The Ghost Studies, Part Two | Grave Talks CLASSIC

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Today on the Grave Talks, we continue our conversation about the ghost studies with author Brandon

Masulo. Do you have any theories on, and it could just be chance why some people have paranormal

experiences and other people think you those people are crazy because it's never happened to them.

And it could just be that person A was in a situation where, you know, maybe it was where they lived

or, you know, maybe a person had passed and came to them like the aunt in saying goodbye.

And then nothing like that's ever happened to another person. So, in your research, how do you kind of

or did you come to any I thoughts on that? Yeah, I think I, and in the book, I talk a little bit about

certain people who just seem to be more prone to ghostly encounters. So, their increased

probability of having ghostly encounters has nothing to do with like psychic abilities,

but rather it's something as simple and concrete as the ability to taste, touch, and smell.

And that has to do with the thing I talked about earlier, which is environmental sensitivity.

So, environmental sensitivity is not psychic sensitivity. It's a little different.

As humans, we're, we all sort of react to the environment differently. There's certain people,

or certain individuals that are just more tuned with the environment. And usually these people

have like migraines. They have fibromyalgia. They have severe sensitivity to light sounds and smells.

They're just overwhelmed with the environment, longstanding allergies, chronic pain.

Now, these environmentally sensitive people, they're just experiencing the world a little differently.

So, if I walk into a room and it has fluorescent lighting, and I sit down on a chair that's been

wiped with harsh chemicals like bleach. And I'm sitting next to a guy who's just doused in

old spice or some cologne. I'm perfectly fine. That's a lot.

Yeah, I'm perfectly fine. I'm okay. A person who's environmentally sensitive would probably get headaches

from the fluorescent lighting. They might get rashes from the harsh chemicals on the sea.

And maybe perhaps they get nauseous or have some other sort of symptoms related to cologne.

So, we're both in the same situation, but a person with environmental sensitivity just

is impacted more by the stimuli that's around them. And what we're finding is these people who

are environmentally sensitive also have significantly more paranormal experiences.

I think they did one research looked at sort of sent a survey out to people who were categorized

as environmentally sensitive. 74% of those had paranormal experiences.

Well, when I did my research in Scotland, I found that people who were environmentally sensitive

had I think three times as many paranormal or anomalous experiences than the general population.

So, you know, we all have this ability to sense what's going on in the environment. However,

some are just better at it. You know, all radios have the basic equipment to pick up or tune

in radio waves. However, some are just more refined and sophisticated and able to pick up

things more clearly. These environmentally sensitive people maybe just have sort of this

superior biological radio. And if ghosts are something that happens in the environment,

so if there is residuals or telepathic distress signals in the environment that are trapped,

you would make sense that these people probably would pick it up more than the average person.

I've always kind of thought, and I don't know that it makes any sense, but I've always kind of thought

that people who are able to experience it maybe are more open to it because you know,

there's just so much coming in at you all the time constantly. You know, you're bombarded with

lots of things every day. And so sometimes I think maybe people just aren't open to it. They

don't, it's not like they are intentionally shutting it down. They just don't have the space.

There's no bandwidth left for a paranormal activity.

Yeah, I'm finding in recent years, I've been looking more at like,

why is one place haunted at another time? Like, what's the difference between vocations?

Not so much people with locations. And I'm finding that when it at least comes to people,

if they go into an environment, sort of open-minded, and by that I mean,

not disbelieving. You know what I'm saying? You know, not going in there disbelieving,

but being open to the idea that something could occur, I think those people usually have more

experiences. So, you know, I think that there's people who adamantly disbelieve. There's no such

thing as ghost or whatever. And then there's people on the opposite side of the spectrum, which are,

you know, everything's a ghost. I think the middle ground seems to be where people are open to the

idea. In other words, they don't go around disbelieving it. They're open to the possibility of it.

And it seems like those types of people, if you're looking for like a good space, headspace to be,

it's probably there. So, maybe I think what you're saying is probably accurate to some degree.

And one other thing I'm going to ask you about is ghostly experience. That in the book,

you talk about psychological aspects plus changes in internal or energy, excuse me,

changes in internal energy or bioenergetics. I don't have my glasses on as you can tell.

