Campfire Stories with screenwriter Richard Hatem: The Ghost of 29 Megacycles, Demons, Possession

Chris is joined once again by screenwriter Richard Hatem to talk about John G. Fuller's The Ghost of 29 Megacycles, demonic possession, and more!

You can follow Chris Stachiw @Casualty_Chris, Jess Byard @writerjessbyard, and the podcast @ScaryStoriesWT. Alex Malnack of Blondo provides the music for the podcast; that track is "Stay Here." The album artwork is provided by Maggie the Odd. Don't forget to check out our official Facebook and Instagram pages for news, upcoming episodes, and more!

Episode Transcript

(00:04):
We're any Hello everyone, and welcometo Scary Stories we Tell. I am

(00:46):
your host, Christashu, and I'mjoined by my good friend. You've heard
him here Lanny, of times before. You're gonna hear him here again now
talking with me about well, wenever know when we go into these,
but we'll figure it out along theway. You're a friend of mine.
Uh. He is one of theco hosts of Ranking on Bass, a
podcast on the weirding Way Media network, and nothing else. He's literally never
done another thing in his life.So I'm your friend of mine. Mister

(01:07):
Richard had him, He's been herebefore, he'll be here again. That's
great, that's all I need.I'm sure there iPhones are clicking off all
across America. That's not that's nottrue. That's not true at all.
I would mention the other things youworked on, but because we're in the
middle of a writer's strike at therecording of this episode, we can't talk
about I guess we could talk aboutthem, but it's best not to talk

(01:30):
about. Yeah, fuck that stuff. I'm here. I'm here to provide
the theater of the mind, theauditor Gliser. So, Richard, since
the last time you were on,which would have been earlier this year,
which I'm sure neither one of usremember at this point, Which is what
happens? What's what have you beenup to in the world of the supernatural,

(01:53):
spooky and weird. I know thatyou're obviously being reached out to on
Twitter x whatever the hell it's calledby fans of fans of the Mofman cryptid
as it were. But what haveyou been up to in the last couples?
Well, it's funny. I dida I did like a zoom sort
of webinar or presentation for a groupcalled ASAP. It's a it's a UK

(02:17):
sort of paranormal group called the Associationfor the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomenon Awesome
and they they meet at least oncea month. This it's been going on
for decades and these are just peoplewho are interested in the supernatural and various
things. And they have speakers andI suppose it kind of like mouf on,
No, because it's not active.It's not moufon. You report too,

(02:42):
like members are expected to go followup. If they got a call
person see something, they're expected togo follow up, file report and and
sort of keep track of UFO activityin that area. But these people are
just people that are interested enthusiasts.One might set enthusias. Yeah, as
far as I know, I meanI don't, but they have once a

(03:04):
month they'll have people come in andtalk. A year ago I came,
well, I didn't come in becausewe don't do them anymore. Now that
we got ZOOM, I wish wedid. I wish they could fly me
out to England. I'm sure theyhave the budget for it. Put me
up in a fine hotel, takeme out to dinner a few times,
the Royal windsor arms too, I'msure. Can you imagine. I gotta
get that gig. I need peopleto fly me around, put me up,

(03:28):
take me out, and all Igotta do is show up to their
club and talk. Oh God,I'd give anything. I'm gonna figure this
out. If anyone within the soundof my voice has a way for this
to happen, please get in touch. I mean, your credit, your
credentials precede you nine percent of thefive. It's just right now they don't.
And what's the fucking weird thing,because like I assume they brought you

(03:51):
on because of right, Oh,you know the first time, John Keel
I would say, I talked aboutthe Mothman prophecies, the movie that I
wrote. I can say that,Okay, I just I don't know.
I don't know what's off limits orno. I mean, I'm not part
of the Writers Guild of America.You ares I can mention anything that I've
done that came out twenty years ago. That's okay, Okay. Anyway,

(04:14):
I spoke to them, and thenand then they back in the spring.
They one of the members reached outto me, Liz Barkley, and said,
Hey, do you want to comeon again? Just talk about whatever
you want to talk about? AndI said, yeah, sure, I'm
like, I wonder what I'm goingto talk about. And then I ended
up talking about a book called TheGhost of twenty nine Megacycles by John G.

(04:36):
Fuller, which is all about thesperrit Colm phenomenon. Do you know
what this? Have you heard ofthe Spira Colm? You are? You
are entering new and uncharted territory forthis friend of yours here? Oh my
god. Okay, So I figured, you know, I'll talk about this
because I think it's not super wellknown. It doesn't get covered a lot
other things get covered a lot plusother things I've talked about on Astonishing Legends,

(05:00):
which is sort of where I go. You know, when I go
on Astonishing Legends, it's usually totalk about a book, you know,
and we'll talk about it, youknow, And that's what. And they
actually found me through Astonishing Legends becausetheir fans at that show they've heard my
guest appearances, so they're like,hey, come on a talk. So
I couldn't talk about anything I'd alreadytalked about on that so I so I

(05:20):
talked about it. But then Iwas like, well, wait a second,
this is a thing where I'm addressingthem, Like I'm not just it's
not a podcast where I'm just talkingback and forth with someone. They're like,
it's like, okay, you'll doyour presentation. It should take about
an hour, and then we'll doquestions. Well, yeah, I can
imagine the anxiety that would give me. Yeah, and I'm you know,

(05:41):
typically I'm like, oh, boy, roll out on microphone, fill a
room full of people, and letme add them. Usually that's because I'm
just speaking extemporaneously about whatever I feellike talking about. But I'm like,
if I'm on zoom and I'm notthere's no feedback and people aren't going to
be raising their hands and asking questionsand you know, lighting a fire for
conversation. I've really got to beprepared. So so I was reading them.

(06:05):
So I had to, you know, reread the book and then write
out a whole presentation just for yourlisteners. Here's what the sparat Colm was.
Just see you know, the sparatcalm. Back in the nineteen late
seventies early eighties, there was aguy named George Meek who had made a

(06:25):
small fortune as an engineer designing airconditioning systems. Okay, and he held
multiple patents for like parts of largermachines and air conditioning systems that would cool
buildings and houses. Okay, sohe's one of those guys. But he
had a deep interest in life afterdeath and the paranormal. So he when

(06:50):
he was in his mid fifties,he was sort of like, Okay,
I'm given the air conditioning business fivemore years. I'm gonna make me I'm
gonna publish a get as many patentsas I can, because patents are things
that will provide passive income, andthen I'll spend the balance of my life,
traveling the world investigating the reality oflife after death. One of the

(07:11):
ways he wanted to do this washe put together a small group called the
Meta Science Foundation of Some of thepeople were parapsychologists, other people in sort
of the New Age movement. Andhis idea was, what if we could
achieve the dream of Thomas Edison,what if we could build a phone to
the dead, which, by theway, people always forget that that was

(07:33):
part of Thomas Edison's thing. Thatwas a huge part of Thomas Edison and
his initial inventions was own to theother side, right, And you know,
electricity is sort of the basis ofeverything. It's kind of a Frankenstein
sort of a thing when you thinkabout it. It's like electricity is the
basis for life. Electricity, youknow, we have electricity in our bodies.

