Text Version:
(Introduction to show begins)
TODD MATTHEWS (Missing Pieces Host): I’m Todd Matthews. This is Missing Pieces on Halloween and tonight our guest is Kimberly Bruklis. Welcome, Kim.
KIMBERLY BRUKLIS (Guest and Program Director of Missing Pieces): Hello. How are you?
TODD: I’m good, thank you. Together, the two of us are basically all that we have on staff here at Missing Pieces besides our transcribers and people that help us out with that type of thing, it’s just the two of us, and the funny thing is, a ghost story brought us together.
KIMBERLY: Yeah.
TODD: It’s really, really, really crazy. I knew Leslie Rule, you know she had a ghost story and she had contacted me about…she wanted to use the Doe Network in one of her books, and I suspect that’s how you came to hear of me in the first place.
KIMBERLY: Yes, Leslie, uh-huh.
TODD: Well, then Kimberly…and I still didn’t know Kimberly at the time, she put a really nice sort of a thank-you to me in regards to the Tent Girl case on her ghost story website, and it’s true-ghost-stories, and I saw it and I just sent her an email. And, you know, we’ve become friends after that, and I told her I wanted to do a radio show, with many other things that I wanted to do, and then she told me that she knew some people at WCAN Radio that did that kind of thing. She kind of put me in contact with them and we developed this program and now we’re doing it on our own, but I think we’re working out now better than we ever have.
KIMBERLY: Yeah, I think it works out great.
TODD: So, it was funny how life brought us together to work on this type of thing.
KIMBERLY: It is.
TODD: But now we’ve both had ghostly experiences in our lives and that’s why we want to focus on it; this is our third Halloween Special.
KIMBERLY: Uh-huh.
TODD: I can’t believe this much time has passed.
KIMBERLY: Oh, I know. I can’t believe it either.
TODD: Already the third. So, Kimberly lives in a haunted house and I sort of grew up in a house that we’d call haunted but we didn’t talk about it very much, not in this area, you just kind of keep things like that to yourself. I did have some unusual experiences with the Tent Girl case that I still can’t explain with science, and I have to adjust it to paranormal. There’s no way to explain some of the things that happened, that I thought I knew there was some type of connection at the time, that I found out was true later on, after we’d finally made the identification of the Tent Girl. I can’t explain it. I can’t explain how I knew what she looked like…there are just so many things that came to me over the years, and in a very unusual way at times, but there was just no explanation for it. But, you know, you see a lot of psychics and paranormal people on television that often are not what they’re cracked up to be and there are always people out there that are not the real thing, but I did find that Kimberly has been involved with the real thing at her home, and actually I’ve had the opportunity to visit her in Tampa…
KIMBERLY: Uh-huh.
TODD: …and it’s been great. She’s like family. So, how did you first know that you lived in a haunted house?
KIMBERLY: I’ve always lived in haunted houses. My mother’s home was very haunted, but I’d never ever seen a ghost in that house. There were a lot of audible sounds and strange things happening, but I never physically saw a ghost in that house. And then, of course, my husband I got married and moved to a home near an Air Force base, and I don’t know if that house was haunted by actually a ghost, I believe it was more of a lower level type of negative energy, and we basically fled that house. We didn’t live in it, not even 11 months. We ended up in the house that we’re in now, and in this house is where I actually saw my first ghost. (Read about Kimberly's current home here)
TODD: Now, are we talking like ‘Amityville Horror’ fleeing the house, or just you had enough of it, “I’ve got to go!”?
KIMBERLY: No, basically, the icebreaker was…we had suspected things were going on and my husband; he was a big skeptic then, and of course, I had experienced things before so I knew things weren’t right…doors were opening on their own; I would hear like a child crying and you couldn’t tell where it was coming from, it was just…whatever room you went it, when it started, if I walked into one room, I could hear it in another room, and I’d go in that room and it would sound like it was coming from another room, and I just couldn’t tell where it coming. And I was actually physically assaulted in that house and we basically thought that we didn’t have a choice, that we had to stay, because you know we were newlyweds, we were pretty much broke, nowhere to go. And a pastor and his family had moved in next door, and my husband and I had gone out to visit our family, and when we got home, the pastor had met us in the driveway and told us that he had almost called the police because he heard violent screaming and profanity, lights were flickering on and off, he thought somebody was in distress and he was going over there to see what he could do to help, and as soon as he stepped foot on the property, it just ceased, and he told his wife, ‘Something’s not right.” And so we told him what was going on in the house, and he told us, “You really need to get out because you’re really in a potentially dangerous situation.” So, I basically called the man that we bought the home from and I said, “Look, you know, the house is haunted,” and I told him some of the things that were going on. At first, we thought that somebody had a key to the house because we hadn’t changed the locks at first, but once we put deadbolts and changed the locks and the doors were still opening, and I’m talking about deadbolts, literally, you’d come home and find the doors wide open and the deadbolts would look like they had traveled through…there was no explanation for the deadbolts to be engaged because you could only unlocked it with the key…(Read more about this home here)
TODD: Uh-huh.
KIMBERLY: …so how could that piece of metal travel through a doorframe and open the door? You know what I’m saying?