External information acquisition equals ghostly experience. Could you kind of dive into that

just a little bit? Yeah. So, I actually think that these ghostly experiences,

kind of like crisis operations, are just a series of complex processes. So, it's not as simple

as waking up and witnessing a ghost or a crisis operation of your aunt or whatever.

There's a series of complex processes which are occurring consciously as well as unconsciously,

which sort of set the stage for these ghostly experiences. So, emotions and psychological aspects

have always been linked with paranormal phenomenon. This is all the way back to the early

psychical researchers who believe that height and emotions are necessary for paranormal

phenomena to occur. So, crisis, trauma, acute stress, life-fretting events, these things cause

an explosion of emotional distress and turmoil that kind of reverberate throughout your body

and it affects you mentally and physically. So, acute emotional shifts related to crisis are

sort of the starting point for the catalyst for ghostly phenomenon. You know, in the ghost

studies, I talk about, you know, that being the start of it. And so, the instance of my aunt,

that example that we've been talking about, the start of that is her having a crisis event,

which is obviously dying. That sets off numerous things internally for her and leads to biological

changes inside of her. So, if I think I'm going to die, my emotions are going to be pretty heightened.

My emotions are heightened. It's going to impact sort of the internal part of me.

And then that internal part of me sort of leaks out into the environment and then it reaches,

if you want to think about this, and I go over step by step for all these things in there. So,

it's hard to sort of condense into one little paragraph. But all these things really

take into account sort of like the ingredients of a paranormal encounter. So, if anyone's interested

in it, you know, on my website, I have, it's hauntedtheories.com. I rate a couple little

articles about what it is. I went a couple different articles on sort of the psychological,

or the environmental, the bio-energetic fluctuations that kind of occur, psychological aspects,

changes in internal energy, plus environmental things, and that kind of work goes come from.

The book was written, and I always say this, I wrote the book. The book came out in 2017,

but the book was actually written probably two years previous to that. So,

now it's 2024, right? So, it's been a little while.

Yeah, has anything in your thought process or your research changed since you wrote the book?

I honestly, yeah, and that's the thing. It's like, it changes every day to something great.

Almost a month. It's kind of hard to say that, but you look at things, you add more information to

things, and you know, who I've gone on to other projects since this book. So, it's always difficult to

sometimes, for me at least, when I'm on a project, I'm giving that project a hundred percent.

So, looking back at something I did seven years ago, because sometimes be a little bit challenging.

Oh, yeah. I mean, I just read it. It's for me. It's much, much fresher in my brain.

Yeah. So, you know, I always tell people, it's like, you know, the stuff I talk about here is,

you know, I still stand by it, but when people come up to me, like if I do conferences and stuff,

and they ask me specifics about the book, I'm like, oh my god, this is going to sound horrible,

but I don't remember. Oh, I get that. Yeah, you know, it's tough to do, and I always tell myself,

it's like, I got to reread the book. But, you know, the core parts are there. You know,

you have your psychological part, you have your environmental part, you have your bio-energetic part,

which is bio-energetics is basically stuff that happens inside us. And then we talked about

telepathic distress messages. All these things kind of come together. And I, in my book, I talk

about how the combination of all these things really kind of leads to a ghostly experience.

It was an interesting read to me because it gave me a little different way to think about things.

And especially that telepathic distress, in that how it makes sense to me that if your aunt was

to be able to reach you, to tell you she was passing, does it matter about time? Could you still get

that message 50 years from now? You know what I mean? It's like, is there a loop that could replay

like the story about the woman in her house and here and mom, oh, mom, and what is that? And I

think I think what we're all looking for is here's what that was. Here's the definitive answer.

But you do give an example too about, you know, how phones have changed over the years. You know,

there was a time you couldn't imagine picking up a device and hearing your loved one on the other

end. Now I could send a message to you in Ohio and you'll get it one second later.

And I can send you a photo. I could send you all kinds of things. And we can communicate that way.

You know, that's in my lifetime. I'm old, but in my lifetime, that wasn't there. The internet

wasn't there when I was a kid. Think how that's changed everything. So, you know, think about

research into paranormal, the paranormal. That could change, you know, and I think it does take a

lot of people looking into it and studying it. I talked to some guys last night. It was really

interesting conversation, but they have this haunted location and they like to use it in their

words as a lab. And so there's one entity that seems to be very dark in there. Now I've never

been there. So I can't confirm this, but I've read a lot of people's reviews who went there and

they seem to be experiencing it. But I said, I mean, can you get rid of it? Can you, what can you do?

