Classic Episode: May 6, 2012 — Inside a Ghost Reality Show: Mark Phillips - The Paracast — The Gold Standard of Paranormal Radio

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:22):
You're in the para cast, the gold standard of paranormal radio,
and now here's Jeane Steinberg.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
So neighbors. On the last episode the para cast, we
heard from Chris, and then we didn't because he was
on the road and wasn't able to get a consistent connection.
What happened Chris, Oh, well, I was on the road
and Ravenger Mountains, dumping down canyons and dropping phone calls
in the canyon. Not even these are the problems with

(00:54):
the cell phone system in the United States, very inefficient.

Speaker 3 (00:59):
Been on the moon. So on the movie the best
you can, couldn't even understand half of what was being
said because of the road noise and everything. So I
felt like I was just a kind of an outside Really.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
I'm sure if you heard the final broadcast, you'll know
that Nancy Tom had got a little testy with us.

Speaker 3 (01:19):
Yeah, she did not a good sign.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
Let's give the background here. So, for example, on the
previous episode with Nancy, the first one, she spent a
lot of time setting up the episode in the sense
of the materials she wanted to cover. She sent me
a long letter in Chris showing the various crop circle
cases she wanted to talk about and the evidence. I know, Chris,
you had a conversation of about an hour or more

(01:44):
with her about this.

Speaker 3 (01:46):
I did, Yeah, and we agreed that we should really
concentrate on the diagnostic work that BOT Research had been
involved with for twenty years now and hold the Robert
scenario to the very end and talk about that strange
kind of whitish powder that she claimed was rather anomaloust

(02:06):
and found, you know, within some of these strange events
crop circle sites and the burnt mark on the porch
I think was the first one that you mentioned that
left behind this material.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
Halfway through the episode, there's Robert. The rest of the episode,
all she'd talk about is Robert. In other words, she
changed the plan. Yeah, she wanted to stage manage the
episode in the sense of what we were going to discuss,
and I have no problem with that. You know, if
a guest familiar with the subject wants to focus on
certain areas, okay, we'll do that. Doesn't mean we'll ask

(02:41):
the questions they want us to ask, but we'll do
our best to focus on the areas that we plan
to discuss for everybody's enlightment. Halfway into the episode, she's
on Robert. So I said, you know what, if we're
going to talk about Robert, let's get him on the show.
She's been talking about Robert insanly do a host show
with Robert.

Speaker 3 (03:01):
What you wish for?

Speaker 2 (03:04):
Well, what happened here is I guess she tried to
stage manage that a little bit too so, for example,
every so often she'd interrupt me, you know, maybe that's
not what we plan to talk about. Well, the only
plan we had was to ask him questions and if
he had problems understanding the question or he couldn't explain
everything in detail because of the language problem, she would help.

Speaker 4 (03:27):
Yeah, it didn't.

Speaker 2 (03:28):
Work out that way.

Speaker 3 (03:29):
Not that way, it didn't. I haven't even had a chance, Relegene,
to sit down and really closely listen to the show.
But based on the comments that you erupted on the forum,
I don't think very many people were impressed. It doesn't
sound like the show went over too well with the
forum posters. But but sure generated a lot of debate,

(03:51):
a lot of posts, that's for sure. Well.

Speaker 2 (03:53):
One of the things here, of course, is the first
objection they had was the obvious attempts of and answer
you to stage manage the show. That didn't give her
brownie points at all. They didn't like that, you know,
they want obviously I wouldn't accept it. You know, she
tried to move the conversation one way. I would move
it in the area that I'm going to move it
because you know, I'm the host, you're the co host.

(04:17):
It's our show, it's not her show. And we will
ask what we're going to ask. I mean, if we
agree to do something, we'll do it. But we didn't
agree to let her stage manage that show. And then,
for example, at one point where she was saying, well,
just check the site for the evidence, and I said, no,
you need to explain it because people don't have time
to check every reference. They want to hear everything on

(04:40):
the show, not read the book, go to the site.
Next question. And during one of the segments where we
have that little tussle between that segment and the next,
she's starting to say that our listeners are stupid. That's
going too far.

Speaker 3 (04:57):
Well, I miss that part. Boy, I'm sure I'm out.
I'm kind of glad I did, because I would have
launched on it because we have arguably the some of
the smarter listeners in this whole realm out there, and
I would really take exception to that comment.

Speaker 2 (05:13):
I also, by the way, and I told you this,
but I'll explain to our listeners. After the show was over,
I send a very friendly letter to Nancy saying, you
know what, your site would look more credible if some
of the more questionable pieces of evidence about Robert Vandenbrook
we're taken out. What we're talking about here is they've

(05:33):
got these alleged spirit photos where you have a picture
of some figure showing up in a picture of her room.
She says the room was empty, there was nobody there.
But if you look at the picture, it looks like
a cutout, like a paper doll cut out from a
magazine or something. And if you look at the picture,
it looks like the cutout or image is much sharper

(05:55):
than the room around it. Okay, And obviously, what happens
if you dangle a tiny picture in front of a
camera's lens, more than likely it will have a sharper
focus than the stuff behind it, which is many feet away.
This is what looks like. Okay, that's one of the problems.
Another problem is this photo called Mudman, or several photos

(06:17):
and we're seeing, for example, that Reader's Digest magazine have
these mudman photos, pictures of this mud man, and suddenly
they end up in these alleged spirit photos. Spirit photos.
I mean that he takes a digital camera, holds the
digital camera, and suddenly you photograph a blank room or
a field, and something shows up that supposedly wasn't there.

(06:39):
But in this case, her argument is, if you take
those images and you look at the originals and you
try to align the two images. She talked about this
on our April twenty second episode in detail, they don't
line up perfectly. The registration is off. She doesn't understand
that in photoshop you can tilt the image. You can
blur it, sharpen it large it wanted to reduce it.

(07:02):
It's clay. You can take it on the pixel level,
the tiniest pieces of data in that picture and do
whatever you want with it. It doesn't have to match
one hundred percent. Photoshop is not a photocopying machine. It's
an image editing program. She doesn't understand.

Speaker 3 (07:20):
Yeah, well, I don't understand how the guy is doing this.
There's account after account after account of witnesses right there
with him and he's able to pull this off, and
when I posted on the forums that I thought that
the case, you know, had a trick to his quality
to it. Though there I went to Gene, I used
that word again. I really do feel that, you know,

(07:42):
some independent investigation should be done with a guide to
verify once and for all whether this is an elaborate,
well pulled off hoax or a series of hoaxes, or
whether there is something real behind it. I think the
fact that the pictures look so primitive and the results
of these supposed photographic anomalies are so suspect looking that

(08:05):
that kind of tells me Number one, if it's not
a hoax, then why is it being presented these photos
being presented by whatever force is allegedly doing this. Why
is it being presented so in such a primitive fashion?
And I just find that very intriguing. And I really
think that Nancy should step back from the case. It's

(08:26):
my personal opinion she's too enfranchised in the case. She
has become a part of the case. She's claiming that
things are happening around her. Well, when that happens, I
think it's really important for any investigator to take a
step back, bring in other independent people, which she has
attempted to do from time to time, but she keeps

(08:47):
being pulled back in and she's becoming an apologist and,
like you said, a stage manager of this very interesting guy.
And I think, just in the sense of doing good
and that's a goative work, that she should not be
so closely tied to it, and she should bring in
people who verify these results.

Speaker 2 (09:07):
We have this situation here where I try to impress
upon Nancy that speaking to somebody who's working the graphics
arts business for many, many years, longer than many people
have been alive, I know something of this stuff, and
these photos don't pass muster. You've got to try to
concentrate other stuff. And boy, you talk about being defensive.

Speaker 3 (09:29):
Yeah, yeah, it's unfortunate. And I think that that bears
out what I was saying before about becoming to you know,
too attached to the whole situation and not you know,
allowing yourself to take a step back and be more
objective about it.

Speaker 2 (09:43):
We're going to take a step back for a second
here and more discussion like this with Gene and Chris.

Speaker 3 (09:47):
You're in paracat.

Speaker 1 (10:01):
We'd like to hear from you if you have a
comment or question about the para cast, send it to
news at the paracast dot com. That's news at the
paracast dot com, and don't forget to visit our famous
paracast community forums at forum dotthparacast dot com.

Speaker 2 (10:21):
Chris is on location this week again, but fortunately he's
at a place where the quality of the audio is
better and he's not driving among mountaintops hanging up there
on the side of ledges. Is that what was happening?

Speaker 3 (10:35):
Yeah, yeah, it was. It was went through a storm system.

Speaker 2 (10:39):
Started to think that maybe it was like Tom Cruise
in those Mission Impossible movies where he's hanging from the
top of tall buildings or mountaintops and jumping and leaping.
But right now we're talking about another kind of leaping,
the leaping of the logic, the leaping of the logic
of Nancy Talbot. And I don't want to just insult
her or anything. I don't think that's fair to no.

Speaker 3 (11:01):
I like Nancy. I think that she's doing an admirable
job as a layman trying to explain to the public
the kind of scientific work the Built Research has been doing.
And I don't care what some of the detractors on
the forum say they have been doing good scientific work
on the crops of phenomenon, and they did a calumulation study,

(11:23):
and they've done other studies. You can't throw the baby
out with the bath flater if if one of their
investigations that may have put into question the work, I
don't think you should discount the entire body of work.

Speaker 2 (11:38):
Basically, the philosophy being here, the long insured of it, Chris,
is that if a person makes a mistake in their research,
does that mean that everything they do has to be
thrown out because in that case no research will ever
pass muster. He should we throw out the entire UFO
mystery because ninety five percent of all the things reported
are conventional in some way or of a small portion

(11:59):
of hoax. I think what our listeners are talking about
here in their forums is that in one particular instance,
Nancy reported about some anomalous substance in connection with a
crop circle that was later shown to be a fake,
that the people who faked it confessed, and therefore, if
she made a mistake there, well maybe everything she's done

(12:21):
through her entire life should be suspect. I don't think
that's fair but I would point out that after I
tried to have this exchange with Nancy, she said, don't
write me anymore.

Speaker 3 (12:30):
Really, after you sent the follow up letter.

Speaker 2 (12:33):
I tried a couple of follow ups, and the basic
thing is, I have my experts. You don't know anything.
How dare you that people just need to look at
our evidence and if you don't believe it, I don't care. Basically,
I don't want to hear the truth.

Speaker 3 (12:47):
You know.

Speaker 2 (12:47):
I'm trying to help her. I was trying to say, Look,
we're not trying to detegrate all your work, but this
particular evidence about Robert vandenbroke, it doesn't pass muster. There
are other explanations and we look at, for example, one
thing that we disclosed on the show, and it's not
something unknown. A number of people in our forums have
realized this that these days, Robert has a close friend

(13:09):
named Stan, a former mentalist and also a computer guru. Now,
a megalist is somebody who will go on a stage
and do what is called a cold reading, pretend to
read your personality, read your mind, and know things about you.
And the reason they call it cold reading is because
the person has a good sense of voice inflection, body language,

(13:30):
et cetera. Also apparently they do their research. So, for example,
someone writes in the allegation is they'll look at that
person's profile on Google and come up with the information.
And one of the alleged expose a's has it that
one of the errors in an online profile or information
about somebody ended up in one of Robert's readings, which

(13:52):
would reveal the source.

Speaker 3 (13:55):
You never did get a chance to talk about that either,
did you.

Speaker 2 (13:57):
I thought about it, But that's a very complicated thing
to explain. Robert has at best an average or somewhat
below average grasp of the language, and to explain, you
do an online search, you see somebody's personality. I thought
getting into that would be complicated. And all he has
to say is, no, I didn't do it that way.

