November 6, 2015 • 54 mins
What's the most intense nightmare you've ever had? Have you ever felt trapped in one? Join Ben, Matt and Noel as they explore the phenomenon known as sleep paralysis.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs two, ghosts and government cover ups, histories world
with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn
the stuff they don't want you to now. Hello, welcome
back to the show. My name is Matt and I'm Ben.
As always, we are joined in the studio today with
(00:22):
our super producer Noel the Sandman Brown. Hello, Well do
you like that Sam? And yeah, I worked on the
fan of Sam Man. And most importantly, ladies and gentlemen,
you are here and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know. And today we talked briefly on
off air. There's only one way we can start to
(00:43):
show also the story. So recurring theme for me when
I when I'm sleeping sometimes I guess you're called recurring
my marriage dream. I have this sense that I am
floating in a giant body of water, and I just
to have this overwhelming sensation that there's something much much
(01:07):
larger than me underneath me. And it's not necessarily like
something that's going to empower me. It's just a sense
of like feeling small, kind of an insignificant And sometimes
I'll wake from this and that feeling will kind of
stay with me and I'm not exactly. It's not exactly
a kind of paralysis, but it's just this carries over
(01:29):
from sleep into waking and then I sort of I'm
sort of like kind of stuck with that, and I
experience that even when I'm awaken, it's almost as feeling
I'm being fully awake and sort of still being in
that that space as through a dark, gigantic opens lit
abyss blue field. Yeah, and I mean what I what
I compare to is you know, maybe like a whale
(01:50):
or just some sort of I've always kind of been
freaked out by things that I can't see, things that
lie just beneath the surface, and you know, nothing represents
a larger and seeing, you know, unseeable, unknowable world than
the ocean or right. And so that's just that's something
that's always stuck with me, and it comes back pretty often. Yeah,
(02:12):
the the Leviathan is a very powerful and scary thing
to experience. What about you, Matt, You going, oh, yeah,
certainly I can relate to that feeling, especially being in
the ocean, but I have not really experienced that much
in a dreaming state. I just I had a story
about uh, my wife because we recently experienced this or
(02:33):
she recently experienced it. Um, I guess why don't I
tell that story after we actually talk about what it is? Right? Yes,
So we're talking a little bit about nightmares. And it's
strange that there are some nightmares that occur more often
in one culture than another. There's some nightmares that seem
(02:54):
weirdly specific. A lot of people have nightmares related to
their teeth crumbling or falling out, or having to do
stuff with other people's teeth. Um. So a nightmare at
heart is what is called a parasomnia. And so a
word of today, right, Uh, like the time when we
(03:15):
learned that other what's that word for fake pseudicide? Right? Yeah,
when you fake your own suiceide, which we didn't know
is the thing. So the word like that is paras
omnia or sleeping disorder. A nightmare is a kind of parasomnia,
and nightmare is a weird name when we think about it. Right,
it's like two words. Was I mean like nighthorse kind
(03:38):
of it's just is it scarier? Um? What it originally
meant was this idea of an evil uh incubus or
succubus afflicting sleepers with the feeling of suffocation. Yeah, incubus
would be the male version that generally attacks females, and
(03:59):
the succup is the female. I think, definitely sit on
top of you and steal your breath sometimes or just
fixiate you, suck out your soul, right, I mean that's yeah,
that's sort of the image that I exactly sap your
life energy, right and drink your milkshake. Don't do your
precious bodily plots. Yeah, exactly. And so when we look
at this um now, when we say, oh, I had
(04:22):
a nightmare, my um, I I had a nightmare where
I was walking down the hallway when there was nothing
but shutting doors, and then you know, I kept hearing
someone just around the corner, um singing Lionel Richie's Hello.
I'm making this up. This is happening. Um. But the
(04:44):
that sounds like it might be not that scary, but no,
it's me. There's a lot of Hello songs. But the
the point is that nightmare, once upon a time described
a very specific type of unpleasant dream, and it's the
thing we're talking about today. We're talking about. Before we
(05:05):
give the scientific term, let's just talk about the myth
of this idea of this unwanted visitor coming to find
you in the night. So we know it goes across
different cultures, right, Oh yeah, sure. One of the things
I found was a reference that some people attribute to
this type of thing, another entity visiting a human in
(05:28):
the night. Goes back to the Bible, and it comes
from Genesis six one through four, and the one in
particular I was looking at was the New International version.
It says when the sons of God saw that the
daughters of men were beautiful, and they married them, any
of them they chose, and it speaks about them going
to the daughters of men and having children with them.
(05:50):
And some people attribute this to being like a spirit
or a you know, an angel perhaps coming and visiting
a woman in the night. I don't know, hidden, yeah,
and we also we also hear in other times you've
heard people like you remember the black cat thing like
that cats would sit on the chest of someone, especially babies,
(06:12):
and suck out their breath. There's a fear of black
cats all, I mean, multiple parts of the world for
many different reasons too. But yeah, the actually adopted a
black cat and Humane Society they said they don't adopt
them out around Halloween because people tend to do terrible
things to them, and great, that's what's your cat's name?
(06:37):
Maybe maybe maybe, as in maybe blue, Yeah, as in
maybe you're right, maybe I'm crazy. We should move on.
Another reference that I found, and specifically it was from
this production called The Entity, which aired on I think
Channel four in the BBC, but it was made in
association with TLC and a couple other companies. But anyway,
(07:02):
they put a quote from Horace from the first century
BC at the beginning, at the very top of the
episode they created, and it is quote, when doomed to death,
I will attend you as a nocturnal fury. I will
attack your faces and brooding upon your restless breasts. I
will deprive you of repose by terror. That's pretty crazy.
(07:25):
I mean, I'm sure you've got other examples, but it
just seems to me to be a very striking image
that could find its way into lots of different cultures.
Just the idea of being asleep, completely having your guard down,
and being just totally vulnerable to whether it be spirits,
whether it be physical visitors in the night intending to
do you harm. I mean, sleep is a is a
(07:47):
pretty unique situation in that respect, and this podcast ties
into ties into some strange parts there because we're also
going to talk about uh, reality, which I know can
be such a difficult thing to talk about, and we
might spend in a few circles. But what is the
nature of reality Plato's cave all that stuff, perception, physicality, man, Yeah, yeah,
(08:14):
that's what That's what people are telling me and most
of most of my hallucinations, even though not really vivid ones,
even just like the whispers when I'm walking by the microwave. Anyway, speaking,
moving on, So the what one thing we need to
talk about and is the idea of shadow people. We
have talked about the different ways cultures interpret the same
(08:37):
common symptoms, right, like an inability to move except for
maybe the eyes, difficulty breathing, hallucinations, a sense of a
presence and very strong emotional reactions to that presence. Yea
like tingling that sometimes will or a sense of tingling
or electricity in the air or in the body as
(09:00):
the feeling of the feeling that you're unable to move
starts to occur. I read a lot about that a
couple other things. Oh sounds. I didn't realize that auditory
hallucinations were such a large part of this. Yeah, yeah,
auditory hallucinations. It's strange because every sense that people have,
(09:20):
and there are more than five, I can have some
sort of hallucinatory aspect occur. It's just your body giving
you different information. So these are waking nightmares, Is that correct? Yeah,
the very yes, because your body is somewhere in this
limbo between between the world you know. Well, and it's
like I said at the top of the show, with
my dream, it's sort of I mean, it's not this extreme,
(09:43):
but it's something that's that's recurred enough that I'm it's
meaningful to me. This sense, this feeling of being tiny
and significant and being dwarfed by some sort of mammoth
unseen being is obviously something that resonates with me. And
when I await, I still that stays with me to
the point that I, you know, I am very much
(10:06):
still in that dream headspace even though I'm awake. So
it's not exactly awaking nightmare like we're describing here, but
I think it's it's along the same lines at least
as far as my experience. You know, Yeah, it's it's
it's a very strange thing have you guys ever had
a really intense nightmare where you wake up out of
it and then you know that if you go back
(10:27):
to sleep, you'll be back in that world. Oh yeah,
And then you don't go back to sleep, you put
on something nice like Fallout three three. Yep, that's what
one does, right. I think I may have grown out
of that a little bit. I definitely remember that from
when I was younger. There was a time where I
was absolutely terrified by the movie It and that was
(10:51):
one I remember just having such a hard time with
where I would have these nightmares and then I would
wake up and I would have to stay up all
night watching The flint Stones on Cartoon Network just to
calm myself down because I made the mistake of watching
it when I was too young. And god, if I
watched that movie recently, and it's just awful. It's not
scary at all. It's scared the crap out of you
when I was Hey, maybe that's an unpopular opinion, but
(11:13):
the book, the book was scary. I thought Tim Curry
did a great job. I did a fine job, But
I mean, there's so many things that you can that
you can't do in a nineteen nineties, made for TV,
made for TV serial mini series. I don't care what
you say. Every time I look at one of those
a little runoff sewer great things, I see his face, Well,
they just imagine that. I see his face. Yeah, and
(11:35):
then there everybody float. And let's be honest, it doesn't
matter who is talking to you from inside a sewer.
It's just like nonchalantly. Hey, the more well known they are,
the less cool it is. It doesn't matter if if
that is a pretty striking image where he just kind
of nonchalantly just sort of like pops up out of
there and the kid yeah, if you guys, don't get
(11:56):
me wrong, if if one of us were trapped in
a sewer or even more creepily just nonchalantly and said
yeah to the kids credit he dessert would be like,
how did you get down there? Yeah? It's yeah. But
the the strange thing about these nightmares, these disquieting things,
this line between what is real and what is uh
(12:19):
what is just imagined, came to a head with a
short story I'd like to tell you guys, in place
of the actual nightmare thing. So in two thousand one,
on an episode of one of my favorite radio shows,
Coast to coast, A m art Belt had a guest
on and their conversation wandered over to this notion of
(12:42):
shadow people, murky and distinct, hasty things seen at the
edge of vision, often walking all crazy like the person
in the ring. Listeners, you can't see it, but I'm
doing a pretty good physical impression. And uh, and what
we What they found was that so many people who
had never thought this experience happened to anyone else, found
(13:06):
out that it happened all the time. Well I'm exaggerating,
it happened often. So they started writing in with their
pictures of shadow people and the descriptions of these demons,
these ghosts, these extra dimensional beings, and this similar set
of symptoms. So here's the question, right, putting aside whether
(13:31):
it's real not real, how could so many people experience
the same thing? I mean, were they making it all up?
