Campfire Stories with screenwriter Richard Hatem: The Ghost of 29 Megacycles, Demons, Possession

We're any Hello everyone, and welcome to Scary Stories we Tell. I am your host, Christashu, and I'm joined by my good friend. You've heard him here Lanny, of times before. You're gonna hear him here again now talking with me about well, we never know when we go into these, but we'll figure it out along the way. You're a friend of mine.

Uh. He is one of the co hosts of Ranking on Bass, a podcast on the weirding Way Media network, and nothing else. He's literally never done another thing in his life. So I'm your friend of mine. Mister Richard had him, He's been here before, he'll be here again.

That's great, that's all I need. I'm sure there iPhones are clicking off all across America. That's not that's not true. That's not true at all. I would mention the other things you worked on, but because we're in the middle of a writer's strike at the recording of this episode, we can't talk about I guess we could talk about them, but it's best not to talk about.

Yeah, fuck that stuff. I'm here. I'm here to provide the theater of the mind, the auditor Gliser. So, Richard, since the last time you were on, which would have been earlier this year, which I'm sure neither one of us remember at this point, Which is what happens? What's what have you been up to in the world of the supernatural, spooky and weird.

I know that you're obviously being reached out to on Twitter x whatever the hell it's called by fans of fans of the Mofman cryptid as it were. But what have you been up to in the last couples? Well, it's funny. I did a I did like a zoom sort of webinar or presentation for a group called ASAP. It's a it's a UK sort of paranormal group called the Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomenon Awesome and they they meet at least once a month.

This it's been going on for decades and these are just people who are interested in the supernatural and various things. And they have speakers and I suppose it kind of like mouf on, No, because it's not active. It's not moufon. You report too, like members are expected to go follow up. If they got a call person see something, they're expected to go follow up, file report and and sort of keep track of UFO activity in that area.

But these people are just people that are interested enthusiasts. One might set enthusias. Yeah, as far as I know, I mean I don't, but they have once a month they'll have people come in and talk. A year ago I came, well, I didn't come in because we don't do them anymore. Now that we got ZOOM, I wish we did.

I wish they could fly me out to England. I'm sure they have the budget for it. Put me up in a fine hotel, take me out to dinner a few times, the Royal windsor arms too, I'm sure. Can you imagine. I gotta get that gig.

I need people to fly me around, put me up, take me out, and all I gotta do is show up to their club and talk. Oh God, I'd give anything. I'm gonna figure this out. If anyone within the sound of my voice has a way for this to happen, please get in touch. I mean, your credit, your credentials precede you nine percent of the five.

It's just right now they don't. And what's the fucking weird thing, because like I assume they brought you on because of right, Oh, you know the first time, John Keel I would say, I talked about the Mothman prophecies, the movie that I wrote. I can say that, Okay, I just I don't know. I don't know what's off limits or no. I mean, I'm not part of the Writers Guild of America.

You ares I can mention anything that I've done that came out twenty years ago. That's okay, Okay. Anyway, I spoke to them, and then and then they back in the spring. They one of the members reached out to me, Liz Barkley, and said, Hey, do you want to come on again? Just talk about whatever you want to talk about?

And I said, yeah, sure, I'm like, I wonder what I'm going to talk about. And then I ended up talking about a book called The Ghost of twenty nine Megacycles by John G. Fuller, which is all about the sperrit Colm phenomenon. Do you know what this? Have you heard of the Spira Colm?

You are? You are entering new and uncharted territory for this friend of yours here? Oh my god. Okay, So I figured, you know, I'll talk about this because I think it's not super well known. It doesn't get covered a lot other things get covered a lot plus other things I've talked about on Astonishing Legends, which is sort of where I go.

You know, when I go on Astonishing Legends, it's usually to talk about a book, you know, and we'll talk about it, you know, And that's what. And they actually found me through Astonishing Legends because their fans at that show they've heard my guest appearances, so they're like, hey, come on a talk. So I couldn't talk about anything I'd already talked about on that so I so I talked about it. But then I was like, well, wait a second, this is a thing where I'm addressing them, Like I'm not just it's not a podcast where I'm just talking back and forth with someone. They're like, it's like, okay, you'll do your presentation.

It should take about an hour, and then we'll do questions. Well, yeah, I can imagine the anxiety that would give me. Yeah, and I'm you know, typically I'm like, oh, boy, roll out on microphone, fill a room full of people, and let me add them. Usually that's because I'm just speaking extemporaneously about whatever I feel like talking about. But I'm like, if I'm on zoom and I'm not there's no feedback and people aren't going to be raising their hands and asking questions and you know, lighting a fire for conversation.

I've really got to be prepared. So so I was reading them. So I had to, you know, reread the book and then write out a whole presentation just for your listeners. Here's what the sparat Colm was. Just see you know, the sparat calm.

Back in the nineteen late seventies early eighties, there was a guy named George Meek who had made a small fortune as an engineer designing air conditioning systems. Okay, and he held multiple patents for like parts of larger machines and air conditioning systems that would cool buildings and houses. Okay, so he's one of those guys. But he had a deep interest in life after death and the paranormal. So he when he was in his mid fifties, he was sort of like, Okay, I'm given the air conditioning business five more years.

I'm gonna make me I'm gonna publish a get as many patents as I can, because patents are things that will provide passive income, and then I'll spend the balance of my life, traveling the world investigating the reality of life after death. One of the ways he wanted to do this was he put together a small group called the Meta Science Foundation of Some of the people were parapsychologists, other people in sort of the New Age movement. And his idea was, what if we could achieve the dream of Thomas Edison, what if we could build a phone to the dead, which, by the way, people always forget that that was part of Thomas Edison's thing. That was a huge part of Thomas Edison and his initial inventions was own to the other side, right, And you know, electricity is sort of the basis of everything.

It's kind of a Frankenstein sort of a thing when you think about it. It's like electricity is the basis for life. Electricity, you know, we have electricity in our bodies. And and then you just make the half step leap to, well, now that we have harnessed electricity and we're using it in so many of our everyday appliances, and now that we have the telegraph, and now that we have the telephone, does it make sense that that we could devise a way a radio, a radio that can talk to God. So so His idea was this, let's talk to Let's find spirit mediums who are already who are already able to do that.

They already have within them the ability to speak to discarnate spiritual entities, whether they be dead or alien or whatever. Right siren call of the hungry ghost folks. Here we go again with that. Here we go again with it. Yeah, and then but but if I could find a person like that who also has another quality to them, that quality being they're an electric they're electrical engineer, and they know something about our radio communication and building communication systems and Ham radio whatever.

But that kind of stuff, maybe maybe through those means we could develop this. And what he really meant was that person who understands that sort of engineering could get in touch with a ghost on the other side who's also an engineer, who would tell him how to do it. Boy, I mean it, okay, okay, I mean let me put it this way, like communism. I see where you're going on paper here, I understand the idea that's being presented now in execution, what happens. So I'm holding up the paperback of the Ghost of twenty nine Megacycles, written by John G.

Phillip. So he so he gets in touch with this medium, very eccentric guy named Bill O'Neill and begins working with him. And Bill O'Neill starts getting full body apparitions in his in his farmhouse workspace, in his sort of workshop out in the barn. He gets a full body apparition of a guy called Doc Nick, and Doc Nick starts encouraging him and sort of saying, yeah, there's there's a way to do this. And then and then another spirit comes through, doctor Mueller.

