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By the third grade, Tim Weisberg was sure of two things. He wanted to be in the media and ghosts are real.
Today, the 47-year-old New Bedford resident is one of the South Coast’s most popular radio personalities with his morning talk show on WBSM. And he’s become a national figure in the paranormal industry.
His interest in the media and his passion for things “beyond the norm” have led to myriad projects and accomplishments. Highlighting his resume is one of the longest-running paranormal broadcasts in the nation, “Spooky Southcoast.”
He has made appearances on and contributed to multiple TV shows and documentaries, including being a guest on the first two seasons of the Travel Channel’s “Hotel Paranormal,” as well as providing onscreen commentary for the first season of the Weather Channel’s “Weird Earth.”
He has appeared in the documentaries “The Bridgewater Triangle” and “Famously Haunted: Amityville.” He has written and produced for popular shows such as “Ghost Stalkers,” “Ghost Asylum,” and “Haunted Towns.” He has shared his experiences and insights on Fall River’s Lizzy Borden House for multiple TV shows, including “Ghost Adventures,” “My Ghost Story,” “Most Haunted Towns,” and “Monster Quest.”
Weisberg is also the author of the book, “Ghosts of the South Coast,” which was published in 2010, and he co-authored “Haunted Objects: Stories of Ghosts on Your Shelf” with Woburn’s Chris Balzano in 2012. Weisberg is also the paranormal editor for ultimateunexpained.com.
One of his foremost achievements came in 2018 when he was awarded the slot to fill in for paranormal radio icon Art Bell as host of the show “Midnight in the Desert,” which boasts an international audience. In February 2020, Weisberg was selected to take over the show full time, broadcasting for four hours a night for five days a week. He would be the last host of the show as it ceased broadcasting in April of that year. Only days after the program’s cancellation, Weisberg helped launch the online radio network “Midnight FM,” where he would host the show “Midnight Society” from April of 2020 to June of 2023.
For 15 years, Weisberg has held paranormal “events” throughout New England, where participants are invited to partake in paranormal investigations of historic locations that are considered “haunted.” In addition, he gives 20 to 30 lectures a year on the paranormal at local schools, libraries and civic organizations.
In January 2006, Weisberg co-founded “Spooky Southcoast,” a radio show and podcast that aired on WBSM each Saturday night for more than 17 years. At its height of popularity, the show was attracting an online audience of more than a quarter of a million people from around the world. One of the factors Weisberg points to for the success of the show is that the South Coast region is particularly rich in paranormal activity.
“Spooky Southcoast” went on hiatus in November 2023 when Weisberg received a diagnosis of kidney cancer, a challenge he would eventually overcome. Plans are being made for a return to the airwaves for the program early this year. Weisberg is joined on the show by psychic medium Stephanie Burke, and science adviser Matt Moniz.
“Tim is known coast to coast. He’s well respected in the paranormal community,” Moniz says. “He’s an accomplished journalist, and that helps in doing paranormal research. He’s used to looking into the backgrounds of things and he’s very thorough. He definitely puts in his efforts to research and understand what’s going on. He tells it like he sees it. He’s not trying to be the story itself. He allows the subject matter to be the spotlight. He’s just the storyteller.”
And Weisberg has been telling stories for a while. His introduction to journalism came as a third-grade student at the West Elementary School in Plymouth when he was selected to write stories about school events for the weekly newspaper, The Old Colony Memorial. After writing his first story (about the effects of junk food on your body), he realized that journalists get “special access” to ask questions of interesting people. He was smitten with the role.
His first broadcasting opportunity came in high school when he co-hosted “TV Trivia,” a game show for kids that aired on Wareham’s Public Access TV station, Bay 8.
Weisberg’s first journalism job came when he was 20, writing a column about professional wrestling for The Standard-Times. He later covered high school sports and even the Celtics and Patriots for the paper. He was a frequent contributor to The Standard-Times’ “Dine Out” restaurant review column.
