August 21, 2024 • 65 mins
If you're a fan of ghosts and spirits -- not to mention the Ghostbusters franchise -- you've heard of ectoplasm. According to the true believers, this ghostly goop is the physical residue of entities from beyond the mortal plane, summoned by mediums to communicate directly with the living. But what exactly is this stuff? How does it work? In tonight's episode, Ben, Matt and Noel dive into the strange history of this ethereal substance, separating fact from fiction in a quest to finally determine the truth about ectoplasm.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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Speaker 2 (00:50):
Evening, And sometimes an angel gets its wings and on
with the show.
Speaker 4 (00:55):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 5 (01:19):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is.
Speaker 6 (01:22):
Don't they call me Ben?
Speaker 1 (01:24):
We're joined as always with our super producer Paul, mission
control decands. Most importantly, you are you, You are here.
That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
We're so glad you came over, fellow conspiracy realist. Good evening, Humans,
AI Inspectors alike. We've got a special one for you tonight.
(01:45):
It's for the spirits, the skeptics, and the ghostbusters. It's
a little gooey, it's a little gross. It's a literal
sticky subject on me. Yeah, Yeah, We're finally doing something
we talked to about in a previous couple of previous episodes.
We talked about star Jelly, remember and angel hair phenomenon,
(02:08):
the weird stuff that falls from the sky series.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Oh, how could we forget? It was a golden time,
It was a golden age, and the history of stuff
they don't want you to know. A couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
And we've talked about ghosts extensively on this show, and
photography and the history of attempting to capture whatever it
is that the spiritualism movement was so into all those
years ago.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Or does all of that stuff the idea of capturing
somebody's particular color that they emit. They can only be
captured with a certain photographic process crillion photography.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Yes, I love it, and the idea of EVP like
that famous Michael Keaton I think Michael Keaton film from
way back when we also, what we see here is
a common theme, the idea of chasing some tangible proof
of intangible spirits, and that leads us to tonight's exploration,
(03:04):
what on earth is ectoplasm? Exactly? Here are the facts.
I don't know about you guys, but I think we
should dive in straight to the cool part. Ectoplasm can
mean several things, but well that's a bit of foreshadowing.
(03:26):
But for now, maybe we start with ectoplasm and the
paranormal or supernatural sense, the slime that covers you know,
the breakout star of Ghostbusters slimer.
Speaker 6 (03:37):
Yeah, and I have questions.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
I said that at the top, but like, how come
the ectoplasm went from green to pink between Ghostbusters one
and two?
Speaker 6 (03:46):
It's never really explained. I wouldn't know. I just learned
it when you said it. Now, Yeah, this lineman, you
don't know Ghostbusters to it? This lime that fly but
I don't know the colors. Yeah, Oh, I'm sorry. Ben
I forget. Yeah, well that's true.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
The slime and Ghostbusters two is pink, and they don't
really differentiate it from the slime in Ghostbusters one.
Speaker 6 (04:08):
So it's a little bit odd.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
That just kind of an odd contribution to the lore
without really much justification.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Oh so not the slime on the character Slimer, but
the actual.
Speaker 6 (04:18):
Slimer is still Slimer.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
But he's barely in Ghostbusters two, if he's in it
at all, I want to say. But it's like slime
fills the sewers of the city and starts, you know,
oozing out of everything, and if you go the carpathi
and I guess it is responsible. But it's an entirely
different kind of ectoplasm.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Oh wow, I can't remember. I can't remember if it
has anything to do with actually conjuring any of the
ghosts or like, do the ghosts come out of it?
Or is Slimer being made out of slime somehow ectoplasm?
Speaker 2 (04:47):
It's like a byproduct, right, like of a supernatural encounter.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Yeah, Ghostbusters one, We'll get this out of the way
quite Ghostbusters one. It's it's always bugged me. They don't
have a huge backst worry for slimer. But in Ghostbusters one,
I believe as gooser Spoiler is coming to end the world,
more spirits are gathering. And then in Ghostbusters two, when
(05:13):
Vigo the Carpathian the Scourge of Moldavia or the Sorrow
of Moldavia, the Scourge of Carpathia or whatever.
Speaker 6 (05:21):
When he's come guy in the painting right, when he's.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Coming back, they discover this huge river of ghost goo
and that can be charged with positive or negative energy,
and then that also brings back a bunch of ghosts
we have spoiled Ghostbusters.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
It is representative of what we're talking about today. And
I guess maybe they go more into detail with the
ectoplasm and Ghostbusters too, because you mentioned the positive negative
charge and they actually like experiment with it and stuff.
And Ghostbusters one it's much less of a plot point,
and then two it really is a big deal because
they find that river, it seems stuff seems to emerge
(06:03):
from it. In one, it's more of an afterthought and
something that you get stuck all over you when you.
Speaker 6 (06:08):
When a ghost, you get slimed. That was sort of
the joke, right, I've been slimed.
Speaker 5 (06:12):
Yeah, do you do?
Speaker 6 (06:14):
You guys. Not Like.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
My immediate thought when I hear ectoplasm now is of
South Park. Of course Crim Fresh?
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Right, No, isn't it the episode No, but the one
where he's covered in ghost go like with Randy.
Speaker 6 (06:29):
I thought it was the Crim Fresh I was a member.
Speaker 5 (06:30):
Oh maybe it is, Maybe it is. I think of yeah, whatever,
whatever it is.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Back in the day, I think it's season twelve, like eight,
maybe oh nine, and it was. Yeah, that's what I
think of now every time I think of ectoplasms.
Speaker 6 (06:44):
It was a spooky ghost. It was.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
It's weird because the term dates back pretty far. It
was it was nineteen thirteen when a French physiologist named
Charles rashe R I see came up with or he
used this to describe something paranormal. It comes from the Greek.
(07:07):
For all our etymology nerds, it's a portmanteau of the
two words ectos, meaning just outside, and plasma, which means
anything molded or formed. So outside molded or formed. And
this was a huge deal. It reached its haiti and
popular culture.
Speaker 6 (07:24):
It's hey evening.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
During the movement of a pseudo religious thing called spiritualism
in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and we're
going to have an episode on the rise and fall
of that movement in a future evening. I think either
I don't know, it might be here. It might be
ridiculous history because it's one of those Venn diagram explorations.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Yeah, we did do something on that though recently, Ben
I swear where we talked about the methods of kind
of the hacky kind of methods that were used to
take people in with mentalism and some of the tricks
that were used, like in the Tables and the Peppers
go moist illusions and things like that. I cannot recall though,
which show we talked about this on or what the
nature of the episode was, but it's all kind of fresh.
(08:07):
But I'm glad that you mentioned the origin of the word,
because in my mind I was thinking of another term
that's been in the Newslet lady is like ectopic, the
idea of like an ectopic prectic pregnancy. And I'm glad
you have officially taken all doub out of my mind
that those words are related, that it is just about
something that happens outside.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Yeah, ecto as in something you're currying outside in this
paranormal context, Ectoplasm is what the three of us have
been talking about here, a mysterious substance that is manifested
by individuals with some sort of extrasensory ability, most notably mediums,
(08:44):
specifically physical mediums who commune with the dead or sometimes
completely non human incorporeal spirits. Which is an interesting thing
because these mediums were, you know, for the most part,
they were saying, we are in communication with a dead
human being, but they would also sometimes be talking to
(09:08):
a sentient thing that did not exist on the mortal plane,
which I thought was fascinating.
Speaker 6 (09:18):
It's a weird trip.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
I didn't know there were other categories of ectoplasm. There's
teleplasm that's when the medium is emitting ectoplasm at a distance,
like across the room or in some stories, in a
totally different locale. And then idioplasm that's that's when the
(09:40):
ghost goop molds itself into the likeness of a person,
you know what I.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
Mean, yeah, or just some other you know, face, an
entire body in some cases. And it's weird stuff too,
because it's I like, this idea of teleplasm like just
shows up in different places because you can stories and
they are stories. Let us assure you of this stuff,
(10:04):
whatever it is, we're about to describe it showing up
on the medium, like you said, Ben, across the room,
on the table, underneath the table, in the belly button,
in the face, just weird in the butt.
Speaker 6 (10:18):
Oh oh, if you must.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
You guys, remember that line in True Detective Season one
where Cole where rust Cole says, I smell the psychosphere
and then his partner thinks he's saying he smells a
psycho's sphere. And for the longest time I thought that
was because the subtitles say that, But psychosphere is a
thing that refers to it's like the sphere surrounding psychic energy.
Speaker 6 (10:43):
And reality around the Earth.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
And I think that term psychoplasm ban that you mentioned
probably pertains to that. The idea of this being some
sort of byproduct of these this sort of clustered bubble
of like supernatural energy, I guess right.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Yeah, yeah, being the light fantastic, right, Going from from
everything that science tells humanity death is a one way street, right,
and two from a you know, the idea of scientifically
exploring allegations of the afterlife and the paranormal, you would
(11:19):
want as a scientist, physical reproducible, measurable proof, something tangible
of returning from beyond death, and so ectoplasm or ecto
as the cool kids called it, not to be confused
with ecto cooler.
Speaker 6 (11:38):
It was.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
It was for many people, many very intelligent people. It
was considered the smoking gun of the afterlife, of proof
of something beyond the physical plane. And if you you
can see pictures of this, and as as you were saying, Matt,
you can read all sorts of stories and anecdotes. Uh,
(12:00):
and when you see the photographs it, uh, maybe we're
spoiled in the world of special effects and CGI. But
it doesn't exactly take your breath away. It's kind of
a gauzy substance and usually it comes from some orifice
of the medium's body. And it's cool because it's like, yeah,
(12:25):
it's like symbiat suit in comic books, right, like the
venom symbia.
Speaker 6 (12:31):
It coats the The.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Idea is it coats the spirit, right, like a like
a translucent mech.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
Well, it's almost like it is the medium, the physical
medium through which the spirit plane can enter this realm.
Speaker 5 (12:46):
Like that's kind of the idea. It's it's I was
trying to.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
Come up with a metaphor, and ill I have one
dot if you guys have been thinking about it, but
likelub well almost but the idea of you need to
be covered in this stuff in order to get through
through a barrier of some sort.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
I know, there's this stuff that people like stunt actors
when they set themselves on fire in movies, they coat
their skin with this particular type of material that keeps
the fire from actually touching them.
Speaker 6 (13:13):
It's like the reverse of that kind of I guess
in a way. I mean, you know, I think that
I think that gibes that tracks.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
There's also from the idea of tangible manifestation of otherwise
invisible energy. You could think of the way that you
can see sound waves by vibrations in sand, Like if
you've ever seen that experiment where there's a disk of
sand and then people start playing sounds and you can
(13:42):
sound Yeah, yeah, you can see the waves of sound
reflected there.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
I think between those two we pretty much got it. Yeah,
because it is I see what you're getting at mad Itism.
That's a little hard to put into words because it's
like a it's something it's almost like a space suit
in a way. It allows you to traverse a particular
boundary that you should not be able to exist in.
Like it's almost like without this stuff, the ghosts either
(14:08):
couldn't make it. The spirits couldn't either make it into
this realm or this plane, or they would they would
perish in some.
Speaker 6 (14:15):
Way, or they couldn't be perceived.
Speaker 5 (14:18):
Yeah, that's the other thing.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
The other thought is that when one of these beings, otherworldly, spiritual, ghost, whatever,
when they show up in our physical realm, this is
what they leave behind.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
What they're wearing that allows them to be perceived at
all too, right.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Like their fingerprints or the way that you can see
you can see human oils after flesh touches glass. It's
kind of a residue. And then like to make a
I'll dumb it down because I think this is maybe
this is the dumbest example I can think of. It's
why people throw sheets over ghost the laziest ghost costume
(14:59):
in the history of Halloween. Now that you have the
sheet on, you can see the thing.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
Yeah, Like there's a whole big sequence at the end
of it follows where they're in this school swimming pool
to the gym and they.
Speaker 6 (15:10):
Have to follow the ghost around.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
They keep throwing stuff over it so they can like
track it, and then they shoot it because I guess
you can shoot ghosts in modern movies.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
It's interesting that we're describing it as gauzy because that
is where like that is how it has been described
a bunch, but there's almost another another version of it
that is more And you described it as lubeanole like
a but almost as a louby substance, almost translucent, slightly white.
(15:40):
Hesitating talking about other excretions of the human body here,
because that is kind of the way it's described in
other instances.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Milk going bad. Almost it's like an off AIRYA product.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Yeah, because what's that gross Japanese fermented soybean ben Nato Nato. Yeah,
it has kind of that tacky like it gets stuck
on your fingers, you know. And by the way, I
was saying lube not to be gross, but just the
idea of it helps you.
Speaker 6 (16:07):
Get through something.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
It's like it is a protector, a protection that kind
of helps you navigate a tight boundary.
Speaker 6 (16:15):
Now that sounds like I'm being grosser.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Well no, no, you know, if somebody thinks it's gross,
then maybe it's time for you, fellow listener, and take
a self inventory, because they're all kinds of lubricants.
