Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
And we are back with Daniel Burke who's joining us
live from his home base in Dublin, Ireland. He's a poet, author,
researcher and the brand new book is Telepathic Tales, Precognition
and Clairvoyance in Legend, Lyric and Lore. Before the break, Daniel,
I was asking you for a specific example, let's say,
of an historical figure. In this case, I think you
(00:25):
were discussing a playwright. It was basically changed forever by
some sort of a vision or crisis apparition. I think
this In this case, it was a crisis apparation, wasn't
it correct?
Speaker 3 (00:42):
And there are so many examples of this through history
and with Belasco, it was this experience which kind of
instantiated his belief in ghosts in the first place, his
belief in an afterlife, and furthermore, he implemented aspects of
the experience into the play. And this is something that
we see through history too. With Shaw's Pig Maley and
another famous play. He had an experience in which he
(01:05):
claims to have visualized his wife in a dream long
ahead of their meeting and this is something surprisingly still
commonly reported today, and some aspect of that experience was
also implemented into the play. And these are these kinds
of impacts are kind of culturally relative to some degree,
(01:26):
because you know, in some cases, such as with the
Vardoga for example, the reaction is often not necessarily surprise
in certain cultures where it is expected to be the case. However,
again in some of these cases in the West, for example,
with these crisis operations, I think they're one of the
kind of overlooked areas which may have kind of brought
(01:49):
about belief in and afterlife in the first place, these
kinds of experiences, and this is kind of shown through
the types of accounts that you were asking for, because like,
for example, in nineteen eighteen, there was a very well
documented crisis account in which somebody called Missus Pointer received
the details of the death of a loved one the
(02:12):
appearance of an apparition of her brother Leslie at the
very moment it turned out that he had died at
a distance. Now her quote is, this is one of
the things that makes me know there's a second life.
And that's nineteen eighteen. But like somewhere in the realm
of one hundred years later, we have the very same
experiences imparting the same kinds of profound effects. In Melvin
(02:33):
Morris's work on near death experiences, and after an apariginal
encounter with her father at the very time of his death,
she claims that this dream, this Christ's apparition, this vertical
experience in which her inner world happened to correlate with
the outer world. And that's the main thing here, that's
the main surprise, in the main mystery. This is something
that actually saved her life. And quote unquote, now she
(02:55):
knows for sure that the soul continues. So these are
a profound experience, says another one, quote unquote from a
hospice nurse. All of this has convinced me that there
has to be something more after this life. So I
would say, whatever your view is on these experiences, whatever
your view is on the anecdote in general, or the
capacity to kind of extract meaningful truth from history, okay,
(03:22):
these are experiences which are greatly impacting the individual psychologically,
their entire worldview, and therefore they demand very, very much
more attention.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Your previous book was Crisis Apparitions, so you've studied crisis
apparations extensively before, and now you've included even more in
this new book, which would lead me to suspect perhaps
this is personal for you. Have you had experience a
crisis apparitions.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
It's very interesting because I will say this, when I
began research for this book, none of my conscious impetus
was an experience of that kind. I myself at the
time wouldn't have considered myself necessary, or at least I
wasn't thinking about the fact of myself having had an
experience of that kind. However, those kinds of experiences have
(04:20):
been throughout my family for many years, and like my grandmother,
for example, would very like, very kind of, very solemnly
tell us of her experience, which was that when she
was lying on her bed at night watching television, relaxing,
her dead brother William walked into the room very simply,
(04:43):
very somberly. And that's something about these experiences is that
they're very much unembellished. They're not the chain clanking ghosts
of literature. Okay, they're not the kind of contrived ghost
stories that skeptics like to think that people have fun
making up. Okay, these are total and serious his tones
to people that are trusted, and he took his hat off,
(05:05):
made the very simple gesture of a bow and said
the very simple words Mary, which is my grandmother's name,
and then the simple words it's Holly, which was her
daughter's name. Okay, a few moments later, the phone call
came that my grandmother's daughter had been killed in a
car crush. Oh damn. Yeah, and that is something that
I hadn't thought of. This is what's interesting in relation
(05:28):
to your question. I hadn't thought of that experience until
maybe a year into the research for the book that
actually recalled that experience. And yeah, so there are other
experiences in my family, but I won't go through them
all unless you want to hear another one. I would
be happy to relate at least one more.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
I would love to, But I'd love to hear another one,
and another one and another one. But before that, you
just said something that's very interesting. Well, everything you're saying
is interesting, but you hadn't something at it was in
the family. You knew the story, and that you even
though you're writing a book about it, you hadn't thought
about it. Something triggered that memory, and it's you know,
(06:07):
if something was in the family like that, you would
think it would be like the topic of every conversation,
you know, every time a family gathered. Remember, you know
what happened to Grandma and so forth. Well, something happened
to me like that. This was just I think I've
told the story before. Well, it was not a crisis apparition.