In 2002, Weisberg would make his radio debut on WBSM as a contributor to the “Sports Locker” program. In 2017 he would become the station’s full-time news anchor and reporter, a job he held for a year before becoming the digital managing editor for WBSM and sister station FUN 107. In February 2022 he was appointed assistant brand manager for the station, simultaneously becoming the station’s mid-morning host. Within a year he was the brand manager.
Weisberg continued to climb the radio ladder. In the summer of 2023 he became the host of the morning show on WBSM, and in October 2024 he took on the role of assistant director of content for the two stations, a position he holds to this day.
Weisberg talked with The Light about his career in the paranormal — how he got interested in it and why he’s stuck with it, the paranormal investigations that he does with participants, how he deals with skeptics and non-believers, why some people are more receptive to the unseen, the bounty of paranormal activity in the South Coast, and why he wants to do a paranormal investigation of the White House.
New Bedford Light: What do you consider to be the paranormal?
Tim Weisberg: By definition it’s anything that’s kind of outside of our normal range of belief and what we know. We know what we consider to be normal, but how do you explain what normal is? It’s really hard to define.
Paranormal would be something that is generally agreed upon as being outside of the normal. And I think that what we call the paranormal could be normal if we just explained and expanded our definition of normal.
So this stuff happens so often when we go on investigations that I really don’t think of it as “paranormal.” I think that it’s just something that happens that we don’t understand yet. If more people were open to it and allowed themselves to have these experiences, we wouldn’t consider it to be strange anymore.
But we’re only on the cusp of that now. We’ve only gotten to the point in the last 25 years that people are comfortable talking about it, and in the next 25 maybe they’re getting comfortable exploring it and going out and seeking it. Then maybe a hundred years from now ghosts are commonly accepted beliefs and we just realize that we try to apply Newtonian physics to something that doesn’t fit the rules of Newtonian physics, and we can change the paradigm a little bit.
NBL: How did you get interested in the paranormal and what has convinced you to stay interested?
TW: Like most people that get involved in it, it was through personal experience. From the time that I was a young kid I had weird things that went on, what they call the “Old Hag Syndrome.” Just lying in a crib I remember seeing shadows on the wall that looked like an old lady’s hand coming at me, and it turns out that that is really a common phenomenon that happens. And then when I was a teenager my aunt and uncle purchased a home that was haunted in Halifax, and I would stay over there in summers and school vacations, and that’s when I had actual experiences that made me realize that there is more to this.
When you’re a voracious reader and you start going into the section of the Dewey Decimal System at the library where all the books are on the paranormal, I started reading everything I could, never thinking that I was someone who would be doing actual research.
And then in 2004, the TV show “Ghost Hunters” came along and I realized, “Hey, everyday people can look into this stuff.” Over the course of the next couple of years I started developing the interest that would eventually lead to “Spooky Southcoast.” In 2005 we started putting it together and we debuted in January of 2006.
NBL: When you say they bought a haunted house, did they realize it was haunted when they bought it?
TW: They had no idea. So they actually purchased it and I don’t know how long they were there before they started to realize things were going on, but I think it was relatively soon that my aunt realized that faucets would turn on and off on their own. She would hear noises and things at night. She basically made a deal with the ghost where “As long as I don’t see you I don’t care if you’re here,” and they ended up getting along for the next few years.
At that point it wasn’t just me experiencing it. We had experiences and my cousins would talk about it, and eventually I got my aunt and uncle to talk about it. My uncle’s a very pragmatic guy, so when he started talking about experiences he had, it was like, “This isn’t just a flight of fancy that I’m prone to, my aunt and my uncle are, too.” This is someone that I would consider to be skeptical talking about the experiences he’s had.
NBL: Do you have some epic moments or experiences that have helped solidify your belief in the paranormal?
TW: At the age of 29, when I was at the Lizzy Borden House one night, we were doing an investigation and I actually got thrown up against the wall by something that I couldn’t see. I could feel it putting its hands on me, I could feel it tossing me up against the wall. So I said, “OK, there’s something there.”