(14:18):
It's a coincidence or something like that. And maybe once
is coincidence. If it happened four or five times, I
would think there's a trend. I just didn't think with
one particular case it was enough. I just think that
the revelation that he's working with this guy named Stan
is enough to say, well, this guy can allow him

(14:39):
to fake things.

Speaker 3 (14:40):
Yeah, that wasn't a smart move to bring him on
the air. I think that was rather it advised of them,
because now the cat's out of the bag, just because
Robert is in a computer expert, his best friend is,
and his best friend is also, as you pointed out,
you know, a menalist. He has a background in fooling
piece in creating scenarios that seen high strange, but there's

(15:05):
an explanation behind them. So that I felt that that
was not well advised on their part to bring him
on or to acknowledge that he was even there. Good
cat surgery, Thank you.

Speaker 2 (15:17):
We lucked into it because he was sneezing in the background.
Maybe he wanted to be caught. But here's the thing
to bear in mind. Now, Nancy's argument will be that
you hand Robert this camera and he shoots a picture
in some unknown lim it shows up. But yeah, you
know there's sleight of hand. There's a misdirection because you
know people.

Speaker 4 (15:36):
Will remember maybe I should go there.

Speaker 2 (15:38):
Well, we have a couple of our listeners, by the way,
who live in Europe, have offered. But I think somebody
who knows sleight of hand knows the tricks, and one
of the tricks of the magician. And I'm not a
professional magician, but one of the tricks is misdirection. It
is focus someone's attention on something else while you're pulling
the stunt. So maybe Nancy remembers handing him the camera

(16:00):
and certainly he takes the picture, but maybe Stan is
doing something on the other end of the room and
Robert is putting the cutout in front of the picture
and he's saying, oh, look what happened over there? You know,
looks like it's going to rain. Look up in the
sky or something. You see the moon, the stars, whatever. Misdirection,
And normally people aren't going to remember that, They're going

(16:21):
to remember handing him the camera, having him shoot the picture.
How could he have done that misdirection?

Speaker 3 (16:28):
I think we really, you know, it's impossible for us
to determine in hindsight exactly what happened, but it does
make sense that there is some sort of flight of hand,
some sort of misdirection going on. If these photographs indeed
are are hopes. Again, I think we need independent verification
of this case. I think it should be done with

(16:50):
people who are aware of how these things can be fake,
and if they really want it to be taken seriously.
I think that that's the only way that this whole
thing should proceed. And you know, I've been wondering the
genes over the years where some of these photographs have
leaked out. What is the motivation behind some sort of

(17:12):
force or entity to have some of these silly images
or Nazi soldiers or you know, little look like Roy
Harryhawson claymations. Even if this stuff is really and it's happening,
why is it happening and what does it mean to me?
It's nonsensical, there's no it's it's like foolish to use

(17:38):
a tricksterius term. It doesn't it doesn't make sense to me.

Speaker 2 (17:42):
The other possibility raise of courses that maybe early on
Robert had some real experiences and then got his fifteen
minutes of fame and maybe fabricated some like you said,
you know, Billy Meyer, speaking of ghosts like images though,
that's where we're going to talk about this week. We've
got Mark Phillipsy's producer of a TV show on the
Biography channel on the US called My Ghost Stories. What

(18:04):
she tells me is getting really record ratings. Now, this
is of course a reality show about ghost stories, and
obviously we're gonna ask him questions, you know about how
do you know some of the things that are happening
are real or memory X And we have a lot
of questions from our listeners live interests in this episode.
The show again is called My Ghost Story and here

(18:25):
in the USA, of course, if you have cable or
satellite television, you can see My Ghost Story on the
Biography Channel. The producer Mark Phillips, joining Gene and Chris
on the next segment. You're in the Hi, my name

(18:58):
is Richard Dolan. You're listening to Para Cast. We're joined
by Mark Phillips. He's producer of a TV show called
My Ghost Story for Biography Channel. Mark, Welcome to the
Power Cast.

Speaker 4 (19:12):
Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (19:14):
So Mark, let's get our listeners acquainted with who you
are and what you're about. How did you get started
in producing a show about power and normal events.

Speaker 4 (19:26):
Well, I've been interested in it for a long time
and I don't know if you remember a paranormal investigator
by the name of Peter James. It's a very famous
or famous guy passed away from cancer about six seven
years ago, and somebody introduced him to me. God, it
must have been twenty years ago, and he took me
on a private tour of the Queen Mary. He took
me way down into the bowels of the Queen Mary

(19:48):
where the morgue was in the swimming pool, and it
was totally amazing, and it was freaky the stuff that
I experienced. He and I knocked around a few ideas,
and you know, this and that and that. I always
got involved in other shows and sort of put it
to the side.

Speaker 2 (20:03):
Now, I want to ask you before we go on,
what kind of freaky stuff can I get? This kind
of an.

Speaker 4 (20:07):
Overview, hot and cold, patches of air, weird bizarre smells,
banging on the side of the ship as if it
came from nowhere, stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (20:18):
So you're not just a hired hand who they needed
somebody to do a paranormal show and they said, Mark,
here's a good gig for you. This is something you've
had a real interest in.

Speaker 4 (20:27):
Yeah, but I'm not a hired hand. In fact, I'll
tell you a story.

Speaker 2 (20:32):
Sure.

Speaker 4 (20:33):
The last show that I was involved in as a
hired hand was Ghost Hunters. I actually was the co
executive producer the first two hours I helped invent how
that thing looked and I was fired, and I you know,
I mean, I moved on. I got my own show,
and at that point I said, no more hired hand.
I only produce shows when I can, when my company

(20:56):
can produce them, so I don't get caught up in
the This show came about in two thousand and eight.
I had done a very intense project for It was
a special supposed to be a series that ended up
just as a special for Court TV, which has become
True TV, called Inside Predator task Force, and it was

(21:17):
basically a sex crimes task Force and we arrested fifteen
guys and it was just an amazing show and it
got amazing numbers, and some of the AT A and
E saw it and they got a hold of me
and said, gee, that's really this is called Gee, that's
really good sticky television. Is there something you'd like to
do for us? And I said, well, I've I wouldn't

(21:38):
mind doing another cop show, And they did buy a project,
a cop project from me, and I also told them
about a show that I was thinking about it and
I called it Hauntings Revealed, and basically I described it
as you know, there are a lot of people out
there who have had these amazing paranormal experiences and they've

(21:59):
actually kept showed them on tape or polaroids or you know,
taking pictures of the stuff. And they said, oh, that
sounds interesting. So I sent them a reel with some
materials that I found, and they circled around it for
a while and then passed and Dan in August of
two thousand and eight, they called me and said, can

(22:21):
you do that show? That paranormal show? We want to
call it My Ghost Story And I said sure, and
they said you have to deliver it by Halloween, which
was a practically impossible task to do a really good
hour television and only have you know, basically a month

(22:42):
and a half to do it. Oh man, But I
because it was the end of August when they called.
So what they described to me was brilliant because the
A and E is really the Rolls Royce of cable networks.
This particular exec set to me. Think of it as
this a bunch of people sitting around a campfire telling

(23:07):
ghost stories and then showing their evidence. And I went, oh, yeah, okay,
I get it. I totally get it. It's basically what
I wanted to do, but just their take on it
was so branded, and they said, and make it look
like I Survive, which is if you watch Bio it's
on Sunday nights, it's quite a bit, quite a compelling show,

(23:29):
but visually a bit dull. So I followed the model
that they wanted and I delivered in time. The stories
that I delivered them were kind of low hanging fruit.
They were easy to get. But even as I was
delivering it, I didn't like it because it didn't have
a great look to it, the kind of look that

(23:50):
that I try to bring to a television show.

Speaker 2 (23:54):
There is what you mean by a great look. So
they understand, well it was.

Speaker 4 (23:57):
It was flat. It was the story hellers were all
shot against in black limbo, and the way that the
evidence was introduced and the way the b roll was shot.
It was just all done very quickly and just I
had time to polish it. So we delivered it. They

(24:18):
ran it Halloween two thousand and eight and they got
a great number, but the head of the network said,
you know what, it may be a good number, but
the show doesn't look very good. So the exec who
oversaw it on My Behalf sort of got on bended
kne and said, listen, Mark delivered it way too fast,

(24:38):
and he's given me a plan of what he wants
to really make it look like, and let's give him
another special. So they did. They gave me another special,
and in terms of the look, I knocked it out
of the park because I had it figured out perfectly.
And by the way, I can't take all the credit myself.
I had to give some credit to my coep here
fellow by the name with who the ilon who really

(24:59):
helped me hone the look and who He's a former editor,
so he really gets it. And so we delivered the
second one again. I got great ratings and the network
was thrilled with what it looked like. And we've got
on from there. They have, you know, ordering series and
more series and where I go. It should be noted

(25:21):
I got a call from the network telling me that
last Saturday's episodes at which ran here at seven and
eight and then the East Coast at nine and ten,
performed the highest ratings in the history in that time

(25:41):
slot in the history of biow which is pretty amazing.

Speaker 2 (25:46):
Are you able to give us some numbers as to
what one expects to be the audience of a show
like this on a Saturday night.

Speaker 4 (25:53):
In north of six hundred thousand homes.

Speaker 2 (25:55):
Okay, so we're talking about something huge.

Speaker 4 (25:57):
It's truly a marvelous number for BIO on a Saturday night.

Speaker 2 (26:00):
Well, it's truly a marvelous number on Saturday night. You know,
Saturday Night is on commercial TV, irregular TV networks. You
know they're lucky on the biggest shows to get one
or two million sometimes. Yeah, I know, So that is
a pretty high number. So people have to put that
in perspective. We're talking about people choosing amongst the four
hundred thousand cable shows they've got to see your show.

Speaker 4 (26:23):
I've told you a million times, song exaggerate, Well.

Speaker 2 (26:25):
Maybe five hundred thousand times. You told me that, and
I believe it. But one of the things we want
to get into before we talk about case histories and
answer questions from our listeners is in creating the kind
of look of the show, which we understand has to
look good. It's not just the content, right, but with
the reality show, you've got an hour or something like

(26:46):
that to present this. What do you sacrifice in compressing
the time to fit a TV show?

Speaker 4 (26:54):
I don't think we sacrifice anything. I mean, we we
tell five stories in an hour. We used to tell six.
And that first episode that I told you about, there
were actually eight stories in it, which is one of
the problems because you couldn't explore the you couldn't explore

(27:14):
it deep enough and even but also in that first episode,
we had way too many storytellers. Sometimes on one story
and it's a great story out of Oklahoma City, we
had four storytellers. It's just confusing. It's we never have
more than two storytellers a story.

Speaker 2 (27:33):
Otherwise it's kind of a situation where the camera's cutting
back and forth and gets everything to be very confusing.

Speaker 4 (27:39):
Exactly.

Speaker 2 (27:39):
Yeah, and I don't know anything about that because I
produce radio, not TV.

Speaker 4 (27:43):
And believe me, if I it's just it's the same thing.
I mean, you know, doing a roundtable on radio is rough.
It really is, I would say, And it's imposible, right
to do a round to do a round table, yeah,
it's hard.

Speaker 2 (28:00):
Let's take a few seconds to pull this off. If
you want to get in touch with us, there several ways.
One is to write us news at the powercast dot com.
Once again, that's news at the powercast dot com on Twitter.
We are the power Cast at the Powercast on Twitter
if you want to send us a tweet or check
our forums forum dot thepowercast dot com forum dot thepowercast

(28:22):
dot com. We have Mark Phillips, producer of Mico's Story
for the Biography Channel, with Gene and Chris. You're in.

Speaker 3 (28:44):
Because we've heard them in the author you have done
this easing and to the.

Speaker 2 (28:48):
Paracast with Gene and Chris. You're in the power Cast.
Mark Phillips joining us. He's producer of My Ghost Story,
and we're talking about the background of the show sho
you know, how they put the things together, how it
came to be. And he was telling us on a
previous segment that this has become a major, major show

(29:10):
for Biography Channel in terms of the number of people
listen to it. Before we go into the way you
assemble the episodes, what is there about ghost stories that
attracts people so much?

