leave it to my imagination, and sometimes my mood. I will admit that one of my favorites is the theory proposed after it was reported that he wrote the numbers 1 5 3 4 2 on a piece of paper after being asked his age. (Borrowing from Dan’s Book here, pg 41) From the Peekskill Blade Monday February 23, 1885 “…others, whose minds are capable of conceiving vast ideas, claim that the Leatherman must be 15,342 years of age.” I love that one.

Being Catholic, his story isn’t really all that unusual throughout history….well the leather part is pretty unique. I would compare it to some of the orders of Monks whose routine is the same day in and day out, as well St Francis of Assisi. They are all people who feel called out of this world to live a life devoid of earthly possessions. Others say he was paying a penance with his ritual. Do you think his motivation was spiritual or something else?

I do believe there was an intensely spiritual element to his journey through life. Maybe it was conditioned in him from an early age, and was all he ever knew. Maybe he was “called out” as you say. An individual’s spirituality is deeply personal. Some choose to stand at the pulpit and expound theirs to the world, while others choose to turn theirs inward, their devotion only evident through their actions. From what I have read, I would definitely place the Leatherman in the latter group.

I think by now we all know there is controversy over the plan to exhume his body. From the name of your website [leavetheleathermanalone.com], we know which side of the fence you sit on. But why not dig him up? If he was a Catholic and a believer in the resurrection, would he care while alive if this was done after death? After all Catholics have been digging up people and collecting artifact for centuries.

The idea of digging up anyone’s remains just seems excessive, like a last resort under extreme circumstances. From what I know, I am only willing to speculate that he was Christian. So this point could go in many directions. For instance, there are Christians who subscribe to the belief in a resuscitated corpse of Christ, those who subscribe to the resurrection of the Holy Spirit, and others in-between. It is their spirituality, and it is personal. Herein lays the issue with the Leatherman. Unless he left a detailed manifesto written in the first person expressing his religious beliefs, then I am saying we should err on the side of caution, and be prudent in the handling of his remains in light of the fact that to my knowledge, no such evidence exists. With the course of action I propose, I assume nothing of his religious beliefs. Instead, I have based my opinion not on an assumption, but on accepted fact – the man wished to be left alone. For a group of historians, genealogists, and scientists 120 years later, working in the secular realm and having never met the man, to make the assumption that either he wouldn’t mind being disinterred and give anatomical gifts, or would have preferred to have had a proper Christian burial is, excuse the pun, a “leap of faith”. And also to my knowledge, the Vatican is not involved in this case…yet.

We recently did an Interview with Dan Deluca, afterward you seemed to take some issues up with him in the forum. Care to expand on that?

Dan and I agree on more than we disagree on, and have acknowledged that publicly. The lengths that he is comfortable going to in the name of research are different from mine i.e. the taking of, and resulting destruction of, anatomical gifts from the Leatherman (bone tissue and a molar tooth), the removal of his skull from his remains for 3d imaging and facial re-construction in a laboratory, etc, Those are actions that I take issue with.

Obviously digging him up is physically invasive, but the books lectures, photos etc are all bringing someone who wished to remain private out into the spotlight. Is there really a difference in your opinion?

I thought about that before I named the website, and how it might be perceived as a contradiction. What I came to realize, is that in today’s hyper-connected world, there is very little I can do to control the flow of information about the Leatherman, nor would I want to try. What I mean by Leave the Leatherman alone is literally, leave him alone. Scouring archival newspaper microfiche in a small town America is a right guaranteed by our constitution, and I applaud the tenacity of the Leatherman researchers who have provided us with so much insight into his life thus far. The Leatherman did live in this country, so if he left clues behind during his life that can tell us more about him, I believe that it is certainly anyone’s right to search out information and publish their findings. Taking an anatomical gift from his remains might fast-track that research, but does so at the Leatherman’s expense on a genetic level and thus crosses a line that myself and many others are not at all comfortable with. I do not believe, in the case of the Old Leatherman, that any fellow human being has the right to such anatomical gifts just to “promote interest in historical and genealogical matters” (From Court docs). A judge did give them the right, but to me, it is not right. I say map his footprints, not his DNA!

Is anyone taking your considerations into account, and or responding to your objections?

Yes – As I mentioned earlier, I have had a very respectful ongoing discourse with Dan DeLuca, who has been very responsive thus far. Also, Connecticut State Archaeologist Dr. Nick Bellantoni has also promised some answers to my questions soon. I have also had private email, and personal conversations with others who are trying to make up their mind. The conversation has been very respectful thus far, and that is the spirit I was hoping for. My passion for this cause got the better of me with my initial “scoundrels” remark, and I give the other side of the debate credit for not holding it against me. Has anyone on the research team taken my points into account and said maybe they would re-consider? Not yet. Have others who initially supported the project changed their opinion after reflecting on some of the issues raised on my site? Yes.

Speaking of passion, what is it about the Leatherman that gets you so “amped up”?

It’s like Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam wrote in his song, “Leatherman”. “I heard about a man to whom I may be related – Leatherman.” Eddie Vedder has stated that he wrote the song right after visiting one of the Leatherman’s caves with a friend. Through the years, Ol’ Leathery’s story just has just resonated with certain individuals on a very deep level. As odd as it sounds, I feel a sort of “kinship” with him too, and I think it’s OK to be quirky and different without having to explain yourself. That’s why I feel like I must object to digging him up and doing testing on his remains. Another insight into how my worldview may be affecting me here is this story: I have three maple trees lining my driveway which are probably two to three hundred years old. An arborist came over one day to give me some advice on pruning them, and when he saw them, he just stood under the biggest one, and looked me in the eye and said, “These trees have been through more than you can ever imagine to still be standing here like this, three in a row. You are their steward now.” I really want to know how old they really are, but I would never cut them down just to count the rings. Still another is this song I heard once with the chorus, “There’s a ringing in my ear and I think it’s the call of the wild”. So, now that I’ve shared those three insights, there are at least two others I am aware of that I will not share, ever. So I’m going on record to request that no one ever dig me up, grab a molar and try to figure out what they were!

I have seen a lot of the polls in the newspapers seem to agree with your position. And the majority of people I have talked to seem to agree — leave him alone. But the courts don’t seem to be blocking the way. In the end do you think he will be exhumed?

I’m an optimist and a dreamer by nature, so I will say no. If this were to be settled in the court of public opinion, I would still say no. However, they have a Court Ruling in hand, they own the cemetery, obviously have far greater financial resources than I do, and they are under no obligation to grant my wishes. All I have is my honest opinion, my resolve to see this through to the end, and the right to share my views with my fellow citizens.

Many people visit our site to check out paranormal activities and hauntings. What do you think about reports that the ghost of the Leatherman can still be seen/felt in and around the route he walked in life?

Well, I personally haven’t had any “encounters” so to speak, but there are a few things that are very curious to me when thought of in that light. The first is that I recently found out that the access road to the cemetery was likely paved directly over his grave. So now, aren’t his remains being protected by the very same thing that he found some measure of comfort and safety in during life? His grave site now reportedly poses a public safety hazard. Wouldn’t one sure-fire way to keep yourself safe if you want to see his grave be to simply not go there? You can see a picture of it right on here on DamnedCT, right? His headstone has the name Jules Bourglay on it. Is there not a better way to maintain your anonymity after death than to have a mis-labeled headstone? Add to that, the fact that it is a recycled headstone, with someone else’s name on the back! It’s fitting because this guy was the ultimate recycler! Leather scraps, cigar butts, homemade shovels and pipes, wooden shoes, vegetable gardens, etc. Didn’t he personify the saying “Reduce, reuse, recycle, and “Leave only footprints”? The research team says that they are acting in his best interest to give him a place of honor on consecrated ground, with a proper Christian burial, and a properly labeled brand new headstone. Maybe he’s already left us hints that he’s at peace exactly where he lies? No matter what, it still all makes for one great folktale, that’s for sure.

You had some T-shirts made up supporting your cause, where can I get some Leatherman gear?

Yes, those were a surprise gift from my family. There have been times over the past month where they have told me I need to “Leave the Leatherman Alone!” They’ve patiently listened to my ramblings, and been very supportive of what I’m doing, and had some “gear” made up for me for Christmas. They had to place a minimum order, so there are a few extras. I’ll probably put out word on the site soon, once everyone who has already asked for one has gotten theirs. What size are you?

I’m a s-medium,

Thank you Don, and good luck!

Recently, Dan kindly agreed to answer  some questions for us via e-mail about everyone’s favorite legendary wanderer.

Damned Connecticut: What inspired you to research and write about the Old Leather Man [OLM]?

Dan W. DeLuca: About 22 years ago an historian from Meriden asked me what did I know about the Old Leather Man and do I believe what was being written about him in the newspapers? The newspapers every year or so would revive his story, the Jules Bourglay story about The Old Leather Man.

I told her I did not know anything about him, only what was printed in the newspapers, but would do a little research and get back to her. That was 22 years ago.

Damned Connecticut: How long did it take to do the research and write the book?

Dan W. DeLuca: Researching off and on for about 20 years. To layout and publish the book, the process took about 1½ years. I’m still researching the “OLM or LM” and more and more information is still being uncovered, in the past three years I have more than doubled the information about him.

Damned Connecticut: What was the most surprising thing you learned about OLM while researching and writing the book?

Dan W. DeLuca: He was not Jules Bourglay and every major research over the years has made statements to that fact.

Damned Connecticut: What’s the most common inaccurate idea that people have about the OLM?

Dan W. DeLuca: There are a number of common inaccurate ideas that people have about him and I will list just a few. He did not travel his famous circuit of 365 miles every 34 days for 30 years but started in 1883 and only traveled the circuit for 6 years until he died on March 20, 1889. He would talk to people who talked French but he did not understand English ever well and only then would answered in grunts and hand gestures. He never begged for food, he was not Jules Bourglay, a tramp or hobo. He was not homeless, had many caves and rock/shelters and there was times he wound enter a house, only if he was invited in. He was not exempt from the tramp laws.

Damned Connecticut: What’s one thing that most people don’t realize about him?

Dan W. DeLuca: At one time he was gathering and preserving food, fishing, tanning leather and had a number of gardens in different locations. He was providing for himself and had a strong knowledge of Indian lore, which he was using to survive. All this information has been documented. I also believe he was trapping and hunting but do not have any documentation.

Damned Connecticut: In his day, the OLM was a bit of celebrity — newspapers detailed his travels, and everyone in the towns he passed through knew of him. What made him special as compared to other vagabonds or wanderers?

Dan W. DeLuca: The OLM was around before the Civil War and every one knew who he was. He was dresses all in leather, his suit was made from old boot tops stitched together with leather lacing, his shoes were carved from spruce wood about three quarters of an inch thick with leather uppers, there were water proof, a leather cap with a visor completed his costume all of his own make. He never stole anything, never begged, molested or hurt any one, he would only take what was freely offered him.