That's a possibility, But it could also just be how
our how how our brains function right, and how we
interpret things and try and make faces out of nothing,
(13:55):
just because it's an evolutionary advantageous for us to do that.
I remember the term night terror, So it's sort of
like a distinction between just a run of the mill
nightmare and a night terror that actually like affects you physically.
And that's what this strikes me as. And I mean,
I understand this need to insert some sort of boogeyman
(14:17):
into something that's so traumatic like that. I think you're right.
I think it is just the way our brains kind
of fill in the gaps. I mean, is there something
legit supernatural going on here? I can't say, but it's
it's interesting to think about. It's a possibility, and it
is something that many people believe that there is. I
mean again, for for thousands of years now, it has
(14:38):
been written about these you know, beings that perhaps we're
just named different things throughout culture because if we're all
experiencing the same thing because of our brain, then perhaps
we're just applying what we know to what we are
seeing right or hearing right. Like uf of visitation stories
have a whole lot in common with old stories from
fairy tales and change leans and abducted children and visits
(15:02):
in the night. Uh you're right though, that whether it's
a demon, a witch, a shadow, black head, ghost, etcetera,
they all have the same things in common. And Uh,
what's interesting about this is that this is not just
a bunch of folklore or just a bunch of anecdotes
(15:24):
or old wives tales or opinions. Um, we're talking about
this earlier and that's what our video is about this week.
Uh No, what what does the world of science recognize
this as? So scientists call this phenomenon sleep paralysis, and
it's one of these things that despite there being so
(15:44):
many reports of it and it being clearly relatively widespread,
they're just not quite sure what causes it. And that's
what's fascinating to me about it. So there's actually quite
a few theories about it though, one of them being
that it's an overlap in stages of r A, M
and waking cycles. Another is that it represents uh, mismatched
neural functions, out of balance neural functions. And sleep deprivation
(16:07):
is another one, or disturbance of routine sleep patterns. And
I mean I could speak to sleep deprivation definitely. Some
crazy things can happen when you don't get enough sleep. Yeah,
that's another thing. There is a particular group that also
reports seeing shadow people, and those are methamphetamine addicts. After
(16:29):
after a long bender ride in the rails bender. I mean,
I know that if I just don't if I stay
up all night maybe one night, and then don't get
enough sleep the next night. I always refer to myself
as being a little punchy, you know, where I'm kind
of just like my brain is not firing on all cylinders,
you know, and more so than usual, and I'm much
(16:50):
more likely to kind of fall into sort of almost
like a weird fugue state, you know. And so I
can imagine that you take that and multiply it, it
could be pretty intense. Yeah, that's all I know now.
So I definitely get the corner of your eye when
you moved in the room. Now. Yeah, I get that
(17:12):
feeling way too often now. And it's not just because
I'm aware of at least what's happening chemically in my brain.
I'm I'm aware that that's the the issue. Right. So wait,
so but this also was something that was that was
close to you. This was this suggestion came to the
group because there's something you wanted to look into, right, Yes,
(17:35):
I okay, So not long ago, I watched The Nightmare,
which is a documentary available on Netflix that was directed
by Rodney Asher. Who also did the shining. I mean,
it's just all tangentially related to our show in this
beautiful way. So I just happened upon it. It was
on my suggested things to watch, and man, it was great.
(17:58):
It was you know, it's been touted if you look
at the trailers like this is the scariest movie that's happened,
the kind of film like in the documentary, but it
has some production elements. They did a great job of
doing some re enactments, yes, and but really it's just
the stories themselves of all of these people that they
(18:19):
interviewed for the film who have experienced this type of things,
specifically where you are experiencing sleep paralysis, where your body
you believe that you are in your body, you are
awake in your room or wherever you're sleeping, and these
entities are visiting you and they mean most of the
(18:40):
time to do your harm. Anyway, I just watched that
and Diana, my wife, and our new son, they were
asleep in the room with me, but they had been
asleep for a long time, so I was like, I
think I can watch this now and it won't be
a big deal. We watch it. Well, last week Diana
had an experience of her own with this with a
(19:00):
sleep paralysis, and it's something that I have never experienced
before in my life, and sadly, I was a little
jealous that she got to experience it, even though it
is a horrifying when you're in that moment, it is
a horrifying thing. I imagine, at least from the film
The Nightmare. It seems freaking horrifying and terrible. It sounds
(19:21):
like getting water boarded or something. It's just awful. Well, okay,
so anyway, she experienced it, and I just asked you
guys if you wanted to do this, and that's where
we're here. So Diane, if you're listening to this, we
hope you're doing well. When we'll try to do justice
to this also other people who have experienced this. Before
(19:43):
we're going further, we need to talk a little bit
about r E m uh the band dream sequence. You
guys talk about the passion. Okay, we'll talk about yes.
So rapid eye movement one of the things that happens
when you are asleep, and if you are a child sleeping,
(20:05):
you will have this much more often than you will
as an adult. Kids just dream more, and you know,
there's something kind of like touchy weird about that. But
what we find when we talk about the way nightmares
and r e M sleep uh interact. The only said
(20:26):
a really interesting thing with the idea that sleep cycles
might be happening out of order, essentially right so or
or together, overlapping, overlapping, and in a time when maybe
they should be consecutive waves in and out. So r
M sleep starts with a signal from a thing at
a neighborhood at the base of your brain. If your
(20:48):
brain is a city, your your your brain has a
neighborhood way in the back called the ponds, and these
signals travel to the fallamus and that goes to the
cerebral cortex. Cerebral cortex is like the hot important part
of town. It's where all the colleges are, right right.
(21:09):
I hope it's a little better than that. Well, I
mean it helps you get a whole foods Oh gosh,
any South Park fans in the audience, I need some
curious fusion delights. Sorry you say that sometimes. I'm sorry.
I'm so sorry to take us away and then take
us back. I'm sorry, bring it back, man, real it
(21:31):
in so the cerebral cortex is going to be the
part of your brain responsible for organizing the things you learn,
organizing the things you think, enabling your thought process. So
when this arim sleep occurs, the ponds of sending sending
signals that shut off neurons in the spinal cord, causing
the temporary proalysis of the limb muscles. That's why when
(21:53):
you have dreams, whether they're happier sad dreams, and you're
running your ass off throne usually usually, but if that,
if that delicate balance is disturbed, then you have all
kinds of issues you could have. You could just be sleepwalking,
that's something that's how it manifests. Sometimes you could be
(22:16):
like my dog, where my dog is fast asleep on
the couch and just running like the limbs are physically moving.
Either of you ever slept walk before? Yeah? I have not.
I used to a lot when I was younger, Like
I actually did it, went to my neighbor's house. I
mean seriously, And you know, I wonder why what the
distinction there is? Like what did you do? I think
(22:38):
I knocked on the door and it was wrapped in
a blanket, and they, you know, answered the door and
We're like, hey, that's weird. Go home. I guess probably
you know, six or seven to do like that. One
time I pete in my dad's drawer. Dude, okay, this
just brought I have slept walk. So my dad used
(22:59):
to listen to record words on headphones down in the
living room, and apparently one night I walked down with
while my dad was just sitting on the floor. He's
just sitting on the floor with his hands on his head,
laying back, listening to some I don't know, probably eagles,
it was probably equals, And I walked over and just
pete right onto a speaker huge like these big speakers,
(23:19):
they weren't even in use. I just pete a run
on them. Well, I don't even know how old there was.
I'm sorry to say I've never done any sleeping. Right, yeah, exactly,
excellent word. But the the strange part of this is
that we still don't completely understand right, I'm sleeping. You
(23:39):
might get out of it and be in this stage
of somewhere in between waking and sleeping, and your body
still thinks it's supposed to be shut down. But you
I've opened your eyes in the real world. You've violated
some fundamental law that fiction writers seem to make up
whatever they do a dream world still worry and well, yeah,
(24:01):
and then you're so as those two systems are overlapping,
you may be it may be causing you to see things,
but overlaid on top of your actual room. Right, And
that's why this stuff is so terrifying, because your brain
really believes that it's there. Mm hmmm. So now we've
(24:23):
answered a little bit of the scientific stuff behind the folklore.
Right when we come back, we're going to take a
closer look at maybe the more esoteric abstract one might
even say, paranormal things it involved. At first, a word
from our sponsor, and we are back. So we talked
(25:00):
about the science. We talked about some personal revelations, some
experiential things about nightmares. Let's talk about sleep paralysis itself.
I pulled up some numbers. I'm gonna walk you guys through.
Uh So, just to get a sense of the magnitude
you will hear. You'll hear estimates saying anywhere from two
to eight percent of the population experiences sleep paralysis. So
(25:26):
if we just took the number six percent, right, which
is when I saw in uh in a couple of
different studies out of Stanford. Then what we see is
that as of fifteen, if there are more than seven
point three billion people on the planet, and that means
that even with the lower estimate, nearly like four hundred
(25:48):
forty something million people experienced sleep paralysis. It's larger than
the population of the US. It really makes you understand
why when Art Bell made that show, they got so
many images of people sending in like, hey, this is
what it looks like and what it feels like. Yeah,
what kind of images of what what the what they
had experienced as shadow people or entities? Yeah, they they
(26:11):
drew these these were they weren't supposed to. I think
there were probably a few alleged photographs. But but with
that point, with over four hundred million people experiencing things
that they explain in in the such a similar way,
what what gives you know? And the guy who made
(26:32):
the documentary um was Rodney Asher. He said that that
was one of the more interesting questions to him, not
not necessarily the forefront of the science behind this, but
why it was so similar, you know, I mean, and
admittedly the science is pretty murky at this point. Yeah,
(26:54):
there are questions that remain unanswered. You know, there's every
time on this show or other shows, every time someone
at house stuff work starts to tangle with the dream world.
We quickly learned that most people say, it's probably this
or maybe that, but I don't know. Well yeah, and
the the underlying belief structure of a culture. Honestly, that
(27:18):
is the main way to explain something like this a
lot of time, and it's something occurred to me. Um,
I know this is this is probably pretty intensive think
about for you especially, But crib death, like, you know,
did you ever read that Chuck Polinic book Lullaby. It
was all about like this African spirit that causes the
infants to you know, pass away in their cribs. I
(27:38):
just wonder if there's any connection between this idea of
sleep paralysis and demons or whatever, and if that's like
an infant's version of experiencing that, because think about it,
I mean, like if if if it's that bad for
an adult, can you imagine if something like that happened
to an infant. You know, that's that's an interesting proposition
because there are two myths that tied directly to concepts
(28:01):
of infant mortality that I think of just when you
say that. And the first is um The first is
the black cat myth, and that the cat would attack
a child, right, we know that one. And that's the
one where a cat for some reason gets on top
of a baby and crib event sucks its breath out
right and or in reality sits on its face and
(28:24):
probably just suffocates it with its Which could which could happen?