Okay, doctor George Jefferies Mueller, and so there's doctor Mueller ghost really starts helping him. Okay, Andy, they sort of between them all design something called that he calls a sperrit com and George Meek is very excited and he's sending checks to this guy. And Bill O'Neill was like, practically, I mean, this guy is eccentric and he lives in this farm that barely has walls. Okay, you're telling me that this guy, George O'Neill in O'Neil, Bill O'Neil, Yeah, interacted directly with spirits on the other side, Yeah, to construct the spirit on Yeah. Okay, yeah, Wow, that that, right.

I just want you to understand that, right, there is a lot. A state that's a stead statement is a lot, and there's a lot going into that statement, right, Like, that's it's a hard pill to swallow. In another I mean you have to believe you have let me put it this way, to get to that crossroads, you have to go through several other intersections that are pretty uh spurious, to say the least, and to get to this point where it's like, now you have interacted with a spirit on the other side to the extent that they have been giving you information how to construct something like this, that's a lot. Yeah, well it's this, it's the it's it's like, okay, you have spirit mediums on the one hand, who can who who can talk to dead people?

Right? So you'll go to a medium and that the medium will say, okay, we have someone here young and his name is Tom. Oh that's my son, Tom says, and they start translating for the spirit, right, and you begin to achieve a conversation. Okay. So then on the other hand, for people like you and me, what do we have, Well, we have EVP where we put a tape recorder out and let it play, maybe ask a question and hope we get an answer on playback.

Well, this is merging those two and this is the hope to achieve the dream of a two way conversation between the living and the dead that anyone can do because you know, again keep in mind, George Meek is a guy who builds things, and he's like, if we can do this, I mean, it stands to reason that there is a frequency, the frequency of the dead, the ghost of twenty nine megacycles. If we can identify what that is, then maybe anyone can do this. They can just wake up in the morning, turn on their spirit calm and begin communicating with someone who's died. So that was that was the dream here and and Bill O'Neill was got information, and it was all about sort of these frequencies and tones and and then one day it worked.

And you can find these tapes on YouTube, and you can find them online and you can hear the sounds and it's the creepiest, scariest thing you've ever heard, because the tone itself is sounds like this, okay, and then the spirit starts manipulating that tone, so you hear you hear doctor Mueller talking to Bill O'Neill and he's calling him William and it sounds like this, it's like ohel whee O'Neil olium whereoum wheelio. It sounds totally creepy. And and then Bill O'Neill was like, oh, doctor, yeah, I can. There's a low down you know, and he's talking and they're talking back and forth. You can hear these tapes of these conversations, the hours of them.

I know you're looking for them right now. I know. I am, No, I am. It's well, what's crazy? I mean, like again, like I guess my question to you as in your mind, how is this different than e VP or it's just another kind of Well, it's it's it's the next evolution of EVP.

It's it's pushing EVP to the next logical step, which is being able to because I guess he's talking like we're talking. It's like, you die, we could still do this podcast. Well, and I guess the other conceit of EVP is you're not hearing it in the moment. It's after the fact, which means there is no way. It's it's a it's a blind communication, right, I say something.

Let the recorder. Go, I'm assuming something is said. We'll figure it out when we get back to wherever. Here It's like he's hearing this all in real time, is what you're saying? A real time real time they're going back.

It's like ham radio, you know where he's in his little barn and pats Sylvania and on the other end is someone talking back and they're having a conversation back and forth. Okay, So so this was in the late seventies, okay, going into the early eighties when e VP wasn't really well known, but people within parapsychology knew about it, but it wasn't like it is now like now everyone knows about it. Okay, So this was a big breakthrough and and and there was you know, it got a little bit of publicity, and George Meek held a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC and basically said, here's what we've done, here's what we've achieved, here are the plans for the Spirit Calm. And anyone with some knowledge of electronics should not have too much trouble assembling this.

But hey, I'm putting it out in the world for free. We made it work. Go see if you can make it work. This press conference was in I don't know, nineteen eighty I think fire can't quite remember eighty one. You'll you'll, you'll observe that we do not all have spiracoms in our homes.

Forty years later, I was gloaut to say, I don't. I definitely, having never heard of this before, feel like I'm wondering where the other shoe drops in this story. Well, it took a while, and there's still controversy, but the the overwhelming belief is that Bill O'Neill faked it, and that it wasn't actual communication, and that he was using one of those uh, one of those uh fake larynxes, like an electronic larynx that people who have had operations for cancer. Did you were you in the name? Is that what you're talking about exactly exactly?

To cut that out of this show, that's a little well, well, and what's interesting fol pretty fake that though, like he was was using it to communicate back and just editing the two things together. He was going it was like this, it was like he'd have the thing. He'd be like, you know, we know, yeah, let me or doctor oh okay. So literally he's like it's like literally like a got your nose thing. It's like okay, and there we go and there we go.

Okay, right, it's it's it's it's like Phil Hendry, Phil Hendry's radio show. But really it's well, it's it's a kind of ventriloquism. And and people have made a very simple observation that I, unfortunately have never been able to disprove, and that is that the two voices never overlap each other. So this voice that's being pulled out of the ethers is never talking at the same time that Bill O'Neill was talking. Now, you and I can't get through a podcast without talking over each other, right, So so so how is this possible?

Well, it's because it's one guy speaking as himself and then speaking as doctor Mueller. Now now, but here's okay, now, let's I mean, that's the that is the explanation that makes the most sense, right, I mean, you know, somebody's paying me to give them to give them X. I don't know if I could ever make X happen literally, So I make why happen in place of X, and I disguise it, disguise why is X? Right, and and keep in mind, the guy's not getting paid, like like he's like refusing money from George Meek. And George Meeka is I can I at least pay you know, your forty dollars a month so that your electricity stays on so you can continue these experiments.

And they're sure, I mean, this is not no one's getting rich, all right, But but now, but but then, but then there's then there's another shoe which is actually a previous shoe, which is Bill O'Neil is in touch with the ghost of George Mueller. So even though wait, they're not speaking, well, even though they weren't legitimately probably most likely speaking over the sparacom advice, he started getting messages from this ghost named doctor Mueller, and and then he began providing information about doctor Mueller. And it turns out doctor Mules a real guy with a real family who really died in the way that he said he died. In other words, it's it's just mediumship. Bill O'Neill was able to conduct mediumship and get in touch with a dead guy named George Mueller, and the guy existed and gave information, gave I mean gave a ton of information, like phone numbers.

One of the big, one of the big sort of evidentials in the case is that he said, look, I published a manual when I was in the military. It's an electronics manual. I don't know where you can find any copies of it, but this is what it's called. This is what the manual was. Go find it.

And it took months of multiple people, George Meek, other members of Meta science, and again keep in mind, this is the late seventies, so there's no Internet, there's no computers, you know, for home use, and there's no I mean, you've got the phone. You basically got the phone, You've got the US mail. And took the months, but finally, in an obscure collection in Wisconsin of like, you know, army records, they found one copy of this manual that had been written and he had been told read the last page. On the last page, I guess doctor Mueller got a little fancy and was basically, after having talked about you know, developments and electronics, sort of waxed philosophic and said, you know, in the future, who knows what will happen, but but you know, men will reach into the darkness, and and electronics will bring about developments that could never have been believed.

And you almost seemed to be referring to the eventual development of the spiracon, except that except that last piece never fell into place. And believe me, people have been trying for forty years to get a spirit colm to work. Other people who are interested in both electrical electrical engineering and parapsychology. People have been trying to develop devices, and of course we hear about them, you know, Zach Baggens and whoever else, the ghost hunters. Some people have the you know, the ST's method, you know the spirit box, right I The STS method is, uh, that's the that's then hell your folks, that's Reagan Data new Kirk over there doing.