Chauncey Hotchkiss of Forestville, Connecticut, in 1885 documented the OLM’s famous clockwise circuit of 365 miles every 34 days. He always wanted to be on time to his next stop or eating place, people went out of their way to feed him what he liked, and they looked forward to his next visit.

Damned Connecticut: I’ve often wondered if maybe the OLM was legitimately mentally ill — possibly afflicted with obsessive-compulsive disorder. Is this possible? Or do you think there was another reason for his repetitive routine?

Dan W. DeLuca: I do not believe he was mentally ill, and at this time I believe he had an obsessive-compulsive disorder. Not only did he want to be on time, but when he set up his shelters, they were away neat and everything in its place, the way he stitched his leather suit, the lacing had to lay flat and not twisted. He made pipes to smoke tobacco for every one of his caves; all of his pipes were exactly the same. Everything he made had to be perfect.

Damned Connecticut: Why do you think he did what he did?

Dan W. DeLuca: Why do we do what we do? This was his way of life and he was surviving.

Damned Connecticut: I notice that many of the images in the book are from your personal collection — how much OLM-related items do you have? What’s the most interesting OLM item you possess?

Dan W. DeLuca: I have thousands of LM-related material and newspaper articles, hundreds of photographs of caves, eating places, people who fed him and period photos of towns he visited. One painting, ten original cabinet photographs and 40 postcards of him or his cave-rock/shelters.

The son of the famous LM researcher Leroy W. Foote who researched him for over 40 years gave me the most interesting artifact I have: A pipe made by the Leather Man.

Damned Connecticut: Why did he stay on that particular route? Was there something special about it?

Dan W. DeLuca: Before 1883 he was mostly providing food for himself and had many routes all over Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, Vermont and it has been said Canada. This particular route or circuit was developed over time, and he made many friends that had started feeding him, most all of these towns accepted him for who he was, and left him alone to live out his life. He was no longer providing food for himself and was now dependent upon his friends for his nourishment.

Damned Connecticut: I know you’ve visited numerous stops along the route — have you ever tried walking the entire route?

Dan W. DeLuca: I have driven over his famous circuit many times but have never tried to walk it. The only person I know of, not counting the OLM himself, is Steve Grant, who in 1993 walked and wrote about his daily journey for the Hartford Courant. For years, it was his responsibility to “Keep the Legend Alive,” and he would give talks about his walk and the OLM at historical societies and libraries throughout Connecticut and New York.

When I started researching the OLM I followed the stories in the Hartford Courant and attended a few of Steve’s talks.

Damned Connecticut: Although the name Jules Bourglay is on his tombstone, the truth is that it’s a fabricated name created in a newspaper story that was more fiction than fact — who do you think the OLM really was?

Dan W. DeLuca: It’s a question that I have answered many times but cannot prove: I think he is part French Canadian and Indian, for some reason he was raised by his Indian grandfather. His grandfather taught him all the skills he needed to survived, and around 1880–1882 I think his grandfather died and he stopped making his trips up into Canada.

I also believe like LM researcher Allison Albee who said in 1937 when asked, who was the Leather Man? “Occasionally, legend and reality unite in the form of some remarkable soul who, through peculiarity or chance, assume a role resembling the mythical characters we read about in childhood’s fairy tales. The Old Leather Man was one of these.”

Damned Connecticut: Why do you think that 120 years later, people are still so fascinated by the story of OLM?

Dan W. DeLuca: He was a “mystery and legend” in his own time and very little was known about him. You have to remember that at one time he traveled over four states, great-great-grand parents, great-grand parents, grand parents and parents have passed down the “mystery and legend” and there were others who took it upon themselves to “Keep the Legend Alive.” Every year since the OLM died there has been a story about him in newspapers and someone going around giving talks about him. People like mysteries and legends, and the OLM was both.

It is also important not to forget the newspapermen, researchers, and people who spent a lot of time to “Keep the Legend Alive.” I would be remiss if I did not name some of them: Jonathan Tillotson Clark, Alexander Gordon Sr., Alexander Gordon Jr., William A. Gordon, Alfred E. Hammer, James F. Rodgers, Chauncey Hotchkiss, Isaac W. Beach, Lanning G. Roake, William P. Toms, Frank Knight, Allison Albee, Leroy W. Foote, Thomas J. Price, Elliot B. Hunt, Foster M. Johnson, L. Raymond Ryan, Nick Shoumatoff, Patricia E. Clyne, Bertram R. A. Smith, Edward McKeon Jr., Steve Grant and all the other anonymous people.

For about seven years railroad historian Leroy Roberts has been helping with the research and I would say he knows all most as much as I do about the LM; he is now working on the LM’s timetables and cave-rock/shelters. He donated his railroad collection to Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut, and you can view some of his collection at Connecticut History Online.

Shirley Sutton has been to a number of my talks over the years and interviewed me about my research, for the past few years she has been going out giving talks.

And now added to the list is Ray Bendici, who is “Keeping the Legend Alive.”

Damned Connecticut: Finally, Steve wants to know: Why leather?

Dan W. DeLuca: Leather was easy to come by and it was plentiful; Keeps in body heat, protected him from the winter weather and from animals and snakes.

Dan adds: At this time I’m back researching, looking at microfilm, compiling more and new information on the OLM for a new book: 1889-1937 The Legend Continues.

If anyone has any information about him or his cave-rock/shelters they can email me at danwdeluca@aol.com

Here are some links to other sites.

• Wesleyan University Press
• “The Story of an Old Man and the Road”
• The Old Leather Man and James F. Rodgers
• The Leatherman’s Loop 2011 (10K road race)

Thanks again to Dan for taking the time and passing along all the great information. And we will do our best to keep the legend of Ol’ Leathery alive!

Dan, who is now 50 years old, resides in Payson, Arizona “with a wonderful wife” and “is living a Christian life.” He graciously took the time to answer some questions for us via e-mail.

Damned Connecticut: We’ve heard that spirits are sometimes drawn to “believers” — was your family interested in the paranormal before you moved in? Had you heard any “ghost” stories about the house before you moved in?

Dan Wilms: My family knew absolutely nothing about the paranormal before coming to our new house and we had not heard any “ghost” stories prior to moving in.

Damned Connecticut: How old were you when your family moved in?

Dan Wilms: I was about 4 years old when we moved into the house — that would have been 1964.

Damned Connecticut: What events did you personally experience?

Dan Wilms: Not long after we moved in we had a barometer that was hanging in an entry way. Well, this barometer kept falling off of the wall — my Dad kept putting in bigger and bigger screws into the wall to keep it in place until finally one day the barometer jumped off of the wall and broke into a million pieces.

When I was 9 years old things started happening to me. The first thing was that my bed started to move on its own while I was asleep in it — then other things started to happen …. Footsteps up the back stairs through a locked door and up the stairs to the attic. Lights turning on and off. Things of that nature.

Damned Connecticut: There were stories about one of the Wilms’ sons being attacked — what happened?

Dan Wilms: Yes. My oldest brother felt a hand on his shoulder while he was laying in bed — it pinned him down and paralyzed him almost to the point of not being able to breathe. After several minutes of this the hand released its grip and when he turned the light on and inspected his shoulder he could plainly see the finger marks on his shoulder where the hand had been.

Damned Connecticut: Did you ever feel that you personally were in danger? How about the rest of your family? Were you in constant fear or more a state of constant annoyance?

Dan Wilms: No. I personally did not feel I was in any danger, I figured if my parents were not afraid why should I be afraid? The overall reaction was neither fear or annoyance but curiosity. We all tried to keep an open mind, especially my parents. You see … people are afraid of what they don’t understand and my parents tried to learn as much as they could about this sort of thing.

Damned Connecticut: What lead your family to call in the Warrens?

Dan Wilms: We became friends with a photographer/reporter from the New London Day and it was he who introduced us to the Warrens.

Damned Connecticut: What was your experience with the Warrens like? What did they experience/do?

Dan Wilms: The Warrens brought two gentleman from the University of Connecticut. One of these men, while in a trance, saw a man who was distraught over killing his best friend. They were arguing over a woman and in a rage he stabbed him to death. This was the earthbound spirit that was inhabiting the house. I know firsthand that there is also a spirit inhabiting the house in the form of a woman and has been seen by several people.

Damned Connecticut: Did you feel as if the events ever actually stopped? Why?

Dan Wilms: No, they continued over the years right up until the day we moved out. A man came over to get some old bed frames and saw the lady in the upstairs hall adjacent to my bedroom. I saw the lady one more time prior to leaving the house.

Damned Connecticut: Looking back now, what is your overall take on the situation?

Dan Wilms: The experience taught me to keep an open mind about everything.

Damned Connecticut: Have you had any sort of paranormal experiences after leaving the John York House?

Dan Wilms: Nothing of a terrestrial nature but I have seen some things in the sky that I cannot explain over the years — white and green rotating lights stationary in the sky, I just can’t explain them!

Thanks again to Dan for taking the time to answer a few of our questions and sharing his experiences!

Courtesy of James Myers & 826 Paranormal

James Myers is a sergeant with the Bridgeport Police Department with a strong interest in both photography and the paranormal. (See his Flickr portfolio.) As a result, it was only a matter of time before he met up with Lorraine Warren and began to investigate paranormal cases using his police background.

Myers subsequently founded 826 Paranormal, a unique paranormal investigative unit comprised of current and retired law enforcement officers who “use our law enforcement training and experience to investigate and resolve [paranormal] issues on a daily basis.”

Recently, Jim was kind enough to take time to chat with Damned Connecticut.

Damned Connecticut: So how did you go from investigating crime to investigating the paranormal?

James Myers: Actually, it has been a long-time thing with me as far as the photography end of it. I started back in high school, probably around 1986. I started getting into the photography of urban decay and abandoned buildings, and I kept doing throughout college. I went to Chamberlain School of Design in Boston and then I went to Paier College of Art, so I was always into the art part of it.

When I got onto the police force, I got to see a lot of the historical sites that a lot of people wouldn’t normally get to see being a regular civilian. But since I have to search a lot of these buildings to make sure there aren’t any squatters or vandals or anything, along with the art part of it — I was always into the historical part — I started taking more and more pictures.

People started making comments about my photos that were posted on Flickr, and when I started checking out what they were saying, they were saying, “Hey, you got some weird images on your pictures.” And I said, “Well, it’s probably dust or whatever.” And then they said, “Well, you probably want to look into it a little bit more.” They then started describing the difference between the dust and the orbs, the difference between light reflections and how things reflect off of different surfaces. Then they asked what camera settings I used, so I told them that I do a lot of the stuff without having any flash on at because it gives better resolution. And they were like, “Well even more so, you should check into it.”

So then I was on a prisoner watch with my partner up at St. Vincent’s Hospital and I saw this older lady get wheeled by me and I said, “Gosh, she looks really familiar,” and my partner said, “Ahhh, whatever.” I said, “I know this lady from somewhere.” Then I heard someone say, “Lorraine Warren.” So I said, “Oh my god, my grandparents have been talking about her for years. I gotta meet her!” So I went to the security guard and asked him, “Hey, do you know if that was Lorraine Warren?” And he said, “Oh yeah. When Ed was here with his illness, we became really close. Do you want to meet her?” And I was like, “Yeah, sure!”

