 Good morning and welcome to Moments with Melinda. I am your host, Melinda Moulton, and today my guest is Joe Citro. How are you today, my friend? Very well, thank you. I want to thank you so much for being with me. You and I have a lot of similar thoughts about a lot of things. But for my viewers, let me tell them who you are. Joe Citro is a Vermont author and folklorist who has extensively researched and documented the folklore, hauntings, stories, paranormal activity, and occult happenings in New England. Is that about right, Joe? That's about right. I would add just that I specialize in Vermont lore. And I started doing that in 1994 because no one else had ever done it. So it becomes sort of a mission for me to get the collect the Vermont stories. Well, when I was at camp at O'Gon's camp when I was six years old in New Hampshire, I had, I first heard about Vermont and it was about a vampire bat that had bit some farm boy. I mean, I, you know, that was my, and then I went, oh, Vermont, that's my place. I want you to know that I did bring my crystal for us today. And I'm going to pull a tarot card that's going to, because I do tarot readings, which I will do for you someday, which will define our reading for today. Let's see what I picked. Oh, I picked the three of coins. This is our card here, Joe. It's the three of coins. And let me throw the pentacles and let me tell you what the meaning of that is. It means talent rewarded, creative ability, bringing material gain, recognition by an employer, status through accomplishment, abundance, a new home or place of residence, redecoration and pregnancy. Well, I'm not going to worry about that at all, but it is, it is a reformation of who you are and who I am as we move through life being to people who do believe in the strangeness of life. So let's start right now talking with you about your life growing up in Vermont. Were you a creepy kid? Secretly, yeah. I tried not to appear that way, but I have my secrets as two most Vermonters, I suspect. Yeah, yeah, I was a little bit of an outsider. We didn't have goth kids in those days. But if I could turn back the clock, I would probably be a gothy sort of kid. Aha. Well, you probably would have been, you're looking, I think you're a little goth now. And I'm goth because I wear black all the time, but that doesn't mean anything that you wear black. But I was a creepy kid and I would have loved to have known you when I was a child, because I think you and I would have gotten along. So from an early age, you had an interest in horror. Tell us about what piqued your interest in horror as a child. What got you into this kind of cultist place where you live? Well, I think it was kind of a strange alchemy between my parents. My father was something of a storyteller, oral. He knew all the lore, all the towns around where I was kid. When I started being a kid, we were in Ludlow. And that's where my father was from. And he knew all the strange happenings and haunted houses and monsters and murders and things like that that had happened in that area. My mother was a reader. My father wasn't, but my mother was. And her recreational reading was sort of mystery stories like John Dixon Carr and Conan Doyle and Hillary Queen. And I think Perry Mason was at the lighter end of that. But yeah, so I think there was an inevitability about it. I was just going to be picking up on weird stuff. Did you have siblings? Yeah, my brother, who likes to consider himself an only child, he still lives in Rotland and he's far less tuned into this sort of thing than I am. Were you the older sibling? I was the older one. Yeah, he's three years younger than I. Frightened him when he was a child? Did you frighten him with your creepy... I think I frightened everyone, really. My brother, no, I don't think so. I think he frightened me more than I frightened him because he tended to be sort of accident prone. So he was getting hurt all the time and I was trying to take care of him. If you read my short autobiography, you'll get some stories from my brother and his adventures. But maybe you haven't seen that. That's the more normal side of me. If you've seen just the collections of stories you haven't seen everything. Well, I have not seen everything because there's so much out there on you. There's tons on you but I do have a lot about you that I've learned and I'm glad to know that you have a younger brother who you took care of because sometimes people, young kids who are into creepy stuff, can scare their younger siblings and I'm glad that you did not do that to your brother. What was your first interest in horror? I mean, what took you there? I know that when I was three years old, my father would wake us up. I had four siblings and he would wake us up at three in the morning and march us downstairs to the den where we would watch shock theater. And I was about three and our mother was asleep but she never knew that he did this. Oh, look at my shadow on the wall. That's kind of creepy. And we would mark this down. And I'd be three years old sitting there watching, you know, Bella Lugothi and, you know, all these creepy, the wolf man and it was just, I was raised on creepiness. And that's what made me a little bit creepy as a child. What was it that made you kind of go into this as a child? Melinda, I don't think