LATIF NASSER: Hey, I'm Latif Nasser. This is Radiolab in your podcast feed a day early because it is October 31. We're celebrating Halloween by bringing you a ghost story for the occasion. There aren't a lot of radio stories out there that will genuinely spook you but also make you laugh out loud. And this one, oh man, does exactly that. We first released it exactly 10 years ago today, reported by our now senior producer Matt Kielty. This was one of his first stories, actually.

LATIF: It's about exactly how far one man is willing to go to understand his haunted house. This story is both a trick and the perfect fun-size Halloween treat. So here you go. Happy Halloween. Enjoy "Haunted." Mwah-hah-hah-hah!

[RADIOLAB INTRO]

DENNIS CONROW: I think there's a lot of moments in your life that you find yourself doing something.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Brittany Elaine: Okay, if there is anybody in here, my name is Brittany. I'd love to be able to talk with you.

DENNIS CONROW: And you take that moment and step back from it.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Brittany Elaine: Are you here?]

DENNIS CONROW: And you realize ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Larry: Come through to us.]

DENNIS CONROW: What the [bleep] am I doing? What just happened? Was this real? And I think that was one of those moments.

JAD ABUMRAD: Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT KRULWICH: I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: This is Radiolab and today on the podcast ...

[screams]

JAD: ... a ghost story.

ROBERT: Really? We're gonna do a ghost story?

JAD: Yeah, it's Halloween, dude. You don't even know. Just listen. Just let's listen, okay?

ROBERT: Okay.

JAD: This one comes from our producer, Matt Kielty.

MATT KIELTY: Yeah, so I first heard this story from a buddy of mine.

ANDY MILLS: Do do do dee do do do.

MATT: His name is Dennis Conrow.

ANDY: Dennis?

DENNIS CONROW: Andy?

ANDY: Hey, what's up dude?

JAD: That's producer Andy Mills. You guys are all buddies.

MATT: Mm-hmm. Total buds. Anyways, the story ...

ANDY: All right. Well, Dennis ...

DENNIS CONROW: Yes?

MATT: ... it's about a lot of things but in particular, a house.

MATT: So let's start with the house. When did you move back in?

DENNIS CONROW: Well, let's see. I was probably, I don't know, age 20.

MATT: Dennis had been going to college.

DENNIS CONROW: Yep.

MATT: By the way, what did you study?

DENNIS CONROW: Creative writing.

MATT: Okay.

DENNIS CONROW: But, you know, I just kind of got bored there, kind of stopped going to class. [laughs] I think once my parents realized that they weren't very happy.

MATT: I would assume so.

DENNIS CONROW: And so I was kind of asked to come back home.

MATT: Back to a town just outside Kansas City.

DENNIS CONROW: A little town called Grandview.

MATT: Did you grow up in this house?

DENNIS CONROW: I did. I did. And the house was ...

MATT: Fairly old.

DENNIS CONROW: Yeah, it was about 105 years old at the time.

MATT: Two-storey white house, nice little porch, awning over it.

DENNIS CONROW: Typical farmhouse style.

MATT: And so you were at your parents' home back in your old bedroom?

DENNIS CONROW: Yeah, in my old childhood bedroom. Yeah, so there was always a sense of, like, I need to get out of this house. It's holding me back somehow from things.

MATT: So he got a job.

DENNIS CONROW: Worked a job and got laid off.

MATT: And one year turned into two. And then three, then four and then five.

DENNIS CONROW: It was not a great time to be there.

MATT: In what way?

DENNIS CONROW: Just that I felt like I was still 16.

MATT: He says he'd overhear his mom telling people on the phone ...

DENNIS CONROW: "Well, he's never gonna move out, is he?" [laughs]

MATT: [laughs]

MATT: And then she started circling classifieds.

DENNIS CONROW: Jobs for typists, printing press, sales rep, typesetter. I don't know. I think everything in my life, however I mean for it not to, sort of moves at my own snail's pace.

MATT: And eventually ...

DENNIS CONROW: I was fairly old, like 27 maybe.

MATT: Actually, he was 28. After eight years in this house, Dennis gets a steady job, finds this cheap apartment.

DENNIS CONROW: This ratty six-plex apartment.

MATT: He starts packing up his things, but right when he's set to move out, to finally leave home ...

DENNIS CONROW: My mom got really sick.

MATT: Dennis's mom had been in remission from breast cancer for, like, nine years, but that summer her doctors told her that it had returned.

