Inside the Paranormal, True Crime, & Epstein Files with YouTuber Colin Browen

0:00As soon as the steps get to the door, no one comes around the corner but I hear this weird noise and then all of a sudden it's like somebody is on all fours crawling around my bed in circles. What is the secret to unlocking your full potential? What makes your idols any different than you? How do you become the person you've always wanted to be in life? This is where you get all of your questions answered. My name is Justin Shank and I sit down with some of the most epic individuals who are changing the world with their actions in business and in life. We discuss how they did it, why they pushed themselves, and more importantly how they were able to focus on continuous growth to achieve their dreams. Welcome to the Growth Now Movement. Welcome to the show, man. Thank you for having me, dude. I'm sure just based on what we were just yapping about, we're going to have some good

1:01chats today, man. Yeah, I was like, I got in record. I feel like all this stuff we mentioned before, I even have record, but I just know that we're going to go down some rabbit holes, we're going to talk about some truths, we're going to talk about things that people question all the time and that's kind of where you live, man. You start it in the paranormal world on YouTube and grew one of the largest paranormal channels and just doing some research on you. You've produced full on like movies for YouTube channel. How did that even start? Yeah, it's funny because when I was younger, the one thing that I always wanted to be was a film director and when I was young I'd make zombie films and like really kind of messed up horror movies and my dad and I would build blood cannons and you know, I really got into that side of film. Yeah. When I was in high school, my family moved into a house which was interesting and this is a whole story in itself, but the house ended up being haunted. But what was interesting about the house is that my parents built it.

2:02There was no history to the home, no one died there. We didn't disturb an ancient burial ground or something like that. It was just a brand new house and from the moment that we moved in, we experienced stuff. That turned into me telling everybody at school at my high school, like, oh my God, my house is haunted and my friends started to have experiences and then there are people that didn't want to come over to my house at all because they had seen whatever, heard whatever and eventually people at my school who were involved with the school newspaper invited me to do a ghost hunt at my actual high school because there were rumors that it was haunted. I'd never heard these stories, but I agreed and I went with them into the basement of the school, which is like a big catacombe, almost like network of tunnels that are underneath the school. It's super creepy. It's a whole sub floor under the whole floor plan of the school. I've never heard of that for a school. No, dude, I didn't know that it was a thing until I went down there and it was literally

3:04like the upside down, like, stranger things, it was the entire floor plan of the school, but like, creepy catacombs version with old chairs from the 1960s and like, weird substances. But anyways, we had all this stuff happen and I didn't have a camera with me and so I practically begged my teachers and principal to let me come in and do it again and film it and we did and that became the first episode of my YouTube channel and we had a premiere at my high school and we had like the local news come out and I was on the front page of the newspaper as like the ghost hunting guy and it's really crazy, man, because when I started digging into my high school and asking teachers all of a sudden I'm talking to whatever my computer teacher and she's telling me the story about seeing a guy floating through her classroom. I'm like, you've seen this? Yeah, this was like five years ago and she tells me someone else has a story and before I know it, I'm like, this place is definitely haunted and no one's talking about it.

4:08There are all these teachers that had experiences and old janitorial staff. I brought one guy in who the principal reached out to for me and he was so afraid he had seen something in the school and quit like the day. Yeah. And he's like in the footage, he's shaking his hands because he hadn't been in there in 20 something years. He had seen someone floating on stage in the auditorium. Like just no legs, no feet, just floating there and he was so scared, he quit. And obviously no one was talking about it and it was really cool because we were able to compile all those stories and then investigate it. And nowadays I'll see YouTube videos or like top 10 lists where they say top 10 most haunted schools in America and it's like my high school makes its way out of those lists now, which is, which is cool, you know, yeah, so I don't know if they liked that, but well, I mean, I, you know, you're stuck with whatever public school you're going to go to. So I guess at that point, it doesn't matter. Maybe from a staff perspective, you know, people don't necessarily want to work there.

5:10But I want to go back to the home. What kind of stuff were you experiencing as a kid after your parents built this home? And was that like the first kind of like experience that you you saw or had or was it like you've always been, I know you said you were into hard movies. I know a lot of people who are into hard movies don't even necessarily believe in ghosts. So like, how did you like kind of bring that all into your life in the, in the, from a real perspective? Because I think most people see that and they block it out and they never want to see it again. You clearly embraced it. Yeah. Well, for me, there, there's a history of paranormal sightings and I wouldn't call it abilities because it sounds cheesy, but there have just always been these oral ghost stories handed down to my family, like my great grandma saw her sister, the night that her sister died. Like she came to her in her bedroom and she knew something was wrong that she got the phone call like stories like that. But for me, I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when I was 12 years old. And obviously that has a profound impact on who you are as a person and what you think

6:15about. I was only 12 and I was forced to confront death and life and you know, the reality of living a shorter life than most people, even though nowadays the treatment's better than it even was 15 years ago. But so when I started learning about ghosts and the paranormal, it became my fixation because you know, I was afraid to die. I still am in my own way because I'm still, I'm more confused than I was, I guess, what I started, but it's, it's just one of those things where when it started happening in our house, I dove in, but it wasn't, it wasn't fun. It ended up being really horrifying and we had everything happening. It was, it was like a classic poltergeist style, like haunted house film where first day we go, my sister, my mom and dad and I leave our house because our old house like five minutes away.

7:16So we leave my sister in the new house and we told her we're going to go get some more boxes, bring them over, it will be right back. And by the time we get back with the boxes, she's trying to climb out of her bedroom window and taking the screen off the window because she's locked her door and when we get in there, she tells us she heard men talking in the kitchen area and like banging around and making noises. Wow. We're like, okay, no one's there. You know, at the time I was, I think, 14, I can't remember my exact age, but my sister's four years younger than me. So it's kind of one of those things where do you think, I don't know, I mean, maybe they are, she heard something and it wasn't really what she was hearing or you do the classic horror movie thing where it's like, okay, whatever, brush it off. But yeah, it got so bad actually that I heard my mom's voice when she wasn't there. Multiple times, which was really, really spooky. And this one night, I heard her in the kitchen and I, I can't remember, I said something

8:20to her because she had said something and I think I asked her to like bring something into my room for me. And I heard her say like, yeah, I'll be right in. And then I heard footsteps coming all the way down this long hallway that led to my sister and I's rooms who were right across from each other. And you gotta imagine I'm sitting and staring at my doorway. There's some ambient light that's kind of coming through, but I'm expecting my mom to walk into the door because you hear the footsteps. Yeah. As soon as the steps get to the door, no one comes around the corner, but I hear this weird noise and then all of a sudden, it's like somebody is on all fours crawling around my bed in circles like, and it was so bizarre that I literally stood like sat right up in my bed and I was like, Mom, what the fuck are you doing? When I turned my iPhone flashlight on, noise has stopped immediately and my sister came out of her room and it had woken her up and she was like, what's going on? And I went over to my parents and they were in their bedrooms asleep.

