The Paranormal Through History

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
M m hey everybody, and welcome back to four the

(00:41):
Oh for.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
The Booze Now fixture headphones, which I did. Yeah, I
see that. So we are back. We have had some
stuff going on, so we couldn't do what we wanted
to do last week and bang out to episodes. So
I guess that's what we're gonna do this week. So
there'll be another one. Well for the listener of the podcast,

(01:04):
it's not going to seem that way. I also thought
about maybe putting this one out today. Okay, you know
it kind of makes sense, right, some people will do that.
I don't know. If you're listening to this on Monday,
then that's what we did. And if not, then we're
going to do it staggered and you won't know this
will even make any sense to you.

Speaker 1 (01:23):
So sounds great.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
Things have just been all over the place, but we're
back and we have an episode today. It's gonna be
a little different. Well so excited it is. But I
can't stress enough. I know I keep saying this, but
it is paranormal. It's just not paranormal in the way
that we normally do things where we talk about locations
and stuff. Oh and also I forgot to tell you
we had a listener reach out via email today and

(01:48):
give us a suggestion of a place to do. So
I'm going to look into it and if I can
find enough, that's probably what we're gonna do on Wednesday.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
Oh yes, I'm so excited.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
So we have to look forward to that. I forgot
their name. But when we go to record it, I
will shout you out.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
I promise.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
So yeah, So this is going to be different, and
it's it's going to be more of like a an out.
I don't I don't really know how to describe this.
If I had to put it into words, I guess
it'd be like kind of like an outside look at
people's on how we've come into our understanding of the
world of the paranormal today. Okay, I don't know how

(02:24):
else to put it. I'm sure there's a better way.
I'm just not educated enough.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
So is it like the history of parents?

Speaker 2 (02:33):
Yes, but it's gonna be kind of how we got
to where we are today and how we view things
about the paranormal today. Okay, you know, because we talk
a lot about what Oh I thought that's not what
I thought you said. I thought you said something else,
and we I know, we usually do like we're just like,
you know, we talk about a location and or just
like is it haunted? Yes or no? And then it

(02:55):
made me think, like, you know, that's all interesting and stuff,
but there's been a time in history where people didn't
and give the paranormal a second thought, And what would
it be like to kind of look at that side
of it and how we even got here.

Speaker 1 (03:07):
I love it.

Speaker 2 (03:08):
It's just different.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
I'm down. Let's do it.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
And I've never really heard anybody else talk about this,
So for the booze, you hear it here first. Probably not.
You've probably heard some of this stuff before. It's fine,
but let's get into.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
This, all right, let's do it.

Speaker 2 (03:21):
The paranormal has long captured the imagination of humankind, existing
at the fringes where the known world blurs into the unknown.
The term itself paranormal encompasses phenomena that defy scientific explanation. Ghosts, hauntings,
psychic abilities, cryptids, extraterrestrial encounters and more. And when I
say more, I do mean more. There Like, there is

(03:43):
a lot more in paranormal than we think.

Speaker 1 (03:46):
Okay, there's a lot.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
Now, Cross century societies have wrestled with these mysteries, using
them as mirrors to reflect hopes, fears, and the evolving
contours of knowledge. Today, the paranormal is as much a
cultural phenomenon as it is a field of alleged experiences,
and its transformations over time reveal much about the ways
human perceive the world and their place within it. Now

(04:13):
we're gonna first get into where this all lied in
the Middle Ages. Wow, all right, it goes back. I mean, honestly,
you could honestly say that the paranormal goes back even
far beyond that.

Speaker 1 (04:25):
Oh, I'm sure you.

Speaker 2 (04:26):
Know, because people who inhabited the earth had different gods
and their beliefs could probably be categorized into something as paranormal,
you know, their rituals and stuff. So this isn't even
this isn't even like an actual jump off point. I
just think this is kind of where our modern day
knowledge or modern day thoughts of paranormal would have started. Okay,

(04:47):
During the Middle Ages, the boundary between the mundane and
the supernatural was thin and ever shifting. The paranormal was
not only accepted as a part of daily life, but
also deeply entwined with religious doctrine. Folklore and communal fears. Apparitions, miracles,
and omens were seen as signs from God or the
work of demonic entities. Medieval Christians believed that ghosts were

(05:10):
souls trapped in purgatory, returning to request prayers or warn
the living, while angels and saints might appear in times
of crisis to offer protection or even guidance. The personal
stories from this era survive mostly as chronicles in religious
and court records. For example, in the twelfth century, an

(05:31):
English monk named Orderic Vitalis recorded the story of a
woman who claimed her deceased husband visited her knightly, pleading
for prayers to release his soul from suffering. Likewise, the
legend of the green Children of Wolpit, I've never heard
of that one. That's probably something we'll look into. Two
mysterious children who appeared in a Suffolk village speaking in

(05:53):
unknown language was documented by Ralph A. Cogshall Coggishell Cogshall,
leading villagers to debate their ghostly or other worldly origins
for centuries. So as you can see, I mean there
has been paranormal in the way that we have thought
being claimed all the way back in the eleven hundreds.

Speaker 1 (06:13):
Yeah, and I could only imagine it would be just
people kind of sitting around and like saying things, and
other people just kind of look at them, like what, Well.

Speaker 2 (06:21):
They didn't really have Facebook back then, so I'd imagine
that time it was obviously obviously thank you, you're welcome.
I'm here to point it out now. In this era,
tales of witches, demons, and spirits circulated widely, and the
supernatural colored interpretations of illness, misfortune, and unexpected events. Reports

(06:43):
of miraculous healings, possessions, and visions were common, shaping the
worldview of medieval peoples. Monks and clergy chronicled these events,
sometimes to inspire faith, sometimes to enforce church doctrine or
social order. Now, the fear of the unknown also gave
rise to witch hunts and accusations of hearsay or heresy.

(07:04):
I'm sorry, heresy I can't read as communities sought to
root out evil influences believe responsible for local hardships. And
this is, you know, not long after the time or
a lot long before the time. What are you doing
not long before the time of say, like you know,

(07:25):
we I think of this as like what starts that
era of the witch hunt, and we eventually get to Salem.
But what a lot of people don't understand is, I'm
sure a lot of European folks will know better than
we will. The witch hunts that we associate with Salem
started in Europe long before they ever came here in
the absolutely in the same fashion though, and they killed

(07:48):
a lot more people, and it was a lot more brutal.

