MANCHESTER, NH – Eric Mintel is a pretty interesting guy. He’s a jazz pianist who has led his own quartet while performing at a few famous places while also being a student of a legend of the genre. When he’s not making music, he’s studying the paranormal and going to various parts of the country to witness these phenomena in person.
On December 19, Mintel will be taking the stage at The Rex Theatre with saxophonist and flutist Nelson Hill, bassist Jack Heygi, and drummer Dave Mohn to put on a special holiday event. It features renditions of music from the illustrious and acclaimed album, “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” by Vince Guaraldi with the show starting at 7:30pm.
Mintel and I had a talk about what inspired this particular concert, playing the White House, his sidegig as a paranormal investigator, and what he hopes people experience at the upcoming show.
Rob Duguay: What gave you guys the idea to do this type of show where you’re performing Vince Guaraldi’s “A Charlie Brown Christmas” album, and how has the experience been with putting your own spin on the tunes?
Eric Mintel: I’ve been a jazz musician for the last 32 years and my mentor was Dave Brubeck. Of course, Dave was a San Francisco-based pianist back in the ‘40s and ‘50s, and Vince Guaraldi was based in the same city as a pianist as well. Having those influences early on in my career, and obviously growing up on the “A Charlie Brown Christmas” cartoon” and the great music of Vince Guaraldi, about 20 years ago we started doing these holiday concerts and they’ve been really great. Of course we put our own spin on it, like you said, and it’s really not a copycat of the original material. The music itself is incredible, but we just embellish it a little bit more.
RD: From what I’ve seen on your website, you’ve performed twice at the White House, so when exactly did those performances happen and what was it like having such an extraordinary opportunity?
EM: The first time was in 1998 when I was invited to perform for President Bill Clinton, and that was incredible. It came about because I was trying to find ways for my jazz quartet getting out to more of the masses through the music. Originally, I had thought of doing something for the homeless, troops overseas or something like that to boost morale, anything positive with jazz. I saw a commercial for the White House that year, so on a whim, I figured I’d give them a call, and they said, “The person you need to talk to is the social secretary.” I left a message for them, got the mailing address of where to send a CD and some promotional materials, sent it there and I didn’t think anything about it.
About a week later, I got a call on my machine that said it was the White House calling and they would like to invite me and my quartet to perform for Christmas. That was in December of 1998, and then the second time was for [President Barack] Obama in 2011, which was really cool, too, because my girlfriend Sherry said, “Well, you ought to try to play the White House again.” I told her that it was only a once-in-a-lifetime thing, but I still had the phone number in my phone, so I called the White House, they had all of my information. Then they asked me about my availability for December, and that year we played for another holiday dinner reception, this time for President Obama. We had the chance to meet him, and we also had the chance to meet Clinton at the end of the night back in 1998.
I told President Clinton how he and I have a mutual friend in Dave Brubeck, and he said, “Dave said I was the first elected official that could hum the bridge to ‘Blue Rondo à la Turk’.” To Obama, I also told him how we have a mutual friend in Dave Brubeck, and he said that he went to go see Dave with his father in concert when he was a kid, so it was really cool. Those two things happened not by an agent and not by anything else other than me calling, which is what most of my career has been.
RD: Sometimes reaching out and following up are the most important parts to a career, it’s funny how that works. Along with being a jazz musician, you’re also a private paranormal investigator.
EM: That’s true.
RD: What made you want to get into this field of studying, researching and exploring paranormal activity?
EM: I live in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, which is sixty miles northeast of Philadelphia. It’s an area rich in paranormal history, ghost stories, and UFO sightings. Growing up as an only child, my dad told me some stories about the area and some of his own connections and experiences that he’s had, so I’ve just always loved the paranormal. I’ve played jazz most of my life, but in 2016, I wanted to kind of reinvent myself. I was looking at a lot of paranormal shows on TV, and I was inspired to do something like that because I’m also a filmmaker and I love editing, so I’m well-versed in all of that. It was originally called “Bucks County Paranormal Investigations,” but we changed it to “Eric Mintel Investigates” because people were calling me to investigate their bed & breakfast, their inn, or their restaurant because they think it’s haunted.