9:23So that was just one of like hundreds of things and I actually have a totally different perspective on what I think it was now that was haunting our house. And I did back then because we did some research and we found the family that lived on the property in the 1800s. This isn't South Dakota. So this is like, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, that's where I was born and raised and it was a very pioneered town, obviously, Western expansion and everything and back then. There's no proper city cemetery. So when my mom and I went down to the courthouse and got access to the old maps and records, man, it was crazy because the dude at the historical society was able to tell us who the family was that had owned that land, who had set up on that land. And the mother and daughter as he looked in the files had death and burial records in Sioux Falls, but the father and son in the family didn't have either.

10:24And he told us, well, since it was before, maybe there was an accident or there was something that happened or their graves got lost. And we never found out if their graves had maybe been moved or something had happened there. And so that's what I thought it was the whole time because totally different thing that happened. We had a family friend who was a psychic and before my mom and I went to the courthouse and looked at that. And I talked about this in a documentary I eventually did about the case because I have some little proof of this whole event happening. A psychic, the psychic friend of ours called us and told my mom and I, it feels like there are two male spirits in your home. And we thought, okay, well, that's really freaky. She said she was driving by our new house and she felt this. And then we're having all this shit happen and she didn't even know out of nowhere. And then to find out that it was the two, the father and son didn't have death or burial records. I at the time was like, oh my God.

11:25And I filmed all this and I, I had the footage of the guy going through all the, all the files. And to me, that, that was the narrative of what the haunting was. But we tried to cleanse the home. We had this whole thing with three, our psychic friend and she had two other psychic friends and they showed up like almost like American horror story wearing these big fur coats and they went room through room in the house with our family doing these blessings. And oh, we found this spirits in here and all this is a portal here and all this cleansing. And it was like an hours long process. That night our power went out at the house, completely black out. We're the only one on the block, so unexplained. And the next day when we go to eat lunch, the psychics are actually eating lunch at the same restaurant, all three of them, and we had no idea that they were going to be there. The night before that, at about two in the morning, it was actually my birthday. So it was like the night before my birthday and I had friends over for like a sleepover. And we heard this bang on my window that all my friends heard it was so loud that my

12:30parents woke up upstairs and came running downstairs and thought we had broken something or somebody got hurt and all of us were like, we have no idea what the hell that was. And so the next day at lunch, when the psychics are there, we walk up to them and they tell us that they are having a meeting. They called each other because they had all experiences bang on their windows at whatever time it was two in the morning and they're all there. And we're like, okay, we also had that happen to the man. I was free. I still get free when I talk about it. But they told me at the time, you know, I feel like that is the energy leaving your home and it's letting us know I'm out of here. But it didn't happen like that. The haunting actually continued for years and it never really went away. And then my parents sold the house and I mean, I've never reached out to the people who live in the house now. But I don't know, I used to think it was these guys that were the father and son that

13:31had the records there. But nowadays, I feel like it's something more unexplainable that was almost attracted to my family, which I know this is a very long tangent and answer to your question. Love it. That's kind of in a nutshell, man. There's so much more that went into it that was just like crazy, but yeah, I think it was just an energy that there had been some kind of just tragedy in my family at the time. So there was it was really low energy. Everyone was really just not in good spirits when we moved in. And I feel like there was something that, if it's possible for something to do this, felt that and like globbed on to us and wanted that and it's never really left. Like I have psychics all the time I work with for my YouTube and there's this one spirit and it's not a human spirit, but it's something that follows me all the time and I do meditations every night. I've been sober for almost three years now and it's like sometimes during these meditations

14:33that I do. I feel this thing like and it's it sounds crazy and it sounds like hard to believe, but I genuinely in my heart of hearts and my soul and I'm not like recording this for a video or you know, doing anything with this is just what I'm experiencing. I feel this this thing come right up to my face and it's like my whole body. All my hair stands on end and I get goosebumps and I know that it's this thing and I even had sleep paralysis three years ago. I had sleep paralysis for about four months straight and it ended with in a very similar encounter, something going right up to my face and it whispered right in my ear. I'm the demon just like that and I woke up screaming and my wife Courtney was screaming and that was the last time I had sleep paralysis, but it was so real man. It's like it's just the it's something that you can't even explain. You can't put into words because it's it sounds so insane that you know, unless you experience something like that, you're not really inclined to believe that it's real,

15:37but I can assure you it's it's very real. Yeah, and to be fair, like I imagine you get a lot of pushback. You have a massive following across all platforms, you know, and I imagine a lot of people like this guy's crazy, like, you know, ghosts aren't real or like all that stuff, but you're somebody who's gone into all of these different buildings all over, we were talking about how I'm in Pennsylvania and you lived in Philly for a while and there's a very famous place called Pennhurst Asylum with a crazy like backstory of how they mistreated kids within the building and there's there's a if I remember correctly, there's a morgue there. There's like a graveyard on site. There's all these things that had happened like going into these different places as there ever a moment where you go in and you know, I've, hey, I've heard this is the most haunted place and I go in and there's nothing. Yeah, oh yeah, many times and I think that's what's really interesting about the paranormal and one of the challenges with producing a paranormal like program, like I've been doing for this is the 11th year this year, which is crazy.