TODD: Oh yeah. Really.
KIMBERLY: And it was just…so we told him, “You know we can’t live here anymore,” and he said, “Well, I’ll take the property back but I won’t give you anything for it.” Because we had done a lot of remodeling to the house, and I think that kind of was a catalyst to the activities starting up, because while we were moving in, we never experienced anything, it was after we started remodeling the home, painting it, you know just doing a lot of things to the house, that the activity started. So, he bought the house back. We signed the deed over to him and we basically started renting the house that we’re living in now and then we ended up buying it. But, you know, we got here, and I saw a ghost while we were moving in and I thought it was an intruder because it looked so real, and then from there on it’s been history…just so much activity, so many things have been going on. You know, not just me, other people that come here see things and experience things and basically we’ve just learned to adjust and live with it and deal with it.
TODD: You know, I don’t dwell on it, but you know we’ve had similar experiences here, especially you know right around the time that the Tent Girl identification came. You know there was some presence connected with that particular case…I don’t know what it was; I don’t want to say that it was her…I don’t know what it was. I don’t know if it was my mind creating poltergeist-type events, I don’t know, but I know it stopped…a percentage of it stopped when the Tent Girl was identified, but you know there are other things that I didn’t feel were connected to her that would go on. But still, from time to time, it’ll pop up…just noises. I remember hearing noises that would scratch on the wall…it would go up the wall, across the ceiling, down the other wall, under the bed, you know, and it was just like only something inside of the walls could have done that…traveling.
KIMBERLY: Oh yeah.
TODD: And there was just no explanation for it. My wife encountered things, she felt things actually touch her shoulder, thought it was me, you know just countless incidences have happened. The children have seen things. They’ve seen things that they’ve described to me that I know that they’re telling me the truth because it’s something that I’ve seen that I had not described to them, and they were describing the same event…
KIMBERLY: Exactly. Right.
TODD: …and I know that they have encountered something that I have. And there was some relief in that, it’s odd to say, but when you’re thinking, “Well, maybe I’m just…I’m crazy. Maybe I’m losing…”
KIMBERLY: Oh, exactly.
TODD: “…my mind,” and then you have a child who comes and tell you, and the innocence of a child, that’s not really capable of lying to you, tell you something, and you say, “Ahh, that validates it. I’m not crazy.” But then you have a bigger problem. You have a paranormal experience to deal with and, you know, who knows how that’s going to turn out? You have no control over it.
KIMBERLY: Right. Exactly.
TODD: So, have you ever been truly afraid? You know, I mean besides…I know you left the house, but I mean, have you really been terrified?
KIMBERLY: Um, I was in this house. Now, in the other house, I was always terrified. There was a terrible feeling in that house, and you know basically, that’s why we fled, because we couldn’t…we weren’t prepared to deal to with that. I didn’t know the things that I know now. I wasn’t educated as far as, you know, paranormal phenomena, back then as I am now.
TODD: Because that forced you to study. You know, you began to study paranormal experiences.
KIMBERLY: Oh, absolutely.
TODD: Well, and the Internet allowed that to happen. You know I was able to research and find things too that I saw and that I see described in other areas, so I think, again, another level of validation. I know I’m not crazy because somebody way over there in England experienced exactly the same thing I did, and I didn’t know about it until I researched on the Internet.
KIMBERLY: Exactly, and I always encourage everyone that contacts me, that are asking for help, I always encourage them to do research to find out the history of the home and the property. And I also really, really encourage them to educate themselves, as much as they can, about paranormal phenomena because it allows them to learn how to deal with it. They…people don’t realize that when you get frightened by certain events…
TODD: Uh-huh.
KIMBERLY: …and that energy, that…when you get scared, you release energy, and they feed off that energy. You are empowering them when you feel that fear, so if you educate yourself and you know when to stand your ground, you know, because basically ghosts aren’t going to hurt you.
TODD: Uh-huh.
KIMBERLY: I’m mean, they’ll scare…they can scare you.
TODD: And cause you to hurt yourself.
KIMBERLY: Oh yeah, definitely, you know. And even my children…my children are very educated on the facts of paranormal activity. They know, basically, they’re kind of like me, if they hear something, or somebody tells them something, they sort of analyze it and that’s what I do when my husband tells me, he says, “Do you hear that?” and I will try to figure out the most logical explanation for what’s going on before I will finally accept that it has to be something paranormal.
TODD: Well, I want to try to find another reason, another possibility for it, you know, and there’s kind of a nice feeling about knowing that something exists beyond us.
KIMBERLY: Oh yeah.
TODD: It gives you comfort, in some ways, knowing that there’s an existence beyond and you have run into some type of evidence of this.
KIMBERLY: Right.
TODD: In the world of crime and investigation, what I have learned is sometimes you run into psychics that are not always what they should be…
KIMBERLY: Hmm…
TODD: …and I had a psychic, years ago, tell me that a person was deceased, that was actually missing.
KIMBERLY: Uh-huh.
TODD: That person, later on, surfaced.
KIMBERLY: Right.