It’s now become a paranormal tourism TV show and now we’re carried on the Pocono Television Network, we’re on the Beyond Paranormal channel, and of course all of the YouTube and social media stuff. We’re on a lot of cable channels up and down the eastern seaboard and pretty much all over the world, so it’s really, really a lot of fun and I just love it. The sense of wonder in this world has gone by the wayside, and when we do these investigations, we’re exploring some areas that people pass by every day, but they have no clue what’s in their own backyard. Some of the history and some of the things we’ve captured on video we still have yet to explain, but I go into a lot of these investigations on the skeptical side as well. Having said that, and having captured what we’ve captured on video, whether it’s ghosts, UFOs, Bigfoot in the New Jersey Pine Barrens, I kid you not, and Dog Man in Elkhorn, Wisconsin, we’ve had encounters with all of these things.
We’ve got better video than most of the TV shows out there, it’s just unbelievable. We go on site and we’ve been in some dangerous situations, so I went from a nice, soft place in jazz to go investigate the world of the paranormal. (laughs)
RD: That’s amazing. What would you say is the craziest thing you’ve seen during your investigations?
EM: The craziest thing I’ve seen has been the Dog Man, who is supposed to be an upright canine dog-man-werewolf type creature that’s walking around on two legs. We did this investigation in Elkhorn, Wisconsin, in October of 2021, and I went out on this investigation thinking that it was a great story, but we weren’t going to see anything, this is going to be b.s., but I was totally wrong. The night of October 3, we had a trifecta of activity happen. We first saw a UFO go over the field we were in where this thing has been seen, and we were in a 35-acre hayfield in the middle of the night. Right after we saw this UFO sighting, which was crazy, we heard these howls.
There was one howl far away, another one came close, about 250 yards away, and the third howl that we heard was nothing like anything out there. It wasn’t a fox, coyote, wolf, dog, nothing like any of those, it was like a man screaming this low, guttural growl. We heard that, and then we saw eyeshine. Even though we heard the howl, we were trying to figure out what it was, but what really got us out there was that this thing is supposed to be six to seven feet tall, and Domenic [Sattele], who is my paranormal teammate, asked me to shine the light over to where we heard the howl. In the corn, about six to seven feet up, was where we saw eyeshine looking back at us, back and forth. That was when I said, “Ok, we’re out of here,” and it was the craziest night because I didn’t know what the hell these things were going to do.
There was more than one, so we got out of there and this all happened within 50 minutes. People can see that investigation on my YouTube channel too, it’s called “The Beast of Bray Road (Alive and Well).” People asked us why we didn’t stay out there longer, and I said, “I’m not going to be the first casualty of this thing,” and another crazy thing I’ve seen was before I even started the show. In January of 2016, my girlfriend Sherry and I were going over this bridge outside of New Hope, Pennsylvania. She was renting a farmhouse at the time in New Jersey and we had to go over the bridge, which then goes over the Delaware River. Out of the corner of my eye, I see these five orange orbs just appear out of nowhere.
She saw it, we both saw it, and I immediately tried to get a picture. Of course, my flash went off in the car, but I was able to get one shot of this thing. It was so weird, these five orbs appeared, and they looked like lava, like plasma. They did a search pattern over the river, and then one by one, they disappeared, and they were only a couple hundred feet above the bridge. It was really something and I felt lucky to be able to see something like that, but it was the weirdest thing and I was able to get one picture.
Come to find out later, a lot of other people had seen the same thing. We’ve been doing UFO reports over in Bucks County, so there’s a lot to the paranormal and we’re not just sitting behind a computer researching, we’re out in the field in some dangerous situations because that’s the only way we’re going to be able to get the truth about what’s going on out there. We’re very truth-based, we don’t use any gimmicks, any spirit boxes or any of the things you see on these shows, that’s all entertainment. We’re using Domenic Sattele, who’s our spirit medium, and he goes into some of these areas unknowing where we’re going while I know all of the paranormal because I don’t have what he has, so he goes right into those hotspots as soon as we arrive. It’s really cool to have him on the team and it’s just been amazing.
RD: It definitely sounds like it. Going back to the “A Charlie Brown Christmas” show at The Rex Theatre, what would you say is the ideal selling point for it? Is it for both fans of jazz and fans of “Peanuts”, or do you think it’s something that’s open for everybody?
EM: I think the biggest selling point is the fact that we all grew up with this great cartoon and the great message that the cartoon has during a very simple time in our lives. People can come out for a couple of hours and relive their childhood, and now they’re bringing their own children to experience this music that they grew up with, so that’s what I think the whole idea with these concerts is all about and why we love doing them.