16:40Congratulations, by the way, man, on all your success. Thanks. Thanks. It's not easy. No, and I didn't expect to be doing this. When I started the channel and I even, I dropped out of film school in Austin, I went to my academic advisor and told them, you know, my YouTube's taken off. I just feel like this is going to be what I'm going to do. And he told me you should do it. You should drop out. If you have this, you should do it now. And then I did and I had my first million view video like two or three weeks later, which wow. I don't know. That's the universe to me. You know, sign from whatever whoever you believe in. Yeah. Keep going. When it comes to this paranormal and shit, man, it's crazy. Like I've gone to like the most haunted places on earth, like some of these places they hype them up. Like, you know, there's fucking demons crawling out of the walls and like pentagrams of a glow in the mirrors and, you know, there's this shadow woman that screams and attacks you.

17:41And it's like, I've been there and I've asked for things to possess me and I've asked to get scratched and said you could do literally whatever. And I'm there with the genuinely curious mind because that is something I think is very important with the paranormal is your intent and how you go into it, which we could talk about later. But. And then it doesn't happen. But on the flip side of the coin, I've had so many experiences where it's just some random place. Like, you know, one of the craziest things I just went back to this place recently, there's this old, it's called the Garnet House Hotel or Garnet House in, it's in Kansas and some really messed up history in this building. But it's just like a small little building in the middle of nowhere in Kansas. And I had heard people comment and tell me like, you should go investigate this location because it's super active for a long time. And I never had, but three years ago at the end of our trip, we did like a 10 day trip and I think we did eight investigations.

18:41The very last night we go to this place and it's like, dude, we're all burned out. We've been up till four, five a.m. every night for seven nights straight driving across the state of Kansas and Missouri. You're just kind of like, okay, let's just do this and be done with this series because I'm tired. That was ended up being the most activity I think besides my house I've ever seen in my life. It was so shocking that it completely reinvigorated me and got me re-interested in the paranormal. A dog was thrown at us on camera and a beach ball came flying out of an attic at us. We heard footsteps and like a straight up, like if someone just, the wall behind you just banged with their fist as the crazy shit ever. And we all were just like, we kind of went in like tired like, okay, let's just, you know, see if there's something here, but yeah, it's weird. The paranormal is just weird like that, man.

19:41And also the last thing I'll say to that point that's interesting is when you see, when you hear ghost stories and you hear, you know, these tales from people who live and work at these locations, and I've heard so many of them because we always interview someone for our video. It's like Jenny, or we'll just call her Jenny. She's worked at this prison for 20 years. She's been the tour guide here for 20 years and she spends six, seven hours a day in this location. But when you ask her and you interview her like, what have you had experienced wise, she'll have like three or four really good stories over a 15, 20 year period, which is why when you have a show, it's like you're never going to see the ghost on camera. You're never going to see, you know, this cup levitating and then shattering against the wall because it just does, it's so infrequent and rare. And I do think it's intelligent enough to happen when you're not recording or actually, you

20:47know, documenting it. It's, it's weird. It's, I've got a lot of theories, but that's kind of the tip of the iceberg there. No, I'm sure. And so like, you know, you talked about you have to be in a certain mindset to be able to interact with these spirits or potentially see them or whatever. Like, I know for, I know dang well, I don't ever want to see a ghost because I enjoy my sleep too much and I'll never sleep ever again. But I've had experiences. So when I met my now wife, when we started dating, she was in a house that she was like, oh, it's haunted. And I was like, okay. And I remember many nights sleeping there and hearing footsteps down the hall to her door. Well, she had two kids, two little kids at the time, they're grown, not grown. They're 12 and 15. But like, we'd open the door. There'd be no kid. They'd be asleep, you know, in the hall. The one night we're laying in bed and we hear, we heard a voice, like, and this was the creepiest thing ever. We heard a voice said mom. So assuming we're like, we kind of froze. Whereas like, she, if she heard mom back then, she'd jump out of bed and run down the hall. But we both like froze, right? And so we're like, and I, I think she said at first, she goes, did you hear that?

21:50I go, yeah, I heard that. And she got up, the kids were dead asleep, like nobody said mom. And then I think the time after that that I was sleeping over, the sheets on the bed got lifted up and thrown off of me. We found out, like, what we figured is that the spirits didn't like me as a male energy. Like, it was like one of those weird things, like, oh, a new energy, a new male. And so we're going to, we're going to stoke the flames. Do you notice sometimes if you kind of disturb something, they'll start to kind of wake up a little bit? Yeah, I mean, we used to provoke and do stuff like that all the time. And I don't know, I mean, for me, that was immature to call things out. I know some people still swear by that method, but I've just adapted to respecting the dead. However, when it comes to these inhuman things that we don't understand, I love poking the bear when it comes to that. I'm not necessarily, I'm not a religious person, but if I go to a house that's known

22:52to be a demon house, right, I will specifically go out of my way to bring like a blessed crucifix or blessed rosary beads or whatever to try, provoke these things into, into attacking or doing whatever. And that's, you know, years ago when I started the channel, one of my biggest things was I don't believe in demons. And I would say it over and over again, the shit isn't real and people are clickbaiting this and yada yada. But you know, I've done 560, 570, however, 600 investigations at this point across the planet from Romania to Greece to all over America. And I can confidently tell you there is an intelligent spiritual force that exists that is non-human that is out there and that is what in my opinion people called demons. And I call them demons too as kind of just a catch all term because people understand what I'm getting at instead of me saying like my more technical term is non-human energies

23:59or non-human intelligent energies. And I don't know, they're never really good spirits. I have to tell you. It would be very honest, whenever we've interacted with these things, it is like, it gets really spooky really quick. Like, it'll call out things that you don't even know about yourself or my parent, like it's made in one investigation, it made my dad cry because through one of our devices, it sounded like it was making fun of my aunt, his sister who had died of a particularly painful form of cancer and it was every word was just making fun of like seemingly her. And it hit so hard to him, he was like sobbing and we had to stop and like take a step outside and that is what I think going back to my haunted house, globbed on to us and what is globbed on to you know me still nowadays or they exist at some of these locations. And it's very real and it's a distinct type of energy, it's very violent usually.