DENNIS CONROW: And had spread quite a bit. I said to her, "Do you want me to be here or do you want me to go?" And she was like, "Well, if this is my time," she wants to go knowing that her kids can take care of themselves.

MATT: So Dennis moved out. About five months later, his mom died.

DENNIS CONROW: Yeah. She went pretty fast. About a month or so after my mom died, my dad found out he had stage four prostate cancer.

MATT: Wow.

DENNIS CONROW: And he was really too sick to take care of the house and just be the guy by himself at that point.

MATT: Now Dennis pretty much had to come home.

DENNIS CONROW: I'd take care of him ...

MATT: Three, four times a week.

DENNIS CONROW: And as he got worse, he had said to me, like, "Hey, let's try to find you a house to buy so that I can teach you how to do all of the kind of stuff that one has to do. Men know how to do things, like change out plumbing." All this kind of stuff. And so we put an offer on a house.

MATT: But that fell through. And before they could find something else ...

DENNIS CONROW: The cancer from his prostate spread to his brain and the last week of his life, he was really not there. I can remember, one day, maybe a week or so after he had died ...

MATT: Dennis was walking through the empty kitchen.

DENNIS CONROW: And there was so much stuff. There was so much stuff. Papers all over the place, junk mail all over the kitchen floor.

MATT: Down in the basement ...

DENNIS CONROW: Tools all over the place. I had this moment of, "Here are his tools, and now I have them in my hands." And, you know, I just remember picking up this claw hammer and just crying because this is now my hammer, this is now my house, this is now my problem.

MATT: But a few days passed and he starts thinking ...

DENNIS CONROW: Okay.

MATT: "I can handle this."

DENNIS CONROW: Yeah.

MATT: "I've just gotta get in there, clean it out, sell it."

DENNIS CONROW: Clean and flip, that was the plan.

MATT: So at the age of 32, moves back in.

DENNIS CONROW: There was all this just junk in the basement.

MATT: Put that stuff on the curb.

DENNIS CONROW: Sale after sale after sale.

MATT: And one day he finds himself standing in the downstairs bathroom looking at the nasty floor tile.

DENNIS CONROW: It was just horrible.

MATT: His dad had meant to replace it before he died but, you know, couldn't finish.

DENNIS CONROW: And my thought was, like, I'll just do this one bathroom so that it looks pretty good to sell.

MATT: The problem was his dad had never showed him how to do any of that stuff.

DENNIS CONROW: It was at that point that I was like, "YouTube."

[ARCHIVE CLIP, YouTube: Now hold the tile in one hand firmly and begin with your ceramic tile.]

MATT: So he went online, learned how to tile, do some plumbing. And he redid the bathroom.

DENNIS CONROW: And it turned out pretty good. It was kind of fun. And then the next thing I knew I was taking wallpaper off in the kitchen. That's gotta go. Hardwood floors, insulation in the attic, glass block windows in the basement.

MATT: Pretty soon ...

DENNIS CONROW: That turned into the whole house.

JAD: And how long did that take?

DENNIS CONROW: Five years.

MATT: Actually, it was six.

JAD: Wow.

MATT: And he says the whole time he was doing this renovation, at night ...

DENNIS CONROW: I would have these dreams where my parents just kind of came through the back door, and it was just like, "Oh, what are you doing here? Oh, that's right, you're dead." And then I would turn my back, and then they would have somehow undone all of the things that I did.

ANDY: They had brought the house back to the state it was in when they were alive?

DENNIS CONROW: Yeah.

ANDY: Huh.

DENNIS CONROW: And I probably had this dream, I'm not kidding, at least a hundred times.

ANDY: Wow.

MATT: Night after night, after night.

DENNIS CONROW: It just kept going on and on, and ultimately kind of drove me crazy.

MATT: So one day after yet another one of these dreams, Dennis is finally like, "All right, I'm selling it." Puts it up on the market, starts waiting for a buyer, and then something strange happens.

DENNIS CONROW: Well, something kind of strange. I had made this friend, and she came over for the first time.

ANDY: It's like a date, a lady friend?

DENNIS CONROW: Yeah, it was a lady friend.

ANDY: All right. You've gone on a date. You've taken her back to your house.

DENNIS CONROW: [laughs] Uh-huh. And so ...

MATT: Dennis was giving her a tour, showing her all the improvements. Until ...

DENNIS CONROW: She was in the kitchen.

MATT: Right by the basement door in the kitchen, when ...