Speaker 1 (07:51):
I could I could only imagine.

Speaker 2 (07:53):
They were a lot less, a lot less forgiving over
in the you know, European times. As far as it
came to the witch hunts and stuff, it seems like
they just wanted to kill people. I know, honestly, it's
wild brutal now. Thus, in the Middle Ages, the paranormal
was a constant presence, both the source of awe and terror,

(08:13):
woven into the spiritual and social fabric of the time.
Its manifestations reflected the ara's anxieties and hopes, setting the
stage for later transformations and how the unexplained would be understood.

Speaker 1 (08:26):
Now.

Speaker 2 (08:26):
In the ancient world, the line between the natural and
supernatural was indistinct. Early humans seeking to understand the mysteries
of life and death attributed unexplainable events to the actions
of spirits, gods, and other worldly beings. Ghost Stories appear
in some of the oldest recorded texts. The Epic of Gilgamesh,

(08:47):
for example, recount spectral visitations, while ancient Egyptian and Greek
civilizations described hauntings and afterlife journeys. These are pre date
is far back. We would never think to think this
far back for paranormal stuff.

Speaker 1 (09:05):
I couldn't even think of it. Like you talk about
like witches and things like that, but like this, this
is even further than that.

Speaker 2 (09:15):
Yeah, you're talking about in the time of the Middle Ages.
They're looking back on this time going wow, that's old, right, right,
that's ancient.

Speaker 1 (09:22):
So like we think witches and we're like, wow, that
was so long ago, like the witch hunts and things,
and in.

Speaker 2 (09:28):
Reality it wasn't. It was only like three hundred years ago.

Speaker 1 (09:30):
But like this is even longer than that. It's crazy,
it's crazy.

Speaker 2 (09:35):
Yeah, So, I mean paranormal claims go back a really
really long way. Yeah, like really long.

Speaker 1 (09:40):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:41):
Personal stories from antiquity are preserved in myth and oral tradition.
One such account comes from Pliny the Younger, a Roman
author who wrote to a friend about a haunted house
in Athens. According to his letter, tenants heard rattling chains
and eventually saw the ghost of an old man bound
in shackles. The ghost led a brave lodger to a

(10:04):
spot in the yard where a buried skeleton was found,
and after its proper burial, the haunting ceased, showing how
personal encounters with the unexplained shaped early beliefs. Wow, you
know what that reminds me of Christmas, Carol. The first

(10:24):
thing I thought of, Yeah, you know, he's got the chains.

Speaker 1 (10:27):
He's like Ebaneese or screw. I wonder if it's yeah,
the ghost of Christmas past or.

Speaker 2 (10:34):
Present or future. Oracles and shamans, individuals believed to possess
special connections to the spiritual realm, were integral to early communities,
and they channeled spirits, predicted futures, and helped explain the
seemingly arbitrary forces of nature. In these societies, the paranormal
was not only accepted, but expected an everyday part of existence.

Speaker 1 (10:58):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (10:58):
See, so a lot of people don't think of the
you know, the paranormal in this way. You know, I've
always thought of it as like a modern phenomena. Right,
I never really knew until maybe the past couple of
years that people really even considered the idea of paranormal before,
like the fifties.

Speaker 1 (11:19):
I mean it wasn't mainstream, that's for sure, but I
mean this is otherwise. I mean true, they.

Speaker 2 (11:28):
They literally just said it wasn't you know, they was expected. Wow.
I actually think they might have believed in the paranormal more.

Speaker 1 (11:35):
Than we do, and we do now.

Speaker 2 (11:37):
Well, there was a lack of the modern science that
we have, so things that now we know for a
fact are not paranormal, they are just things that happen.

Speaker 1 (11:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (11:48):
Absolutely, they had no way to determine. You know, even
in the more advanced societies and stuff, they still there
was just a lot that you know, they working able
to know. Societies developed, so too did their interpretations of
the paranormal. In medieval Europe, Christian dogma deeply influenced perceptions
of unexplained phenomena. Now, ghosts were often seen as souls

(12:11):
in purgatory, seeking prayers to aid their passage. Reports of
apparitions and miraculous events were woven into the fabric of
religious life, sometimes serving as tools for church authority. The
personal stories fueled the witch hunts and superstitions of the era.
A well known incident was the Possession of the Nuns

(12:32):
of Loudon in seventeenth century France, in which a group
of ursuline nuns claimed to be tormented by demonic forces.
The exorcisms and trials that ensued captivated and horrified the public.
Another enduring example is that of Matthew Hopkins, the self
styled witch Finder General in England, who relied on personal

(12:55):
accusations and quote spectral evidence from villagers worries of ghostly
apparitions and curses to justify the persecution of alleged witches.
The van helsing.

Speaker 1 (13:08):
Yeah, wow, so we're just gonna be like, yeah, so
this is what happened. Well, because this is what we're
going to do to these people.

Speaker 2 (13:17):
This is If you've listened to or watched this enough,
you'll know, especially today, buy my shirt. I'm not much
of a church guy. I don't really have much of
a belief system in that way. And this is honestly.
Why is because they obviously can't do the stuff. Now,
you know, they can't round you up and kill you.

(13:39):
But there was a time where if you didn't believe
in their beliefs, they would just burn you at the stake.
And that's problematic for me if I'm being honest.

Speaker 1 (13:49):
Absolutely, Like we went to Saint Augustine.

Speaker 2 (13:53):
You grew up in the church.

Speaker 1 (13:54):
I did.

Speaker 2 (13:54):
Okay, I'm not saying who you are, but I'm just
saying what happened in your life. You grew up in
the church. And you can't tell me that you haven't
heard times where it's like, oh well, you can't listen
to that, you can't do that thing, You can't believe
this thing because it's evil, and this is how they
control people.

Speaker 1 (14:11):
Absolutely. Now, I'm I have set kind of like rules
and expectations, a lot of rules, and if you stray
away from them, you're you're not in line with everybody else.