25:00Yeah. Now have you ever been touched, attacked, scratched all that stuff? Yeah, I've been scratched multiple times, my brother-in-law's been scratched, my dad's been scratched. And it's always really freaky because like, and I show this in the videos, the scratches are not really, I feel like it's a weird term when you say you were scratched and it's a popular paranormal thing. But the stuff that we've seen isn't ever really like an actual scratch, it's like a raised wealth on your skin that will appear and then like 20 minutes later, it's already gone and it's like it was never there in the first place and we've documented that every time like showing, all right, here's this mark that just appeared and then 20 minutes later like check the time, it's completely gone. What is that? I don't know, is that the body's like allergic reaction to a paranormal energy? I don't claim to know, so I don't tell anybody what, you know, my thoughts are really, I have my theories, but I'm inclined to believe that more often than not, the energies

26:04that are out there are more often like non-human versus human. Like I think we've talked to a lot of human spirits, but I don't know, after 11 years of doing it on YouTube, it's like, I just never really feel like if I'm talking to a human spirit with our stuff, I don't feel like it's intelligent. And we've had these intelligent conversations, I feel like it's these non-human whatever these things. If that makes sense, it sounds crazy, but the answer is just, they don't click. It's not like, you know, if we're in the house where the ghost bride is, if we ask her about her wedding day, we're going to get answers, but if this other thing comes in and starts talking to us and we can talk to it and it starts responding, that's when it gets weird, but it always seems to veer towards like a peculiar negativity. Yeah, so it's almost like if it's a human spirit, it's almost like a residual energy left

27:05behind, whereas these demons or whatever you want to call them, they're intelligent enough to manipulate, hurt all these things, and it's just a totally different, like you almost can't even compare the two. Yeah, and I think there's, it's a very important distinction to make here. I think that there are good, non-human intelligent entities and inversely also bad ones. The bad ones just tend to make more noise or make themselves known more, but I mean, I've had, like even today, I had a sign this morning, like when I went to rehab, I, I've been sober for three years and I almost three and a half by who's really counting. I'm sure you are, man. Congratulations. It's a big feat, too. Thank you, man. It's been crazy, but yeah, I was in rehab in Austin for 40 days, roughly, and the first day when I went in there, and this is part of what has expanded my mind, too, is just

28:09like these core experiences. When I was in there, we did this breath work on my very first day. And you do this, this breath work and then you're supposed to sit and visualize that they said, visualize what you think God is, like if God's nature or an actual Christian God or whatever, visualize it. And so I'm sitting there and in the black of my eyes, I see this butterfly just fly across my vision. And so I wrote down on my rehab journal, God is a butterfly. And I shit you not, man, the last day when I'm leaving rehab after 40 days of whatever counseling and trauma dumping and being sober for the first time since I was like 17. I'm walking alone to the cabin area where the main meetings are from my area. And after this meeting, you literally leave. Like you walk out of the door. I got all my stuff. I'm ready to go.

29:09I'm walking out this huge monarch butterfly comes and just lands on my shirt. And I stare every time I get my hairs all stand on it, I stare at it. It felt like it like looked me in the eyes and then it flew away. And that's what that's why I got this tattoo. I got the butterfly and my wife and I then weirdly later on my wife and I were talking about me being in rehab right when I got home. And you can't make it up. We're sitting there talking about how glad we are that I did this from myself and for us. And on the TV, on the Google stock photos, there's a fucking butterfly pops up on the screen as we're talking about this. And I'm like, I took a picture of it. I'm like freaking out. But, you know, now I've seen these butterflies. And I see them at really, really meaningful, meaningful times. And I just actually had a great conversation with one of the Epstein survivors, her name

30:11is Julie at the other day, total 180 here, but I was about to 180 us anyway. So you're doing this for me, which is great. Yeah. She told me, there's apparently a whole thing within the Epstein survivors in the Epstein story. If you get into the metaphysical side of things, with butterflies and specifically this blue butterfly. And I can't remember what she was saying, but she just did a podcast on it with somebody. But like her journal that she was showing me from the time of the abuse had a blue butterfly on it. And there's something with Virginia Gufre and she had one of the Epstein's main accusers. She had the blue butterfly motif. It's like a lot of these victims have had these blue butterflies, what are their tattoos or whatever. And so when she was telling me that, I'm like, holy shit, I got to tell you about my butterfly story too. I don't know. When you sit back and think about it, it's like, especially for rehab, butterfly coming out of a cocoon and transformation and rebirth. And I didn't even make that connection until like a month later.

31:13And it kind of hit me like a train like holy shit. Yeah. This is very real. You know, I dive into spirituality a lot on this podcast. And there's so many interwoven connections that we have to nature to each other. We're all connected in some way, shape or form. And when I talk about spirituality, it's funny because a lot of times people, I grew up doing my grandfather's a pastor. So I grew up in the church. I don't go to church now. I'm not religious. But when I look at spirituality, I say believe in two things. One is greater. Something is greater and bigger than you that created all this, whatever you believe it to be, right? I don't care if it's God, source, mother nature, whatever. The second piece is, you have to believe that we're all energy, which is just science, right? It's true. We're electrons, protons, and neutrons. And part of you seeing that butterfly in my opinion and having the spiritual conversations I had was like, you're finally in alignment energetically. And this was your sign, right? When you look at that rebirth, the butterfly, all the things. And then you also have the other side.

32:14I mean, if you have that kind of with the Epstein survivors, which I'm sure was a crazy conversation, you know, it's that you look at a butterfly and they're just free, right? They're flipping and flapping all over the place. And I imagine when you're in that world, you feel anything but free. It's same with, you know, being an alcoholic, right? And then finally, being free from that disease. It's just this crazy, crazy thing, man. So thank you so much for sharing that with me. I think that's huge. And obviously, you shifted gears for us, right? Now, a lot of your content has now shifted to what's happening in the world with the pedophile rings, Epstein. And even before that, I know you're creating a documentary to talk about the original Epstein Island, which is totally before, right? Like I believe, you know, Epstein is just the tip of the iceberg. Everybody's looking at him as like the main boss, but it's not even close to the end. Why the shift in your content to just beginning to research this type of thing? Well, I think it's been a slow, gradual shift for me because I've always been interested