And not long after that, during an investigation of the Houghton Mansion in North Adams — there’s a type of phenomenon known as “shadow people” which is a ghost that doesn’t quite manifest, it’s just a shadow or an outline of a person that you see in the darkness. And this one shook my hand. It grabbed my hand, held it and pumped it up and down. It felt like a regular person shaking my hand.
The location had become a Masonic lodge that was the property of the Freemasons, and they had built a lodge in the middle of the mansion.
In the back, they had kind of a secret passageway where they would conduct rituals, and that’s where we saw these “shadow people” walking through. And that’s where I shook hands with a “shadow person.” There was a shadow figure at the end of the hallway, and we kind of coaxed it to come down to us and when it came down to where I was standing, I put my hand out and said, “Can you give me a fist bump?” and one of the other investigators kind of elbowed me and said: “No, shake his hand like a man.”
So I held my hand out and said, “Can you shake my hand?” I felt this hand wrap around me and I saw the shadow figure. His hand wrapped around my hand and started pumping my arm up and down. It was almost like a regular handshake from a human being, except it was so moving to me that I had tears streaming down my face because I had that “Ghosts are people too” moment.
NBL: Have you had any experiences that made you question what you were doing? Any moments of doubt?
TW: There’s been times when I’ve gone into places and there’s been no activity, or the activity that we may have been experiencing we were able to figure out that it was something that we could explain. But nothing has ever made me question getting into this — I’m convinced that there is something there. While it may not be as exciting for people as a dead person’s soul floating around, there’s something to this phenomenon. That’s what keeps me going. I’m not just proving it to myself anymore, because I’m convinced. It’s being able to take other people on their first experience and seeing the way that they react and watching their entire world view change.
NBL: How do you inspire and interest other people that the paranormal truly is a thing?
TW: My approach has always been that I’m trying to tie it into history. I’m trying to use ghosts as a way to get people to learn about local history and things like that. For me, even if somebody doesn’t have a paranormal experience when they come to one of our events, I’m hoping that they learned something. I’m hoping that they’ve thought about something in a different way. I’m hoping that they come away with some of the history of a location. So that’s the approach I take. The paranormal can’t be guaranteed so if something happens, that’s a bonus.
The other side of that is, and I don’t want to sound conceited about it or special in any way, but it seems that things happen when I go to places. So I don’t have a lot of nights where I walk away and say, “Wow, nothing happened.” I can walk away and say that it wasn’t as intense as the last time I’d been doing that, but I’ve never walked away and said, “That was a total waste of time.”
NBL: Do you find that most people want to believe?
TW: Ten or 20 years ago I felt differently about it. There were pockets of people who already believed, and there were a few people who weren’t sure, and there were people who outright didn’t want to talk about it at all.
That’s changed over the course of “Spooky Southcoast,” and my paranormal career, because now it’s become more popular and more in the pop culture zeitgeist. People are more willing to go down that path a lot more than before. They may not believe at the outset, but they’re at least interested enough to remain open minded.
So there’s a lot less of that hardline skepticism that I used to see before, and a lot more people who show up at events and are like, “Just so you know, I don’t believe in any of this stuff, but I’m willing to have my mind changed.” Before it was like, “I don’t believe in this stuff and you’re not going to convince me otherwise.” We’re seeing that shift and I think that part of it is if you look at some of the Gallup polls and the statistics, the belief in the paranormal has increased over the last 10 or 15 years, and at the same time there has also been an increase in spirituality in people.
So, as they’re jumping onboard with the idea that there’s something greater, that’s opening their minds to the paranormal.
I don’t believe in a higher power, but I don’t believe you have to believe in one to believe in the other.
NBL: Do you find that some people are more in tune and in touch with the paranormal?