It just so happened there was nobody with her at the time so we went in. When I walked in, it was weird because she looked at me — and on my uniform, all it says is “J. Myers,” it doesn’t say Jimmy — and she was like, “Hey Jimmy, how are you?” I looked at the security guard thinking maybe his name was Jimmy — well his name isn’t Jimmy, it’s John. So that kind of freaked me out. We got into talking about the whole Flickr thing and she looked at a bunch of my pictures, then the next thing you know, we were meeting for lunch and discussing all the paranormal stuff. She got me more and more into it and started training me in what to look for.

The thing Lorraine liked about my observations is that I looked at it from the standpoint of a cop. The standpoint of a cop is that I’m used to seeing things that are strange. The ordinary person going into a dark scary building . . . to me, that’s an everyday thing as a cop. She liked that I was very skeptical and that I was able to pick apart various aspects of it all, and that I had a background in photography. She knew the methodology that I used in police work, and applied that to the paranormal. She then started taking me on cases, and then, started sending me on cases on my own. That’s pretty much how it all began.

Damned Connecticut: How long have you been a police officer?

James Myers: I am going on my thirteenth year.

Damned Connecticut: How has your police training affected your research into the paranormal?

James Myers: It works pretty much parallel to the paranormal. You have to take everything for what it is at face value. You have to think about the negative first, and then if you eliminate everything else and you come up with something at the end, then you look into that even further. As for as police work goes, you have to build your case up to a certain amount of probable cause. Well, that’s the same thing with the paranormal. You have to work you way up to a point where you say, “Well, maybe it is something.” Before that, you have to look at “Well, this is what it could be. It might not be anything paranormal, it might actually be something natural and explainable.” It’s all in the method of training and experience to do the job.

A lot of it doesn’t come from the books, and a lot of it doesn’t come from the training at the academy, it comes from street time and learning how to read people, how to actually interview people. There are a lot of people out there just looking for attention, and we get a lot of cases like that in police work. There’s a lot of people in the paranormal who do the same thing.

Damned Connecticut: So there’s a lot of crossover skills — interviewing, investigating . . .

James Myers: Oh, absolutely. I almost say it’s like an interrogation when I interview people [regarding the paranormal] because I’m pretty thorough and I take it from the point of view of a cop. I don’t consider myself a paranormal investigator. I consider myself a police officer who investigates the paranormal. It’s definitely a crossover between the two.

Damned Connecticut: I’ve seen your story in the Connecticut Post and you have your website — you’ve been very public about what you do. What’s your reaction from your fellow officers?

James Myers: Well, at first they thought I was crazy. [He laughs.] Well, in public they thought I was. But it was funny, as soon as everything started hitting the public eye and there was more and more media attention, it was strange how I was getting phone calls from these same cops behind the scenes and they were saying, “Hey listen, when I was a kid I had this situation . . .” or “I live in this house and there’s a possibility that there’s something going on there, could you take a look or tell me what you think of the whole situation.”

The reaction then turned over to where I had a lot of cops who wanted to get involved in it and that’s how the East Coast Paranormal Police started. We now have 36 members who are all in emergency services — most of them are police officers, fire fighters, EMTs . . . we have a variety. We have canine search and rescue. We have a good variety of people.

Damned Connecticut: Let’s talk a little bit about 826 Paranormal. What’s the 826?

James Myers: That’s my badge number.

Damned Connecticut: How long ago did you start the group?

James Myers: The group started in 2007-08. Like I said, the cops became very interested, and then you had a lot of them who were interested in just the camera when there was interested in possibly doing a TV show about it. Then I had to start to weeding through [applicants]. Some guys were really serious about it while other guys where in it for the thrill-seeking. I wasn’t really interested in having the thrill-seekers out there. I just wanted people who were interested in what I was interested in as far as the historical interest, the photography end of it and trying to get to the bottom of different cases with evidential value and not saying, “Oh, everything is haunted,” because not everything is haunted.

Damned Connecticut: Funny you should say that — the longer we’ve been doing Damned Connecticut and the more people we talk to, when you first start going through places, everyone swears that every place is haunted, but when you start looking at cases closer and closer, much of it seem rather thin.

James Myers: Oh yeah. I always fall back upon and remember that it was on the “The Ghost Hunters” where a guy had everything rigged up to all these mechanical devices. Of course, there are restaurants out there who would love for us to come in and say, “Hey listen, you guys are haunted,” because the next thing you know, you have lines out the door because people want to be part of the whole paranormal experience, especially with it being so popular right now.

Damned Connecticut: Again, it’s funny you should say that. I recently was talking with an archaeologist, and he was saying how a lot of the historical societies and people who run historical graveyards, after years of trying to keep the paranormal community out, are now begging people to come in and investigate because they want someone to say, “Oh, this place has paranormal activity” and people will come and check them out.

Courtesy of James Myers & 826 Paranormal

James Myers: Yeah, a lot of places — the cemeteries, too. It draws attention to the cemetery — Union Cemetery up in Easton, I know they don’t appreciate it much in terms of having the trespassers at night. But as far as putting them on the map, that cemetery is infamous, worldwide. It also draws attention to the historical values of each of the cemeteries. We had one historical cemetery right across from Remington Arms, St. Augustine’s Cemetery, and it wasn’t being taken care of, there was graffiti all over the place and it was an eyesore. Then after a little bit of attention got drawn to it — someone did a paper or wrote a book about the historical value of St. Augustine Cemetery, and now the cemetery looks really really good.

Sometimes it brings positive attention to different sites, and then sometimes you have the negatives. If you have a site that’s been on TV, then all of a sudden you can get break-ins, the trespassers and then, the thrill-seekers. If you don’t know the lay of the land and you don’t really know what you’re doing in terms of searching a building, there’s a lot of these places that you can really get hurt in. Remington for one — you can really get hurt in there.

Damned Connecticut: We went by Remington Arms about a year ago — we didn’t go in, just took some pictures from outside the fence, and I was like, “You couldn’t pay me to go inside that place!” Not because I’m afraid of anything supernatural, but because that place looks like it’s ready to come down on your head!

James Myers: Yeah. Structurally, most of that area is pretty sound except where there’s been fire and whatever. However, there’s a lot of stuff that’s laying around, there are things hanging off the walls and it’s just not safe for a person who isn’t trained to go into a building and clear a building or isn’t with someone who has been in the building before. Of course, we’re trained to search out the buildings, and that comes big into play with our investigative tools. We have one guy who is part of the S.W.A.T. team — we use him to clear the buildings in the beginning. We go with him, of course, because before the S.W.A.T. team, we were the S.W.A.T. team and we would clear out the buildings. We have our techniques for doing things, and most of it falls on training and experience doing things and not through book knowledge.

Damned Connecticut: Remington Arms seems like a place where you should have all your tetanus shots before you go there.

James Myers: [He laughs.] If you saw the “Ghost Adventures” episode, someone — I think it was Nick — got a nail through his shoe, and that was in the light out in the open. Ever since the fires, it’s not the safest place to be in. There are a lot of areas where, if you’re walking around at night, there are these open manholes where you can fall like eight feet and never be found again! It’s just not a safe place for a person to go unless they’re with a person who knows the lay of the land or if they’re trained in searching out buildings.

Damned Connecticut: How many investigations do your team do? Do you do one a month, a couple a year? Do you have a schedule?

James Myers: Me, I go on sporadic investigations. It’s kind of like if I have time and I’m not working or it’s slow at work and I can take some time off, I’ll go to like five or six places in a matter of a week. I’ll do my end of the investigation, and if I see anything that needs to be checked into further, then I’ll send my team in there. Usually, I’ll go in and do the photography stuff first, and if I don’t see anything that really needs to be checked out, or if I do find things that I need answers about, I’ll consult with Lorraine. Her and Tony [Spera] have been a big help with the whole team. If I have any questions on any of the cases, they help out. So it’s been good, really good.

Damned Connecticut: When you go on an investigation, how many members go with you as a team? It sounds like you go in different groups.

James Myers: It all depends. Like I said, I’ll do the photography end of it and if I find a spot that’s very interesting and think it deserves more attention, then I’ll e-mail all the guys from the team — we have different schedules at the police department — and it’s a matter of getting who we can on certain days or at certain times. With our tech guy, any time I call for him, he’s right on it and he’s very good. He can wire up a place in like 40 minutes. It can be a really big place, doesn’t matter. He’s really good.

Damned Connecticut: Talking about tech stuff — what type of camera do you use?

James Myers: I use a Nikon D60. I carry around . . . I don’t even know what I’m carrying right now, let me check what camera I have in my pocket. I always have a camera with me. Always. Okay, this one is a Sony Cyber-shot, and it’s 12.1 megapixel. It’s small, you keep it right in your pocket, and if you see something you want to investigate further, it’s there. Lately, we’ve been getting a lot of occult stuff, so it’s good to have it, just for evidential value.

Certain times of the days you see certain things with your eyes, but as far as photography goes, you can only capture that moment if you have the camera with you. That’s why I carry it with me everywhere.

Damned Connecticut: One you thing you talked about earlier I wanted to go back to — dust verse orbs. I mean, what is the difference between the two?

Poli Palace, courtesy of James Myers & 826 Paranormal

James Myers: When you’re actually shooting . . . . I’ll give you an example, like in the Poli Palace [in Bridgeport]. It’s my baby. [He laughs.] It’s been closed since 1971. It’s connected to the Savoy Hotel and the Majestic Theater. The Poli Palace is 3,624 seats while the other one is like 2,600 seats, and the hotel has like 150 rooms. Now when you go in there and you have a flashlight, and you put the flashlight straight up, you can see the dust. It’s like snow.

When you capture stuff on the camera, if it’s a piece to the side and it’s separated from everything else, and it has a certain shape and a certain color to it, you can eliminate it, like maybe it was a bug or something, which there’s not many bugs in there. The dust is more of a granular particle while the orb is more shaped and has a little bit of a distinct color to it. Not all orbs have the colors, but there are some that are just the white. You can pretty much distinguish between the two by just the shape of it and what’s around it. If it’s pretty much separated from everything else, you can tell.

Damned Connecticut: Are there any particular cases that stick out? You’ve talked about the hotel you were at.

James Myers: Yeah, we’ve had a couple different experiences at the hotel. The hotel was supposedly a hot spot for a mobster back during the Prohibition Era. It was Dutch Schultz who was hiding from the Feds over at the Stratfield Hotel, which is right across the street from the theaters. He was running the alcohol illegally from a house on Harriet Street. He was running it back and forth to the hotel and to the theaters. Some people say that he’s supposedly behind some of the voices we get, but I keep telling everybody that the voices we’re getting are female voices.