33:18in true crime and these documentaries and, you know, I've had a lot of weird experiences myself, like I was with one of the almost victims of the rainy street ripper, the serial killer in Austin the night he went, he went missing from rainy street. I was out within that night and his body was found by the river days later. He's counted as one of the victims and I, I saw, you know, we were all normal that night. We were drunk, but it's not like anybody's going to go, like I live in Osprey years, like you're not going to walk down to the fucking river and just jump in. That's just impossible. That's a whole different tangent. But so I had a lot of these experiences and my wife, Courtney and I, when we first started dating, she was listening to a bunch of true crime shows and we'd have these kind of talks about what we liked and what we thought people could do better on and what we'd like out of a show. And so we decided and I had all this extra podcast here lying around from a failed paranormal

34:19podcast that I tried to launch, which was crazy. Actually, we were bringing equipment into haunted locations, like full on these arms and everything and a table setting up in the middle of these locations and then interviewing people and doing the podcast live from these haunted spots, which was crazy. And it was a ton of work, but it was interesting because we'd be like talking like this and then there'd be like banging from this upstairs. We were in a prison once and we heard like somebody walking on one of the, the grates and you just stopped like, oh, that's interesting. Anyways, let's keep on, yeah, we launched Murder in America, which has been our show together. And doing the show, we eventually didn't episode about John Wayne Gacy. We did a four part series about Gacy and this was the first time that I had ever heard of a guy named John David Norman, who have you heard of this dude and Gacy? I have not.

35:20Oh, Gacy, of course, but not the other. So my wife and I, we watch way too many murder documentaries. So I'm, I know, I know the world, but I don't know the second name he mentioned. He is so modern day, a lot of people, including myself, believe John Wayne Gacy did not act alone, same with Dean Coral, the candy man serial killer down here in Houston. I actually live in the heights in Houston and Dean Coral would hunt kids like on my street. His candy shop was a few walks over. I just found that out the other day. It's a three minute walk from my place like the connection there is insane. And I've done whole documentaries about him and I had no idea. He was like right here, but yeah. In our episode, we explored this connection between this pedophile ringleader from Texas named John David Norman, how he was allegedly supplying boys to be used in snuff films by the candy man who got all his victims here and they were filming all of this and distributing all of this child CSAM material out there.

36:22And then John David Norman got arrested and he went to Illinois shortly afterwards. He ends up in the same world as John Wayne Gacy and John David Norman's like top man who's helping him run his CSAM production ring ends up working for John Wayne Gacy. And then Gacy on death row names John David Norman and says there are so many more people implicated in this than you guys were ever ready to accept. And that to me was eye opening and I'm like, okay, I've never even heard of this, but holy shit, the evidence is extremely compelling. And that's what I started digging into these rings and just doing research on my own and I started to go kind of crazy if we're going to be honest, like Courtney at one point told me like, you need to start your own podcast talking about this stuff because I can't listen to you rant for like another hour about whatever this ring that you found. And I'm like, I know I feel like I'm going crazy because no one knows this shit.

37:22And yeah, that led to the creation of my podcast slash second YouTube channel, the conspiracy files and then these docuseries that I've been working on where we've actually been working with victims who were trafficked as a part of these historical rings. We have confronted perpetrators like we knocked on the front doors of multiple people yeah, and confronted them one of them overseas, which was really scary a guy that's accused of having financed and participated in snuff film production of children in a credible case, not a conspiracy world allegation like these are allegations coming from police reports and investigations and people who died and people who saw this footage and then they reported it and they died and it's a whole twisted world. But I think for me it was kind of one of those things where once I read about it and I understood that this is what we were looking at and dealing with, I knew that I I wanted to use my

38:27platforms to talk about it because of the Epstein thing because I knew my friend and I just made a video about this this morning that I'm going to post on my social media in 2018 my really good friend and I were sitting in South Dakota in my parents house, I was smoking a joint with him in my parents hot tub just like chilling outside and I vividly remember him telling me about this Jeffrey Epstein guy back in 2018 and I was like stoned as hell and I'm like what dude like that's crazy man and I kind of you know believed him but I didn't know what to think about it and then 2019 Epstein's arrested and I saw that headline and I was like holy shit my friend was right then Epstein commits suicide ostensibly, we all know didn't happen but that's a whole another that's a whole another rabbit hole but yeah I mean it's wild dude that was that yeah that was the moment that for me I was like holy shit yeah these things are very real and now having become friends with all of these survivors

39:32and you know I've worked with people in Amsterdam India Germany all across the United States and sat and cried and and become really close with a lot of these survivors it's I don't know the problem is it's just so wide spanning and the real problem is that this has been happening for decades and no one has ever taken it seriously so we have networks of thousands and thousands of survivors that never received justice and it's mainly because a lot of these people were connected to the upper echelons power whether that's political power or just money in general it's crazy what these people can get away with even in South Dakota it's it's crazy man there's this guy named Denny Sanford who's the richest like guy in South Dakota and years ago the hospital system in South Dakota used to be named the Sioux Valley Sioux Valley regional whatever he took it over he donated billions and now it's all Sanford and there's a children's

40:35hospital and it's so eerie there's a there's a statue of Sanford there's two of them actually in my hometown Sioux Falls and he's got kids on his shoulder he's got kids in front of him few years ago they found over 30 child porn images on his personal email and you know it normally if you find 30 CSAM images on someone's device they go to prison or they they get arrested at the charge what ended up happening though nothing it went away no one was ever they said he was hacked no one was arrested this is it's still a story that's developing because of the weirdness in fact the guy's personal attorney Denny Sanford's personal attorney would end up becoming the attorney general of South Dakota and he was previously the attorney general so and he now he's running for governor which is why I'm trying to bring this story back up because I hate the dude yeah but um yeah that's just like a microcosm example of money influence you can

41:38make things disappear even with children I mean I saw Alan Dershaw would say it on an interview recently like you know if Epstein would have been intelligence if he was arrested for crimes against children and you went and told the prosecutors hey he's in an intelligence asset leave him alone would they have left him alone he's like yeah yeah even crimes against children yeah yeah it's he's intelligence you just get away with it it's it's it's not it's you know I think this thing is like people still don't understand the depths of it all like you said like you're talking about these little microcosms in South Dakota and and everywhere else and now we know of much bigger deal of it because of Epstein and then all of a sudden okay why is it that every single person in power every single person who has money every single person who whatever is now involved in this have you done a deep dive in that like because I know you're going through all the files man like if anybody finds you know what shout out your Instagram really quick because if they find it people can see how deep you're diving into this stuff so what's the handle it's the paranormal files yeah and