Speaker 6 (16:26):
Now, I just made it weirder spiritual lubricut.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
I'm bringing up milky patches there, because that is the
phrase that Charles Rushet, the guy who coined the term,
used when he first started describing ectoplasm in a paranormal sense.
He began by observing a physical medium named Usapia Palladino,
very cool name, and her ecdoplasmic projections were to him
(16:52):
white veils and milky patches, so he called them examples
of ectoplasm. And because every sidy is at heart a
doubting tabas, people wanted to touch this, they wanted to
engage with it, to take samples right, and to analyze
those samples, which gets tricky later. But we have accounts
of people that you would consider otherwise skeptical who totally
(17:16):
believe this, and you can read first hand accounts of
them saying, I visited a medium. They extruded ectoplasm. I
touched it. It's cool to the touch, it was viscous,
it was slimy, and everybody was on board.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
Yeah, And well, we'll get into the reasons why it
might be so slimy but also somehow you know, look
like a a gauzy almost cloth of some sort, but
it is really sticky and wet because of maybe where
it's been.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
And that's interesting too, because a lot of historical burials
involved like shrouds and kind of gauzy coverings that would
be placed over top of the of the body. I
don't know, it's just an interesting connect and I'm saying
it's like means anything.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Necessarily, people totally leaned into it because at least part
of this so it was branding.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Yeah, because again, we have a ton of proof of
the existence of this stuff. I don't want to spoil
it right now, but this is sort of a lot
of there's a lot of Laura wrapped up in this,
and a lot of like historical telephone. I think those
early burial traditions may well have played a part in
what people have described as as having seen.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
There's another aspect here. Folks like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
who is famous for a couple of other things, he
was also big into the investigation of ecdoplasm and mediums
and spiritualism. He worked with a medium who was identified
as ev c her full name Eva Correri, but at
(18:47):
first he was just calling her ever c. He touched ecdoplasm,
this medium created and he said, holy smokes, jeepers, you guys,
that's what he said at jeepers. This feels like a
living material, right, I'm not just touching something cool to
the cool to my fingers. The tactile sensation alone is
(19:12):
not the end of the story. This is moving and
responding to my touch. This thing, whatever it is, is
kind of like a gunkier version of T one thousand
in Terminator two. It's changeable, it's mercurial.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
Oh so reminds me of the black goo from the
Alien films that has sort of a sense shant quality
to it as well.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Yeah, or X files, the black oil goo stuff. That's
very interesting that Arthur, I was gonna say, Arthur C. Clark,
and that Arthur Conan Doyle like touched it and he
did like write about it. And it's a weirder thing
than even I'm imagining when I'm looking at these historical photos,
at least for this episode, where we'll get into those
(19:57):
and like what those look like specifically and why there's
some weirdness with the photography going on there and the
experiments and the quote controls and all that stuff. But
that is very that's very interesting to me because it
would be i don't know, as a writer like that,
if that were real and that we're true, or if
(20:18):
you wanted people to believe it was true, you could
come up with some very compelling stories.
Speaker 6 (20:24):
Sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
I mean also, he's the creator of Sherlock Holmes, right,
And one of the mortal sins in writing fiction is
to write a character who is the smartest person in
the room, because it's so difficult to do. No, it's true.
I mean, think about it. Every time you see a
(20:46):
super smart character that isn't actually behaving as though they
are super intelligent, it's because the smartest character in the
room can only ever be as smart as the person
writing that character, which is it's just tricky. It's very
difficult to pull off. So shout out to sir Doyle himself.
(21:07):
He wrote Sherlock Holmes, and he was still, for a
time very convinced about this ecoplasm stuff.
Speaker 6 (21:14):
For a time.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
We also know that kind of like how star jelly decays,
this stuff seemed to decay at first. It was like
clear phlem or snot.
Speaker 6 (21:27):
It was almost divisible.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
And again under those conditions that we just teased the
second and go, it would become gradually more gradually translucent,
from transparent to translucent, and then it would start darkening
and becoming more visible as the medium's connection to the
spirit world intensifies. Some people said it would glow kind
(21:50):
of like bioluminescence from beyond the grave.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
But.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
It only happened in low light. The problem with taking
samples is it would dissipate very quickly under exposure to light.
Side note Also, we found a lot of people reporting
that ectoplasm had a peculiar strong odor, but no one
seemed to agree on what that odor is like. No,
(22:20):
there's not a single universally accepted description of the smell.
They're just a lot of people saying it kind of smells.
We're laying some really gross foreshadowing points here, folks. Now,
this like the brief history as we're diving in. This
can all sound somewhat ridiculous as we hear it laid
out in this manner. No, I mean, it's it's crucial
(22:42):
that we remember a lot of the proponents of ectoplasm
and spiritualism. They didn't think this was woo woo hippie stuff.
They didn't think it was a cult or in any
way necessarily infernal. In their mind, this was a marriage
of science and spiritual world. The guy we mentioned Rashe,
(23:03):
for example, he's a legit physiologist at this time. He
later goes on to win a Nobel Prize for his
work on anaphylaxis. So he's not just you know, he's
not just the ghost snut guy.
Speaker 5 (23:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
Well, imagine there are rumors of folks down at this
building somewhere downtown that are allegedly conjuring spirits with their
methods and their boxes and their curtains and their seances. Oh,
we need to get down there and investigate. Let's use
scientific rigor to prove that this stuff's real, because if
it is, my God, this is world changing.
Speaker 6 (23:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
Yeah, And they're these investigators, because that's what they were.
These investigators and enthusiasts are good faith actors. The height
of public interest in ectoplasm is inseparably intertwined with the
rise and fall of spiritualism. You don't hear too much
about in the modern day, but this has that people
(23:59):
felt like they were on the cusp the bleeding gooby
gooey edge of a breakthrough that would fundamentally change human civilization.
We're talking about the smartest people in the Western world.
They were convinced that if they took modern methodology right,
the scientific method, they could understand and finally answer the
(24:22):
fundamental questions of the human experience that haunt poor choice
of words, everybody listening tonight. What happens when we die?
Does some vestige of the consciousness persist when the body
itself becomes an empty house? It is a cool story,
But is.
Speaker 6 (24:39):
There anything to it? Yeah, I mean sort of. We'll
get into that after a quick word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
Here's where it gets crazy, all right, fellow conspiracy realist,
that is a little bit of a fake out. Ectoplasm
is it turns out very very real, just not perhaps
in the way the spiritualist hoped or claimed it to be.
Speaker 6 (25:10):
I think we could.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Look at two genuine examples of ectoplasm, and maybe do
you want to just start with the most boring one.
Speaker 6 (25:18):
It's the one we can actually prove.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
And for this one, let's go to biology. Oh, let's
talk more about ectoplasm also known as exoplasm. What is
that huh Ben, what's exoplasm, right?
Speaker 1 (25:34):
Or ectoplasm, Matt. You know, it's positively telepathic that you
would ask that it is, as any person who's awesome
at biology mixers knows. The non granulated we're quoting here
the non granulated outer part of a cell's cytoplasm. The counterpart,
(25:57):
the granulated inner layer, known as the endoplasm. So it's
cell biology. It's kind of a bait and switch because
ectoplasm in the world of ghost means what we described
before the break, and ectoplasm in the world of biology
is a very real thing that is in so many cells,
(26:20):
an innumerable number of cells.
Speaker 6 (26:23):
It's the outside goo.
Speaker 5 (26:25):
Oh yeah, it's like the cellular wall.
Speaker 6 (26:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
And this was coined by a guy named Ernst Haeckel
in the late nineteenth century, so it actually is a
predecessor to the use of ectoplasm in the world of
the paranormal. And he, you know, he was super into
this phrase as a way of describing unicellular organisms like amoebas.
(26:53):
And just like you said that, the real ectoplasm it's
both a shield and sort of a transit platform for
all the stuff bouncing around inside a cell, which means
that if you are a human or another form of
organic life, you are absolutely riddled with ectoplasm. You are
inundated with it. You're dripping and drowning in ectoplasm right
(27:16):
now as you listen to tonight's program. I mean, don't
think about it too too much. If you're a jerpophobe
or you know, you get squigged out easily. But it
turns out we're all sort of slimers, yeah, dude.
Speaker 6 (27:30):
In our own way. The slimer within.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
Slimer within ghost is coming from inside the house. So
that's the boring one. But that is that is the
real ectoplasm we can prove. Do we want to talk
about the more interesting I don't know, is this interesting
or is this more of a downer?
Speaker 5 (27:49):
It's a donor, but it's we got to talk about it.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
So to talk about this other real ectoplasm, we have
to talk about some of the famous photographs. Just like
if you go back to nineteen oh six, there's this
thing called the instantograph Belows camera, and it is a
camera that was used in some of the most famous
(28:13):
photographs of alleged ectoplasm. And this is a pretty simple
machine that uses a plate, a photographic plate that gets
exposed when you expose the lens of the camera and
then you put it back. Then you close it right
after this plate has been exposed to light, and whatever
(28:36):
light goes through that lens and hits the plate, that's
what you get. Well, some of these plates saw stuff
that if you just looked at the photograph and you
weren't in the room, it looks I'm going to say it,
hella weird. It looks like this white, weird, gauzy, maybe
clothy substance emanating from a medium's nose or a medium's
(29:00):
mouth who's just sitting in a chair, sometimes directly in
front of a weird darkened box, sometimes directly in front
of weird darkened curtains. Sometimes their hands are being held
by other people off camera. Sometimes their hands are even
like clasped to a chair or something so that they
(29:20):
cannot interfere and create whatever this thing is. But man,
it looks like it's just material like cheesecloth or linen,
some kind of like really thin linen or it often
it looks like fabric to.
Speaker 5 (29:39):
Me, at least to my eyes.
Speaker 6 (29:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
The second version of real ectoplasm, actual ectoplasm version two.
We're happy to say there were genuine physical substances present
during those trances, those seances, other exhibitions of physical mediums
at the height of spiritualism in particular, and we know
that from photographic evidence, like you're mentioning there, Matt. The
(30:03):
thing is, none of this stuff was ever proven, ever,
in any case, without exception, to be anything other than
mundane material with a heck of a lot of showmanship
and performance. Eat your heart out, Vents offer, Eat your
heart out, Billy Mays. Do you guys remember who Vent's
offer is.
Speaker 6 (30:23):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
Slapchop, guys, slap slap chop, Yeah, with the garlics or
the Billy Mays was the showtime the rotissary chicken guy, right?
Speaker 1 (30:35):
I think that was another guy. Billy Mays is oxy cling.
Speaker 6 (30:38):
Oxy clean.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
But there was another guy that was like all about
the rotissary chicken.
Speaker 6 (30:42):
Yeah, yeah, case but.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
But oh I missed that halcyon era of made for
TV commercials. And the showmanship of these physical mediums was
not too different, because, like you were saying, I teased
it several times. In some cases, this ectoplasm, we know
(31:08):
for sure was straight up cheese cloth in other cases,
it might be a fabric or textile of some sort
smoothed up with potato starch.
Speaker 6 (31:19):
Or it might be paper. It might be.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
Still cloth but with egg white mashed into it instead
of potato starch. Or it might be something I was
not familiar with called butter muslin. Butter muslin part of
my accent. I'm still learning English, not Muslim Muslin.
Speaker 6 (31:38):
M U s l I N. That's like a higher
end cheese cloth.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
It's that shroud material I was talking about earlier, that
kind of transparent, translucent rather textury kind of material that
you'd see draped over you know, bodies and you know
historical kind of burial ceremonies.
Speaker 6 (31:55):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (31:55):
And we're going to get into why. Sometimes it even
looked like it was coded with egg whites or just
biological material because it was hanging out in somebody's stomach
and or throat and or you know sinuses.
Speaker 6 (32:11):
Yeah, it was in their holes. Yep, it was in
their roles.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
And the story of ghostly ectoplasm is inherently unfortunately, folks.
It is a story of cons and frauds. And that
was the stuff the vast majority of these mediums did
not want their audience to know. It turns out a
lot of these folks were quite adept at old school
close up magic, sleight of hand and to understand how
(32:40):
these conspiracies worked, because conspiracies they were. We have to
get our heads around two aspects of the con and
the first and I think for for all four of
us with a love of film and cinematography, the practical
effects are just amazing because we got to talk about
(33:00):
the case conditions. Just like a mentalist, right, just like
Darren Brown always has very specific conditions, or pen and
Teller always have very specific conditions, these folks were no different.
Speaker 5 (33:12):
Well, yeah, it makes so much sense.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
You're going in to attempt to scientifically study something that
has to occur under as you said, these conditions where
maybe for the medium to perform the act of connecting
with the spirit world, they have to let's say, get
inside a specific box, like a human sized box, or
(33:36):
let's say they have to have a table behind them
with specific instruments on it, specific things and items on it,
and there has to be a curtain that separates them
from that box, which could be maybe that's just how
it happens, that's how this person does it, but it
could also be a very a very calculated way to
(33:58):
insert manipula via either themselves or another person.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
And all of these conditions, by the way, are non
negotiable circumstances.