Is this took a dark turn, my friends? The other
one would be, of course, those old stories of change leans.
That was a way too. That was a way for
people to interpret that kind of situation, you know, like
they advocate's healthy, then they have a kid who's not.
Then it must have been some sort of intervention by
(28:49):
unnatural forces. So this brings us to the bigger one
of the bigger questions. Oh wait, wait, wait, wait, wait
wait wait, Before we get to that, guys, I gotta
say I think in our notes here it says there's
a part where I wanted to complain about the video script.
It's tough time writing this one. Were tough time writing
(29:09):
this well. If you if you check out the video listeners,
go go easy on it. The editing will as always
be fantastic and the production will be great. But uh,
if at some points there you go, I don't know,
it's kind of weak, then it's my fault, not that
their knows. That's so to be clear, I think you're
(29:30):
a little too hard on yourself. This is an interesting
topic though it's a little out of the norm, you know,
for the show, So I applaud you for attacking it
with such. We had a lot of people get upset
that we covered slender Man, even when we said Slenderman,
it's not real and was invented in two thousand and nine. Yeah,
(29:50):
they were mad because we were listening to our younger viewers.
And that's the that's I would say the comment that
we get the most, But I didn't viewers. Man, won't
you do someone about doge? About what a dog? I don't. Well,
that's the thing, like I I don't know the age
of someone who writes to us unless they tell us.
(30:14):
And uh and we we try to cover as much
as we can. We have a backlog. Uh and and
not every not everything is going to be successful. But
I bring him slender Man because we are We've been
exploring mythology in this weird way and folklore, and that
brings me to like the biggest question that I have
(30:37):
to ask you guys, do you think these kind of
things are real or that there's some way to encounter
another entity through your brain? It gets it takes me
back to the video Gland. That's what I think about
because I believe melo melotonin is released from the panel Gland.
(31:03):
I believe that's correct. I'm not a scientist. That's what
I found in my notes. Uh, I don't know. Somebody,
Emory shoot me a note anyway. Yeah, you're I mean,
you're right. So that the idea that there is an
idea that the panel Gland seated in the center of
your brain is somehow this gateway to other dimensions or
(31:24):
the spirit, realm or whatever you want to call it
um and perhaps this is a way that we could
get into communication with other things, if they exist. I
tend not to believe that that is the truth, but
I don't think there's anybody currently trying to write, I
don't know, write a thesis paper. Well that I think
at the end of the day, we're all working with
(31:44):
the same equipment, you know, and so when certain wires
get crossed and things you know, chemicals are out of
balance that it can produce similar results. I mean, look
at people describing hallucinogenic experiences for example, and taking you know, psychedelics.
Shout out the Graham Hancock and the machine Elves. Do
you guys, that's a thing, that's a I'll show No,
(32:07):
I just mean, I mean, I don't have any specifics
right off the bat, but I mean, and just in
reading people, you know, descriptions of their their trips or whatever,
there are a lot of similarities. There are a lot
of things that are experienced very similarly. So I just
wonder if the fact that many people report similar sleep paralysis, um,
(32:28):
you know, apparitions appearing to them. Like I said, we're
working with the same equipment, if the wires are crossed
in a similar way, would it produce similar results? Oh? Yeah,
you know, that's that's interesting because we can make I mean,
human experimentation is still pretty limited in this day and age,
but we could do some interesting things if ethics weren't involved.
(32:51):
I'm just saying, but no, I'm just it just has
to say. It's just just spitballing here, guys. I'm not
gonna do it. I'm not going to you. Uh, surgery
on people's beneal glands, you guys, and hallucinogens. That's crazy.
It's interesting though, I'm just saying it's interesting. There's a
lot to learn. Oh yeah, sure, Uh, I'm just really fast.
(33:13):
I wanted to come up with some of the ideas
of what people who do experience this have attempted to
do to make it stop. And there are a lot
of things when if you consulted, let's say, a therapist
or a psychologist, and you you say, hey, I'm experiencing
this at night, I'm I'm feeling paralyzed and I see
shadow people. I know that sounds crazy. What can I do? Um,
(33:35):
you're gonna be told, well, we need you to eat
a little more healthily, we need you to get more sleep,
not use you know, your cell phone or other electronic
devices right before you go to bed. All these different
things of lifetime lifestyle changes and going back to even
two thousand two in that Entity documentary, Uh, people who
(33:57):
experience this express how difficult it is to hear that
because a lot of times it doesn't really help that much.
Perhaps it will alleviate the symptoms slightly, but um, it's
almost it feels like a dismissal at least is what
it seems from these people who are interviewed like it's
not real, look chill out well, and are these people
(34:21):
just cool as cucumbers in their day to day lives
or do they struggle with some serious anxiety that I
would say at least these are the two main documentaries
I watched. The Nightmare in the Entity, it seems it
seems to fluctuate. So there was one guy who says
he experiences it almost every night. He's unable to It's
(34:41):
affected him where he can't keep down a regular job,
he can't really do much of anything. His social world
is just all messed up because at night he's just terrified.
So you would almost argue that his daily anxiety is
as a result of this, this these night terrors, right
right right, That's what I just wonder if folks with
intense anxiety issues that that affect them every day are
(35:04):
more prone to having these nighttime and anxiety experiences, or
they could be real. It's a possibility, honestly, it is.
It's well, that's that's the thing. If we're talking just
in terms of rhetoric and technicalities, and there's always the
out where we can say, well, perhaps there's just since
(35:26):
we don't know if these things were to exist, we
don't know what substance they would be formed of. We
don't have a way to measure whatever constitutes them, right,
So it is possible that we just don't have the technology.
But then it's also probable that it's not necessarily a haunting.
(35:47):
I love I love horror movies, you guys, and I
love watching, uh watching movies with a lot of heavily
implied mythology. I will say I myself have never ex
experienced sleep paralysis in the way that I hear it
depicted in these sorts of things. You know. Um, I
(36:09):
guess I should be fortunate in that regard. But when
when we talked about the nature of reality, we're talking
about whether you find your experiences true? Is that the
ultimate thing you can trust? Or do you trust what
(36:30):
other people tell you about their experiences or experiences of
humanity at large? You know what I mean? Or can
you even trust what you see in here sometimes because
we know that your tricks on you. One of the
strangest episodes we did, which is also a difficult one,
was about the flat Earth theory, and I think that's
(36:50):
the one where it ends in. There's you know, there's
clearly guys, Okay, the Earth is not a perfect sphere,
but it is a sphere. It's not a day, it's
not a disk. Yeah, and uh, there's a there's a
group of people, the vast majority are people who are
sort of trolling, and they called themselves a flat Earth society.
(37:10):
But their belief is, or the stick is that with
the right rhetorical tools, you can't argue anything. And I
get that. I mean, I'm not excited about it, but
that's the real thing. I like the idea. And then
there are there are very few people who do actually
believe that the Earth is flat. And I was reading
(37:32):
you know, he's doing the research on this, and one
person said, oh, yeah, astronauts have been there. How much
do you trust, asked her, do you know any astronauts?
I think we Yeah, that was what we used that, yeah,
because I didn't know what else. Like. It was just
such a great question, you know, because I don't know
when he asked her, right, it's completely true, but at
(37:54):
the same time it's not plausible. So with with that mind,
we haven't dug all the way into altering reality via hallucinogens.
And I think that's a very good conversation for us
to have. And I want to know if listeners. We've
talked a little bit about the science, right, but I
want to know if you out there listening have had
(38:18):
an experience like this that you believe cannot be explained
by some sort of wonky hiccup in your sleep cycle
or another mundane thing, the chemical and balance of some sort. Yeah,
And if you have had that, what is your explanation
for what it is? Um? I really want to know
(38:40):
that some of the hypotheses that were put through in
the nightmare where they're one of the people said they
think perhaps this might be some sort of visitation from
beings from another dimension. Another person said, well, what if
people who are experiencing this are how getting the raw
(39:01):
data from the from the world, from this reality or
whatever it is that most people can't process, and they
can't process the full raw data of what they're seeing.
That is the by the way, that last one is
the guy who can't hold down a job. Um, well,
that's the kind of thing people talk about with the hallucinations,
(39:22):
you know, is is this sense of a flood of
data and information that you can't perceive when you're not
in that state. Yeah, there's too much. By the way,
I can we talk about one specific thing that happened
in the Nightmare documentary one Okay, it was that guy.
(39:42):
He said that he was asleep in his bed. But
this is a spoiler. Um, if you want to watch
the documentary, and I highly recommend that you do. He
says he was sleeping in his bed and there were
two females sleeping in the bed with him. He was
on one side and then two g He says that
he got the sleep paralysis or it affected him, and
(40:05):
he couldn't move. He saw a huge eight foot black
figure standing over him, had red eyes and was speaking
to him and saying things like you don't know me,
but I know you, but you know who I am.
Like really strange, cryptic but and almost contradictory statements. And
he was terrified. He couldn't move. Then all of a sudden,
(40:26):
the girl next to him shot up out of bed, screaming.
At least according to this guy, this is his story,
and she just I guess it woke him up and
knocked him out of it. What she said she saw
was a black cat sitting on her chest with red eyes,
speaking in some other language to him at while at
(40:48):
the same time he believes he's seeing this giant eight
foot character talking to him. I don't know. That to
me is fascinating, the idea that two people could experience
something very strange but so similar at the same time. Yeah,
I'd like to hear stories about that. There's there's another
thing I want to pose it there. Wait, man, I'm sorry,
I never I don't mean to interrupt you, but should
(41:09):
we keep that in? I feel like maybe I was
just telling too much of the movie with the two?
With the two? Yeah, the story is an antegoque front
of a film. No, we should totally keep that. I mean,
I don't know, it's interesting, but it just sounds like
some tweaker stuff to me, really a little bit. And
what's he doing in bed with the two chicks in
the first place? And this is the guy that candle
down the job. I'm sorry, I should I do agree
(41:32):
with Noel here. I feel like you're right, man, there's
some there's some missing plot points, all right, Look, I'll
give you that, but it makes for a good story.