Speaker 2 (14:23):
Well, and obviously certain sects of the church they have
some of there's different belief systems, but I mean some
of them range from like oh, you know, it's not
a big deal of their kids too, You're going to
burn in hell, right, you know, talking about you Southern Baptists.
But I just don't like the controlling aspect of it.
And and don't get me wrong, like I don't have

(14:46):
an issue with people who have religion. I think it's good.
I actually think it does a lot of good for
some people to have faith. And you know, if that's
what it takes to make you a you know, be
a better person, I'm fine with that. I just don't
like the idea of the church in general, just because
of how it's been. I'm trying not to offend anybody,

(15:09):
you know, because I know that a lot of people
do take their religion very seriously. And that's fine. That's fine.
I'm fine with that. But you got to admit, you
guys don't have the best track record, done a lot
of bad things over the years. I didn't grow up
in the church, obviously. Now, this era also witnessed the
dark tides of witch hunts. Fear of the paranormal, now

(15:29):
tied to heresy and demonic packs, led to mass persecutions,
as we know from Salemooch Trials, which trials in Europe
and colonial America were driven by anxieties about unseen evil
lurking within communities. Phenomena like possession, curses, and spectral evidence
shaped the legal and social landscapes, blending folklore with fervent belief,

(15:53):
and most of these people are the people who came
over here and lived in the colonies because they were
you know, the Puritans and stuff. And I don't think anybody,
even the Southern Baptist could even compete with the hardcore
religious beliefs of the Puritans. Oh man, patience, man, if
you know, you know, patience, patience. We gotta see if

(16:15):
there's more.

Speaker 1 (16:16):
I know, I love that show. It's such a good show.

Speaker 2 (16:18):
Now. Yet, even as fear of the supernatural feud, violence,
and repression, the paranormal also provided comfort. Belief in miracles,
guardian angels, and prophetic visions offered hope and guidance in
uncertain times. Many accounts from the journals of ordinary people
described visions of lost loved ones providing solace in an
age marked by sudden mortality and hardship.

Speaker 1 (16:41):
It kind of took an ease to people thinking that
their loved ones were still with them in difficult times.

Speaker 2 (16:49):
Well, and I the one good thing about religion is
that comforts people who really do have faith that this
isn't the end for them. You know, when they pass,
they'll see those people again. And while I'm not a
religious person because of some of the stuff that's happened
to me recently. I think about this a lot, and

(17:09):
I hope that there is the chance that I will
get to see some people again. So I don't know.
But it's not all bad, is I guess what I'm
trying to say. And don't listen to me. I mean,
I'm not a preacher or anything. You have your own.

Speaker 1 (17:24):
Thoughts, since everybody has their own opinions about literally everything.

Speaker 2 (17:29):
I don't know how I married a girl who grew
up in the church. It's very strange. Good girls like
bad guys carry on. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries heralded
an era of reason and scientific inquiry. The Enlightenment challenged
many traditional explanations for the paranormal. Skeptics debunked hauntings as

(17:50):
natural phenomena, you know, creaking floorboards, drafts, or the tricks
of candle light. Witchcraft, and demonic possessions were increasingly attributed
to mental illness or social hysteria. Yet stories persisted, stubbornly
resilient in the face of reason. In seventeen sixty two,
the Cocklane Ghost that is an awful name, Yes it is.

(18:14):
It's going to throw that out there one more time.
The Cocklane Ghost in London drew crowds when a family
claimed their house was haunted by the spirit of a
young woman. Visitors reported hearing mysterious knockings and voices, and
newspapers of the day chronicled the events, which were eventually
exposed as a hoax. Nonetheless, the fervor surrounding the case

(18:35):
revealed the persistent allure of the paranormal and the power
of personal testimony to sway public opinion. And this is
what I was saying earlier, is the medieval times didn't
have this scientific advancement or people who I think it
was more like I'm sure there were people who were like, wow,
that's not true, even back in medieval times. But if
they said it wasn't and the church backed it up,

(18:56):
you would be burned at the stake.

Speaker 1 (18:58):
Yeah, oh absolutely, So you just.

Speaker 2 (18:59):
Went along with it. Yeah. Yeah. We have that like
freedom now to be able to do that.

Speaker 1 (19:02):
Of course, but like back then, it definitely wasn't.

Speaker 2 (19:05):
It was like one way, oh yeah, yeah it now
you were screwed. If you said anything, you were definitely
going to die for sure. Despite this rational turn, the
paranormal persisted. The growing popularity of spiritualism in the nineteenth
century exemplified the era's fascination with both science and spirit. Notably,
the Fox Sisters of Hydesville, New York in the eighteen

(19:26):
forties claim to communicate with spirits through rapping sounds, and
we did an episode on them.

Speaker 1 (19:31):
They are we most certainly so full of it.

Speaker 2 (19:34):
They are so full of it now they're seances. And
the rise of mediums attracted attention across the Atlantic, especially
among those mourning loved ones lost to war or disease.
Technologies like the Ouigi Aboard would emerge, blending psychological suggestion
with a veneer of scientific apparatus. Still want to get

(19:55):
one for the backdrop? I know what you do now.
The modern era saw the paranormal migrate from private belief
to public spectacle. The rise of mass media newspapers, radio,
and television transformed ghost stories and psychic phenomena into entertainment.
Investigations into haunted houses, psychic readings, and poltergeist became staples

(20:18):
of popular culture. The first hand accounts from this era
are plentiful. In nineteen twenty one, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
badass name, creator of Sherlock Holmes, published his conviction in spiritualism,
sharing the story of his wife's communications with their deceased
son through a medium. In nineteen seventy seven, the Enfield

(20:41):
poltergeist case in London made international headlines when the Hodgson
family reported eerie voices, flying furniture and other unexplained phenomena. Investigators, journalists,
and skeptics flocked to the scene, and the family's nightly
experiences became the subject of books, documentary is and heated debate.

(21:01):
I am on the I am one of those people
who live in the world of I believe it's a hoax.
The Infield, the Enfield home.

Speaker 1 (21:11):
Yeah there, Well, there.