I think, yeah, I have problems with the They say the hell your method, the STS method. I have problems with it, as I'm sure you do, as I'm sure we all do. You know my problems with Tell me your problems. Describe what it is for the listeners. The STS method is utilizing i would say, sensory deprivation techniques to elicit a response from a spirit box.

So you essentially put on a blindfold or a way to black out your eyes and you put on a pair of noise canceling headphones that essential mute you to the world, and then you have a spirit box piped in right, and you are having questions asked to you by people that you cannot hear, and then you're essentially acting as the spirit boxes speaker for what you're hearing to say things out loud that you're hearing. So the spirit box is just making noises, right, It's scanning, scanning AM and FM bandwidth. That's what it's doing. And again, nobody likes to fucking say that, but I would be doing my audience a disservice if we didn't say a spirit box is just a radio scanner. You know, that's fine.

I mean that I know, but I mean, but I know. But I just talk into the fact that, like you and I both know that in this area of the world, there's a lot of there's a lack of transparency with a lot of these things, and just saying what I mean again, if we say what it is up up front and that's what the expectation is, it doesn't take away from what could be going on. Well, it's just saying, like we understand what the technology is and what it is actually doing okay, okay, but no one is saying that that ghost voices are necessarily manifesting on a radio scanner. I think, I think, correct me if I'm wrong. I think what they're saying is, I, you know, sit in the quiet room, I black out my eyes, I listen to a radio scanner.

If I hear a word that I can identify as a word, I speak it out loud, right, Okay. So so I've got headphones on, So if you're tape recording me in this room, you're not hearing what I'm hearing from my headphones because those are those are you know, designed in such a way that the microphone in the room isn't picking it up. So essentially what you're what you're getting is me sitting in a room and I'll say things like like I'll be silent and then I'll go Colorado, Hamburger, giraffe, okay, because I'll be just hearing words, random words or whatever, and I'll just be saying them right right. Okay. Now, at a previous date, contemporaneous moment, or later date, a separate person is asking questions out loud into the spirit world.

Okay, and the theory I believe, and again correct me if I'm wrong, is that when you then take those questions and match them up with the words that are being said, there will be a correspondence that will appear to be answers to your questions. Is that correct? I haven't heard the removed question and answer part. I mean, in hell, you're they're doing it like they're asking contemporaneous right right, Well, well, yeah, they're sitting there, he's got the headphones on, they're asking the questions, and he's going banana split, you know, Coco puffs are you know? Whatever?

The fuck? I don't know. Yeah, but sometimes it's the synchronicity of it is shocking, right, I will I will say this much. If we're talking the theatricality of these kinds of things, is there anything better than this in terms of like like if I mean, come on, there is a look, there is a little bit of that with all of these things. I mean, just the story you just told me, there's a level of theatricality to it.

You you compared it to ventriloquism, and that's where the question becomes, is it just an elaborate ventriloquism act or is there something else to it? And can it theoretically be both? Are they mutually exclusive? I think I think what it speaks to is a researcher trying to find a way to facilitate for the spirits, a way to communicate with us. Now it's strange because if you go back a hundred years ago, there was direct voice mediumship.

There were mediums who would take on the voice of a dead person. They would sound like they were doing an impersonation of them, but if it was a family member in that seance, they might go, that is the exact voice of my grandfather, okay. Then there were the trumpet seances, where a large paper cone would be utilized that the spirits could speak into and magnify their voices. And then people often said, yes, through that cone that what they called it was a trumpet, I can hear the disembodied voice of my dead relative, okay. And they seem very happy with that, and that seemed to work.

But then it's strange because then that which is fairly simple falls out of favor. And as we move through time and as our inventions become more sophisticated, now we're trying to use those and you know, the first EVPs were recorded onto those big, thick seventy eight record albums that you play on an old Victrola, right right, right, And then it advanced to capturing voices on reel to reel tape, and then it was on cassette tape. And now I'm sure people use digital media to capture EVP. People are using their computers to get images of the dead, people are using cameras when you know, I mean that of course goes back one hundred hundred fifty years. So as the technology develops, people are consistent.

It's like you know, they always say, every time there's a new like invention or a new kind of media recording device, the first use is always pornography. Second uses a second uses ghost work, second uses ghost work. It really is, it's those are the first two things. First, okay, how how can we use it to jack off? Second?

How can we use it to talk to the dead? So this is what we got, not necessarily well, I guess no, it is always in that way. It really is. It really is. I would like to say it isn't, but we don't have hddvds and beta maxes.

Let's just put it that way. You know, VR, Virtual reality AI. All of this stuff will first be used to if you've got AI. Oh you mean AI. We can capture a we can recreate an actor and some sort of deep fake.

Great. That means I can choose two celebrities and have them fuck and I can watch it. I mean, it's logic. It's a it's a logical easoning a tree and I'm just watching you climb up it, right, and then I and then I'm going to get capture images of myself, have those grafted onto a body, and now I can be having sex with a celebrity. We haven't gotten there yet.

What time is it now? Yeah? Right, there are five minutes before that shows up. Yeah, and and the voice of your sex partner will be the voice if that celebrity reacting in a sexual manner. I mean, you know it's I mean, I mean, that's where you want to go.

That's what you want to put on the helmet and be and be having sex with the exact person, not a person who looks like that person. It's like, no, I want to put on the thing and I want to be with the girl from my high school prom. You know, I want I mean you'll be with people you know, you'll be with the woman you work with Donted Applebee's, you know, or the thing you work with Donald Applebee's. No, it's it's all about having sex with celebrities. Like that's not what this would be for this use celebrities and sex with people that you know, you know, right, yeah, And it's like, well, I can you know, well, it's business.

It's the point of thing, right, Like I would watch a point. I know people don't necessarily agree, but I would. If I found out that any one of my friends was making porn or had a porno, you know, I would watch it. I don't care who they are, because like the oportunity see it, there's you don't miss that opportunity, especially if they're doing it willingly. Now if it was like leaked or something different entirely, but if they're doing it willingly, you'll be goddamned if I'm not sitting on the sidelines thumbs up or something up.

Oh exactly. And I know, you know we're going a little off the ghost topic. But but just to continue on with the philosophy of pornography, you know, go into the slash fiction. You know, there are there the volumes of material written about Moulder and Scully having sex written by thing oh much, and it's so much better than anything they ever did on the show, right, the volume of material of uh, Captain Kirk and mister Spock having sex. By the way, Luke Skywalker and Chewbacca.

I mean, you pick your pair. I'm surprised you didn't mention the one that always makes me. It's the thing that I think of when I really think of slash fiction for people my age is supernatural. Oh my god, and that is and that is and that is pretty kinky. Well because it's incest.

I mean, some of it is. I mean, if it's those two guys, that's in. If it's castile and anybody else, yeah, right, but hey, you know, I mean again, it's like what you do that doesn't you know, does not involve another human being being hurt, And that's what you want to think about or read about or see a you know, fake movie. Now Now it's not okay, obviously, because I'm sure whoever you know, I mean, pick your celebrity. You know, Brad Pitt probably doesn't want there to be a bunch of material online that's just sitting there that is purportedly him having sex with another celebrity that you want to watch.