(07:58):
And and then you just make thehalf step leap to, well,
now that we have harnessed electricity andwe're using it in so many of our
everyday appliances, and now that wehave the telegraph, and now that we
have the telephone, does it makesense that that we could devise a way
a radio, a radio that cantalk to God. So so His idea

(08:26):
was this, let's talk to Let'sfind spirit mediums who are already who are
already able to do that. Theyalready have within them the ability to speak
to discarnate spiritual entities, whether theybe dead or alien or whatever. Right
siren call of the hungry ghost folks. Here we go again with that.
Here we go again with it.Yeah, and then but but if I

(08:50):
could find a person like that whoalso has another quality to them, that
quality being they're an electric they're electricalengineer, and they know something about our
radio communication and building communication systems andHam radio whatever. But that kind of
stuff, maybe maybe through those meanswe could develop this. And what he

(09:13):
really meant was that person who understandsthat sort of engineering could get in touch
with a ghost on the other sidewho's also an engineer, who would tell
him how to do it. Boy, I mean it, okay, okay,
I mean let me put it thisway, like communism. I see
where you're going on paper here,I understand the idea that's being presented now

(09:39):
in execution, what happens. SoI'm holding up the paperback of the Ghost
of twenty nine Megacycles, written byJohn G. Phillip. So he so
he gets in touch with this medium, very eccentric guy named Bill O'Neill and
begins working with him. And BillO'Neill starts getting full body apparitions in his

(10:05):
in his farmhouse workspace, in hissort of workshop out in the barn.
He gets a full body apparition ofa guy called Doc Nick, and Doc
Nick starts encouraging him and sort ofsaying, yeah, there's there's a way
to do this. And then andthen another spirit comes through, doctor Mueller.

(10:30):
Okay, doctor George Jefferies Mueller,and so there's doctor Mueller ghost really
starts helping him. Okay, Andy, they sort of between them all design
something called that he calls a sperritcom and George Meek is very excited and
he's sending checks to this guy.And Bill O'Neill was like, practically,
I mean, this guy is eccentricand he lives in this farm that barely

(10:54):
has walls. Okay, you're tellingme that this guy, George O'Neill in
O'Neil, Bill O'Neil, Yeah,interacted directly with spirits on the other side,
Yeah, to construct the spirit onYeah. Okay, yeah, Wow,
that that, right. I justwant you to understand that, right,
there is a lot. A statethat's a stead statement is a lot,

(11:16):
and there's a lot going into thatstatement, right, Like, that's
it's a hard pill to swallow.In another I mean you have to believe
you have let me put it thisway, to get to that crossroads,
you have to go through several otherintersections that are pretty uh spurious, to
say the least, and to getto this point where it's like, now
you have interacted with a spirit onthe other side to the extent that they

(11:37):
have been giving you information how toconstruct something like this, that's a lot.
Yeah, well it's this, it'sthe it's it's like, okay,
you have spirit mediums on the onehand, who can who who can talk
to dead people? Right? Soyou'll go to a medium and that the
medium will say, okay, wehave someone here young and his name is

(12:01):
Tom. Oh that's my son,Tom says, and they start translating for
the spirit, right, and youbegin to achieve a conversation. Okay.
So then on the other hand,for people like you and me, what
do we have, Well, wehave EVP where we put a tape recorder
out and let it play, maybeask a question and hope we get an

(12:22):
answer on playback. Well, thisis merging those two and this is the
hope to achieve the dream of atwo way conversation between the living and the
dead that anyone can do because youknow, again keep in mind, George
Meek is a guy who builds things, and he's like, if we can
do this, I mean, itstands to reason that there is a frequency,

(12:43):
the frequency of the dead, theghost of twenty nine megacycles. If
we can identify what that is,then maybe anyone can do this. They
can just wake up in the morning, turn on their spirit calm and begin
communicating with someone who's died. Sothat was that was the dream here and
and Bill O'Neill was got information,and it was all about sort of these

(13:09):
frequencies and tones and and then oneday it worked. And you can find
these tapes on YouTube, and youcan find them online and you can hear
the sounds and it's the creepiest,scariest thing you've ever heard, because the
tone itself is sounds like this,okay, and then the spirit starts manipulating

(13:35):
that tone, so you hear youhear doctor Mueller talking to Bill O'Neill and
he's calling him William and it soundslike this, it's like ohel whee O'Neil
olium whereoum wheelio. It sounds totallycreepy. And and then Bill O'Neill was

(13:56):
like, oh, doctor, yeah, I can. There's a low down
you know, and he's talking andthey're talking back and forth. You can
hear these tapes of these conversations,the hours of them. I know you're
looking for them right now. Iknow. I am, No, I
am. It's well, what's crazy? I mean, like again, like
I guess my question to you asin your mind, how is this different
than e VP or it's just anotherkind of Well, it's it's it's the

(14:18):
next evolution of EVP. It's it'spushing EVP to the next logical step,
which is being able to because Iguess he's talking like we're talking. It's
like, you die, we couldstill do this podcast. Well, and
I guess the other conceit of EVPis you're not hearing it in the moment.
It's after the fact, which meansthere is no way. It's it's

(14:41):
a it's a blind communication, right, I say something. Let the recorder.
Go, I'm assuming something is said. We'll figure it out when we
get back to wherever. Here It'slike he's hearing this all in real time,
is what you're saying? A realtime real time they're going back.
It's like ham radio, you knowwhere he's in his little barn and pats
Sylvania and on the other end issomeone talking back and they're having a conversation

(15:05):
back and forth. Okay, Soso this was in the late seventies,
okay, going into the early eightieswhen e VP wasn't really well known,
but people within parapsychology knew about it, but it wasn't like it is now
like now everyone knows about it.Okay, So this was a big breakthrough

(15:28):
and and and there was you know, it got a little bit of publicity,
and George Meek held a press conferenceat the National Press Club in Washington,
DC and basically said, here's whatwe've done, here's what we've achieved,
here are the plans for the SpiritCalm. And anyone with some knowledge
of electronics should not have too muchtrouble assembling this. But hey, I'm

(15:54):
putting it out in the world forfree. We made it work. Go
see if you can make it work. This press conference was in I don't
know, nineteen eighty I think firecan't quite remember eighty one. You'll you'll,
you'll observe that we do not allhave spiracoms in our homes. Forty
years later, I was gloaut tosay, I don't. I definitely,
having never heard of this before,feel like I'm wondering where the other shoe