TW: Absolutely. The way I break it down is this: I think that everybody could have the ability to interact with these things, but we’re told when we’re young they’re not real because that’s easier for our parents to try to explain what this is. Some people never get that filter put in place and they’re able to interact with it better. Other people have to learn to get past that filter that has been put in place.
I think that everybody can experience it, but I think some people are naturally in tune to it more. There are people who have mediumship abilities, there are people that never had that block or always have a stronger connection with it. The rest of us have to work at it a little harder.
NBL: How do you deal with skeptics and non-believers? What do you say to them?
TW: I would tell them to choose one of two paths. The first, for those who are open to having their minds changed, is to give it a chance. Open yourself up to the experience and see what comes of it. Even if it doesn’t change your mind, you’ll probably be better off for having given it a shot.
The other path is for those who won’t have their minds changed, the people who are actually cynics rather than skeptics. To them, I say we’ll allow you to have your beliefs, so you should allow us to have ours. We don’t want or need your criticism — or rather, your cynicism — so just move on. We’ll all find out eventually who was right and who was wrong.
NBL: What goes on at events?
TW: Usually we give people a tour of the location and someone who works there will give them the historical side of things. Then I’ll give them a paranormal overview, a quick paranormal 101 of how to investigate if they’ve never done it before.
I’ll tell them some of the tricks I’ve learned and then what we’ll do is break into smaller groups. If you’re experienced and you’ve done this before and you want to go off on your own, go ahead. But if you’ve never done it before, stick with me and we’ll try some different experiments.
Then we’ll do different types of paranormal investigation techniques. It might be everything from old school — using dowsing rods and pendulums to maybe using a Ouija board — and then we can try some advanced stuff like electronic voice phenomenon sessions, and I like to do a lot of what is called the Estes Method, which is named for a town in Colorado where some paranormal investigators honed this approach at the Stanley Hotel, the haunted hotel that inspired Stephen King to write “The Shining.”
It’s a technique which is real-time spirit communication where a person is blindfolded and wearing noise-canceling headphones and is plugged into what we call a “spirit box.” Then what we do is the rest of the people who are in the room will ask questions, and then the person who has gone under will say what they’re hearing from the spirit box, which will hopefully be answers to the questions that are being asked. But the person can’t hear the questions so that way there’s no bias or confirmation bias in what they’re listening for.
If we’re doing this without using this method, I asked the question, “What color is the sky?” your mind or your subconscious you’ll be listening for the voice to say “blue.” But if you don’t know what the question is, you’re just repeating what you’re hearing through the spirit box. These are all radio waves, radio frequencies that are scanning through without stopping, so it’s easy to hear what you’re listening for. So if you don’t know what you’re listening for, you’ll get more of a pure response.
NBL: What are dowsing rods and why do you use them?
TW: Dowsing rods are used for finding water. The reason they’re able to find water is because it has to do with the positive ion flow, so that will actually direct these copper rods with the idea being that because the spirits are manipulating the electro-magnetic field, they can actually do the same thing with the energy around these dowsing rods and can make them move in one direction or another for spirit communication.
The way I do it is I’ll ask a lot of yes or no questions, but I know people that will work out entire alphabets with people and be able to spell words. I just don’t have the patience for that.
NBL: How do you determine the locations for your events?
TW: It’s a combination of things. Sometimes we hear about it from other paranormal investigators and then sometimes we just reach out to historical places to find out if they have any reports of activity or if they’re interested in allowing us to come in and take a look to see if it’s possibly a place where we could do something. So sometimes we go in based on their reports and sometimes we go in based on preliminary investigations that we do.
NBL: You don’t just want to amaze people, you want to educate people as well. How important is education to what you do with the paranormal?
TW: That’s really what the lasting part of it is. Anybody can come to one of my events or listen to one of my shows and be freaked out or weirded out for a little bit, but I would rather that it sparks in them a curiosity so they can go down their own journey of learning because it’s not just about the paranormal.
If you change your mindset and open yourself up to this, it’s going to make you a more open-minded person overall.
