Today we’d like to introduce you to Stephen Belyeu.
Stephen, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I never thought I’d be doing what I’m doing now. Growing up in a small town in South Texas, I was a creative kid who felt I’d make a career out of something I loved. It’s still a process of balancing between 9 to 5’s and this show, but it’s becoming more and more possible that I will transition to podcasting full-time in the near future. The show has now garnerd two back-to-back Austin Chronicle awards for Best Podcast! As per the subject of my show, ghost stories and the paranormal, I’ve always been intrigued by this type of phenomena. It stems back to an experience I had around the age 11. After moving into a new home with my family, something I couldn’t explain came to visit me in my upstairs bedroom. It’s haunted me to this very day and I’ve wrestled with it all my life. I have a healthy skepticism about me, even as a kid I did, so I carried that with me into this show. I saw a need to eliminate the bullshit that permeates most of the paranormal entertainment industry. If I was going to dive into creating a paranormal investigative podcast, I was going to pave my own way – and I feel I have. The show takes a journalistic approach to hauntings.
I travel to haunted places, uncover real ghost stories, and dive deep into the histories and mysteries surrounding them. What was important to me was actually going to these places, recording in real-time the ambience and true testimony from the mouths of those who actually had a paranormal experiences there. It was also vital for me to develop my own way of investigating – and not base it off of what I’d seen on all the ghost shows. When you tune into The Night Owl, you’ll quickly realize, we aren’t your average ghost hunters. We don’t have gadgets, readers, video cameras or voice recorders. Instead, I’ve turned to old-school investigative tactics that are leading us to incredible validations and discoveries on each and every case. We’re now approaching year five and the show is still growing. We are venturing out of the city limits as well and hope to take our Night Owl investigative approach across state lines in the future as well. We’ve already done this to a degree with our Campfire episodes – one-off single episodes that involve really engaging true ghost stories told by individuals who’ve had the experience. These Campfires differ from our other episodes in that we don’t investigate them, more they are events that happened in the past and individual recollect them and share them in an intimate way.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
In no way has it been smooth! I began the journey in 2017 not knowing what this would develop into. However, after I’d finished my very first case and listening to all the audio I had recorded, I quickly realized I had something incredibly special here. That’s when things got bumpy. I knew I had an insanely demanding format and structure to this type of show. It wasn’t a banter-cast where me a couple of friends just sat in my office and joked about spooky stories or read off submitted ghost stories. I was seeking out actively haunted places with significant accounts and eyewitness testimony. My show was not going to have the convenience of a repeatable structure and recording space (we would have to document each case, the traveling, the in person interviews, the research, the contemplation, the historical research). Then, there comes the editing. If you hear the show, it’s of high production value because the episodes are designed to take listeners along for the entire ride of investigating these cases.
I spend months editing, working with my composer Nic Fair, researching history with my father Sam Belyeu, workshopping edits and sound design with my team, all the while I’m trying to hunt down and secure our next case to investigate so when I’m done assembling the current finished case, we hopefully have begun another long investigation so that we will have an episode for next month! It’s a lot. And sadly, I wasn’t able to manage my sleep and health well enough the first few years. I was so sleep-deprived and stressed I ended up fighting illness and potential hospitalizations the majority of those early years. I’ve now had to take a step back and realize it’s more important for me to take care of myself than it is to hit that next deadline. So the show has taken on a slightly more organic release schedule. Due to the unpredictable nature of our content and not knowing how long some cases will go on, I’ve decided to just release episodes when they are done for now. I’m trying to aim for once a month, but it’s not something we have to do – and I’m doing much better now with that.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
Over the years I feel I’ve come to realize what I truly love and feel I want to use to connect with others, and that’s storytelling. I think when you tell someone that you have a podcast about haunted places and paranormal experiences, many will be prejudice to what our show is like without hearing it because of all the paranormal entertainment that’s come before us. I’m very proud that The Night Owl not only feels wholly unique, but it’s also more than just a spooky ghost show. In fact, it is far more than that. I feel CultureMap Austin put it best when they wrote, “Equal parts history lesson, paranormal investigation, and study in human behavior, The Night Owl is a narrative-driven podcast that rivals any in its genre….”. When I saw this very first article that was ever written about the show, it definitely made me proud. If you haven’t heard the show, you simply just won’t be able to comprehend what we’ve done. There are so many profound validating discoveries, heartfelt testimonies that give you not only terrifying glimpses into the paranormal but give you an often overlooked examination of the human condition and how we all are impacted by these experiences. I mentioned the following in a previous question but wanted to re-mention it here. The show takes a journalistic approach to hauntings. I travel to haunted places, uncover real ghost stories, and dive deep into the histories and mysteries surrounding them.
What was important to me was actually going to these places, recording in real-time the ambience and true testimony from the mouths of those who actually had a paranormal experiences there. It was also vital for me to develop my own way of investigating – and not base it off of what I’d seen on all the ghost shows. When you tune into The Night Owl, you’ll quickly realize, we aren’t your average ghost hunters. We don’t have gadgets, readers, video cameras or voice recorders. Instead, I’ve turned to old-school investigative tactics that are leading us to incredible validations and discoveries on each and every case. We’re now approaching year five and the show is still growing. We are venturing out of the city limits as well and hope to take our Night Owl investigative approach across state lines in the future as well. We’ve already done this to a degree with our Campfire episodes – one-off single episodes that involve really engaging true ghost stories told by individuals who’ve had the experience. These Campfires differ from our other episodes in that we don’t investigate them, more they are events that happened in the past and individual recollect them and share them in an intimate way.
Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
If I’m being honest, I have to say I’m the last person you’d call a risk-taker. I have so many anxieties of doing something wrong or making a mistake I calculate and plan everything to death. I drive those who know me mad. I want to research something until I know all the possible outcomes before jumping into whatever it is I’m going to be doing. I find comfort in living in the world I’ve built according to my needs, treading on the well-worn path that exists from my constant routines and patterns. That said, however, I do seem to take risks creatively – especially in regards to this show. Everyone warned me about my structure for this podcast – said I was insane for creating this show. Despite the research that told me I shouldn’t make episodes over 45 minutes, that I had to release more than one episode a month if I wanted to build a reliable fanbase – I went against all this and let my creative instincts and drive guide me. Something told me I had something special in this concept and I didn’t want to let rules and set principles deter me. So I took a risk on all my crazy ideas for this show – and I am glad I did. I’ve never really sat and pondered what the word risk means to me, but if you look it up, it’s going to define it along the lines of exposing oneself to danger. But I see risk as much broader than that. When I think of risk, I think of anything involving the possibility of a loss. Not just the loss of health or life, but even the loss of time, energy, creativity, love. Sometimes it’s okay to stay in a place of comfort and not take risks, but other times we need to experience loss or the fear of loss to propel us into growth beyond what we are familiar with.
Contact Info:
- Email: thenightowlpodcast@gmail.com
- Website: www.thenightowlpodcast.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thenightowlpodcast/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thenightowlpodcast/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/nightowlpod
- SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/thenightowlpodcast
- Other: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-night-owl-podcast/id1296680421
Image Credits:
Thao Nguyen @thaophotography