Speaker 4 (29:21):
Well, I think that's the number is seventy percent of
the folks out there in America believe not necessarily a ghost,
but that there's something else going on in our lives,
and so people are fascinated by it. And I wouldn't
doubt that skeptics kind of like to watch it as well,

(29:43):
because they like to make fun of it. I mean,
I was told of Sci Fi. I was at a
pitch at Sci Fi and I was told that the
majority of the audience of Ghost Hunters is are people
that like to make fun of it, which are the
hosts hilarious?

Speaker 3 (30:01):
Well, it's actually a really good show. Yeah, it really
has evolved. It's it's tough having to come up with new, exciting,
goosebump producing stuff week after week.

Speaker 4 (30:11):
Yeah it is.

Speaker 2 (30:13):
Now that's the next question to ask, of course, is
how do you get your material? Do you look at
published reports of stories? Do people contact you and say, hey,
this happened to me when I was a kid, I
need to tell you about this.

Speaker 4 (30:26):
Yeah, Well, we have researchers who are out there and
exploring the Internet with various search tools finding stories. And
then there are I think we have a database of
something like sixteen or seventeen hundred ghost hunter or you know,
ghost investigation paranormal investigation groups that we that we reach

(30:49):
out to, and we also have a lot of really
good stories submitted to us through the bio website. So
any of Your listeners can go to the bio website
and submit a story, or they can submit it to
us directly. If you don't mind, I'll give you the

(31:11):
the email address you go to. It's my ghost story
at MPPT dot TV. And again my ghost story at
MPPT dot TV.

Speaker 2 (31:24):
Okay, so that's t like and TV right, Mark, that's
t like and TV.

Speaker 4 (31:28):
Right, Yeah, T is and TV.

Speaker 2 (31:30):
Okay, Okay, But I guess the biggest question first of all,
is all right, you're getting all these stories. How do
you vet them? How do you separate the stuff from
people who say, you know what, I have the story,
but it's really something they made up or maybe something
that a parent told them and they're just telling stories.
How do you separate the week from the chaff?

Speaker 4 (31:48):
Well, you got to remember, on our show, a story
is only a story when this storyteller has some evidence.
So the first thing we want to know is, you know,
what's the evidence. And then our researchers get into it
and they find you know, we talk to the people,
We have them either send us some tape on themselves

(32:12):
or we interview them over skype. And you know, my
producers have a good eye for who they think is
a good storyteller, and who they may think is making
something up. There aren't a lot of people out there
making stuff up. We have had a couple of instances,

(32:33):
and then there are other elements that fall into place
in the story in terms of what these people's personal
background is. You know, what happened to their mother, father, sister, brother,
because sometimes that's what has triggered this event in their lives.
Or that there's some kind of historical significance to the

(32:55):
place where this where this event took place, and there's
a lot of that out there, and that's really really
fascinating stuff. I really love that. The best stories, in
my mind are come from just regular everyday folk who
have had this experience and sometimes they don't realize the

(33:20):
significance of it until it happens over and over again
and they ask an investigator to look into it. The
investigator comes in, looks into it and ends up recording
bizarre images and recording sounds and then a light goes
off in the head.

Speaker 3 (33:40):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (33:41):
So when we tell that story, we have the original
person who uncovered the event and then have an investigator
be the second storyteller. But I just so love it
when both storytellers are just regular folk. It really comes
up fross.

Speaker 2 (34:01):
Have you ever had a situation here where you ran
something on the show and then you learn maybe a week,
a month, a year later, wait a minute, you know
this wasn't real.

Speaker 1 (34:09):
Was it?

Speaker 4 (34:11):
You know what? We haven't had that. We have not.
We have had some situations where we got into the
story and even recorded something about the story and then said, hey,
you know what, this is hinky and we just and
we just drop it. We've had that. We've had that
a few times, and it becomes partently obvious. Once you've

(34:34):
done so many of these stories as we have, it
becomes partly obvious why they're doing it. They're trying to
promote either their their group, or they're trying to promote
a particular place that they own and that they want
people to come to because it's sexier because it's haunted.

(34:55):
So it becomes it becomes obvious to us.

Speaker 3 (34:59):
Yeah, found that too. I've been a long time a
field investigator, and since about two thousand and four, I've
been doing quite a number of haunted side investigations, and
it's pretty apparent when you know an e and owner
or a bar owner or maybe a hotel and a
restaurant owner is trying to drum up business for a
place and uses the old well it's haunted, you know,

(35:23):
using that adage, and I have run into that. It's
you would think you'd run into it more.

Speaker 4 (35:28):
But yeah, you just hit ahead, You just hit ahead
with the hammer there, because that's exactly the kind of
places that I'm talking about.

Speaker 3 (35:37):
Yeah, yeah, And I would suspect that you would find
more of this type of self promotion or place promotion.
But I've been fortunate, at least with the groups that
I've worked with and associates their work. It's not as
prevalent as you would think, but it is out there.

Speaker 4 (35:57):
And of course, as you're probably are, there are many
many inns and taverns and bars that there has been
paranormal activity.

Speaker 3 (36:08):
Yet.

Speaker 4 (36:08):
In fact, there's a book of a thousand page book
called called Bottles of Booze as a boos and there's
just thousands of places that claim to be haunted.

Speaker 3 (36:19):
Yeah, yeah, especially if you go over to Europe or
in England, England.

Speaker 4 (36:23):
Which we are doing by the way, your audience, your
audience may want to know that we were starting to
do international episodes actually international stories that will be featured
in the episodes. In fact, we just did our we
did our first one family from from England and there's
some fascinating stories in England and Ireland, Scotland, Wales. We're

(36:46):
doing another one in Australia.

Speaker 3 (36:49):
Wowy, but also them a little bigger than.

Speaker 4 (36:52):
Yeah, and also a few in Canada. Well my ghost Story.
The episodes that we produce here in Los Angeles are
shown all over the world on any and non A
and E stations. And there's also that what we call
a two Michael's Story formats that are being produced. One

(37:17):
is in Singapore, that's for Southeast Asia, and the other
is being produced out of buens Aire's for Latin America
exactly Latin America. One has aired already, so it's really
been a success in in in that sense there's a
well yeah, just Americas.

Speaker 3 (37:38):
Yeah, you need good quality material to work with for
it to be a success. So, I mean, you can
put lipstick on a salt, but it's not gonna last
long unless you have some little content.

Speaker 2 (37:49):
Yeah, So Mark, just as obviously the left field question,
will you tell people who say, you know what, I
don't believe this stuff they're just faking it on TV.
It's just a TV show.

Speaker 4 (38:00):
Change channel, you know, yeah, you know, go watch wrestling.

Speaker 2 (38:12):
Yeah, we want to watch something real, or watch a
political show if you want to talk about something.

Speaker 4 (38:16):
Of course, it just occurred to be that wrestling isn't
real either, and we're in trouble now, folks.

Speaker 3 (38:24):
Can people bet on it?

Speaker 2 (38:27):
Well, that's real, that's real. People bet on wrestling, so
we know that's real. That's how it works. In our
next few segments, will also be beginning to ask the
questions that our listeners have. So I don't know what
they're going to say. You know, we just pick them

(38:47):
up from our forums and we ask them unedited, except
the course, in case they use user unfriendly words, we
have to of course to leave those. We ask them
and we'll have to see what you have to say about.
As we explore My ghost Story from Biography Channel, the
producer Mark Phillips is with us with Gene and Chris.
You're in.

Speaker 1 (39:26):
Welcome back to the Para Cast, the gold standard of
paranormal radio. And now here's Jane.

Speaker 2 (39:35):
Steinberg with Gene and Chris and the Power Cast. Mark Phillips,
producer of My Ghost Story listeners. I gave you the
chance in our forums at forum dot theparwacast dot com
to ask your questions. Okay, we have a bunch of
questions here and as of the time I checked this

(39:56):
message before, it had thirteen messages, but since that's unlucky,
it's up to fourteen question but each message has multiple questions.
Trained Observer, the Paranormally disenchanted member of the forums since
twenty ten, ask several questions, of which we've had answers
so far. But here's one mark. Do you have anything
to do with Celebrity ghost Story.

Speaker 3 (40:19):
No?

Speaker 4 (40:19):
No, it's produced by another company and we are Celebrity
ghost Stories companionses. It's a it's a pretty good looking show,
so that's.

Speaker 2 (40:32):
The point here. There are different ghost story kind of things,
like different programs about paranormal encounters. Are you aware of
many of them and how they do their shows?

Speaker 4 (40:43):
Well, I'm very aware of how Ghost Centers does their show.
I have a pretty good sense of how Celebrity ghost
Stories is done. Those are the two that I'm most
familiar with. I guess I know a bit about Paranormal
State because I'm a fan of that show and it's
an A and E show. It's it's kind of an

(41:05):
interesting show.

Speaker 2 (41:06):
But the question is here, do you have time to
watch anything else since you have this big diet of
paranormal shows plus your own work.

Speaker 4 (41:13):
Well, I had to stay in touch with a lot
of stuff on television. I mean, I don't just produce
my ghost story. There are other projects that I'm involved
in and developing, and I tend to watch a lot

(41:33):
of reality TV. I especially like the transactional shows, stuff
like Storage Wars in Auction Hunters on Spike. I think
that's a terrific show.

Speaker 2 (41:46):
My wife is a fan of house Hunters.

Speaker 4 (41:49):
Also a good show.

Speaker 2 (41:50):
Okay we're talking about here, folks, where people go out
and they look at a house and supposely they choose
which house they want to buy among three houses. And
the nice thing about it is, if you're planning to
move to a specific part of the world, you get
to see what the homes are like, what the scenery
is like. Interesting for that kind of show.

Speaker 4 (42:09):
So we need to tell your wife to watch Celebrity
house Hunters, which I believe it's either on A and
E or Bio And it's really a pretty cool show.
And you know, celebrities that you're following along with the
celebrity as there as they show you the house that
they're living in now, and they give you a sense
of what they're looking for, and then a real estate

(42:31):
agent takes them to three different houses and by the
end of the show they choose which one they're going
to buy.

Speaker 3 (42:37):
They have to see the great houses.

Speaker 4 (42:38):
They're like, you know, houses anywhere from you know, two
million to ten million. I mean, they're pretty cool places.

Speaker 2 (42:45):
Say, in case, you want to build a garage on
the second story with an elevator exactly. Okay, we know
that's very important. I understand that's an important thing. Now
if you want to be a rich politician, you have
to build an elevator on the second floor of your home.
But we don't. I'll cover politics on the show, ladies
and gentlemen. I just want to make that clear.

Speaker 3 (43:04):
So people are well, like the politics of the baron
normal Well.

Speaker 2 (43:09):
That might be whether we like to or not.

Speaker 3 (43:12):
Mark sports into it.

Speaker 2 (43:15):
So, Mark, is it a challenge? What kind of challenge
is it to come up with a season's worth of shows?

Speaker 4 (43:22):
The challenge is doing the research properly and having enough
time to reach out and find the stories, and you
need to find the stories far enough in advance that
you can line them up and get them shot quickly
and efficiently. And then you got to edit them in

(43:47):
such a timeframe that you have twenty thirty stories completed
before you start stacking them into shows. Because if you
watch My Ghost Story, you'll see that there's always a
really cool variety of stories in any one particular show.

(44:08):
There'll always be, you know, a story that has tremendous
history in it. There will always be a story that's
really freaky, you know, somebody is being scratched and hunted
by a demon. There will always be some kind of
a good spiritual story in one, and maybe even a
story about an animal or so. There's always you know,

(44:30):
that's how we's how we try. We try to we
try to bring some variety to it really makes the
show sing.