It makes for a good story. All right, So there
is you know, there's this strange debate about how many
senses we have. We have so many other strange senses
(41:53):
that don't quite get the don't quite get the superstar
status of the of the main five, right like the
main cast. So I'd like to do an exercise. Ladies
and gentlemen listening to the podcast, we'd like to do
an exercise with you. Now, if you're in a safe place,
we want you to turn out the lights. Go to
the darkest place you can find, physically, not emotionally. Don't
(42:16):
get weird with it. And okay, are you there? All right?
Close your eyes and take your right hand with your
eyes closed, so with it straight out at your side,
as though you're trying to lean to a wall on
your right. And then when your palm up, move your
hand slowly in front of where your field of vision
(42:39):
would be if your eyes are open. You're in the dark.
You have your eyes closed, but according to several different
studies of you will be able to somehow see your hand,
or you will think that you see your hand, because
your body has a sense of its own um where
(43:00):
it exists in space. Right, not necessarily everybody but basically daredevil.
But the study says people basically have daredevil esque powers.
And this is interesting to mean because it then means
that you could have I don't know about you, guys,
but I've had this slippery moment where I feel like
(43:21):
my whole body has slipped away, where I think, Okay,
I'm it, it's time to get working on the show.
Matt Nolan, I are meeting up, so let me get up,
and I'm brushing my teeth and play it on the pants.
And then the meeting some cereal or something. I'm kidding.
I don't have my life together enough to handle breakfast
and uh. And then I realized that I've been in
bed the entire time. I'm just laying there, and I
(43:44):
started thinking about what I had to do and slowly
started slipping back into dreaming about it. Yeah, I've done
that before when I sneeze hit the sneeze button, and
when I shouldn't have. My dreams aren't that organized? Oh man,
if any of my dreams will work appropriate, I would
I would tell Tell the real way really fast. Before
(44:05):
we get out of here, guys, I just want to say,
there there's a ton of research you can do on
your own about this stuff there are. They're all kinds
of books. One of my favorite ones about this idea
of hallucinating is called Hallucinations by All of Our Sex
Fascinating book. Diana has a whole host of his books, um,
just dealing with what happens when weird things happen in
(44:27):
the brain. Uh, really great stuff. Another one was, Oh,
it's actually called sleep paralysis by Shelley Adler, who's uh
someone that Diana knew as well. Sorry, that's my wife.
Everybody smart, she's really smart. I think that's really that's
really I just want to say, they're all kinds of books,
they're all kinds of places online if you were suffering
(44:48):
from this that that can at least try to help
you out, and their forms you can go to and
discuss with other people. It's a serious thing, and I
would yeah, I would like to say for my part,
I am not diminishing this variants. I believe that people
can have all kinds of experiences and just because we
don't share them does not make them anymore or less real.
So if this is happening for you and it's something
(45:09):
that you're struggling with, let us know we were interested
in hearing about it, and I just hope at no
point during this episode that I come off as being
flippant about it, right, especially if this is the verdict
is so far the scientific consensus, I should say, is
that this is not something that will physically harm you. However,
(45:30):
this can be emotionally traumatizing, and there are people who
have reported being physically harmed by what they believe psycho
somatic possibly or but they believe that they have been um,
you know, assaulted like punched or scratched. And and guys,
we've all drank too much in our twenties and younger listeners. Yeah, yeah,
(45:55):
that's some adventures ahead of your time, so you know, people,
My point is people have woken up with how did
that get there? Kind of bruise before, you know what
I mean. And just because we don't know where something
came from doesn't mean that it automatically implies a certain
like a certain outcome or a certain cause. Rather sure,
(46:17):
so I'm glad we got that disclaimer out there, guys,
because this is a serious problem. As Matt said, you
can go to forums to talk with other people who
have experienced this, and many people will have different explanations
for the causes. But I'm sure there are different versions
of the experience. We're kind of talking about a specific
one that was portrayed very chillingly in this film Nightmare.
(46:41):
But you have to imagine as many people as there
are out there that have these experiences, there have to
be lots of different vas Yeah. There, it's always always
slightly different, and it's usually most of the time just
this dark being or beings or the sensation of what yes,
(47:01):
And that's that's kind of why I at the very
top of the podcast, just to circle back, I mentioned
my you know, recurring dream or nightmare. See, the thing is,
at this age, I almost don't even think about things
as nightmares anymore because they don't scare me. It's just
a sense that I'm left with that is it can
be a positive thing, like I said, feeling my size
(47:22):
and feeling and the insignificance of you know, me in
relation to the machinations of the universe and larger beings
and things like that. So I mean, to me, the
thing that I'm experiencing is as much an apparition as
one of these shadow people. You know. It's it's it's
just kind of like it represents something. At least that's
(47:42):
the way I interpreted it represents whether whether it's a
lack of something, a you know, lack of confidence or
you know, some sort of thing that is difficult to
deal with. That's kind of how you know, I look
at it. You know, that was well said. I I
think that's I think it's handed air way to look
at it. And we would like to hear what you think,
(48:03):
so right to us, right to us directly or find
us on the internet, and just to show you that
we actually do read, listen, or mail. Do you guys
want to do something? Absolutely, I've got one right here.
This mail comes to us from Matt. Matt is very
generous with his compliments. He uh says he's listening to
(48:28):
the Halloween Special podcast. He wanted to share a somewhat
similar experience he had last year. I'll be, Oh, excellent,
I'll be His story doesn't involve ghosts or anything bad happening,
So here it is. Um, let's see. At this point
in time, I've been running a house with my wife
in central Pennsylvania for going on three years. The house
was in a quiet community and we felt a sense
of security. I imagine anyone living in the suburbs normally feels.
(48:51):
One week in the middle of the summer, while I
was away on business, our central air went out. My
wife called the landlord to have it fixed, as it
gets pretty toasty in Pennsylvania in the summer months. The
landlord had the HVAC guy called my wife and asked
when she would be home. My wife responded that she
wouldn't be home until around six pm. The HVAC guy
said he had a local job in the area, but
didn't know if he could hang around that long. She
(49:13):
told my wife he'd see if he could troubleshoot the
problem from outside, and told my wife to call him
if it had been a success. So my wife got
off work and went home to find a work van
outside our house, but the HVAC guy was nowhere to
be seen. She walked to the front door of our
house to find that the door had been unlocked. She
opened the door to find the HVAC guy standing in
our living room. Obviously startled, she asked the man how
(49:35):
he got inside. He replied, oh, well, a lot of
landlords keeps spare keys on top of the electric meters
for maintenance people. I looked and found a key to
your house sitting there. Sorry to startle you, it goes
without saying. My wife felt a mixture of terror and
anger that this man took the liberty to get inside
our home without our permission. It equally freaked us out
(49:58):
that we had a spare key outside our home for
two years that we had no idea about. After my
wife told me this, I immediately called the landlord and
as far our locks to be changed, as it is
entirely possible another key could exist without our knowledge. We
live in the same house to this day, but it
still freaks me out knowing how vulnerable we were. A
word of advice to anyone running a house, check with
(50:19):
your landlord to see if they have a spare key
staffed around the property. Anyway, that was my experience with
finding maintenance people creepily waiting inside my home. Thank you
for producing a great show, and I look forward to
future episodes. I think that hits on the theme of
the of the episode. I mean just this. You know,
if you've heard the expression safe as houses, right, that
doesn't apply anymore, you know, it just doesn't. But the
(50:41):
thing is is that we feel safe in our home
just naturally you want to at least because it's it's
it's your You've got your walled in, it's like your fortress.
But there are so many things that we take for granted,
like a maintenance person, like a spare key, like having
a landlord that is in control of our locks and
(51:01):
has extra keys that could be hanging around without our knowledge. Yeah.
So I mean, like I said in the episode, I
don't want people to be paranoid and live in fear of,
you know, being invaded or something like that. But you
know that these things are an issue. You have to
be aware of your surroundings. So thank you Matt for
writing in again, for being very kind, and for sharing
a pretty disturbing real life version of you know, the
(51:25):
kind of the story that we read may have just
been a story, who knows, but that's a real world example.
He yikes. We have one more listener mail before we
head out today, and that is from our friend Mike
in and guys. Mike was writing in about our Highway
of Tears episode says, hey, I recently found your podcasts
(51:47):
and been spending hours a day catching up. I'm a
truck driver, so there's been many Miles that you've kept
me company. Keep up the great work and thanks for
the thought provoking topics. As a side note on your podcast,
Highway of Tears and the on serial killers, you talked
about truckers being serial killers. Just know that most of
us are hard working family guys and gals who just
wanted to deliver our goods and get home safely to
(52:09):
our families. Mike, I think that was I think that's
a good point because we didn't we sort of said
how rare serial killers are. Well, I think we should
establish because we do have a lot of trekkers listening
to the show as well, we should establish the trekkers
are good people. You know, even if they weren't listening
to our show, they would still be awesome because they
(52:31):
get us things. I mean, that's the only way things
happen to get other places was because truckers exist, right,
Cargo ships and trucks and rail Uh. Truckers don't just
drive racks in a very real way, they drive the economy. Yeah,
my buddy Charlie who just moved back to upstate New York,
his dad and a couple other guys that they would
get around and talk about you know what would happen
(52:53):
if the trucker associations all decided to go on strike
and the people in the docks all the sided, dude
go on strike because you know, of mistreatment or something. Yeah,
he was just talking about the real world effects of
nothing getting shipped anywhere. Take things for granted, Take things
for granted. But with that said, Mike, thanks so much
(53:16):
for checking out the show, and you guess you as
well listening. Thanks so much. We hope you enjoyed this topic.
We'd love to hear a suggestion from you. Is there
something we should cover in an upcoming episode, video or audio?
You can you can let us know. You can let
us know, right, There's so many ways you can let
us know. We're all over the internet. We're lousy over
(53:36):
The internet is lousy with us. Yes, don't don't even
search stuff they don't want you to know, because you'll
probably break your computer. There's so many search results. What No,
you can find us on Facebook. You can find us
on Twitter where we are conspiracy stuff. You can find
us on stuff they don't want you to know where
you can almost very soon find pictures of Noel and
(53:57):
Matt and Ben. And that'll be awesome when that happens. Uh.
If not, If you don't want to do any of
those things, if you just want to send us a message,
you can find us. We are conspiracy at how stuff
works dot com. From one on this topic, another unexplained phenomenon,
(54:18):
visit YouTube dot com slash conspiracy stuff. You can also
get in touch on Twitter at the handle at conspiracy
stuff
From UFOs two, ghosts and government cover ups, histories world
with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn
the stuff they don't want you to now. Hello, welcome
back to the show. My name is Matt and I'm Ben.