TODD: And then, the psychic’s explanation was “It was the demons giving false data.”
KIMBERLY: Ohh.
TODD: And you know you have to think that, in their world, it makes sense, but is that just a way to justify, “I was wrong.”?
KIMBERLY: Right. Yeah.
TODD: So, it’s hard, and I never send people to psychics. You know I have a lot of people that are seeking resolution in crime, and I think that if they need to see a psychic, I think the opportunity will present itself, but I would never pick somebody and say, “You know, you need to talk to a psychic.
KIMBERLY: Oh yeah, there are a lot of con artists. You know people do contact me and they say, “Well, a friend of mine knows so-and-so and they said that they could come in for $30 and get rid of the ghosts,” and I’m very leery of that. You know I tell them, I urge them, “Don’t do it,” you know. Because people do feed on, you know there are a lot of con artists that feed on people who are vulnerable like that.
TODD: Well, because you’re into a desperate society.
KIMBERLY: Right.
TODD: Often these people are truly desperate…
KIMBERLY: Uh-huh.
TODD: …and we had an incident; we had at least one time with Missing Pieces that we captured what we call an EVP, Electronic Voice Phenomenon.
KIMBERLY: Oh, yeah.
TODD: And that was…
KIMBERLY: Yes, definitely.
TODD: …when we interviewed Randy Schaffer (Episode 64), and his son, Brian Schaffer, had vanished, and his wife had died prior to his son’s disappearance, and now, unfortunately, Randy was killed earlier this year, himself, in an accident where a tree had fallen on him, and so I’ve not had the opportunity to ask him about the possibility of discussing this EVP. I told him about it. I think he was open to the possibility but I don’t really think he wanted to…because we thought we could hear what we thought was Brian.
KIMBERLY: Yes, exactly. Yeah. It was very…it was very obvious when I was reviewing the audio, when I was doing the editing…
TODD: Uh-huh.
KIMBERLY: …that there was something there, because I can see it in the program that I use to edit the audio for Missing Pieces, and I can always see when something stands out and I will immediately go to that to see what it is. It may be, you know, like a dog barking in the background, but this was definitely a male voice and he said, “Brian” right when Randy was talking about contacting the police and it was amazing.
TODD: It was really clear. Now, you could hear it afterwards but during the process, you know, that wasn’t something that we could hear.
KIMBERLY: Right. Yeah, you couldn’t hear it…yeah, while you were doing the interview with Randy, you couldn’t hear it, it just picked up on the recorder, uh huh.
TODD: Well, he ended up doing a paranormal show where he had a group of psychic kids that came in, and we helped arrange that for him, and they didn’t get anywhere with it. I did contact the producers to let them know that Randy had passed away himself and I feel like maybe they could have come back or something before, but it just changed everything. He has passed away too, but I have a feeling that they’re all together, wherever you go from here, you know, so…
KIMBERLY: Definitely.
TODD: …hopefully he found what he was looking for.
KIMBERLY: Exactly. Yeah.
TODD: So now, you have sisters…other family members that have actually come to your home and have experienced things in your home?
KIMBERLY: Oh yeah, uh-huh. Yeah, definitely. One of my sisters was actually a skeptic herself. She had experiences herself but never in my home, and I got the typical response from her whenever I would tell her that, you know, I call her up scared, you know, if I hear something, or there’s something going on, the dog is going crazy attacking something I can’t see, and she’d come over and look around and say, “Oh, you’re letting your imagination get the best of you” and just trying to dismiss it. But then I had a birthday party for my son in the month of October, which is the most active month, for some reason. I don’t think it has anything to do with ghosts and goblins, it’s just a coincidence that it’s in October, I think. I don’t know why.
TODD: Do you think it’s because it’s on everybody’s mind at this point in time? I think everybody wants to believe in something.
KIMBERLY: I don’t know. I honestly believe that something happened in this house that we don’t know about, because the people that we purchased the home from…when we were doing a walk-through of the house, before we actually moved in, we couldn’t find anything to rent for a while, they had made some remarks, that when I think about it now, it should have set off some red alarms for us, but I guess that we were so desperate when we got out of that other house that we didn’t pay attention to the signs. But they made some remarks about the home and over a period of a couple of years, they had made some remarks, you know, they continued to say things, and then upon interviewing neighbors and stuff, we started to kind of put pieces together, but we don’t know exactly the history of the home and the property, but I do suspect that something happened here. I don’t know if it’s…I do know that a child passed away in the home that was one of the family members, and I don’t know if perhaps they performed a séance or played with a Ouija Board and possibly tried to contact her and opened a portal or let some things in, I don’t know. I do know that there is some history to this property of this home that we just haven’t discovered yet, because it’s very, very active. It’s…we don’t see the same energy all the time. It’s not like one specific ghost haunting our home. I, myself, have seen no less than eleven different ghosts in this house…if they’re ghosts. I don’t know.
TODD: Do you think they’re back here to tell us something or just…? You know I’ve heard a lot of different stories; some are back to give you a message, sometimes they’re just re-enacting…
KIMBERLY: Right.
TODD: …just kind of like a shadow just running through the final phases again and they might not even know they’re dead.