Speaker 2 (21:13):
Was a lot of that stuff going around at the time,
and it was.

Speaker 1 (21:17):
A hot topic at the time.

Speaker 2 (21:19):
It was very huge. It was a very hot topic
at the time. And I'm not talking about your favorite
store in the mall.

Speaker 1 (21:25):
Love that store. Hot topic is are you great?

Speaker 2 (21:27):
Are you ever going to grow up?

Speaker 1 (21:28):
No? Never be an adult?

Speaker 2 (21:31):
No, thank you, you're you're a parent. Apparently lame all
burned anyways. Simultaneously, scientific interest in the paranormal took on
new forms. Organizations like the Society for Physical Research, founded
in eighteen eighty two, and the American Society for Psychical

(21:55):
Research sought to apply rigorous methods to the study of telepathy,
apps and near death experiences. While mainstream science remained skeptical,
these groups reflected a persistent curiosity about the limits of
human perception and the possibility of worlds beyond the ordinary.
And this is how we get to like today when

(22:15):
it's like people like me and Megan, where I am
much more of a skeptic. Even though I am a believer.
I am a believer. I always want to make sure
that I let everybody know that I am just very,
very skeptical in my belief because when I was younger,
I was a full believer. If you told me anything,

(22:36):
what's handed, I'd be like, that's cool, I need the story,
but let me know it. But with the inception of
YouTube and people making money off of it, we've learned
that so many people are faking, which has led me
to believe that a lot of the people that I
liked back in the day are probably faking.

Speaker 1 (22:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (22:54):
Absolutely, because you can apply the things that we've learned
about people now to the things that we've seen the past,
and you could be like, if they're doing the same
thing and it's unfortunate for me.

Speaker 1 (23:04):
It is very unfortunate because you go and you see, like,
you know, things in history, and people are just so
like dedicated to these stories and they're just all in.
But then you get these people who are absolutely not
like there's nothing, you know, there's no paranormal not at
all whatsoever. But then you get people like us or

(23:26):
you who are specifical believers but are super skeptical too.
But nowadays, like we have I guess instruments and tools.
I guess that we've put towards this, but.

Speaker 2 (23:39):
Most of those have even been debunked. Is not working.

Speaker 1 (23:44):
I'm not going to sit here and say that all
of them work, and they're exactly one hundred almost of them.

Speaker 2 (23:50):
I know, almost none of them. I know, like there
nothing beats the old school method of a camcorder and
a tape recorder. Oh I know for sure, you know,
I get the idea. Well, I'm not gonna all right,
So like rempods and stuff like that, they technically work,
but it's also been discovered that you can interfere with that,

(24:12):
you can fake them easily. It's not even hard, right,
So it it's not good for scientific research to use
something that can be like interfered with so easily and
maybe not even intentionally. So I guess, if you want
to get technical, some of the stuff works. It just

(24:33):
doesn't work. I don't know how to describe it doesn't work.

Speaker 1 (24:36):
I feel like, not that it doesn't work, I just
feel like it could, it can be interfered with, which
puts doubt to that said piece of viment in science.

Speaker 2 (24:47):
If they're doing something scientific and they know that it
is super easy or most likely they're using something that
will be contaminated along the way, they're not going to
use it.

Speaker 1 (24:57):
No, absolutely, I agree with that.

Speaker 2 (25:00):
For the reason of then that you know.

Speaker 1 (25:02):
It it's a kind of tinted it tainted outcome.

Speaker 2 (25:05):
Yeah, one hundred percent attaints it so like I don't know.
I guess this is paranormal is its own field that
is very young in the way that we think of it,
and it just it needs more time. It needs more
time because I want them to find something. I do.
I do believe, I just don't know what to what
extent anymore. The UFO sightings and alien abduction reports exploded

(25:28):
in post war America, reflecting both Cold War anxieties and
technical optimism, technological optimism, sorry. The nineteen forty seven Roswell
incident and subsequent flying Saucer craze generated a flood of
personal stories, such as that of Betty and Barney Hill,
who in nineteen sixty one described being abducted by extraterrestrials

(25:50):
in New Hampshire, one of the first widely publicized abduction accounts.
Paranormal television shows, movies, and literature ranging from The X
Files to ghost Busters brought these mysteries into living rooms
around the world, fueling debates and inspiring new generations of
believers and investigators. Now I know all about Betty and
Barney Hill. I don't know if you do, because I

(26:11):
know it is a very very famous UFO case and
it gives real, real in depth, real in depth to
where they were. I don't I'm not going to get
into it on here, because there's a lot to it.
We might do it as an episode one day, because
I know that we wanted this kind of start doing

(26:31):
other things. This is a very very famous case.

Speaker 1 (26:37):
I've never heard of it.

Speaker 2 (26:38):
And it's one that is still kind of believed, okay,
have happened in the ways people interpret and experience the
paranormal have always reflected broader cultural trends. In times of
social upheaval, wars, pandemics, or rapid technological change, interest in
the supernatural often surges. The paranormal offers meaning and narrative

(27:02):
structure amid chaos, providing explanations when reasons falters. In the
late twentieth and early twenty first centuries, personal paranormal stories
found new life online. Internet message boards and social media
spawn communities like reddits are slash paranormal, where users share
first hand accounts from mysterious shadows glimpsed in childhood homes

(27:27):
to encounters with cryptids and royal woods. One widely shared
account comes from a user who recounted the experience of
waking up to see a translucent figure at the end
of their bed, a presence that inexplicably left a cold
handprint on the covers. And such accounts, though impossible to verify,
illustrate the enduring power of the personal narrative and shaping

(27:50):
collective belief. Now we even read stories on our Patreon
episodes that come from Reddit, and well, some of them
do sound good. There is this thing when it's like
it's almost like a mass hysteria thing. If you can
get enough people to believe it, it's true. So the
Internet has really made it easy for fake paranormal stuff.

(28:16):
I hate to be like that because not everybody on paranormal,
not everybody online, is faking paranormal. I can't say that enough.
But when I I will all, I automatically, when I
think YouTube investigator, I will autumn. My brain will automatically
go to fake. I can't help it. You yeah, oh
on YouTube.