As always, we are joined in the studio today with
(00:22):
our super producer Noel the Sandman Brown. Hello, Well do
you like that Sam? And yeah, I worked on the
fan of Sam Man. And most importantly, ladies and gentlemen,
you are here and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know. And today we talked briefly on
off air. There's only one way we can start to
(00:43):
show also the story. So recurring theme for me when
I when I'm sleeping sometimes I guess you're called recurring
my marriage dream. I have this sense that I am
floating in a giant body of water, and I just
to have this overwhelming sensation that there's something much much
(01:07):
larger than me underneath me. And it's not necessarily like
something that's going to empower me. It's just a sense
of like feeling small, kind of an insignificant And sometimes
I'll wake from this and that feeling will kind of
stay with me and I'm not exactly. It's not exactly
a kind of paralysis, but it's just this carries over
(01:29):
from sleep into waking and then I sort of I'm
sort of like kind of stuck with that, and I
experience that even when I'm awaken, it's almost as feeling
I'm being fully awake and sort of still being in
that that space as through a dark, gigantic opens lit
abyss blue field. Yeah, and I mean what I what
I compare to is you know, maybe like a whale
(01:50):
or just some sort of I've always kind of been
freaked out by things that I can't see, things that
lie just beneath the surface, and you know, nothing represents
a larger and seeing, you know, unseeable, unknowable world than
the ocean or right. And so that's just that's something
that's always stuck with me, and it comes back pretty often. Yeah,
(02:12):
the the Leviathan is a very powerful and scary thing
to experience. What about you, Matt, You going, oh, yeah,
certainly I can relate to that feeling, especially being in
the ocean, but I have not really experienced that much
in a dreaming state. I just I had a story
about uh, my wife because we recently experienced this or
(02:33):
she recently experienced it. Um, I guess why don't I
tell that story after we actually talk about what it is? Right? Yes,
So we're talking a little bit about nightmares. And it's
strange that there are some nightmares that occur more often
in one culture than another. There's some nightmares that seem
(02:54):
weirdly specific. A lot of people have nightmares related to
their teeth crumbling or falling out, or having to do
stuff with other people's teeth. Um. So a nightmare at
heart is what is called a parasomnia. And so a
word of today, right, Uh, like the time when we
(03:15):
learned that other what's that word for fake pseudicide? Right? Yeah,
when you fake your own suiceide, which we didn't know
is the thing. So the word like that is paras
omnia or sleeping disorder. A nightmare is a kind of parasomnia,
and nightmare is a weird name when we think about it. Right,
it's like two words. Was I mean like nighthorse kind
(03:38):
of it's just is it scarier? Um? What it originally
meant was this idea of an evil uh incubus or
succubus afflicting sleepers with the feeling of suffocation. Yeah, incubus
would be the male version that generally attacks females, and
(03:59):
the succup is the female. I think, definitely sit on
top of you and steal your breath sometimes or just
fixiate you, suck out your soul, right, I mean that's yeah,
that's sort of the image that I exactly sap your
life energy, right and drink your milkshake. Don't do your
precious bodily plots. Yeah, exactly. And so when we look
at this um now, when we say, oh, I had
(04:22):
a nightmare, my um, I I had a nightmare where
I was walking down the hallway when there was nothing
but shutting doors, and then you know, I kept hearing
someone just around the corner, um singing Lionel Richie's Hello.
I'm making this up. This is happening. Um. But the
(04:44):
that sounds like it might be not that scary, but no,
it's me. There's a lot of Hello songs. But the
the point is that nightmare, once upon a time described
a very specific type of unpleasant dream, and it's the
thing we're talking about today. We're talking about. Before we
(05:05):
give the scientific term, let's just talk about the myth
of this idea of this unwanted visitor coming to find
you in the night. So we know it goes across
different cultures, right, Oh yeah, sure. One of the things
I found was a reference that some people attribute to
this type of thing, another entity visiting a human in
(05:28):
the night. Goes back to the Bible, and it comes
from Genesis six one through four, and the one in
particular I was looking at was the New International version.
It says when the sons of God saw that the
daughters of men were beautiful, and they married them, any
of them they chose, and it speaks about them going
to the daughters of men and having children with them.
(05:50):
And some people attribute this to being like a spirit
or a you know, an angel perhaps coming and visiting
a woman in the night. I don't know, hidden, yeah,
and we also we also hear in other times you've
heard people like you remember the black cat thing like
that cats would sit on the chest of someone, especially babies,
(06:12):
and suck out their breath. There's a fear of black
cats all, I mean, multiple parts of the world for
many different reasons too. But yeah, the actually adopted a
black cat and Humane Society they said they don't adopt
them out around Halloween because people tend to do terrible
things to them, and great, that's what's your cat's name?
(06:37):
Maybe maybe maybe, as in maybe blue, Yeah, as in
maybe you're right, maybe I'm crazy. We should move on.
Another reference that I found, and specifically it was from
this production called The Entity, which aired on I think
Channel four in the BBC, but it was made in
association with TLC and a couple other companies. But anyway,
(07:02):
they put a quote from Horace from the first century
BC at the beginning, at the very top of the
episode they created, and it is quote, when doomed to death,
I will attend you as a nocturnal fury. I will
attack your faces and brooding upon your restless breasts. I
will deprive you of repose by terror. That's pretty crazy.
(07:25):
I mean, I'm sure you've got other examples, but it
just seems to me to be a very striking image
that could find its way into lots of different cultures.
Just the idea of being asleep, completely having your guard down,
and being just totally vulnerable to whether it be spirits,
whether it be physical visitors in the night intending to
do you harm. I mean, sleep is a is a
(07:47):
pretty unique situation in that respect, and this podcast ties
into ties into some strange parts there because we're also
going to talk about uh, reality, which I know can
be such a difficult thing to talk about, and we
might spend in a few circles. But what is the
nature of reality Plato's cave all that stuff, perception, physicality, man, Yeah, yeah,
(08:14):
that's what That's what people are telling me and most
of most of my hallucinations, even though not really vivid ones,
even just like the whispers when I'm walking by the microwave. Anyway, speaking,
moving on, So the what one thing we need to
talk about and is the idea of shadow people. We
have talked about the different ways cultures interpret the same
(08:37):
common symptoms, right, like an inability to move except for
maybe the eyes, difficulty breathing, hallucinations, a sense of a
presence and very strong emotional reactions to that presence. Yea
like tingling that sometimes will or a sense of tingling
or electricity in the air or in the body as
(09:00):
the feeling of the feeling that you're unable to move
starts to occur. I read a lot about that a
couple other things. Oh sounds. I didn't realize that auditory
hallucinations were such a large part of this. Yeah, yeah,
auditory hallucinations. It's strange because every sense that people have,
(09:20):
and there are more than five, I can have some
sort of hallucinatory aspect occur. It's just your body giving
you different information. So these are waking nightmares, Is that correct? Yeah,
the very yes, because your body is somewhere in this
limbo between between the world you know. Well, and it's
like I said at the top of the show, with
my dream, it's sort of I mean, it's not this extreme,
(09:43):
but it's something that's that's recurred enough that I'm it's
meaningful to me. This sense, this feeling of being tiny
and significant and being dwarfed by some sort of mammoth
unseen being is obviously something that resonates with me. And
when I await, I still that stays with me to
the point that I, you know, I am very much
(10:06):
still in that dream headspace even though I'm awake. So
it's not exactly awaking nightmare like we're describing here, but
I think it's it's along the same lines at least
as far as my experience. You know, Yeah, it's it's
it's a very strange thing have you guys ever had
a really intense nightmare where you wake up out of
it and then you know that if you go back
(10:27):
to sleep, you'll be back in that world. Oh yeah,
And then you don't go back to sleep, you put
on something nice like Fallout three three. Yep, that's what
one does, right. I think I may have grown out
of that a little bit. I definitely remember that from
when I was younger. There was a time where I
was absolutely terrified by the movie It and that was
(10:51):
one I remember just having such a hard time with
where I would have these nightmares and then I would
wake up and I would have to stay up all
night watching The flint Stones on Cartoon Network just to
calm myself down because I made the mistake of watching
it when I was too young. And god, if I
watched that movie recently, and it's just awful. It's not
scary at all. It's scared the crap out of you
when I was Hey, maybe that's an unpopular opinion, but
(11:13):
the book, the book was scary. I thought Tim Curry
did a great job. I did a fine job, But
I mean, there's so many things that you can that
you can't do in a nineteen nineties, made for TV,
made for TV serial mini series. I don't care what
you say. Every time I look at one of those
a little runoff sewer great things, I see his face, Well,
they just imagine that. I see his face. Yeah, and
(11:35):
then there everybody float. And let's be honest, it doesn't
matter who is talking to you from inside a sewer.
It's just like nonchalantly. Hey, the more well known they are,
the less cool it is. It doesn't matter if if
that is a pretty striking image where he just kind
of nonchalantly just sort of like pops up out of
there and the kid yeah, if you guys, don't get
(11:56):
me wrong, if if one of us were trapped in
a sewer or even more creepily just nonchalantly and said
yeah to the kids credit he dessert would be like,
how did you get down there? Yeah? It's yeah. But
the the strange thing about these nightmares, these disquieting things,
this line between what is real and what is uh
(12:19):
what is just imagined, came to a head with a
short story I'd like to tell you guys, in place
of the actual nightmare thing. So in two thousand one,
on an episode of one of my favorite radio shows,
Coast to coast, A m art Belt had a guest
on and their conversation wandered over to this notion of
(12:42):
shadow people, murky and distinct, hasty things seen at the
edge of vision, often walking all crazy like the person
in the ring. Listeners, you can't see it, but I'm
doing a pretty good physical impression. And uh, and what
we What they found was that so many people who
had never thought this experience happened to anyone else, found
(13:06):
out that it happened all the time. Well I'm exaggerating,
it happened often. So they started writing in with their
pictures of shadow people and the descriptions of these demons,
these ghosts, these extra dimensional beings, and this similar set
of symptoms. So here's the question, right, putting aside whether
(13:31):
it's real not real, how could so many people experience
the same thing? I mean, were they making it all up?
That's a possibility, But it could also just be how
our how how our brains function right, and how we
interpret things and try and make faces out of nothing,
(13:55):
just because it's an evolutionary advantageous for us to do that.
