Fox's Hocking Hills Canoe Livery: Up close with Pat Quackenbush; Hocking Hills Naturalist / ghost hunter

Hocking Hills is full of wonderful creatures...

Pat's dance moves

Not the least of which is its Naturalist Supervisor, Pat Quakenbush, who was recently honored by the Hocking Hills Tourism Association with the Keith Fox Award, which was established in 2014 to recognize extraordinary tourism leadership.

I had the chance to sit down with Pat last spring and chat about deep gorges, horned devils, vampires, prohibition, baseball bats, epic pirate battles, and since Pat moonlights as a professional ghost-hunter, we even delved into the truly unnatural.

My interview with Pat Quackenbush

Note: green text indicates side note information not actually part of the interview.

Wes

Wes here Hocking Hills Canoe livery sitting with naturalist Pat Quackenbush. Maybe former naturalist of Hocking Hills is a better title? What's the latest with you Pat?

Pat
Well, still naturalist, you'll still find me out there, it’s where my love always has been, always will be. I'll still be doing plenty of programming at Hocking Hills State Park, but yes I am the new Naturalist Supervisor for the southern half of Ohio State Parks, so I’m going to be working with a lot of the other naturalists throughout southern Ohio. All the way to Barkcamp on the PA line to Shawnee down by Portsmouth to Houston Woods over by Oxford, Ohio. We're going to get out there, and I'm excited to do it and help any way I can.

W

So a busy man just got busier!

P
(Laughing) Pretty Much!

W
So how long have you been with the state parks, particularly Hocking Hills?

Cowan Lake Ohio

I came to Hocking Hills in 1988. but actually what is kind of funny is that I did my first seasonal work for Ohio State parks at Cowan Lake State Park over near Wilmington. It's a beautiful park, and I'll be honest, going in there, I grew up in southwestern Ohio but hadn't been to Cowan Lake. In fact, I can't remember ever really going there as a kid, we were a little farther south. I was generally surprised when I went in as a naturalist, that is a really beautiful park and a very loyal following of campers and boaters. Then I spent several years, well left for a few years and worked for another park, then came back to Ohio state parks to work for Houston Woods state park before transferring here. So yea, I bounced, it’s normal for a naturalist, especially when you're young, you bounce a lot.

Cowan lake boasts the Cowan Lake Sailing Association, one of only two community sailing programs in Ohio according to USsailing.org

So what was it like when you found out you were coming into Hocking Hills state park, because it’s been the gem in the system for a while right?

Well obviously it was a good thing, and I loved two quoted things that I can't take credit for. First was when I arrived here the first day, the assistant manager at the time, Mark West, looked me in the eye and he said "welcome to a naturalist playground”, and the longer I stay here the more I think he couldn’t be wrong if he tried!

The Dining Lodge

So you get that feeling, and then I ran in to an old friend who I've known literally just out of High School, and he did not know I had been transferred here, and I loved the way he summed it up when we literally ran into each other at the Hocking Hills Lodge. He looked and said, " what are you doing here?" I said " well I actually transferred here about 8 months ago", to which he said "well you got a promotion!" and I said " yea you're right"!

It's a wonderful place for a naturalist to work. It's the only park that I’ve ever worked in, from a naturalist standpoint, where I regularly discover things I didn't know we had, and I still do that. I’ve been here since 98 and we still find things occasionally, “there's a species we didn't know we had”, or “there’s a hidden little area we didn't know we had”, and I’m still doing that.

So what are the top three species that really identify the Hocking Hills?

That’s pretty easy. Obviously we are famous as a gorge system, cliffs and waterfalls, but what makes this such a unique place is a lot of the ice age remnant species such as the Hemlock, the Yellow Birch, the Black Birch, the Yew Bushes, and along with those we have some Canadian species of moss, over by Ash Cave, found nowhere else except Ash Cave and Canada. We have things such as Nesting Hermit Thrush and Canadian Warblers and Chestnut Warblers, things that really shouldn't be here, but they're here, locked in those special gorges down there. So some of the really unique ones are spectacular, NOT discounting our regular native Appalachians! It make it unique and make it different than the rest of the area, even and especially the rest of Ohio, because of those.