that's your shadow. Don't turn around. I don't know. I think it was my father, actually, because he, for example, when we would go from Ludlow to Rutland, we'd go by Cuttingsville in the Bowman mansion. And my father would tell the story of how Mr. Bowman lived there after his wife and kids had died spending his years looking for ways to bring them back from the dead. And that would do it. And he supposedly had employees that lived in the house after he died to prepare, to keep the house up and to prepare a meal every night in case Mr. Bowman and or his family should shambles from the crypt and come back to the house and arrive hungry. Hungry and need to eat. And that would, that would peak my imagination as a little kid. And I think that is probably the first scary story that I ever heard. And you fell in love with it and you loved it and you weren't frightened. I was never frightened. I just was enthralled. I was enthralled with it all. I was not frightened. So tell us about some of the horror books that you've written. You've written Shadow Child, The Unseen, Guardian Angels. Tell us a little bit about your writing and some of the books. It starts with those stories that my father told. And when I wanted to take up writing, it occurred to me that some of these old Vermont stories had lasted for a really long time and could be told to a modern audience in a modern way. So I started to put those together as novels. The first novel I ever wrote had to do with a guy who was looking to prove that there was a critter in Lake Champlain. So I built a whole story around the possibility that there's a critter in the lake. That was the first one. That was the first one I ever wrote. That wasn't the first one to be published. But it's a good example of how I tried to use legitimate Vermont folklore and myth and history to build modern novels. That was fiction. So you were a collector and reporter of creepy unexplained happenings, legends, even UFO sightings in haunted houses. And you were the keeper and the share of these collections. And you have been called the bard of the bazaar, I believe, by one of the great newspapers, the Boston Globe. We have them to thank. Yes, you do. You've been covered by a lot of great newspapers and writers. So you are considered the bard of the bazaar. Now, you said in an interview that you are not weird, but indeed, your fascination with the occult and unexplained paranormal realities of human existence does make you a bit out of the ordinary. Yes. That's for you to judge. Well, I think it almost has to be to dive into some of these mysteries around life. And do you feel like sometimes the mysteries of life help you to understand death? That's an interesting question. And maybe that's what set the root of the whole search. I don't know. I don't know. It's interesting to think that there might be something on the other side of the veil. And as I get older, maybe that becomes more more real. The possibility of finding out. Well, if there's nothing after the veil, of course, we'll never find that out. But if there is something after that on the other side of the veil, you know, what could it be? I frankly, I don't, I don't believe that the dead return. I don't believe in ghosts. What I believe in is the ghost experience, that thing that people have that convinces them that they have seen a ghost. Robert Brunel and I did a book where that's considered to some degree. It's called the Vermont ghost experience. Robert illustrated it, I wrote it. And that's the book where I talk most about the possibility that ghosts are not the spirits of the dead. I find it really hard to believe that that they are. Do you believe that ghosts are spirits of the dead? Well, you know, it's so weird that that's one of the things, the questions that I always have is why me? Why am I here? Why was it me that all the time? And especially as you get older. But listen, this is where you and I differ about ghosts, because you do not believe that ghosts are spirits from the dead, but a spiritual phenomenon. Now, I do believe that they are spirits that are living with us. And I do believe they're of the dead, because I've had a ghost living with me for 40 years. And I know who he is. And I know how he died. And I know when he died. And I know that he is, he is, he was a real person. And I know that because people who have come to my house who don't even know about him, who have slept in our guest room, have seen him. And they've seen him in a doorway, and they've asked to be put in another room. And there's been people, and we've experienced him over and over again over the last 40 years. So I do believe that that that ghosts can be and often are spirits who just have not left. And we have his brother to try to do an exorcism and everything. But at the end of the day, that's where you and I sort of disagree. Have you ever heard of a spirit holding down a person while they slept? Yeah, yeah, I've heard of that. Let me ask you this. When you see, have you seen this ghost? Yes. Is it naked? That's not the, that's not the image that you get. It's more, no, it's, it's, you know, I know that that this, that he does not have any legs and he's floating and it's an apparition. But more it's the incidences that happen throughout our life that we've experienced. And then incidences that have