Okay, he would have a complaint or Jennifer Anniston or whoever, I mean, name your actress name or actor who was like, but that's not me and I don't want that, So I'm going to sue someone or I'm going to track someone down. And that's I get that. So okay, I think we're done with pornography. Now we move on to the supernatural, which is, how does every single advancement in technology lead to, hopefully a more refined way to speak to the dead. And guess what we have not done yet.

It hasn't happened. And you would think now that we all carry around phones. I mean remember phone calls from the dead. In the seventies, this was a thing. This was an urban legend, but then it was an actual thing, Like there was a book written about cases of people who reportedly received phone calls from the dead.

Right now, they were rare, but they were enough to be investigated. Well, now everyone carries a phone, Everyone is getting text messages, everyone is getting emails. Where are all the emails from the dead, Where are all the text messages from the dead. Where are all these spontaneous photographs today? Suddenly you're on your phone of the dead.

Yes, the stories exist, but in no greater volume than they ever did in the past when it was just a landline telephone. Right, So, are we getting better at this or not? I my issue is I wonder if it's are we getting better or are we just not looking in the right place? Yeah, digging in their wrong place? I mean, I mean that's I wonder if it's that, because I mean, they're in a lot of ways.

We don't know what we don't know, and just like you know, you know, mentioning siren call of hungry ghosts, they say, don't trust what's on the other side because you don't know what you don't know, which is literally you do not know what's on the other side, and to trust it is a problem. And so I don't know if we just don't know yet there's the right direction to look. It could be, you know, a matter of misdirection. We're looking in one direction and they're off in the other direction, fucking waving their arms and legs, trying to get our attention, and only ever so infrequently do we look that way and see them I wonder if it's that, because if if you have a stronger belief in this kind of stuff like I do, you do clearly to have devoted in time to giving it space in our mind, time to read books and watch things.

Then it would stand to reason that I believe that this is going on even if we're not able to constantly capture it, which in my mind means there's just it's it's in a different it's in a direction or a space that we either haven't looked yet or literally we don't have the technology yet. I mean, look, fucking BTK, who's back in the news was jerking off, jizzing inside of his victims. A dude, how fucking stupid do you have to be? You can? You can?

You cannot tell me that at some point in the future you didn't think they would figure out a way to test that for your fucking DNA. But yet, but yet, now we have that technology and it put that motherfucker in jail. And that's my point. It's like, we don't know what we don't know about the future of technology. They could invent something a year from now that goes the ghosts are real.

Here's the phone. The ghost phone, and we figured out what wavelength or what's thing or where to look to figure out how to pick up on it more efficiently than we have in the past. It's frustrating that in over sixty years of this and sixty years when there's been a ton of advances and electronic communication in all directions and in all ways, and if we're hungry and the ghosts are hungry, and we're both working our way toward each other, it is crazy that still EVP seems to be the main breakthrough. That's the crazy part is that it still seems to be nope, just a personal recording device either cassette tape or I guess just a voice recording excuse me, like a voice memo app on your phone. And I was getting the stuff.

What's that recorder that the Scott and Forest used when they to the when they went to the Sally house. That's like, that's the one that you use. I mean, we've talked about this before, but that's the one you use because it's such a piece of shit, like there's something there's something wrong with it, which is what makes it so good. But also to the point of view and talking about you know, there's controversy, that thing being the way that it is may also be the reason it gets anything to begin with, is because of the way. Is it the way that the speaker is soldered and it's soldered too close or something like.

It could just be that. It could just be that, and like you said, him communicating with the dead could have just been him. They his voice. Hey, well, what are you saying? Like, if that's what it is, it could be that.

Well, but but if it's okay, taking a step back from your last commented, just talking about I think it's kinda like the DS fifteen or the dr Forrest Burgess will kill me because I don't know the exact model, but neither one of us own it, so it's money nobody. And it's so funny because he does and he keeps it like in this velvet box, wrapped up in a silk rag, and it's like it's like this, but it's like, wait a second, this was just a product made by radio Shack. It's like twenty bucks when it came out or something, and now it's like, you know, ten thousand dollars. Yeah, but what's because there aren't any more being made? But do they just make them.

I mean, come on the number of people out there who love this stuff and who you just put a button on it, Richard, make it, make the thing that does the thing. And then it's like, well is it doing the thing? And it's just And that's what I think they are making it, because if they made it, everybody would realize it's just the technology being wonky. But if there's but fine, if there's a wonky technology. In other words, if it's like, oh, there's something weird about the VHS tape that records ghost images better than the Beta Max, then that's fine.

Just physically build the physical thing. No magic is involved. It rolled off an assembly line, and if Sony or whoever it was that built the thing in the first place, doesn't really care about that. Although I think they're missing out on a marketing opportunity, I agree with you on that. But just build, you know, it's it's like dissect it, open up the little machine, find out exactly and then just make that.

And and not only that, but begin to build theories about what it is about the device and its shape and how close the microphone is to the speaker or whatever it is it's different than others and follow that because that's all we have right now. And again that's assuming that these devices really are more successful. And the fact of the matter is, I think pretty much anything is successful if you use it and you want it to be used. I mean, I'm not sure there's any device that has never recorded an EVP if it happens to be the camera, the phone, or whatever that you're using. There are so many ghost hunters now and so many groups of people who venture out to haunted areas and fry this stuff.

And you know what's kind of frustrating, because yes, I know, if you're in your mid twenties, you want to go to the abandoned a sane asylum on some summer night with twenty other people because that's fun and that's an adventure. But I kind of wish people would get back to the old way of doing it, which was once a week, five of us are going to meet and we're going to do a seance at a table and we're going to see if we can produce seance phenomenon and just do that, I mean, and then record it or I think you're missed. I think I think there's a fun I think there's a missed opportunity here, Richard, you could you could have seances in your house and charge mon seance with Richard had people, which you you're missing an opportunity now because that people would show up and fucking droves.

Man, Look by what people showing up in droves to my house. I mean a couple hundred dollars an evening to do a seance with. And yeah, oh exact you mentioned money. Now you see what I'm talking about. Everybody wants to have experience and those things.

Doctor Susan, See how many people we can pack into our backyard while me and four other people pretend to contact the dead. And that's the thing, and that's the thing, pretend to contact the dead. It's like, I don't know, John Edwards, Teresa Kaputo, all of those people, like they all claim to do the thing that we haven't even confirmed that we can do with technology. But their human ability is supposedly innate innate. Literally it has to be innate because there's no other explanation for it and there's no ability to learn it.

Best we've again, best we can tell. I have a hard time with all of this because it is also in the scheme of emotional manipulation, if none of it is true, and there's such a button to be had, a point to be had, and a button to be pressed by doing that in a non legitimate way, that it makes something like the spirit calm. Like you mentioned, the controversy behind it is no different in the controversy behind any of these communicating with the dead things. Are you actually doing it or not? Well, here's the thing.

Some people will say, Well, it's like if you're faking it, if you somehow are able to consistently convince, you know, a never ending stream of strangers that you are speaking to their dead person, maybe you can do it. And some people have, right, I think, I think, I think a lot of people do it legitimately. But but but it also comes down to, well, you're not, you know, you're what is the You're telling people I'm talking to your dead person, and your dead person is saying they're okay, goodbye. That's all it ever? It's like, that's all it ever is.

It's not like, hey, Grandma, tell me where you stash the key for the security deposit box that has hundreds of thousands of dollars of gold in it. Yeah, I mean, it's not that much different than your local religious leader on a Sunday, you know, or on a Saturday, depending on when you go to church, and you go to them and you're like, I miss my dead loved one so much, and that pastoral advice that comes back at you is, according to our beliefs, they're okay, right, and they're in a place where they're okay, and you love them and they still love you. Go enjoy the rest of your weekend. How is that any How is that really any different in effect than a person saying I am literally speaking to them right now, Because, by the way, what does that really tell you?