Speaker 1 (28:36):
It's so few and far between that you find something
on YouTube that is not like we like to call
for entertainment purposes only, which means absolutely fake.

Speaker 2 (28:47):
But I'll take it a step farther. When I think
of television paranormal, I automatically think fake because let me
let me explain this to listeners. Right, A lot of
paranormal shows I leave start out as people who want
to they are searching for the paranormal. But the problem is,

(29:09):
over time ratings will go down. The network will want
you to find things, whether you find them or.

Speaker 1 (29:15):
Not, to bring that viewership back up.

Speaker 2 (29:17):
You will have to find stuff in order to stay relevant.
There is no way to get around that. It will
never change. So when it comes to paranormal television, it
will always be fake in my.

Speaker 1 (29:35):
Opinion, agree, I absolutely agree.

Speaker 2 (29:38):
Now, psychological research has explored how cognitive biases, memory errors,
and suggestion contribute to paranormal beliefs. The human brain, ever,
adept at pattern recognition, sometimes finds meaning even where none exists,
and the sleep paralysis, for instance, can give rise to
vivid hallucinations of shadowy visitors later interpreted as ghostly counties

(30:01):
encounters or alien abductions, or the sleep paralysis demon that
we've all heard about a million times.

Speaker 1 (30:08):
Oh God.

Speaker 2 (30:09):
Now many people have shared stories of waking unable to
move with the crushing sense that something unseen was watching
experiences that feel ghost lore across cultures. The desire for connection,
particularly following the death of loved ones, can also manifest
as belief in the afterlife or communication with spirits. So
people who lose loved ones are always more likely to

(30:35):
believe in the paranormal because, like I said earlier, I
don't have a religious background. I am very skeptical, and
I want to believe because of the people that I've lost,
I want to think that I can see them again.
In my heart of reason, I don't think I will
you huh me, I just don't. I mean, I really don't.

(30:58):
I'd love to think that, Oh, I'm going to die
one day, You're going to die one day. We're going
to find each other in the afterlife and all that,
but I feel.

Speaker 1 (31:06):
Like it means more like you're more likely to see
them in the spiritual world while you're still in the
living world, is what they're referring to. I guess I.

Speaker 2 (31:19):
Understand that, and I that's that's what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 (31:21):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 2 (31:22):
But because all of a sudden, even those skeptics will
go back on their core beliefs because of something traumatic
that's happened, it makes them more susceptible to believing in
the paranormal. I agree with that too, you know, because
you want to believe. I was just using my case
as an example. Yeah, it's just it's just a thing.

(31:43):
It's it's like the folly, a do thing that happens
where it's it's a it's like when two people lose
their mind in the same way at the same time.
It's like a mass hysteria thing. I'm not calling this
mass hysteria, but I'm saying it falls within the same
line it's a group thinking. It's you know, it's where
you can make a massive group believe the same thing,

(32:04):
and that online is really.

Speaker 1 (32:07):
It's kind of that.

Speaker 2 (32:08):
It's truly done a good job in that.

Speaker 1 (32:09):
Yeah, it's kind of wause that's.

Speaker 2 (32:12):
Sure, people. And I know for those of you who
don't know, we record these on YouTube, and while we
can't really comment to what's going on right now because
we're recording, I want to throw this out there for
certain people that are in there. A good example of
what I'm saying comes from people who watch stuff like
Twin Paranormal Mind Seed TV. Yeah, how can you look

(32:34):
at that and tell me that that's real? It's not
and it's not, but one point five million other people
say it's true. So the younger people come along and
they're like, it's true.

Speaker 1 (32:45):
And like for us, we want to see actual, true
paranormal investigations. Those come with hardly any evidence. You hope
to get them, absolutely, that's what you're there for. But
like a ghost isn't like a light switch, or a
spirit isn't like a you know, something that will just
flip on automatically exactly when you want it to.

Speaker 2 (33:05):
I've always said it like this if we believe the
paranormal exists. The paranormal, without getting biblical, are human entities.
I can't go into a room and make you dance. No,
I can't, Right, because you're a human, you have free will,
You do what you do, what you want.

Speaker 1 (33:22):
Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (33:23):
I don't know why people would think that any different
about dead people. If their ghosts are there, there's still
the remnants of a human, So their entity is still
going to react, unless it's a residual haunting, which is
you know, but their entity is going to react the
same way as the human formwood. You're not going to
make them do anything.

Speaker 1 (33:42):
Nope.

Speaker 2 (33:43):
And people don't seem to understand that, and it bothers me.
It bothers me. But I think we have a I
think the reason me and you have come to be
like we want real investigations. We're kind of we're in
this community, you know, in some shape or form out there,
you know, not debunkers, we're not investigators. We just kind
of talk about it. But we're in that community, so

(34:05):
we talk about it a lot, and we've shaped our
own belief system around us, and we've seen a lot
of debunking stuff. We've seen a lot of you know,
investigation stuff. So we don't just watch the I hate
to be this all mean, but the trash and be
like it's real. You got to remember that. So there's

(34:25):
other people that will just come online and they have
they have no dog in this fight, and they'll just
start watching stuff that we all know is fake, and
to them it'll be real. I don't know they you
know what I'm trying to say, I do. It's awful.
Media and technology have dramatically reshaped the paranormal landscape. Now.
The Internet age democratize ghost stories and conspiracy theories, creating

(34:47):
forums where enthusiasts share experience, evidence, and theories. The paranormal
investigation shows, podcasts, and YouTube channels have turned ghost hunting
into a participatory hobby. New technologies EMF meters, infrared cameras,
digital voice recorders promised to document the undocumentable, blurring lines

(35:09):
between entertainment and investigation. Group like taps, the Atlantic Paranormal
Society have televised their investigations, sharing real time reactions and
to mysterious noises, fleeting shadows, and unexplained anomalies that have
since become modern folklore. Oh never plugged it in we're

(35:31):
having technical difficulties. I forgot to plug the power cable in,
and I'm not cutting any of this out. I don't care. Yeah,
it's good, thank you. These are real time things that
happen on that show. But this is what I'm talking about.
But you know, the paranormal is such a it's such
a new thing. And EMF meters and infrared cameras and

(35:56):
digital voice recorders, like there was a time time when
they did promise to document the undocumentable. But we don't
know that for sure.