gone from my house to another house where he used to hang out. So I'd like, I'd like to meet him. Well, I would love you to come and meet him too. I had a friend, I had a friend of mine, Maureen, who was a spiritualist and she came, she knew nothing about this. And she came to dinner at our house and had a beautiful dinner with her husband. And and we had a great time laugh, listen to music. And when she left, she turned around and she touched my arm and she said, look, I just want you to know in case you don't know that you have a spirit in your house. And I said, yeah, I've been living with him for 40 years. So anyway, let me let me just I used to believe that ghosts were the spirits of the dead. I agree. I believe that there was some possibility that my grandfather or grandmother would come back and communicate with me. But then there's one thought that I had that got me thinking along different lines. And that is, there's no reason why ghosts should have clothing on, because clothing doesn't produce, doesn't survive death. Ghosts should all be naked. And if they're not, then there's something other than spirits of the dead dirty old man, my heavens, my well, I have yet to see a naked ghost too. But the ghost clothes do not produce ghosts. But apparitions, but literally apparitions, meaning a movement of a light of some kind of a figure. But that'd be said, I hope someday you get to see a naked ghost. And when you do, let me know. Now I'm going to move on to the vampire. Because I have often thought that I could be a vampire. Now, my first scary movie was the Bella Lugosi. My favorite vampire movie is the one with Gary Oldman. But anyway, I have often thought that I could be a vampire. And it's not because I suck blood, but because I am fascinated by them. And I feel a deep connection. I think they're very sexy. So what is your favorite vampire movie? My favorite vampire movie, that's a good question. You know, Vermont has a great history of vampires. A lot of them here. You know that. No. Well, you must. But let's back to movies. I like, let the right one in quite a bit. Have you ever seen that? No. Let me write that down. Yeah, yeah. There's two versions of it. One is a foreign film, and one is an American remake. They're both equally, equally good, I think. Another one is, I haven't even thought about vampire movies, but I'll leave you without one. Well, tell me about a vampire in Vermont. Is he still here? She here? How do I meet them? Where are they? You know, I introduced Bob Standard to the vampire in Woodstock quite recently. That's probably the most famous one, but I think Bob already knew about the one that was in Manchester. I think Bob Standard could be a vampire. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Anyway, he knows we're kidding. We know we're kidding. So you wrote Green Mountain Ghosts. Tell us about Corwin the Vampire, that poor little boy. They dug him up. They cut him up. He's the one that was in Woodstock. And it's important to keep in mind that the New England vampire is really quite different from the European vampire. Tell me, how is that? The New England vampires don't suck blood, but rather they somehow drain the essence from the person and weaken the person. And eventually the person will die, allowing the vampire to continue to live. It's a very different tradition from the European tradition. It's explored pretty thoroughly in a book by Rhode Island's former folklorist, Michael Bell, a book called, I think it's Food for the Dead, I think is the name of the book. And he, more than anyone else, talks about the New England tradition of vampirism. There's a poem by Amy Lowell called Oddly, The Dracula of the Hills, where she talks about that very same thing. So Corwin is, Corwin was a member of a family and the family was being wiped out by something that people then perceived as vampirism and called it vampirism. Today we would call it tuberculosis. So vampires are wiped out as long as the diseases wiped out. But there were a bunch of different stories all around Vermont of families that had a vampire in them. The one in Manchester, I'm trying to think where I, which book I talked about that one in, it might have been the book Passing Strange. It was Green Mountain Ghosts, wasn't it? I don't know. I can't remember if I talked about the Manchester vampire in Green Mountain Ghosts. Maybe I did. Corwin, okay. I need an index in my head, which stories are in which book. Anyway, as far as I know, no one has ever written a book or made a horror movie about the New England vampire. And I always saw that as part of my mission, but I never got to it. You ever want to make a movie just so you know my husband and I are filmmakers? So we would love to partner with you on that. And I definitely want to be in the movie, because I'm also theatrical. Would you like to play a ghost? I would play anything. I would play the victim. I would play the victim. Oh, I'm fine with that. And I wanted to do the play Dracula by Bram Stoker at the black box. Oh, yeah. And I wanted it to be directed by Mark Nash or have Mark Nash. And then I thought, you know what, maybe I'll make take Bram Stoker's play and have a woman be directed. I could change the genders. And so anyway, that's something that I still have in my heart to produce and to direct on stage is