We also had a historian tell us that the theaters, before they were built, was a business there, and before that was built, when they were excavating the land, they found Indian remains and artifacts there, so he thinks with the Golden Hill Paugussetts, who have their main tribal area about two blocks up the street, it’s a good possibility that it was a burial ground. Unfortunately, there’s no definitive answer for that. I mean, with the layout of the land and all the excavation that has been done over there, it’s hard to know for sure.

Damned Connecticut: Other than Remington Arms, are there other places in Bridgeport that you would consider to be active spots?

James Myers: I didn’t even answer your question on the last one. In the theaters, when we were up, I think on the second floor in the hotel, they had picked up on a little girl’s voice. They were using a regular digital recorder. They called me up and said, “Hey listen, we think we’ve got something up here.” We were playing it back and [they] were asking if there was anyone up there — “This is a recorder, just say hello.” As soon as they said, “Hello,” you heard a little girl in a very soft voice say, “Hello.” It was like “Hello!” So they shared that with me and I was impressed with that. We also had the people from Ghost Chat New England, they had an enhancement on the audio — it’s like a Miracle Ear — and they picked up on a female voice in there also.

We’ve had experiences where we’ve had people say that they felt like something was touching them up there. We have numerous photos of some really, really strange things. We had one photo of what I would say looked like it was a developing entity. If the person had taken more photographs, they might’ve gotten something very good.

Damned Connecticut: Do you ever notice anything while you’re shooting? I know a lot of times people say they didn’t notice anything until after the picture is taken. Have you ever seen anything before the image is taken?

James Myers: You know, I’ve seen stuff out of the corner of my eye. I’ve seen some strange stuff as far as shadows that are unexplainable, and then you go back to re-enact what you just did to make sure it wasn’t something you did to cause the shadow to happen. Yeah, there’s been quite a few shadow figures over at Poli and over at Remington. I’ve seen quite a few shadow figures but a lot of the stuff is out of the corner of my eye, so I question myself on that.

A lot of these buildings, too, you have to remember they’ve been closed for so long that you have a lot of vagrants who hang out in these buildings. So when we’re searching out the buildings, we’re thinking first police work. We’re thinking, “Hey, we have to clear this building and make it safe. If something so happens to fall into play in the opposite way in regard to the paranormal, well, then you know, it’s good.” A lot of the guys don’t like that. [He laughs.]

Damned Connecticut: You mean your fellow police officers would rather have the straight police work rather than the paranormal stuff.

James Myers: Yeah. A lot of times I’ll go in, especially when we’re working, and we’re searching the building out, and if something happens where they happen to see something out of the corner of their eye or they feel something . . . I had one guy walk right out of the Poli and say, “I’m NOT going back in there.” I think a lot of it is also that if they’ve heard stories in the past about the location, it might freak them out a little bit more. That’s why I try not to tell anybody anything beforehand if they don’t know about the building.

Damned Connecticut: Do you find yourself becoming the kind of de facto paranormal expert on the force?

James Myers: Well, a lot of people come to me, they e-mail me with different situations and different incidents, so yeah, it falls upon me. But there’s another police officer who used to work with Lorraine back when Ed was still alive — he had some really good experiences with the Warrens. So if I have questions, a lot of times I’ll go to him, too. It’s a lot of networking. You use your resources in a positive way. Just like in police work — you have to use everything you can possibly use to get to the bottom of the case.

Damned Connecticut: You mentioned this earlier, and I just wanted to come back to it quick — you mentioned the increased occult incidents in Bridgeport, some issues related to Santeria.

James Myers: We’ve had numerous incidents within the last year and a half where we’ve had several animal parts have been found. There’s quite a few of the Santeria shops within the city. What I say to everybody is that the way you have to see it is if it is a religion, there’s a freedom of religion amendment in the Constitution, so you can’t automatically say that they’re doing something illegal unless they’re actually doing something that has a criminal aspect that falls within the general statutes for the state of Connecticut.

Damned Connecticut: But you’ve noticed an increase?

James Myers: Yes. It’s something that the department doesn’t like to focus on too much, but when the cases come in, they let me know about them and I try to look into them a little bit further outside of work unless it’s something dealing with the criminal aspect, and then I try to look as far as if there was any criminal violations of the law. Case by case, individually.

Some of the stuff, you can tell — I was just on a field trip with my kid over to the Milford Historical Society and then they took us over to the Milford cemetery where all the old historical war markers are. There was “666″ all over the place — on the gravestones, on the trees . . .

I was taking pictures of all that stuff and they were laughing at me. I said, “This might not be anything at all, but it may be somebody who thinks that they are practicing in the occult or has watched too much TV or thinks it’s cool.” Back in my day, it was that you played the record backward and somebody was saying something to do with the devil. You know.

So there has been an increase with the occult, but it’s nothing that would be alarming to the general public. I think the people who are doing it are aimed toward certain subjects and that’s it.

Damned Connecticut: You’ve mentioned the hotel and Remington Arms, what other places have you been to?

James Myers: Yeah, you have Remington Arms. You have Mt. Grove Cemetery, which has a lot of different incidents, especially involving the police where there’s been a lot of different paranormal incidents. The University of Bridgeport has a couple of different places.

Courtesy of James Myers & 826 Paranormal

There are a lot of places in Bridgeport that are urban legends and people feed off the stories that were originally told about different areas, and they put their own two cents into it — they try to make it scarier than it actually is. When I tell the stories, I tell them as I know them. I’m not embellishing anything or adding anything to make someone more scared about a different location. If I thought it was interesting enough to tell the story, then it has to have some value to it.

Location-wise, we have Mt. Grove Cemetery, Lakeview Cemetery . . . you have the GE Building on Boston Avenue, which they don’t even let the police in that building. Where else? You have the Lindley Street house, which we haven’t had any calls over there, but that’s infamous from the 1970s case with the poltergeist and the Goodin girl.

Damned Connecticut: That was an early Ed and Lorraine case.

James Myers: Yeah. That might be one of the things we’re looking at. We’re working with a production company right now and we might be returning back to that actual house. We’re just doing all the logistics right now as far as that goes.

The Burroughs Library downtown — they supposedly have a ghost or a spirit in there of a former worker. Her name is Lola! I was actually talking to the librarians just yesterday and they were telling me different stories about it. I told them how a couple of times my team members have been in there on building searches when the alarm has gone off and they’ve had interesting things happen to them and they’ve never been able to figure out why or where the things were coming from. This happened to be one of the S.W.A.T. guys, so he’s used to searching buildings.

You have the old rail track over on Fairfield Avenue and Railroad Avenue where the Federal train wreck was back in the early 1900s. Supposedly people see black shadow figures walking on the tracks. I’ve never seen it — I’ve worked over there numerous overnight details and I’ve never seen anything over there but I still mention it because it’s in a lot of books.

Over on Union Avenue where the rail station is, we had a former police officer who used to do her paperwork over there, she used to talk about this guy who used to have a lantern and used to walk the tracks at two o’clock in the morning who she thought was a worker for the rail line. She stopped seeing him for a while so she asked one of the conductors over there, “Where did that guy go? I used to wave to him and everything, is he okay?” And they were like, “What are you talking about? There’s no guy who walks around with a lantern.” She was very sensitive too, so she’s actually had different experiences over at Mt. Grove Cemetery and over at the University of Bridgeport.

Damned Connecticut: Anything from where L’Ambiance was?

James Myers: Yes! I’m glad you brought that one up. On Washington Avenue — of course, that’s a high-crime area — but the thing over there with L’Ambiance, we actually had a woman who pulled me aside and she told me about this person who keeps breaking into her house, but said that whenever she went to look for the person, the person is never there when the cops come. She had no idea about anything having to do with L’Ambiance, so I told her “Yeah, this is the site where L’Ambiance collapsed and there was lots of tragic death here.” She was really surprised about that.

The security guard has also told us different stories where he’s seen shadow figures walking down the hallway. There have been quite a few different incidents over in The Hollow. The old age home that’s on Coleman Street — it’s right down the street from L’Ambiance — they’ve had numerous incidents where they’ve had alarms go off and they find like, a wheelchair out in the middle of the hallway. Different incidents where the cops were taken off guard so much that they go in contact with me and were like, “You might want to check into this further.” I’ve gone out there and searched the buildings out. Of course, you’ve got your vandals who break in all the time, so you’ve got to take it with a grain of salt.

Damned Connecticut: You’ve mentioned a few goosebump-raising type stories — what’s your take on all of it when it’s actually happening? Do you freak out a little or would you rather face something like that than someone with a gun?

James Myers: In police work and in the paranormal stuff, like I said, it runs parallel. In both situations, while it’s happening, you don’t have time to be scared.

Afterward, you’ll think about it and you’ll be like, “Oh my god, I can’t believe I just did that,” or “I can’t believe that just happened.” You have to think that your training and experience comes into play [at the moment]. You’re trained to go into situations that normal ordinary people wouldn’t go into. Normal people run away from the gunshots, we have to run toward them. It’s all in the mindset, and that’s where I think the police work really helps me out. It benefits me going into the really scary buildings and everything because that stuff doesn’t really bother me. Afterward you may think about it and be like, “Ahh, that was a little bit hairy.”

But while it’s actually happening, you just take it for face value and you don’t think too much about it.

Thanks again to Jim for taking the time to chat. Please check out his photos and the 826 Paranormal site.

Here at Damned Connecticut, we usually go to great lengths to find subjects for our damned interviews — this time, we only had to go to a family birthday party!

Jeff Wise is my wife’s cousin’s husband (making him my cousin-in-law?), but more importantly, he is the author of Exteme Fear: The Science of Your Mind in Danger, recently published by Palgrave MacMillan.

Aside from being family, Jeff is a science writer, outdoor adventurer, and pilot of airplanes and gliders. A contributing editor at Popular Mechanics and Travel + Leisure, he has also written for The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Details, Popular Science, Men’s Journal and many others. In the course of his journalism career he has surfed in Alaska, scuba dived the South China Sea, piloted a WWII fighter plane and mushed a dog team in Montana. He also has a blog, fittingly entitled Extreme Fear, where he continues to explore this unusual subject.

After his son Rem’s recent first birthday party, Jeff took the time to chat with us about extreme fear — the book and the phenomena.

Damned Connecticut: What’s more terrifying — jumping out of a plane or trying to finish your book by deadline with a newborn in the house?

Jeff Wise: It’s very different kind of stress. You know, one of the major points that the researcher I worked with made was that we’ve really evolved to deal with the short-term immediate stress, like jumping out of an airplane. We’re very good at that. It’s intensely terrifying in that specific moment, but then you have this afterglow of . . . it’s called parasympathetic rebound where the stress goes away, it’s gone, and you just have this wonderful feeling of relaxation, which is maybe why people skydive in the first place.

With the book, it was just months and months of “Oh my god, I’m tearing my hair out, I’m not getting enough sleep, I’m grinding my teeth.” All that sort of awful long-term stress that really doesn’t have much of a positive thing. And even when I was done and filed it, it was never a clean break.