I remember the term night terror, So it's sort of
like a distinction between just a run of the mill
nightmare and a night terror that actually like affects you physically.
And that's what this strikes me as. And I mean,
I understand this need to insert some sort of boogeyman
(14:17):
into something that's so traumatic like that. I think you're right.
I think it is just the way our brains kind
of fill in the gaps. I mean, is there something
legit supernatural going on here? I can't say, but it's
it's interesting to think about. It's a possibility, and it
is something that many people believe that there is. I
mean again, for for thousands of years now, it has
(14:38):
been written about these you know, beings that perhaps we're
just named different things throughout culture because if we're all
experiencing the same thing because of our brain, then perhaps
we're just applying what we know to what we are
seeing right or hearing right. Like uf of visitation stories
have a whole lot in common with old stories from
fairy tales and change leans and abducted children and visits
(15:02):
in the night. Uh you're right though, that whether it's
a demon, a witch, a shadow, black head, ghost, etcetera,
they all have the same things in common. And Uh,
what's interesting about this is that this is not just
a bunch of folklore or just a bunch of anecdotes
(15:24):
or old wives tales or opinions. Um, we're talking about
this earlier and that's what our video is about this week.
Uh No, what what does the world of science recognize
this as? So scientists call this phenomenon sleep paralysis, and
it's one of these things that despite there being so
(15:44):
many reports of it and it being clearly relatively widespread,
they're just not quite sure what causes it. And that's
what's fascinating to me about it. So there's actually quite
a few theories about it though, one of them being
that it's an overlap in stages of r A, M
and waking cycles. Another is that it represents uh, mismatched
neural functions, out of balance neural functions. And sleep deprivation
(16:07):
is another one, or disturbance of routine sleep patterns. And
I mean I could speak to sleep deprivation definitely. Some
crazy things can happen when you don't get enough sleep. Yeah,
that's another thing. There is a particular group that also
reports seeing shadow people, and those are methamphetamine addicts. After
(16:29):
after a long bender ride in the rails bender. I mean,
I know that if I just don't if I stay
up all night maybe one night, and then don't get
enough sleep the next night. I always refer to myself
as being a little punchy, you know, where I'm kind
of just like my brain is not firing on all cylinders,
you know, and more so than usual, and I'm much
(16:50):
more likely to kind of fall into sort of almost
like a weird fugue state, you know. And so I
can imagine that you take that and multiply it, it
could be pretty intense. Yeah, that's all I know now.
So I definitely get the corner of your eye when
you moved in the room. Now. Yeah, I get that
(17:12):
feeling way too often now. And it's not just because
I'm aware of at least what's happening chemically in my brain.
I'm I'm aware that that's the the issue. Right. So wait,
so but this also was something that was that was
close to you. This was this suggestion came to the
group because there's something you wanted to look into, right, Yes,
(17:35):
I okay, So not long ago, I watched The Nightmare,
which is a documentary available on Netflix that was directed
by Rodney Asher. Who also did the shining. I mean,
it's just all tangentially related to our show in this
beautiful way. So I just happened upon it. It was
on my suggested things to watch, and man, it was great.
(17:58):
It was you know, it's been touted if you look
at the trailers like this is the scariest movie that's happened,
the kind of film like in the documentary, but it
has some production elements. They did a great job of
doing some re enactments, yes, and but really it's just
the stories themselves of all of these people that they
(18:19):
interviewed for the film who have experienced this type of things,
specifically where you are experiencing sleep paralysis, where your body
you believe that you are in your body, you are
awake in your room or wherever you're sleeping, and these
entities are visiting you and they mean most of the
(18:40):
time to do your harm. Anyway, I just watched that
and Diana, my wife, and our new son, they were
asleep in the room with me, but they had been
asleep for a long time, so I was like, I
think I can watch this now and it won't be
a big deal. We watch it. Well, last week Diana
had an experience of her own with this with a
(19:00):
sleep paralysis, and it's something that I have never experienced
before in my life, and sadly, I was a little
jealous that she got to experience it, even though it
is a horrifying when you're in that moment, it is
a horrifying thing. I imagine, at least from the film
The Nightmare. It seems freaking horrifying and terrible. It sounds
(19:21):
like getting water boarded or something. It's just awful. Well, okay,
so anyway, she experienced it, and I just asked you
guys if you wanted to do this, and that's where
we're here. So Diane, if you're listening to this, we
hope you're doing well. When we'll try to do justice
to this also other people who have experienced this. Before
(19:43):
we're going further, we need to talk a little bit
about r E m uh the band dream sequence. You
guys talk about the passion. Okay, we'll talk about yes.
So rapid eye movement one of the things that happens
when you are asleep, and if you are a child sleeping,
(20:05):
you will have this much more often than you will
as an adult. Kids just dream more, and you know,
there's something kind of like touchy weird about that. But
what we find when we talk about the way nightmares
and r e M sleep uh interact. The only said
(20:26):
a really interesting thing with the idea that sleep cycles
might be happening out of order, essentially right so or
or together, overlapping, overlapping, and in a time when maybe
they should be consecutive waves in and out. So r
M sleep starts with a signal from a thing at
a neighborhood at the base of your brain. If your
(20:48):
brain is a city, your your your brain has a
neighborhood way in the back called the ponds, and these
signals travel to the fallamus and that goes to the
cerebral cortex. Cerebral cortex is like the hot important part
of town. It's where all the colleges are, right right.
(21:09):
I hope it's a little better than that. Well, I
mean it helps you get a whole foods Oh gosh,
any South Park fans in the audience, I need some
curious fusion delights. Sorry you say that sometimes. I'm sorry.
I'm so sorry to take us away and then take
us back. I'm sorry, bring it back, man, real it
(21:31):
in so the cerebral cortex is going to be the
part of your brain responsible for organizing the things you learn,
organizing the things you think, enabling your thought process. So
when this arim sleep occurs, the ponds of sending sending
signals that shut off neurons in the spinal cord, causing
the temporary proalysis of the limb muscles. That's why when
(21:53):
you have dreams, whether they're happier sad dreams, and you're
running your ass off throne usually usually, but if that,
if that delicate balance is disturbed, then you have all
kinds of issues you could have. You could just be sleepwalking,
that's something that's how it manifests. Sometimes you could be
(22:16):
like my dog, where my dog is fast asleep on
the couch and just running like the limbs are physically moving.
Either of you ever slept walk before? Yeah? I have not.
I used to a lot when I was younger, Like
I actually did it, went to my neighbor's house. I
mean seriously, And you know, I wonder why what the
distinction there is? Like what did you do? I think
(22:38):
I knocked on the door and it was wrapped in
a blanket, and they, you know, answered the door and
We're like, hey, that's weird. Go home. I guess probably
you know, six or seven to do like that. One
time I pete in my dad's drawer. Dude, okay, this
just brought I have slept walk. So my dad used
(22:59):
to listen to record words on headphones down in the
living room, and apparently one night I walked down with
while my dad was just sitting on the floor. He's
just sitting on the floor with his hands on his head,
laying back, listening to some I don't know, probably eagles,
it was probably equals, And I walked over and just
pete right onto a speaker huge like these big speakers,
(23:19):
they weren't even in use. I just pete a run
on them. Well, I don't even know how old there was.
I'm sorry to say I've never done any sleeping. Right, yeah, exactly,
excellent word. But the the strange part of this is
that we still don't completely understand right, I'm sleeping. You
(23:39):
might get out of it and be in this stage
of somewhere in between waking and sleeping, and your body
still thinks it's supposed to be shut down. But you
I've opened your eyes in the real world. You've violated
some fundamental law that fiction writers seem to make up
whatever they do a dream world still worry and well, yeah,
(24:01):
and then you're so as those two systems are overlapping,
you may be it may be causing you to see things,
but overlaid on top of your actual room. Right, And
that's why this stuff is so terrifying, because your brain
really believes that it's there. Mm hmmm. So now we've
(24:23):
answered a little bit of the scientific stuff behind the folklore.
Right when we come back, we're going to take a
closer look at maybe the more esoteric abstract one might
even say, paranormal things it involved. At first, a word
from our sponsor, and we are back. So we talked
(25:00):
about the science. We talked about some personal revelations, some
experiential things about nightmares. Let's talk about sleep paralysis itself.
I pulled up some numbers. I'm gonna walk you guys through.
Uh So, just to get a sense of the magnitude
you will hear. You'll hear estimates saying anywhere from two
to eight percent of the population experiences sleep paralysis. So
(25:26):
if we just took the number six percent, right, which
is when I saw in uh in a couple of
different studies out of Stanford. Then what we see is
that as of fifteen, if there are more than seven
point three billion people on the planet, and that means
that even with the lower estimate, nearly like four hundred
(25:48):
forty something million people experienced sleep paralysis. It's larger than
the population of the US. It really makes you understand
why when Art Bell made that show, they got so
many images of people sending in like, hey, this is
what it looks like and what it feels like. Yeah,
what kind of images of what what the what they
had experienced as shadow people or entities? Yeah, they they
(26:11):
drew these these were they weren't supposed to. I think
there were probably a few alleged photographs. But but with
that point, with over four hundred million people experiencing things
that they explain in in the such a similar way,
what what gives you know? And the guy who made
(26:32):
the documentary um was Rodney Asher. He said that that
was one of the more interesting questions to him, not
not necessarily the forefront of the science behind this, but
why it was so similar, you know, I mean, and
admittedly the science is pretty murky at this point. Yeah,
(26:54):
there are questions that remain unanswered. You know, there's every
time on this show or other shows, every time someone
at house stuff work starts to tangle with the dream world.
We quickly learned that most people say, it's probably this
or maybe that, but I don't know. Well yeah, and
the the underlying belief structure of a culture. Honestly, that
(27:18):
is the main way to explain something like this a
lot of time, and it's something occurred to me. Um,
I know this is this is probably pretty intensive think
about for you especially, But crib death, like, you know,
did you ever read that Chuck Polinic book Lullaby. It
was all about like this African spirit that causes the
infants to you know, pass away in their cribs. I
(27:38):
just wonder if there's any connection between this idea of
sleep paralysis and demons or whatever, and if that's like
an infant's version of experiencing that, because think about it,
I mean, like if if if it's that bad for
an adult, can you imagine if something like that happened
to an infant. You know, that's that's an interesting proposition
because there are two myths that tied directly to concepts
(28:01):
of infant mortality that I think of just when you
say that. And the first is um The first is
the black cat myth, and that the cat would attack
a child, right, we know that one. And that's the
one where a cat for some reason gets on top
of a baby and crib event sucks its breath out
right and or in reality sits on its face and
(28:24):
probably just suffocates it with its Which could which could happen?