(16:17):
drops in this story. Well,it took a while, and there's still
controversy, but the the overwhelming beliefis that Bill O'Neill faked it, and
that it wasn't actual communication, andthat he was using one of those uh,
one of those uh fake larynxes,like an electronic larynx that people who

(16:41):
have had operations for cancer. Didyou were you in the name? Is
that what you're talking about exactly exactly? To cut that out of this show,
that's a little well, well,and what's interesting fol pretty fake that
though, like he was was usingit to communicate back and just editing the
two things together. He was goingit was like this, it was like

(17:03):
he'd have the thing. He'd belike, you know, we know,
yeah, let me or doctor ohokay. So literally he's like it's like
literally like a got your nose thing. It's like okay, and there we
go and there we go. Okay, right, it's it's it's it's like
Phil Hendry, Phil Hendry's radio show. But really it's well, it's it's
a kind of ventriloquism. And andpeople have made a very simple observation that

(17:29):
I, unfortunately have never been ableto disprove, and that is that the
two voices never overlap each other.So this voice that's being pulled out of
the ethers is never talking at thesame time that Bill O'Neill was talking.
Now, you and I can't getthrough a podcast without talking over each other,
right, So so so how isthis possible? Well, it's because

(17:51):
it's one guy speaking as himself andthen speaking as doctor Mueller. Now now,
but here's okay, now, let'sI mean, that's the that is
the explanation that makes the most sense, right, I mean, you know,
somebody's paying me to give them togive them X. I don't know
if I could ever make X happenliterally, So I make why happen in

(18:14):
place of X, and I disguiseit, disguise why is X? Right,
and and keep in mind, theguy's not getting paid, like like
he's like refusing money from George Meek. And George Meeka is I can I
at least pay you know, yourforty dollars a month so that your electricity
stays on so you can continue theseexperiments. And they're sure, I mean,
this is not no one's getting rich, all right, But but now,

(18:38):
but but then, but then there'sthen there's another shoe which is actually
a previous shoe, which is BillO'Neil is in touch with the ghost of
George Mueller. So even though wait, they're not speaking, well, even
though they weren't legitimately probably most likelyspeaking over the sparacom advice, he started

(19:00):
getting messages from this ghost named doctorMueller, and and then he began providing
information about doctor Mueller. And itturns out doctor Mules a real guy with
a real family who really died inthe way that he said he died.
In other words, it's it's justmediumship. Bill O'Neill was able to conduct
mediumship and get in touch with adead guy named George Mueller, and the

(19:25):
guy existed and gave information, gaveI mean gave a ton of information,
like phone numbers. One of thebig, one of the big sort of
evidentials in the case is that hesaid, look, I published a manual
when I was in the military.It's an electronics manual. I don't know
where you can find any copies ofit, but this is what it's called.

(19:47):
This is what the manual was.Go find it. And it took
months of multiple people, George Meek, other members of Meta science, and
again keep in mind, this isthe late seventies, so there's no Internet,
there's no computers, you know,for home use, and there's no
I mean, you've got the phone. You basically got the phone, You've
got the US mail. And tookthe months, but finally, in an

(20:11):
obscure collection in Wisconsin of like,you know, army records, they found
one copy of this manual that hadbeen written and he had been told read
the last page. On the lastpage, I guess doctor Mueller got a
little fancy and was basically, afterhaving talked about you know, developments and

(20:32):
electronics, sort of waxed philosophic andsaid, you know, in the future,
who knows what will happen, butbut you know, men will reach
into the darkness, and and electronicswill bring about developments that could never have
been believed. And you almost seemedto be referring to the eventual development of
the spiracon, except that except thatlast piece never fell into place. And

(20:56):
believe me, people have been tryingfor forty years to get a spirit colm
to work. Other people who areinterested in both electrical electrical engineering and parapsychology.
People have been trying to develop devices, and of course we hear about
them, you know, Zach Baggensand whoever else, the ghost hunters.
Some people have the you know,the ST's method, you know the spirit

(21:18):
box, right I The STS methodis, uh, that's the that's then
hell your folks, that's Reagan Datanew Kirk over there doing. I think,
yeah, I have problems with theThey say the hell your method,
the STS method. I have problemswith it, as I'm sure you do,
as I'm sure we all do.You know my problems with Tell me

(21:41):
your problems. Describe what it isfor the listeners. The STS method is
utilizing i would say, sensory deprivationtechniques to elicit a response from a spirit
box. So you essentially put ona blindfold or a way to black out
your eyes and you put on apair of noise canceling headphones that essential mute
you to the world, and thenyou have a spirit box piped in right,

(22:03):
and you are having questions asked toyou by people that you cannot hear,
and then you're essentially acting as thespirit boxes speaker for what you're hearing
to say things out loud that you'rehearing. So the spirit box is just
making noises, right, It's scanning, scanning AM and FM bandwidth. That's

(22:26):
what it's doing. And again,nobody likes to fucking say that, but
I would be doing my audience adisservice if we didn't say a spirit box
is just a radio scanner. Youknow, that's fine. I mean that
I know, but I mean,but I know. But I just talk
into the fact that, like youand I both know that in this area
of the world, there's a lotof there's a lack of transparency with a

(22:48):
lot of these things, and justsaying what I mean again, if we
say what it is up up frontand that's what the expectation is, it
doesn't take away from what could begoing on. Well, it's just saying,
like we understand what the technology isand what it is actually doing okay,
okay, but no one is sayingthat that ghost voices are necessarily manifesting

(23:10):
on a radio scanner. I think, I think, correct me if I'm
wrong. I think what they're sayingis, I, you know, sit
in the quiet room, I blackout my eyes, I listen to a
radio scanner. If I hear aword that I can identify as a word,
I speak it out loud, right, Okay. So so I've got
headphones on, So if you're taperecording me in this room, you're not

(23:33):
hearing what I'm hearing from my headphonesbecause those are those are you know,
designed in such a way that themicrophone in the room isn't picking it up.
So essentially what you're what you're gettingis me sitting in a room and
I'll say things like like I'll besilent and then I'll go Colorado, Hamburger,
giraffe, okay, because I'll bejust hearing words, random words or
whatever, and I'll just be sayingthem right right. Okay. Now,

(23:56):
at a previous date, contemporaneous moment, or later date, a separate person
is asking questions out loud into thespirit world. Okay, and the theory
I believe, and again correct meif I'm wrong, is that when you
then take those questions and match themup with the words that are being said,

(24:17):
there will be a correspondence that willappear to be answers to your questions.
Is that correct? I haven't heardthe removed question and answer part.
I mean, in hell, you'rethey're doing it like they're asking contemporaneous right
right, Well, well, yeah, they're sitting there, he's got the
headphones on, they're asking the questions, and he's going banana split, you
know, Coco puffs are you know? Whatever? The fuck? I don't

(24:38):
know. Yeah, but sometimes it'sthe synchronicity of it is shocking, right,
I will I will say this much. If we're talking the theatricality of
these kinds of things, is thereanything better than this in terms of like
like if I mean, come on, there is a look, there is
a little bit of that with allof these things. I mean, just
the story you just told me,there's a level of theatricality to it.