Speaker 5 (34:09):
Yes, so I can't do this without my stuff.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
It doesn't work in the lights, you know what I mean.
And the fact that you're questioning this means that you're
non believer and you're kind of screwing up the vibe.
So if it doesn't work this time, it's your fault.
Speaker 5 (34:26):
That's Harry exactly.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
And that's kind of a conversation who Denie actually had
with people. Yeah, the manifestations often only occurred in very
low light, very specific seating arrangements, and some of these
conditions were placed on the audience as well, like you
would have to I don't want to call these people roubs,
but the participants were required to stay seated often and
(34:52):
they kind of had to kind of had a pure
monitoring system because you had to join around the table,
so you couldn't move your hands, you couldn't move your
physical location, you could not change your perspective, you couldn't
stand up and like walk behind the medium.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
God, that's so important that the just the idea of perspective.
And we know this from modern close up magic, from
any modern magic television show. Right where we're watching illusions
Michael on the television, the audience is in a very
specific spot and with a specific as you said, perspective.
(35:31):
I think perspective is maybe one of the most important
even words to imagine and think about when we're considering
ectoplasm at all.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
Yeah, and there's that's one of the big parts of
the next step in the con The practical effect of
the illusion is to make it seem as though the
manifestation is coming somehow from or through the medium, appearing
in the same sinity as though you know, it just
(36:02):
came in the room with you. That's fine, it's mids
you could say, you know what I mean, like, it's disappointment, right,
you're you're It's kind of like if you your parents
got you a car when you turn sixteen, like, hey,
we got you a car. Oh my gosh, thank you parents.
And then they say it's a Geo Metro and then
(36:23):
you go, oh, well, I mean.
Speaker 6 (36:26):
It's a car. Yes.
Speaker 3 (36:29):
Sometimes it's a Dodge Caravan, okay, and that's fine.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
Sometimes it's a it's a gremlin. No, what's one of
those like notoriously dubious cars of yesterdyear.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
Gril pentol. So this was not peak showmanship. Peak showmanship was,
as we were saying, to have that ghostly substance appear
to extrude from the body. You know, now you've got
your twitching. You know, you've got your maybe some glossal alia,
(37:08):
speaking in tongues, some eolulations, all that kind of stuff. Ones, Yeah,
eye rolling, and then like you're spasming and all of
a sudden, coming out of your mouth there appears.
Speaker 5 (37:21):
Ghost Yeah.
Speaker 3 (37:23):
Hardcore mode is if you can get the ectoplasm to
emanate from the scientist who's there to study you.
Speaker 5 (37:29):
Which I don't think it's happened yet.
Speaker 6 (37:32):
What why, I don't know.
Speaker 5 (37:34):
That's weird.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
Yeah, heck of a coincidence that. And here's the thing,
I don't know we teased it here. We should just
say it for anybody who is wondering why we keep
mentioning the shiny appearance. Why does this stuff look shiny?
Because if you look at regular cheese cloth, it doesn't
(37:57):
have a sine, So where did it get the viscosity?
Speaker 5 (38:01):
Snochine until you put it in your mouth for a
while and roll it around and then spin it back out.
Speaker 3 (38:06):
Eh.
Speaker 5 (38:08):
Sorry, that's true.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
Regurgitated just like a feed in a baby bird.
Speaker 6 (38:14):
Baby bird, which.
Speaker 1 (38:15):
Helps explain some of the spasms, right, because your flexing
your diaphragm.
Speaker 2 (38:19):
Yeah, are these ecdospasms?
Speaker 6 (38:23):
These are.
Speaker 1 (38:28):
So this was a common practice and people were people
were doing this were quite talented at it.
Speaker 6 (38:34):
Credit where it's a due.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
If you did not know the mechanics behind this, and
the show was good enough, you might even if you're
not entirely convinced, you might think, well, there's something going on.
Speaker 6 (38:45):
I don't know what it.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
Is until you see people who get busted like a medium,
a Danish guy named Einer Nielsen who was exposed as
a fake when he was caught hiding at plasma in
his rectum.
Speaker 5 (39:03):
Uh like cheese cloth.
Speaker 6 (39:05):
Yeah, he boofed it.
Speaker 5 (39:07):
Okay, Well that's one way to do it.
Speaker 6 (39:10):
I feel more.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
Difficult though, right, Yeah, Well you can make yourself regurgitate,
but how do you get it?
Speaker 6 (39:16):
Like, what's your sleight of hand at that point?
Speaker 3 (39:19):
You know, of I don't know, core muscles, just shoving
it out of there. And I it's interesting because now
I'm thinking about the interaction between stomach acid and cheesecloth,
And I wonder if it had the ability to break
down some of that a little bit, but probably not enough.
Speaker 6 (39:42):
Depending on maybe how long you kept it in there.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
Yeah, this is so weird, it kind of gross. So
we know that, we know we still haven't answered the
question that we're telling you some of the mechanics of
the purported substance. But what about the the idioplasm. What
about the stuff that wasn't just milky patches or gauzy veils?
(40:08):
What about the things that looked like people's faces or hands,
you know, suspended in the air.
Speaker 6 (40:14):
Is this you're missing child? Things like that.
Speaker 5 (40:19):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (40:19):
They didn't have projectors per se back then, the same
way we have them. Hmm, how could they have possibly
done that? Photography plates that have been double explosed what.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
Yeah, what you might call trick photography, right, Yeah, Ghosts
were not proven to exist at this point, but magazines
were very much proven to exist, and scissors also existed,
so wasn't too difficult to cut out Like in the
case of Ava C that we mentioned earlier, she was found.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
To use magazine cutouts suspended in the air in the
darkness with pins and carefully placed string, which.
Speaker 6 (41:08):
Sounds dark in the dark.
Speaker 1 (41:09):
Yes, that's the key part in the dark and it
might sound like, you know, low budget acts of chicanery,
but we have to remember these practical effects are only
one part of the operation. The second aspect is arguably
more important and more dangerous and can be weaponized. Today
we talked about the physical perspective, but the key to
(41:33):
really getting the grift to work was the psychological perspective.
In a very real way, these mediums were manipulating in
tangible forces, but they were manipulating the minds and the
spirits of the living rather than the spirits of the dead.
Speaker 3 (41:51):
Yes, oh my god, do you guys mind really quickly
before we get into this the psychology, because that is
absolutely the most important thing here. Just when it gets
to the photography, when we're talking about those plates that
I keep kind of mentioning but not fully talking about
what you can do with those plates if you expose
(42:12):
them really briefly to something like imagine imagine someone in
complete darkness except for a small light that's illuminating someone
wearing all white or being painted white even or wearing
a white mask or having white gauze all around them
or lacey substances materials. Imagine someone standing in the darkness.
(42:35):
Then you use your camera and you barely expose it
to this light of this person in the darkness. Then
you close it really quickly again. Then you take that
plate and you transfer it into the place wherever you
are going to take the photograph of let's say the
medium or the person who was attempting to contact a spirit.
Then you expose that one fully. You are going to
(42:55):
have the literal light ghost of that previous exposure on
that plate. And no one may be the wiser if
they believe, at least if you did a little bit
of psychological work to make people think, oh, this is
a brand new photo plate that I'm now opening and
I'm placing into my camera.
Speaker 2 (43:15):
Well, it's before people really were wise to a lot
of that stuff too. I mean right, yes, in terms
of like you know, now we know photoshop. Everybody knows
that images should all be just you know, viewed with
a grain of salt. But like back then, it was
a lot less you know, common knowledge.
Speaker 3 (43:30):
Yeah, you need to study how photographs are made and
how they work. You need to be in that in
a business or connected to a business likely that uses
photographs for some purpose, to have a full understanding of
how the light actually, you know, changes that plate so
that it creates an image.
Speaker 1 (43:50):
Yeah, that's a great point, because it's still it's still
rarefied air at this at this juncture in history, right
to the degree.
Speaker 5 (44:00):
We're talking nineteen twenties. Still in nineteen.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
There's still such a new car smell on the technology
that even people who are seasoned professional photographers could be fooled, right,
because very few people knew the panopoly of techniques available.
And you could say, hey, I am a I consider
myself a pretty crackerjack photographer, and I can't explain this.
(44:28):
It doesn't mean these people were in any way less
intelligent than anyone. They just didn't have the same familiarity
with a technology that's much more familiar to the average
person today.
Speaker 2 (44:41):
Well, and it's all about intent too, I mean, these
are techniques that were employed in order to fool people.
I mean I took a dark room photography class when
I was in college, and I have a picture hanging
in my bedroom that I really like or took. I
was in a dark basement with no lights and had
a camera on a tripod and just opened the shutter
for a series of exposures and lit a cigarette lighter
(45:02):
and moved around the room. And in the image there's
like six of me and it's really cool looking. But
if you show that to somebody in these days, they
be like, what witchcraft is this?
Speaker 6 (45:11):
You know? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (45:14):
Quite possibly, Yeah, unless you unless you were there to
explain to people, to the observer what happened, and that
would defeat the purpose, as you said, that would defeat
the intention of these of these mediums. And with all
of this, and Noel, I love the point about the
intention of the of the mediums and their colleagues or
(45:37):
their co conspirators. We talked about the practical effects and the
importance of physical perspective. We're going to take a break
to hear some words from spirits of our own, our
sponsor spirits, and then we'll return with the other more
dangerous perspective, the psychology. And we're back psychology one oh
(46:08):
one colon Grifter.
Speaker 2 (46:10):
Addition, so, while it's certainly possible that a handful of
these mediums truly believed in their abilities, again, there's something
that we've talked about anytime this topic comes up like
they're not all grifters. There are certainly ones that like
truly believe they have a gift and that they are
sharing that gift with others and helping people. But then
the vast majority of them are kind of hucksters and
(46:31):
people that are trying to make a buck off of folks.
Speaker 6 (46:35):
Insecurities and or you know, grief, and that sucks.
Speaker 5 (46:38):
But there may be real mediums. We just haven't been
able to prove it yet.
Speaker 6 (46:43):
There a shadow beyond the shadow of dow.
Speaker 1 (46:44):
There's no like done equivocal test for it, right right, Yeah,
And let's let's take a second there because we were
talking about this off air, so it could be a
little bit confusing. The folks that we're speaking of here
this evening are called physical mediums, and during the spiritualism
movement and even now today with some of the with
(47:08):
some of the instrument free faith healing kind of things
that you see, you know, that's where someone lays on
hands and they pull out some gunk purportedly from.
Speaker 6 (47:20):
A human being.
Speaker 5 (47:22):
That a whole episode we do.
Speaker 1 (47:24):
That's a that's a kissing cousin of a physical medium.
So a physical medium here is defined as someone who
is a like door man in the Great Lakes Avengers.
They're a portal through which physical manifestations of the spiritual
can be seen well.
Speaker 2 (47:44):
And therefore, you know, especially since all the things we've
said about what the idea of ectoplasm is, it makes
sense that they might have some that would come out
of their body because it's they are literally the ghosts
or the spirits are passing through them, and that's where
the remnant might the resident. I guess the spiritual residue
might end up.
Speaker 5 (48:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (48:03):
In that episode, by the way, is called what is
quote laying on hands unquote If you want to look
that up, it's from September twenty twenty. But I know
I interrupted you well.
Speaker 6 (48:14):
I think I got there.
Speaker 2 (48:15):
Just the point being is that we certainly aren't trying
to say anyone who believes that they possess these types
of intuitions or skills are completely full of it. You know,
that's not what we're here to say or to prove
or disprove. But historically the fact remains that a vast
majority or a very large number of these folks purporting
(48:37):
to have these abilities.
Speaker 6 (48:37):
We're doing just what I.
Speaker 2 (48:38):
Said, trying to pray on people and they're you know, misfortune,
you know, So think about it this way. Your most
you know, ardent supporters are going to be people navigating
a significant loss, a dead child, a dead spouse, dead parent, whatever,
it might be, a needing some kind of closure, and
therefore there's that just absolute opportunit for that confirmation bias
(49:01):
and if you know how to play into that, you know,
the cold reading of it all. You know that we
see on these kind of Hollywood psychic type shows, which
I think are ninety percent of the time absolutely bogus
and manipulative. It's really easy to see how someone is
very open to being manipulated in that way when they're
already weakened, their defenses are already weakened because of going
(49:23):
through a trauma.
Speaker 1 (49:24):
Yeah, that's absolutely it. As the old line from X
Files goes, they want to believe. And you know this
is very cold, but it's necessary to say. You can
see the attempts at grifting folks just by the content
of the purported messages. Very few returning spirits, for example,
(49:45):
say stuff like hey, I miss you and I was
bad and now I'm burning in hell. Right, very few
people give a terrible message about the afterlife. Very few
people give specifics that could not otherwise be derived from
the sith level arts of hot or cold reading. And
so long as you don't look just like the photographs,
(50:08):
so long as you don't look too closely at the
method and the message of the medium, these conversations and
experiences feel right, they feel reassuring. They're better than the
silence of the grave.
