Music & Monsters

By Cynthia Marone

Piano and the paranormal, music and monsters. These usually only mix in the scariest of scary movies but Eric Mintel combines jazz and the Jersey Devil in his everyday life — all without missing a beat. “In my travels as a jazz musician, we’ve played a lot of great, beautiful theaters and halls,” the Plumsteadville resident said. “It's funny, but I will not even say anything and the people come up to me at the concert and say, ‘Oh, and by the way, this place is haunted.’”

Eric channels his two seemingly incompatible worlds into the Eric Mintel Quartet, where he is the bandleader and jazz pianist, and “Eric Mintel Investigates,” serving as lead paranormal investigator, host and editor for his eponymous show. Jazz and the supernatural became dual passions while growing up in Upper Black Eddy.

When Eric’s father, Larry, wasn’t telling him tales of haunted Bucks County, he and Lucreatia, Eric’s mother, would fill the air with music, particularly jazz and classical, for their young son. As a toddler, Eric quickly found he preferred playing. “They would always find me sitting at the piano trying to make up my own melodies,” he said.

Once Eric connected with the keys, there was no other instrument in his world. It would be at least a decade before he found his focus while poking around his parents’ record collection, looking for some 45s to spin. “I had been listening to a lot of rhythm and blues, a lot of Elvis, a lot of Ray Charles, a lot of different, eclectic things, even folk music. Finding this record, I just put it on and it was something about the rhythm, it was about the melody. After that, I found everything I could on Dave Brubeck recordingwise and tried to learn,” Eric said about the cool jazz icon’s “Take Five” and “Blue Rondo à la Turk” that sparked his interests.

Eric attempted proper piano lessons for about a year after that, but he didn’t make it far. In actuality, he was too far ahead. Coming to his teachings already playing obscure jazz tunes and odd time signatures, his instructor gave the blessing to move on and Eric eventually forged his own path. Since forming in 1993, his Eric Mintel Quartet has released more than a dozen albums, with his three-CD box set being featured on home shopping channel QVC; appeared at the Kennedy Center more than 10 times; played the White House twice for two different presidents; and performed at the United Nations. In between, Eric was a guest on NPR’s Peabody Award-winning “Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz” and hosted “Talking Jazz with Eric Mintel” on Princeton Community Television.

Jazz is in his blood, but there was always a pull into the unknown. The stories Eric heard of spectral sightings in his hometown never left him and, as he looked around, only intensified. He launched what would become Eric Mintel Investigates in 2016 as Bucks County Paranormal Investigations. “I created it because, in Bucks County, we have so much rich history and so many things people pass by on a daily basis. These beautiful buildings and structures have great history no one even knows about. That was one of the reasons why I started the show—to tell those stories of these incredible places that have great ties to history and paranormal history,” Eric, a 1985 graduate of Pennridge High School in Perkasie, said. “I have always loved the paranormal since I was a kid. And I've always been a filmmaker, so this is stuff that was brewing in the background, even with my jazz.”

The background came to the foreground and Eric and his team have investigated a plethora of poltergeists at places such as the New Hope Railroad, McCoole’s at the Historic Red Lion Inn in Quarkertown and the Continental Tavern in Yardley, among others. They also look into sightings of UFOs (which the government now calls “unidentified aerial phenomena” or UAPs) and hairy humanoids, such as Bigfoot, and spots with otherworldly energy. What began with a focus on Bucks County quickly morphed into visits throughout Pennsylvania and then the country, with stops in Connecticut, Georgia and New Jersey. As the nail-biting net widened, a name change was in order and Eric Mintel Investigates became the official moniker earlier this year.

Eric has seen his share of the unsettling with his team, which includes spirit medium Dominic Sattele, who is also a friend from their high school days, but the one experience that haunts Eric is the Beast of Bray Road. “It was one of the spookiest nights we've ever had. We had no protection for anything. We had no weapons. No nothing. We just had a flashlight and a radio. We kept hearing rustling sounds behind us,” Eric said of their visit to Elkhorn, Wisconsin, which also included guttural howls caught on video and a mysterious mist that tampered with their equipment. “We're still wrapping our heads around it.”

The beast stayed away during Eric’s follow-up visit but more than 140 residents gathered to tell him of their run-ins with what Eric described as an “upright, canine, werewolf-type creature,” including its strange gliding gait. Another sighting closer to home is the Bryn Athyn Beast and many people — to Eric’s delight — are eager to share their brushes with the towering dogman that is said to move from bipedal to quadrupedal with ease while roaming Montgomery County. “Even 10 years ago, would we even be talking about this as freely as we are? We're at a good period now because people feel comfortable talking about their own experiences. Elkhorn, that town hall really showed me people are willing to come forward. Even with the Bryn Athyn Beast, we've got people coming on camera telling us their stories of seeing this thing and how it changed their lives and shook their foundations,” the 55-year-old said.

Eric personally has experienced several sightings of UFOs/UAPs, but he wasn’t always a believer in afterlife appearances. Lately, his denial is disappearing. “I want to look at this scientifically and say, ‘What's really going on here? What is that sound people are hearing? Is it a heating pipe upstairs that's making noise?’ With that being said, I will say I'm becoming more of a believer because of what we've caught on video. I'm really starting to think there’s a real thin veil from here to there. It's something we can't see, but it’s there,” he said.

The raw footage of each “Eric Mintel Investigates” is brought into the editing room and, with Eric at the helm, emerges with a jazzy pulse beating underneath. “I approach it as a musician. Editing to me is like writing a piece of music because you build the tension and release. That's what jazz is. Tension and release,” said Eric, whose quartet was invited to the XM Satellite Radio, now Sirius XM Radio, headquarters to perform at its Live Performance Theater, a show that was then played on one of its jazz channels. “I’m getting those exciting scenes mixed in with those scenes where we're looking at all the evidence, listening to what's going on, listening to all the possibilities, and then Dominic gets hit with some kind of energy.”

There’s definitely energy surrounding Eric, from his music to his steps into the unknown, and he is happy to have so many people along for the ride—and so many who are willing to talk about what they have seen. “It’s funny because I'll say to my jazz audience, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I wrote a new tune and it goes like this’ and they'll maybe halfheartedly listen to what I said. They'll listen to the music. They love the music. The minute I say, ‘I also want to let you know I have a paranormal TV show and what we do is …’ then you could hear a pin drop. Everybody is quiet because that interest is there,” he said. “I am very fortunate that my jazz audience has followed me into the paranormal world. Everybody's always interested in what we're doing next. People have stories to tell.”

For more information on the Eric Mintel Quartet, visit www.EricMintelQuartet.com. “Eric Mintel Investigates” can be found at Facebook.com/BucksPN1 or on YouTube; 11 p.m. Saturdays on Amazon Fire TV, Roku and/or Apple TV through the Central New Jersey Network; and 10 p.m. Sundays on Service Electric Cable TV.

Cynthis Marone is a freelance writer who lives in Philadelphia.