Once I filed it, I felt a surge of relief for five minutes, then my editor wrote back and was like, “Okay, but what about the notes?” And then I had to go back through every chapter and had to find where I put my notes for each assertion I made.

So I think the short answer is skydiving is a lot more pleasant than writing a book on deadline.

Damned Connecticut: I think you addressed it in the book, but what was your inspiration to write this book?

Jeff Wise: It was kind of long in gestating in that my career, by fits and starts, got more and more into kind of soft adventure, so I found myself doing these things. One of these real moments of clarity was standing on top of a bungee bridge and just feeling this overwhelming force that was coming from some brain center that I had no access to. It’s amazing the power that parts of your brain can have, and I thought, “Where is this coming from, how does it work and what can I do about it, if anything?”

Damned Connecticut: I think it’s interesting that extreme fear is something that everyone deals with at some point, but I was surprised — as you point out in the book — how little research is actually done about it.

Jeff Wise: Yeah, in terms of everyday fear . . . It’s hard, and there’s a bunch of reasons for that. There’s a guy named Joseph LeDoux at New York University, and he’s kind of the “fear guy,” and he’s done a lot of work elucidating the role of the amygdala, which is sort of a deep-brain center and serves as the switchbox for the fear response, and in the late 90s, he did a lot of his research.

The military has done a lot of research in how people respond to acute fear, and they have a massive program that’s underway right now to help people become more resilient to stress from things like combat so that there’s less psychological casualties. In fact, it’s almost the major threat to the military right now — psychological casualties.

But yeah, in terms of everyday life, there hasn’t been that many studies. It’s sort of an elusive topic. One of the points that I make is that it’s hard to create intense fear in the lab. There have been a couple of skydiving studies, like the one in which I took part. There’s a time perception study that I talk about in the book where a researcher dropped his subjects from 150 feet up — in this Texas amusement park experience, I guess you can call it. Just 150 feet of freefall and he had them look at these wristwatches as they were falling to see if they could perceive changes of time. But apart from that, you just can’t put someone in a lab and put a bear in there with them or something. It’s a little unethical.

I do mention in the book that in the 1950s there were far fewer ethical restrictions on what experimenters could do and the Army did a thing where they took people up in an airplane, turned off one of the engines and said, “By the way, we’re going to crash. Please fill out this insurance form so that your heirs can get their compensation.” And then they gave them what was ostensibly this life insurance form but really was a psychological test in disguise, which was this obtusely written, supposed insurance form.

Damned Connecticut: I remember reading that in the book and saying, “How horrible is that?”

Jeff Wise: I know! There are all these famous, horrible studies that they did in the 1950s and 1960s.

Damned Connecticut: You were just talking a little about time dilation, and you do a bit of mythbusting in this book, which I think is kind of cool. And you talk about the myths of time dilation and super human strength during moments of extreme fear.

Jeff Wise: Yeah, I did a blog post on superhuman strength on Psychology Today, and somebody wrote in, “This isn’t science. You don’t lift the whole weight of the car, you only lift a part of the weight of the car.” Whatever. People sort of got upset about it.

But yeah, there are so many wives’ tales about fear, like “A mother lifted a car off her kid.” But it turns out if you look for these stories, you won’t really find them. You will find things that are similar, like a grown man, who used to lift weights in college, lifts a car up off a kid, for a few inches.

There’s some truth to it — yes, fear does give us some incredible extra strength that we normally don’t access, but we’re not the Incredible Hulk. We’re not magic. It’s the strength that’s inherent in us, but we usually have this automatic governor that prevents us from using it for whatever reason. It’s kind of an interesting question: Why can’t we just turn on the tap and go 100 percent whenever we want? It’s kind of a profound question.

One of the sort of legendary things about fear is, like in the beginning of Saving Private Ryan, for instance, it all goes into slow motion — and this is kind of a new trope in motion pictures, where like Keanu Reeves, they’re shooting bullets at him and it’s so slows down that you can actually see the bullets coming at him. So there’s this idea that time slows down when you’re in an intensely fearful situation, and peoples’ experience bears this out. “The car was skidding, and it was like in slow motion.”

David Eagleman, really an interesting guy from Baylor University College of Medicine, who after I talked to him, came out with this fascinating book of poetic essays of what the afterlife might be like, called Sum: Forty Tales from the After Lives. He got rave reviews for it, and it’s like this book of poetry. Anyway, he did this really fascinating study that has gotten a lot of play, where he asked, “When you are perceiving time [during a moment of extreme fear], are you actually perceiving more?” When you make a slow motion movie, the way you make it is that you run the film through the camera much faster, so you take 100 frames per second as opposed to 20, or whatever it is. And then when you play it, because there’s more information, it appears to play slower.

So what his question was, “Is that what the brain is doing? Is the brain sampling information faster when it is in danger, or is something else happening?” The long and short of it is that the brain doesn’t sample information faster, but it remembers more of what it gets. And since we tend to judge time by how much stuff happens in a given period, the psychological effect is that it feels like the time went slower. So the amount of stuff that normally happens in a minute can happen in 10 seconds in your memory.

The interesting thing about this is that when you talk to people about it, they say that at the time it happened, it felt as though time was going slower. So the paradox is that it didn’t actually go slower at the time, but when they remember that incident, the memory of the incident felt slower. I’m sort of saying this in a convoluted way. But the upshot is that our experience of the now is something that we actually construct afterward. Things don’t happen simultaneously. It takes longer to process vision than smell, for instance. So what we think is happening right now is a bunch of stuff happening in random times and put together after the fact. It’s kind of a profound insight into the nature of consciousness.

Damned Connecticut: I was thinking of it in terms of Fortean-type phenomena — I wonder if sometimes that kind of event, and how it affects our memories and experiences, has an effect on when someone thinks they see a ghost or they think they see a UFO. Maybe their memories are affected by the fear, or how their brain is processing it.

Jeff Wise: Oh, absolutely. It all gets down to filtering. Some people have put forward the claim that attention, which is such a crucial part of consciousness, where you focus, what you’re looking at, what you’re thinking about — where is that spotlight of your consciousness? And that is a matter of biasing, meaning that you turn up the knob on one thing and turn the knob down on something else.

There have been studies that have to do with different people’s inherent level of signal-to-noise ratio. So, for instance, let’s say you’re on guard duty, and you’re expecting an attack. It’s the middle of the night, and you’re staring out into the darkness, and you’re waiting for the enemy to come. You’re filled with fear, and what fear does, it’s like turning up the squelch on your CB radio, so any noise that comes across, you’re going to interpret as a signal. So people are like, “I saw the enemy, so I started shooting at him!” And it turns out that there was no enemy there. But because their brain has that squelch knob turned up, they’re ready to see a signal in the noise.

On a non-fear related topic: Some people just walk around with their signal-to-noise ratio just turned up, so they see patterns in a random signal, if that makes any sense. Their brain is just inehrently looking for something. Like people who see Mary in a piece of toast, you’re pulling out information, you’re seeing a signal in the noise. Let’s say that a cloud is noise — if you see a sheep in the cloud, you’re actually projecting information into the noise.

The world is full of random coincidence, and if you can see a pattern in that random coincidence — “Oh my god, you have the same birthday as my cousin. What a small world!” You know what I’m saying? If you perceive lots of patterns in an otherwise random world, you might be more willing to be religious because you might see an architect of order in what an atheist might see as a sea of random. I think they’ve done studies where they’ve found some metric for measuring people’s signal-to-noise ratio processing bias and correlated that to religiosity or spirituality, which I really think ties into Forteana.

Damned Connecticut: You are talking about how we try to look for patterns out of noise — I think about driving along a highway on a dark night and seeing what you at first think is someone standing on the side of the road, but then you’re brain gets to the next level, and you realize it’s just a tree or a bush.

Jeff Wise: Yeah, absolutely. Another thing about fear that’s interesting is that our brain has multiple redundant levels of threat detection. So the most primitive ones are the crudest and the fastest. So if you’re walking through the forest and you hear a twig snap, it’s just the fact that there’s a noise — you don’t know anything about it, all you know is instant information. But then, as you have more time, you can say, “Oh, it’s only a twig.”

But a very rough match — the things you’re talking about like a figure by the side of the road or something that looks like a bear . . . I go for a jog upstate and someone has put a cutout shaped like a bear in their yard. And you come around the corner, and you see this bear, and you jump! And then you look again, and it’s like, “Oh, it just a cutout of a bear.” But at the crudest level, it’s a bear. At a more subtle level, it’s a cutout of a bear. So the cruder level of threat detection triggers, but your slower and more sophisticated level of threat detection kicks in and shuts it down. But at the lowest level, it’s set very crudely, so anything can register as a “hit.”

Damned Connecticut: Are familiar with Gavin de Becker and his books like The Gift of Fear? In one of the books, he made a real interesting point talking about the primative levels of awareness and our instinct, and sometimes we sense danger, but we shut it off. I think you talk about this in the book a little — we see something is wrong, but we override it and tell ourselves it’s okay.

Jeff Wise: Yes. We can override it without even being aware that we’re overriding it. Like when we see a face. Any time we see a new face, we [have a reaction of fear]. In neurological terms, it’s like novelty equals danger. We’re not even necessarily conscious of that because our higher levels of alarm processing shuts it down before it even reaches consciousness. De Becker’s point basically is that we really shouldn’t shut it down, we should listen to that voice. He was writing at a time when crime was very high. I feel like we’ve entered a level of sociological complacency, which is appropriate. Part of the message of that book is that it’s not bad to be afraid, you just want to have your fear response be appropriate to the actual threat, and not to let your imagination run out of control and magnify the threat beyond what it really is. Or conversely, you don’t want to be really brave in a situation that’s really dangerous.

I got an e-mail from somebody who read my book and said, “Hey look, I’m going to Afghanistan and I can’t sleep. I know my chances of being killed are really small, but I can’t sleep well, I can’t eat well, etc.” And I wrote back — one of the points in the book is that there’s two things we have to worry about when we’re afraid: the thing that is threatening us and our own fear response. So I said, “The thing that is threatening you is real — you’re going off to a war zone. It’s completely appropriate that you can’t sleep at night. You’re brain is trying to tell you something.”

I think that’s what Gavin de Becker is all about. Don’t try to be brave and shut down what that part of your brain is trying to tell you — it’s vital information. We have this incredibly sophisticated danger-response system that’s there to protect us, and sometimes it’s not attuned to the modern world but that doesn’t mean we should try to shut it down.

Damned Connecticut: It’s right around the anniversary of the crash landing in the Hudson, and in the book, you talk about Capt. Sullenberger and how he was able to act calmly despite his fear. He even admitted that was afraid. But by the same token, it wasn’t a random event the way he responded — you talk about how some people are maybe better geared to respond, possibly through preparation and other factors.