(25:00):
You you compared it to ventriloquism,and that's where the question becomes, is
it just an elaborate ventriloquism act oris there something else to it? And
can it theoretically be both? Arethey mutually exclusive? I think I think
what it speaks to is a researchertrying to find a way to facilitate for

(25:22):
the spirits, a way to communicatewith us. Now it's strange because if
you go back a hundred years ago, there was direct voice mediumship. There
were mediums who would take on thevoice of a dead person. They would
sound like they were doing an impersonationof them, but if it was a
family member in that seance, theymight go, that is the exact voice

(25:48):
of my grandfather, okay. Thenthere were the trumpet seances, where a
large paper cone would be utilized thatthe spirits could speak into and magnify their
voices. And then people often said, yes, through that cone that what
they called it was a trumpet,I can hear the disembodied voice of my

(26:10):
dead relative, okay. And theyseem very happy with that, and that
seemed to work. But then it'sstrange because then that which is fairly simple
falls out of favor. And aswe move through time and as our inventions
become more sophisticated, now we're tryingto use those and you know, the
first EVPs were recorded onto those big, thick seventy eight record albums that you

(26:36):
play on an old Victrola, rightright, right, And then it advanced
to capturing voices on reel to reeltape, and then it was on cassette
tape. And now I'm sure peopleuse digital media to capture EVP. People
are using their computers to get imagesof the dead, people are using cameras
when you know, I mean thatof course goes back one hundred hundred fifty

(26:57):
years. So as the technology develops, people are consistent. It's like you
know, they always say, everytime there's a new like invention or a
new kind of media recording device,the first use is always pornography. Second
uses a second uses ghost work,second uses ghost work. It really is,
it's those are the first two things. First, okay, how how

(27:19):
can we use it to jack off? Second? How can we use it
to talk to the dead? Sothis is what we got, not necessarily
well, I guess no, itis always in that way. It really
is. It really is. Iwould like to say it isn't, but
we don't have hddvds and beta maxes. Let's just put it that way.
You know, VR, Virtual realityAI. All of this stuff will first

(27:41):
be used to if you've got AI. Oh you mean AI. We can
capture a we can recreate an actorand some sort of deep fake. Great.
That means I can choose two celebritiesand have them fuck and I can
watch it. I mean, it'slogic. It's a it's a logical easoning
a tree and I'm just watching youclimb up it, right, and then

(28:03):
I and then I'm going to getcapture images of myself, have those grafted
onto a body, and now Ican be having sex with a celebrity.
We haven't gotten there yet. Whattime is it now? Yeah? Right,
there are five minutes before that showsup. Yeah, and and the
voice of your sex partner will bethe voice if that celebrity reacting in a

(28:25):
sexual manner. I mean, youknow it's I mean, I mean,
that's where you want to go.That's what you want to put on the
helmet and be and be having sexwith the exact person, not a person
who looks like that person. It'slike, no, I want to put
on the thing and I want tobe with the girl from my high school
prom. You know, I wantI mean you'll be with people you know,

(28:45):
you'll be with the woman you workwith Donted Applebee's, you know,
or the thing you work with DonaldApplebee's. No, it's it's all about
having sex with celebrities. Like that'snot what this would be for this use
celebrities and sex with people that youknow, you know, right, yeah,
And it's like, well, Ican you know, well, it's
business. It's the point of thing, right, Like I would watch a

(29:07):
point. I know people don't necessarilyagree, but I would. If I
found out that any one of myfriends was making porn or had a porno,
you know, I would watch it. I don't care who they are,
because like the oportunity see it,there's you don't miss that opportunity,
especially if they're doing it willingly.Now if it was like leaked or something
different entirely, but if they're doingit willingly, you'll be goddamned if I'm
not sitting on the sidelines thumbs upor something up. Oh exactly. And

(29:32):
I know, you know we're goinga little off the ghost topic. But
but just to continue on with thephilosophy of pornography, you know, go
into the slash fiction. You know, there are there the volumes of material
written about Moulder and Scully having sexwritten by thing oh much, and it's

(29:55):
so much better than anything they everdid on the show, right, the
volume of material of uh, CaptainKirk and mister Spock having sex. By
the way, Luke Skywalker and Chewbacca. I mean, you pick your pair.
I'm surprised you didn't mention the onethat always makes me. It's the

(30:15):
thing that I think of when Ireally think of slash fiction for people my
age is supernatural. Oh my god, and that is and that is and
that is pretty kinky. Well becauseit's incest. I mean, some of
it is. I mean, ifit's those two guys, that's in.
If it's castile and anybody else,yeah, right, but hey, you
know, I mean again, it'slike what you do that doesn't you know,
does not involve another human being beinghurt, And that's what you want

(30:38):
to think about or read about orsee a you know, fake movie.
Now Now it's not okay, obviously, because I'm sure whoever you know,
I mean, pick your celebrity.You know, Brad Pitt probably doesn't want
there to be a bunch of materialonline that's just sitting there that is purportedly

(30:59):
him having sex with another celebrity thatyou want to watch. Okay, he
would have a complaint or Jennifer Annistonor whoever, I mean, name your
actress name or actor who was like, but that's not me and I don't
want that, So I'm going tosue someone or I'm going to track someone
down. And that's I get that. So okay, I think we're done
with pornography. Now we move onto the supernatural, which is, how

(31:23):
does every single advancement in technology leadto, hopefully a more refined way to
speak to the dead. And guesswhat we have not done yet. It
hasn't happened. And you would thinknow that we all carry around phones.
I mean remember phone calls from thedead. In the seventies, this was
a thing. This was an urbanlegend, but then it was an actual

(31:45):
thing, Like there was a bookwritten about cases of people who reportedly received
phone calls from the dead. Rightnow, they were rare, but they
were enough to be investigated. Well, now everyone carries a phone, Everyone
is getting text messages, everyone isgetting emails. Where are all the emails
from the dead, Where are allthe text messages from the dead. Where

(32:06):
are all these spontaneous photographs today?Suddenly you're on your phone of the dead.
Yes, the stories exist, butin no greater volume than they ever
did in the past when it wasjust a landline telephone. Right, So,
are we getting better at this ornot? I my issue is I
wonder if it's are we getting betteror are we just not looking in the

(32:30):
right place? Yeah, digging intheir wrong place? I mean, I
mean that's I wonder if it's that, because I mean, they're in a
lot of ways. We don't knowwhat we don't know, and just like
you know, you know, mentioningsiren call of hungry ghosts, they say,
don't trust what's on the other sidebecause you don't know what you don't
know, which is literally you donot know what's on the other side,