So if National Geographic was going to do a show on the weirdest creatures on the planet, what creature or plant, what life form in the Hocking Hills would they focus on, like wow this is just out of the ordinary, bizarre!

Hickory Horned Devil

O gosh! The weirdest creature.... hmmmm. This is going to take a second because there is a lot of odd balls out there! You know one of my favorites is a caterpillar which becomes a moth, and is called the Hickory Horned Devil. The locals get to know it pretty well. If you're talking something It is actually a caterpillar that grows to about 8 inches in length and will get bigger around than your thumb, about three quarters of an inch in diameter. You look at and go "wow that is just creepy weird looking”!

That's a snake!

Red Shouldered Hawk

(Laughing) Yea, and it's covered in what looks like horns which is where the name comes from, but they are basically just little fleshy appendages. He's a fall species that comes out and prefers Walnut Hickories, as his name implies, Hickory Horned Devil. So as far as bizarre species people come running to me from the campground, "WHAT IS THIS!"!. So yea that's definitely at the top, but we have some true Appalachians here - Red Shouldered hawk, things like that, a little more majestic, this is Appalachia, this is Hocking Hills. You go to western Ohio you might see a Red Shouldered hawk, but not every 2 miles like you do here, so there’s some species that are really indigenous here.

side that says

Pat I’ve heard a wide range of numbers thrown out on how many people visit Hocking Hills, so what's the truth here? Is it millions? Is it more than some of the great parks? What’s the true story about how many people we think come through here.

To give you the honest answer, we don't know exactly. There’s no way to count every person that comes through the park. Is it in the millions? Yes. We laugh because our range, if you ask a park employee is generally between 2 and 4 million. If you go by strictly a math standpoint, and look at the parking lot and add it up, some estimates say a million and a half. A good example is this past Saturday, it was a beautiful sunny Saturday afternoon, the Old Man’s Cave parking lot was completely full. They were parking in the grass on 664, parking up Culp road, so you can't go by a standard car count when you are looking at

just the parking lot. Does it rate up there? Absolutely! We do rate visitation wise in scenic wonder in the top, I always like to say the top 25 in the country. That puts us in the same category as the Yellowstone’s, and the Muir Forests, and those kinds of places you go, so absolutely the visitation is there for sure.

According to the National Park Service, between 2 and 4 million would put Hocking Hills State Park smack dab in the midst of the top 10 most visited National Parks in the country, nestled in with Yosemite, Yellowstone, and Grand Teton National Parks!

Winter hike

Right on, that's pretty exciting! Alot of people come to do your programs, the winter hikes draws thousands, it’s a big deal! What would surprise the average Hocking Hills tourist about the work that you do?

About what I do? You know a lot of people don't know what naturalist do, they really don't. They hear the names of the great naturalists of the past that created a lot of it, and most people don't realize what that is. And honestly, even as a Naturalist Supervisor is a tough position to define, what is a naturalist? We are biologists, zoologist, we're botanist, and ornithologists, but we're educators, that’s a big part of what we do. The fun side is, and I tell the naturalist I work with all the time, if you literally are not having fun doing this job, you are doing it wrong, because part of our job is just to have fun. We work with the visitors that come out and just have fun. Some good examples such as our Halloween campout, there really is no

Halloween in the hills

education involved with that, it's all about just having a good time. So we do a little bit of everything in that aspect. I have a lot of students that are in college and say “I love animals and I love the forest, and I want to do what you do”. My standard answer, I think which really shocks people when I look at them and say, "how are you with people?" They'll look at me and say “what do you mean, you do animals”? Then I say “I work a lot more with people than I do animals”, and that really surprises them. So you have to be that type of person if you're going to be a naturalist.

So probably been thousands Pat, but pick a particular magical moment on the trail that really stands out in your mind, “that's why I do this”.

You get those a lot as a naturalist, and I'm happy to say that, it's what keeps you going. I'm going to be honest with you, sometimes it's a job and you have to slam the alarm in the morning, crawl out and get your coffee and come to work. But we do get, as naturalist, that wonderful reward coming back to us from our visitors, and I think that's why I say you have to be a people person, you have to enjoy that.