KIMBERLY: Uh-huh.
TODD: You know lots of times I think it would be hard to not know I’m dead, though.
KIMBERLY: Right.
TODD: I hope I know it when…
TODD: The glass insulators.
KIMBERLY: The glass insulators…you gave me those and you said, “Now let me know if anything strange happens with these insulators,” so I basically was doing an investigation with my EMF detector and my infrared camera and I was…for like a week, I tried to see if I got any phenomena around that, around those two pieces, and I didn’t get anything.
TODD: Now, I didn’t tell you a lot. I didn’t tell you a lot, and I did it on purpose. I didn’t give you a lot of data on them and I think you probably actually maybe gave up.
KIMBERLY: Yeah, I gave up. I pretty much just got them and I stuck them in a memorabilia cabinet, which is a glass cabinet. They were tucked away, and out of the wild blue, I’m in the kitchen and here I see this person coming towards me, and I don’t know why, but I emailed you and I told you, “Todd, I just saw a ghost in my dining room.” And they I talked to you…was it the next day, or a few days later?
TODD: It was a day or two.
KIMBERLY: You told me the significance of that date and I was like, “Oh, my God,” and I went on the Internet and I looked up the Tent Girl. I went to your website and I looked her up and I looked at her description and that’s exactly what I saw, and I’m like, “Oh, wow, this is amazing,” you know, so next year I’ll be prepared. I’ll have everything set up facing those insulators and see if I get anything on film.
TODD: And what about people who would say that we are crazy…
KIMBERLY: (Laughs)
TODD: …for even thinking about something like that?
KIMBERLY: Yeah, well, I don’t know.
TODD: I don’t know, for me, if it’s the house that’s haunted, or I don’t know if people are haunted or houses are haunted, but historically, some of the same events that have happened to relatives before me, have happened to me…
KIMBERLY: Uh-huh.
TODD: …and you know you don’t know where it all started. You have no idea where it really started and it’s all…if it’s the same thing or the same type of phenomenon, it has followed us for more than one generation and over pretty great distances.
KIMBERLY: You know there’s a Frank, I don’t recall his name, but he does have this theory that paranormal activity, you know, people that experience it or are very perceptive to it, are genetically prone to it, and I kind of believe that theory because everybody in my family, at one time or another, has had some sort of paranormal experience.
TODD: And some people don’t even see it as paranormal experience. They’ll…they’ve got it so explained of what it is to the point that it’s just some kind of crazy event that occurred, but it’s explained as something.
KIMBERLY: Right.
TODD: And they don’t even relate it as a paranormal experience, you know, it’s just something crazy that happened one night and somebody broke in on us but we never caught them. I’ve heard a lot of stories from people that actually thought that somebody was in their house and then they got out claiming that they don’t even know how they got out…that the doors were all locked and I thought, “Well, maybe it was something else that didn’t need a door.”
KIMBERLY: Yeah. Right. You know, something similar to that happened to my husband and I, we thought we had intruders. We heard everything being destroyed. You could tell…the fish aquarium, you could tell…specific sounds, you could tell exactly where it was coming from. Like, we could tell the aquarium door was being slammed and the grandfather clock was being unlocked; you could hear all those specific sounds, we knew exactly where they were in the house.
TODD: Uh-huh. You knew what you heard.
KIMBERLY: The cabinet doors in the kitchen slamming…we thought…I was worried most for my children because they were in another room and I wanted to get to my kids, and my husband’s like, “Are you kidding? You’re going to go out there and they’re going to kill you.” But we went out to go get the kids and when we came out…as soon as we opened…well, I was whispering to my husband, “Are you ready go? You know, we need to get the kids,” and it got real silent, and my husband said, “Oh my God, they heard you. They’re going to come in here and kill us.” And we were basically petrified, you know, but we went out to get the kids and discovered not one single thing broken or out of place and all the doors and windows and everything were locked. So we had no explanation for it but we both heard it.
TODD: I’ve heard very specific things break. Something that you know what it would sound like if it broke, like a certain object, like that was definitely that picture, that glass mirror, that fell off the wall.
KIMBERLY: Yes.
TODD: You could hear it slamming across the fireplace and you’d go in there and it’s hanging up on the wall where it should be, and you know that you heard it break.
KIMBERLY: Yes, because they mimic sounds. They’re very good at mimicking sounds and what I have discovered is, if I hear a glass break, if…okay, one example, if hear that the dishes rattle at my kitchen sink and I go in there and I don’t find the dishes out of place, they’re all like they were the last time I saw them…
TODD: Uh-huh.
KIMBERLY: …but if I rattle those dishes, it’s not exactly the same sound. It’s distinguishable enough for me to know what the sound is, but they don’t mimic it exactly. So, I could get a pan and rattle it and it won’t be the same sound that I heard but I knew what I heard was a pan rattling. Do you know what I mean?
TODD: It’s just the image that pops into your mind. You think you know what it is.
KIMBERLY: Right. Exactly. Yeah, like there have been times when I told my husband, “This is what I heard,” and I’ll go to a door to unlock it and slam the door so he could hear what I found, but I can’t get it to mimic…I can’t get that sound exactly the way I heard it but I knew it was that door because no other door makes that sound. So they do mimic sounds…
TODD: Uh-huh.