42:41you're just going ham on these files and diving deeper like how deep and twisted do you think this whole Epstein thing is going I mean it's deeper than anyone can even conceive because it's what really is happening here is the curtain is being pulled back and yeah the child abuse and the trafficking of children that's horrific and that deserves you know all the attention in the world and that's why I've dedicated like all my accounts to fighting that sort of crime for years now but with Epstein we are seeing a dark machine of power and influence and murder and cover-ups and cover-ups of cover-ups it's not even just that they're trying to cover up this sex abuse of miners it's they're covering up financial crimes they're covering up murders that you there's so many murders that are mentioned and alluded to that were never really investigated they're covering up

43:43just the power structures and dynamics I mean it's people that said that they you know they never interacted with each other in the public eye and yet in the emails you can see that they're they're very close friends or they're tightly knit I mean to me it was shocking to see people like Peter Teal and Elon Musk and all those individuals getting with Epstein so frequently and discussing all these things and you've got me and I post original conviction like that's the thing too that's the big party convicted previously now so and I would look at that from a standpoint of like okay communication before that wasn't related via email not using things like pizza not using weird terms that all of a sudden you're finding all these emails anything before they could okay like he was they were introduced or whatever and then he once he was incriminalized or criminalized with the first thing and they cut off okay cool maybe there's something we should look into but the fact that a lot of this happened post the first thing was unbelievable to me and it's yeah that's I think what's the most shocking is when you

44:48you not only see all these people that I mean like I've never thought Elon Musk or any of those guys were good people but it's like when you see people that are respected having these interactions with Epstein post conviction it's like what were they thinking I mean this guy has been he's not only just an evil dude but he's a pedophile he's a convicted pedophile and yet what was I just thinking what was the email I just read I just covered this email and they were talking about providing like people to Epstein or whatever vice versa it was some slavery but there's all this this sexual talk between these people and Epstein and I don't know I mean if my friend it's her now he was an accused child sex trafficker in a hardcore abusive pedophile I would definitely drop them as a friend but nobody did it seems like almost nobody stopped hanging out of them in fact based on like the emails that they've released it's almost like Epstein

45:49got even more popular after he was convicted of that because that's when the bulk of the emails are really coming from that we've seen yeah and yeah you could go crazy all day trying to decode stuff and yada yada and you know there are all these different weird bizarre allegations which I'm I'm more inclined to be open-minded to the truly bizarre stuff not only because I've been working in the paranormal for 11 years so I've my reality has been shifted for a long time but I've interviewed people that were victims of those sorts of things themselves like this woman incredibly sweet woman who we worked with in Germany who's a part of a survivor's organization we interviewed her as a part of our shoot over there and one of her stories was that she had been trafficked by her parents into this cult a group of individuals who would have these meetings in the countryside and she said at one point they got all the kids and they put them in a circle and they got this naked full grown woman and she was like bound and whatever and

46:54they put her in the center of the circle of kids they put a pistol up her genitals and then blew her hat off in front of these children and then they said she told us that the other adults then told the kids to lick up the meat that was for exact verbiage that she used and so I get it I get when it's hard to believe these things and I mean you can't really litigate something without evidence and and properly prove it but when you sit there like I have and you actually work with these people and you get to know them and you hear their stories and you hear the authenticity in their voices and you hear it time and time and time and time again it's like I don't know there is something more insidious that happens in this world you're naive if you don't think that things like that have happened like anything terrible you can possibly imagine in the worst nightmares besides I mean things that defy the law of physics you know those things have all probably

47:56happened at some point on earth because you you can never underestimate the the fucked upness of people you know it's just the depravity never never ends yeah dude and I'll tell you what man like I the conspiracy theory world I was never a big part of it until a lot of people started to wake up in 2020 and then started to kind of go down that rabbit hole from that standpoint and so like you start to get glimpses of it I was never a deep researcher of it I would just see certain things and I would I just wouldn't question whether it was real or not it'd be like okay that's interesting let's find out more and these these Epstein things have me in a place now and I think a lot of people are which is why I want you to address it I think a lot of people that are kind of opening their eyes up now are going like okay well what is it like is it really rich sick sadistic people who then or is it really rich people who become sick and sadistic or is it really sadistic people who in a sense sell their soul for the fame money and power because if you notice people who are paying attention to this this is the first time in the last 10 years that's

48:59something major is happening and Hollywood is not speaking up right I mean it's I think it's all the above I think you've got people that are attracted to power because they want to go on to abuse that power and there are also people that get to the top and they're innocent but they have to be corrupted that's a part of the system I mean Epstein at the end of the day just like some of these other historical rings that we could talk about the chicken and the bowls ring in New York City we could talk about J Edgar Hoover's pedophile blackmail parties at the Plaza Hotel in New York all these things that have been documented it's it boils down to with Epstein and his handlers this was at least in part an intelligence operation it was it was the blackmail and one of the rings that we're doing this documentary series about that we've been working on it for two years and we've got 20 plus people interviewed for the series multiple victims and and we've even

50:00got perpetrators that are admitting to taking the blackmail photographs for this ring anyways it's a lot to get into but that's it the exact same thing was happening in the in the 1980s and 90s in America and about as soon as that whole thing went under Epstein's operations started and there there are clear pathways between these rings because that ring that we're making the documentary about it was exposed about 10 years after the one the other the other one that we're making the docu series about was exposed which is what I was in the independent talking about which is the Frank Sheldon ring the original Epstein he had his own island I mean he's a multi-millionaire potentially a billionaire like extremely politically connected family grandfather's the governor of Michigan like really really really important dude from Michigan who once again molested children on an island he filmed them he they produced mountains of CSAM videos and photos there were hundreds