One that comes to mind that that I laugh about. I had an engineer that I worked with during the gorge renovations when we were redoing the trail. He now teaches part time at Ohio State. He teaches environmental engineering and wanted to bring his students down and show them the unique work we did in the gorge. He asked if I’d have time to meet with the students. He happened to pick the marathon day, so I said “it’s going to be brief so I'll meet with them quickly and then I got to get back to the marathon”. So we were


Pictures with Pat

down there doing a talk at the falls, he was going to then take them out and show them the bridges we designed and show them the work that was done.

When we got all done, one of the young lady students, probably a sophomore or junior, came up and said “wait Mr. Quackenbush?. Do you mind can I get my picture with you in front of the waterfall?” You do that from time to time especially with small children and the ranger. “Sure I'd be happy to!” Of course given the age I am, you get this kind of smile and you go “wow, this pretty blonde girl college student wants her picture with me!” So you smile really big and go over and stand, and after we snapped the picture, and you know I'm all puffed up with pride, and she looks at me and she said, “yea I had this exact same picture when I was about 7 years old with you.” Deflated the ego but at the same time made me feel wonderful that she remembered that. She’s now a college student coming back, remembered that this is the exact same spot we took a picture together.

So she recreated the photo of her and you when she was younger? Wow that's really cool!

What that tells me, is that somehow we connected. when she was 7 years old, I mean I can barely remember anything from 7 years old, but to remember not only that she had gone on the program but that she had been there with me and took a picture, that tells me that I connected somehow, somehow I got through to her. So you get that. I've had instances where, I’m old enough now, that I have students at Hocking College and Ohio State University say, “you know I decided to get into this field because I went to some of your programs”. Those moments are golden and it really is what keeps you going and keeps you wanting and exciting about coming in and doing what you do.

And for you, having been at this for a while, how do you continue to get yourself motivated to get out there and do it?

Had an old naturalist that passed away, way back when I started back in the early 80's, he was the chief naturalist, and he watched one day I was absolutely worn out at the end of the day, just tired. He came up and said, “you know you're doing this all wrong”. I said “what do you mean?” He said “you got to be a naturalist vampire”. Of course I got a laugh and said “what are you talking about?” He said “don't bite any of our visitors, but what you need to learn to do is instead of working yourself into the ground, learn to present and

feed off their energy

talk to folks and work with them educationally where they are doing the work and you are feeding off of their energy.” So they are supplying this all back to you which makes you excited about what you do and it actually energizes, and you can actually end a busy day feeling good instead of, I just want to crawl on my couch and go to sleep for a while. You still have those days! I just love the way he put it, “you have to be a naturalist vampire”, that's what he said, “you have to feed off their energy.”

All right Pat I'm going to put you on the spot here, you may not know this but the state of Ohio is having budget problems, and unfortunately they have to sell off Hocking Hills State Park. they’ve given it to the real estate developers, so they are breaking it up into 3 acre plots. Because you've given all your time and energy, you get the first pick of a 3 acre plot to build your house, and then everybody else will build around. What 3 acres will you pick? Where is that single spot you will build your house?

(Laughing) You know you're asking a question I get asked almost every single day by a visitor, “what's the best place to go in Hocking Hills?”

Yea, but I want to know what is Pat's favorite, that’s the one I'm going to build my house!

You know, it does vary, I have to be honest. It depends on what I want that day, what I'm looking for. I am like many of the masses, very fond of Ash Cave. It's very special historically, environmentally, scenic beauty, it's got it's all together right there. But I tell visitors, when you ask me that question, it really depends what you looking for today. Are you looking for waterfalls? Well, Cedar Falls or Old Man's Cave. Here we have 4 waterfalls at old Man’s Cave alone. Are you looking for giant caves? Ash cave or Rock House. Are you looking for rugged trails? Okay, that's Cantwell Cliffs. How about species diversity? That's Conkle’s Hollow. So you have to ask yourself, what am I looking for today? So I guess it would come down to what day I signed the Realtor papers as to what 3 acres I would choose! (laughter)

Today!

Today?

Pat's house goes here

Yup today.

I'm probably fondest of Ash cave, I really am. I do love it down there. And if you look at my program schedule it reflects that, you'll see a lot of stuff scheduled at Ash Cave. Though again, it does vary, depends on what I'm looking for.