(32:51):
and to trust it is a problem. And so I don't know if we
just don't know yet there's the rightdirection to look. It could be,
you know, a matter of misdirection. We're looking in one direction and they're
off in the other direction, fuckingwaving their arms and legs, trying to
get our attention, and only everso infrequently do we look that way and
see them I wonder if it's that, because if if you have a stronger

(33:14):
belief in this kind of stuff likeI do, you do clearly to have
devoted in time to giving it spacein our mind, time to read books
and watch things. Then it wouldstand to reason that I believe that this
is going on even if we're notable to constantly capture it, which in
my mind means there's just it's it'sin a different it's in a direction or
a space that we either haven't lookedyet or literally we don't have the technology

(33:38):
yet. I mean, look,fucking BTK, who's back in the news
was jerking off, jizzing inside ofhis victims. A dude, how fucking
stupid do you have to be?You can? You can? You cannot
tell me that at some point inthe future you didn't think they would figure
out a way to test that foryour fucking DNA. But yet, but

(33:58):
yet, now we have that technologyand it put that motherfucker in jail.
And that's my point. It's like, we don't know what we don't know
about the future of technology. Theycould invent something a year from now that
goes the ghosts are real. Here'sthe phone. The ghost phone, and
we figured out what wavelength or what'sthing or where to look to figure out
how to pick up on it moreefficiently than we have in the past.
It's frustrating that in over sixty yearsof this and sixty years when there's been

(34:22):
a ton of advances and electronic communicationin all directions and in all ways,
and if we're hungry and the ghostsare hungry, and we're both working our
way toward each other, it iscrazy that still EVP seems to be the
main breakthrough. That's the crazy partis that it still seems to be nope,

(34:44):
just a personal recording device either cassettetape or I guess just a voice
recording excuse me, like a voicememo app on your phone. And I
was getting the stuff. What's thatrecorder that the Scott and Forest used when
they to the when they went tothe Sally house. That's like, that's
the one that you use. Imean, we've talked about this before,

(35:05):
but that's the one you use becauseit's such a piece of shit, like
there's something there's something wrong with it, which is what makes it so good.
But also to the point of viewand talking about you know, there's
controversy, that thing being the waythat it is may also be the reason
it gets anything to begin with,is because of the way. Is it
the way that the speaker is solderedand it's soldered too close or something like.

(35:28):
It could just be that. Itcould just be that, and like
you said, him communicating with thedead could have just been him. They
his voice. Hey, well,what are you saying? Like, if
that's what it is, it couldbe that. Well, but but if
it's okay, taking a step backfrom your last commented, just talking about
I think it's kinda like the DSfifteen or the dr Forrest Burgess will kill

(35:50):
me because I don't know the exactmodel, but neither one of us own
it, so it's money nobody.And it's so funny because he does and
he keeps it like in this velvetbox, wrapped up in a silk rag,
and it's like it's like this,but it's like, wait a second,
this was just a product made byradio Shack. It's like twenty bucks
when it came out or something,and now it's like, you know,

(36:12):
ten thousand dollars. Yeah, butwhat's because there aren't any more being made?
But do they just make them.I mean, come on the number
of people out there who love thisstuff and who you just put a button
on it, Richard, make it, make the thing that does the thing.
And then it's like, well isit doing the thing? And it's
just And that's what I think theyare making it, because if they made

(36:35):
it, everybody would realize it's justthe technology being wonky. But if there's
but fine, if there's a wonkytechnology. In other words, if it's
like, oh, there's something weirdabout the VHS tape that records ghost images
better than the Beta Max, thenthat's fine. Just physically build the physical
thing. No magic is involved.It rolled off an assembly line, and

(36:57):
if Sony or whoever it was thatbuilt the thing in the first place,
doesn't really care about that. AlthoughI think they're missing out on a marketing
opportunity, I agree with you onthat. But just build, you know,
it's it's like dissect it, openup the little machine, find out
exactly and then just make that.And and not only that, but begin

(37:19):
to build theories about what it isabout the device and its shape and how
close the microphone is to the speakeror whatever it is it's different than others
and follow that because that's all wehave right now. And again that's assuming
that these devices really are more successful. And the fact of the matter is,
I think pretty much anything is successfulif you use it and you want

(37:42):
it to be used. I mean, I'm not sure there's any device that
has never recorded an EVP if ithappens to be the camera, the phone,
or whatever that you're using. Thereare so many ghost hunters now and
so many groups of people who ventureout to haunted areas and fry this stuff.
And you know what's kind of frustrating, because yes, I know,

(38:02):
if you're in your mid twenties,you want to go to the abandoned a
sane asylum on some summer night withtwenty other people because that's fun and that's
an adventure. But I kind ofwish people would get back to the old
way of doing it, which wasonce a week, five of us are
going to meet and we're going todo a seance at a table and we're
going to see if we can produceseance phenomenon and just do that, I

(38:27):
mean, and then record it orI think you're missed. I think I
think there's a fun I think there'sa missed opportunity here, Richard, you
could you could have seances in yourhouse and charge mon seance with Richard had
people, which you you're missing anopportunity now because that people would show up
and fucking droves. Man, Lookby what people showing up in droves to
my house. I mean a couplehundred dollars an evening to do a seance

(38:52):
with. And yeah, oh exactyou mentioned money. Now you see what
I'm talking about. Everybody wants tohave experience and those things. Doctor Susan,
See how many people we can packinto our backyard while me and four
other people pretend to contact the dead. And that's the thing, and that's

(39:12):
the thing, pretend to contact thedead. It's like, I don't know,
John Edwards, Teresa Kaputo, allof those people, like they all
claim to do the thing that wehaven't even confirmed that we can do with
technology. But their human ability issupposedly innate innate. Literally it has to
be innate because there's no other explanationfor it and there's no ability to learn

(39:35):
it. Best we've again, bestwe can tell. I have a hard
time with all of this because itis also in the scheme of emotional manipulation,
if none of it is true,and there's such a button to be
had, a point to be had, and a button to be pressed by
doing that in a non legitimate way, that it makes something like the spirit

(39:57):
calm. Like you mentioned, thecontroversy behind it is no different in the
controversy behind any of these communicating withthe dead things. Are you actually doing
it or not? Well, here'sthe thing. Some people will say,
Well, it's like if you're fakingit, if you somehow are able to
consistently convince, you know, anever ending stream of strangers that you are

(40:20):
speaking to their dead person, maybeyou can do it. And some people
have, right, I think,I think, I think a lot of
people do it legitimately. But butbut it also comes down to, well,
you're not, you know, you'rewhat is the You're telling people I'm
talking to your dead person, andyour dead person is saying they're okay,
goodbye. That's all it ever?It's like, that's all it ever is.