51:05of men thousands that were subscribed to them the CSAM mailing service there were men that visited the island there were men that participated in all this and ran the cameras and abused the children and at the end of the day one guy went down for that he was his accomplice Frank Sheldon the main guy the billionaire he have scotted and he left America and that that's kind of the starting point of our docu series is what the hell happened to this guy because he was he was in the spring chicken but he was like I don't know like 60 or so when he fled America even in his 50s I believe so he had a lot of years and what ended up happening is he left America and the ring that he either helped start or globbed onto was even bigger than what was going on here in America and the people that we've talked to and the information that we've gathered I mean it was an Epstein style operation that spanned all the way to India and when I'm there in India and we're in the middle of

52:07nowhere in India hours from the nearest city in the literal mountains in a small village talking to people and they're able to positively identify this guy through a picture and then they talk about how he molested them over and over or he molested this person and then all of a sudden we hear allegations that there's someone that's been murdered and they're buried here and blah blah blah I don't want to talk too much about it but that's for me when you start to realize you know there's a reason why these people aren't caught and there's a reason why they aren't properly investigated because their connections with Sheldon and various powerful people and you know obviously Epstein's got I mean it's so obvious for people but you still don't see them talking about it in the mainstream media of course like like it's even a part of the story when was the last time you saw I've the only article I've seen with some douchebag debunking the intelligence connection and I'm like okay so not only is there like tons of tons of evidence for it but I mean there are

53:14literal like documents and emails showing that Epstein with like for example the former prime minister of Israel they were going around selling um software like literal backdoor spy software to different countries like yeah that's that's just on its face like an intelligent there's so many things in the fact that it's not being covered by mainstream media is not surprising but also mind blowing at the same time like at the heat of everything as they were releasing I think the second round of all the information by the way there's still more they're going to make you think that was it but there's more oh yeah my wife goes yeah I went on to some news website and she's like it's not even in the top 10 news things of the day number number the top three were like Virginia Guthrie's mother right so or like Virginia whoever Guthrie's mother her name might be Virginia I don't know I don't watch TV so I don't know these daytime talk show people um but you get what I'm saying like that's not a bigger story I'm sorry and scrolling through your social media will prove to you that it is not a bigger story and there's just so many questions and I

54:16think that's the thing right we can just keep going down and down and down as far as like why the file is missing around 9 11 why are there like there's so many bigger things you know and I think the real question is who who's at the top and I don't know if anybody has that answer well it's really interesting I just watched um the film have you seen the age of disclosure that that documentary no I don't think so it's about UFOs and aliens oh yeah I think I watch part of it yeah yeah man it is so so interesting and mind blowing to see these ex-government employees making these these statements and talking about things that they were made privy of while they worked there um about you know crash retrieval projects and their actual recovery of biological remains of aliens like they're talking about multiple species of aliens that were recovered from these crashes that exist at US bases and like it's like so mind blowing to hear all this shit coming

55:21from real people with real credentials and the thing that stuck out to me in that in that film was I can't remember who they were talking to but it was the former guy at the CIA and they're basically stating that you know if you're the top guy at the CIA you're like a political appointee you're just being brought in for four years or whatever same with the president so a lot of these top secret programs they never make their way up to the top brass and then within that there are even more secret programs that exist within 10 20 people and within those programs there's even secret more hidden programs and that to me is self-rightening because you'll never get the truth about like an Epstein or or any sort of intelligence connection or or operation there because either they kill those people before they can talk or you know they're just they're just truly evil people that want to keep it going yeah and it's not a big operation like what

56:24the files like I've been saying since the beginning if you blackmail someone and you traffic children to these rich people you're not gonna make a document that says like oh George Bush molested a child today her name is blah blah blah you know it's like that shit is not going to exist people have to learn to read between the lines connect the dots and then yeah I mean the files that really would show it they're gone they're either shredded or they didn't exist in the first place so yeah that's that's the challenging thing about Epstein it's like they're not going to just write down like oh he paid me $30,000 for this child today like here we go blah blah blah it's it's never gonna be like that yeah do you think Epstein's still alive how to know man you know it's that's one of the weird ones because I personally and people disagree with me on it I feel like he was definitely killed because there are people in the past who have done very similar things to him

57:24stories that were telling who definitely died and they died very weird suspicious deaths now and I think I mean personally I think if Epstein was still alive I mean he'd be such a liability what would be stopping him from just randomly one day going and telling a story like he could do that if he was still alive and I don't know why they would keep him alive when that's that's a potential but I mean the autopsy photos the mismatched whatever the years and all that is weird and then the guy the file with the guy in the body swapping or whatever the the post that he made on forechan that was verified like you can't make that stuff up but it's the whole thing with Epstein man and there are no answers they provide no context they give you no information they dump a shitload of photos and videos that have no meaning but they at the same time mean so much and then they just declare that there's there's no investigation needed you know

58:26we just need to carry on like Trump says I've been exonerated let's stop talking about that or Pam Bondy with the the Dow over 50,000 yeah dude yeah we we're living we're living in a movie right and it's funny that you brought up the disclosure television show as as Spielberg strapped in disclosure day this year and like really funny when you see a lot of similarities about real life that are in Hollywood and Hollywood tends to happen first and it's like this interesting type of you know really weird world we're living in and my whole thing to everybody is like just question everything even if it's something you always have always believed in question it a little bit right and I think that's a really good place to start and also find something to do to keep your sanity because humans are not meant to ingest this information to see the things we accidentally see on the internet I mean you're diving deep I refuse to dive deep because I don't want to see some of the stuff that are that are that are on those files but like do something that you're going to keep your sanity as if you decide to go down this rabbit hole like people listening right now it's it's just a crazy crazy thing to think about man so I think from the standpoint of like

59:32the documentary work when can we start looking for it is it releasing somewhere what's all the good stuff well we are hopefully going to be finishing production in the next month and then yeah we're taking it to the people that that want to see it already and hopefully it'll be I mean our goal is to to get this out as soon as possible because we have we have the Sheldon series the Frank Sheldon Island series which is unbelievably explosive and the things that we saw just producing that you can't unsee you can't you can't you can't unlearn and we've had confidential sources that have told us things that we couldn't show their identities and people within the government that have spoken with us and it's it's it's really really shocking but the the big bad boy is the one that I don't want to like name and talk about yet just out of kind of safety concerns for us in the