But after the day my father was buried a few
(06:30):
years or a few days into nineteen eighty seven, he
died New Year's Eve, nineteen eighty six, and I saw
my doppelganger hovering above me. And then years later when
I started to get into you know, this arena and
talking about the paranormal and stuff, and people would say, well,
is anything ever happened to you? You know, and I said, no, nothing, nothing.
(06:53):
I had completely blocked it out. And then I had
to think. And then one day I realized, you know,
like slap my fore ahead, what am I thinking? I mean,
that was at the time, it was, it was life altering.
I saw my doppelganger hovering above me. How, I mean,
how do we how do we shut those things out?
Why do we do that?
Speaker 3 (07:15):
Yeah, that's an extraordinary experience, I mean, and you're it's
so interesting, isn't it, Because you're saying, like, really, this
is something that's like you've you saw your own doppelganger, Like,
how how could that not retain a place of importance
in my mind like such that I would keep speaking
about it, et cetera. It's so interesting how that's the case.
And then with my experience too, like how is it
(07:37):
that that's not something that I that came to mind,
either to inform the research or earlier on in the research.
It's so interesting? And yes, again, how is how are
these not topics of conversation around the kind of you know,
did the dinner table, et cetera. I mean, maybe to
some extent more superfluous kind of soup, if I can
(07:57):
use that term here, not to belittle anyone's experience, but
more kind of culturally accepted ghost stories may be told
in that regard, you know, like hunters or I saw
something in a window here or there. But yeah, these
are these experiences, as as we can see from some
of those quotes that I mentioned, like, these really are
and they can be very they can very much reorient
the individual's entire sense of their place in the cosmos
(08:20):
and what the nature of that cosmos is, and what
is the relationship between me and that and death and life,
and like what does this mean? So to some extent,
it's hard enough to talk about those questions to each other.
So if the experience is so strongly tied to those
kinds of existential questions which can bring on ease to
some extent, I can see why they aren't necessarily spoken about,
(08:41):
if only from that perspective, But certainly, of course one
of the main reasons would be, you know, the unwillingness
to share something so outside the realms of accepted daily reality,
and the unwillingness to kind of take the flack of
the you know, criticism of others, including loved ones. And
this actually, this actually is something that comes out in
(09:02):
the anthropology and ethnology too, because you will often see
these accounts kind of hidden away in the note sections,
or if I could find the reference. I mean, there
was one kind of anthropologists who's not only did he
kind of hide an experience he had the experience for example,
when he was going to meet an African tribe of
(09:22):
when he met them, when he met one of the
individuals there, the leader, he realized in that moment, oh,
this is the same person that I saw in a
dream like two nights ago. How interesting now he hid
that account away in the back of them in the
note section of his book, even though it was very
clearly an interesting and relevant anomaly to his work. And
it's not just that he hit it there. He actually
(09:43):
specified that the reason I hid it there is because
I didn't want to kind of incur the wrath of
my colleagues. And I think that really sums up why
these things are kind of less spoken about and kind
of special to the individual.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Well, it's one thing too decide you're not going to
speak about it, and I didn't except for a few
family members. I told them what had happened. But it's
another thing to completely shut it out of your own mind,
which is what happened to me for many, many years.
And I'm wondering maybe it's I don't know, self preservation,
(10:19):
a defense mechanism. Maybe I, deep down I didn't believe it.