I got to pin Pat down, because I know he's going to go through all the parks, that's his Job, but I was thinking what would be your spot. I figured probably Ash Cave for you.

When I answer people that way, “he's doing the political answer right there”, but it really does depend what you're looking for. They all have the scenic beauty, they all have something unique, something that they specialize in.

I agree, that's part of the joy, they are all similar, but everyone is different, and when people ask me, I tend to ask “what's your energy level today? What other kinds of people are hiking along with you?”

Rule # 1 when you become a naturalist is you're only as fast as the slower person on your hike!

So what concerns are there about Hocking Hills state park, what kinds of things give you pause?

You know I think it's the universal concerns with everybody. I mean we have a fond term we use with the visitation; “you're loving the place to death”. There are some real management decisions that you have to make, ecological decision you have to make. When you have 2 - 4 million visitors a year, and even if everyone was an angel, and stayed on the trail, and never dropped litter, you know, you're still looking at anywhere to 4 - 8 million boots! That's a lot. The impact alone is something I don't see anything but going up. It is such a destination; it is such a place. They are coming from all over the world now to see it, so deciding that future is something that is as a naturalist a big concern for me, and not just Hocking Hills, but an international level of course. Invasive species, and problem species, and things that are going on with that, it’s a huge issue all over the world, not just here.

What are a couple of those invasive species Pat that concern you today?

The end of wooden bats?

Well we always have a handful of monsters, multi-flor rose, those types, Honeysuckle, things like that. But a couple of the big ones of course, we are all familiar of the Emerald Ash Borer, which has basically devastated and wiped out all of the Ash trees. I got a grandnephew that is the newest Chicago Cub that will tell you baseball bats will never be the same since they've stopped making them out of Ash.

The hardness yet the flexibility, of Ash make the best baseball bats in the major leagues. The Louisville slugger, I believe about a year and a half ago had to switch to other wood products.

Here's a great read on the Emerald Ash Borer and it's impact on Major League Baseball.

Emerald Ash bore is a big one right now. But unfortunately it's done most of the damage it can do in Ohio, it's pretty much devastated Ohio. Of course the big one we are concerned with right now is the Hemlock Woolly Adelgid. The Adelgid is an aphid family insect. it attaches to the needles. Slow kill over the year of 2 to 5 years of the Hemlock Trees if nothing is done about it. Of course the whole forest system inside the gorges are Hemlock systems. Obviously that would be devastating.

Wooly Adelgid, yikes

Is it here now?

Unfortunately, yea, we found 2 separate populations at Cantwell Cliffs. It has not made it down into the southern regions of the park. We have dealt with it and we feel relatively successful. We had 80-90 percent mortality after the first treatment session. Believe it or not we are one of the few folks that are glad about past couple of harsh winters, because we discovered the Woolly Adelgid does not like sub zero temperatures, it will kill them. So between that and our treatment we getting there, but it's a constant battle we have to keep an eye on to keep it from spreading. Unfortunately, it's probably just a matter of time looking at a national level of the Woolly Adelgid issue, it's going come, it's just a matter of are we ready to deal with it.

Yes, that would be bad for the eco system and the tourism.

It would completely change the face of it.

What do you see as the most consistent myth or misunderstanding of the Hocking Hills area?

(Laughing) Old Man cave's looks like Mammoth cave! They don't realize they walked right through it. d I’ll be at the naturalist cabin which is at the top of Old Man's Cave there, and they'll come up to me and say " where's Old Man’s Cave, I'm confused". "Well did you come up those steps?" “Yes.” "Well then you just walked right through the middle of it!"

That's probably the biggest myth about Hocking Hills, is understanding that we are in sandstone. To have a true cave, such as an underground cave system

like Mammoth Caves, or Ohio Caverns or something like that, you have to have a limestone bedrock, we have sandstone. Sandstone by its very nature will carve relatively easily, but won't hold its own roof. Eventually the rooms begin to flake and collapse, so a true cave system is not going to be what you find here, but it does give an entirely different type of cave geological formation to look at, it's very different. That's probably number one.

So where is Pat Quackenbust a tourist, where do you go for vacations?