Speaker 2 (44:38):
So basically, you first record the show, the episodes, the
specific segments of the episode, and then from your drawer
of episodes or your repertory or whatever, you say, you
know what, I'm going to balance this out, and we
assemble a show from those sets exactly just.

Speaker 4 (44:56):
To give you and your your listeners an idea of
how we put it together. First of all, we do
our research, we find our stories, we find our storytellers.
We then fly the storytellers to Los Angeles and we
put them in a studio and we shoot that interview,
sit down portion, and as that is being recorded, one

(45:22):
of the producers is making very specific notes about where, when,
and how did this story happen. So then once we
have that portion of it recorded and we had the
evidence in hand, we then send a field producer out

(45:42):
to the location where the story happened who shoots what
we refer to as point of view B role, which
is all the extraneous material that helps cut it all together.
And that B role it has a very specific style
to it that that we've developed over over the you know,

(46:06):
over the years.

Speaker 2 (46:07):
Scenic material. Is that what you do?

Speaker 1 (46:09):
Roll?

Speaker 2 (46:09):
Okay, okay, because we're getting into the inside baseball here
and I want our listeners to understand here. So basically,
when you're seeing somebody in the studio and you're recording them,
or maybe you hear their voice and you're seeing the
scenery of where this happened, the home or whatever or
the surroundings, and you hear their voice, their voice is
in the studio, that's correct, But what there are on

(46:31):
location if you're shooting this on location, but you're dubbing
in or editing in the surroundings, which is kind of
how all TV shows are done. You know, it's not
it's not just somebody standing in the haunted house and talking.

Speaker 4 (46:45):
No, no, not at all, not at all. So but
if you think, if you think about it, it's it's
we put a lot of bang for the buck on
the screen for bio because these stories take place all
over America. And by the way, that's another that's another

(47:06):
thing that we take into into account when we when
we stack the stories into a show is where they happened.
It's always great to be popping from Massachusetts to Arizona,
to California, to Alaska to Florida.

Speaker 2 (47:18):
So I have to ask you, being that Chris and
I live in Arizona, maybe we are near a haunted house.
We're living near one a fies.

Speaker 4 (47:26):
We've done a few stories in Arizona, but there are
just so many stories in Florida, and so many stories
in West Virginia and Pennsylvania and Massachusetts and New York
and Ohio, Illinois.

Speaker 2 (47:43):
I mean, they're just it's all over the world.

Speaker 4 (47:46):
Well, it's all over the world. But in terms of
the shows that we do, stories that we do in America.

Speaker 2 (47:52):
Now, this question is one that probably will have to
stretch to our next segment, but here it is. What
was the most convincing story that you have heard so far?
And you can give us as much detail as you want,
refers to an episode or whatever.

Speaker 4 (48:06):
Sure, when we start it now or you want to
wait for long?

Speaker 2 (48:09):
Why don't we start it now? Because cliffhangers are good.
Ask the producers of Hawaii five to zero when they
did that series. Tie in with ncis Los Angeles.

Speaker 4 (48:19):
Okay, well, then I'll even take you to the cliffhanger.

Speaker 2 (48:22):
It's got to be a forty second cliffhanger.

Speaker 4 (48:24):
They're one of the most compelling stories. Is a story
that takes place. It starts on Staten Island with a
with a New York City Police Department officer who he's
been assigned to dig through the rubble of nine to
eleven for body parts, and then stuff starts to follow him.

Speaker 2 (48:48):
Home, and we'll find out what that stuff is In
a moment. I think when stuff wants to follow me home,
it might be a bill collector.

Speaker 1 (48:56):
But there you go.

Speaker 2 (48:56):
I want to give this special thank you to Blue
Sky Music because they're responsible for the opening and closing
theme for the Paracast. That's Blue Sky Music dot com.
Once again, Blue Sky music dot com. We have Mark
Phillips with Gene and Chris. You're in.

Speaker 1 (49:20):
We'd like to hear from you. If you have a
comment or question about the Paracast, send it to news
at the Paracast dot com. That's News at the Paracast
dot com. And don't forget to visit our famous Paracast
community forums at forum dot theparacast dot com.

Speaker 2 (49:40):
We have Chris O'Brien in a ghostly location, another one
of those ghostly locations that he visits, and talking to
us on the scene. But we're also on the scene
from his office. Anyway. Mark Phillips, producer of Micah's Story
for the Biography Channel, and we were talking about a
story here where someone is digging for remains. I take
it Mark from nine to eleven and something starts following

(50:04):
him home to Staten Island.

Speaker 4 (50:07):
After nine to eleven, they took all of the debris
from the twin towers. They took it to Staten Island.

Speaker 2 (50:14):
Because they wanted to make Staten Island kind of dumping ground.
And I think people on Staten Island could say other
things about that. But okay, I'm not.

Speaker 4 (50:20):
Sure why they took it to Stanton Island, but they
did take a Stanton On and this particularly had the
off film where this officer he was assigned to find
body parts, and then he started having experiences at home.
He would and he would take pictures of them. He's crucifixes,

(50:41):
multiple crucifixes in his on the wall in his kitchen,
and his clock would keep stopping at nine forty three.
I think it was nine four its entry. I remember
the exact time, but it was the time when the
first plane hit the tower. It happened over and over
and over again. He had all this wonderful. So he
was a you know, a typical New York City cop,

(51:03):
and he's just he'd been a cop all his life,
and the experience of what happened on Staten Island in
his home finally led him to a heart attack and
he left the fourth and he wrote a book about
It's called Running with the Bulls. Trying to remember his name,
name of the author, But your audience might want to

(51:23):
look it up. It's quite a good book. He actually
brought me an autograph copy of it when he came
to Los Angeles. That's one of the stories that really
really stands out of my mind. Another one, because it
kind of struck me personally, was this woman. Her son

(51:45):
was born in nineteen seventy seven, and her son unfortunately
died when I think he was like nine or ten
years old, and ever since that time, she has been
finding money and at very important moments in her life.

(52:08):
And the money is always nineteen seventy seven. It's either,
you know, a penny, a nicolodiamond quarter or whatever. And
I was sitting watching this interview from the control and
it really it struck me personally because I'm always finding money.
There's something bizarre. I'm constantly finding money.

Speaker 2 (52:28):
Boy, do I wish that happened to me?

Speaker 4 (52:31):
And I consider good luck.

Speaker 3 (52:33):
It's a superstition, works out.

Speaker 4 (52:36):
It's a superstition that that. It's a superstition that was
passed on to me by my father who passed away
when I was kind of young. But he always taught
me when I when I find money, you know, to
pick it up and put it in my left pocket.
And leave it in my left pokraph for a while,
which I do, and then I have a box that
I put it in. I've got a box filled with change.

Speaker 2 (52:57):
By the way, folks watching million dollars, he's got four
million dollars now right.

Speaker 4 (53:02):
So I'm watching this story and I this lady's very compelling,
very compelling storyteller. And I went out to my car
to get something. And as I'm coming back into the studio,
I notice a penny on the floor on the ground.
I reached them and pick it up and it's a
nineteen seventy seven penny. It was like, WHOA, that's freaky.

(53:22):
And when she came out of the studio, I gave
it to her and she had slipped her out. She
give me a huge hug. So that's another story that
stands out of my mind just because it affected me personally.

Speaker 3 (53:32):
Yeah, I'm saying that your team has really Obviously your
researchers have been exposed to some of the more celebrated
haunted sites and some not so celebrated. What's your short
list for four hanted sights in America that you feel
give investigators, you know, the best chance to really prove
that there is some sort of force that maybe represents

(53:57):
some sort of life force after death. What are your
favorite ardor sites.

Speaker 4 (54:04):
Well, Gettysburg's got to be has got to be the
number one. I mean, we've done a number of stories
in and around Gettysburg and some of the evidence out
of Gettysburg is just phenomenal, absolutely phenomenal. So I would
say that would probably probably be the number one. There's

(54:26):
another one called the Salia House, which is where there
was a very famous axe murder that took place. There's
been a few stories in and around there. Gon't to
remember where it is.

Speaker 3 (54:39):
Is that the one in Kansas or No?

Speaker 4 (54:41):
I think it's in Ohio, I've heard that. I'd say
the big Gettysburg is. You know, if your members of
your audience want to go someplace where it's true trippy,
it's it's got to be Gettysburg trippy trippy.

Speaker 2 (55:06):
Now. One of the questions asked by our resident skeptic.
We have several resident skeptics. One is Angelo, who's one
of the administrator of her forums. He's been around since
two thousand and nine in the forums. Didn't just appear
on this earth and so here. His skeptical question is
as follows. With so much advanced technology, why don't we
have anything that actually proves ghosts are more than something

(55:29):
that maybe we imagine. I think kind of answered some
of that already, But you.

Speaker 4 (55:34):
Want to go on with that, Mark, Well, I mean,
there are a number of people who are working on
developing imaging techniques to be used in search of the paranormal,
and I've seen some of it. We've actually featured some
of that on our show. So I mean, I'm not

(55:57):
convinced it either, so that I've seen some pretty freaky
images taken by It's I'm trying to remember. It's a
camera that sees in all different dimensions that cha. The
name of it is slipping my mind.

Speaker 3 (56:15):
All different dimensions or or not. It's I mean in
terms of frequencies life frequency.

Speaker 4 (56:22):
From a yes, different, that's right, different, different frequencies, yeah.

Speaker 2 (56:28):
Okay, different spectrums of light.

Speaker 4 (56:30):
Oh, that's what it's called. It's called a multi spectrum camera.

Speaker 3 (56:34):
Mm hmm uh huh.

Speaker 2 (56:37):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (56:37):
So that's one kind of elment that thinking would be
is that there's there's a phenomena occurring outside of the
visible Unfortunately, the spectrums we.

Speaker 4 (56:46):
Can see different outside of the field. That the human
eye can see correct, right.

Speaker 2 (56:53):
Well, that also raises the question here can we say
then that how of these ghosts can only be seen
by some people because they's somehow sensitive to something, or
anybody in that location at that time with normal vision
should be able to see the same thing.

Speaker 4 (57:08):
Well as as far as we're concerned, it's not a
story unless somebody's taking the picture of it or recorded
in some in some manner. M h ology is you know,
I always come I always come back to that when
it when it comes to Michael's story is that's what
Michael's story, That's that's what makes it such a compelling show.

(57:29):
I saw this, this happened to me. I took this
picture of it.

Speaker 2 (57:34):
Wow. So if we get the photoshop expert out there
who takes your picture, he's not gonna find it.

Speaker 4 (57:41):
We have we have photoshop experts on staff. I don't
need anybody else. If somebody has pulled out on us
already and you know it ended up in the junk door.

Speaker 2 (57:52):
We have Mark Phillips, producer of Micah's Story. I'm Gene
Steinberg with Chris O'Brien. You're in the par of cat.

Speaker 1 (58:10):
Hi.

Speaker 4 (58:10):
This is Don Ecker and you are tuned into the
para cast.

Speaker 2 (58:15):
Let me tell you what you're gonna hear Steph here
that you probably won't hear anywhere else.

Speaker 3 (58:22):
Hear that George snoring.

Speaker 2 (58:25):
With Gene and Chris. You're in the Power Cast with
Mark Phillips right now. We're answering your questions. And the
one thing you mentioned there is, yeah, you can't fool
them with photoshop because being a professional movie production company
or a TV production company, they've got people on staff
who will know if you play with the pixels, they'll
catch you.

Speaker 4 (58:46):
I mean, that's what editors do. That's what I have
some of the best editors in Los Angeles working on
the show, and that's what they do. They as editors,
they play with pixels. So when somebody's playing pixels on us,
we'll catch them. But you know what, the goofy stuff

(59:09):
that's sent to us, you know, we get that out
of the way long before we even get to the interroom.