It's like, you can only I've read all the books, I've heard all the stories, all the things about what the next life is like, and I still have no idea what it's like. How can I? I can't there. I can't imagine a world where things are non physical and time doesn't matter. I can hear it, I can think about it, but I can't really really really go, oh got it?

Do you and Susan have like a code word or like a thing that wanted like who do you? Do? You know? I feel like we all should right, should we come? Richard should Richard, we should have one.

Well, and they did the early, the early guys in the in their Society for Psychical Research. I think when Richard Hodgson died, he then came right back through and talked to the other members of the investigatory team that he was once a part of. It was like, I'm over here now, guys, I made it. Why for real? Absolutely read Deborah Blum's book Ghost Hunters, and you'll read about and all this information is out there.

Well I know, well that, yeah, and and and but but this was an actual thing. And if you really go into the files of the Society for Psychical Research, you can spend the rest of your life reading thousands of pages of communications between people who have died and their friends that they recently left behind, and evidential, you know, material is shared. I remember this event, I remember this thing you told me, you know being And this is one hundred and fifty years ago, when there was no telegraph, telephone, there was barely mail. Travel was impossible, I mean, forget Internet, and extremely detailed information was coming through that people had no access to in any other way. And yet we're still arguing it just fine whatever, But the fact that the fact that certain people can get information that they should and could not have any other access to.

You know, the question becomes, well, where are they getting it? Are they getting it from the dead? Are they tapping into the Akashic records or some sort of river of information that they can stick their hand in and pull things out of it. I don't know. Either one of them is pretty incredible.

But but yeah, you know, I think I think to any reasonable human being, that has been proven that people can have access to information they shouldn't have any other access to. And again, it's either super esp or it's they're talking to the dead. And the people who are doing it talk about it as if they're talking to the dead. They don't go, Okay, I'm going into a trance. Now, I'm walking into a huge library.

I'm going to the card catalog. I'm looking up your person I'm taking out a card. I'm going to a shelf. I'm reading the book of their life. That's not what people are describing.

They're like, Okay, there's a person here, here's how they look, here's what they're saying. Here's the personality I'm getting from them. That's what they're doing. It seems to imply personality survives death. Now, that's a weird, uncomfortable thing for a lot of people.

And if people are skeptical and don't want to believe it, or they want to say it's all a lie, that's fine. There's plenty of emotional reasons to not want to believe this, But I don't think there's a ton If you really research it pretty quickly, you go, okay, it's probably happening on some level. That's happening, right, it's not. It's often being faked. Sometimes it's being faked by people who can actually do it, who's talents Wax and Wayne and who bolster when they really need to.

And yet in other situations when fraud is not possible, they provide real information because these people are still people, all right, and not everyone's on every night and sometimes your favorite singer comes out and their voice sucks well, And that's I mean, we talked about that last time. We talked about the idea of doing an investigation in a haunted place for nights on end, because again, it's I mean, it's it's like anything else. It's like going to see the humpback whales. If you go to Seattle, like there's no guarantee that you go out you will see whales. They will take you to the places where the whales might be, but there's no guarantee that you're going to get to see a whale.

And but Chris, I went on one of those and I didn't see any whales. I just saw dolphins. It's all bullshit. There are no whales, right, And that's what it feels like. I mean, that's what it feels like with bigfoots.

As a as a staunch defender of bigfoot, I know that, you know, we go out into the woods cooking for bigot bigfoot hunters find bigfoot. Who the fuck else is supposed to fin and bigfoot if they're going out into the woods all the time to look for bigfoot. You know, you and I have been friends for a long time, and I had worked on a script about the Patterson Gimlin thing, and I still want to finish it at some point. But the idea of people who are going to look for these things finding these things and that is then a problem, is a weird thing to have to struggle with in this area of the world, because again, you know, in other in other things, like a scientist does experiments and they get results, and nobody goes, well, why did you get results?

Why are you doing that? It's like, well, because I'm a scientist. If you go to look for bigfoot, if you're studying ghosts, the expectation is you're probably gonna have some interactions more often than people that aren't doing it intentionally and going out of their way to do it. Well, that's the hell of it. That people go out, Yeah, people go out searching, don't get anything.

Meanwhile, twenty miles away, someone's just camping and bigfoot rips up their campsite or whatever, right right, No, we didn't tape it. We didn't. But every once in a while you'll get an audio tape of those really weird and they have you know, online you can listen to the audio tapes of what is shiite? Well not only that, but but I just you know, it's like you've also got people who are familiar with what things in nature sound like, and you know, I feel like people should be able to go, I know what that is or I've never heard anything like it before, or they go, I know what that is, but that shouldn't be there is my favorite. That's where it gets scary, like what what do you mean?

Well, like they'll be like, I know what that is. That's a primate. But the fact that you're hearing primate in north northern Washington doesn't make a whole lot of sense, right, There should not be primates out in the woods, you know, outside of Yakama fucking Washington. Yeah, but that but that's the thing I mean then and again, like that's why I love the you know, the northwest of this country so much, the Pacific Northwest, because it is it is so it's steeped in bigfoot, just like color I mean, just like Colorado is. I mean, you go to any store in any of those little mountain towns in Colorado and they'll have bigfoot stuff.

I own a couple of having gone there for vacation, some bigfoot things. But I have always really been perturbed by the idea that the people that go looking for these things are not supposed to be the ones to find it, and if they do find it, there is somehow illegitimacy to what they've found. Right. Well, the thing is that the Bagans is the reason we have this conversation. It's because of people that are doing it for an entertainment, and I don't know if it's for real anymore.

I mean, i'd like to believe that Zach Bagans is on the level, but there's part of me that knows that he's not, and that he's a showman and that he's an entertainer at heart. And you go and you don't get anything. It's not as exciting as if you go and get something. And sometimes you got to blow the something completely out of proportion because otherwise you do have nothing. And that's the problem, because they kind of dictate the conversation, at least in the public sphere, because that's the only people that most people know are dealing with ghosts.

Well only that, but most people have lives and are very busy and and they're not going to spend a lot of time wrestling with the notion of Bigfoot until a dead Bigfoot body is dragged into the town square and then you're like, oh, there's Bigfoot. Okay, I guess there was a weird primate, which is why it feels like Bigfoot has to be supernatural, like it has would have found Bigfoot skeletons by now, that's what everybody always says. Well, I hate that term. They're naturalists who explain why you're not finding you know, bear skeletons. That's why you're not finding fucking people, does it?

Julian Sands, Guys, he disappeared for like the year and they just found him in like Californ and they were looking for it. They were lee exactly and they and what he was like a couple hundred feet off of a path or something. It's like he wasn't even that like far out in the middle of nowhere, and it took him a year to find him. Like, guys, come on, people disappear all the time. Well, and not only that, but animals die in the woods all the time.

But you're not always coming across the bones of squirrels and birds and rabbits and coyotes and bears and badgers and whatever. So nature is unfucking relenting. It does not stop. That's what people don't understand. Living in homes has really desensitized us to the idea of how fucked nature is a god.

It don't give a shit, It don't it's don't give a singular fuck. When I was hiking out in Colorado, I thought to myself, like I could just disappear out here and you would not find because that's what because that's because that's how fucked nature is. Like, it's just it's sobering. That's why I like camping. It's sobering.