Pats vacation

I left on vacation two weeks ago, and right before I left I was doing a hike at Old Man's Cave and one of the visitors asked me that and I couldn't resist, I actually turned and joked " New York City!" No, my children know me. I'm an avid birder, and I fill in part type as an adjunct teacher of Ornithology, so even if we go to taking the kids to Disneyworld, I'm looking, well it's right next to the Everglades, we can get a little birding in! Yea we're always looking for new places to go.

Of course, my wife being a history literature major, we're both huge into history, so we love the historical. If we go to a town, we like to find the old historical towns. While we were visiting family in Florida we snuck over the old FrenchQuarter in New Orleans, and unlike a lot of folks that go for Bourbon Street, we went for the historical aspect. it's just an amazing historical town that you can go to and learn. So I'm like most tourists, I like a good mixture. I like the outdoors, but I love the cultural aspect and experience.

Speaking of history Pat, because we're rich in history here from ancient history to modern history, there's a lot of neat historical stories surrounding Hocking Hills and this area, what's one or two of your favorite historical kind of tidbits of the area?

Well I tell it almost every day, the Old Man's Cave story, the story of Richard Rowe, the oldman himself of Old Man’s Cave is a fascinating story. The problem with Richard is, he never really kept much in the way of a diary journal, so what we get from him is tidbits from other people that mention him or talk about him. Just when you think I pretty much found what can be found, a little tidbit will surface and historically wading through what’s real and what’s made up is, you know, we tend to think as Hollywood-ing as a modern technique, but it is not. They've been doing it for hundreds of years, making up stories. So wading through the truth is always interesting.

Moonshiners

In Hocking Hills I do like to tell a story about moonshiners. Most folks don't realize in this area how big that was. They think of Tennessee or Kentucky, but the reality is during prohibition, we were the moonshine capital here in southeastern Ohio! We were the quickest trip to the hill country from Chicago Detroit, so yea, New Straightsville alone had 90 some stills in operation during prohibition, so I like to look at history from the more human side of it. You can remember your names and dates and battles, but I’d rather get into the more human side of day to day life, because nothing today in the Hocking Hills is there that was not effected culturally, every bit of it, so you have to understand the cultural history to really understand the natural history.

The Hocking Hills is a phenomenal place, but there’s also some risks here. What are your top 3 safety tips if you're going to come to Hocking Hills and go home with great stories to tell?

You know there are 74 state parks in Ohio, and we're one of only 4 parks that actually have a trail law, which means, you're required by law to stay on the trails at all times. There's two reasons for that. 1 is from an ecological standpoint. Lots of delicate species, you know we have flowers such as Solonaceae that grow a foot off the trail that are state endangered and if you trample them, they aren’t like Kentucky blue grass they don't snap back, once they are gone they are gone. Even things like wading in streams, people in

Stay on the trails

August are like, "why can't we get in the stream?" Well, we have several very unique species that are nesting right now, and you're walking on top of them when you're wading. It's not that we don't want you to cool your feet off, we all want that too, but there are reasons for it.

Safety is a huge concern. Some things you can do to make your life so much nicer, and I don’t care what time of year this is, summer, winter, spring or fall - get online and check ahead of time. Learn something about the park, pick up maps, learn something about it. That’s any park you're going to go to. You hear stories out west, or anywhere, Appalachians, get to know it a little bit first. It's easy to do now, the internet has made this so easy. Check your sites, make sure you're going to a reputable site, because unfortunately there are some folks that like to, well, you know, the internet is both good and bad! So be careful where you're going, check it all out ahead of time.

Bad idea says Pat

When you get to there, stay on the trail. Wear the right shoes. Flip flops or high heels, not a good idea in the Hocking Hills! You don't have to wear heavy duty hiking boots. You can, but good treaded sneakers will work fine too. Bring along something to drink, like I said, all seasons. It's shocking how many folks get dehydrated in January, because they get out with all those layers, and they're hiking, they get hot and don’t realize you can get dehydrated just as fast in January, sometimes even quicker because of the dry air. So things like that are really important, but the biggest thing to remember in the Hocking Hills is using common sense. A tree hanging over a gorge? You probably shouldn't grab a branch and look over, it probably won't hold you up. Grabbing a vine and swinging on it, although Tarzan does it, I don't recommend you do it, because most of those vines are attached by a quarter inch twig up in the tree and the will break, and do break, it happens all the time.