Is this took a dark turn, my friends? The other
one would be, of course, those old stories of change leans.
That was a way too. That was a way for
people to interpret that kind of situation, you know, like
they advocate's healthy, then they have a kid who's not.
Then it must have been some sort of intervention by
(28:49):
unnatural forces. So this brings us to the bigger one
of the bigger questions. Oh wait, wait, wait, wait, wait
wait wait, Before we get to that, guys, I gotta
say I think in our notes here it says there's
a part where I wanted to complain about the video script.
It's tough time writing this one. Were tough time writing
(29:09):
this well. If you if you check out the video listeners,
go go easy on it. The editing will as always
be fantastic and the production will be great. But uh,
if at some points there you go, I don't know,
it's kind of weak, then it's my fault, not that
their knows. That's so to be clear, I think you're
(29:30):
a little too hard on yourself. This is an interesting
topic though it's a little out of the norm, you know,
for the show, So I applaud you for attacking it
with such. We had a lot of people get upset
that we covered slender Man, even when we said Slenderman,
it's not real and was invented in two thousand and nine. Yeah,
(29:50):
they were mad because we were listening to our younger viewers.
And that's the that's I would say the comment that
we get the most, But I didn't viewers. Man, won't
you do someone about doge? About what a dog? I don't. Well,
that's the thing, like I I don't know the age
of someone who writes to us unless they tell us.
(30:14):
And uh and we we try to cover as much
as we can. We have a backlog. Uh and and
not every not everything is going to be successful. But
I bring him slender Man because we are We've been
exploring mythology in this weird way and folklore, and that
brings me to like the biggest question that I have
(30:37):
to ask you guys, do you think these kind of
things are real or that there's some way to encounter
another entity through your brain? It gets it takes me
back to the video Gland. That's what I think about
because I believe melo melotonin is released from the panel Gland.
(31:03):
I believe that's correct. I'm not a scientist. That's what
I found in my notes. Uh, I don't know. Somebody,
Emory shoot me a note anyway. Yeah, you're I mean,
you're right. So that the idea that there is an
idea that the panel Gland seated in the center of
your brain is somehow this gateway to other dimensions or
(31:24):
the spirit, realm or whatever you want to call it
um and perhaps this is a way that we could
get into communication with other things, if they exist. I
tend not to believe that that is the truth, but
I don't think there's anybody currently trying to write, I
don't know, write a thesis paper. Well that I think
at the end of the day, we're all working with
(31:44):
the same equipment, you know, and so when certain wires
get crossed and things you know, chemicals are out of
balance that it can produce similar results. I mean, look
at people describing hallucinogenic experiences for example, and taking you know, psychedelics.
Shout out the Graham Hancock and the machine Elves. Do
you guys, that's a thing, that's a I'll show No,
(32:07):
I just mean, I mean, I don't have any specifics
right off the bat, but I mean, and just in
reading people, you know, descriptions of their their trips or whatever,
there are a lot of similarities. There are a lot
of things that are experienced very similarly. So I just
wonder if the fact that many people report similar sleep paralysis, um,
(32:28):
you know, apparitions appearing to them. Like I said, we're
working with the same equipment, if the wires are crossed
in a similar way, would it produce similar results? Oh? Yeah,
you know, that's that's interesting because we can make I mean,
human experimentation is still pretty limited in this day and age,
but we could do some interesting things if ethics weren't involved.
(32:51):
I'm just saying, but no, I'm just it just has
to say. It's just just spitballing here, guys. I'm not
gonna do it. I'm not going to you. Uh, surgery
on people's beneal glands, you guys, and hallucinogens. That's crazy.
It's interesting though, I'm just saying it's interesting. There's a
lot to learn. Oh yeah, sure, Uh, I'm just really fast.
(33:13):
I wanted to come up with some of the ideas
of what people who do experience this have attempted to
do to make it stop. And there are a lot
of things when if you consulted, let's say, a therapist
or a psychologist, and you you say, hey, I'm experiencing
this at night, I'm I'm feeling paralyzed and I see
shadow people. I know that sounds crazy. What can I do? Um,
(33:35):
you're gonna be told, well, we need you to eat
a little more healthily, we need you to get more sleep,
not use you know, your cell phone or other electronic
devices right before you go to bed. All these different
things of lifetime lifestyle changes and going back to even
two thousand two in that Entity documentary, Uh, people who
(33:57):
experience this express how difficult it is to hear that
because a lot of times it doesn't really help that much.
Perhaps it will alleviate the symptoms slightly, but um, it's
almost it feels like a dismissal at least is what
it seems from these people who are interviewed like it's
not real, look chill out well, and are these people
(34:21):
just cool as cucumbers in their day to day lives
or do they struggle with some serious anxiety that I
would say at least these are the two main documentaries
I watched. The Nightmare in the Entity, it seems it
seems to fluctuate. So there was one guy who says
he experiences it almost every night. He's unable to It's
(34:41):
affected him where he can't keep down a regular job,
he can't really do much of anything. His social world
is just all messed up because at night he's just terrified.
So you would almost argue that his daily anxiety is
as a result of this, this these night terrors, right
right right, That's what I just wonder if folks with
intense anxiety issues that that affect them every day are
(35:04):
more prone to having these nighttime and anxiety experiences, or
they could be real. It's a possibility, honestly, it is.
It's well, that's that's the thing. If we're talking just
in terms of rhetoric and technicalities, and there's always the
out where we can say, well, perhaps there's just since
(35:26):
we don't know if these things were to exist, we
don't know what substance they would be formed of. We
don't have a way to measure whatever constitutes them, right,
So it is possible that we just don't have the technology.
But then it's also probable that it's not necessarily a haunting.
(35:47):
I love I love horror movies, you guys, and I
love watching, uh watching movies with a lot of heavily
implied mythology. I will say I myself have never ex
experienced sleep paralysis in the way that I hear it
depicted in these sorts of things. You know. Um, I
(36:09):
guess I should be fortunate in that regard. But when
when we talked about the nature of reality, we're talking
about whether you find your experiences true? Is that the
ultimate thing you can trust? Or do you trust what
(36:30):
other people tell you about their experiences or experiences of
humanity at large? You know what I mean? Or can
you even trust what you see in here sometimes because
we know that your tricks on you. One of the
strangest episodes we did, which is also a difficult one,
was about the flat Earth theory, and I think that's
(36:50):
the one where it ends in. There's you know, there's
clearly guys, Okay, the Earth is not a perfect sphere,
but it is a sphere. It's not a day, it's
not a disk. Yeah, and uh, there's a there's a
group of people, the vast majority are people who are
sort of trolling, and they called themselves a flat Earth society.
(37:10):
But their belief is, or the stick is that with
the right rhetorical tools, you can't argue anything. And I
get that. I mean, I'm not excited about it, but
that's the real thing. I like the idea. And then
there are there are very few people who do actually
believe that the Earth is flat. And I was reading
(37:32):
you know, he's doing the research on this, and one
person said, oh, yeah, astronauts have been there. How much
do you trust, asked her, do you know any astronauts?
I think we Yeah, that was what we used that, yeah,
because I didn't know what else. Like. It was just
such a great question, you know, because I don't know
when he asked her, right, it's completely true, but at
(37:54):
the same time it's not plausible. So with with that mind,
we haven't dug all the way into altering reality via hallucinogens.
And I think that's a very good conversation for us
to have. And I want to know if listeners. We've
talked a little bit about the science, right, but I
want to know if you out there listening have had
(38:18):
an experience like this that you believe cannot be explained
by some sort of wonky hiccup in your sleep cycle
or another mundane thing, the chemical and balance of some sort. Yeah,
And if you have had that, what is your explanation
for what it is? Um? I really want to know
(38:40):
that some of the hypotheses that were put through in
the nightmare where they're one of the people said they
think perhaps this might be some sort of visitation from
beings from another dimension. Another person said, well, what if
people who are experiencing this are how getting the raw
(39:01):
data from the from the world, from this reality or
whatever it is that most people can't process, and they
can't process the full raw data of what they're seeing.
That is the by the way, that last one is
the guy who can't hold down a job. Um, well,
that's the kind of thing people talk about with the hallucinations,
(39:22):
you know, is is this sense of a flood of
data and information that you can't perceive when you're not
in that state. Yeah, there's too much. By the way,
I can we talk about one specific thing that happened
in the Nightmare documentary one Okay, it was that guy.
(39:42):
He said that he was asleep in his bed. But
this is a spoiler. Um, if you want to watch
the documentary, and I highly recommend that you do. He
says he was sleeping in his bed and there were
two females sleeping in the bed with him. He was
on one side and then two g He says that
he got the sleep paralysis or it affected him, and
(40:05):
he couldn't move. He saw a huge eight foot black
figure standing over him, had red eyes and was speaking
to him and saying things like you don't know me,
but I know you, but you know who I am.
Like really strange, cryptic but and almost contradictory statements. And
he was terrified. He couldn't move. Then all of a sudden,
(40:26):
the girl next to him shot up out of bed, screaming.
At least according to this guy, this is his story,
and she just I guess it woke him up and
knocked him out of it. What she said she saw
was a black cat sitting on her chest with red eyes,
speaking in some other language to him at while at
(40:48):
the same time he believes he's seeing this giant eight
foot character talking to him. I don't know. That to
me is fascinating, the idea that two people could experience
something very strange but so similar at the same time. Yeah,
I'd like to hear stories about that. There's there's another
thing I want to pose it there. Wait, man, I'm sorry,
I never I don't mean to interrupt you, but should
(41:09):
we keep that in? I feel like maybe I was
just telling too much of the movie with the two?
With the two? Yeah, the story is an antegoque front
of a film. No, we should totally keep that. I mean,
I don't know, it's interesting, but it just sounds like
some tweaker stuff to me, really a little bit. And
what's he doing in bed with the two chicks in
the first place? And this is the guy that candle
down the job. I'm sorry, I should I do agree
(41:32):
with Noel here. I feel like you're right, man, there's
some there's some missing plot points, all right, Look, I'll
give you that, but it makes for a good story.