So I feel like people who pursue this naturally become a different kind of critical thinker because they’re willing to look outside of what they already believed and therefore that makes it easier to change their mind about other things and admit that they might have been wrong about something, even if it’s a completely different topic.
NBL: What are your paranormal Holy Grails? What do you have your eye on for the future? What gets you licking your chops?
TW: If I had the opportunity, the one place I’ve always wanted to investigate is the Amityville Horror House in Amityville, New York. I’ve been obsessed with that case since I was a kid. When I bought the paperback as a kid at a flea market for a quarter and just read everything I could on it, saw every movie and watched every documentary.
A couple of years ago a TV production company had me go to Amityville and film a documentary on the Tubi network’s “Famously Haunted.” They had us actually set up shop outside of the house. Stephanie Burke and I, she’s a psychic medium, we sat in the car outside the house and did a little spirit communication attempt because we couldn’t get into the house because the people who own it don’t want anybody in.
That was the place where, if I did get into anywhere and spend a night investigating, that would be my number one.
Number two would probably be the White House. The White House has been haunted pretty much throughout its entire existence. During the Abraham Lincoln administration, because they lost their son Willie, they were holding séances in the White House. They actually had mediums that would come and try to communicate with Mary Todd (Lincoln’s wife) and speak to her deceased son. There are rumors that Lincoln actually sat in on one of these séances and that he was prone to having psychic visions — he had two premonitions of his own death, including one the night before his assassination.
And then the Taft administration actually had this spirit in the house that they called “The Thing.” Taft actually threatened to fire anybody that spoke publicly about “The Thing.”
During Harry Truman’s time there was a time when his wife was away and he was writing her a letter — he was talking about how haunted the White House was, all the noises he could hear when there was nobody around.
So this is a place that has had ghost stories throughout its entire existence. Obviously nobody’s going to get the chance to do a paranormal investigation but maybe someday, if I run for president, I’d do the investigation and then resign the next day because I really don’t want the job.
NBL: How does the South Coast area compare to other areas when it comes to the paranormal? Is this a rich area?
TW: We are definitely a paranormal hot spot. We’re part of what is known as the Bridgewater Triangle, which is known as a paranormal vortex where all types of activity happens — ghosts, UFO’s, aliens, creatures like Bigfoot, giant Thunderbirds. We have all of these stories concentrated in this area and that’s a big part of why “Spooky Southcoast” has grown so big because from the very beginning we’ve been talking about this Bridgewater Triangle that started off as a relatively unknown obscure topic and has now become one of the biggest topics in the paranormal worldwide.
You can pretty much ask anybody what it is and they’ll have a rough idea.
I lecture at libraries about the Bridgewater Triangle, and in 2010, I think it was at the Bridgewater library, and I asked, “How many people know about the Bridgewater Triangle?” and out of 50 people only two or three raised their hand.
Now, no matter where I go, I say, “How many people haven’t heard of the Bridgewater Triangle?” and I see maybe one or two hands. It’s become much more popular. People are realizing just how spooky the South Coast really is.
NBL: What are the economics of what you do? Is it expensive or lucrative?
TW: It is not lucrative at all. In fact, most people out there in the paranormal world are spending significant sums on equipment, location rentals, travel expenses, etc. It’s a hobby, just as someone might really love golf and spends money on clubs and balls, trips to various courses and resorts, tee times, and everything that goes with golf.
Very few people make money in the paranormal world, and if they do, it’s because they’re working on television shows, writing books, etc. I’ve been lucky enough to do things that can turn the paranormal into a part-time job, but that’s based on my background as a writer, talk show host and public speaker.
I’m paid for those skills, and the paranormal just happens to be the topic on which I focus. There are only a handful of people I know who have made the paranormal their full-time job, and I am definitely not one of them.
But I love what I do for my “real” job too, so my pursuit of the paranormal is more about the experience and the knowledge than anything else.
Sean McCarthy is a freelance writer and frequent contributor to The New Bedford Light.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