Speaker 1 (36:04):
No, no, we don't we have there that we could know.

Speaker 2 (36:08):
We have no idea what will work and what won't work.
And that's kind of the essence of the paranormal. It's
other than the normal, it's extra normal, it's supernatural. Until
we know for sure, we know nothing.

Speaker 1 (36:25):
That we can we can just assume that we know
absolutely nothing.

Speaker 2 (36:29):
Like, how do we know that that spirits do exist?
Let's say spirits do exist? Okay, right, but let's say
there's no real way of documenting this on a digital
device of any kind. But the only way that we
could actually see them is because of the human connection
that we have between you know, people, So maybe we

(36:50):
are our own conduit to seeing into the veil to
the other side, you know, because I like.

Speaker 1 (37:00):
It.

Speaker 2 (37:00):
I just I don't know, Like we've come up with
all these devices and we're like, this works. How do
you know it works?

Speaker 1 (37:06):
Right? But then you get people who do debunk parts
of parts and bits and pieces of these devices or
fully devices, but like people still use them. So are
we going to go with you know, the scientific kind
of backing behind it, or are we going to go
with like our gut and this is just how it is.

Speaker 2 (37:24):
But I also think it's more than that. I think
it's I think there's something to the human the connection
that happens between two people, the energy that we share together.
It's not digital. It's very analogue. It's very real world.
It's something you can't you cannot recreate with a digital device.
And maybe that's the key here, is that we can't

(37:47):
actually capture what we want to with these digital things,
and we're missing the mark here because we're not thinking
of it as a broader spect. So if you're listening
to the podcast version of this computer just Died, so
I kind of lost place, but you get what we're saying. Anyways,
I think there's a lack of respect for the human connection.

(38:07):
As far as being used as a tool, agreed, absolutely,
I think that's something that should be used more.

Speaker 1 (38:17):
Is And I get where people would say, you know, like, oh,
you can't, you can't track that, you can't make evidence
out of that. But I feel like that's the best evidence.

Speaker 2 (38:28):
Now in the twenty first century, did I already read that?
I kind of frantically started spinning the wheel. In the
twenty first century, the paranormal is more fragmented and diverse
than ever. Belief in ghosts, afterlife and psychic phenomena remains widespread.
Surveys consistently show unsubstantial portions of the global population endorse

(38:49):
at least some form of the paranormal. At the same time,
skepticism has grown, fueled by scientific education and the debunking
of hoaxes. Many people to continue to share encounters with
the unexplained, often in the form of podcasts, Hey that's US,
blogs or documentary interviews. For example, a tour guide in Savannah,

(39:11):
Georgia tells the story of seeing an apparition in an
old hotel corridor, a woman in nineteenth century dress who
vanished as quickly as she appeared in Japan. Visitors to
the Aoki Gihara. We did an episode on that I
Remember how to say it. Forests near Mount Fuji have
recounted hearing disembodied voices and feeling a sense of dread

(39:35):
that defied rational explanation. Now such personal accounts now travel
the globe instantly, becoming part of a collective of digital folklore.
And this helps the mass hysteria, for lack of a
better word, Yeah, absolutely, but the group thinking behind the paranormal,
because now stories don't travel, they are instantly in the

(39:58):
palm of your hand or on your tele vision set.
So and I agree with what they're saying, Like, I
understand the belief in the paranormal has grown, But for me,
my skepticism has grown because of this stuff. Yeah, you know,
because with the influx of fake paranormal has come an

(40:21):
influx of people saying, Hey, that's not right, that looks wrong,
let's figure this out, And then we inherently end up
debunking things that we watched twenty years ago.

Speaker 1 (40:33):
Then you're questioning everything really, like you're questioning your Like
I've been watching and into the paranormal for thirty years.

Speaker 2 (40:43):
Now, God, you're old.

Speaker 1 (40:45):
I know, God, you're still cute.

Speaker 2 (40:46):
You're so cute as a button moment, and.

Speaker 1 (40:47):
You know, like it's crazy because I just I couldn't
imagine when I first started getting into like the paranormal
and things like that, I couldn't imagine ever thinking that
and see it and just like not seeing things the
way that I do now. Like I was one hundred

(41:08):
percent of believer, and I am very much a believer
now also, but I just I don't know, I couldn't
imagine it back then, thinking that I never wanted that
I would ever question things. I guess.

Speaker 2 (41:25):
I God, I used to be such a believer. Man,
It's just it's so hard for me now, absolutely, because.

Speaker 1 (41:40):
But there's so much out there that makes you question things.
There's just so much. And like we go back to
the YouTube side of things and the four entertainment purposes only,
and that's just kind of embedded this question everything mentality.
I guess, yeah, it's it's wild.

Speaker 2 (42:02):
I don't know, it's just hard. It's just hard because
of all the stuff that we've we've seen over the years,
and I don't know, it's just it's too difficult to
say for sure. If I'm being honest, absolutely, those who
listening to the podcast, we had another technical difficulty to

(42:24):
today is just that day, I guess.

Speaker 1 (42:28):
So back to the Mount Fuji. I cannot pronounce the name.
I don't remember Oki Kihara.

Speaker 2 (42:33):
Oh, thank you as suicide for us? Yes, the one
that made Jake Paul or not Jake Paul Logan, Paul
Logan Paul a winner. Now. The commercialization of the paranormal
is a defining feature of the modern era. Haunted house attractions,
ghost ghost tours, paranormal conventions, and reality television series offers

(42:58):
both thrills and profits. Fans share their scariest moments at conventions,
and haunted tourism draws thousands each year to sites like
the Myrtle's Plantation in Louisiana and the Tower of London,
both reputed for storied hauntings recounted by generations of visitors
and staff. Did we do the Myrtle's Plantation as an episode?

(43:22):
I cannot remember.

Speaker 1 (43:23):
I can't remember either.

Speaker 2 (43:25):
I don't know, man, I feel like we did or
we were going to.

Speaker 1 (43:31):
Did we do like a combined Louisiana style? Like?