KIMBERLY: …pretty close.
TODD: But why?
KIMBERLY: I think to get attention. You know sometimes they just do it for attention. You know possibly to scare you to feed them that energy that you release when you get scared. Maybe they want help and they don’t know how to ask for it, you know, it’s hard to tell.
TODD: I mean, there are so many explanations for it because sometimes it seems like a higher form of intelligence; sometimes it seems like a lower of intelligence. You know it’s really hard to tell. You know there might be several difference types of energies out there, you know, for whatever reason.
KIMBERLY: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Uh-huh. You have to know that there are various forms, uh-huh.
TODD: Now, you…basically what you’re talking about seems more like a poltergeist-type of activity, and a poltergeist is not exactly always technically a ghost.
KIMBERLY: Right. Exactly.
TODD: And I really think that’s what we were experiencing, originally, before we had the experience with what we call ‘the Tent Girl experience.’ Mostly what we saw wasn’t really specific around an individual entity, it was something that seemed to just keep digging at a person, and sometimes other people could hear it but there would always be one person in particular that it would be most connected to…
KIMBERLY: Right.
TODD: …or the person that first started hearing it and then other people could hear it along with them, the first person woke up, you know, it always seemed to be me that would hear it first here, but it would still be carrying on when you get somebody that’s woken up, and you say, “Do you hear that?” But now, the Tent Girl was a little different. Of course it was still something that was connected to me but it seemed like it had its own individual personality and it wasn’t there really to scare me. It wasn’t something like, “Boo!” It was like a presence that you could feel; a glimpse that you could catch out of the corner of your eye…
KIMBERLY: Because she…yeah, she wanted to let you know that she was there.
TODD: …a whisper in your ear.
KIMBERLY: Uh-huh.
TODD: You know I could hear a voice talking to me that sounded like it was somebody walking toward me, talking to me, and it would pass on through me, and you could turn around and it would going another way, and I thought I heard…and all it was just a voice and you could actually see where you thought the voice was coming from…nothing there. You know you can kind of follow a sound with your eyes…
KIMBERLY: Right.
TODD: …and you could see where you thought it was and there was nothing there and it goes right straight through you and out the back side and on through the wall and you hear it getting more distant from you.
KIMBERLY: Right.
TODD: But there were pieces of words and names and places that I heard during that and I would write them down often, and you know some of those things did help me piece together the final clues.
KIMBERLY: Yeah.
TODD: Because I knew what I was looking for at the time, I thought there were just certain things that were said…and I planned on saying more before I did this interview…before I did this…who’s interviewing who? Me or you? But there are things that I just don’t want to say now, now that I’m on the phone and now that I could, I don’t want to repeat them, because I’m afraid to re-experience them. And that’s crazy.
KIMBERLY: Did that entity frighten you?
TODD: Not really, it’s just something like you think, “I don’t want to be there again.”
KIMBERLY: Right.
TODD: You know there are times that I was afraid that I was hearing things and really didn’t know what it was or why it was there, I did see some very graphic sleepwalking events where I thought I was seeing what was supposed to be the Tent Girl, very graphic images that it was the image not the being that scared me. It was what I was seeing that was frightening to me…the state of the person’s decay, was what was disturbing to me, and you don’t want to talk about some things because you’re afraid you’ll re-experience them.
KIMBERLY: Oh yeah, I know.
TODD: You know?
KIMBERLY: I’ve been there myself.
TODD: It’s like, ‘speak of the devil.’
KIMBERLY: Oh yeah.
TODD: You don’t want to bring something up and get something started, you know, because I don’t want to go back to that spot where I was doubting my sanity, doubting the whole world around me, it was a bad time trying to resolve the Tent Girl because it really was…there were some dark areas there and I felt real alone and very isolated…
KIMBERLY: Uh-huh.
TODD: …and not even sure if I was okay in my mind, and you know, and remembering it and talking about it, I can think about it and it’s different, but when I’m talking to you about it, it’s very specific to me now and I really don’t ever want to be there again.
KIMBERLY: Yeah.
TODD: It ended positively, but I’m afraid of what happened before. I don’t want to fall into that cycle again and I never want to live that life again. But now the blessings that have been since then, you know, all this brought everything that’s in my life now to me, including you. It’s all been because of that particular event in my life. It’s brought very special people into my life and we’ve gotten to do very positive things for other people and we’re still doing it. And so it’s been a good thing and I want to focus on all the positives and go forward with those.
KIMBERLY: Right.
TODD: And we have slowed down on Missing Pieces now. We’re not doing as many shows; we were doing one a week, and it was really hard for both of us to do that. We’ve got very active families, very active lives, and it was very difficult to do it. It’s not that we’ve slowed down because we want to quit; we don’t want to quit, but we’re focusing on things that really need our attention and some of the older cases, some of the older shows that we’ve worked on, we’re actually getting feedback from some of them that are causing us to go back and re-examine them, so it’s more that we have a big full basketful of information and we keep going back and reassessing these other cases so you know we don’t really know where we’re going to grow to. We really have no idea how many…when it’s time to say we can’t do it anymore, I don’t know.