Speaker 3 (50:23):
Dude, did you guys see that movie from twenty either
twenty twenty or twenty twenty one called Nightmare Alley?
Speaker 2 (50:31):
The gear model are so good and the original is
good too. Guys like the actual fifties I believe version
it's it's incredible, But I like the Gaiamo version two.
But it's all about these kinds of things. Yes, it's fantastic.
Speaker 3 (50:44):
It reminds me a lot of exactly what you're talking about, Ben,
where it's just it looks into the characters that are
figuring out these techniques and figuring out you know, very
complex versions to I mean, it is to fool someone.
Speaker 5 (51:00):
In order to make money, right, that's the idea.
Speaker 3 (51:03):
Fool and fool and audience people so that you can
make their money.
Speaker 5 (51:07):
You put on a show.
Speaker 3 (51:09):
But it does make me wonder about I don't know,
not necessarily a motivations, because ultimately it is like a
spectacle performance that you're going to watch the way you
would if you were going to see a play or something.
Speaker 5 (51:24):
In my mind, at least in some ways.
Speaker 1 (51:27):
Or for the more atheistic amidst us gives you the
same similar kind of reassurance as a religious ritual would.
I mean, yes, it doesn't have to be evil, right,
A panacea is not always given in bad faith, These
blue sky pills of the mind we could call them.
And also this might be kind of a hot take here,
(51:50):
but I'm still not okay. So the physical medium, ectoplasm,
spiritualism stuff, I'm confident that we can say, not easily
ninety plus percent of it is a bad faith drift.
But I'm still on the fence about spiritual mediums, like
I'm still on the fence about vibes or you know,
(52:12):
non tangible inexplicable messages and information and knowledge.
Speaker 6 (52:17):
I like, I'm so.
Speaker 1 (52:19):
On the fence about it that I am uncomfortable talking
about it on air. We know, I mean, we know
that there were grifters because the message was always reassuring
and always kind of hitting those dopamine triggers. Right, not
(52:39):
only can I help you talk to this person that
you miss so deeply and profoundly, but you can come
visit them any old time you like. You can talk
to them again and again and again, so long as
you bring some coin along with you, which is just brutal,
(53:00):
you know what I mean?
Speaker 6 (53:01):
Do you guys?
Speaker 1 (53:01):
Ever, one example of very controversial people like this in
the modern day would be that guy John Edwards.
Speaker 2 (53:11):
Do you remember it was kind of describing I think
he's a TV guy, right.
Speaker 1 (53:15):
He was, Yeah, he was on Oprah, Larry King, Candy's
own TV show.
Speaker 2 (53:20):
Well, I'm not going to name names, but I worked
closely with a producer on some podcast stuff in the
past who had a background in TV I think, in
that exact kind of sphere that you're talking about, and
worked with someone very similar to this fellow, and was
absolutely disgusted by the whole thing and just described it.
And I'm not going to throw anybody in the bus
or anything, and I'm not trying to be like who
(53:41):
I have inside info, but this is a person who
worked closely and saw these tricks being plied and and
you know, and to be around a person like that
who probably pretty openly when people aren't listening and the
cameras aren't rolling, talks trash about the people that they're manipulating.
Oh like that you imagine, Yeah, that's to the imagine unfortunately.
Speaker 6 (54:02):
Can Yeah.
Speaker 1 (54:03):
It reminds me of like the televangelist or faith healers
who have the little hidden earbud where they get information
about people in the audience and then claimants divine inspiration.
I don't know, I mean, this shows us something strange
about this period of history. There are several reasons the
(54:24):
belief in ectoplasm is nowhere near as popular now as
it was back then, and a lot of it is
because the interested nerds who brought scientific principles to these
seances ultimately proved the falsity of these claims. Our boy
who coined the term ectoplasm in the paranormal sense rashe
(54:46):
was once the president of a outfit called the Society
for Psychical Research. They really wanted this stuff to be true.
They wanted it to be true so so bad. However,
because they were scientists and they were trying to be objective,
they were bummed out over and over again. They found
(55:08):
sleight of hand, psychological manipulation, good old fashioned grifting, and
basic material science. Those were the things that Wind combined
and a certain recipe created the appearance of ghost. And
then they published it. Oh, there was a book burning.
We need to get to that. This is this is
(55:28):
a huge milestone because these guys who sought to prove
this stuff or investigate it and wanted it to be true,
they just kept disproving it. And there was a book
that was originally published anonymously called Revelations of a Spirit Medium.
And it was like when a stage magician breaks the
(55:49):
big code. Is there like a magic code where you're
not supposed to explain the tricks?
Speaker 5 (55:54):
Right?
Speaker 6 (55:55):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (55:56):
And like you know, I'm at the Magic Castle in
Los Angeles, which like a private magicians club. No photographs
are allowed inside, and they have like a really it's
a very hush hush kind of world. And if you
there was like a TV show where there was a
magician that would debunked a lot of those kinds of
tricks and he wore like a hood over his.
Speaker 6 (56:14):
Head and didn't Yeah that's right. He didn't want to
be exposed. Maybe that was just part of it.
Speaker 2 (56:18):
But no, it's definitely frowned upon, and you certainly could
get blacklisted from what is already a pretty niche performing community.
Speaker 3 (56:24):
I would say that's why Penna Teller are household names,
because they would show that you can be tricked by
us and by other illusionists. Michael, and because this is
how sorry, I'm gonna do that every time for the
rest of my life because that show is so important
to me.
Speaker 2 (56:39):
How much could have banana cross im Sorry, this show
is just infinitely.
Speaker 6 (56:43):
Quotable and applicable.
Speaker 2 (56:44):
List is why you leave a note sorry too many?
Speaker 3 (56:48):
But I mean so, that's why they're important, because the
would actually show you, like they do a trick with
opaque cups, and then they would do the same trick
with transparent cups so that you could see through and
see what.
Speaker 5 (56:59):
They were doing.
Speaker 3 (57:00):
But it's also why somebody like Randall James Zwinge, I
don't know how to say it, Yeah, James, Randy why
he was so important because he was attempting to show
there are no at least in his mind, there are
no psychic powers, there are no spiritualism powers, there are
(57:20):
no other powers. Because I am sitting here offering a
million dollars to anybody that can prove it scientifically, and
I'll give you a million dollars. You just got to
prove that you've got those powers, and it never happened.
But still, I don't know. I'm just going back to
that code, right. You don't want to show how trick's
work because it takes away from everybody's ability to pull
(57:44):
those illusions off to either make money and have a
career or just to keep a little magic in people's minds.
Speaker 1 (57:52):
Yeah, you're blowing up the spot basically, right. And also,
just for a side note, I don't know about you, guys.
I completely agree with the Amazing Randy's mission objectively, but
I found a lot of his bedside manner to be
a little bit militant and unhelpful.
Speaker 2 (58:14):
He's a guy with no I'm thinking of the amazing Jonathan,
the guy with the headband, And.
Speaker 6 (58:20):
Who is the amazing Randy. It's the skeptic James Randy.
Oh of course.
Speaker 2 (58:25):
Yeah, we all have assigned Simpson's five cartoon images of
him on our walls that some listener or a colleague
or somebody sent us.
Speaker 6 (58:33):
That's pretty cool. Sorry, I should look more into thee Tyler. Yeah, okay,
there you go.
Speaker 1 (58:37):
Yeah, so thank you, thank you, Tyler, and we also
you know again, I just want to say, like I know,
his bedside manner, Randy's wasn't for everybody, but the mission
is noble, that's the main takeaway. And what he's trying
to do and what he spent most of his life
doing was attempting to prevent people from being manipulated or
(59:00):
built into further heartbreaking tragedy.
Speaker 6 (59:03):
So there is something noble to that.
Speaker 1 (59:05):
And to this day, I think as a state continues
with the offer. Right to this day, no one has
successfully proven something to the standards set out in that
challenge or that proposition. Going back to the fall of
spiritualism and the fall of ectoplasm as a popular craze,
(59:28):
there was a book that broke the medium code. It
was published anonymously at first. It was called Revelations of
a Spirit Medium, and just like the books by you
know or the performances by the mass magician or pen
and teller, this revealed behind the scenes easily reproducible methods
for creating a ghost, and the psychic industry in that
(59:52):
rarefied spiritual air. They were super pissed about it. This
was not a would look for them, so much so
that they bought up almost all the original copies of
that book and they destroyed them on mass. The larger
public like they censored it. They tried to erase it
from history because this was their livelihood. The public only
(01:00:16):
learned about this when these two researchers, Eric Dingwall real
last name and Harry Price managed to save if they
found one copy, they saved it from destruction. They republished
it widely, and that's when the public learned, Hey, maybe
that's really not you know, my mother has passed away,
(01:00:38):
or my child that I lost, or my spouse or whatever.
And the tide turned.
Speaker 3 (01:00:43):
Yeah, if you have time and you're interested in this stuff,
look more into Harry Price. There is an amazing article
that goes into his nineteen thirties research attempting to use
X rays specifically to investigate psychic mediumship in this kind
(01:01:03):
of thing where there's either ectoplasm created or a spirit
that manifests and using X rays to try and prove
that the medium may or may not actually have something
inside their person right that they are using to fool everybody.
Really great stuff. You can find an article on the
(01:01:23):
website for the Science and Media Museum. It's called spirit
Photography and the Occult Making the Invisible Visible.
Speaker 1 (01:01:29):
And if you want to see some kind of gonzo
fiction in this regard, if you're a fan of graphic
novels at all, please check out BPRD and hell Boy,
which goes deep into the spiritualism movement or uses it
as inspiration for some crazy adventures. I say, crazy adventures, hijinks.
(01:01:50):
It's deep stuff. It's maybe not appropriate for kids all
the time.
Speaker 2 (01:01:54):
I was also going to suggest a movie that came
out pretty recently that I thought it was pretty good call.
I think it's called Late Night with the Devil, where
it's like about like an exorcism that takes place on
a late night show, but there is a James Randy
esque character who is there like trying to talk and
crap about the whole thing all along the way, So
it's very seventies kind of vibes, and I think it's
(01:02:15):
good if interested.
Speaker 6 (01:02:18):
I mean, I'm clearly I'm cartoonishly in the demographic for
the same thing.
Speaker 2 (01:02:22):
Yeah, but I thought it was well done and it
was entertaining, and it's actually got some humor in it,
but it's it's definitely a bit of a dark uh
exploration of these types of things.
Speaker 1 (01:02:30):
And so with the fall of spiritualism, which we'll explore
in a later evening, uh, the wave the tide turned,
and the wave of belief at ectoplasm never fully returned
to the shore of the public zeitgeist.
Speaker 6 (01:02:45):
So with all this in.
Speaker 1 (01:02:46):
Mind, we can say the following, Yes, ectoplasm is real,
But that answer depends entirely on what we mean by ectoplasm.
A basic part of cell structure, for sure, an agglomeration
of mundane materials exhibited under specific physical and psychological conditions.
Apps of frickin lutely the physical traces of ghost eh.
Speaker 6 (01:03:13):
I don't know.
Speaker 5 (01:03:15):
I haven't seen any.
Speaker 3 (01:03:16):
I've seen lots and lots of weird photographs of cheese cloth.
Speaker 6 (01:03:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:03:21):
Of course, that is unless you listening tonight, fellow conspiracy realist,
unless you happen to have inarguable physical proof of spirits
visiting this realm from beyond the grave and leaving tangible
evidence behind. If so, we would love to learn more,
reach out, tell us, show it to us. We can't
(01:03:43):
wait to share it with the world, or just let
us know what you think. We'd love to hear your
stories about encounters with mediums and psychics, and we'd love
to hear where you fall on the spectrum of spiritualism
and skepticism. We try to be easy to find online.
Speaker 6 (01:04:00):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (01:04:01):
You can find us to the handle Conspiracy Stuff where
we exist on Facebook with our Facebook group. Here's where
it gets crazy, on xfka, Twitter and on YouTube with
video content coming at you on the regular on Instagram
and TikTok. However, we are Conspiracy Stuff Show.
Speaker 5 (01:04:15):
Do you want to call us? Tell us what you think?
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Call one eight three three STDWYTK. It's a voicemail system.
When you choose to call, give yourself a cool nickname,
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if we can use your name and message on the air.
If you got more to say than can fit in
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Speaker 5 (01:04:34):
Us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 1 (01:04:35):
We are the entities that read every single piece of
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sometimes the void writes back. Be aware yet unafraid. Tell
us what's on your mind. Conspiracy at iHeartRadio Dot call.