1:00:33project which is about this other ring that is there's never been a documentary well there was one that they produced this film and then right before I was going to be released it got pulled and there's copies of it online now but it never officially aired and yeah it's it's a photo copy of Epstein that happened in the 1980s and we we're trying to push for it to be released as soon as possible because hopefully it'll it'll be like a match that starts a fire it is it shows people look at this story and you can see what happens if we do not do the right thing right now at this incredibly important moment in history like even for me a little off topic but I've been thinking like what the hell can we do like what what is the logical step like you and I can talk and I can rant and you know blah blah blah this guy sucks and he did this what can we do so what I'd like to see

1:01:34is like some sort of action like I'd like to see like a protest like in the 1990s there it's a different rabbit hole but there's there was an Epstein in Europe his name is marked to true and I did a whole documentary about him he they call material killer because he's responsible for like six or eight children's deaths and it's really horrific stuff but he was like the Epstein he was providing kids to this network of rich pedophiles that went all the way up to the royalty in Belgium he even had a guy working over him who was his leader named Michelle Lehuil who said in an interview they'll never arrest me essentially they'll never question me because if I tell them the truth it'll bring the whole system down he said that in a newspaper you won't yeah and so what happened with the true is people saw the cover up happening live and this is in the 90s and they had this thing called the white march and they had over 300,000 people in Belgium out on the streets protesting the government's handling of a pedophile ring and 300,000 have done sound

1:02:39like a lot but Belgium is a small country so it was like a significant portion of the population they were all out and you can see the videos and photos from that day and it's really inspiring so I feel like that's where that's where we need to be because people also ask and I get shit for like why do you cover like the graphic things that you see and why are you talking about this and people call me all sorts of names and say that I'm like whatever you know I've had people call me a pedophile because I'm just reporting on this stuff which is fucking insane to me but my answer to all those people is always you know like you have to hear this and we have to be like people are still not angry enough you need to understand my potential implications of what happened like torture and murder of not only adults but also potentially children we're talking about hundreds thousands of kids that were abused that were molested by these rich and powerful

1:03:39people were talking about child porn being produced and pedophile parties and orgies and all the worst things you can possibly imagine are all in those files for you to see if you want to look at them and that's why for me with my content especially on like Instagram and TikTok I'm like I need people need to be hit with this so that we can get pissed it's no more time to sugarcoat this it hasn't worked in the past it never worked in the past that's why all these people got away with it with all these rings that I've been working on for years and I just don't want it to happen anymore and the way to do it is to I mean look at what happened in England people were pissed in England now Andrew's been arrested yeah fit wasn't a right the child stuff yeah well I think if something is going to happen on a on a on a broad scheme of things it's always they're always going to be arrested for something else it's always going to be a secondary thing it's always going to be whatever but but yeah my wife and I were literally just talking about like we these people protest everything why are they not pissed off and protesting about this and that's

1:04:45that's the crazy part that I can't quit I mean there's we can't if I if I went down the rabbit hole as to why we'd be here for another hour but like it's you know it's an interesting thing as far as like why this why we aren't coming together as a as a humanity because it's beyond just America so as a humanity to protest to speak up is mind blowing which is why I wanted to have this conversation with you so thank you so much for coming on and I always wrap up every single interview with the same question but before we get there how can people find you obviously we already talked about the doc which they should keep their eyes open for but how can people find you connect with you off what's all the good stuff on all my socials it's the paranormal files so like Instagram TikTok I'm the paranormal files on YouTube I'm also the paranormal files and then if you want to hear me rant about Epstein which I do every other day it's the conspiracy files on YouTube or Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts and then finally my wife and I host I mean she's the she's an incredible writer and researcher our podcast is called Murder in America and we were

1:05:49on Times Square for the show a year or so ago it was really cool opportunity and you know we have an amazing audience out there that listens every week and we also advocate for totally different justices with murder in America and that's to wrap that up is that's what's interesting is you know when I was talking about Gacy and my introduction to this world it was through all this research when I kept coming across all these stories of pedophile rings that no one was talking about that no one knew about and that's what I I don't know it became like my goal to talk about this stuff and then going to rehab and getting sober it's like it's a mission I feel like I have spiritually I feel like I'm on the right path because of some really weird shit that has happened to me while we've been filming these documentaries which we're actually including some of the footage in the series so it's it's crazy but yeah I mean even here man I feel like I was meant to be right

1:06:51here today having this conversation with you everything happens for a reason dude I appreciate a man so like I said I wrap up every single interview with the same question that is in your life what has been your biggest moment of growth honestly I'm gonna say after I got sober after getting sober was the the most beautiful time of my life got out of rehab it was extremely challenging you know having to navigate life without any of the comforts that I used to have but I just really dug in and started working and producing and I was finally able to do the business that I I always wanted to do and and handle things how I wanted to handle them and I got control of my life again and then everything everything just lined up I had the biggest summer in my life on YouTube with

1:07:51all my documentaries four hour long documentaries getting millions of views talking about pedophiles and and all these investigative things that we were doing which was awesome all my accounts came back to life that I had ignored because of my obviously my addiction and then the biggest thing was my relationships with like my wife and my parents and everybody all my friends that all I think fixing all those and and mending all those even though they weren't really like broken it was just like shedding this horrific shit that I've been dealing with for so long it enabled the growth and then once you find that the piece you know within yourself man it's just like the things that you want to happen they start to happen and yeah it was a really really good time my life and I'm still riding on that high right now with all these projects even though I'm bogged down like do it I didn't expect to start filming that series in 2024 and to still be here we just shot more of it

1:08:54two weeks ago to try to finish it out it's crazy but yeah it's it's a blessing it's a blessing to be alive should have been dead with all the things that I did in substances I abused but something's kept me here and it shows itself and and I'm just I'm just happy man I'm really happy man Colin thank you so much for doing what you're doing please keep advocating keep doing the things you're doing making awareness to people and thank you so much for coming on dude this has been a blast yeah dude if you ever want to hear more rants about extremely dark and disturbing subject I'm your guy I love it thank you guys so much for being a part of the growth now movement this is how you can really help me out if you guys enjoyed this episode please share it out on Facebook Instagram Twitter all that fun stuff and let's grow this movement to epic heights and it's all gonna be because of you guys thank you so much and we'll see you next