(40:42):
It's not like, hey, Grandma, tell me where you stash the
key for the security deposit box thathas hundreds of thousands of dollars of gold
in it. Yeah, I mean, it's not that much different than your
local religious leader on a Sunday,you know, or on a Saturday,
depending on when you go to church, and you go to them and you're
like, I miss my dead lovedone so much, and that pastoral advice

(41:06):
that comes back at you is,according to our beliefs, they're okay,
right, and they're in a placewhere they're okay, and you love them
and they still love you. Goenjoy the rest of your weekend. How
is that any How is that reallyany different in effect than a person saying
I am literally speaking to them rightnow, Because, by the way,
what does that really tell you?It's like, you can only I've read

(41:30):
all the books, I've heard allthe stories, all the things about what
the next life is like, andI still have no idea what it's like.
How can I? I can't there. I can't imagine a world where
things are non physical and time doesn'tmatter. I can hear it, I
can think about it, but Ican't really really really go, oh got
it? Do you and Susan havelike a code word or like a thing

(41:52):
that wanted like who do you?Do? You know? I feel like
we all should right, should wecome? Richard should Richard, we should
have one. Well, and theydid the early, the early guys in
the in their Society for Psychical Research. I think when Richard Hodgson died,
he then came right back through andtalked to the other members of the investigatory

(42:14):
team that he was once a partof. It was like, I'm over
here now, guys, I madeit. Why for real? Absolutely read
Deborah Blum's book Ghost Hunters, andyou'll read about and all this information is
out there. Well I know,well that, yeah, and and and
but but this was an actual thing. And if you really go into the

(42:34):
files of the Society for Psychical Research, you can spend the rest of your
life reading thousands of pages of communicationsbetween people who have died and their friends
that they recently left behind, andevidential, you know, material is shared.
I remember this event, I rememberthis thing you told me, you

(42:57):
know being And this is one hundredand fifty years ago, when there was
no telegraph, telephone, there wasbarely mail. Travel was impossible, I
mean, forget Internet, and extremelydetailed information was coming through that people had
no access to in any other way. And yet we're still arguing it just

(43:20):
fine whatever, But the fact thatthe fact that certain people can get information
that they should and could not haveany other access to. You know,
the question becomes, well, whereare they getting it? Are they getting
it from the dead? Are theytapping into the Akashic records or some sort
of river of information that they canstick their hand in and pull things out

(43:44):
of it. I don't know.Either one of them is pretty incredible.
But but yeah, you know,I think I think to any reasonable human
being, that has been proven thatpeople can have access to information they shouldn't
have any other access to. Andagain, it's either super esp or it's
they're talking to the dead. Andthe people who are doing it talk about

(44:04):
it as if they're talking to thedead. They don't go, Okay,
I'm going into a trance. Now, I'm walking into a huge library.
I'm going to the card catalog.I'm looking up your person I'm taking out
a card. I'm going to ashelf. I'm reading the book of their
life. That's not what people aredescribing. They're like, Okay, there's
a person here, here's how theylook, here's what they're saying. Here's

(44:24):
the personality I'm getting from them.That's what they're doing. It seems to
imply personality survives death. Now,that's a weird, uncomfortable thing for a
lot of people. And if peopleare skeptical and don't want to believe it,
or they want to say it's alla lie, that's fine. There's
plenty of emotional reasons to not wantto believe this, But I don't think

(44:45):
there's a ton If you really researchit pretty quickly, you go, okay,
it's probably happening on some level.That's happening, right, it's not.
It's often being faked. Sometimes it'sbeing faked by people who can actually
do it, who's talents Wax andWayne and who bolster when they really need
to. And yet in other situationswhen fraud is not possible, they provide

(45:10):
real information because these people are stillpeople, all right, and not everyone's
on every night and sometimes your favoritesinger comes out and their voice sucks well,
And that's I mean, we talkedabout that last time. We talked
about the idea of doing an investigationin a haunted place for nights on end,
because again, it's I mean,it's it's like anything else. It's
like going to see the humpback whales. If you go to Seattle, like

(45:32):
there's no guarantee that you go outyou will see whales. They will take
you to the places where the whalesmight be, but there's no guarantee that
you're going to get to see awhale. And but Chris, I went
on one of those and I didn'tsee any whales. I just saw dolphins.
It's all bullshit. There are nowhales, right, And that's what
it feels like. I mean,that's what it feels like with bigfoots.
As a as a staunch defender ofbigfoot, I know that, you know,

(45:54):
we go out into the woods cookingfor bigot bigfoot hunters find bigfoot.
Who the fuck else is supposed tofin and bigfoot if they're going out into
the woods all the time to lookfor bigfoot. You know, you and
I have been friends for a longtime, and I had worked on a
script about the Patterson Gimlin thing,and I still want to finish it at
some point. But the idea ofpeople who are going to look for these

(46:14):
things finding these things and that isthen a problem, is a weird thing
to have to struggle with in thisarea of the world, because again,
you know, in other in otherthings, like a scientist does experiments and
they get results, and nobody goes, well, why did you get results?
Why are you doing that? It'slike, well, because I'm a

(46:35):
scientist. If you go to lookfor bigfoot, if you're studying ghosts,
the expectation is you're probably gonna havesome interactions more often than people that aren't
doing it intentionally and going out oftheir way to do it. Well,
that's the hell of it. Thatpeople go out, Yeah, people go
out searching, don't get anything.Meanwhile, twenty miles away, someone's just

(46:55):
camping and bigfoot rips up their campsiteor whatever, right right, No,
we didn't tape it. We didn't. But every once in a while you'll
get an audio tape of those reallyweird and they have you know, online
you can listen to the audio tapesof what is shiite? Well not only

(47:15):
that, but but I just youknow, it's like you've also got people
who are familiar with what things innature sound like, and you know,
I feel like people should be ableto go, I know what that is
or I've never heard anything like itbefore, or they go, I know
what that is, but that shouldn'tbe there is my favorite. That's where
it gets scary, like what whatdo you mean? Well, like they'll

(47:36):
be like, I know what thatis. That's a primate. But the
fact that you're hearing primate in northnorthern Washington doesn't make a whole lot of
sense, right, There should notbe primates out in the woods, you
know, outside of Yakama fucking Washington. Yeah, but that but that's the
thing I mean then and again,like that's why I love the you know,
the northwest of this country so much, the Pacific Northwest, because it

(47:59):
is it is so it's steeped inbigfoot, just like color I mean,
just like Colorado is. I mean, you go to any store in any
of those little mountain towns in Coloradoand they'll have bigfoot stuff. I own
a couple of having gone there forvacation, some bigfoot things. But I
have always really been perturbed by theidea that the people that go looking for
these things are not supposed to bethe ones to find it, and if

(48:19):
they do find it, there issomehow illegitimacy to what they've found. Right.
Well, the thing is that theBagans is the reason we have this
conversation. It's because of people thatare doing it for an entertainment, and
I don't know if it's for realanymore. I mean, i'd like to
believe that Zach Bagans is on thelevel, but there's part of me that
knows that he's not, and thathe's a showman and that he's an entertainer