Speaker 3 (01:05:16):
Stuff, They Don't Want You To Know is a production
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Important announcement before we dive in. We would love to
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of choice.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Particularly particularly on Apple podcasts. If the spirit moves you,
we'd love to hear what the show means to you
in the form of a nice five star review.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
Yeah, if you've been listening to the show for a
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you can access it. We would just love to hear
what you think.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Toss a coin to your witchers, as they say occasionally,
and it does make a difference. Just know this, folks,
every time you give us some of those stars inter review,
our boss looks at a strange, occult necronomicon esque spreadsheet
and says, we'll give them one more.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Evening, And sometimes an angel gets its wings and on
with the show.
Speaker 4 (00:55):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 5 (01:19):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is.
Speaker 6 (01:22):
Don't they call me Ben?
Speaker 1 (01:24):
We're joined as always with our super producer Paul, mission
control decands. Most importantly, you are you, You are here.
That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
We're so glad you came over, fellow conspiracy realist. Good evening, Humans,
AI Inspectors alike. We've got a special one for you tonight.
(01:45):
It's for the spirits, the skeptics, and the ghostbusters. It's
a little gooey, it's a little gross. It's a literal
sticky subject on me. Yeah, Yeah, We're finally doing something
we talked to about in a previous couple of previous episodes.
We talked about star Jelly, remember and angel hair phenomenon,
(02:08):
the weird stuff that falls from the sky series.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Oh, how could we forget? It was a golden time,
It was a golden age, and the history of stuff
they don't want you to know. A couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
And we've talked about ghosts extensively on this show, and
photography and the history of attempting to capture whatever it
is that the spiritualism movement was so into all those
years ago.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Or does all of that stuff the idea of capturing
somebody's particular color that they emit. They can only be
captured with a certain photographic process crillion photography.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Yes, I love it, and the idea of EVP like
that famous Michael Keaton I think Michael Keaton film from
way back when we also, what we see here is
a common theme, the idea of chasing some tangible proof
of intangible spirits, and that leads us to tonight's exploration,
(03:04):
what on earth is ectoplasm? Exactly? Here are the facts.
I don't know about you guys, but I think we
should dive in straight to the cool part. Ectoplasm can
mean several things, but well that's a bit of foreshadowing.
(03:26):
But for now, maybe we start with ectoplasm and the
paranormal or supernatural sense, the slime that covers you know,
the breakout star of Ghostbusters slimer.
Speaker 6 (03:37):
Yeah, and I have questions.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
I said that at the top, but like, how come
the ectoplasm went from green to pink between Ghostbusters one
and two?
Speaker 6 (03:46):
It's never really explained. I wouldn't know. I just learned
it when you said it. Now, Yeah, this lineman, you
don't know Ghostbusters to it? This lime that fly but
I don't know the colors. Yeah, Oh, I'm sorry. Ben
I forget. Yeah, well that's true.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
The slime and Ghostbusters two is pink, and they don't
really differentiate it from the slime in Ghostbusters one.
Speaker 6 (04:08):
So it's a little bit odd.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
That just kind of an odd contribution to the lore
without really much justification.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Oh so not the slime on the character Slimer, but
the actual.
Speaker 6 (04:18):
Slimer is still Slimer.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
But he's barely in Ghostbusters two, if he's in it
at all, I want to say. But it's like slime
fills the sewers of the city and starts, you know,
oozing out of everything, and if you go the carpathi
and I guess it is responsible. But it's an entirely
different kind of ectoplasm.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Oh wow, I can't remember. I can't remember if it
has anything to do with actually conjuring any of the
ghosts or like, do the ghosts come out of it?
Or is Slimer being made out of slime somehow ectoplasm?
Speaker 2 (04:47):
It's like a byproduct, right, like of a supernatural encounter.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Yeah, Ghostbusters one, We'll get this out of the way
quite Ghostbusters one. It's it's always bugged me. They don't
have a huge backst worry for slimer. But in Ghostbusters one,
I believe as gooser Spoiler is coming to end the world,
more spirits are gathering. And then in Ghostbusters two, when
(05:13):
Vigo the Carpathian the Scourge of Moldavia or the Sorrow
of Moldavia, the Scourge of Carpathia or whatever.
Speaker 6 (05:21):
When he's come guy in the painting right, when he's.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Coming back, they discover this huge river of ghost goo
and that can be charged with positive or negative energy,
and then that also brings back a bunch of ghosts
we have spoiled Ghostbusters.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
It is representative of what we're talking about today. And
I guess maybe they go more into detail with the
ectoplasm and Ghostbusters too, because you mentioned the positive negative
charge and they actually like experiment with it and stuff.
And Ghostbusters one it's much less of a plot point,
and then two it really is a big deal because
they find that river, it seems stuff seems to emerge
(06:03):
from it. In one, it's more of an afterthought and
something that you get stuck all over you when you.
Speaker 6 (06:08):
When a ghost, you get slimed. That was sort of
the joke, right, I've been slimed.
Speaker 5 (06:12):
Yeah, do you do?
Speaker 6 (06:14):
You guys. Not Like.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
My immediate thought when I hear ectoplasm now is of
South Park. Of course Crim Fresh?
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Right, No, isn't it the episode No, but the one
where he's covered in ghost go like with Randy.
Speaker 6 (06:29):
I thought it was the Crim Fresh I was a member.
Speaker 5 (06:30):
Oh maybe it is, Maybe it is. I think of yeah, whatever,
whatever it is.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Back in the day, I think it's season twelve, like eight,
maybe oh nine, and it was. Yeah, that's what I
think of now every time I think of ectoplasms.
Speaker 6 (06:44):
It was a spooky ghost. It was.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
It's weird because the term dates back pretty far. It
was it was nineteen thirteen when a French physiologist named
Charles rashe R I see came up with or he
used this to describe something paranormal. It comes from the Greek.
(07:07):
For all our etymology nerds, it's a portmanteau of the
two words ectos, meaning just outside, and plasma, which means
anything molded or formed. So outside molded or formed. And
this was a huge deal. It reached its haiti and
popular culture.
Speaker 6 (07:24):
It's hey evening.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
During the movement of a pseudo religious thing called spiritualism
in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and we're
going to have an episode on the rise and fall
of that movement in a future evening. I think either
I don't know, it might be here. It might be
ridiculous history because it's one of those Venn diagram explorations.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Yeah, we did do something on that though recently, Ben
I swear where we talked about the methods of kind
of the hacky kind of methods that were used to
take people in with mentalism and some of the tricks
that were used, like in the Tables and the Peppers
go moist illusions and things like that. I cannot recall though,
which show we talked about this on or what the
nature of the episode was, but it's all kind of fresh.
(08:07):
But I'm glad that you mentioned the origin of the word,
because in my mind I was thinking of another term
that's been in the Newslet lady is like ectopic, the
idea of like an ectopic prectic pregnancy. And I'm glad
you have officially taken all doub out of my mind
that those words are related, that it is just about
something that happens outside.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Yeah, ecto as in something you're currying outside in this
paranormal context, Ectoplasm is what the three of us have
been talking about here, a mysterious substance that is manifested
by individuals with some sort of extrasensory ability, most notably mediums,
(08:44):
specifically physical mediums who commune with the dead or sometimes
completely non human incorporeal spirits. Which is an interesting thing
because these mediums were, you know, for the most part,
they were saying, we are in communication with a dead
human being, but they would also sometimes be talking to
(09:08):
a sentient thing that did not exist on the mortal plane,
which I thought was fascinating.
Speaker 6 (09:18):
It's a weird trip.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
I didn't know there were other categories of ectoplasm. There's
teleplasm that's when the medium is emitting ectoplasm at a distance,
like across the room or in some stories, in a
totally different locale. And then idioplasm that's that's when the
(09:40):
ghost goop molds itself into the likeness of a person,
you know what I.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
Mean, yeah, or just some other you know, face, an
entire body in some cases. And it's weird stuff too,
because it's I like, this idea of teleplasm like just
shows up in different places because you can stories and
they are stories. Let us assure you of this stuff,
(10:04):
whatever it is, we're about to describe it showing up
on the medium, like you said, Ben, across the room,
on the table, underneath the table, in the belly button,
in the face, just weird in the butt.
Speaker 6 (10:18):
Oh oh, if you must.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
You guys, remember that line in True Detective Season one
where Cole where rust Cole says, I smell the psychosphere
and then his partner thinks he's saying he smells a
psycho's sphere. And for the longest time I thought that
was because the subtitles say that, But psychosphere is a
thing that refers to it's like the sphere surrounding psychic energy.
Speaker 6 (10:43):
And reality around the Earth.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
And I think that term psychoplasm ban that you mentioned
probably pertains to that. The idea of this being some
sort of byproduct of these this sort of clustered bubble
of like supernatural energy, I guess right.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Yeah, yeah, being the light fantastic, right, Going from from
everything that science tells humanity death is a one way street, right,
and two from a you know, the idea of scientifically
exploring allegations of the afterlife and the paranormal, you would
(11:19):
want as a scientist, physical reproducible, measurable proof, something tangible
of returning from beyond death, and so ectoplasm or ecto
as the cool kids called it, not to be confused
with ecto cooler.
Speaker 6 (11:38):
It was.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
It was for many people, many very intelligent people. It
was considered the smoking gun of the afterlife, of proof
of something beyond the physical plane. And if you you
can see pictures of this, and as as you were saying, Matt,
you can read all sorts of stories and anecdotes. Uh,
(12:00):
and when you see the photographs it, uh, maybe we're
spoiled in the world of special effects and CGI. But
it doesn't exactly take your breath away. It's kind of
a gauzy substance and usually it comes from some orifice
of the medium's body. And it's cool because it's like, yeah,
(12:25):
it's like symbiat suit in comic books, right, like the
venom symbia.
Speaker 6 (12:31):
It coats the The.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Idea is it coats the spirit, right, like a like
a translucent mech.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
Well, it's almost like it is the medium, the physical
medium through which the spirit plane can enter this realm.
Speaker 5 (12:46):
Like that's kind of the idea. It's it's I was
trying to.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
Come up with a metaphor, and ill I have one
dot if you guys have been thinking about it, but
likelub well almost but the idea of you need to
be covered in this stuff in order to get through
through a barrier of some sort.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
I know, there's this stuff that people like stunt actors
when they set themselves on fire in movies, they coat
their skin with this particular type of material that keeps
the fire from actually touching them.
Speaker 6 (13:13):
It's like the reverse of that kind of I guess
in a way. I mean, you know, I think that
I think that gibes that tracks.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
There's also from the idea of tangible manifestation of otherwise
invisible energy. You could think of the way that you
can see sound waves by vibrations in sand, Like if
you've ever seen that experiment where there's a disk of
sand and then people start playing sounds and you can
(13:42):
sound Yeah, yeah, you can see the waves of sound
reflected there.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
I think between those two we pretty much got it. Yeah,
because it is I see what you're getting at mad Itism.
That's a little hard to put into words because it's
like a it's something it's almost like a space suit
in a way. It allows you to traverse a particular
boundary that you should not be able to exist in.
Like it's almost like without this stuff, the ghosts either
(14:08):
couldn't make it. The spirits couldn't either make it into
this realm or this plane, or they would they would
perish in some.
Speaker 6 (14:15):
Way, or they couldn't be perceived.
Speaker 5 (14:18):
Yeah, that's the other thing.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
The other thought is that when one of these beings, otherworldly, spiritual, ghost, whatever,
when they show up in our physical realm, this is
what they leave behind.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
What they're wearing that allows them to be perceived at
all too, right.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Like their fingerprints or the way that you can see
you can see human oils after flesh touches glass. It's
kind of a residue. And then like to make a
I'll dumb it down because I think this is maybe
this is the dumbest example I can think of. It's
why people throw sheets over ghost the laziest ghost costume
(14:59):
in the history of Halloween. Now that you have the
sheet on, you can see the thing.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
Yeah, Like there's a whole big sequence at the end
of it follows where they're in this school swimming pool
to the gym and they.
Speaker 6 (15:10):
Have to follow the ghost around.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
They keep throwing stuff over it so they can like
track it, and then they shoot it because I guess
you can shoot ghosts in modern movies.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
It's interesting that we're describing it as gauzy because that
is where like that is how it has been described
a bunch, but there's almost another another version of it
that is more And you described it as lubeanole like
a but almost as a louby substance, almost translucent, slightly white.
(15:40):
Hesitating talking about other excretions of the human body here,
because that is kind of the way it's described in
other instances.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Milk going bad. Almost it's like an off AIRYA product.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Yeah, because what's that gross Japanese fermented soybean ben Nato Nato. Yeah,
it has kind of that tacky like it gets stuck
on your fingers, you know. And by the way, I
was saying lube not to be gross, but just the
idea of it helps you.
Speaker 6 (16:07):
Get through something.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
It's like it is a protector, a protection that kind
of helps you navigate a tight boundary.
Speaker 6 (16:15):
Now that sounds like I'm being grosser.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Well no, no, you know, if somebody thinks it's gross,
then maybe it's time for you, fellow listener, and take
a self inventory, because they're all kinds of lubricants.