Bram Stoker and have Dracula be a female. Now, let's get back to this. All right, let's get back to this. So the vampires. So you're talking about the New England vampire. And I just want you to know that I've had a lot of people in my life suck the life out of me. And so I'm not sure if they're vampires or not, but it happens often as humans that we do have people in our lives who suck the life out of us. I know. And you have to be able to eat a lot of garlic and tell them to just go on their way that you're done with them. Now, you wrote about Champ. So isn't he or she somewhat of a novel mystic legend here in Vermont? And I have a friend who saw him four times and actually took a photo, had a photograph taken and it was in Life Magazine. Are you a believer of Champ? Pretty much. Yeah. The only the only thing lacking, be totally convinced that I haven't had a sighting, but the evidence is overwhelming. And in fact, I'm working right now on a new edition of my book, Lake Monsters, which is about the guy that comes to Vermont to search for Champ. So I might say I'm diving into Champ again right now as we speak. That book is in progress and should be out, I don't know, sometime next year. Well, fans, when it comes out, I want to interview again. So where do you think spirits go when they die? Well, I'm not entirely convinced that there are spirits that go anywhere. So I think if it were me, I'd probably want to go to Canada, I guess. I thought you were going to say cancun. I like the idea that the spiritualists had, which was somewhat at odds with Christian tradition. And that was the idea of the summer land, that when you die, you go to what they call the summer land. And do you know about this? It's just a place that's like a beautiful Vermont summer day where the birds are flying and tweeting and the grass is green and the trees are full of leaves and the air is temperate and perhaps fragrant with flowers and everybody lives smiling and happy in the summer land. That was the notion that the American spiritualists had at the end of the 19th century, early 20th century. I always said that appeals to me much more than the duality of heaven and hell. In fact, going to heaven and spending eternity with Christians really puts me off. That would be a problem for me too. I think I'm a bit of a pagan for sure. And I believe that God is nature and the trees are talking to me all. You and I are kindred spirits. Now, do you want to be buried or cremated? I do not want to be burned. I told my husband that's in my will because I believed that I was a witch and I was burned at the stake in a past lifetime and it haunts me still. So I want to be laid in a coffin and buried and I have my whole ritual written up. I wrote it up 30 years ago. Do you want to be buried or cremated? There's another choice. What is that? It's sort of a green burial where I'm just sort of planted and I become a tree. The idea of getting cremated seems like air pollution to me. Buried in a cemetery puts me off. So I think I just want to be planted in my backyard and become a tree. What tree would you want to be? Oak tree. An oak tree, beautiful, fabulous. They do not yield. They bend. They do not bend. They fabulous. Okay. So do you believe in past lifetimes? You know, I look at the evidence from time to time and some of it is very convincing, but I think there must be another explanation. I like the idea that we have sort of a combined consciousness when we die, that we don't remain as separate entities, but we combine into one consciousness and perhaps in subsequent lives people can tap into a bit of that and think they're tapping into their own past life. But I don't know. For me, I'm such a skeptic and belief requires evidence and personal evidence from me. So I don't know. I'm waiting to pick up some baby some time and recognize it as my mother, but it hasn't happened yet. I don't know about past lives. Well, so do you believe in reincarnation? Do you believe that when you die that you could come back as another creature or another human? I'm willing to be convinced, but belief to me is irrelevant. You know, belief is for church. In what I consider in my version of the real world, there's just no way to know that lacking experience. So if I'm reborn and have some fragments of memories of this life, I may become convinced. I know there are some very convincing stories about past life experiences. There was a teacher in the Bellows Falls school system who convincingly hypnotized one of his students and brought forth a bunch of past life experience about being shot in the Civil War. The teacher and his assistant and the kid went back to the place where all of that happened and was able to verify a lot of information that the kid had given under hypnosis. So it's a very convincing story. I tell it briefly in my book, The Vermont Ghost Experience, but there's a lot more information about it. So yeah, but I don't know what to make of that. I'm not convinced that the kid actually lived before, but maybe he did. Well, I have some great stories I want to share with you. I would be delighted to hear that. Truly. I'm very open-minded. I'm a researcher. I'm very open-minded and you're asking me how I feel about things right now at this moment in the here and now. So which is not to say there is no critter in the