Speaker 2 (43:35):
No, we did a few. We we did a few
episodes in Louisiana.

Speaker 1 (43:39):
Wait did was that?

Speaker 2 (43:41):
That was the mansion, the Lollori mansion.

Speaker 1 (43:43):
I know, But when we did the Haunted Items episode.

Speaker 2 (43:47):
That's what it was. It was the mirror, the Myrtle's
Plantation mirror. Uh yeah, I think I thought we were
going to do it at one point and then we
never did for some reason.

Speaker 1 (43:59):
That it's still rept its way into an episode.

Speaker 2 (44:01):
It always does.

Speaker 1 (44:02):
I know, it's spooky.

Speaker 2 (44:05):
The internationalization of paranormal belief is another notable change. Now,
ghost stories, cryptid sightings, and supernatural folklore now cross cultural
and linguistic boundaries at unprecedented rates thanks to digital communication.
Urban legends once confined to a single village and now
become global memes, reshaped and retold to suit new audiences.

(44:30):
So now we get a lot of these, you know,
folklorey and urban legendee type things that we hear about
that now become, for lack of a better term, fact,
but they're not.

Speaker 1 (44:44):
Nope.

Speaker 2 (44:44):
The science and the paranormal remain uneasy companions. While mainstream
science often dismisses paranormal claims as pseudoscience or delusion, some
researchers continue to probe the boundaries of human experience. Parapsychology,
a controversial investigates the phenomena like telepathy, precognition, and psycho

(45:06):
psycho psychokinesis couldn't get that out, though results remain inconclusive.
Every even scientists have their stories. For example, doctor Ian Stevenson,
a psychiatrist at the University of Virginia, collected thousands of
personal accounts of children who claim to remember past lives,

(45:27):
including details that sometimes matched to cease persons unknown to
the children's families. Though controversial, such case studies have kept
debate about the limits of consciousness and the unexplained alive
in academic circles. So like, there are cases of children
who they do tell weird stories about stuff they couldn't know.

Speaker 1 (45:52):
Being alive previously. I don't know. I've definitely heard of
people kind of not necessarily being trapped in a previous life,
but they remember very specific things. It's weird something they
have never lived.

Speaker 2 (46:08):
My brain automatically goes to that one real life scene
of the little girl who her mom is like, oh,
do you remember being a baby, and she's like, no,
but I remember crawling out from the pits of hell,
Like I don't know why that's just the first thing
I think.

Speaker 1 (46:23):
Yeah, no, I get it now.

Speaker 2 (46:25):
Well, we did an episode on like the Imaginary Friends
of Children, and a lot of that kind of revolves
around stuff like this where kids just I don't know,
they sometimes they just know things or they come up
with things that they shouldn't know exactly, so very weird.

Speaker 1 (46:40):
I shouldn't know about these things, but they do now.

Speaker 2 (46:43):
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence demonstrates how questions once deemed
paranormal can become respectable scientific pursuits. Reports of unidentified aerial
phenomena or UAPs have prompted renewed attention, with governments and
defense agencies taking some claims seriously. When former Navy pilots

(47:06):
describe seeing unexplained aerial objects craft moving with speed and
agility beyond known technology, their stories drew global attention, blurring
boundaries between personal testimony and scientific investigation. The line between
paranormal and scientifically unproven shifts as our tools and understanding evolve.

(47:30):
And I mean there's been a lot more real talk
about extraterrestrials as of late. You know, the government was
finally being like, all right, we think there's something really
happening yeah.

Speaker 1 (47:39):
There's things going on, no specifics, but there are things, so.

Speaker 2 (47:43):
There might actually be something out there. Who knows. I
just don't. I just can't fathom the idea of their
not being more life out there in the universe. It's
way too big. There has to be. We cannot be
the only planet out of a billion other planets that
can sustain some sort of life. It just can't be. Ultimately,

(48:04):
the evolution of paranormal beliefs offers a window into human psychology, culture,
and history, and the paranormal adapts, changing shape to reflect
each era's anxieties, technologies, and even worldviews. Where medieval people
saw demons, modern individuals might see extraterrestrials, and where Victorians
linked seances to grief. Digital natives from online communities to

(48:28):
share unexplained experiences each era. Stories, whether a monk's vision
and a candle it sell, a Victorian seance and a
shadowed parlor, or a teenager's encounter with a shadowy figure,
posted to an online forum, reveal enduring human questions what
happened after death? Are we alone in the universe? Can
we shape reality through thought and desire? The answers may

(48:52):
remain elusive, but the search itself endures, binding generations across
time and place. It's it's you know, like saying the
human's Humankind is always going to question it. Even even
like like let's say tomorrow we knew for a fact

(49:13):
it doesn't exist, people are still going to believe. People
are still going because there's always a chance science has
been wrong before. Maybe this ain't the first time, right,
you know, so, and now it's it makes it easier
because now we have windows into you know, other worlds
and other communities that we just didn't before. When I

(49:35):
was a kid in the eighties, my entire world consisted
in half of the city. That's all I knew, you know.
There there was no internet, you know, so it was
me and my friends, a couple of blocks and some bicycles,
and that was the world to me. And now it's
not like that. Now we can literally set up a camera.

(49:55):
We have people that watch us from across the world.

Speaker 1 (49:58):
All over the world. Yes, so it's so widespread now.