I understand why people like yourself don't because it's sobering in the other direction, in the less positive direction. Yeah, but yeah, but I mean again, you're out in a tent in the middle of the night, you hear fucking branches snapping and noises being made. I'm not gonna blame you if you think it's bigfoot. It's probably not bigfoot. But that doesn't mean whatever it is isn't scary to you in the same setting.

Yeah, it reminds me of a movie that I saw last night called Prey movie. Yes, the Predator movie among the you know Native Americans, you know First Nations people, and and you know, the concept in a way is better than what the movie ultimately was, even though the movie had great performances in some you know, really nice moments, but but it it it was that sort of like, oh, it's like what happens when you go out and you're hunting something that is an alien? You know, it's not supernatural, but it's not of your world, and I kind of wish they'd like, uh, like it had been part of a legend. It's like, yes, you know these things, do you know? Every generation one will come from the sky and the one must like the whale rider, one must fight it, you know, and entire tribes have been wiped out.

But uh, but you know, we have you know, the the old ones have stories. They didn't go in that direction. I wish they did because that's always my favorite direction where it's like the legend, because then they you know. Anyway, I won't ruin the movie for you because it is a fairly new movie, but anyway, Yeah, it's like it's like, what do you what do we expect from the people who go out searching? And it's tough.

We're getting into an age where evidence sucks because you know, ai motherfucker. You know, it's like, even look at the Paterson Gimblin film. At least it was done on whatever, sixteen millimeter. It was done on a medium where it's fairly hard to fake. It's also you know, you can study it, you can look at it.

Well. The only way to fake it was the only way to fake it was the way to fake it pre digital filmmaking techniques, which is, you've got a guy in a fucking suit walking around, right, and but the but the cool thing is that there's a technology to a suit also, right. And in nineteen sixty seven, suit technology was not such that would produce that film. It just wasn't. And there's all kinds of people saying, oh, yeah, no, it's been fake.

But and the more you look at it through modernize, the more convincing it is, except convincing of what I don't know what camp that is that they can't explain what it is well, and and that was my and that was my whole idea for that script that I was writing, was the idea that they went out there to fake it, but then it actually happened anyways, Well that's the crazy and people say that people, and that's kind of what I think happened, is like they maybe did go out there to fake it, but I think I think the universe stepped in and said, Twilight Zone, motherfuckers, here's real Bigfoot, because there's no way that that's a suit. I'm sorry, it's not a suit. It moves like it the way it moves and those like essentially Seprueder Sepruder film esque breakdowns every word, We're going to do every frame, break it down, right, ye, stabilization right, Like, all of that more or less proves that whatever it is is a thing.

It's not a thing inside of a thing. It is a organic thing in an in an in an actuality. It's not someone pretending to be something else. But man, if it is, then what the fuck? I don't know where where was that technology?

Like for Planet of the Apes and everything else, like well, well, but I mean no, what I'm saying is, if that's an animal or a biological entity, what is going on in the woods, Like there's got to be more than one because they gotta have babies, and then that's one somewhere. Yeah. I I really have a hard time when people discredit the Patterson Gimblin film because like, there hasn't even been tell me the UFO evidence that's ever been that good, Like not like it's it's so good, it's so good, and yet everybody wants to pick it apart. But even when they do, it still holds up. And like I know that there have been people on death beds saying all kinds of things.

But I don't care what someone says on their fucking deathbed. Most people on their deathbed, Like there's people on their deathbed saying there's alien bodies, you know, right right? Yeah? No, oh, so many those roswell things that the military has those. But I mean, and I'm not a big disclosure guy, but you do get to a point where there's, like most people just trying to get through their lives, right, people don't want to believe because who wants to believe that?

That's terrifying and awful. I don't want to believe it so well, and that's and that was the thing, you know. I just released an episode that I did with my mom, and I asked her the question of like, would you go on a cruise if there was this, if there was something in the ocean that could swallow cruise ship's hole and it ate one once a year, would anyone ever go on a cruise again? And I apply that to the Bigfoot question. It's like, if Bigfoot is real and it's doing all these things in the woods, then why are people going into the woods?

Okay, so would you go on a cruise ship in the middle of the ocean, if there was something that could swallow a boat, it's the what's the level of risk? Because I guess Bigfoot has never murdered anyone except Bigfoot has or Bigfoot's made people disappear. Well, now we're getting into the missing nine one one. Oh my god, yeah, mit, oh yo, can't get into that. I think missing.

I think that I think that whole thing it's it is weird. I think it all ties into an idea of a piece that you said, which is Bigfoot is a supernatural entity. Right, And but it comes back to the question that you asked with the sphere calm, It's just what does that even mean? Even if we do decide that that's the case, Like, if if we decide the sphere Calm works, what does that mean, you know what, Like if Bigfoot's a supernatural or they're a cosmic entity, what does that mean? Like it just means we can have a weird discussion about whatever that is.

But there's no evidence that that's the case. No, it means we can all if the if the spirit calm had worked, it would mean that we could all, you know, be in a room and it would be like a conference call. It would be like people say, table, I have a question, what is it like on the other side, and can you go talk to my you know, my friend or or you know, are there animals or what do you do? Do you get to eat? Do you get to they have sex?

You know, we would ask all the questions that we've asked mediums since mediums began to exist, and we'd get whatever answers we get. But you know, back in the nineties when I was trying to break into film by writing movies, and that's how you that was the way to get into writing, was you write a movie, and you sell a movie and maybe the movie gets made. Okay, right, But the big genre was serial killers because of movies like Science and The Lambs. So so every writer I knew, including me, had to spend six months of their life reading all those John Douglas books and then you were ahead of the curve, buddy, you know, and then you know, writing your serial killer mystery. Okay, So and Ruler Richard and I didn't, well, no, I don't think I did, although she was a big one.

I mean that stranger stranger beside yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. And you but you get in this crazy terrible place where you're like, it's it's like a med student learning about all the diseases and they become a hyperchondric. It's like you read these books and you're like, Okay, there's probably a fifty fifty chance I'm going to die at the hands of a serial killer because it's so in your mind. You're reading all the cases and you're just like, this is terrifying. I don't want to be tied up on somebody's basement and they're burning me and fucking coming at me with pliers, like like that's now now I'm out white.

I mean, that's the worst thing. That than ghosts, that's worse than aliens. It's worse than anything. It's like another human being who's just floridly insane and you're at their mercy and you read this stuff and you can't you can't sleep at night. Yeah, it's like does Bigfoot even matter?

When Jeffrey Dahmer was eating people in his apartment? Like, does does Bigfoot really matter? Right? And then you and that's We'll move on and read about something else, and then you what are you going to read about airplane crashes? What are you gonna read about you know, cars exploding, you're gonna read about tells collapsing, the Abola virus, You're going to read about cancer.

It's like you're going to drive yourself out of your mind. So most again, most healthy, sane people don't spend a lot of time studying on this stuff. They just go about. But also, I would say that studying on this stuff is more fun than studying on serial killers and cancer, because this at least engages our imagination and it feels like a mystery that won't ever really hurt us. But it's sort of out there in an interesting way, as opposed to out there in a way where again, like you said, we go hey BTK, you said you told us about all the people you're murdered, but all of a sudden, there's all five more people that maybe you killed.

Yeah, it's no, it's yeah, it's well, I don't want to say it's no fun because there's a huge subsection of the audience that listens to the show that would disagree with me and you, So I'm not gonna say it's not fun. It's just not my flavor of ice cream. The True crime fan, Well, it's my flavor of ice cream all the time. I mean, I get on my kicks. I've listened to a fair number of hand Rules stuff and jobless is stuff like there and and they're and they're great books, and they're great pieces of firsthand account source material about dealing with people that hopefully none of us ever have to deal with.