Speaker 6 (16:26):
Now, I just made it weirder spiritual lubricut.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
I'm bringing up milky patches there, because that is the
phrase that Charles Rushet, the guy who coined the term,
used when he first started describing ectoplasm in a paranormal sense.
He began by observing a physical medium named Usapia Palladino,
very cool name, and her ecdoplasmic projections were to him
(16:52):
white veils and milky patches, so he called them examples
of ectoplasm. And because every sidy is at heart a
doubting tabas, people wanted to touch this, they wanted to
engage with it, to take samples right, and to analyze
those samples, which gets tricky later. But we have accounts
of people that you would consider otherwise skeptical who totally
(17:16):
believe this, and you can read first hand accounts of
them saying, I visited a medium. They extruded ectoplasm. I
touched it. It's cool to the touch, it was viscous,
it was slimy, and everybody was on board.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
Yeah, And well, we'll get into the reasons why it
might be so slimy but also somehow you know, look
like a a gauzy almost cloth of some sort, but
it is really sticky and wet because of maybe where
it's been.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
And that's interesting too, because a lot of historical burials
involved like shrouds and kind of gauzy coverings that would
be placed over top of the of the body. I
don't know, it's just an interesting connect and I'm saying
it's like means anything.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Necessarily, people totally leaned into it because at least part
of this so it was branding.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Yeah, because again, we have a ton of proof of
the existence of this stuff. I don't want to spoil
it right now, but this is sort of a lot
of there's a lot of Laura wrapped up in this,
and a lot of like historical telephone. I think those
early burial traditions may well have played a part in
what people have described as as having seen.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
There's another aspect here. Folks like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
who is famous for a couple of other things, he
was also big into the investigation of ecdoplasm and mediums
and spiritualism. He worked with a medium who was identified
as ev c her full name Eva Correri, but at
(18:47):
first he was just calling her ever c. He touched ecdoplasm,
this medium created and he said, holy smokes, jeepers, you guys,
that's what he said at jeepers. This feels like a
living material, right, I'm not just touching something cool to
the cool to my fingers. The tactile sensation alone is
(19:12):
not the end of the story. This is moving and
responding to my touch. This thing, whatever it is, is
kind of like a gunkier version of T one thousand
in Terminator two. It's changeable, it's mercurial.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
Oh so reminds me of the black goo from the
Alien films that has sort of a sense shant quality
to it as well.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Yeah, or X files, the black oil goo stuff. That's
very interesting that Arthur, I was gonna say, Arthur C. Clark,
and that Arthur Conan Doyle like touched it and he
did like write about it. And it's a weirder thing
than even I'm imagining when I'm looking at these historical photos,
at least for this episode, where we'll get into those
(19:57):
and like what those look like specifically and why there's
some weirdness with the photography going on there and the
experiments and the quote controls and all that stuff. But
that is very that's very interesting to me because it
would be i don't know, as a writer like that,
if that were real and that we're true, or if
(20:18):
you wanted people to believe it was true, you could
come up with some very compelling stories.
Speaker 6 (20:24):
Sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
I mean also, he's the creator of Sherlock Holmes, right,
And one of the mortal sins in writing fiction is
to write a character who is the smartest person in
the room, because it's so difficult to do. No, it's true.
I mean, think about it. Every time you see a
(20:46):
super smart character that isn't actually behaving as though they
are super intelligent, it's because the smartest character in the
room can only ever be as smart as the person
writing that character, which is it's just tricky. It's very
difficult to pull off. So shout out to sir Doyle himself.
(21:07):
He wrote Sherlock Holmes, and he was still, for a
time very convinced about this ecoplasm stuff.
Speaker 6 (21:14):
For a time.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
We also know that kind of like how star jelly decays,
this stuff seemed to decay at first. It was like
clear phlem or snot.
Speaker 6 (21:27):
It was almost divisible.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
And again under those conditions that we just teased the
second and go, it would become gradually more gradually translucent,
from transparent to translucent, and then it would start darkening
and becoming more visible as the medium's connection to the
spirit world intensifies. Some people said it would glow kind
(21:50):
of like bioluminescence from beyond the grave.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
But.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
It only happened in low light. The problem with taking
samples is it would dissipate very quickly under exposure to light.
Side note Also, we found a lot of people reporting
that ectoplasm had a peculiar strong odor, but no one
seemed to agree on what that odor is like. No,
(22:20):
there's not a single universally accepted description of the smell.
They're just a lot of people saying it kind of smells.
We're laying some really gross foreshadowing points here, folks. Now,
this like the brief history as we're diving in. This
can all sound somewhat ridiculous as we hear it laid
out in this manner. No, I mean, it's it's crucial
(22:42):
that we remember a lot of the proponents of ectoplasm
and spiritualism. They didn't think this was woo woo hippie stuff.
They didn't think it was a cult or in any
way necessarily infernal. In their mind, this was a marriage
of science and spiritual world. The guy we mentioned Rashe,
(23:03):
for example, he's a legit physiologist at this time. He
later goes on to win a Nobel Prize for his
work on anaphylaxis. So he's not just you know, he's
not just the ghost snut guy.
Speaker 5 (23:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
Well, imagine there are rumors of folks down at this
building somewhere downtown that are allegedly conjuring spirits with their
methods and their boxes and their curtains and their seances. Oh,
we need to get down there and investigate. Let's use
scientific rigor to prove that this stuff's real, because if
it is, my God, this is world changing.
Speaker 6 (23:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
Yeah, And they're these investigators, because that's what they were.
These investigators and enthusiasts are good faith actors. The height
of public interest in ectoplasm is inseparably intertwined with the
rise and fall of spiritualism. You don't hear too much
about in the modern day, but this has that people
(23:59):
felt like they were on the cusp the bleeding gooby
gooey edge of a breakthrough that would fundamentally change human civilization.
We're talking about the smartest people in the Western world.
They were convinced that if they took modern methodology right,
the scientific method, they could understand and finally answer the
(24:22):
fundamental questions of the human experience that haunt poor choice
of words, everybody listening tonight. What happens when we die?
Does some vestige of the consciousness persist when the body
itself becomes an empty house? It is a cool story,
But is.
Speaker 6 (24:39):
There anything to it? Yeah, I mean sort of. We'll
get into that after a quick word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
Here's where it gets crazy, all right, fellow conspiracy realist,
that is a little bit of a fake out. Ectoplasm
is it turns out very very real, just not perhaps
in the way the spiritualist hoped or claimed it to be.
Speaker 6 (25:10):
I think we could.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Look at two genuine examples of ectoplasm, and maybe do
you want to just start with the most boring one.
Speaker 6 (25:18):
It's the one we can actually prove.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
And for this one, let's go to biology. Oh, let's
talk more about ectoplasm also known as exoplasm. What is
that huh Ben, what's exoplasm, right?
Speaker 1 (25:34):
Or ectoplasm, Matt. You know, it's positively telepathic that you
would ask that it is, as any person who's awesome
at biology mixers knows. The non granulated we're quoting here
the non granulated outer part of a cell's cytoplasm. The counterpart,
(25:57):
the granulated inner layer, known as the endoplasm. So it's
cell biology. It's kind of a bait and switch because
ectoplasm in the world of ghost means what we described
before the break, and ectoplasm in the world of biology
is a very real thing that is in so many cells,
(26:20):
an innumerable number of cells.
Speaker 6 (26:23):
It's the outside goo.
Speaker 5 (26:25):
Oh yeah, it's like the cellular wall.
Speaker 6 (26:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
And this was coined by a guy named Ernst Haeckel
in the late nineteenth century, so it actually is a
predecessor to the use of ectoplasm in the world of
the paranormal. And he, you know, he was super into
this phrase as a way of describing unicellular organisms like amoebas.
(26:53):
And just like you said that, the real ectoplasm it's
both a shield and sort of a transit platform for
all the stuff bouncing around inside a cell, which means
that if you are a human or another form of
organic life, you are absolutely riddled with ectoplasm. You are
inundated with it. You're dripping and drowning in ectoplasm right
(27:16):
now as you listen to tonight's program. I mean, don't
think about it too too much. If you're a jerpophobe
or you know, you get squigged out easily. But it
turns out we're all sort of slimers, yeah, dude.
Speaker 6 (27:30):
In our own way. The slimer within.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
Slimer within ghost is coming from inside the house. So
that's the boring one. But that is that is the
real ectoplasm we can prove. Do we want to talk
about the more interesting I don't know, is this interesting
or is this more of a downer?
Speaker 5 (27:49):
It's a donor, but it's we got to talk about it.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
So to talk about this other real ectoplasm, we have
to talk about some of the famous photographs. Just like
if you go back to nineteen oh six, there's this
thing called the instantograph Belows camera, and it is a
camera that was used in some of the most famous
(28:13):
photographs of alleged ectoplasm. And this is a pretty simple
machine that uses a plate, a photographic plate that gets
exposed when you expose the lens of the camera and
then you put it back. Then you close it right
after this plate has been exposed to light, and whatever
(28:36):
light goes through that lens and hits the plate, that's
what you get. Well, some of these plates saw stuff
that if you just looked at the photograph and you
weren't in the room, it looks I'm going to say it,
hella weird. It looks like this white, weird, gauzy, maybe
clothy substance emanating from a medium's nose or a medium's
(29:00):
mouth who's just sitting in a chair, sometimes directly in
front of a weird darkened box, sometimes directly in front
of weird darkened curtains. Sometimes their hands are being held
by other people off camera. Sometimes their hands are even
like clasped to a chair or something so that they
(29:20):
cannot interfere and create whatever this thing is. But man,
it looks like it's just material like cheesecloth or linen,
some kind of like really thin linen or it often
it looks like fabric to.
Speaker 5 (29:39):
Me, at least to my eyes.
Speaker 6 (29:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
The second version of real ectoplasm, actual ectoplasm version two.
We're happy to say there were genuine physical substances present
during those trances, those seances, other exhibitions of physical mediums
at the height of spiritualism in particular, and we know
that from photographic evidence, like you're mentioning there, Matt. The
(30:03):
thing is, none of this stuff was ever proven, ever,
in any case, without exception, to be anything other than
mundane material with a heck of a lot of showmanship
and performance. Eat your heart out, Vents offer, Eat your
heart out, Billy Mays. Do you guys remember who Vent's
offer is.
Speaker 6 (30:23):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
Slapchop, guys, slap slap chop, Yeah, with the garlics or
the Billy Mays was the showtime the rotissary chicken guy, right?
Speaker 1 (30:35):
I think that was another guy. Billy Mays is oxy cling.
Speaker 6 (30:38):
Oxy clean.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
But there was another guy that was like all about
the rotissary chicken.
Speaker 6 (30:42):
Yeah, yeah, case but.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
But oh I missed that halcyon era of made for
TV commercials. And the showmanship of these physical mediums was
not too different, because, like you were saying, I teased
it several times. In some cases, this ectoplasm, we know
(31:08):
for sure was straight up cheese cloth in other cases,
it might be a fabric or textile of some sort
smoothed up with potato starch.
Speaker 6 (31:19):
Or it might be paper. It might be.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
Still cloth but with egg white mashed into it instead
of potato starch. Or it might be something I was
not familiar with called butter muslin. Butter muslin part of
my accent. I'm still learning English, not Muslim Muslin.
Speaker 6 (31:38):
M U s l I N. That's like a higher
end cheese cloth.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
It's that shroud material I was talking about earlier, that
kind of transparent, translucent rather textury kind of material that
you'd see draped over you know, bodies and you know
historical kind of burial ceremonies.
Speaker 6 (31:55):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (31:55):
And we're going to get into why. Sometimes it even
looked like it was coded with egg whites or just
biological material because it was hanging out in somebody's stomach
and or throat and or you know sinuses.
Speaker 6 (32:11):
Yeah, it was in their holes. Yep, it was in
their roles.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
And the story of ghostly ectoplasm is inherently unfortunately, folks.
It is a story of cons and frauds. And that
was the stuff the vast majority of these mediums did
not want their audience to know. It turns out a
lot of these folks were quite adept at old school
close up magic, sleight of hand and to understand how
(32:40):
these conspiracies worked, because conspiracies they were. We have to
get our heads around two aspects of the con and
the first and I think for for all four of
us with a love of film and cinematography, the practical
effects are just amazing because we got to talk about
(33:00):
the case conditions. Just like a mentalist, right, just like
Darren Brown always has very specific conditions, or pen and
Teller always have very specific conditions, these folks were no different.
Speaker 5 (33:12):
Well, yeah, it makes so much sense.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
You're going in to attempt to scientifically study something that
has to occur under as you said, these conditions where
maybe for the medium to perform the act of connecting
with the spirit world, they have to let's say, get
inside a specific box, like a human sized box, or
(33:36):
let's say they have to have a table behind them
with specific instruments on it, specific things and items on it,
and there has to be a curtain that separates them
from that box, which could be maybe that's just how
it happens, that's how this person does it, but it
could also be a very a very calculated way to
(33:58):
insert manipula via either themselves or another person.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
And all of these conditions, by the way, are non
negotiable circumstances.