Stay safe, avoid this!

Those are all things, that if you stop for a minute, you know and think about, yea, maybe it's not the beast idea. Even crosses your mind for a second, go with that gut, probably not a good idea, probably going to get you hurt, and if you're in the gorge, you're going to be hurt for a while before you get help. No matter how fast we respond, it takes time for somebody to tell us, for us to get to you, to get you safely packaged into a basket, or whatever the case might be, and to get you back out into an ambulance, into a helicopter, to the hospital. If you get hurt in the gorge you're probably looking at, even if a helicopter flight is involved, you're still probably looking at an hour and a half before you're in front of a medical doctor, minimum. So something to think about, next time you think yea I’m going to climb up the side of that cliff, looks like a good idea! Its probably not. Just the logistics of getting you out of there is always interesting.

A lot of people come visit here, they want to see the park thrive. What can they do to help?

P There’s lots of ways,! There the simple easy way- volunteer. We have strong volunteer programs. We use volunteer groups., and we laugh. Some groups that will contact me, and we may not have a bridge to be built over the gorge, which you can imagine is a rare thing that we do now. So I'll say “how do you guys feel about picking up trash for us?” Their reaction is like, “well um”, and I’m like, well you don't understand, 2 million visitors a year ok, and we don't have staff to do that! It is a huge help when somebody just wants to come out and do something like that. We do have a trail trolls group to work on the trails as a volunteer group, so volunteerism is a big way to do it.

Monetary donations are always a possibility. One of the things I recommend, not just here at Hocking but any park you might go do, you really do want to make a donation, I mean you can drop $20 in the box, that's great. But if you're going to make a substantial donation, talk to them, ask how can I help you the most. What do you guys really need? If they say something like, “a

brush mower at work

brush mower”, don't look at them like they've grown a second head, because that's just not in the budget! Maybe it's something exciting, like a new display for the visitor center, whatever the case may be, don't be to quick to say, wait a minute, really? Our Friends of Hocking Hills, you can become a member of that. I'm literally have setting right now in the back of my truck, and am extremely excited about, a new lockable terrarium for our timber rattlesnake, a full size terrarium with all the plants, and it was a donation from our friends group, and I'm very excited about that!

Then one of the other things, probably the biggest thing, visitors can do is use their voice. Let people know, be it state legislators, or whoever it might be. I'm not saying complain about something you don't like, actually just the opposite. If you like the Hocking Hills, say “I like the Hocking Hills, I had a great time while I was there”. Let’s make sure we take care of that because ultimately they are not my parks, they are our parks, and it's up to all of us to make sure folks understand how we want them. We want them nice and we want them beautiful, and I personally want my great grandchildren to see Hocking Hills the same way it is today. So yea, just the voice can do wonders. I always recommend, the you catch more flies with honey that you do with vinegar!

Pat, let's skip tracks, I have a really important question to ask before we jump into something else. If two pirate ships collided, and one captain's got the parrot and one captains got the monkey, and the monkey and the parrot battle- who wins and why?

Beware the parrot!

(Laughter) O wow! Parrot, got to go with parrot! Ortho guy here, and the parrot has one of the strongest beaks in the bird kingdom. A friend of mine raises parrots, Macaws. Amazing, handed it a grape, and it peeled the grape because it didn’t like the peel. Just with his beak, peeled the grape and ate the inside, and then turned around and gave it a Macadamia. Have you ever attempted to crack a macadamia nut? You need a hammer, you really do! It snapped it like it was a blade of straw, same beak. So yea, monkeys got hands, monkeys got a tail, but the birds going to get him.

All right Pat, I know something else you are passionate about. You and your wife have written how many ghost hunting books now, 7?

Check out all their books here on Amazon.

So you guys are on 8 now, where did this come from, where did this interest arise?