Right. But like you said, I would rather have an alien encounter than I would encounter a serial killer. But here's the other thing. Whitley Strieber has entered the chest and would like to have a word with me. And that's the problem, and that is the ultimate problem.

Is like for every for everybody in Barney Hill, there's you know, a Whitley Streeber where it's like we had a good time, we lost time, but we were abducted. And then it's like Whitley Streep was like I've been I've been haunted by these things since I was a child, you know, And that's the thing in contact with them, right, And that's like, well, maybe I would rather just be murdered by a serial killer then, because maybe your life is that a life worth living if you're constantly under the thread of something that people don't even believe you when you tell them about it. Yeah, well yeah, and he leaned into it. I'm not talking, but he leaned into it publicity wise, like oh, I'm gonna I've found a slot machine.

Because it has not led to a wealthy life for him at all. He lost his book contracts, He's lost more money than he ever made on. Your credibility goes out the window the moment you say I believe in aliens. I've been abducted, like you right even now, like I want people to pretend, yes, we are a much different time now, but like it's still not it's still not. Well.

He has turned toward the phenomenon. He made the decision, if this is happening, then maybe as terrifying as it is. And apparently it is terrifying, and I do not question that. But but he made a decision. It's like, I'm going to engage with this and try to learn everything i can, like in this modern shaman sort of way.

I'm going to do it and try not to go insane and get whatever. And you know, but you read his new book, A New World, and it's hard not to think that he's gone at least a little insane. And then you go, well, wait, a second, though, if he's legitimately interacting with non human entities, maybe that's what happens. Maybe your worldview changes to the point where when you try to express yourself to people who have not had those experiences, that communication human to human is going to be tough and people are going to think you're insane and you have definitely stepped out of the you know, the borders of you know, our consensus reality such is such that it is, So it's tough. I don't think Whitley Strieber's making it up, and I don't think that he is suffering from mental illness, But what experience is he's really having and then his human ability to interpret those man it gets tough to follow after a while.

Well, and that's and that's the thing. It's like, you know, serial killers. I don't know, like you you see people that have interacted with you know, being left in abasement for five years, and they have a hard time reintegrating themselves into society. I don't know what it would be like to have an alien encounter once and then try to reintegrate yourself into society, knowing what you know, knowing what if you know, and if you've had that experience, then you have had an experience that so changes everything that it is hard for me or you to really comprehend it. And that's why I have a hard time like discrediting these people, because it's like Jesus Christ, your life must have changed overnight, and especially in Willie Streeber's case, like I would have a hard time continuing to live with the constant threat of being abducted by aliens over my shoulder, and like you have family and other people in your house and it's happening to them too, Like how could you ever in good conscience, Like I would never invite you to my house Richard, And you would never invite me to your house if you knew that, like I was being abducted by aliens every now and then, Like oh hey, by the way, Richard, if alien subduct us all in the middle of the night, like you could have prevented it by never having invited me to your house.

Whitley's wife and died several years back. He's had post death communication with her. But Whitley Streeber also has kids who are now adults, and not to infringe on their privacy at all, but I do. It's I'm curious if I ran into one of his kids at a party what they would say, Like, I'd be like, wait, Whitley, Whitley Streeber's your dad? I mean, what do you think?

And I wonder what they would say and what they're like, because clearly they are not also experiencing what he's experiencing, but they were close by, and they've lived with him and they know him as a person. I'd be curious as to what they have to say. Yeah, and well, And that's the other thing about all of this that I do think about it is, you know, again the effect that it has on the people around them. You know, the Lutz family is kenna notatorious exactly though, right, Like, what are those kids saying, like, Hey, it was all bullshit. I don't know, Like I don't know, and nobody's asking those questions.

Well, they were pretty little and they've talked about it. But but I think they're someone on board was what happened, or at least on board that Daddy was really upset now that I believe we have no way to pay for this home. I got to invent something about demons and flies and get out to bring this full circle. I wanted to talk to you about something that I guarantee you you've never heard of, but it's something that I would be curious to gauge your thoughts on it. So friend of ours, father Malone, he used to work a museum.

And I won't say whose museum it is, but if it's in Las Vegas, it's in Las Vegas. He's a rather well known ghost hunter who goes on adventures with ghosts. Okay, okay, okay. In his museum, he has a room dedicated to a woman whose name is Lee sober Shapiro. Okay, guarantee you've never heard this name before.

And there's well, we'll talk about the controversy surrounding it when I get to the end of the story. But this woman, smart woman, apparently one of those kind of you know, like a immensely talented at everything she did. She played it, you know, she could play an instrument, pick it up and just play it, you know, immensely smart, went to Juilliard, all all these things that they're kind of talking about a kind of exemplars to this woman in her kind of mental acumen. But I guess later in her life she began to become obsessed with the idea of talking to the other side and communicating with the other side again, as you know we've kind of been talking about in this episode at the spear, come, you know, what does that mean to talk to the other side?

Can I talk to the other side? And if I can talk to the other side, what happens then? So supposedly get According to this museum in Las Vegas owned by a famous ghost hunter, this woman figured out a way to communicate with the other side through some machine that she built. And this machine she turned it on one evening and throughout the course of the evening was taking polaroid pictures of herself, and throughout the evening she started to deteriorate, and then a family member came to check up on her the next day and found her dead in the middle of the room, surrounded by all of this machinery turned on. Okay, so what you're really saying is that a woman was in a room and then later people came into that room and she was dead.

They found her dead in a room surrounded by her technology that she supposedly had concocted and crafted to contact the other side, and the way the story is told at the museum is that she may have contacted demons, and in the process of contacting the other side, these demons came through and caused her to commit suicide or die or something. But there are like a series of images, like four or five polaroids in the museum wherein the first one she looks normal, the second one she looks a little rougher, through one she looks a little rough. For fourth one she looks really rough. The fifth one she looks like death. And that's it.

Well, okay, I mean, I've there's so many questions. I mean, when you say she looks rougher, like what, she starts to look more gaunt and pehid and paler, and she just starts. I mean again, maybe that's what happens when you have a heart attack. Well again, like it's clear that these photos weren't being taken all at the same time. It's like through the span of the eye.

But the kind of the question, though, and similar to the spirit calm, is you know, well, actually, let me let me finish the finish the story. So then once the story is told to you by the docent at the museum, they then go and on the other side of this door. If you open it, it will turn on the machine that's in the room on the other side of the door, and so they go. If you want to, you can go up to the door and open it and peek in and look, and the machine is on and making noise, and it's it's unlike any machine I've ever seen, but you know, it's very theatrical, right, I mean, go open the door and the machines on the other side of the door, and the machines going, and the machine was going the night she died.

There is no proof of any of this information outside of the museum. There's no other newspaper articles, no family members, no independent One family member supposedly has been tracked down by people who have investigated this outside of the museum. And there's a couple of websites that if you type in the name Lee's ober Shapiro, they will come up and they have links to investigations that they've done about this, and one of them even has a picture. You're not supposed to take pictures inside the museum, so I'm assuming someone took a picture inside the museum unbeknownst to anybody else on the tour But what's weird is I can't figure out if this is a real story like the one you're talking about with the spirit com or something actually fucking horrifying happen, or if it is again this whole problem that we're having here of it's just a really good story, and I want somebody to I want a really good story to somehow continue to facilitate the conversation, because that's almost what I have to wonder here, is like, is that necessarily a bad Well, I don't know.