DENNIS CONROW: She was like, "Oh, there's some kind of weird presence here." And I was just like, "Okay." Well, that was a sign that was not gonna last. [laughs]

ANDY: [laughs]

MATT: Fast forward a few years.

DENNIS CONROW: I didn't really think too much about it.

MATT: Until one day Dennis's realtor is having an open house. No one shows.

DENNIS CONROW: So she was in the house by herself.

MATT: And Dennis starts getting these text messages from her.

DENNIS CONROW: It's like, "Dude, your house is haunted. Like, I can hear people walking around. And ..."

MATT: She texted that there was definitely something weird going on.

DENNIS CONROW: Right by the basement door.

JAD: Wait, that's the same spot?

MATT: Yeah.

DENNIS CONROW: You know, I'm just like, "Huh. That's kind of weird." But then here's the crazy thing.

MATT: Not too long after this, Dennis bumps into an old friend of his and he's like, "Hey, funny thing. Two different people, two separate occasions, had come over to the house and they said they felt this weird presence."

DENNIS CONROW: And she was like, "Wait. Right by the basement door?"

ANDY: Get out!

DENNIS CONROW: Yeah. I was like, "Okay." So I've got Heather, I've got Stacy, I've got Carla. All three who say they feel this weird presence.

ANDY: Did you consider yourself a bit of a skeptic about such things?

DENNIS CONROW: I would say so. Rationally, I'm just gonna say no.

MATT: You don't believe in ghosts?

DENNIS CONROW: No.

ANDY: All right. What happened next?

DENNIS CONROW: Well, this also happened to be right at the time that I sold the house.

MATT: Dennis had finally put some pen to paper, signed the contract, packed up all his stuff.

DENNIS CONROW: And so Carla, the girl that first felt this thing ...

MATT: The girl he went on a date with. They stayed friends.

DENNIS CONROW: ... said to me, like, "You know, I'm really curious about this. Would you mind if I call these ghost people to come and check out this place?" And I was like, "Well sure. I don't care, why not?"

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Dennis Conrow: Very shortly, in a few minutes actually, we are bringing paranormal investigators to find out what's in the basement.]

DENNIS CONROW: You know, I'm just kind of walking through the house. And I think I got this on tape of just me walking through the house. I'm like, "Well, this is probably a waste of time," but I'm still kind of curious about it.

ANDY: It's Friday night, what else are you gonna do?

DENNIS CONROW: Right. It's a Friday night, mid-November.

MATT: Around six o'clock.

DENNIS CONROW: I can see some cars parking on the street, so I go downstairs.

MATT: People start filing in.

DENNIS CONROW: Maybe 10 people.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Brittany Elaine: We all have different specialties. Larry's our tech guy.]

DENNIS CONROW: About four techies. Two sets of clairvoyants.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Brittany Elaine: Chantelle's the psychic.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Katie: She's very gifted.]

ANDY: Who are all these people?

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Dennis Conrow: Can I get you to just say your name?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Brittany Elaine: My name is Brittany Elaine.]

DENNIS CONROW: Well, they're part of the Kansas City, paranormal investigators club, or some kind of thing.

MATT: And pretty much right off the bat ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Dennis Conrow: When you guys came in and you were saying you could talk ...]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Brittany Elaine: When we first got here, we both saw a woman looking out the window at the top.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Dennis Conrow: So what did she look like?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Brittany Elaine: I didn't really see what she looked like. Katie can describe her.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Katie: She had, like, long hair. It was, like, gray, and she was wearing one of those weird, old-timey dresses.]

MATT: Dennis was like, "Whatever."

DENNIS CONROW: They set up cameras in the basement and then the kitchen.

MATT: And the clairvoyants decided they wanted to try to talk to this woman, or maybe any other spirit in the house. And so Brittany ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Brittany Elaine: I don't know if I even explained to you what we do.]

MATT: ... who was like the ringleader of the night ...

DENNIS CONROW: She sort of explained how she does things. She was like, the best way that she could get them to talk to them was through flashlights.

JAD: Huh.

MATT: Yeah. So what they do is they take a few flashlights, turn them on, and then they unscrew the tops of them just enough so that they turn off. And then they just kind of set the flashlights that are now off in the room by themselves. And the idea is that if the ghost or the spirit wants to communicate, they can just sort of touch the top of one of the flashlights with their ghost-y finger and that'll turn it back on.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Brittany Elaine: It's barely connected. All they have to do is either push or pull a tiny bit of energy.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Katie: I see.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Brittany Elaine: It's not that hard. It's obvious for them to do.]