(48:40):
at heart. And you go andyou don't get anything. It's not as
exciting as if you go and getsomething. And sometimes you got to blow
the something completely out of proportion becauseotherwise you do have nothing. And that's
the problem, because they kind ofdictate the conversation, at least in the
public sphere, because that's the onlypeople that most people know are dealing with
ghosts. Well only that, butmost people have lives and are very busy

(49:02):
and and they're not going to spenda lot of time wrestling with the notion
of Bigfoot until a dead Bigfoot bodyis dragged into the town square and then
you're like, oh, there's Bigfoot. Okay, I guess there was a
weird primate, which is why itfeels like Bigfoot has to be supernatural,
like it has would have found Bigfootskeletons by now, that's what everybody always

(49:25):
says. Well, I hate thatterm. They're naturalists who explain why you're
not finding you know, bear skeletons. That's why you're not finding fucking people,
does it? Julian Sands, Guys, he disappeared for like the year
and they just found him in likeCaliforn and they were looking for it.
They were lee exactly and they andwhat he was like a couple hundred feet

(49:46):
off of a path or something.It's like he wasn't even that like far
out in the middle of nowhere,and it took him a year to find
him. Like, guys, comeon, people disappear all the time.
Well, and not only that,but animals die in the woods all the
time. But you're not always comingacross the bones of squirrels and birds and
rabbits and coyotes and bears and badgersand whatever. So nature is unfucking relenting.

(50:10):
It does not stop. That's whatpeople don't understand. Living in homes
has really desensitized us to the ideaof how fucked nature is a god.
It don't give a shit, Itdon't it's don't give a singular fuck.
When I was hiking out in Colorado, I thought to myself, like I
could just disappear out here and youwould not find because that's what because that's
because that's how fucked nature is.Like, it's just it's sobering. That's

(50:34):
why I like camping. It's sobering. I understand why people like yourself don't
because it's sobering in the other direction, in the less positive direction. Yeah,
but yeah, but I mean again, you're out in a tent in
the middle of the night, youhear fucking branches snapping and noises being made.
I'm not gonna blame you if youthink it's bigfoot. It's probably not
bigfoot. But that doesn't mean whateverit is isn't scary to you in the
same setting. Yeah, it remindsme of a movie that I saw last

(50:58):
night called Prey movie. Yes,the Predator movie among the you know Native
Americans, you know First Nations people, and and you know, the concept
in a way is better than whatthe movie ultimately was, even though the
movie had great performances in some youknow, really nice moments, but but

(51:22):
it it it was that sort oflike, oh, it's like what happens
when you go out and you're huntingsomething that is an alien? You know,
it's not supernatural, but it's notof your world, and I kind
of wish they'd like, uh,like it had been part of a legend.
It's like, yes, you knowthese things, do you know?

(51:44):
Every generation one will come from thesky and the one must like the whale
rider, one must fight it,you know, and entire tribes have been
wiped out. But uh, butyou know, we have you know,
the the old ones have stories.They didn't go in that direction. I
wish they did because that's always myfavorite direction where it's like the legend,
because then they you know. Anyway, I won't ruin the movie for you

(52:04):
because it is a fairly new movie, but anyway, Yeah, it's like
it's like, what do you whatdo we expect from the people who go
out searching? And it's tough.We're getting into an age where evidence sucks
because you know, ai motherfucker.You know, it's like, even look
at the Paterson Gimblin film. Atleast it was done on whatever, sixteen
millimeter. It was done on amedium where it's fairly hard to fake.

(52:29):
It's also you know, you canstudy it, you can look at it.
Well. The only way to fakeit was the only way to fake
it was the way to fake itpre digital filmmaking techniques, which is,
you've got a guy in a fuckingsuit walking around, right, and but
the but the cool thing is thatthere's a technology to a suit also,
right. And in nineteen sixty seven, suit technology was not such that would

(52:52):
produce that film. It just wasn't. And there's all kinds of people saying,
oh, yeah, no, it'sbeen fake. But and the more
you look at it through modernize,the more convincing it is, except convincing
of what I don't know what campthat is that they can't explain what it
is well, and and that wasmy and that was my whole idea for
that script that I was writing,was the idea that they went out there

(53:14):
to fake it, but then itactually happened anyways, Well that's the crazy
and people say that people, andthat's kind of what I think happened,
is like they maybe did go outthere to fake it, but I think
I think the universe stepped in andsaid, Twilight Zone, motherfuckers, here's
real Bigfoot, because there's no waythat that's a suit. I'm sorry,
it's not a suit. It moveslike it the way it moves and those

(53:37):
like essentially Seprueder Sepruder film esque breakdownsevery word, We're going to do every
frame, break it down, right, ye, stabilization right, Like,
all of that more or less provesthat whatever it is is a thing.
It's not a thing inside of athing. It is a organic thing in
an in an in an actuality.It's not someone pretending to be something else.

(54:00):
But man, if it is,then what the fuck? I don't
know where where was that technology?Like for Planet of the Apes and everything
else, like well, well,but I mean no, what I'm saying
is, if that's an animal ora biological entity, what is going on
in the woods, Like there's gotto be more than one because they gotta
have babies, and then that's onesomewhere. Yeah. I I really have

(54:25):
a hard time when people discredit thePatterson Gimblin film because like, there hasn't
even been tell me the UFO evidencethat's ever been that good, Like not
like it's it's so good, it'sso good, and yet everybody wants to
pick it apart. But even whenthey do, it still holds up.
And like I know that there havebeen people on death beds saying all kinds

(54:47):
of things. But I don't carewhat someone says on their fucking deathbed.
Most people on their deathbed, Likethere's people on their deathbed saying there's alien
bodies, you know, right right? Yeah? No, oh, so
many those roswell things that the militaryhas those. But I mean, and
I'm not a big disclosure guy,but you do get to a point where
there's, like most people just tryingto get through their lives, right,

(55:10):
people don't want to believe because whowants to believe that? That's terrifying and
awful. I don't want to believeit so well, and that's and that
was the thing, you know.I just released an episode that I did
with my mom, and I askedher the question of like, would you
go on a cruise if there wasthis, if there was something in the
ocean that could swallow cruise ship's holeand it ate one once a year,

(55:30):
would anyone ever go on a cruiseagain? And I apply that to the
Bigfoot question. It's like, ifBigfoot is real and it's doing all these
things in the woods, then whyare people going into the woods? Okay,
so would you go on a cruiseship in the middle of the ocean,
if there was something that could swallowa boat, it's the what's the

(55:51):
level of risk? Because I guessBigfoot has never murdered anyone except Bigfoot has
or Bigfoot's made people disappear. Well, now we're getting into the missing nine
one one. Oh my god,yeah, mit, oh yo, can't
get into that. I think missing. I think that I think that whole
thing it's it is weird. Ithink it all ties into an idea of