KIMBERLY: Right.
TODD: How do you feel about that?
KIMBERLY: Well, you know, you know me, I love doing Missing Pieces, and there’s nothing more…that I find more satisfying than helping these families, you know, that we work with and the victims and the authorities and everything. I would like to see all these cases solved and resolved. And, you’re right, there are certain things in our lives that are needing our attention right now and we did kind of slow down, but we are going back and we’re updating some of the cases that we’ve previously featured because we don’t want those to get kind of lost in the archives, we want to keep them…the purpose of the show was to keep them out there in the public’s attention, you know.
TODD: We went more into a maintenance type phase with a lot of these things, and you know, you might not see a new show pop up but you can read there and see new information that’s been posted on some old cases and we’ve had some pretty interesting updates that people might want to look back into, and a lot of them have some really strange twists of fate and it’s like a story that you couldn’t make up and tell anyone, you just have to go and read it and things that we couldn’t say during the process of the interview that we knew and that had to come out a little bit later on.
KIMBERLY: Exactly.
TODD: But I’ve definitely enjoyed doing it, and I look forward to doing it for a long time. I can’t imagine saying, “I can’t do it any more.”
KIMBERLY: You can’t be doing that.
TODD: No, we can’t be doing that. But, I think it’s kept us out of a lot of trouble, you know. I know that we’ve received blessings because we’ve tried to help people; I know that, and that might have been the only thing to keep us out of a lot of trouble. (Chuckles) But, you know, sometimes, the ones that come…when it’s time, you know you have somebody that you want to interview, but it’s like…and I just gauge it on this, without having the pressure of having to do a weekly show now, has helped me out a lot because it’s one of those things that you know when it’s time…
KIMBERLY: Right.
TODD: …because something needs to take place or something…it’s just like, it hits me and I’m like, “Okay, it’s getting really close to the time you need to do this.” And it usually works where it’s really pivotal to a certain event or something that’s happened and something just lets you know that it’s time to interview that person, it’s time to connect with that person, it’s time for an update. And so I’ve got updates on two of the former shows that we’ve had, just today. People that I knew before we did the show, and did the show with them, and now I have things that I can go back and re-evaluate and try to maybe create an update.
KIMBERLY: Right. And I’m sure the listeners of the show can appreciate the updates, you know.
TODD: Uh-huh.
KIMBERLY: Because a lot of the shows you see on TV, some of the crime files, you see the episode, and you’re like, “Well, what happened after that?” You know it kind of sticks with you, some of these stories, they really hit home, you know, they go right straight to your heart and you wonder, you know, “What’s going on with this case?” and unless it’s being written about in the media, you know the public has no way of knowing updates of the case, so it’s good that we go back and we kind of keep everybody updated.
TODD: Well, commercial radio and commercial televisions shows, they don’t…I don’t think they go back like we do because you usually develop a relationship with the person you’ve interviewed, or you already had a relationship with them, I’ll say that, and you go back from time to time and you just keep checking. And usually when, you know I’ve been on talk shows before, when they’re done with you, they’ve forgotten who you are before you’re even on the jet going back home.
KIMBERLY: Right.
TODD: And that’s usually that they’re done with you; they’ve already moved onto the next show, and I don’t ever want to be anything like that, and I think we do keep going back and I often flip back through the archives and re-read a few passages or try to remember something and go back and read it. And you know we transcribe, we have really good Transcriptionist, one in particular, that really takes care of everything for us, and she’s probably really frustrated because we’ve not sent her a show in a while, so hopefully this will make her feel better and give her something to do, but I think those transcriptions are as important, and sometimes more important than the spoken word.
KIMBERLY: And you and I both know, that’s a lot a work.
TODD: Oh, wow, yes, because we tried to do them. You know we did them at first.
KIMBERLY: Yes.
TODD: I don’t know how many you did. I did a few and I’m just not, you know, it took somebody that’s truly just a professional Transcriptionist, and we’ve had people that were kind enough to dedicate that professional talent to us, so we can put this information in.
KIMBERLY: Right.
TODD: And you know they’re not making anything, and we’re not making anything. In fact, and I don’t know if anyone knows this, but Kimberly herself donates the web space for Missing Pieces, so we’re all kicking in a lot of different things to make it possible. It’s to help some people if we can and it’s not…I’ve had people that…I’ve had relatives that have said, “I bet you make a fortune doing that show,” and I thought, “No, it actually costs us things to do this show.” But I think it’s important that we do it.
KIMBERLY: Yeah.
TODD: I think it’s important.
KIMBERLY: Our reward is knowing that we are helping those families and those victims, that’s how I personally feel.
TODD: And we’ve really had some interesting experiences that we couldn’t have gotten any other way.
KIMBERLY: Right.
TODD: So, your husband, now that you’ve brought the horrors of ghosts into his life, what does he think?
KIMBERLY: Oh, my goodness. Well, like I told you, he was a skeptic. He saw his first ghost this year.