A good ghost story

First off, I got to give credit where credit is due, Pat helped with 4! Ok, Jeanette has helped with 8. but where did it come from? it came from.... well it's not one of those things, you suddenly like ghost stories, because we all do. We've all loved them since we were kids. That is not the issue, do you like ghost stories, of course everybody does, some people to a more or less degree I guess. You know I mentioned New Orleans earlier, and we spent a good portion of time researching some stories down there.

I noticed your web site has gotten some links now to some New Orleans ghost stories and I was confused by that, but now it makes sense.

We do! it’s not just there, we've traveled to some other states now, but it really got started 1997- 98, about the time we came here. We loved it prior to here and we were always into the stories, we always did that. Anybody that knows me personally, knows I’m kind of a Halloween nut. That's a little insider information, so I’ve always liked that macabre kind of thing on the side, and it's something, everybody loves a good scare.

Haunted Hocking

But one of the things that really, really got us attracted goes back to that history because we have now gone on, well we actually had a reporter ask us this earlier this year, how many haunted places have you went, and Jeanette and I looked at each other and froze, because we'd never added it up! So we had to think, at that point we said 700, we're now looking at like 1000 different haunted locations we've been to, close to a thousand places, and I can't tell you how many of them ended up on the editing room floor because we couldn't find substantiation behind the story. The historical aspect is extremely important to us. How do I come up with tidbits about the moonshine stills in New Straightsville? Well a lot of those through the research of ghost stories because you've got to have a history, you’ve got to have a passion, you've got to have something there to have a ghost. There’s got to be something there behind that story, so that's the first thing we ask. “I have a good ghost story” somebody will tell us. Ok, where'd it come from? What do you know about it? Again credit to my wife, I'm kind of the technical guy. I love the equipment and the tech gear. I do like it, it’s the science behind it I love, the auditory, the visual sides, the light waves, and all the different things.

So what is the equipment? Give us a quick overview of the back pack, what do you take out?

Ghosthunters kit

Well as everybody calls it now, my body bag, it's not a back pack anymore! Basically, when you're talking about ghost hunting, you're talking about energies, and the problem is and has been for centuries, since man started walking, what is that? Because we don't know exactly what it is, but we know enough now to know there are energy sources that we don't completely understand out there. So we use magnetic fields, anything that will work with magnetic fields, and if you've watched some of the ghost shows you've seen a lot of this. So electromagnetic fields etc. I love the history of it, so if you come to one of our talks I'll talk about the ways they did 400 years ago before they had EMF detectors, and they used crystals and they used dowsing which everybody goes like o yea, and I'm like no no, you have to understand, those work on magnetic fields, they're not as accurate, they’re not as detailed as the EMF detector, but they work. If you know what you're doing, and you have a strong enough magnetic field they will pick it up.

Click the dowsing link, and download their "4,3,2,1 of dowsing" to learn it yourself.

Listen carefully

Another way is auditory, sound waves. We know as naturalist, there are many things we can't hear. Humans can't pick up ranges that many animals use, many creatures frequently run at or ranges much higher frequencies than we can deal with. So using devices that can pick up all those different sound wave lengths and bring them down to were we can hear them, obviously those are great tools to use.

Then of course visual light wave lengths, which really comes down to that we see very well in what we refer to, and it's kind of an ego on our part, scientist refer to it as the visible spectrum. Again it all depends on your concept of visual. We know very well that birds and insects see in the ultra violet spectrum and wave lengths that we don't see. There are other creatures that can actually see into the infrared spectrum that we can't see. So we use instruments that will see in all those spectrums, then again transfer that into wave lengths we can see. That’s the key to it. People say, well it just sees in ultraviolet, and I say well if it just saw in ultraviolet we wouldn't be able to see anything on it, because we don’t! So you have to have something that not only sees in ultraviolet, but then converts to it to what we call, the visible wavelength, the visible spectrum.

So as you can see from a science standpoint, obviously being a naturalist my science background is very strong, so I love that aspect. But I also love doing that outdoor adventures and talking about, “wow, wow, wow, is that a ghost!” No that’s a cricket frog. So to separate what you've got going out there. My goodness I've totally lost track of all the photographs, and thousands


Cricket frog

and thousands of hours of video footage, and thousands and thousands of pictures, and we could count the big ones on both of my hands, so it's a rare thing when it does happen and you do actually pick up something that’s out of the ordinary. You'll find Jeanette and I are the biggest skeptics of all. What really got us going was the historical perspective. Then we had a few instances that really get your mind rolling, that all that science, that strong science background I have and still can't explain what that was. That really gets the scientific curiosity goes crazy, and you've got to figure out what’s going on. It's a combination of a lot of things, and sometimes it's just fun.