DENNIS CONROW: And I was like, "Okay." And so she took three flashlights, and we all sat in this dark room in a circle. And ...

MATT: Brittany sets the flashlights in the middle of the circle by themselves. No one's touching them.

DENNIS CONROW: And she says ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Brittany Elaine: If there's anybody in here, my name is Brittany. I'd love to be able to talk with you. Can you turn one of those lights on?]

DENNIS CONROW: And they sit there and they sit there.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Brittany Elaine: Are you here?]

DENNIS CONROW: And then all of a sudden this light kind of barely blinks on. And then she said, "Okay."

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Brittany Elaine: Thank you.]

DENNIS CONROW: "Please turn it off." And then it goes off.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Brittany Elaine: What we can do with these lights here, is if I can ask them ...]

DENNIS CONROW: And then she says, "We have three lights here. The one you just turned on we'll call, 'yes.' Please turn on one more and that will be no."

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Brittany Elaine: If you could do that for us, that will be wonderful.]

DENNIS CONROW: And then a second light comes on.

MATT: No way! Are you scanning the room, looking for somebody who has a little switch or something?

DENNIS CONROW: Yeah. But, like, we didn't pay these people, so they have no reason to fake this, I suppose. But, you know, I just keep thinking, "Well, the house is really close to the train tracks and maybe the train ..."

ANDY: The vibrations of the train? Yeah, that makes sense.

DENNIS CONROW: But all of a sudden they were like, "Can you hear that? Footsteps."

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Brittany Elaine: Yeah. It sounds like there is somebody walking right here in front of me.]

DENNIS CONROW: And they're going towards the kitchen. And I could hear dishes rattling on the countertop in the kitchen.

MATT: No one's in the kitchen?

DENNIS CONROW: No one's in the kitchen.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Brittany Elaine: If you're in the kitchen right now, can you turn one of these lights on?]

MATT: And so they sit and stare at these three flashlights. And then ...

[screams]

ROBERT: I am just leaving the room!

JAD: [laughs]

ROBERT: [laughs] What happened?

MATT: Well, actually everyone—everyone in that room died except for Dennis.

ROBERT: Oh God!

JAD: [laughs]

ROBERT: I have no idea why I even invited you into this building.

JAD: [laughs]

ROBERT: They did not die.

JAD: What happened to them?

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Brittany Elaine: You scared me!]

MATT: Actually, they're fine.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Brittany Elaine: Was that you?]

MATT: It turns out that there was a guy downstairs in the basement, one of the techies walking around, pitch black down there, and he just, like, bangs his head into, like, an air duct and the sound just reverberated throughout the whole house.

ROBERT: [laughs]

MATT: Scared them a little bit.

JAD: It was very Blair Witch-y.

MATT: Anyhow, the techies ...

DENNIS CONROW: Decided they want to get the three psychics down in the basement by themselves. And so, you know, these three women go down in the basement by themselves. We kind of hear them downstairs talking, but we don't really know what's going on.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Katie: That was interesting.]

DENNIS CONROW: They come back upstairs.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Brittany Elaine: How did it go?]

DENNIS CONROW: And they said ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Katie: The girl was downstairs.]

DENNIS CONROW: "She was definitely down there."

MATT: The old woman that they first saw when they got to the house. And they said that she was standing down in the basement next to where the old furnace used to be. And they told Dennis that she said that she'd lived here for a long time. And Dennis was like, "Wait a second." He knew that back in the '30s or something a woman had lived in this house.

DENNIS CONROW: Who was kind of not all there.

MATT: And one day she had gone down into the basement.

DENNIS CONROW: And thought she was picking lice off of chickens and throwing them into this big furnace that was downstairs in the basement at the time.

MATT: She got a little too close to the furnace, the story goes.

DENNIS CONROW: Caught herself on fire and then died there, I guess, in the basement.

ANDY: Oh!

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Katie: So then there was another man downstairs who showed himself to me, but he won't talk and he just completely disappeared.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Dennis Conrow: What did he look like?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Katie: He was bald. He was about Rick's height but it wasn't Rick.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Dennis Conrow: Did he have a build like me?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Katie: Yeah.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Dennis Conrow: A lot like me?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Katie: Not a lot, but similar. Definitely.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Dennis Conrow: If I were just to show you a picture of my father, would you have any sense of this was him?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Katie: If I saw a picture of him. Yeah, maybe.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Dennis Conrow: I found this the other day.]