TODD: Uh-huh.
KIMBERLY: Now, we’ve been together almost 30 years…
TODD: But he’s believed before then, but he just saw…
KIMBERLY: He…yeah, he definitely believed. He was very skeptical. His theory was that, you know some strange things were going on, it’s just that he’s never seen a ghost before…
TODD: Uh-huh.
KIMBERLY: …well that was fixed this year. He did see a ghost this year and it really took a toll on him. He was very upset about it. He was, like you and I, like you described, you kind of go through these phases where you’re kind of questioning, “Did I really see that?”
TODD: Uh-huh.
KIMBERLY: And he kept…he basically kind of kept it to himself, he told me, “I think I saw something.” He got very, kind of distraught about it, and I told him, “Well, tell me what you saw?” So he started to describe it to me, and I said, “John, you saw a ghost.” And he said, “That’s was I thought I saw.” Well, every time I asked John to tell a sister, to tell a friend, you know repeat the story of what he saw, he didn’t want to, and it was because he was still in that phase of…he was trying to…it was sinking in, he was trying to really accept that he really saw what he saw. And I said to him, “Well, now you know how I feel every time I’ve told you that, you know, I’ve seen something and I’m trying to describe it to you and you almost can’t put it into words.
TODD: Well, it’s different to think about it, you know, an experience, and then when you actually hear yourself saying the words, you know because it goes in my mind all the time, but I’m not used to hearing, you know, to talk about it.
KIMBERLY: Right, and you’re afraid to tell anybody. You’re afraid of what they’re going to think, you know?
TODD: Yeah, you don’t want them to think you’re crazy, and that’s why with the crimes that I’ve worked on, you know I try to primarily go with science, but now there’s very, very, very often that you get that gut feeling. You know I’ve told detectives, “Well, just humor me. Just humor me and just consider this possibility.”
KIMBERLY: Right.
TODD: You know I don’t want to say, “I had a dream,” or “I saw this,” or…so [I say], ‘Just humor me with this theory.” And you know some times it works out right away, some times it doesn’t, some times it takes a little time to resolve, and some I’m still waiting on.
KIMBERLY: Right.
TODD: But anybody that…if they read Leslie Rule’s books, and she’s a good friend of both of ours now…’Coast to Coast Ghosts,’ ‘Ghosts In The Mirror' , you’ll see evidence of Kimberly and myself in these books, I think. Here and there, you’re going to see us in these books.
KIMBERLY: Right.
KIMBERLY: Well, I’ve had it for about 15 years, but there was a short spell that I had to take it down because I had experienced some things that were so horrifying that I literally had to consult with a demonologist…
TODD: Uh-huh.
KIMBERLY: …and he told me, “Take the website down, you’re putting too much energy, you’re getting too consumed and obsessed with these people contacting you and you don’t realize how open you’re making yourself and you’re basically inviting these things in. So I would suggest shutting the website down, let things calm down, and then take it from there.” So the website was shut down for a short time, but basically, from the beginning, because I’ve had it on the Internet before, it’s become pretty big now, you know I get like 10,000 hits a month, and I get thousands of people emailing me all the time, but when it was nothing, back 15 years ago, I guess. But, actively, since I shut it down the first time, it’s about 8 or 9 years.
TODD: Well, you know, what you discover, more than other things, something more frightening than the dead, that’s the living that often we encounter out there.
KIMBERLY: Oh yeah.
TODD: And some of the living are far more weird and dangerous than some of the dead, that I know.
KIMBERLY: Oh yeah.
TODD: We’ve both encountered that…very intensely at times, and I think that’s some of the perils of being in the public.
KIMBERLY: Right.
TODD: At times you’re going to hear from some kind of crazy people at times, and I’ve had a hard time from some of them, but I know a lot of people that have been involved in crimes that have had their stalkers and people that really…
KIMBERLY: I’ve had three.
TODD: You know people that just seem like…and I think that we’ve shared one of the three, as a matter of fact. (Chuckles)
KIMBERLY: Oh, yeah! Yeah.
TODD: And I’ve seen a lot of very…people that I would say were wicked people, and you know what? I have to say this; most of them are women.
KIMBERLY: Yeah.
TODD: And I don’t want to throw that at the women out there, but most of the super villains that I’ve encountered on the Internet, have been women.
KIMBERLY: Right. Well, my first two stalkers from my ghost website…
TODD: Uh-huh.
KIMBERLY: …the two that I dealt with, one that I had to threaten a restraining order on, those were men…
TODD: Uh-huh.
KIMBERLY: …two of them were men, one of them threatened to literally come to my home and cut my throat. He told my husband he was going to kill me. And that was another reason why that I had to shut down my website, because at this time, you know I was dealing with this stalker and then all the strange activity in our home. But this most recent one that you and I have both dealt with, this was a woman. Now, she lives on the other side of the world from us, but I do worry about her because she’ll kind of disappear, but she resurfaces.
TODD: Uh-huh.
KIMBERLY: She’s constantly resurfacing.