And he said, then I can't study it if I get rid of it. I was like, oh, never really thought of it

like that, but you're right. So there's just so many people kind of studying different aspects of it

that I like to think one day we could know more. And maybe everybody, you know, the collective kind

of comes together and it helps explain it. And there's things in your book that helped explain

things to me that in ways I hadn't thought about. Yeah. And, you know, I, I'm the goal is to just think

outside the books. And, and I think, you know, we're with, with, with TV, it's, it's usually a one or

two things about what ghosts are. You know, it's residual. It's an intelligent haunting. Oh, it's a

demon. You know, and I think that those, not to say that those don't exist, but I think there's

other things that could be going on as well. So if you really just only focus on every,

every case or every haunting being one of those three things, you're going to find things that

line up to it. But if you open your mind and look at other possibilities like telepathy or you

mentioned like time loops or things like that, I think you just really just become more enchanted

with it. So the idea of some of a paranormal occurrence or ghostly apparition, not being like a

discarnate soul that's come back to haunted location, but rather it just being sort of the result

of telepathy or something along those lines, we think it's less cool or less sexy or less, less

something. But actually, it's not. It's actually, it's my, from my perspective, a little bit more

intrigue. You know, in the book, I talk about how my thoughts or my hypotheses don't explain

every type of ghostly encounter there is. So my hypothesis about the ghost doesn't really explain

the intelligent haunting. So if you're sitting with someone and talking about actually physically

communicating with a ghost or something like that, that doesn't, my thoughts and hypothesis don't

line up with that. So that's okay. And you know, as we move forward with research, it's from,

from my perspective, it's just a little bit more about having fun and just enchanting yourself

every day with stuff. Do you have any current projects you're working on in the paranormal world

books? Yeah, I do a lot of, I do a lot of writing. So I do a working on a book right now

about we went into a haunted location. Me and a several other people, one was a physician,

another was a molecular biologist and another was a computer engineer. So we went into a place

and we were there for a couple days and we took, we just basically did an investigation.

And we also did a questionnaire and gave it to I think 240 people who went to the house as well.

So we're just going through all the data that we got from that. We're going to write a book about that.

That's interesting. Yeah, I think so. Sort of like, why is this location have so many ghost

lake experiences? And obviously, there's no way to definitively answer that, but we give some

ideas about what could be going on. So that's what we're working on now. And if people go to my

website, I have, I write articles and different stuff. So I'm always doing something.

I'm usually always right. If I feel like at least three hours a week, I'm doing something ghost

related. So I'm not part of a ghost hunting team. So I think everyone will purchase things

differently. So a lot of people will go to a lot of locations and kind of spend the weekend there

every weekend or once a month where I'm more of the guy that's reading and looking at past

experiences and writing stuff up. So we're all attacking this differently. Not to say I don't go

to a haunted locations, but it's not, it's probably not as frequently as everyone else in the

field. Now, I'll put a link wherever people are listening to this and they can click on it and

it'll take them right to your website, hauntedtheories.com. And you also have a haunted theories

Facebook page and on Twitter or XX. X sounds so weird to me. I can't every time I say that,

it's like, what? What's X? But it's also there on the theories. And the book is the ghost

studies new perspectives on the origins of paranormal experiences. I downloaded it from Amazon.

And so people can get it there and I'm assuming wherever books are sold.

Yeah, you can pretty much get it anywhere.

Well, Brandon, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me.

The book itself is there's a lot of heavy stuff in there. I think most people could pull quite a

bit out of it. Absolutely. I mean, I took, there was some things that I wrote down so I could go

back too late or not just for this conversation. But I went up to and I highlighted them because I

have a Kindle. So I just highlighted them. And yeah, and there's a lot of like case examples of

stories. But that's just, you know, for the first book, I think I got a lot of learn from this.

Yeah. And there was some really interesting things that you brought up that I had never thought

about. And I thank you for that.

And that wraps up our conversation with Brandon Masulo about his book, The Ghost Studies.

New perspectives on the origins of paranormal experiences. You can buy the book on Amazon

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patreon.com slash the Grave Talks. I'm Carol Hughes and for all of us here at The Grave Talks,

thank you for listening.