It makes for a good story. All right, So there
is you know, there's this strange debate about how many
senses we have. We have so many other strange senses
(41:53):
that don't quite get the don't quite get the superstar
status of the of the main five, right like the
main cast. So I'd like to do an exercise. Ladies
and gentlemen listening to the podcast, we'd like to do
an exercise with you. Now, if you're in a safe place,
we want you to turn out the lights. Go to
the darkest place you can find, physically, not emotionally. Don't
(42:16):
get weird with it. And okay, are you there? All right?
Close your eyes and take your right hand with your
eyes closed, so with it straight out at your side,
as though you're trying to lean to a wall on
your right. And then when your palm up, move your
hand slowly in front of where your field of vision
(42:39):
would be if your eyes are open. You're in the dark.
You have your eyes closed, but according to several different
studies of you will be able to somehow see your hand,
or you will think that you see your hand, because
your body has a sense of its own um where
(43:00):
it exists in space. Right, not necessarily everybody but basically daredevil.
But the study says people basically have daredevil esque powers.
And this is interesting to mean because it then means
that you could have I don't know about you, guys,
but I've had this slippery moment where I feel like
(43:21):
my whole body has slipped away, where I think, Okay,
I'm it, it's time to get working on the show.
Matt Nolan, I are meeting up, so let me get up,
and I'm brushing my teeth and play it on the pants.
And then the meeting some cereal or something. I'm kidding.
I don't have my life together enough to handle breakfast
and uh. And then I realized that I've been in
bed the entire time. I'm just laying there, and I
(43:44):
started thinking about what I had to do and slowly
started slipping back into dreaming about it. Yeah, I've done
that before when I sneeze hit the sneeze button, and
when I shouldn't have. My dreams aren't that organized? Oh man,
if any of my dreams will work appropriate, I would
I would tell Tell the real way really fast. Before
(44:05):
we get out of here, guys, I just want to say,
there there's a ton of research you can do on
your own about this stuff there are. They're all kinds
of books. One of my favorite ones about this idea
of hallucinating is called Hallucinations by All of Our Sex
Fascinating book. Diana has a whole host of his books, um,
just dealing with what happens when weird things happen in
(44:27):
the brain. Uh, really great stuff. Another one was, Oh,
it's actually called sleep paralysis by Shelley Adler, who's uh
someone that Diana knew as well. Sorry, that's my wife.
Everybody smart, she's really smart. I think that's really that's
really I just want to say, they're all kinds of books,
they're all kinds of places online if you were suffering
(44:48):
from this that that can at least try to help
you out, and their forms you can go to and
discuss with other people. It's a serious thing, and I
would yeah, I would like to say for my part,
I am not diminishing this variants. I believe that people
can have all kinds of experiences and just because we
don't share them does not make them anymore or less real.
So if this is happening for you and it's something
(45:09):
that you're struggling with, let us know we were interested
in hearing about it, and I just hope at no
point during this episode that I come off as being
flippant about it, right, especially if this is the verdict
is so far the scientific consensus, I should say, is
that this is not something that will physically harm you. However,
(45:30):
this can be emotionally traumatizing, and there are people who
have reported being physically harmed by what they believe psycho
somatic possibly or but they believe that they have been um,
you know, assaulted like punched or scratched. And and guys,
we've all drank too much in our twenties and younger listeners. Yeah, yeah,
(45:55):
that's some adventures ahead of your time, so you know, people,
My point is people have woken up with how did
that get there? Kind of bruise before, you know what
I mean. And just because we don't know where something
came from doesn't mean that it automatically implies a certain
like a certain outcome or a certain cause. Rather sure,
(46:17):
so I'm glad we got that disclaimer out there, guys,
because this is a serious problem. As Matt said, you
can go to forums to talk with other people who
have experienced this, and many people will have different explanations
for the causes. But I'm sure there are different versions
of the experience. We're kind of talking about a specific
one that was portrayed very chillingly in this film Nightmare.
(46:41):
But you have to imagine as many people as there
are out there that have these experiences, there have to
be lots of different vas Yeah. There, it's always always
slightly different, and it's usually most of the time just
this dark being or beings or the sensation of what yes,
(47:01):
And that's that's kind of why I at the very
top of the podcast, just to circle back, I mentioned
my you know, recurring dream or nightmare. See, the thing is,
at this age, I almost don't even think about things
as nightmares anymore because they don't scare me. It's just
a sense that I'm left with that is it can
be a positive thing, like I said, feeling my size
(47:22):
and feeling and the insignificance of you know, me in
relation to the machinations of the universe and larger beings
and things like that. So I mean, to me, the
thing that I'm experiencing is as much an apparition as
one of these shadow people. You know. It's it's it's
just kind of like it represents something. At least that's
(47:42):
the way I interpreted it represents whether whether it's a
lack of something, a you know, lack of confidence or
you know, some sort of thing that is difficult to
deal with. That's kind of how you know, I look
at it. You know, that was well said. I I
think that's I think it's handed air way to look
at it. And we would like to hear what you think,
(48:03):
so right to us, right to us directly or find
us on the internet, and just to show you that
we actually do read, listen, or mail. Do you guys
want to do something? Absolutely, I've got one right here.
This mail comes to us from Matt. Matt is very
generous with his compliments. He uh says he's listening to
(48:28):
the Halloween Special podcast. He wanted to share a somewhat
similar experience he had last year. I'll be, Oh, excellent,
I'll be His story doesn't involve ghosts or anything bad happening,
So here it is. Um, let's see. At this point
in time, I've been running a house with my wife
in central Pennsylvania for going on three years. The house
was in a quiet community and we felt a sense
of security. I imagine anyone living in the suburbs normally feels.
(48:51):
One week in the middle of the summer, while I
was away on business, our central air went out. My
wife called the landlord to have it fixed, as it
gets pretty toasty in Pennsylvania in the summer months. The
landlord had the HVAC guy called my wife and asked
when she would be home. My wife responded that she
wouldn't be home until around six pm. The HVAC guy
said he had a local job in the area, but
didn't know if he could hang around that long. She
(49:13):
told my wife he'd see if he could troubleshoot the
problem from outside, and told my wife to call him
if it had been a success. So my wife got
off work and went home to find a work van
outside our house, but the HVAC guy was nowhere to
be seen. She walked to the front door of our
house to find that the door had been unlocked. She
opened the door to find the HVAC guy standing in
our living room. Obviously startled, she asked the man how
(49:35):
he got inside. He replied, oh, well, a lot of
landlords keeps spare keys on top of the electric meters
for maintenance people. I looked and found a key to
your house sitting there. Sorry to startle you, it goes
without saying. My wife felt a mixture of terror and
anger that this man took the liberty to get inside
our home without our permission. It equally freaked us out
(49:58):
that we had a spare key outside our home for
two years that we had no idea about. After my
wife told me this, I immediately called the landlord and
as far our locks to be changed, as it is
entirely possible another key could exist without our knowledge. We
live in the same house to this day, but it
still freaks me out knowing how vulnerable we were. A
word of advice to anyone running a house, check with
(50:19):
your landlord to see if they have a spare key
staffed around the property. Anyway, that was my experience with
finding maintenance people creepily waiting inside my home. Thank you
for producing a great show, and I look forward to
future episodes. I think that hits on the theme of
the of the episode. I mean just this. You know,
if you've heard the expression safe as houses, right, that
doesn't apply anymore, you know, it just doesn't. But the
(50:41):
thing is is that we feel safe in our home
just naturally you want to at least because it's it's
it's your You've got your walled in, it's like your fortress.
But there are so many things that we take for granted,
like a maintenance person, like a spare key, like having
a landlord that is in control of our locks and
(51:01):
has extra keys that could be hanging around without our knowledge. Yeah.
So I mean, like I said in the episode, I
don't want people to be paranoid and live in fear of,
you know, being invaded or something like that. But you
know that these things are an issue. You have to
be aware of your surroundings. So thank you Matt for
writing in again, for being very kind, and for sharing
a pretty disturbing real life version of you know, the
(51:25):
kind of the story that we read may have just
been a story, who knows, but that's a real world example.
He yikes. We have one more listener mail before we
head out today, and that is from our friend Mike
in and guys. Mike was writing in about our Highway
of Tears episode says, hey, I recently found your podcasts
(51:47):
and been spending hours a day catching up. I'm a
truck driver, so there's been many Miles that you've kept
me company. Keep up the great work and thanks for
the thought provoking topics. As a side note on your podcast,
Highway of Tears and the on serial killers, you talked
about truckers being serial killers. Just know that most of
us are hard working family guys and gals who just
wanted to deliver our goods and get home safely to
(52:09):
our families. Mike, I think that was I think that's
a good point because we didn't we sort of said
how rare serial killers are. Well, I think we should
establish because we do have a lot of trekkers listening
to the show as well, we should establish the trekkers
are good people. You know, even if they weren't listening
to our show, they would still be awesome because they
(52:31):
get us things. I mean, that's the only way things
happen to get other places was because truckers exist, right,
Cargo ships and trucks and rail Uh. Truckers don't just
drive racks in a very real way, they drive the economy. Yeah,
my buddy Charlie who just moved back to upstate New York,
his dad and a couple other guys that they would
get around and talk about you know what would happen
(52:53):
if the trucker associations all decided to go on strike
and the people in the docks all the sided, dude
go on strike because you know, of mistreatment or something. Yeah,
he was just talking about the real world effects of
nothing getting shipped anywhere. Take things for granted, Take things
for granted. But with that said, Mike, thanks so much
(53:16):
for checking out the show, and you guess you as
well listening. Thanks so much. We hope you enjoyed this topic.
We'd love to hear a suggestion from you. Is there
something we should cover in an upcoming episode, video or audio?
You can you can let us know. You can let
us know, right, There's so many ways you can let
us know. We're all over the internet. We're lousy over
(53:36):
The internet is lousy with us. Yes, don't don't even
search stuff they don't want you to know, because you'll
probably break your computer. There's so many search results. What No,
you can find us on Facebook. You can find us
on Twitter where we are conspiracy stuff. You can find
us on stuff they don't want you to know where
you can almost very soon find pictures of Noel and
(53:57):
Matt and Ben. And that'll be awesome when that happens. Uh.
If not, If you don't want to do any of
those things, if you just want to send us a message,
you can find us. We are conspiracy at how stuff
works dot com. From one on this topic, another unexplained phenomenon,
(54:18):
visit YouTube dot com slash conspiracy stuff. You can also
get in touch on Twitter at the handle at conspiracy
stuff
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Hosts And Creators
Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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United States of Kennedy is a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week, hosts Lyra Smith and George Civeris go into one aspect of the Kennedy story.
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