MATT: Dennis goes and gets this photo of his dad that he had, that was left over from his memorial service.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Katie: Yep. That's the man I saw.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Dennis Conrow: Really?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Katie: Yeah.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Dennis Conrow: Wow.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Katie: Yeah, that's the man I found.]

DENNIS CONROW: Let's pause this for just a second here. Like, she's very hesitant at the beginning. It's like, well ...

MATT: I should jump in here really quick and just tell you that this was actually the first time that Dennis had ever listened to this tape.

JAD: Really?

MATT: Yeah. And the reason is because for a long time, he didn't want to listen to it.

JAD: Why?

MATT: Well, I think part of it had to do with this moment because ...

DENNIS CONROW: This was the point where my skepticism kind of kicked off.

MATT: And part of it had to do with what happens next.

JAD: That's coming up when we return.

JAD: This is Radiolab. Let's get back to Matt Kielty's ghost story. And we'll pick up with our main guy, Dennis Conrow, having just heard from the ghost hunters that they encountered a spirit in the basement of his home who looks remarkably like his dead father.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Katie: Yep. That's the man I saw here. Yep.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Dennis Conrow: So he's here?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Katie: Yep. He's here.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Dennis Conrow: Hmm. Can we try to talk to him?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Katie: We can try to talk to him, absolutely.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Dennis Conrow: He's in the basement? Or here? Or ...]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Katie: I feel like he went upstairs. He's not in the basement anymore.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Dennis Conrow: Can we go upstairs and just talk to him?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Katie: Yeah, absolutely.]

DENNIS CONROW: So, you know, I hadn't really told them a whole lot about what the different rooms in the house were, but they led me upstairs to what was his room.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Brittany Elaine: Let's do this.]

DENNIS CONROW: And to the corner of the room where his bed was.

ANDY: And they had no idea that they used to be ...?

DENNIS CONROW: They had no idea. And I said to them, "Okay. Well, if he's gonna talk, he'll just talk to me."

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Dennis Conrow: All right, Dad. Are you here? You could turn on the lights if you are. Thank you. Thank you, Dad. We're gonna call that yes. You can turn that one off now, and turn on the no light, any other light. Please? I need to know that you're here.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Brittany Elaine: There you go.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Dennis Conrow: Thanks, Dad.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Brittany Elaine: Do you want us to leave?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Dennis Conrow: Dad, would you like these people to leave and just talk to me?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Brittany Elaine: Yeah. That's okay, let's leave them alone.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Dennis Conrow: Dad, I want to know are you in a good spot? Are you okay? Are you okay? Are you okay, Dad? Yes? Good. I'm glad to hear that. Okay, everything off. Everything's off almost. Almost, Dad. All right, thanks. Hey, I'm gonna ask you this. Is Mom here, too? Is Mom here, too?]

DENNIS CONROW: And the other of the three flashlights lights up.

ANDY: Huh.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Dennis Conrow: Yes, she is here. Hi, Mom. Now that you're both here, I love you very much and I miss you both. I have so many questions for you, I can't ask them all. They're just yes or no questions.]

DENNIS CONROW: But I said, "Well, have you been able to see the things that I've done to the house?" And both of the lights lit up very brightly, "Yes." And then ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Dennis Conrow: So I've lived here for six years, redone the house. I've done a lot of things.]

DENNIS CONROW: You know, I said ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Dennis Conrow: What do you think, are you happy with this?]

DENNIS CONROW: "Are you happy with the things I've done with the house?" And they both lit up very brightly, "Yes." And I said, "Are you proud of me?"

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Dennis Conrow: Are you proud of what I've done, who I am, how I'm doing? That's weird. [laughs] That's a very bright yes. It means a lot to me. In a few days, guys, I'll probably never set foot in this house again. And I don't want you to, like, stay here and feel like you belong here. I want you to go out and be free. Can you let go of this house, to finally move on? That's fine. I'm going to leave you guys. You've been haunting my dreams a lot about this house. And I know it's very important to you. It's very important to me. It's time we leave, right? Yes. All right.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Katie: Are you okay?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Dennis Conrow: Yes.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Katie: Do you want a hug? [laughs]]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Brittany Elaine: I think you need one.]

MATT: So that's where it ends.

DENNIS CONROW: Yeah.

ANDY: Hmm.

DENNIS CONROW: That's how I recall it being. Exactly like that. And I kind of teared up.