Jeff Wise: Preparation in his case was a major factor. He had thousands and thousands of hours as a pilot. He was a safety expert — what he did in his off time was go around to aviation conferences and talk about aviation safety. One of the things you really can’t do in an emergency is think up something that you’ve never thought of before, and he didn’t have to because he had probably been over similar situations in his head over and over again. And he was a glider pilot, so he had actually landed aircraft thousands of times probably without engines. So he didn’t have to come up with a new solution, it was in his expertise.

That’s pretty much what the second-to-last chapter is about: Answering the riddle of how can you react creatively in a crisis. And the answer is you have such a deep level of understanding of the situation that your unconscious mind is actually able to come up with a creative solution. We don’t tend to think of our subconscious as being creative — we tend to think of our conscious mind as the thing that comes up with creative novelties, but that’s actually not the case.

Damned Connecticut: You also talk about how some people are just naturally predisposed or equipped to deal better with exteme fear in some situations. Why is that?

Jeff Wise: Yeah, is there a nature/nurture kind of thing, or does upbringing have a role? I talk about Audie Murphy, the most-decorated soldier of World War II, who is incredibly brave in one situation and kind of a coward in another. The first being physical danger, and the other being social fear. I think the big conflicting evidence is to what extent being somewhat resilient to fear in one kind of situation carries over to being reslient in another. For instance, if you’re a firefighter and you deal with the threat of being burned up alive, does that help you deal with armed gunmen better?

I think that the consensus is that it probably does. In World War I, the recruiting officers were always looking for lumberjacks and men like that because these were guys who dealt with life-threatening situations before, so it wasn’t entirely new to them.

Damned Connecticut: Fear is something that everyone — everyone – has to deal with, but do you think we’re taught to properly respond to it on any level or at any point?

Jeff Wise: I don’t think many people set out to consciously train themselves to deal with fear better. If anything, I feel that New Yorkers especially take pride in being neurotic and somewhat susceptible to stress — there’s a certain perverse pride in being like, “I’m so stressed out!”

I think we should [be better prepared]. To a man with a hammer, everything is a nail, so thinking about fear a lot, I think we should deal with fear better. People have their priorities. But if you want to live a life that’s less bounded by fear, which I think is the case for most of us, you should take an approach where you actively try to confront your fears every day. It can be little things like taking the bus, if you’ve never taken the bus before, you know, just to accustom yourself to novelty.

We are creatures of habit. We instinctively seek out the comfortable, the easy. We avoid the awkward and the nerve-wracking. But if we push ourselves, even a tiny little bit every day, I think we can get in the habit of pushing back against our fears.

I mention a guy in the book — I had to use a pseudonym for him — a friend of a friend of mine who is a special forces trainer, a real interesting guy, and he was talking about when he was a kid, that was sort of his personality: he felt frightened of rock climbing, so he took up rock climbing as a hobby. He still feels fear when he gets on the wall, but there’s a fine line between anxiety and excitement, which gets back to the skydiving thing. The thing that terrifies you can also exhilirate you.

Damned Connecticut: In your situation, you understand that there’s a whole lot of science going on in your body as you’re standing at the edge of the plane–

Jeff Wise: And that doesn’t do you any good! To intellectually know what’s happening with your brain doesn’t do you a lick of good. These unconscious, automatic centers … I’ve figured this out especially since my son was born — we tend to think of our consciousness, our intellect, that sort of Mr. Spock part of us as the main point of human existence, and really the essence of what we are. But it’s not. It’s a tiny little sideshow.

Ninety-nine percent of what goes on in our brain is this powerful, emotional, primal, largely subconscious, largely automatic stuff. We’re just along for the ride. We’re like a tick riding on the back of a horse or something! I’ve been sort of anticipating someone saying, “So are you really brave?” and the answer is, “No!” Knowing how fear works by itself does nothing to make you a more courageous person. But it can hopefully show you the way to start creating the habits of courage, which will eventually take effect.

That’s sort of the conundrum: How can this weak little impotent thing that our conscious mind is have any impact on this incredibly robust and powerful and unstoppable fear center that takes over when it senses danger? And the answer is: By preparation, really. By careful, long-term preparation. Because the automatic brain learns very slowly, but when it reacts, it reacts very quickly.

Damned Connecticut: You talk about this subject — and to sort of tie it in — I think of that old Yogi Berra quote: “Baseball is 99 percent mental and the other half is physical.” And in the book, you talk about choking in sports being the same kind of thing, as well as stage fright. But it is the struggle against your own mind most times.

Jeff Wise: For a book that’s ostensibly about a guy who’s about to be in a plane crash and a woman who is going to be eaten by a bear, I spend a lot of time in the book talking about the aspect of social fear. I think one of the reasons is because it’s interesting and it takes so much explanation, is because it’s enticingly and confusingly paradoxical. It’s really a situation where our fear centers run a riot and run out of control with very little danger ostensibly at hand, and you get in these paradoxical loops where you really do become your own worst enemy. So this is a place where clearly all we have to fear is fear itself, unlike the case where you’re being attacked by a bear, where you have a great deal else to fear beyond fear itself.

But in choking and in various other areas of performance anxiety, like shy bladder syndrome and so forth, it’s like the moment you become aware that your brain could betray you — BOOM! It’s like you’re plugged into this feedback loop. It’s like the microphone at the wedding that goes “SKREEEE!” and it’s screeching and there’s nothing you can do except run. So that’s a really interesting section there.

Damned Connecticut: I could see also, that in terms of the book, it’s important to have the example of extreme fear in situations like plane crashes, but it doesn’t mean that other types of fears, like social fears, can’t be as horrible.

Jeff Wise: They are as horrible! They are exactly as horrible. And some people get very little sympathy. It’s like, “It’s all in your head.” It is all in your head. But the fact that it is all in your head doesn’t do you any good.

We have this weird and sort of horrible prejudice in this country against psychological conditions. We have this Descartian illusion that we’re in charge of our brains, and therefore, it’s just a matter of, “Hey, suck it up! It’s in your head, so therefore, deal with it.” We think we have control of what’s in our head. Big, big mistake. Completely untrue.

Yes, the fact that your fear is completely self-generated, doesn’t make it any less horrible. It’s just as bad as being eaten by a bear. I mean, it might be physically less painful, but you still feel like you’re going to die. People literally feel like they’re going to die, and it’s horrible enough that they then have this fear of it coming back, which again, is this self-fulfilling kind of thing.

Damned Connecticut: There’s one chapter in the book where you talk to a woman who has extreme panic attacks, which I thought was fascinating. I think everyone, at one point, has had — maybe not to that extreme — those moments where they felt that extreme duress.

Jeff Wise: Yeah, I’ve twice in my life had periods where I felt social anxiety. I think I mention them in the book. They were panic attacks triggered by social situations, not social anxiety per se, but it’s awful. You want to throw up, you want to pass out. It’s a terrible, terrible feeling.

I liked the story [in the book] because the woman was a very normal, high-functioning person who in all other aspect was able to see herself with a sense of perspective and a sense of humor, but she literally could not accept what was happening was in her head. She was someone who believed, as most of us do, that “I’m in charge. I’m in control.” So when her body started to seize up, she said, “This must be a heart attack. It must be a physical condition.” We are perfectly happy accepting that our bodies are not within our control, but we expect our brains to be in control.

– Again, the book is Exteme Fear: The Science of Your Mind in Danger, and of course, we highly recommend it.

Thanks again to Jeff for taking the time to chat with us!

Courtesy of Yale University

Michael Faison is the director of Yale University’s Leitner Family Observatory and Planetarium in New Haven. He is also an astronomer, researcher and lecturer at Yale. He has extensively studied astrology as it pertains to astronomy, as well as archaeoastronomy and radio astronomy.

Recently, he was kind enough to take the time to talk to us about astrology vs. astronomy, life elsewhere in the universe, mysteries of deep space and the International Year of Astronomy, as well as other questions of the deep space.

Damned Connecticut: One of your most popular lectures is entitled “Astronomy, Astrology and Pseudoscience” — what led you to coming up with that lecture?

Michael Faison: I teach astronomy, mostly at the college level, and besides just teaching kids how the universe works and how we’re learning about stars and galaxies and planets and sort of the list of all the things we’ve discovered, I also want them to understand how science works, so I go through the process of science and I try to teach them about the history of science so there’s context to how we know what we know about the universe, and how it’s always changing. And often, when I’m talking about the process of science, as a counter-example, I bring up pseudoscience, and so I talk about how you can tell the difference between science and pseudoscience, and some of the examples I talk about include astrology, which is a classic pseudoscience, some of the alternative medicine that seems to work on placebo effects, things like cold reading . . . .

So I talk about these things that a lot of the people in the skeptic movement talk about because I feel that doing science education is part of improving science literacy, which is part of, for one thing, stopping some of the pseudoscience that’s running amok out there. I wouldn’t say that astrology is running amok so much any more. Astrology has gotten, well, I wouldn’t say ‘beaten down,’ but it’s not as big an issue sort of socially right now as some other things.

But anyway, I talk about astrology, I talk about the historical connection between astrology and astronomy in my classes — I even teach a course in the spring at Yale on archeoastronomy. Of course, for a long period of time, astronomy was practiced for the purpose of astrology, so if you knew where the planets were in the past or where they would be in the future, you could essentially predict the future, if you believe in astrology. So a lot of the ancient Mesopotamian astronomers and Greek astronomers who were trying to build models where the planets moved, one of their motivations was to practice astrology.

I started giving this lecture after I had done a lecture on astrology and the historical connection to astronomy in my classes. I was in Chicago in 2000-2001, I was teaching at Northwestern University and working at the Adler Planetarium, and I came up with the idea to teach a class on astrology at the planetarium, and in particular, why it’s not a science — whatever else it may be, why it is not a science, how it is different from other sciences. And I started doing a lot of research because I really wanted to know what I was talking about. I read a lot of books on astrology, I went out and met a lot of astrologers, started going to the Chicago area astrologers’ meetings, I sat in on some real interesting talks — I had to zip up my mouth to not say anything, but I did some real interesting observing there — and then I gave my class at the Adler Planetarium.

It was interesting because it had been advertised widely, just like many of the general interest classes that they offer there, and about half the audience turned out to be astrologers when I gave my class. I gave this class, which is about a two-hour lecture and some interactive hands-on stuff, and afterward, the astrologers were really impressed that I, as an astronomer, knew so much about astrology, and most of them ended up agreeing with me that, “Yes, what we practice is not science in the same way astronomy or cosmology or astrophysics is a science.” I kind of felt that it could’ve went a little further — “. . . so therefore, we shouldn’t say it is.” You know. But we didn’t quite make that leap. Nevertheless, I felt as though I had gotten my point across.

So I turned that class into a public lecture that I have given many times in various contexts. I give it about once a semester in my classes; I’m teaching a survey astronomy course. I’ve given it in public many times. Sometimes I’ve given it up at the Leitner Planetarium where I work at Yale. We have public lectures periodically, so I’ve given it a few times there.