Yes, no, everything is question And I love the story you just told, and it makes me want to go to that museum, going back and like you said, bringing a full circle. As we conclude to the Ghost of twenty nine megacycles, there are people in the world of parapsychology, of the world of people who are investigating techniques of electronic voice phenomenon who become infuriated by the lingering legend of the Sperrit Calm because people still talk about it. I mean, it's still you know, the dream of the Spirat Calm. And then it's like, well, why are you so angry about it? And it's like, because it doesn't work and it and it draws people down a blind alley.

We already know it doesn't work. Why are we, forty years later talking about a thing that didn't work and that is overwhelmingly believed to be a hoax and as never been replicated. Is it overwhelmingly believed to be a hoax? Online? It is?

And and but pre pre online? Was it considered to be a host early on? Yes, okay, okay, I was just curious. I was just curious very early on in Fate magazine, and I don't have the guy's name in front of me, but a guy, a guy wrote an article saying, I've listened to these tapes and I have a I have a theory. And he was not.

And again, in the great tradition of unmasking hoaxes, it was not a skeptic. It was another parapsychologist who was pissed off because that's you know, it makes sense. It's like, well, wait a second, I've been doing research in this area and you claim success. Well, I cry foul stories like that abound, uh And and those people have a bone to pick and they, I mean, they're like a skeptic schmeptic that these guys are barracudas. I mean they will come for your bones.

Uh, because it's now now you're in my house. Soh. And again I don't have the guy's name in front of me. But he wrote an article in Fate magazine soon after the the information was made public and started tearing it apart, and was later much of what he accused Bill O'Neill of was seemed to be true because no one and but but the most damning bit of evidence. I mean, I'm not I have no interest in standing here saying Bill O'Neill was a fake.

Therefore everything's bullshit because that's not my belief and that's not my game or that's not my interest. Well, I don't holistically discount stuff either, right, I'm I'm open. I want to hear the story. I want to and if you and if you can disprove it, disprove it. Don't disprove things in general because people are goofy the so yes, it is it is believed that that he faked the sparat Com tapes, and the sparat Com tapes are not what he said they were.

And so as we were saying, people are like, well then move on. And what i would say is aside from just pointing a finger at him and saying you're a fake, the biggest sort of indication that this was not real is that it's never been replicated. Now EVP gets excuse me, replicated all the time, right if it doesn't. If it doesn't, you're really disappointed. See me going to the Sally House.

Will you know? And I don't know how many times you got to do it before it works? Or some people do it five times, some people do it five hundred times, some people get a lot of results, some people don't. Is it because of the person who knows? But there's too many people doing it for it to be now no one understands how it's done, and people are doing it in different ways.

But EVPs out there and people can try it, and there's I would say, a better than fifty percent chance that if you practice with EVP you will one day get something that you cannot explain. Agreed, all right, so but spiracom hasn't happened, so so Yeah, there's an argument to be made that hoaxes do hurt. They absolutely do. And when people who are famous psychic mediums are revealed to have faked, even some of their results. It taints the entire field, and and it baby out with bath right, and and so you tend to then not listen very hard when people are like, but wait a second, what about this evidence, because no, well that's compelling until someone tells me it's fake.

So all of these journeys become individual journeys. Bigfoot doesn't exist because Patterson Gimmelin is fake according to people. That's that's that fatalistic view that I cannot get behind any more than you can, right, Or there's a fake UFO picture. Therefore, no one has ever seen a truly unidentified flying object whatever. Typically these are individual journeys.

People who are interested set off. They visit a psychic, they've visited me medium, they try EVP, they visit a haunted location, they read a million books, and they come to some conclusion it's all bullshit, it's all absolutely true, or something in between. And as we say goodbye to summer right now, we're in the first week of September, you and I and we're heading into the spooky season. These things come up for people, and I would encourage everyone who has an interest to read up, explore safely, and answer the question for yourself. Don't listen to a true believer, don't listen to a skeptic.

Be skeptical, but be open minded and see what results you get. And most of all, don't use Aluiji board because those things they fucking dangerous than a Luigi board. You mean, right, don't don't use a Luigi board, an Ojo board. God, Hey, you know what, I have heard the Wuiji board thing before. I got no interest.

I have one in my house, but I've never touched it. I almost bought my wife like a vintage one at an antique mall, and she was very glad that I did not, but those are very expensive for a piece of cardboard and a piece of plastics for fuck sakes, people. But no, no, I'm with you, and you know again, I you know, feel like I'm I just edited the episode I did with my mom. So we were talking about that same thing, about like this journey is very personal and that ultimately what it should be for everybody is personal and not. I mean, if you wanted to be a shared journey organized religions, perfect, but I think nowadays anymore, for most people, it's personal.

It's a personal journey. Spirituality is very much something that you should hold near and dear to yourself, because like so many other things, you cannot give it away and it is yours and you should. You know, even if you're an atheist or agnostic like that's there's still a belief system behind that. It's not like you're just a complete nihilist, which even if you're a nihilist, there's a belief system behind that. So I don't know, Like I'm with you ultimately, you know, my belief in something or lack of belief is dictated less on one specific thing and more on a wide scope of things.

And I tend to air on the side of, you know, skeptic, less like or not skeptic. But I guess you know, I'm you know, like Fox Moulder, I want to believe, so whatever that is, So whatever that is, you know, that's everybody wants me Fox Molderike who doesn't want to be David to Coveney, right like you me, everybody else who watched that show in the nineties. So or I guess you want to be cold Check, which is right, same same Amphitheater different too. You want to be free to ask your questions, right, or you want to be free to turn away and say that is garbage, it's foolishness. And you know I have more important things to do, and you probably do.

But but not looking at something doesn't mean it goes away. It's fair, It's very fair. So until the next time, Richard, you join me again to talk about literally who knows what? Where can people find you and what are you find Well? They can find me on Twitter.

If you want to get in touch, you can always find me on Twitter. No one ever does. What isn't one of your live whoever's listening to this, just hit me up on Twitter and just say I heard you on Scary Stories. We tell just so I know you're out there. And then you don't, you don't have enough tell me if you liked it or not, because I'm going to assume for my benefit.

For my benefit, yeah, don't tell them that. Don't don't tell don't tell us if you like this. But otherwise I'm on the picket line with Writers Guild of America hoping for a fair deal from the AMPTP, the armpit, the armpit people who make a lot of money but don't pay us our share. So anyway, hopefully that gets resolved soon. Like I said, we're in the first week of September right now that we're recording this.

We'll see what happens. And as for me, you can find me on Weirdingwaymedia dot com, where this show and so many other shows like his wife's show Eighties TV Ladies can be found. If you're into TV shows from the eighties that feature ladies, I think that's the show for you. And if you or not, well you should be and you should go listen to the show anyways. Oh yeah, and Richard and I and Mike White share the audio space together once a months talking about ranking and bass and that's quickly coming to an end, soon to be replaced by another project that has actually nothing to do with that project other than the fact that three people are working on it together.

So yeah, you can find all those things at weirdingwemedia dot com. As for this show, Scary Stories weetell dot com is where you can go like rate and review the show wherever you get it. Big thanks to Maggie, Dustin and everybody else who put their time, effort, in creative energy into making this show what it is. Richard, thank you so much for joining me. As always a pleasure as always Man, and we'll catch on the next episode.

No mystery is closed to an open mind.