Speaker 5 (34:09):
Yes, so I can't do this without my stuff.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
It doesn't work in the lights, you know what I mean.
And the fact that you're questioning this means that you're
non believer and you're kind of screwing up the vibe.
So if it doesn't work this time, it's your fault.
Speaker 5 (34:26):
That's Harry exactly.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
And that's kind of a conversation who Denie actually had
with people. Yeah, the manifestations often only occurred in very
low light, very specific seating arrangements, and some of these
conditions were placed on the audience as well, like you
would have to I don't want to call these people roubs,
but the participants were required to stay seated often and
(34:52):
they kind of had to kind of had a pure
monitoring system because you had to join around the table,
so you couldn't move your hands, you couldn't move your
physical location, you could not change your perspective, you couldn't
stand up and like walk behind the medium.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
God, that's so important that the just the idea of perspective.
And we know this from modern close up magic, from
any modern magic television show. Right where we're watching illusions
Michael on the television, the audience is in a very
specific spot and with a specific as you said, perspective.
(35:31):
I think perspective is maybe one of the most important
even words to imagine and think about when we're considering
ectoplasm at all.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
Yeah, and there's that's one of the big parts of
the next step in the con The practical effect of
the illusion is to make it seem as though the
manifestation is coming somehow from or through the medium, appearing
in the same sinity as though you know, it just
(36:02):
came in the room with you. That's fine, it's mids
you could say, you know what I mean, like, it's disappointment, right,
you're you're It's kind of like if you your parents
got you a car when you turn sixteen, like, hey,
we got you a car. Oh my gosh, thank you parents.
And then they say it's a Geo Metro and then
(36:23):
you go, oh, well, I mean.
Speaker 6 (36:26):
It's a car. Yes.
Speaker 3 (36:29):
Sometimes it's a Dodge Caravan, okay, and that's fine.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
Sometimes it's a it's a gremlin. No, what's one of
those like notoriously dubious cars of yesterdyear.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
Gril pentol. So this was not peak showmanship. Peak showmanship was,
as we were saying, to have that ghostly substance appear
to extrude from the body. You know, now you've got
your twitching. You know, you've got your maybe some glossal alia,
(37:08):
speaking in tongues, some eolulations, all that kind of stuff. Ones, Yeah,
eye rolling, and then like you're spasming and all of
a sudden, coming out of your mouth there appears.
Speaker 5 (37:21):
Ghost Yeah.
Speaker 3 (37:23):
Hardcore mode is if you can get the ectoplasm to
emanate from the scientist who's there to study you.
Speaker 5 (37:29):
Which I don't think it's happened yet.
Speaker 6 (37:32):
What why, I don't know.
Speaker 5 (37:34):
That's weird.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
Yeah, heck of a coincidence that. And here's the thing,
I don't know we teased it here. We should just
say it for anybody who is wondering why we keep
mentioning the shiny appearance. Why does this stuff look shiny?
Because if you look at regular cheese cloth, it doesn't
(37:57):
have a sine, So where did it get the viscosity?
Speaker 5 (38:01):
Snochine until you put it in your mouth for a
while and roll it around and then spin it back out.
Speaker 3 (38:06):
Eh.
Speaker 5 (38:08):
Sorry, that's true.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
Regurgitated just like a feed in a baby bird.
Speaker 6 (38:14):
Baby bird, which.
Speaker 1 (38:15):
Helps explain some of the spasms, right, because your flexing
your diaphragm.
Speaker 2 (38:19):
Yeah, are these ecdospasms?
Speaker 6 (38:23):
These are.
Speaker 1 (38:28):
So this was a common practice and people were people
were doing this were quite talented at it.
Speaker 6 (38:34):
Credit where it's a due.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
If you did not know the mechanics behind this, and
the show was good enough, you might even if you're
not entirely convinced, you might think, well, there's something going on.
Speaker 6 (38:45):
I don't know what it.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
Is until you see people who get busted like a medium,
a Danish guy named Einer Nielsen who was exposed as
a fake when he was caught hiding at plasma in
his rectum.
Speaker 5 (39:03):
Uh like cheese cloth.
Speaker 6 (39:05):
Yeah, he boofed it.
Speaker 5 (39:07):
Okay, Well that's one way to do it.
Speaker 6 (39:10):
I feel more.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
Difficult though, right, Yeah, Well you can make yourself regurgitate,
but how do you get it?
Speaker 6 (39:16):
Like, what's your sleight of hand at that point?
Speaker 3 (39:19):
You know, of I don't know, core muscles, just shoving
it out of there. And I it's interesting because now
I'm thinking about the interaction between stomach acid and cheesecloth,
And I wonder if it had the ability to break
down some of that a little bit, but probably not enough.
Speaker 6 (39:42):
Depending on maybe how long you kept it in there.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
Yeah, this is so weird, it kind of gross. So
we know that, we know we still haven't answered the
question that we're telling you some of the mechanics of
the purported substance. But what about the the idioplasm. What
about the stuff that wasn't just milky patches or gauzy veils?
(40:08):
What about the things that looked like people's faces or hands,
you know, suspended in the air.
Speaker 6 (40:14):
Is this you're missing child? Things like that.
Speaker 5 (40:19):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (40:19):
They didn't have projectors per se back then, the same
way we have them. Hmm, how could they have possibly
done that? Photography plates that have been double explosed what.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
Yeah, what you might call trick photography, right, Yeah, Ghosts
were not proven to exist at this point, but magazines
were very much proven to exist, and scissors also existed,
so wasn't too difficult to cut out Like in the
case of Ava C that we mentioned earlier, she was found.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
To use magazine cutouts suspended in the air in the
darkness with pins and carefully placed string, which.
Speaker 6 (41:08):
Sounds dark in the dark.
Speaker 1 (41:09):
Yes, that's the key part in the dark and it
might sound like, you know, low budget acts of chicanery,
but we have to remember these practical effects are only
one part of the operation. The second aspect is arguably
more important and more dangerous and can be weaponized. Today
we talked about the physical perspective, but the key to
(41:33):
really getting the grift to work was the psychological perspective.
In a very real way, these mediums were manipulating in
tangible forces, but they were manipulating the minds and the
spirits of the living rather than the spirits of the dead.
Speaker 3 (41:51):
Yes, oh my god, do you guys mind really quickly
before we get into this the psychology, because that is
absolutely the most important thing here. Just when it gets
to the photography, when we're talking about those plates that
I keep kind of mentioning but not fully talking about
what you can do with those plates if you expose
(42:12):
them really briefly to something like imagine imagine someone in
complete darkness except for a small light that's illuminating someone
wearing all white or being painted white even or wearing
a white mask or having white gauze all around them
or lacey substances materials. Imagine someone standing in the darkness.
(42:35):
Then you use your camera and you barely expose it
to this light of this person in the darkness. Then
you close it really quickly again. Then you take that
plate and you transfer it into the place wherever you
are going to take the photograph of let's say the
medium or the person who was attempting to contact a spirit.
Then you expose that one fully. You are going to
(42:55):
have the literal light ghost of that previous exposure on
that plate. And no one may be the wiser if
they believe, at least if you did a little bit
of psychological work to make people think, oh, this is
a brand new photo plate that I'm now opening and
I'm placing into my camera.
Speaker 2 (43:15):
Well, it's before people really were wise to a lot
of that stuff too. I mean right, yes, in terms
of like you know, now we know photoshop. Everybody knows
that images should all be just you know, viewed with
a grain of salt. But like back then, it was
a lot less you know, common knowledge.
Speaker 3 (43:30):
Yeah, you need to study how photographs are made and
how they work. You need to be in that in
a business or connected to a business likely that uses
photographs for some purpose, to have a full understanding of
how the light actually, you know, changes that plate so
that it creates an image.
Speaker 1 (43:50):
Yeah, that's a great point, because it's still it's still
rarefied air at this at this juncture in history, right
to the degree.
Speaker 5 (44:00):
We're talking nineteen twenties. Still in nineteen.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
There's still such a new car smell on the technology
that even people who are seasoned professional photographers could be fooled, right,
because very few people knew the panopoly of techniques available.
And you could say, hey, I am a I consider
myself a pretty crackerjack photographer, and I can't explain this.
(44:28):
It doesn't mean these people were in any way less
intelligent than anyone. They just didn't have the same familiarity
with a technology that's much more familiar to the average
person today.
Speaker 2 (44:41):
Well, and it's all about intent too, I mean, these
are techniques that were employed in order to fool people.
I mean I took a dark room photography class when
I was in college, and I have a picture hanging
in my bedroom that I really like or took. I
was in a dark basement with no lights and had
a camera on a tripod and just opened the shutter
for a series of exposures and lit a cigarette lighter
(45:02):
and moved around the room. And in the image there's
like six of me and it's really cool looking. But
if you show that to somebody in these days, they
be like, what witchcraft is this?
Speaker 6 (45:11):
You know? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (45:14):
Quite possibly, Yeah, unless you unless you were there to
explain to people, to the observer what happened, and that
would defeat the purpose, as you said, that would defeat
the intention of these of these mediums. And with all
of this, and Noel, I love the point about the
intention of the of the mediums and their colleagues or
(45:37):
their co conspirators. We talked about the practical effects and the
importance of physical perspective. We're going to take a break
to hear some words from spirits of our own, our
sponsor spirits, and then we'll return with the other more
dangerous perspective, the psychology. And we're back psychology one oh
(46:08):
one colon Grifter.
Speaker 2 (46:10):
Addition, so, while it's certainly possible that a handful of
these mediums truly believed in their abilities, again, there's something
that we've talked about anytime this topic comes up like
they're not all grifters. There are certainly ones that like
truly believe they have a gift and that they are
sharing that gift with others and helping people. But then
the vast majority of them are kind of hucksters and
(46:31):
people that are trying to make a buck off of folks.
Speaker 6 (46:35):
Insecurities and or you know, grief, and that sucks.
Speaker 5 (46:38):
But there may be real mediums. We just haven't been
able to prove it yet.
Speaker 6 (46:43):
There a shadow beyond the shadow of dow.
Speaker 1 (46:44):
There's no like done equivocal test for it, right right, Yeah,
And let's let's take a second there because we were
talking about this off air, so it could be a
little bit confusing. The folks that we're speaking of here
this evening are called physical mediums, and during the spiritualism
movement and even now today with some of the with
(47:08):
some of the instrument free faith healing kind of things
that you see, you know, that's where someone lays on
hands and they pull out some gunk purportedly from.
Speaker 6 (47:20):
A human being.
Speaker 5 (47:22):
That a whole episode we do.
Speaker 1 (47:24):
That's a that's a kissing cousin of a physical medium.
So a physical medium here is defined as someone who
is a like door man in the Great Lakes Avengers.
They're a portal through which physical manifestations of the spiritual
can be seen well.
Speaker 2 (47:44):
And therefore, you know, especially since all the things we've
said about what the idea of ectoplasm is, it makes
sense that they might have some that would come out
of their body because it's they are literally the ghosts
or the spirits are passing through them, and that's where
the remnant might the resident. I guess the spiritual residue
might end up.
Speaker 5 (48:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (48:03):
In that episode, by the way, is called what is
quote laying on hands unquote If you want to look
that up, it's from September twenty twenty. But I know
I interrupted you well.
Speaker 6 (48:14):
I think I got there.
Speaker 2 (48:15):
Just the point being is that we certainly aren't trying
to say anyone who believes that they possess these types
of intuitions or skills are completely full of it. You know,
that's not what we're here to say or to prove
or disprove. But historically the fact remains that a vast
majority or a very large number of these folks purporting
(48:37):
to have these abilities.
Speaker 6 (48:37):
We're doing just what I.
Speaker 2 (48:38):
Said, trying to pray on people and they're you know, misfortune,
you know, So think about it this way. Your most
you know, ardent supporters are going to be people navigating
a significant loss, a dead child, a dead spouse, dead parent, whatever,
it might be, a needing some kind of closure, and
therefore there's that just absolute opportunit for that confirmation bias
(49:01):
and if you know how to play into that, you know,
the cold reading of it all. You know that we
see on these kind of Hollywood psychic type shows, which
I think are ninety percent of the time absolutely bogus
and manipulative. It's really easy to see how someone is
very open to being manipulated in that way when they're
already weakened, their defenses are already weakened because of going
(49:23):
through a trauma.
Speaker 1 (49:24):
Yeah, that's absolutely it. As the old line from X
Files goes, they want to believe. And you know this
is very cold, but it's necessary to say. You can
see the attempts at grifting folks just by the content
of the purported messages. Very few returning spirits, for example,
(49:45):
say stuff like hey, I miss you and I was
bad and now I'm burning in hell. Right, very few
people give a terrible message about the afterlife. Very few
people give specifics that could not otherwise be derived from
the sith level arts of hot or cold reading. And
so long as you don't look just like the photographs,
(50:08):
so long as you don't look too closely at the
method and the message of the medium, these conversations and
experiences feel right, they feel reassuring. They're better than the
silence of the grave.