TODD: Well, I’ve got about three or four ladies like that…ladies, I’ll say ladies, that they’ll go away for a while; they’re like an old great white shark, they’ll go off in other waters, and then they’ll come back again, and it’s just like ‘boom!’ You know, here they are again, just full of vengeance, and you manage to battle them off, and for the most part, most people have learned them; they know what they’re about. So they pretty much actually took care of themselves because so many people have had encounters with them, or witnessed firsthand their encounters, that they pretty much discredit anything that they’re going to do or say.
KIMBERLY: You and I have basically dealt with her over the Internet…
TODD: Uh-huh.
KIMBERLY: …and on the telephone.
TODD: Uh-huh.
KIMBERLY: A friend of yours, which I consider him a friend, but not as you are close to him…
TODD: Yeah.
KIMBERLY: …he really had a personal encounter with her and you know he got the real wrath of it.
TODD: She mentions us frequently on her website and she prays for us, she says. I’ve never seen any help that she’s offered us other than this crazy stuff that she says.
KIMBERLY: Right.
TODD: And I think that people realize that when you get yourself out into the public, you’re going to run into those things and I think we’ve learned better how to deal with them over the years and just to take everything with a grain of salt and don’t let it get you down. It used to be really discouraging to me, why would anybody try to torment other people…
KIMBERLY: Right.
TODD: …just at the fringe of the law, just enough that they won’t get in trouble?
KIMBERLY: Right.
TODD: I don’t know if it makes them feel better or eliminates some of their problems...I don’t know.
KIMBERLY: And I’m sure this interview will have her resurfacing again, but you know, we’ve been dealing with her, so…
TODD: We’ll know she’s listening, right?
KIMBERLY: Pardon?
TODD: We’ll know if she’s listening?
KIMBERLY: Oh yeah, we’ll know. We’ll start seeing things posted all over the Internet and getting emails, we’ll hear from her again, I’m sure.
TODD: No doubt about it. And I truly wish her no harm. I hope everything works out for her and I hope she finds a place where she can be happy…
KIMBERLY: Right.
TODD: …because obviously there’s a problem there.
KIMBERLY: Yeah. And, you know, like I told you, if she would put as much energy into helping other people, as she does trying to destroy you and I…
TODD: Uh-huh.
KIMBERLY: …she would accomplish so many wonderful things.
TODD: She has such an opportunity to advocate.
KIMBERLY: Right. Exactly.
TODD: An opportunity…and I think she tries to do that. I don’t know what the problem is, but there’s a broken wire somewhere…
KIMBERLY: Right.
TODD: …because she’s been more destructive to herself than she’s done to help herself along the way.
KIMBERLY: Right.
TODD: And there are so many people like that and if I get crazy like that, I hope you’ll tell me.
KIMBERLY: No, I hope you tell me.
TODD: But, everybody listening, they should know, there is something out there and if you think you’ve seen something or you’ve heard something or you’ve witnessed something and you begin to think that you’re just a little bit nutty, rest assured, you’re not alone. We’ve all been there and you’re not going to be put in the cracker box and never talked to again, but you know, you can be discreet…
KIMBERLY: Right.
TODD: …you don’t have to explain everything you see to everybody, but do some research, like Kimberly said, and you’ll find a way to deal with it, in time.
KIMBERLY: Absolutely.
TODD: It sure made my life interesting.
KIMBERLY: Yeah.
TODD: And our paranormal experiences is what brought us together to allow us to do Missing Pieces, so that’s another interesting thing, but it’s definitely those experiences that helped bring us together for this.
KIMBERLY: Right.
TODD: So, you’ve done your first interview with Missing Pieces.
KIMBERLY: Yeah. I did.
TODD: So now you’re going to go back and edit the data and do all the other stuff, and I’m finished. (Chuckles)
KIMBERLY: Yeah, I get to have fun with it now. Now I get to add scary music to audio, and I do want to post Brian’s EVP on our website for our listeners.
TODD: I think that would be great. That would be great, you know. I don’t know what it’ll bring. I don’t know if it’ll help, because there’s still a crime here, there’s still something that has happened in that case, you know even though his Dad’s gone, there still needs to be some resolution. You know I think he’d be happy knowing that we’re still concerned and that we’re still working on it.
KIMBERLY: Right, because he has never been found.
TODD: Yeah.
KIMBERLY: Living, or his remains…he’s still…
TODD: True.
KIMBERLY: …and then once he is found, alive or not, there’s still who’s responsible for that, and that’s another step, so…
TODD: Well, hopefully, maybe we’ll get help to add to that.
KIMBERLY: Who knows? Maybe Randy will start coming to visit you.
TODD: You never know. If he can, he would, you know, I know he would. If there was any way possible that he would do it. So I guess we’ll find out.
KIMBERLY: Yeah.
TODD: So, I guess we can wish everybody a Happy Halloween 2008, and hopefully we’ll be here for Halloween 2009 doing another show.
KIMBERLY: Yes, hopefully.
TODD: Okay, well I’ve had fun, and we’ll say goodnight to everybody and see you again, whenever we feel like we’re able to do another episode. (Laughs)
KIMBERLY: Okay.
TODD: All right. Goodnight, everybody.
KIMBERLY: Goodnight.
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