Speaker 2 (59:14):
Is it worth maybe a B show where you show
the flubs. It's kind of like the end of the
movie Rush Hour where all the clubs are being shown.

Speaker 4 (59:24):
Geane, that's not a bad idea. Can I steal it
from me.

Speaker 2 (59:27):
If they steal everything from me, you might as well
steal that too. I've got a concept for a science
fiction show, but I can't let you steal that.

Speaker 3 (59:33):
That's actually a funny idea.

Speaker 4 (59:36):
The stories that didn't make that didn't make my ghost story.

Speaker 2 (59:41):
I can think of a few that we encounter on
the Power Cast, a few goofy photos and such. Then fact,
before you came on, we were talking about a couple
of really goofy ones, really poor attempts at photoshopping, right.
You know, even the ten year old who knows how
to do photoshop now would do better than this. Let

(01:00:02):
me ask you a question here from another listener named
pixel Smith, speaking of pixels. He's a guy officious pixels
for a living. Why are ghosts often depicted as wearing
clothing of some sort?

Speaker 3 (01:00:15):
I knew that would come up.

Speaker 4 (01:00:18):
That's funny because sometimes that's the most significant part of it.
You know, a man in a in a victorian coat,
the one that Oh, here's a great story out of
Oklahoma City of a woman who appears on a security
camera and she's wearing a ball cap and like a

(01:00:43):
Levi work shirt, and supposedly that's what she was wearing
when she was in a car accident.

Speaker 2 (01:00:52):
Is that the key here that the ghosts will wear
what they were wearing when they died. That's correct, Okay,
so it's bedclothes. Maybe they died in the hospital room.
So that's why. For example, on a TV show like
Being Human, the woman who is the ghost, she's wearing
the clothing she died in when she fell down the stairs.

Speaker 4 (01:01:14):
I haven't seen that that show, but yes, I'm presuming.
I'm presuming that. But also, you know, there's a lot
more than just ghosts, at least on our show appere
not just as in the human form, but there's also
all kinds of you know, bizarre mists and orbs and
multiple orbs and images inside orbs and all that kind

(01:01:37):
of stuff. The most one of the freakiest ones it
was taken next to Sharon Tate's house and it's a picture.
One of the pictures is of an orb, and inside
the orb is a little orb as if the orb
is pregnant. Because as you know, Sharon Tate was right.

Speaker 3 (01:01:56):
I've been waiting for the ghost of Lady Good Diva
to be photographed.

Speaker 4 (01:02:00):
That would be good, yeah, or her horse by the way,
there's number a number of great stories involving animals as well.

Speaker 2 (01:02:09):
Couple.

Speaker 4 (01:02:10):
Oh well, there's a there's a Marvel story out of
Gettysburg with the with the the mules that were pulling
the wagons of dead and wounded soldiers. That's a good one,
probably one of the most personal ones. And it's a

(01:02:33):
Christmas time story. Is let me see I can pull
this out of my head.

Speaker 2 (01:02:37):
That's okay. We are not putting you on trial, and
therefore no, it's okay. If you make a mistake, we'll
just theg on you. In the forums.

Speaker 4 (01:02:46):
It's a good story. It starts in Colorado with a
woman who has this big, beautiful dog and she's in
the final stages of terminal cancer and her friend Los
Angeles goes and visits her and is with her while
she passes away, And just before she passed away, she said,

(01:03:08):
would you please take care of my dog for me?
So our storyteller, who's actually actually a lawyer, she said,
of course I will, And after she passes away, she
takes the dog back to her home in Los Angeles,
and that Christmas, which just shortly after the woman passed away,

(01:03:28):
the dog is always staring off into space and looking
at as if it's looking at something. And the dog
sitter takes a bunch of pictures of the dog and
you can see that the dog, these these shapes and
images and orbs her are in front of the dog
and he's just like looking at it. He can see it,

(01:03:53):
and it's caught on camera. But it's a very one
of those sensitive and spirit kind of stories.

Speaker 3 (01:04:01):
You keep mentioning orbs. Many of our more skeptical listeners
of the show are of a mind of the totally
diff missing orb.

Speaker 4 (01:04:11):
Yeah, I know that it's as particles, that's particles all that.

Speaker 3 (01:04:15):
Yeah, I know. Where where do you guys come down
on that? I've I've heard I've heard you use that
term several times.

Speaker 4 (01:04:20):
Then, well, because there's there's there's so much of that
stuff out there, we will never do a story where
there is just a picture of an orb. It's that
So is it significant? Yeah? Maybe, But it becomes more
significant when there is something else that's been caught on
camera or on audio, or there's some kind of presence

(01:04:43):
that you know. One of the things that I'm really
pushing my staff to get is to to try to
find stories that have some kind of tactility to them.
Whereby there's an actual object I'll give you. I'll give you, well,
the pennies a perfect example, because you know the woman
had all the pennies in her hand and showing it.

(01:05:05):
It's a camera. But there's a story that we did.
I believe it's out of New York City where a
from a bar and we have on tape on security
on security camera tape, in the middle of the night,
this astray just leaps all by itself and smashes on

(01:05:27):
the bar. Well, not only do we have this the
footage to show and the experiences that people have working
at the bar, but they also brought in the broken
pieces of the of the of the astrak. I'd love
that kind of stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:05:43):
That's what can possibly get rid of the deniers.

Speaker 4 (01:05:47):
Well, you know, I give everybody the right to believe
it or not. I mean, if you don't want to
believe it, that's fine. I mean, you know, I come
down the middle myself on it. Sometimes you see stuff
that's hard to believe, and sometimes you see stuff that
you don't really see what other people are seeing in it.

(01:06:10):
But if they see it, it's significant to them, and
it's still a good story.

Speaker 2 (01:06:16):
Now our listeners will know why I'm asking this, and
you may not, but I'll ask the question anyway. Have
you explored instances of so called spirit photography where somebody takes, say,
a digital camera in an empty room, and they take
a picture and something appears on the print.

Speaker 4 (01:06:34):
Well, I don't understand the significance of the question, because
that's what happens all the time. People take pictures in
an empty room, because because somebody has had an experience
in an empty room and long and beholds this unexplained
miss or an apparition of a man with no head.

Speaker 2 (01:06:55):
I mean, you know, so you're physically seeing nothing but
the cameras catching it.

Speaker 4 (01:07:00):
That's correct.

Speaker 2 (01:07:00):
Okay, so this is happening to you fairly often. We've
seen some instances where people report this, but looks like
they just took tiny stick figures and stuck them in
front of the camera with their hand.

Speaker 4 (01:07:13):
So I think that we would we bet are all
the evidence pretty closely. That would never happen on our show.

Speaker 2 (01:07:20):
A ridiculous question here, Why are ghosts so shy? What's
all this flitting about? They don't like real people, live people.
I don't know, ask a ghost and they'll tell you.
We'll find out more answers. We've got Mark Phillips, producer
of My ghost Story. I made him laugh the only

(01:07:40):
time I'll make him laugh this episode. This has nothing
to laugh about. If you want to contact us on Twitter,
send us a tweet, send it to the Power Cast.
The Power Cast on Twitter with Gene and Chris. You're in.

Speaker 1 (01:08:08):
This is Jerome Clark, ass or of fewful encycloped in
other books. You're listening to the Paracast.

Speaker 2 (01:08:20):
We have the ghostly voice of Chris O'Brien speaking from
an unknown location and a planet far far away in
another galaxy.

Speaker 3 (01:08:28):
I must say before we get started on more questions
here that when I did my first real haunted side
investigation as a cameraman, and he's more of a technician
and someone that was there with some experience in the
field also of that evidence and help interview some of
our principles in the pieces that we did. I went

(01:08:51):
in very skeptical about the whole idea of haunted sites,
and I felt that that many of these locations and
events could be explained. But I'll tell you, after spending
a number of years in some of the more celebrated
haunted sites around I've really done. I've done a one eighty.
I really do feel that there is something to these

(01:09:11):
particular location specific sites that deserves scientific study, and I
think we're seeing a result of that in the incredible
amount of people that are fascinated by these subjects and
why we have so many, why you've had such an
upsurge and interest in this subject over the past ten years.
And Mark, I can't wait to find someone with a

(01:09:34):
TV to check out your show. I've kind of banned
TV from my house for a while, but I'm very
intrigued in some of these the accounts that you're mentioning,
and I do think that it's important, as you've been stating,
to vet this evidence because you don't want it to
come up behind you and bite you. So I'm not
going to get admirable on your part not to jump

(01:09:58):
to conclusions and to really you know, Cya and got
your eyes and cross your d's with this.

Speaker 4 (01:10:04):
I mean, two weeks ago, we were taping storytellers and
lo and behold, the storyteller is a woman in her
mid forties in a police officer uniform, and she's the
chief of police of a small, you know town, and

(01:10:24):
she's telling us a ghost story and showing us this
incredible security camera footage. And it took her a while
to come around to, you know, telling the story in
public because she's a police chief. But she believes the
story that she told us, and it's an amazing story

(01:10:46):
with amazing evidence. Another interesting story, this is the relates
to the guy who invented this full spectrum camera. This
is the guy who has his PhD and quantum physics
and he makes he designs and manufactures medical devices and

(01:11:15):
and also devices for like for the c i A.
I mean, he's he's like, he's this guy is a
really really smart dude, and he's expanding his business. So
he moves into this warehouse. It's trying to remember where
it is. It's just south of I think it's in Carson, California,

(01:11:37):
and he sets up his security cameras and catches the
most amazing stuff. When he's checking the security cameras, a
chair is moving, and of items on the on the
desk moving around, all completely on their own, and he

(01:11:58):
can't believe his eyes, but he he's like wow. And
then he somehow gets a hold of who used to
rent that space and whoever rented the space before him.
There were several employees who quit because all the stuff
was happening in the middle of the night, and they

(01:12:20):
actually moved away from this particular warehouse because it was
so bloody haunted. So this particular fellow of the VHD,
he set about to invent a camera. He's still working
on a full spectrum camera and he's recorded some He's
showed me some of the stuff that he's recorded. It's
pretty amazing.

Speaker 3 (01:12:41):
We could get this technology into a video camera. We
might be able to detect the whole hidden world that
he interacting with us, and we don't even know it.

Speaker 4 (01:12:49):
Maybe would not know now Mark at all.

Speaker 2 (01:12:53):
When you investigate these stories as ghosts, do you find
other things happening in those communities? I'm talking about maybe
UFO sightings, maybe strange creatures, stuff like that. Do you
find that when something happens, it opens the damn as they.

Speaker 4 (01:13:08):
Say, Well, not in terms of UFO, But I'll give
you a good example. One of our videographers who was
like the field producer who we sent out to the locations.
I explained that before his name, Steve Bowler is a
wonderful wonderful videographer, and we sent into a story in

(01:13:30):
Orange County and he ended up being shoved and pushed
and he actually recorded apparitions on tape, you know, while
he wasn't investigating anything, he was just shooting the b
roll and it happened to him. And I actually went
to the network and I said, you know, we have
sort of a story within his story here. Yeah, really said,

(01:13:52):
And they said, I said, you know, should we think
about maybe putting this on the show, And then we
all ruled again because it's really breaking the fourth wall.
But that story we did produce Steve Boehler's story and
you can you can watch it at the bio website.
It's it's about three or four minute story.

Speaker 2 (01:14:15):
So the key here is that you're investigating this stuff,
but we can include as part of your show stuff
in which you or your other staff members are involved.

Speaker 4 (01:14:24):
That's correct, because we're not, you know, we're not an
investigatory show. We don't really. The only thing that we
investigate is to make sure that we believe that the
storytellers are telling the truth and that the evidence of
the showing is is something that they that they captured
and didn't manufacture.

Speaker 2 (01:14:41):
So you're the journalist, you're not the experiencer.