Speaker 3 (50:23):
Dude, did you guys see that movie from twenty either
twenty twenty or twenty twenty one called Nightmare Alley?
Speaker 2 (50:31):
The gear model are so good and the original is
good too. Guys like the actual fifties I believe version
it's it's incredible, But I like the Gaiamo version two.
But it's all about these kinds of things. Yes, it's fantastic.
Speaker 3 (50:44):
It reminds me a lot of exactly what you're talking about, Ben,
where it's just it looks into the characters that are
figuring out these techniques and figuring out you know, very
complex versions to I mean, it is to fool someone.
Speaker 5 (51:00):
In order to make money, right, that's the idea.
Speaker 3 (51:03):
Fool and fool and audience people so that you can
make their money.
Speaker 5 (51:07):
You put on a show.
Speaker 3 (51:09):
But it does make me wonder about I don't know,
not necessarily a motivations, because ultimately it is like a
spectacle performance that you're going to watch the way you
would if you were going to see a play or something.
Speaker 5 (51:24):
In my mind, at least in some ways.
Speaker 1 (51:27):
Or for the more atheistic amidst us gives you the
same similar kind of reassurance as a religious ritual would.
I mean, yes, it doesn't have to be evil, right,
A panacea is not always given in bad faith, These
blue sky pills of the mind we could call them.
And also this might be kind of a hot take here,
(51:50):
but I'm still not okay. So the physical medium, ectoplasm,
spiritualism stuff, I'm confident that we can say, not easily
ninety plus percent of it is a bad faith drift.
But I'm still on the fence about spiritual mediums, like
I'm still on the fence about vibes or you know,
(52:12):
non tangible inexplicable messages and information and knowledge.
Speaker 6 (52:17):
I like, I'm so.
Speaker 1 (52:19):
On the fence about it that I am uncomfortable talking
about it on air. We know, I mean, we know
that there were grifters because the message was always reassuring
and always kind of hitting those dopamine triggers. Right, not
(52:39):
only can I help you talk to this person that
you miss so deeply and profoundly, but you can come
visit them any old time you like. You can talk
to them again and again and again, so long as
you bring some coin along with you, which is just brutal,
(53:00):
you know what I mean?
Speaker 6 (53:01):
Do you guys?
Speaker 1 (53:01):
Ever, one example of very controversial people like this in
the modern day would be that guy John Edwards.
Speaker 2 (53:11):
Do you remember it was kind of describing I think
he's a TV guy, right.
Speaker 1 (53:15):
He was, Yeah, he was on Oprah, Larry King, Candy's
own TV show.
Speaker 2 (53:20):
Well, I'm not going to name names, but I worked
closely with a producer on some podcast stuff in the
past who had a background in TV I think, in
that exact kind of sphere that you're talking about, and
worked with someone very similar to this fellow, and was
absolutely disgusted by the whole thing and just described it.
And I'm not going to throw anybody in the bus
or anything, and I'm not trying to be like who
(53:41):
I have inside info, but this is a person who
worked closely and saw these tricks being plied and and
you know, and to be around a person like that
who probably pretty openly when people aren't listening and the
cameras aren't rolling, talks trash about the people that they're manipulating.
Oh like that you imagine, Yeah, that's to the imagine unfortunately.
Speaker 6 (54:02):
Can Yeah.
Speaker 1 (54:03):
It reminds me of like the televangelist or faith healers
who have the little hidden earbud where they get information
about people in the audience and then claimants divine inspiration.
I don't know, I mean, this shows us something strange
about this period of history. There are several reasons the
(54:24):
belief in ectoplasm is nowhere near as popular now as
it was back then, and a lot of it is
because the interested nerds who brought scientific principles to these
seances ultimately proved the falsity of these claims. Our boy
who coined the term ectoplasm in the paranormal sense rashe
(54:46):
was once the president of a outfit called the Society
for Psychical Research. They really wanted this stuff to be true.
They wanted it to be true so so bad. However,
because they were scientists and they were trying to be objective,
they were bummed out over and over again. They found
(55:08):
sleight of hand, psychological manipulation, good old fashioned grifting, and
basic material science. Those were the things that Wind combined
and a certain recipe created the appearance of ghost. And
then they published it. Oh, there was a book burning.
We need to get to that. This is this is
(55:28):
a huge milestone because these guys who sought to prove
this stuff or investigate it and wanted it to be true,
they just kept disproving it. And there was a book
that was originally published anonymously called Revelations of a Spirit Medium.
And it was like when a stage magician breaks the
(55:49):
big code. Is there like a magic code where you're
not supposed to explain the tricks?
Speaker 5 (55:54):
Right?
Speaker 6 (55:55):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (55:56):
And like you know, I'm at the Magic Castle in
Los Angeles, which like a private magicians club. No photographs
are allowed inside, and they have like a really it's
a very hush hush kind of world. And if you
there was like a TV show where there was a
magician that would debunked a lot of those kinds of
tricks and he wore like a hood over his.
Speaker 6 (56:14):
Head and didn't Yeah that's right. He didn't want to
be exposed. Maybe that was just part of it.
Speaker 2 (56:18):
But no, it's definitely frowned upon, and you certainly could
get blacklisted from what is already a pretty niche performing community.
Speaker 3 (56:24):
I would say that's why Penna Teller are household names,
because they would show that you can be tricked by
us and by other illusionists. Michael, and because this is
how sorry, I'm gonna do that every time for the
rest of my life because that show is so important
to me.
Speaker 2 (56:39):
How much could have banana cross im Sorry, this show
is just infinitely.
Speaker 6 (56:43):
Quotable and applicable.
Speaker 2 (56:44):
List is why you leave a note sorry too many?
Speaker 3 (56:48):
But I mean so, that's why they're important, because the
would actually show you, like they do a trick with
opaque cups, and then they would do the same trick
with transparent cups so that you could see through and
see what.
Speaker 5 (56:59):
They were doing.
Speaker 3 (57:00):
But it's also why somebody like Randall James Zwinge, I
don't know how to say it, Yeah, James, Randy why
he was so important because he was attempting to show
there are no at least in his mind, there are
no psychic powers, there are no spiritualism powers, there are
(57:20):
no other powers. Because I am sitting here offering a
million dollars to anybody that can prove it scientifically, and
I'll give you a million dollars. You just got to
prove that you've got those powers, and it never happened.
But still, I don't know. I'm just going back to
that code, right. You don't want to show how trick's
work because it takes away from everybody's ability to pull
(57:44):
those illusions off to either make money and have a
career or just to keep a little magic in people's minds.
Speaker 1 (57:52):
Yeah, you're blowing up the spot basically, right. And also,
just for a side note, I don't know about you, guys.
I completely agree with the Amazing Randy's mission objectively, but
I found a lot of his bedside manner to be
a little bit militant and unhelpful.
Speaker 2 (58:14):
He's a guy with no I'm thinking of the amazing Jonathan,
the guy with the headband, And.
Speaker 6 (58:20):
Who is the amazing Randy. It's the skeptic James Randy.
Oh of course.
Speaker 2 (58:25):
Yeah, we all have assigned Simpson's five cartoon images of
him on our walls that some listener or a colleague
or somebody sent us.
Speaker 6 (58:33):
That's pretty cool. Sorry, I should look more into thee Tyler. Yeah, okay,
there you go.
Speaker 1 (58:37):
Yeah, so thank you, thank you, Tyler, and we also
you know again, I just want to say, like I know,
his bedside manner, Randy's wasn't for everybody, but the mission
is noble, that's the main takeaway. And what he's trying
to do and what he spent most of his life
doing was attempting to prevent people from being manipulated or
(59:00):
built into further heartbreaking tragedy.
Speaker 6 (59:03):
So there is something noble to that.
Speaker 1 (59:05):
And to this day, I think as a state continues
with the offer. Right to this day, no one has
successfully proven something to the standards set out in that
challenge or that proposition. Going back to the fall of
spiritualism and the fall of ectoplasm as a popular craze,
(59:28):
there was a book that broke the medium code. It
was published anonymously at first. It was called Revelations of
a Spirit Medium, and just like the books by you
know or the performances by the mass magician or pen
and teller, this revealed behind the scenes easily reproducible methods
for creating a ghost, and the psychic industry in that
(59:52):
rarefied spiritual air. They were super pissed about it. This
was not a would look for them, so much so
that they bought up almost all the original copies of
that book and they destroyed them on mass. The larger
public like they censored it. They tried to erase it
from history because this was their livelihood. The public only
(01:00:16):
learned about this when these two researchers, Eric Dingwall real
last name and Harry Price managed to save if they
found one copy, they saved it from destruction. They republished
it widely, and that's when the public learned, Hey, maybe
that's really not you know, my mother has passed away,
(01:00:38):
or my child that I lost, or my spouse or whatever.
And the tide turned.
Speaker 3 (01:00:43):
Yeah, if you have time and you're interested in this stuff,
look more into Harry Price. There is an amazing article
that goes into his nineteen thirties research attempting to use
X rays specifically to investigate psychic mediumship in this kind
(01:01:03):
of thing where there's either ectoplasm created or a spirit
that manifests and using X rays to try and prove
that the medium may or may not actually have something
inside their person right that they are using to fool everybody.
Really great stuff. You can find an article on the
(01:01:23):
website for the Science and Media Museum. It's called spirit
Photography and the Occult Making the Invisible Visible.
Speaker 1 (01:01:29):
And if you want to see some kind of gonzo
fiction in this regard, if you're a fan of graphic
novels at all, please check out BPRD and hell Boy,
which goes deep into the spiritualism movement or uses it
as inspiration for some crazy adventures. I say, crazy adventures, hijinks.
(01:01:50):
It's deep stuff. It's maybe not appropriate for kids all
the time.
Speaker 2 (01:01:54):
I was also going to suggest a movie that came
out pretty recently that I thought it was pretty good call.
I think it's called Late Night with the Devil, where
it's like about like an exorcism that takes place on
a late night show, but there is a James Randy
esque character who is there like trying to talk and
crap about the whole thing all along the way, So
it's very seventies kind of vibes, and I think it's
(01:02:15):
good if interested.
Speaker 6 (01:02:18):
I mean, I'm clearly I'm cartoonishly in the demographic for
the same thing.
Speaker 2 (01:02:22):
Yeah, but I thought it was well done and it
was entertaining, and it's actually got some humor in it,
but it's it's definitely a bit of a dark uh
exploration of these types of things.
Speaker 1 (01:02:30):
And so with the fall of spiritualism, which we'll explore
in a later evening, uh, the wave the tide turned,
and the wave of belief at ectoplasm never fully returned
to the shore of the public zeitgeist.
Speaker 6 (01:02:45):
So with all this in.
Speaker 1 (01:02:46):
Mind, we can say the following, Yes, ectoplasm is real,
But that answer depends entirely on what we mean by ectoplasm.
A basic part of cell structure, for sure, an agglomeration
of mundane materials exhibited under specific physical and psychological conditions.
Apps of frickin lutely the physical traces of ghost eh.
Speaker 6 (01:03:13):
I don't know.
Speaker 5 (01:03:15):
I haven't seen any.
Speaker 3 (01:03:16):
I've seen lots and lots of weird photographs of cheese cloth.
Speaker 6 (01:03:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:03:21):
Of course, that is unless you listening tonight, fellow conspiracy realist,
unless you happen to have inarguable physical proof of spirits
visiting this realm from beyond the grave and leaving tangible
evidence behind. If so, we would love to learn more,
reach out, tell us, show it to us. We can't
(01:03:43):
wait to share it with the world, or just let
us know what you think. We'd love to hear your
stories about encounters with mediums and psychics, and we'd love
to hear where you fall on the spectrum of spiritualism
and skepticism. We try to be easy to find online.
Speaker 6 (01:04:00):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (01:04:01):
You can find us to the handle Conspiracy Stuff where
we exist on Facebook with our Facebook group. Here's where
it gets crazy, on xfka, Twitter and on YouTube with
video content coming at you on the regular on Instagram
and TikTok. However, we are Conspiracy Stuff Show.
Speaker 5 (01:04:15):
Do you want to call us? Tell us what you think?
Speaker 3 (01:04:17):
Call one eight three three STDWYTK. It's a voicemail system.
When you choose to call, give yourself a cool nickname,
and let us note at some point in the message
if we can use your name and message on the air.
If you got more to say than can fit in
a three minute voicemail, why not instead send.
Speaker 5 (01:04:34):
Us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 1 (01:04:35):
We are the entities that read every single piece of
correspondence we receive. When you send a message into the void,
we can all see it, and we all know that
sometimes the void writes back. Be aware yet unafraid. Tell
us what's on your mind. Conspiracy at iHeartRadio Dot call.
Speaker 3 (01:05:16):
Stuff, They Don't Want You To Know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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Hosts And Creators
Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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