The call of a cricket frog, ghost? You decide.

Try searching you app store for Ghost Hunting Tools, and join the fun!

So do you believe in ghosts?

(Pauses) yea. if you would have asked me that ten years ago, I would have given you the real political skeptical answer, and I am the worse skeptic. When someone comes to me with this ghost story, if you want me to really believe it, you got to convince me there’s a possibility there’s really something going on. You hear a thousand stories of crybaby bridges. There’s a crybaby bridge in almost every town. Oh you can hear the baby crying from a car accident! Then you look at the research and there’s never been a car accident near the bride. Sometimes there is.

The Elmore ghost rider?

You know we recently just put one on our Facebook page, and folks went crazy over it. WWI veteran returns only to find his sweetheart had chosen someone else and took off, you know, as fast as he could go on his motorcycle. Ended up flying off a bridge, and they say if you go back on the anniversary, you know. Turns out, the story end of that was true, now unfortunately we did not capture the motorcycle crossing the bridge, we would have loved to have.

It's funny, we've been talking this week and laughing, my wife did a story in Urbana. She just posted it on Facebook about a week ago, and it was just a small town type story, but she did the research that the story behind it was true. she posted it, and within 3 days the there was almost 70, 000 people. The anniversary of this particular event is April 29th and I do believe the Urbana police are kind of going to hate us! (laughter) It's going to be jam packed with people!

They'll have to start a new festival! Laughter

It just shows you how everybody is fascinated by it. There is the unknown, and that’s what makes it so so cool. After you have a few things happen to you, it’s really tough to say no after a while.

Can you think of the times where you really turned a hardcore skeptic, who went along on one of your tours just because they wanted to tell you how bogus it was, they walk away going, o my!

Its happened more than one. and even if we didn't pick up something, they realize there really is something to what these folks are doing. They are doing historical research. Jeanette, spends so many hours, from newspaper archives, to court house, to looking through birth and death certificates. I can't tell you how much time is spent doing that. They see that, they see the equipment that we’re using, and then I always laugh, because being in a science background, people you’ll hear on TV say “I always use the scientific method”, and you know, most times I’m shaking my head, they didn't pay attention what they did their science fair, because they are not using the scientific method!

What I like to say, we try to use the most scientific procedures and equipment that is available to us. you're doing a whole new realm of science, so trying to say, yep we use the scientific method all the time, doesn't really apply fairly to what we're doing, but we try to be as careful and technical, and we go in as the biggest skeptics of all first. Oh yea you have a ghost? let me see it, prove it to me, let's get the history behind it that says its possible first.

Haunted Hocking web site

The last question for you, after you die, where can tourists go to maybe bump into the ghost of Pat Quackenbush.

(laughter) You know it's a funny joke my wife and I have had many times, because I have to admit, some of that macabre started when I snuck into graveyards as a kid! I look at it now, we never vandalized, it was the whole thrill factor, and I do remember one of my friends falling into an open grave they were beginning, and the terror on his face as he begins to claw his way out! And I do love a good practical joke, so we talked about my wife is going to rig up my tombstone so I can have fun with the people that come to visit me after it's all over with. The hard part with me, I love to go different places, I love different locations. Like when you tried to nail me down to the house place, that's going to be hard to say. Strong things to connect people to where they were, where they are, and I’m a family man, love my wife, love my children, maybe I'll be haunting my children, I've told them that many times! It's hard to say, but wherever it is, I plan to have fun with it, I plan to torture people with it so be prepared.

Please do stop in if you can, take a moment at a park with Pat Quackenbush, he's be all over southern Ohio teaching folks all about what’s happening. Thanks Pat!

Fox's Hocking Hills Canoe Livery

Monday, February 29, 2016

Up close with Pat Quackenbush; Hocking Hills Naturalist / ghost hunter

My interview with Pat Quackenbush

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