Speaker 4 (01:14:44):
That's correct.

Speaker 2 (01:14:45):
On the other hand, that raises another question. Here is
and the course of investigating all these things, have you
or a member of your staff been hurt or touched
impact in some way by some physical phenomenon.

Speaker 4 (01:15:01):
Well, a number of our videographers who go out to
the b Roll locations have had some scary things happen
to them, but none of them have really wanted to
talk about it in public. Steve, Steve Bowler was Steve Boler.
He did want to talk about it. So to answer

(01:15:21):
your question, yes.

Speaker 2 (01:15:22):
Now, what are we proving here or demonstrating by seeing ghosts?
Are we really seeing images of dead people? Are we
into a time portal? What ideas do you have about it?

Speaker 4 (01:15:34):
Oh? Boy, that's a hard question.

Speaker 2 (01:15:37):
That's what we're here for.

Speaker 4 (01:15:39):
Yeah, and I don't know. I really don't know, you
know what, I haven't really thought about it. I mean
a lot of the stories have either personal or historic
significance to the storytellers, so I'm not quite sure what
a time portal is.

Speaker 2 (01:15:57):
It's like somebody lived in eighteen ninety, you're seeing the
image of the person who lived in eighteen ninety, but
it's not necessarily a ghost. You're seeing that person the
image being transported across time. Does that make sense?

Speaker 4 (01:16:12):
Yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (01:16:13):
That's my science fiction bent. That's where I come up
with this stuff. Yeah, that's the key here is this
the afterlife? What do we see that?

Speaker 3 (01:16:21):
There are theories that try to explain that in terms
of residual hauntings versus self determined you know, seemingly self
determined intelligent forces. There are various classifications. I think I've haunted.

Speaker 4 (01:16:36):
Yeah, there are. We don't try to get that deep
into it. So I will tell you that that producing
in this particular arena has led me to another interesting
arena that's adjacent to it, and that is reincarnation. And

(01:16:58):
it's actually a project that I'm developing called Our Past Lives,
and it explores storytellers past lives, and there's the real
and the significance of their past life on the present life,
and and.

Speaker 3 (01:17:15):
Like killed in having an incredible knowledge of a person
or a time frame that the attact if possibly have
have intellectually known based on I.

Speaker 4 (01:17:26):
Mean, there's a there's a classic story of affect. It's
was turned into a book of this kid who who
has this ongoing dream of yelling I'm hit, I'm hit, fire, fire,
I'm hit, and knows the word Corsair with the Coursair.

(01:17:52):
And the father hears this kid talking about this stuff
and he starts exploring and corse Air, as you may
or may not know, it was a World War Two
airplane f F four U Corsair made by Chance Vought.
And to make a long story short, this kid, even

(01:18:15):
the family believes, is the reincarnated pilot of a particular
Corsair that crashed into the bay at the Iwajima.

Speaker 2 (01:18:28):
That's a way to in a segment, isn't it, folks.
Mark Phillips joins us with Gene and Chris.

Speaker 3 (01:18:33):
You're in the Paracast.

Speaker 1 (01:18:52):
Welcome back to the para Cast, the gold standard of
paranormal radio. And now here's Jane Steinberg.

Speaker 2 (01:19:05):
With Gene and Chris. We're talking to Mark Phillips, who
is now conceiving a show that might deal with reincarnation.
Have you countered other similar episodes you'd like to recount
before we get onto some more ghost stuff?

Speaker 4 (01:19:18):
What reincarnation?

Speaker 2 (01:19:20):
Yes, okay, we'd like to hear more.

Speaker 4 (01:19:23):
Well, I mean, there's there's lots of great stories out there,
but I would prefer if you don't mind, to save
them from my pilot that I'm doing to sell.

Speaker 3 (01:19:35):
The new show. Well, there's a bunch that have to
do with reincarnated ripaches from from you know, Tibetan stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:19:44):
I think you're gonna have to break down.

Speaker 4 (01:19:45):
It's a pretty it's a pretty fascinating arena. I'm not
sure whether as many people believe in reincarnation as who
believe in quote unquote the paranormal, but it's kind of
the it's it's kind of the same church, just just
just a different pew. But there are many, even famous

(01:20:09):
people who believe who sincerely believe that they were reincarnated.
Stephen King believes that he was reincarnated, that he was
Jonathan Swift in a in a former life. Personally, I
like Jonathan Swift's work better than Stephen King's.

Speaker 3 (01:20:25):
But there you go. General George Patton.

Speaker 4 (01:20:28):
General George Patton thought he was who was it again,
A fame Hannibal?

Speaker 3 (01:20:36):
Yeah? And also I think a Roman, a Roman centurion
or a Roman general if if I remember correctly, Hannibal
was the main one.

Speaker 2 (01:20:47):
We segue back to ghosts comment from one of our
listeners para reality Saint what a name? He asked a
number of questions. I think we've kind of covered, but
one is our gouss necessarily benign creatures or there is
some demonic aspect?

Speaker 4 (01:21:05):
What's your Oh no, it runs a full gamut. There's
benign and there's really demonic.

Speaker 3 (01:21:12):
Yeah, there are some scary ones out there.

Speaker 2 (01:21:15):
What's the scariest you've encountered amongst the shows that you've recorded.

Speaker 4 (01:21:19):
Were the ones that We've had a number of stories
that have involved scratchings and that's really bizarre stuff. That's
really really bizarre stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:21:30):
Now it's one of those Tony Pickman and the Sally
House in Atchison, Kansas.

Speaker 4 (01:21:35):
Oh, we did that story a long time ago.

Speaker 3 (01:21:37):
Yeah, we did. That's I investigated there. That's that's the
Will McCoy there, I think.

Speaker 4 (01:21:42):
Yeah, that's a really bizarre place. He actually revealed he
actually revealed on the show something that he has never
revealed in the past, and that is that he actually
killed the neighbor's cat. He actually he actually stuck a
knife straight through the cat.

Speaker 3 (01:22:01):
Why uh. He he.

Speaker 4 (01:22:05):
Was driven to this. He was driven to evil because
it's such an evil thing to do to kill a
cat with a butcher knife. Wow, but there was he
got to a point where he wanted to kill his wife.
You know, they just they just had to get out
of that house. I believe to this day that house
is that house is still empty.

Speaker 3 (01:22:25):
Yeah. Well, I I think the team that I went
in with was one of the last teams to investigate
there for a number of years. And it was the
first time Tony and his wife had been back in
the house in a year and a half, two years,
and the same thing happened to him. He got, you know,
the scratches developed right on the camera. We were down

(01:22:47):
in the basement area and some presents started coming up
through the floors. I mean that was real.

Speaker 4 (01:22:53):
It was I you know, I get a very very
very very freaky place.

Speaker 3 (01:22:59):
Yeah. I never felt anything like that in all my
years of being out in the field and doing things.
That's the Roal McCoy there.

Speaker 2 (01:23:05):
I'll tell you what, Mark, You're gonna have to get
together with our co host, Chris O.

Speaker 3 (01:23:09):
Ryan.

Speaker 2 (01:23:09):
He has done a lot of research and maybe there
are things he can help you with. I'm serious.

Speaker 4 (01:23:16):
You should just get a hold of me, you know
you can and if I can one more time, tell
your audience if there are people out there who have
a story with evidence and they want to they want
to reach out to us and come on our show,
they can email us at my ghost Story at m
T P T dot TV. It's m P T E

(01:23:37):
T dot TV. So it's ms in Mark, key as
in Phillips, as in production key as in television dot TV.

Speaker 2 (01:23:47):
Okay, so it's Peter Peter or Phillips Phillips TV dot TV.
It's confusing, you know, let's we'll try to It's.

Speaker 4 (01:23:55):
Mark, Peter, Peter Tom dot tom V.

Speaker 2 (01:24:01):
Okay, now we got it, and we'll try to reproduce
it in our say. I have a question here which
is more than a comment. It's from one of our
new members of the forum called Nameless. I'm serious. That's
the name he chooses to use or she chooses to use.
And this is more of a statement than a question,
but I'll ask it. Hello. Ghost schools inspectors have always

(01:24:22):
been a part of humanity and a facet of every culture.
It seems like they're built into the fabric society, Yet,
due to its temporal, translucent, and ethereal nature, has never
been taken too seriously. I would really like to know
from an experiencer and as a professional in the field,
as to whether mark fields that apparitions are a natural

(01:24:45):
anomaly or entity rooted to a material place outside of
the experiencer, or maybe is a shared psychological occurring phenomenon
created by the witness or witnesses of form of collective
subconscious tulpa. And that was a hard one to read.
I'll tell you, folks did good though. Genis thank you,

(01:25:08):
you give me a raise later, Chris.

Speaker 4 (01:25:11):
And my answer to her is yes.

Speaker 2 (01:25:15):
Or him, I'm not sure which.

Speaker 3 (01:25:16):
Yeah, the long answer is yes. The short answer would be, well,
I think what she was getting at her he was
getting at is the possibility of a collective manifestation of
phenomenal events, similar to creating a tulpa, which would be

(01:25:38):
a manifested spirit being that actually becomes physical. And this
comes from a Tibetan tradition. So I think they were
trying to differentiate between the various explanations for these things.
And I think the short answer of yes, they're all
probably true is is at least that's what I took
your single word answer to me, Nat, I think that

(01:26:00):
that I think we're dealing with something very complicated. As
I'm sure your team has found out. There are no
boilerplate explanations for any.

Speaker 4 (01:26:08):
Of this in my mind.

Speaker 2 (01:26:11):
So is it that some people are meant to see ghosts,
born into it, or it just happens.

Speaker 4 (01:26:20):
I think that it's a combination of both. Sometimes it
just happens, and some people are just meant to see them.
I mean, because I've met people who are just so
in tune with this stuff that they uncover things wherever
they go.

Speaker 2 (01:26:42):
Is it part of a belief system that maybe inherently
you believe there are ghosts. Therefore, if you go to
the right place at the right time, you'll see them.
But if you're not really into that, it's not going
to happen. Or am I just barking up the wrong tree?

Speaker 4 (01:26:58):
I think you're barking up the wrong tree. But you
just you just brought up an interesting memory that I'm
going to share with you. I don't know if you
know anything about my background. I was born in England,
I grew up in Canada, and I came to America
to work in television. And though I did work in
television in Canada as well, my father passed away to

(01:27:21):
a very young age, at a very hard life. And
my father was a tailor, a woman's tailor by trade,
and when we immigrated from England to Canada, he couldn't
get a job. You think he would have researched in advance,
but anyhow, so he ended up making drapes. He then

(01:27:41):
went on to become a like a truck driver at
a meatpacking company. But he was very talented Taylor, and
very talented at making drapes. I mean, if you can
make a woman's suit, you can make you can make
a set of drapes in your sleep. So all this
leads me to he had made drapes that covered the

(01:28:02):
entire wall of their bedroom. And after my father passed away,
several years after he passed away, my mother was in
bed and trying to fall asleep, and she saw my
father appear through the drapes, come around to the side
of the bed, and then he put his head on

(01:28:23):
her lap and then poof disappeared.

Speaker 2 (01:28:28):
This segment's going to disappear. We have Mark Phillips with
Gene and Chris.

Speaker 3 (01:28:32):
You're in the paracast.

Speaker 1 (01:28:46):
We'd like to hear from you. If you have a
comment or question about the para Cast, send it to
news at the paracast dot com. That's news at the
paracast dot com. And don't forget to visit our famous
community forums at forum dot thepowercast dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:29:05):
We have Mark Phillips with Gene and Chris on the
power Cast. Mark telling us of the time, not long
after his dad had died, that your mom saw him
through the drapes.