lake, which is not to say ghosts are not the spirits of the dead, which is not to say that reincarnation never happens. I'm just saying where I'm at on those subjects and I'm willing to take another look at anything. Well, you're an occultist though. I mean, you're somebody who delves into occult, very bizarre happenings that do not exist in the real world. And so for you to be able to write about it and to dive into it and to in many ways sort of promote the occultism that lives inside of your sort of pagan being, there has to be some kind of understanding that this stuff might actually be or then because you're not a charlatan, you're not making this stuff up. It's got to come from some of the mysteries and I'm a detective. You are a detective and I want to share with you some of my mysteries because they're pretty extraordinary. And so I become a believer, but I was going to say maybe I'm a little older than you, but I don't think I think we're both probably. How old are you? Do you mind if I ask? We're both old spirits. We're young and hard, but are you my age? I'm 72. I'm older than you. How much older? How old are you? In January, I'll be 75. Oh, you look so young. You look very good for 75. You have a very kind and very Santa Claus-y look about you, very generous. And now we're coming to the end of my show, so I just want to let you know that I just installed a cemetery on my meadow and I did it five years ago and I am fascinated with death. I lost my parents when I was young, and my grandchildren, they find it all fascinating, but they're a little weirded out by me. When I put this in, I explained that I wanted to be close to them, so it's right near where everybody lives. And this is where I'll be and I know where I'll be. I know what my view is going to be and I'm planting flower gardens and everything. And I believe that it'll be extremely hard for me to leave this place. And I fully well realize that I may become a spirit that lives here for all eternity, and I'm really good with that, quite frankly. Drop by if you go first. I'll stop by and see you and I'll make sure I don't have any clothes on so that you know that it's me and you believe that actually I am, that I actually am who I am and that I'm there. So I really do hope that you'll come visit me up here and that I can come visit you. I'm going to be down to see Bob and Allison some time after he's in the next couple of months and I'm assuming you're close to them, so maybe we can all get together and chit chat. I'd love to invite you up to Huntington. We have a lot of stories up here in this town that are fascinating and I'm so glad that you are who you are and that you do what you do because we need more people like you telling these stories. They're fascinating. I think my skepticism is really an aid to what I do because with the stories that I've collected, if I told them as if I am a believer that would eliminate a lot of readers and if I told them as if I were a denier would eliminate readers. The fact is I'm right on the fence and I've been that way for years and it can be painful sitting on this damn fence after a while but that's pretty much where I am. If you were a believer, people wouldn't believe you. I totally get that. And I can be a believer because I'm not writing, it's not my thing and so I can be a believer but you really need to stay on that fence but when that moment happens, when somebody holds you down in your sleep and your dogs are downstairs because they don't come up this because they can't get up the ladder to the second floor and they're growling and whining and their little toenails are clipping across the floor and you're being held down for three minutes by a spirit who ends up going 20 miles away to a house that they used to visit and doing it to somebody else. You become a believer that yes that was something very, very occult and strange and I have so many of those stories that have happened to us in this house. I would love to talk to you about those things. I've had weird things happen, things that I can't explain, things that if I thought about it differently might convince me that there was something beyond but I think the fact that I can't explain something doesn't mean it can't be explained and I've had weird experiences in my own home when I was living in Burlington. I've had a weird experience in Emily's Bridge and Stowe, the allegedly haunted bridge in Stowe. I actually had two weird experiences in my home in Burlington, the one I had a home down on St. Paul's Street for years and it was pretty old but we don't have enough time for those stories and we'll talk about them someday. Well and what brought us together was my picture on social media about the forest and how at that stone wall at that particular place in the same forest the trees on one side were beautiful and lush and alive and colorful and the ones on the other side were dark and scary and how I believe the trees do absorb energy and so on that note I love your energy. I just love now that I know you in a personal way and I hope that I can have you back when you finish your next book and that you'll come visit me in Huntington and that we can forge a creepy relationship together. Let's keep in touch on Facebook until then and thank you very much for having me on your on your show. Thank you my friend.