Eventually, I’d like to turn the talk and some other information into a short planetarium show about astrology and the historical connection to astronomy, a planetarium show we can play here at the Leitner Planetarium in New Haven, and also distribute to other planetariums who might want to run it. It’s a long-term idea that I have that I’d like to work on in the next couple of years.

Damned Connecticut: I seem to remember when I saw you speak you said something like — and please correct me on the numbers — 3,000 professional astronomers versus 10,000 professional astrologers?

Michael Faison: The last time I looked it up, the membership of the American Astronomical Society — which you know, is not everybody who is a professional astronomer, while some members are not professional astronomers, but it’s a good metric — their membership is about 2,500 or so. And the number of professional astrologers is about 10,000. So yeah, we’re outnumbered!

Of course, the area of entry to professional astrology is much lower than for professional astronomy. If you make your living at astronomy, it takes quite a lot of preparation, schooling and so forth.

Damned Connecticut: Aside from the schooling, do you think there’s something else about why astrology is so widely embraced, not just in this country but around the world?

Michael Faison: Well, it’s just like a lot of other pseudosciences. It has a lot of the things that people like about trying to explain the universe, and none of the things that you don’t like. People like to think there’s a connection between humans and the rest of the universe; we have sort of an anthrocentric view of the universe, especially an egocentric view of the universe, so we like to believe that “Well, where the planets are affects me.”

Then there’s all the jargon and the trappings of science. A lot of the terminology astrology uses comes from historical astronomy. Quite a bit of it isn’t stuff that astronomers use any more. Although it’s interesting that some of the terminology has entered our vocabulary. Words like “aspect” — the entomology is “star position” as in “astro.” “Disaster” means means “bad star” in Greek. Astrology certainly has a strong cultural component that I like to talk about when I give my lectures.

There are several things. For one thing, people like think of themselves as having a personal connection to the universe. We, as a species, tend to look for patterns, and we lock onto the coincidental hits and we ignore the misses. The way that astrology is practiced by the vast majority of people is that they look at their sun sign horoscope and these things are written very vaguely, so they kind of look at it, and if it jives really well with how they think they are or what they’re experiencing, they’re like, “Wow, that’s amazing! Astrology works.” And if it doesn’t, they just blow it off. They just don’t pay any attention to it, so there’s no checking of how many hits or how many misses, or what are the chances that these things would line up based on chance.

In the more complicated version of natal chart astrology, if you go to see a professional astrologer, they’ll probably cast a natal chart for you which has the positions of the stars and the planets at the latitude and longitude at the time you were born. It’s kind of like doing palm reading or tea leaves: there’s a lot of complexity there, so they can throw things out, and people, they want the astrologer to turn out to be right, they want to have a positive outcome from the experience, so they tend to latch on to hits and ignore the misses. And the astrologer, either knowingly or unknowingly, will employ cold reading. They’ll shy away from things that don’t seem to be hits and lock into things that do hit and are what the client likes, and then they will keep moving in that directions, just like a palm reader will, or someone who’s a spirit medium will lock onto these things and stick with them, and avoid things that don’t seem to be hits. They may or may not know they are doing that. Some of these astrologers — actually most astrologers, I’m sure — are earnest and sincere in believing the interpretation they are giving is accurate. They might not be aware of what they’re doing.

Damned Connecticut: Changing gears, let’s talk a little more about astronomy. What drew you to astronomy? How did you choose it as a career?

Michael Faison: I was an amateur astronomer growing up, so I had a telescope and I lived in rural Alabama where the skies are quite dark. So I got a book on the constellations, I went and learned the constellations and looked at Saturn, looked at the moon, watched Halley’s Comet swing through in 1986 and was pretty disappointed, but found other things that were pretty cool. So I was interested in astronomy, but I wanted to go to college and study physics. I got really interested in sort of the fundamental laws of how the universe works. And I wanted to do something fairly practical — I thought I would do something in optics or something involving electrical engineering or computer engineering or something really practical.

I went to a liberal arts school and majored in physics, and while I was there, there was a radio astronomer who did research on pulsars, and he took a group of students down to the radio telescope in Arecibo in Puerto Rico.  I went with him, and really had a great time doing radio astronomy research and figuring out how pulsars worked, these rotating neutron stars that pulse radiation. I did a senior research project and really enjoyed that, and realized, “Hey, astronomy is a kind of physics. I can do astronomy and it counts as a type of physics.” So I decided to go to grad school and learn a little more about this, and thought I’ll keep doing it as long as I enjoy doing it and can make a living at it and . . . so far, so good! I enjoy it and I make an okay living, so I’m still going strong.

Although in the past two years, I’ve moved much more into education than research, mainly because we opened this new planetarium at Yale, so almost all of the time I’m not teaching, I’m working on outreach programs, new shows and various things for the planetarium.

Damned Connecticut: Speaking of the Leitner, I recently brought my family there — my sons had a great time, it’s a great facility. So far how has it been for you?

Michael Faison: I’ve been at Yale for five years. I came here to teach in the astronomy department and I had a research program going when I first got here, and also to run the observatory. Right as I came to Yale, we opened a new observatory on campus, which we hadn’t had for quite a while. It’s really important, I think, for every college to have an on-campus observatory where students can put their hands on a telescope and look through it and see things with their own eyes rather than just see computer slides during a lecture. It’s also real important for outreach for an astronomy department to have a public night where people can bring their kids up and look through telescopes, and experience some of this wonder.

Astronomy is really unique among the sciences in that there’s so much public enthusiasm for it. There are a lot of amateur astronomers out there, some of whom are doing interesting research in their own right. It’s amazing really, the technology that amateurs have access to these days so that they can do their own research. You know, there aren’t that many amateur particle physicists or amateur chemists out there doing the same kind of research amateur astronomers are doing. It’s great that people are so interested in astronomy. They beat a path to our door to learn more about astronomy, so it’s very important for us to take advantage of that.

Anyway, I came here in 2004 to run the campus observatory. Over time, we renovated the building the observatory was in, put in a lecture hall, put in exhibits about astronomy. The donor who gave us the money to build the observatory expressed interest in building a planetarium, so in 2006 we started doing research on what kind of planetarium we could afford, and what would be best for our programs and our education activities. We pitched to the donor the design we came up with and he was interested, so construction started in 2008, and we opened the new planetarium in 2009.

It’s been really fantastic. We’ve expanded our programs a lot. When we just had the observatory, we would be open twice a month for observing, but if the skies were cloudy, we would cancel. Now that we have the planetarium, we always have shows on Tuesday nights whether it’s clear or not. If it’s clear, we also open up the observatory for public viewing through the telescopes. Where as before we might have had a public event once a month or every other month depending on the weather, now we have a public event every Tuesday night regularly, which is really great.

We’ve also expanded into school visits. We used to have occasional school visits to the observatory and we did have a portable, inflatable planetarium called a “starlab” — it’s this big dome that you blow up with a fan, kids pile into it and you can project stars on the inside of the dome. We used to take that to schools to do demonstrations, or we could set it up at the observatory as well. But now that we have this nice, digital planetarium theater, we bring in school groups during the day, pretty much every day during the week in the spring, and every other week in the fall. We have a new staff member who runs all those programs, and we’re coordinating with the Peabody Museum of Natural History in New Haven to sort of mooch off their education staff to help with scheduling visits and bringing kids up. They’ve had school buses coming up there for tours for years and years, so we’ve siphoned off a little spring of yellow school buses to come to the observatory and planetarium shows.

We’re planning on doing more coordinated shows in the future with the Peabody Museum. We were thinking what would be the natural connection between the planetarium or astronomy and the Peabody Museum, which is famous for the dinosaur exhibits there, and we were thinking about doing a program on the extinction of the dinosaurs. We’d have a show about meteorites and asteroids and things hitting the Earth, and talk about the impact 65 million years ago, and then the kids would go down to the Peabody Museum and the kids would see the dead dinosaurs, the ones that were killed off by the meteorite. We’re working on a program based on that.

So that’s basically the latest we’ve done with the planetarium. It’s made a huge difference in the kinds of outreach activities that we can have here. We’re still fairly staff limited. I mean, we have some of my time and our half-time K-12 educator, but we’d like to be open more often to the public. We’re thinking about starting to do Sunday afternoon matinees for people, in addition to the Tuesday night shows. We’re just trying to get volunteers trained, and there is a lot of students interested in doing presentations to the public, so we’re trying to get them trained on how to present shows. Hopefully, in the near future, we’ll do that. We’ll have more public events.

Damned Connecticut: Now I know this is the International Year of Astronomy, celebrating the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s turning his telescope to the heavens, which is obviously a landmark moment in astronomy. What other landmark moments do you anticipate in the next few years as we keep looking deeper and deeper into space?

Michael Faison: This International Year of Astronomy has been a big coordinated international effort. The thing about Galileo’s use of the telescope is that it opened a whole new world when you could gather the light and focus it so you could see faint things and magnify images, which is essentially the same as going there. If you magnify the moon by a factor of 10, you’ve basically traveled 90 percent of the distance to the moon. That’s what it would look like if you traveled that 90 percent.

So the year of astronomy is really quite an interesting international effort. When you go and look at their website, it dawns on you how much is going on all over the world. It’s not just NASA, it’s not just U.S. schools and universities.

But in terms of upcoming milestones, one of the things about these big shifts is that it’s hard to predict when it’s going to happen or what is going to be the thing that changes things. I think now, if you look at the big questions in astronomy, there are questions like, “Are we alone in the universe?” Which is a question that we’re starting to answer in bits and pieces as we find planets around other stars and look for what are the possibilities of how life could get started and evolve on other planets. “What are the necessary chemical conditions and astronomical condtions?” “What kind of stars could possibly facilitate the beginnings of life, and where should we look for signs of life?” And, “What would those signs look like?” Now we know of hundreds of planets around other stars that we didn’t know about 10 or 15 years ago, so those are tremendous, important questions.

Another big area of questions is how did the universe begin? “Where is it going?” “What’s going to happen to the universe?” Big cosmological questions. Again, we’re just starting to understand that. There were big mysteries, oh about 20 years ago or so, of how the universe was changing. There were some things that didn’t make sense, and now, within the past five to ten years, “Well, it didn’t make sense before because we didn’t take into account this dark energy, this repulsive force that making the universe expand faster and faster.” No one really knows what this dark energy is — people have theories. But now that we know it’s there, we don’t have to scratch our heads as to what is going on. That’s a big step, and so people are working on trying to explain what that dark energy is, and also the dark matter that holds galaxy clusters together.

It’s actually fascinating, that question: What is the dark matter? It might be answered by particle physics because it might be possible that the dark matter are tiny little particles that are very difficult to detect, but this new large collider in Switzerland, the Large Hadron Collider may actually detect these particles of dark matter in the not-too-distant future and we’ll finally understand what that stuff is.

So I think those are the big questions that we’re just on the cusp of starting to answer. Now, the thing is, whenever we have a time like this when we’re just about to answer a big question, other equally big questions come up, so it’s hard to predict what those new questions are going to be.