Speaker 4 (01:29:17):
And let me put this in context for you. My
mother is not the kind of person who you would
think would be seeing ghosts. She told me about this
about nine months ago. Is up visiting her in Toronto
and she told us to me after I asked if
she's been watching my ghost work. He's a sorry popeter
in Canada, and she said she watched it once, but

(01:29:41):
it scared the crap out of her, though she didn't
use that word. And then she told me that story
and it really it actually blew my mind because it
was like, Holy, this is just not my mother. My
mother is as straight and as uncomplicated as an arrow.
So for her to have that kind of experience and

(01:30:01):
talk about it, and for wait to wait so many
years to tell me.

Speaker 2 (01:30:05):
About it, Wow, did you think that maybe you think
she's crazy.

Speaker 4 (01:30:10):
No, I just think that, given the context of one
of the shows that I'm doing is all about ghosts,
I think she just felt that she could tell me,
and I wouldn't think that she was crazy.

Speaker 2 (01:30:22):
Did she ever have any other experience or was this
a singular event.

Speaker 4 (01:30:25):
The only event she ever told me about?

Speaker 2 (01:30:28):
So maybe there's something else there if you talk to
her the right way. Yeah, maybe buyers some perfume, send
her a gift and tell her tell your ghost stories.
Any other members of your family have strange things happened
to them, since we're going in that direction.

Speaker 4 (01:30:45):
No, well, I have a very small family, so.

Speaker 3 (01:30:48):
Not really.

Speaker 4 (01:30:49):
No, not at all, Not at all.

Speaker 2 (01:30:52):
I understand this because the same thing is true with
my family. You know, my parents never paid attention. My
brother sort of paid attention, but he did it in
a way that he could poke fun at me. I think, right,
if that happens, so it didn't happen to me. How
about the people that you recruit as part of your staff.
Are these people you've worked with for years or those

(01:31:13):
who joined you because they had a particular interest in
the subject.

Speaker 4 (01:31:16):
It really most of my staff, especially the people who've
been working with me for many, many years. They're just really,
really good storytellers, because that's what television is all about.
It's all about good storytelling. And if you're a good
storyteller and you can wrap your arms around the material

(01:31:37):
or wrap your head around the material, then you're going
to do well on My ghost Story. I would say
that the in terms of editors, which is one of
the hardest things to do on this show. There are
a number of my editors who are true believers and
they cut really good stories. And then there are a

(01:32:00):
number of editors who they're kind of skeptics, but they
really know how to tell a good story when cutting
it together. So it's a combination of both. I'm not
evading a specific answer. It's just there are some people
who are more into it than others. But that's not
necessarily what makes a good producer or editor for my

(01:32:20):
ghost Story. It's the ability to be able to tell
a good story.

Speaker 3 (01:32:23):
It doesn't matter exactly. You have to leave your own
personal belief that them outside the SYNTHI edit Sweet Door
exactly like you said, you know, do your job and
tell the story correctly. There you have a question, I
have a question for you concerning an electronic voice phenomenon.
How important a part does that play in your evidence
gathering process?

Speaker 2 (01:32:43):
Oh?

Speaker 4 (01:32:43):
I love that stuff and if you've watched my ghost story,
you should see how we present it. We have a
very specific graphic that we use to illustrate visually the
sound and it's it's very cool. I love I love EVPs.
It's catching this great stuff. We have some really phenomenal EVPs.

Speaker 3 (01:33:05):
You know, Michael Esposito has been on the show in
the past. It took a little bit of flak for
his reliance on cheap digital hand recorders, people saying, well,
why don't you get you know, state of the art
you know, microphones and recording equipment, And he seems to
think that OURCA equipment is somehow designed in a way

(01:33:26):
that does allow it to be more efficient in terms
of picking up ev P, And of course the skeptics
arguments say, well, it's just has has you know, crappy circuitry,
and so you're you're producing more noise with the with
that particular you know, uh technology, and that's why you're
getting your you know, more e vps. Relatively speaking to

(01:33:48):
other gear, where do you come down on actual, uh,
the actual science, if there is such a thing regarding
e v P.

Speaker 4 (01:33:56):
Well, I mean, I can't come down anything, because we've
had EDPS recorded on all kinds of different equipment all
the way from you know, a cell phone to a
to a real to reel tape recorder too. I mean
it's too recorded with good microphones and with no microphone,

(01:34:17):
so I've heard it all over the place.

Speaker 3 (01:34:22):
Yeah, he just got back from Rome and did EVP
sessions in the basement waiting area of the Colisseum, and
he's pretty convinced that he has quite a number of
different languages, including ancient Greek that he feels he's captured.
And he also was able to capture an extinct form

(01:34:44):
of padawotomy in one site that he did in the Midwest,
and only a handful of people still were able to
decipher wow language, which I find very very compelling. Hard
to just throw that one out with a skeptical dismissal.
That's pretty compelling evidence to me. And I think EVP

(01:35:06):
is a very important investigative tool. And obviously you guys
are relying on some class A A VPS to present, But.

Speaker 4 (01:35:14):
Once again, I would never we would never do a
show that's just based on an EVP, it would be
an EVP plus some kind of plus something.

Speaker 2 (01:35:24):
We're still producing a show. It has to have a
visual appeal, not just a great story.

Speaker 4 (01:35:29):
Yeah, it's always you have to have multiple pieces of
evidence right to make it go.

Speaker 2 (01:35:39):
Story really apply, And I suppose also Mark, it's a
juggling match that you want to be true to the
story presented accurately, but you also have to be presenting
a product, as they say in show business, that is
entertaining to the people who are watching it and keep
their attention correct. It's kind of a juggling match to

(01:36:00):
do that without, of course pandering to the audience. But
to be true to your material, you.

Speaker 4 (01:36:05):
Always have to be true to your story. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:36:09):
I'm good to hear you say that, because there are
some programs that.

Speaker 4 (01:36:12):
Aren't in the reality world actually all over TV. I mean,
you know there's a lot of junk on There's a
lot of junk on TV.

Speaker 3 (01:36:22):
Yeah, a lot of good stuff.

Speaker 4 (01:36:23):
There's a lot of good stuff as well.

Speaker 3 (01:36:25):
Yeah, even your network news.

Speaker 2 (01:36:27):
Yeah, makes it difficult. And I guess the part of
it is that there's such a clamor for reality TV
these days. And obviously they have to be stretching the
envelope here. Is there a point where this kind of
reality show is going to go out of style and
back towards more scripted programming or what do you think?

Speaker 4 (01:36:48):
Never? It will never happen. It will never happen. There's
too much product required in the especially in the cable universe.
And you know one of the reasons that I've been
I've been television for a long time, and I've been

(01:37:08):
in reality or alternatives sometimes called my whole career. I
have done some scripted stuff that I've always been in
this space.

Speaker 2 (01:37:17):
I'll tell you what we get into more of this
in a moment. Mark Phillips joins us with Gene and Chris.

Speaker 3 (01:37:22):
You're in the parajazz.

Speaker 2 (01:37:36):
Hi, this is Nick Pope.

Speaker 4 (01:37:37):
You're listening to the paracog.

Speaker 2 (01:37:41):
As we closed out this segment, you mentioned that you've
been mostly doing reality programming as opposed to scripted programming.
What attracted you to reality programming in general?

Speaker 4 (01:37:52):
So I got my first job, and I'll do it
for you. My first job was as a researcher on
a sort of a wacky talk show that was I
was hired in Toronto but it was shot in Montreal,
and it was produced by a big American production company
in Canada called Columbia Pictures Television, and it was through

(01:38:14):
them that I got down here. But I had always
done talk shows and game shows and panel shows, that
kind of stuff. And it occurred to me in the
probably the late eighties i was a studio executive at MGMUA,

(01:38:35):
that this was going to be an arena of television.
It was going to grow because so much of the
scripted material was costing so much money, and especially to
the writers. And you know, if you analyzed the shows
and the late eighties early nineties sitcoms and some of

(01:38:59):
these guys being paid huge money to write absolute chunk.

Speaker 2 (01:39:04):
Thank you, my friend for saying that.

Speaker 4 (01:39:07):
Because it was an absolute junk. And I remember the
writers strike a few years ago, and I would draw
a drive from my home to my office. I'd drive
by Fox and there are all these writers out there
with signs, you know that that somehow the business has
ripped them off. They ripped us off. As far as

(01:39:30):
I'm concerned, I got to tell you something. To write
a sitcom and be funny, you got to be really,
really good. And the Networks finally came to the conclusion,
you know what, we're paying through the nose for garbage.
At least reality it doesn't claim to be anything else

(01:39:52):
but garbage.

Speaker 3 (01:39:56):
Well, you know, I have to tell you something about
in the public with a bad joke.

Speaker 2 (01:40:01):
You know, I watch these coming Attractions and I watch
some series TV each evening. I think there's some shows
that are really well done. I'm a fan of, say,
of Fringe, I think it's very imaginative. I think some
great show.

Speaker 4 (01:40:11):
I'm a fan of Health and I'm so sorry it's
going away.

Speaker 2 (01:40:16):
My wife has gotten a little bit, as they say, disenchanted.
But you know, Hugh Lourie is such an incredible performer.
Some people suggesting he should be the next Doctor Who,
by the way, because he has that quirkiness to him.
But the last episode, for example, he directed, I thought
it was really well done episode where his friend, his

(01:40:36):
friend on the show right, has cancer and he's showing
him going through chemo and everything else. There was a
fascinating show. But I'm glad we're kind of think alike
about stuff like that. Moving on to our little corner
of the world here a reality show. People understand it
if they've had ghost experiences, or they understand because it

(01:41:00):
has happened to them, or they know people to whom
it's happened. Well, what about the mainstream scientific community. Now
you can say, look, we're producing an entertainment show. Yes
it is reality, we have no obligation. Or do you
think that scientists ought to be interested in figuring out
what's going on? Oh?

Speaker 4 (01:41:16):
I think they should be. I gave you the example
of the guy who's developing the full spectrum camera.

Speaker 2 (01:41:24):
But he's such an exception.

Speaker 4 (01:41:25):
Well, I mean I've run into a number of very
very well educated people who are really into it and
who are investigators. Doctor Renee Cruz if you know her,
I believe she's out of Massachusetts, but you know she's
a mechanical engineering professor. And it's like totally trying to

(01:41:51):
use the scientific method to prove that something is haunted.
Were so very it may it may, it may take
a while, they take a while.

Speaker 2 (01:42:03):
You think that show is like yours, And the fact
that so many millions of people are interested will encourage
scientists to say, you know what, maybe we should take
a look and see what.

Speaker 4 (01:42:11):
I'd like to I'd like to I'd like to think so.
I'd like to think so.

Speaker 3 (01:42:16):
They I had.

Speaker 4 (01:42:19):
Drinks with a buddy and bandmate of mine on Saint
Patti's Day down in Santa Monica, and somebody joined us
at the table. And he's a a mergers an acquisition
professor at USC. He's written six books, obviously has a doctorate.
And and when my friend Michael says yeah, Mark is

(01:42:45):
the existive producer of Michael's story, he goes, oh, I
love that show. I watched that show every week. He said,
I don't watch it ivo.

Speaker 3 (01:42:53):
I love that show.

Speaker 4 (01:42:54):
And then he started and gonna remember, this is a
guy who's written six books, is a mergers and acquisition professor.
And he start telling me, you know what. In nineteen
seventy two, I was driving along this highway in Farmingdale, Pennsylvania,
and I'm doing the speed limit and a woman appears
in front of me and I run her down. Oh no,

(01:43:16):
I tried to break I downshifted, I got out of
my car. I looked underneath, I looked behind, I looked
through the side.

Speaker 3 (01:43:23):
There's no woman.

Speaker 4 (01:43:25):
It was a ghost. I saw a ghost. I swear
to God, I saw a ghost. And this is the
guy he'd only had one beer. But I want to
remind you again he's a mergers and acquisitions professor at
USV and he's telling me a ghost story, for.