Do you think you.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
Yeah, literally, do you consciously shut it out or did
you kind of realize years later that maybe I'm surprised
that I haven't thought about this as much as I
should have.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
It's the latter I was surprised. Had I mean, I
remember at the time it had totally rocked my world,
and why wouldn't it? And then through the passage of time,
I just forgot about it. How do you forget something
like that? I don't know, But now I think about it,
you know, probably a couple of times a month and
(10:58):
then and since then, I've had other experiences. I won't
go into now because I'm more interested in what you
have to say. But okay, so tell me more about
some of these. You know, in the family crisis apparitions
you shared the one about your grandmother. What else have
you got? I absolutely will.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
Do you mind if I speak a little more to
that point too, very quickly, first, if that's okay, please
about your experience, because I think it's very interesting. One
of the main reasons possibly at these experiences such as yours,
when you realize you think back years later and say, wow,
why haven't I thought of that for so long? It's
the problem is that, at least for a lot of
us in the Western world, there really isn't a framework
(11:37):
within which to kind of place it. There's nowhere to
very easily contextualize it. There's no cosmology to easily kind
of appeal to in order to just kind of casually
put this experience away like every other experience that we
may casually put away, like a dream, for example. But
this isn't the case all over the world. And that's
again speaking interestingly to these kind of relative reactions. Just
(12:00):
as a very quick example for our return to your regression,
a very quick example would be, like these experiences, it's
that I mentioned of dejah reve the individual may not
only dream a person ahead of time, but a place.
For example, one may come upon a place and this
isn't again, this isn't deja vu, This isn't oh I
feel like I've been here before. This is somebody who
very specifically knows they dreamed of this place before, or
(12:24):
envision before, and in some cases actually recorded this in
their journal before having arrived there. Now, my point is
that excuse me that it can be very challenging for
us to easily place that kind of in any kind
of reasonable context where we can understand it. So we
place it kind of in the back of our minds.
But for somewhere, for example, in South Indonesia, among the
Tarajian tribe, for example, Okay, they have true dreams called tindo,
(12:47):
and those are considered real experiences in which the actual
spirit or mind of the individual may attain accurate and
legitimate information. Why because it's it's simply understood that many
of the individual's life be foreshadows and dreams. Why because
the spirit can leave the body. Okay, it will do
so at night. And therefore when you see somewhere that
(13:08):
you have never been before and recognize it, the simple
explanation for them is, oh, my spirit was here before.
Very simple. For us, we don't have that. And that
was just a little point I wanted to make because
it can be quite interesting to see those different cultural reactions.
Speaker 4 (13:21):
Right, yeah, right, okay, yeah, back to your family. So
to be honest, yeah, there are multiple experiences here like
for instance, and in Ireland, actually in my home country.
These experiences do have something of a pedigree. Now, they
haven't been given great treatment overall, they haven't been really
(13:44):
paid enough attention to, but they do have a pedigree
and they do have a name. For example, here we
may call them, we may call it the fetch. These
are the these experiences of the fetch, which is kind
of the soul or spirit or double of the individual
which may turn up at death in order to kind
of let the individual no of its fate. Now regarding
my family again, like I my brother, for example, he
(14:10):
was on the bus.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
This is many years ago now, and he was on
the way to school and he just very simply saw
one of our classmates walking his dog. And I wasn't
in school that day, and Norton, I was with my cousin,
and we knew something that he didn't know. And so
when he came back and just kind of told us, oh,
(14:33):
I saw such and such walking his dog today, Well,
we informed him that that person had actually died earlier,
sorry not early, that the previous day, and he had
no idea that that was the case. So we were
quite shocked to discover that he had seen that person.
And this is this before I move on to another camp,
this brings out something interesting. Like in the book, I
(14:54):
have a chapter called Revenance Rates and Disinterested Shades, And
that's something I really want to focus in on, is
that in these experiences, in these crisis operations, often it's
that simple. It's seeing somebody walking a dog, it's seeing
somebody going about their daily life. It isn't this vast
kind of psychologically complex, kind of embellished, culturally kind of
(15:17):
effaced message or meaningful, seemingly meaningful thing. It's just a
site of visual a sighting and then later some sort
of correlation with the external world.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at
one am Eastern, and go to Coast to coastam dot
com for more