Damned Connecticut: You were just talking about extraterrestrial life in space and looking for it. I think, based on what we’ve seen about the formation of life, and with the billions of stars and the hundreds of planets out there, it’s not really a question of if, but when, and where, and what kind of life we find out there.

Michael Faison: Oh sure. If you look at the statistics, the chances that we’re alone in the universe are incredibly small. Incredibly small.

If you ask most astronomers if they believe in aliens, the answer will be yes, or a qualified yes because most astronomers like me believe it’s likely that there’s life elsewhere in the universe but the chances of us communicating with intelligent life are much, much smaller because of the vast distances between planets that would probably have intelligent life that could communicate using radio telescopes or whatever type of communication.

So if you ask an astronomer, “Do you believe in UFOs?” Well, there are things that are flying that are unidentified, but do I believe that UFOs are aliens? Almost certainly not. Do I believe that there are aliens somewhere else in the universe? Almost certainly yes.

Although if you look at the statistics of intelligent life in our galaxy — our galaxy is an island of hundreds of billions of gravitationally bound stars, and there are almost certainly millions, or tens of millions of Earth-like planets in our galaxy and probably a lot of those have microbial life or some kind of simple life on them. But if you push it and say, “Well, what are the chances of intelligent life that’s evolved around these stars?” Well, it took a long time for intelligent life to evolve on the Earth, and we only have a sample size of one to think about what are the chances of it happening on another planet. If you’re pessimistic, then it could be we’re the only intelligent civilization in our galaxy so there might not be anyone to talk to. If you’re more optimistic, like Carl Sagan was, there might be a million of them.

Of course, then you have the question of, “If there is a million intelligent civilizations in our galaxy, we should have detected one of them by now with a radio telescope, so where are they?” Of course, this is only talking about our galaxy, and then there are hundreds of billions of galaxies in the known universe, and then that’s only in the visible universe. The actual universe is much, much bigger than we can see within our horizon of light-travel time.

So with hundreds of billions of galaxies out there, it’s very, very likely that many of them have intelligent life of some form. Although who knows if we will be able to communicate with them because the closest galaxy is two million light years away, so we have to come up with some method of physics that we don’t know about now that will allow us to communicate faster than light, and we don’t know how to do that.

Damned Connecticut: What would you actually look for in terms of signs of life in other places? Radio signals or something?

Michael Faison: For simple life, it’s pretty simple. You would look at the atmosphere of a planet. You could do this remotely, and in fact, we tried this on the Earth. When the Galileo spacecraft swung by the Earth on its way to Jupiter, the scientists pointed Galileo at the Earth and looked at the chemical composition of the atmosphere and said, “Hey, there’s probably life on the Earth!” Because you look at the ratio of oxygen and methane and water vapor — life leaves a certain signature in the atmosphere of a planet. Now we already know that there’s life on the Earth, so it’s good that Galileo detected it, but now we can look at other planets, and we’re just starting to do this. I expect that within the next ten years, maybe five years, we’ll be able to see the light from the atmosphere of a planet and look for the chemical signatures of life around other planets.

So I’m pretty sure within a decade, or two decades, we will find microbial life on another planet. We’ll just look for chemical signals in the spectrum of the light coming from another planet. Intelligent life then, you’d look for some kind of signal. This is a really complicated subject. I mean, how do you find the sign of intelligence in some kind of signal?

The movie and novel Contact that Carl Sagan wrote sort of talks about one way you might do it. You could encode it in a mathematical signal because all species regardless of their culture will use the same kind of simple mathematics. But then, things move into culture very, very quickly, and that’s dependent on your history, how you interact with other people.

The people who work on SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, one of the games they play is that they will actually write out messages that they think will be easily decoded as intelligent, and they’ll send them off to their friends who are also SETI people, and they can almost never interpret each others’ messages, so it’s very difficult to communicate through mathematics with other human beings, let alone other intelligences.

There are things we can do, there are way to find signals that would be impossible for them to be a natural signal. If only the aliens are thinking like we are! Then we’ll be able to pick it up. But it’s tough. It’s hard to say what would an alien civilization think of as an intelligent signal.

Damned Connecticut: Would they classify us as intelligent considering I have a hard time classifying us as intelligent?

Michael Faison: Yeah, sure! Right. I guess maybe artificial versus natural, in terms of intelligence.

Damned Connecticut: We were talking about deep space earlier — I saw recently how they saw a cluster of galaxies that’s 10.2 billion light years away, and then the story about the 13 billion-year-old gamma ray burst. What are the significance of those kinds of discoveries? How do they affect what we know about deep space?

Michael Faison: That’s a good question. These really, really distant things, what they tell us about the universe is what the universe was like a long time ago because these events and these objects are very far away so it’s taken a long time for the light to travel. We don’t see these things as they are now, we see them as they were 10 billion or 13 billion years ago.

It’s interesting. When we look further and further away, the universe looks different. When you look at galaxies and stars five billion light years away, and 10 billion light year away, and 13 billion light years away, they look really different then galaxies do now. So it’s a very important way that astronomers make models of how galaxies and the universe change over time. Galaxy evolution.

For example, the gamma ray burst. These gamma ray bursts are thought to be real massive stars exploding in a very, very energetic explosive event. You don’t really see these nearby. You don’t see these things going off in our galaxy. There may have been some in the past. I’ve heard suggestions that some of the mass extinctions on the Earth might’ve happened because there was a nearby gamma ray burst that basically would’ve fried one half of the Earth.

Anyway, they’re not going off now, so what was different back then? Why were there these massive stars that could explode in these violent ways? Well, we have some ideas about how that happens. So it’s really important for people who model the early universe to understand how the universe has changed over time.

Damned Connecticut: I assume we’ll keep looking further and further, so what do you think might be beyond the edge of the known universe? What type of discoveries do you expect as we look further?

Michael Faison: Yeah, well, we’re almost at the edge — and I say edge — of the known universe. We have a limitation, again, since light has a finite travel speed. Light always travels at 300,000 kilometers per second. We can’t see beyond a horizon … it’s not at a distance of 13.7 billion year — it’s actually about 15 billion light years because the universe has been expanding since the light has been traveling to us. But there is a limit as to how far away we can look just because the age of the universe is finite. There is almost certainly a universe beyond that, and some cosmologists think that the universe might be infinite, so there’s an infinity beyond the horizon. As time passes, the horizon gets a little bigger — it’s getting bigger by a billion light years every billion years. In my lifetime, it’s not going to change very much.

But we’re actually on the verge of being able to map the entire visible universe, which is quite another big achievement. You were talking about Galileo before — when the replacement for the Hubble space telescope goes up in a few years, the James Webb telescope, it’s going to be much bigger than Hubble with four times the area, so it’s going to be able to see much, much further, and it’s actually going to be able to map every galaxy in the known universe. So it’s going to be like some point in the past when explorers had mapped every coastline of every continent on the Earth and there’s just no more coastline to explore — that’s pretty much where we’re going to be in a few decades.

That’s where it is, unless we find a new way to study the universe with some new form of radiation or light or something we didn’t know about. Or if we find some way to explore other universes. Who knows if that’s even possible. We’ll never see beyond that horizon until it expands even more.

I don’t know. I haven’t really decided whether or not if I like the infinite universe or the finite universe — what’s beyond the horizon. If the universe is infinite, that has certain philosophical implications that are disturbing. There’s no evidence one way or another to say if it’s infinite or finite, but we can’t see beyond it at this point.

Damned Connecticut: It’s truly hard to wrap your mind around that idea of infinity, or if something like the universe is finite, doesn’t there have to be something beyond that?

Michael Faison: If the universe if finite, what could happen is that the universe would warp around and close on itself. So it would be analogous to the surface of the Earth. The surface of the Earth is a finite area because it curves around in a third dimension and closes on itself. So you could map out every area on the surface of the Earth and keep walking in any direction and never reach an edge, but there’s still a finite surface area. So it could be that the universe warps around to fourth spatial dimension so that it has finite volume, but if you went off walking in any direction, you’d never reach an edge — you’d eventually come back to where you started. And that’s possible.

If that’s true, then the universe is still really, really, really big because the little patch of the known universe, of the universe we can see out to the 13 billion-light-year horizon is perfectly flat — as if you went out to a soccer field and tried to measure the curvature of the Earth, you couldn’t see it. The Earth looks really flat on small scales. But if you went to a really big scale, it curves around on itself. Our little patch of the universe looks perfectly flat, so that means that the universe is perfectly flat and just goes on for infinity, or it curves back in on itself on some really big scale.

Damned Connecticut: You were talking a little while ago about amateur astronomy — when I saw you speak, you talked a little about Hanny’s Voorwerp and the Galaxy Zoo, and I know that other objects, like comets and storms on planets have also been discovered by amateur astronomers. How important are they to the overall process?

Michael Faison: They’re very important in certain fields. Now if all amateurs decided to stop working in astronomy, astronomy research would still continue, but there’s some specialties and areas where amateurs make really important contributions. For example, studying variable stars. There’s so many thousands of variable stars that professional astronomers, even if we spent all our time looking at them, we couldn’t study them as much as they need to be studied. So there are thousands of amateurs, in fact, many of them are coordinated by the American Association of Variable Star Observers [AAVSO], which tells amateurs who are interested in doing this research which starts to go look at, how to measure the brightness, how to submit observations and so forth. Then professional astronomers will actually use their database to study variable stars without having to go make the observations themselves.

Another important area is in asteroid research. There are thousands of asteroids that need to be studied. We need to know what their positions are so that we can map their orbits so we can understand how the asteroids behave, which ones might hit the Earth in the future, etc. And there’s just too many for professional astronomers to look at. So there are many amateur astronomers with nice telescopes and digital cameras who study asteroid movements. That’s really important.

Another area is look for new comets. Another area is looking for supernovae, stars that exploding in other galaxies. So there are these areas where things change in the sky — moving asteroids, variable stars in other galaxies and things like that — where amateurs make a big contribution. If we lost that data, lost that work that they’re doing, there’d be a detriment to research. There have been a lot of important discoveries in how these things work that have been made by amateurs.

Damned Connecticut: Finally, any special events coming up at the Leitner?

Michael Faison: We have some talks about the International Year of Astronomy. On November 19 at the Peabody Museum, David Rabinowitz, is lecturing. He’s one of the scientists who discovered the new dwarf planet Ares which led to the demotion of Pluto as a planet. So he’s giving a talk about weird things in the solar system.

Then I’m giving a talk about the winter solstice at the Leitner on December 15, and then again the next week on December 22, which is part of our regular Tuesday night shows. Every planetarium everywhere in the U.S. has to have some kind of Christmas show, so this is our version of that.

We have our website you can check — yale.edu/iya — lists the events we’re having especially for the International Year of Astronomy. And then, there’s our own website, leitnerobservatory.org, and we try to keep that up-to-date.

– Thanks again to Michael for taking the time to talk to us!