MATT: And keep in mind that this was the first time that Dennis had heard this tape, and so we played it back to him because we just wanted to see, like, how he remembered that experience.

DENNIS CONROW: You know, I guess part of—part of my fear of listening to it was that it would change it, and that it would be a different experience. It would be a little more hokey and it would be a little more unclear what was happening, but listening to it again, it was as I recalled it being.

JAD: So in the end, does he believe he was actually talking to his dead parents?

MATT: No. No. I ended up actually calling this guy who explained to me how this whole flashlight thing works, and that there is a perfectly non-paranormal explanation as to what's going on with the flashlight.

ROBERT: It almost feels bad manners at this point to have a practical explanation, but I'm very curious to hear it.

MATT: [laughs] What's going on is you turn the flashlight on.

ROBERT: Yeah.

MATT: And when you turn the flashlight on the bulb gets really hot.

ROBERT: Right.

MATT: And then you take the top of the flashlight, and you unscrew it just enough that the flashlight flickers off. So the flashlight's off and the bulb, it got really hot so the inside of the flashlight also got really hot. And there's this little piece of plastic inside the flashlight that when it got hot, it expanded. And now since the flashlight's off, that piece of plastic, it starts to cool down and starts to contract. And when it contracts, it pushes these two tiny bits of metal together, these two little bits of metal come into contact. And that's your circuit. So the circuit opens, the light bulb, it goes back on.

JAD: Hmm.

ROBERT: Oh, then it warms again and cools again.

MATT: Then it gets hot, and so the little piece of plastic, it starts to get hot. It starts to expand and pushes the two pieces apart.

ROBERT: And these people chose this flashlight because it had that particular property?

JAD: Yeah, do you think it's like a con or something?

MATT: No, I don't think so. No, I don't think so. I mean, I even talked to Dennis about this. He's like, "I think they're just trying to make sense of randomness. I mean, I don't think they necessarily know that this flashlight does this thing and therefore they can manipulate people."

ROBERT: Well, here's why I don't think it's a con, because in this case it's such a strange coincidence that whenever he wants his mom and dad, his ghostly mother and father to approve of him and congratulate him and honor him with a yes—I mean, it's random he could get a, no but he gets a yes.

MATT: It's just chance.

JAD: And you told Dennis all this?

MATT: [laughs] Yeah, I told Dennis because you told me to tell Dennis.

JAD: That's true. [laughs] That's right, I forced him. Okay, so when you told him, what did he say?

MATT: Well, on one level, like, it didn't faze him. Dennis basically said, like, "Look, I know ..."

DENNIS CONROW: I know that the way that the world works is the way that the world works. People don't come back from the dead. People don't talk to you through flashlights.

MATT: But he also said that, like, he's not gonna let go of that experience. He wants to have it both ways.

DENNIS CONROW: I guess so. I guess I want to have both yes, this didn't happen and yes, this absolutely happened.

ROBERT: I understand that.

JAD: Yeah.

MATT: Because even if you are the world's biggest skeptic, if you don't believe in ghosts, like,there really aren't that many ways to talk about these sorts of things, these sorts of things that we all feel. You know, guilt for the things that we've done in our past, the loss of those who we've loved. That,like, ghost stories seem to stick around because they are an experience, albeit like a metaphorical experience, but an experience that lets us talk about these things that we can't adequately talk about. You know, that feeling of being haunted.

JAD: And so did he eventually sell the house and move out?

MATT: Yeah, sold the house, moved out.

JAD: No more dreams of his parents haunting him.

MATT: Well ...

DENNIS CONROW: It's been odd in the time that I've sold the house now. I thought the dreams would stop. And now the dreams are that I am the one haunting the house of the new people. [laughs] Where I will just walk in and just be like, "Hey, I'm here."

ANDY: And are you, like, going around repairing things?

DENNIS CONROW: No. I'm just, like, being somewhat shocked at what they've done to it. [laughs] It's like it never stops, you know?

JAD: Thanks, Matt.

MATT: No problem.

JAD: Matt Kielty. I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT: I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: Thanks for listening.

[LISTENER: Hi, I'm David and I'm from Baltimore, Maryland. Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad, and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes: Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gebel, Maria Paz Gutiérrez, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Rebecca Laks, Alex Neason, Sarah Qari, Sarah Sandbach, Arianne Wack, Pat Walters and Molly Webster. Our fact-checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger and Natalie Middleton.]

[LISTENER: Hi, this is Ellie from Cleveland, Ohio. Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.]

 

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