In the first half of the program, screenwriter, playwright and NYU faculty member Jeffrey Stanley discussed his lifelong fascination with the supernatural, his adventures staying in haunted hotels, conducting a Ouija board séance, EVP session, and apparently capturing ghost images along with an adorable ghost-hunting family. Related Videos: Hotel Colorado/Bachelors Grove Cemetery.
Stanley recounted a mind-blowing experience he had at nineteen, when he and some friends created a makeshift Ouija board out of paper and used a credit card for the planchette. After a question was asked the credit card began moving rapidly back and forth from A to Z, he reported, noting that the spirit identified itself as the 'Alpha and Omega' or Jesus. "When you throw open the door... whenever you get an iconic historical figure, question it," he said. Stanley recounted his friend's experience contacting the spirit of deceased guitar legend Jimi Hendrix. He would ask an obscure biographical question and the board would give the correct answer, Stanley recalled, adding that when asked to sound a note on his friend's guitar a cat ran into the room and smacked the strings.
According to Stanley, many of the spirits he has contacted via Ouija board claim to reside in a heavenly realm. He talked about how his own belief in the afterlife has been informed by The Tibetan Book of the Dead. When we die we go to a place called the Bardo where we stay until the next incarnation, he explained. Sometimes a spirit can get stuck there in a state of morbid self-obsession afraid to move forward, he noted. "It jives very well with what I feel like the spirits themselves have communicated to me over the years," Stanley revealed. He also spoke about his 12-day odyssey aboard the Amtrak Residency for writers.
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The second half of the show featured Open Lines. Dave, a trucker driving through Texas, shared details from the night his 7-year-old daughter ran out of her room screaming about seeing a baby in her bed. Dave said he stayed in his daughter's room that night and the next, when something extraordinary happened. "I woke up and I saw that baby," he revealed, adding that he realized it was the spirit of his daughter's older brother who had died at birth. Dave recounted additional encounters with the baby and finally learned it was his daughter's guardian angel.
Amber from San Antonio, Texas, told George about experiencing various paranormal activities and discovering she had an interdimensional portal in her dorm room. Kevin in Boston related a story about his mother who works as a Hospice nurse. According to Kevin, a dying patient told his mom that her friend Judy said hello. She asked around to see if a woman named Judy worked at the facility but found no one with that name there, he explained. Two weeks later, she showed the same patient a photo of her deceased mother and the patient identified her as Judy, Kevin noted.