Speaker 2 (50:02):
It just makes it easier for people to believe because
now they're hearing stories that they never would have heard before.
The paranormal persists not because it is immune to scrutiny,
but because it fulfills profound psychological, social, and existential needs.
Personal stories passed down, written, or shared online keep the

(50:22):
mystery alive, ensuring the unknown remains a vital part of
the human experience. As society changes, so too will the
stories we tell about what lies beyond the veil of
the unknown, whether as comfort, warning, entertainment, or challenge. The
paranormal reminds us that the world is larger, stranger, and
more mysterious than we can ever fully comprehend, and that

(50:47):
perhaps is the greatest power. Ooh, I like that, And
that's kind of where we're at, Like that's what it's
kind of like a quick run through history and how
we perceived the paranormal through time, and it's changed a lot,
because at one point it was it was spirituality. At

(51:10):
another point it was you know, God, at another point
it was you know, the dead. It just changes all
the time. It's it's always something different, you know, And
we've come through times where like paranormal wasn't viewed as paranormal.
It was viewed as like if you didn't believe it,
you'd get burned at the stake. And then it you know,
then it became a source of entertainment, and now it's

(51:32):
I mean, I guess it's still stuck in that source
of entertainment, but it's just ever evolving and ever changing
and ever growing. And the only hate that I have
for it is the fact that we've weaponized it as
this money making machine. Yes, you know, because while well,
I mean technically we are trying to be part of
that machine, we're trying to be, in my opinion, on

(51:54):
the right side of that machine, where we're trying to
un more the truth rather than perpetuate this ridiculous thing
that has been created on YouTube. You know, this this
cartoon monster, if you will.

Speaker 1 (52:14):
That's a really good way of putting it. Bother.

Speaker 2 (52:17):
I mean, look at all the people, Look at all
the people we have out there just doing fake stuff.

Speaker 1 (52:21):
Oh yeah, just thousands upon thousands of channels of people
just having such great grand communities for nothing.

Speaker 2 (52:34):
But we have, luckily, we do have people out there,
whether I like them or not, makes no difference that
are trying to uncover the truth. You know, I'm never
going to tell my opinion on here because I want
to exist in the same spaces. But even you know,
somebody who challenges the idea of people who can always
find paranormal who was in here earlier, like bad to

(52:56):
the bone paranormal. You know, she calls out people all
the time. You've got the Beardo's, you've got the side
eyed guys, you've got the shapes, and you've got a
billion other people who are unknown and will probably stay
unknown because they're not perpetuating the falsities in the fake
garbage that we see all the time. And that's unfortunate

(53:16):
because now we've given all the power and all the
money to these people who think we're idiots.

Speaker 1 (53:22):
And try to I don't know, I guess they try
to push it to an audience who doesn't question, and
then one kid, it's a lot of kids, and once
people who do question start coming in, everything just gets
shut down.

Speaker 2 (53:38):
Well, they jump on and it's crazy, they like attack.
I know, most of the debunking channels that have said
stuff about certain other channels being fake, it's like their
entire fan base goes after them. It's it's wild.

Speaker 1 (53:50):
It's so crazy, and it's unfortunate because we all want
to believe in the same thing.

Speaker 2 (53:56):
Yeah, I mean, nobody's hating on anybody for being a believer.
We're just trying to make sure that you're believing the
right stuff and not keeping this ridiculous stuff going because
it's got it needs to stop. I don't know how
we're making these people rich. It's it's crazy to me.

Speaker 1 (54:09):
It's wild.

Speaker 2 (54:10):
We can't pull a thousand subscribers because we're telling the truth.
You can't handle the truth.

Speaker 1 (54:18):
Well, I thoroughly enjoyed this.

Speaker 2 (54:20):
This was a little different, and I also I also
really like this. We're not going to stop like doing
what we normally do, but I think this was kind
of I think there was kind of like an important
one to do. Absolutely, you know, because where have we
come from over the years? How has this evolved? What?
You know, like what's it been like through different ages
and stuff? And it's changed a lot, It's changed a lot.

Speaker 1 (54:42):
So it's crazy to think like where it came from
and what it is today, like before internet and before
YouTube and videos and like you know, ghost chasing with
equipment and like where it used to be.

Speaker 2 (54:55):
Yeah, it's so much different. Well that's because you know,
for the Internet and stuff, it was bi Yeah, and
if you didn't believe, or you believe too much, you
were a witch. Especially you. You would have definitely died
just saying I would not allowed to be Witchy's not allowed.

Speaker 1 (55:11):
I'm not witchy.

Speaker 2 (55:14):
Oh is that what you heard? I said bitchy? I'm
just kidding. You're not bitchy at all. Actually, But that
that's where that's that's it. That's what we'll end this one.
It was very interesting and and you know what, we
don't care what you believe. If you believe in it
or you don't believe in it, there's a place for
you here listening to us, hanging out with us. That's
fine because the people who do the show, one person

(55:35):
does believe in one person kind of sort of believes,
and that that's that's how we eventually get to the truth.
Are your believers and your skeptics need to meet in
the middle and figure out how to go forth in
this together, not fighting?

Speaker 1 (55:48):
Oh very well, put there, that's.

Speaker 2 (55:51):
What I do, so so loud, That's what I do.
But where can they find us?

Speaker 1 (55:56):
Well, they can find us on Instagram, X, Twitter, whatever,
all ASO, Facebook talk, all the things for the booze
sometimes for the booze on your score podcast. Sorry, can
you let me finish my thing?

Speaker 2 (56:11):
It's going my two thousand and five mode.

Speaker 1 (56:14):
But yes, find us anywhere and everywhere on social media.
If you'd like to write into the show, have a
listener's suggestion, or just want to say hi, you can
also resss at reach.

Speaker 2 (56:24):
You can also resos at.

Speaker 1 (56:26):
For the Booths twelve at.

Speaker 2 (56:28):
Gmail dot com and don't forget. If you'd like to
help support the show, come on over to Patreon at
for the Booz Underscore podcast dot com, or actually just
for the Booz Underscore podcast. You know, you can help out,
or you could not, that's up to you. That's fine.
But we do extra stuff over there that we will
be catching up on that this week because we fell behind.

Speaker 1 (56:45):
Second podcast called Behind the Booze over on Patreon.

Speaker 2 (56:49):
And you have a weird story that you've ever written
on Reddit, We're probably going to read it on there
at some point.

Speaker 1 (56:55):
That's right. We love to find those weird stories.

Speaker 2 (56:58):
Write it with correct punctuation, please, But uh yeah, that's it.
I think we're gonna get out of here, what do
you say?

Speaker 1 (57:05):
I think? So?

Speaker 2 (57:06):
All right, take us out.

Speaker 1 (57:07):
Well, thank you everybody so much for listening, and we
will see in the next one. Bye bye.

Speaker 2 (57:15):
I don't really have anything else to say today. Stop
watching garbage YouTube stuff,

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Stuff You Should Know