Speaker 2 (01:43:39):
Example, Mick Romney telling a ghost story exactly.

Speaker 4 (01:43:43):
I mean, I said to him, do you have any evidence?
He said no. I put one of my researchers on it,
because one of my researchers is actually from that area,
to see if anyone else has had a similar experience
and if there's any evidence of a woman appearing on
the on the rope, because I want to have this
guy on as a storyteller, Like I can't do it,

(01:44:03):
let's have the evidence.

Speaker 3 (01:44:05):
Yeah, it sounds like he acquired a new new kind
of angle on his belief system exactly, and it's kept
it all these years. Yeah. Well, those are the types
of experiences that I think really impressed upon people that
we are living in a reality that you know, the
age of reason in the last five hundred years still

(01:44:25):
has not properly I think of in fully defined. Although
although we're working at it, it's it's baby steps, three
steps forward, two steps back. But I do think a
lot more work has to be done, and we do
have to attract the powers of diagnostics science in academia,
to get involved without fear of ridicule, without fear of
losing tenure or getting you know, censored, and that sort

(01:44:48):
of thing. I think the the taboo on these subjects
needs to be lifted.

Speaker 4 (01:44:54):
Well, how far back does the phrase the whole ghost go?

Speaker 3 (01:45:02):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:45:03):
Exactly, yeah, the Holy Spirit, which reminds me of one
of my favorite jokes. There's a little Jewish man crossing
the road and from a bus runs him over, and
as he lays dying on the sidewalk, a Roman Catholic
priest runs over to his side and takes his hand
and says to him, do you believe in the Father
of the Son and the Holy Ghost? And the little
old man looks up and says, what I'm dying? And

(01:45:26):
you asked me a riddle? You're supposed to laugh?

Speaker 2 (01:45:31):
There you go, and they say, I tell bad jokes.
That works like you're your accident.

Speaker 3 (01:45:39):
Though. That was good, That was good.

Speaker 2 (01:45:41):
That was a real close approximation. You see, I'm from Brooklyn,
I know about them things. That's close. That's close now
in terms of the reaction of people when in person
says these days, you know, I watched that sho my
ghost Stories or any of the other programs. Do you

(01:46:03):
think people in general look at them and say, yeah,
that's cool, I remember a ghost story. Do you think
that people in general, which is the direction where scientists
will eventually come and people in general have come to
accept that there is a paranormal universe out there and
we need to understand more about it. You're seeing it
in that direction.

Speaker 4 (01:46:25):
You know, maybe this is the time where I should
illuminate who the audience of my ghost Story is?

Speaker 2 (01:46:33):
Please do.

Speaker 4 (01:46:36):
Sixty one percent women average age forty two to forty five.
Sometimes I imagine, especially when I'm watching the show, like
who in America is watching it? And what I imagine
is as I imagine women in their thirties, forties and

(01:46:57):
fifties watching it out a third of them have a
significant other with them who's watching it just because they
want to get laid.

Speaker 2 (01:47:09):
We have Mark Phillips with Gene and Chris. You're in

(01:47:31):
I'm Kevin Randall.

Speaker 3 (01:47:32):
You're listening to the Para Cast, the gold standard of
paranormal radio.

Speaker 2 (01:47:41):
With Mark Phillips with Gene and Chris on the Para Cast,
And we know now the secret why men want to
watch my ghost story. It's not to learn about these things?
Is it the kind of subject that women are naturally
attracted to as opposed to men.

Speaker 4 (01:47:56):
Here's another interesting observation for you. I was going to
say fact, but it's probably more of an observation though
it's based on demographics and studies. Women are more apt
to believe in the paranormal than men. Men are more
apt to believe in these existence of UFOs and aliens

(01:48:21):
than women. There is a natural skew between men and
women on that subject matter.

Speaker 2 (01:48:27):
So therefore, if you are a production company or even
the network, and the network says we want to attract women,
we'll go for the ghost stories. We want to attract men,
it's going to be a UFO hunters, correct? Is it
because UFOs have the hardware aspect to them, the technology?

Speaker 4 (01:48:46):
Perhaps?

Speaker 3 (01:48:47):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:48:47):
Yeah, now I never thought about that. That's actually a
very good observation. Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:48:54):
Well. I have also do a tech radio show, some
kind of Caught Up in Both Worlds, and Chris does
a lot of technology in terms of the kind of
work he does. So I guess we're the typical audience
of a UFO show, right, But if we want to
get more female listeners on the power casts. We got
to stick with them ghosts, you.

Speaker 3 (01:49:11):
Got it, and reincarnated pets. That's also a real good
one with the girls.

Speaker 4 (01:49:17):
Oh yeah, that's that's as I say, We've done a
number of a number of episodes on that.

Speaker 2 (01:49:25):
Is it the cultural conditioning that causes the demographics to
skew that way? You know?

Speaker 4 (01:49:31):
I don't know. I think it's more about I think
that women are more more open to things naturally spiritual
than men are. I think that men are probably you know, colder,
and and they only want to believe what they see
in front of their eyes.

Speaker 2 (01:49:52):
So do you find them that most of the people
that you have on as witnesses or narrators in my
ghost story tend to be women.

Speaker 4 (01:50:00):
Now, we try to we try to cast it in
such a way that we always have both men and
women's storytellers. That's not to say we haven't had stories
that where both storytellers and men, and both storytellers are women.
It's interesting because I find that most of the most

(01:50:21):
of the ghost hunters that I've met are men, though
there are some interesting female ghost hunters, but most of
them are men.

Speaker 2 (01:50:29):
In terms of demographics with people who actually see ghosts.
It's pretty much an even split. Yes, Okay, what about racial, cultural,
anything else that might indicate who might have a tendency
to see a ghost.

Speaker 4 (01:50:45):
No, I say that we're we're an equal opportunity experience.
Or it's interesting. The second at my company I mentioned
them before. He's actually one of the executive producers of
Michael's story and I've worked with him for twenty years
and he's Israeli and he told me that in Israel

(01:51:09):
there is no culture of the paranormal whatsoever. And it's
interesting because Michael.

Speaker 2 (01:51:16):
It's interesting. I didn't realize that.

Speaker 4 (01:51:18):
Yeah, it's also interesting that Michael's story is actually shown
in Israel. That his take on it was because I
was saying to him, Hey, you're from Israel, and we
try to do an Israeli version. He says, people over
there don't believe in it.

Speaker 3 (01:51:38):
Yeah, they've got too many other pressing that I was
going to say, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:51:42):
Their personal reality is so upfront and center, it's hard
to think about.

Speaker 3 (01:51:46):
Spiritual well, generally, there is a there is a decrease
in interest in these subjects during times of conflict, war,
civil strife, more pressing matters in people's lives has tend
to damp and down interest in the paranormal, and it's
only when we start coming out of those periods of
conflict that then we coincidentally see waves of UFOs begin

(01:52:10):
to increase. And I think generally there's more of an
interest in the unknown once things get a little less
dicey in the world. That's just something that I've kind
of noticed and over the years of my research. Big
UFO waves tend to occur after we've been in conflict overseas,
for instance, in our so.

Speaker 2 (01:52:32):
Now that we have the end of the Iraqi War,
the winding down the Afghanistan War, and maybe a slight
hope that we'll get things together with Iran, maybe we'll
have a big UFO flap. As a matter of fact,
new fon the Mutual Ufo Network was reporting the same thing.
That's an interesting thing to ask since you're just another
guy there, Mark, do you personally find an interest in UFOs?

Speaker 3 (01:52:54):
Yeah? I do.

Speaker 4 (01:52:55):
I actually try to develop a show called My UFO Story,
but I couldn't find much evidence. Now, there was a
show that I did a few years ago called Light Detector.
It's a very cool show where we would take people
who had a story to tell and people didn't believe him,
and we'd laugh him on a world class polygraph test.

(01:53:18):
For instance, we put Paula Jones on the polygraphy and
absolutely proved that Bill Clinton dropped his doors and asked
her for oral sex. And one of the stories was
of a doctor he is actually a scientist actually, who

(01:53:44):
claimed that he saw evidence that the Pentagon has covered
up UFO several UFO sightings, and we put him on
the polygraph on the claim that he has seen this

(01:54:05):
evidence and he passed. Then again, we had a woman
from Canada who has a paranormal radio program up in Canada,
who came on the show and claimed that she was
her car broke down when she lived in California on
the Pacific Coast Highway and an alien ship land beside

(01:54:27):
her and helped her get her cargoing. And she had
talked about this story for years and years and years,
and we put her on the light detector and she
flunked with a flying Colors.

Speaker 2 (01:54:36):
I'll tell you what. We had an episode last week
in the Power Cast a guy named Robert Vandenbrooke from
the Netherlands, and I would have loved to put that
show on a voice stress analyzer and see what was
going on.

Speaker 4 (01:54:50):
Yeah, yeah, but voice stressed analyzers don't work.

Speaker 2 (01:54:52):
They don't at all.

Speaker 4 (01:54:54):
Now it's fifty to fifty, okay, but.

Speaker 2 (01:54:57):
The light detector is pretty reliable.

Speaker 4 (01:55:00):
Polygraph with a real good polygraph operator, you can get
ninety nine point nine, but you gotta have the right guy,
and the questions need to be framed properly. It's where
art and science meet. It's an amazing thing. I love polygraphs.
I'm actually trying to redo Eliza Tecter. I love that show.

Speaker 2 (01:55:18):
Is it possible for somebody who really knows the knack
to beat the test? Can?

Speaker 3 (01:55:24):
No?

Speaker 4 (01:55:25):
You used to be able to how graphic can I
get here? You used to be able to manipulate a
polygraph to give you a false positive? Therefore not a
not a real decision.

Speaker 3 (01:55:46):
You know, yes or no?

Speaker 4 (01:55:47):
He's lying by manipulating your sphincter muscle. But you better.
You can't do that anymore because they have a special
pillow that and it will detect if you're trying.

Speaker 1 (01:56:07):
To do that.

Speaker 2 (01:56:07):
We have something to detect now, folks.

Speaker 3 (01:56:09):
I detected death. I have a hard time believe in
that one.

Speaker 2 (01:56:13):
Mark Phillips, tell our listeners where they can find more
of the things that you're doing.

Speaker 4 (01:56:18):
Well. One of the things I'd like to say one
more time, if you don't mind, is if anybody out
there has a story that they want to submit to us,
they can reach us at this email address my ghost
story at mpp T dot tv. And that m is
in Mark ps and Peter p is and Peter T
isn't Tom dot T isn't Tom V as in Victor.

Speaker 2 (01:56:42):
And I'll tell you what we'll do here with listeners
once I get things set up, when they click on
your name on our site, it will magically open an
email what they can write to you if they want.

Speaker 4 (01:56:53):
Oh, well, technology, technology, it's finest.

Speaker 2 (01:56:56):
We'll even block the spam. If we can't, we'll try
to encrypt it. Chris O'Brien, Our Strange Planet's coming close
to a conclusion, right.

Speaker 3 (01:57:05):
Yeah, Yeah, Ben and I are working hard, and I
want to thank him and Jarrett for all their hard
work and can't wait to get it up.

Speaker 2 (01:57:12):
We're looking for a launch here today our Strange Plant
dot com and Mark Phillips thank you so much for
joining us this week. I'm the Power Cast.

Speaker 4 (01:57:21):
I appreciate it. It was fun talking to you guys,
and stay in touch. If I can never do anything
for you, let me know.

Speaker 1 (01:57:34):
The Power Cast featuring Jeames Steinberg and Christopher O'Brien is
a copyrighted presentation of Making the Impossible Incorporated. Tune in
next week for a new adventure in the Power Cast.

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Classic Episode: May 6, 2012 — Inside a Ghost Reality Show: Mark Phillips

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