(56:12):
a piece that you said, whichis Bigfoot is a supernatural entity. Right,
And but it comes back to thequestion that you asked with the sphere
calm, It's just what does thateven mean? Even if we do decide
that that's the case, Like,if if we decide the sphere Calm works,
what does that mean, you knowwhat, Like if Bigfoot's a supernatural
or they're a cosmic entity, whatdoes that mean? Like it just means

(56:34):
we can have a weird discussion aboutwhatever that is. But there's no evidence
that that's the case. No,it means we can all if the if
the spirit calm had worked, itwould mean that we could all, you
know, be in a room andit would be like a conference call.
It would be like people say,table, I have a question, what
is it like on the other side, and can you go talk to my
you know, my friend or oryou know, are there animals or what

(56:59):
do you do? Do you getto eat? Do you get to they
have sex? You know, wewould ask all the questions that we've asked
mediums since mediums began to exist,and we'd get whatever answers we get.
But you know, back in thenineties when I was trying to break into
film by writing movies, and that'show you that was the way to get

(57:19):
into writing, was you write amovie, and you sell a movie and
maybe the movie gets made. Okay, right, But the big genre was
serial killers because of movies like Scienceand The Lambs. So so every writer
I knew, including me, hadto spend six months of their life reading
all those John Douglas books and thenyou were ahead of the curve, buddy,

(57:44):
you know, and then you know, writing your serial killer mystery.
Okay, So and Ruler Richard andI didn't, well, no, I
don't think I did, although shewas a big one. I mean that
stranger stranger beside yeah, yeah,yeah, yeah, totally. And you
but you get in this crazy terribleplace where you're like, it's it's like
a med student learning about all thediseases and they become a hyperchondric. It's

(58:07):
like you read these books and you'relike, Okay, there's probably a fifty
fifty chance I'm going to die atthe hands of a serial killer because it's
so in your mind. You're readingall the cases and you're just like,
this is terrifying. I don't wantto be tied up on somebody's basement and
they're burning me and fucking coming atme with pliers, like like that's now
now I'm out white. I mean, that's the worst thing. That than

(58:29):
ghosts, that's worse than aliens.It's worse than anything. It's like another
human being who's just floridly insane andyou're at their mercy and you read this
stuff and you can't you can't sleepat night. Yeah, it's like does
Bigfoot even matter? When Jeffrey Dahmerwas eating people in his apartment? Like,
does does Bigfoot really matter? Right? And then you and that's We'll

(58:51):
move on and read about something else, and then you what are you going
to read about airplane crashes? Whatare you gonna read about you know,
cars exploding, you're gonna read abouttells collapsing, the Abola virus, You're
going to read about cancer. It'slike you're going to drive yourself out of
your mind. So most again,most healthy, sane people don't spend a
lot of time studying on this stuff. They just go about. But also,

(59:15):
I would say that studying on thisstuff is more fun than studying on
serial killers and cancer, because thisat least engages our imagination and it feels
like a mystery that won't ever reallyhurt us. But it's sort of out
there in an interesting way, asopposed to out there in a way where
again, like you said, wego hey BTK, you said you told

(59:38):
us about all the people you're murdered, but all of a sudden, there's
all five more people that maybe youkilled. Yeah, it's no, it's
yeah, it's well, I don'twant to say it's no fun because there's
a huge subsection of the audience thatlistens to the show that would disagree with
me and you, So I'm notgonna say it's not fun. It's just
not my flavor of ice cream.The True crime fan, Well, it's

(01:00:00):
my flavor of ice cream all thetime. I mean, I get on
my kicks. I've listened to afair number of hand Rules stuff and jobless
is stuff like there and and they'reand they're great books, and they're great
pieces of firsthand account source material aboutdealing with people that hopefully none of us
ever have to deal with. Right. But like you said, I would
rather have an alien encounter than Iwould encounter a serial killer. But here's

(01:00:22):
the other thing. Whitley Strieber hasentered the chest and would like to have
a word with me. And that'sthe problem, and that is the ultimate
problem. Is like for every foreverybody in Barney Hill, there's you know,
a Whitley Streeber where it's like wehad a good time, we lost
time, but we were abducted.And then it's like Whitley Streep was like
I've been I've been haunted by thesethings since I was a child, you

(01:00:43):
know, And that's the thing incontact with them, right, And that's
like, well, maybe I wouldrather just be murdered by a serial killer
then, because maybe your life isthat a life worth living if you're constantly
under the thread of something that peopledon't even believe you when you tell them
about it. Yeah, well yeah, and he leaned into it. I'm
not talking, but he leaned intoit publicity wise, like oh, I'm

(01:01:05):
gonna I've found a slot machine.Because it has not led to a wealthy
life for him at all. Helost his book contracts, He's lost more
money than he ever made on.Your credibility goes out the window the moment
you say I believe in aliens.I've been abducted, like you right even
now, like I want people topretend, yes, we are a much
different time now, but like it'sstill not it's still not. Well.

(01:01:29):
He has turned toward the phenomenon.He made the decision, if this is
happening, then maybe as terrifying asit is. And apparently it is terrifying,
and I do not question that.But but he made a decision.
It's like, I'm going to engagewith this and try to learn everything i
can, like in this modern shamansort of way. I'm going to do

(01:01:53):
it and try not to go insaneand get whatever. And you know,
but you read his new book,A New World, and it's hard not
to think that he's gone at leasta little insane. And then you go,
well, wait, a second,though, if he's legitimately interacting with
non human entities, maybe that's whathappens. Maybe your worldview changes to the

(01:02:19):
point where when you try to expressyourself to people who have not had those
experiences, that communication human to humanis going to be tough and people are
going to think you're insane and youhave definitely stepped out of the you know,
the borders of you know, ourconsensus reality such is such that it
is, So it's tough. Idon't think Whitley Strieber's making it up,

(01:02:40):
and I don't think that he issuffering from mental illness, But what experience
is he's really having and then hishuman ability to interpret those man it gets
tough to follow after a while.Well, and that's and that's the thing.
It's like, you know, serialkillers. I don't know, like
you you see people that have interactedwith you know, being left in abasement

(01:03:00):
for five years, and they havea hard time reintegrating themselves into society.
I don't know what it would belike to have an alien encounter once and
then try to reintegrate yourself into society, knowing what you know, knowing what
if you know, and if you'vehad that experience, then you have had
an experience that so changes everything thatit is hard for me or you to

(01:03:23):
really comprehend it. And that's whyI have a hard time like discrediting these
people, because it's like Jesus Christ, your life must have changed overnight,
and especially in Willie Streeber's case,like I would have a hard time continuing
to live with the constant threat ofbeing abducted by aliens over my shoulder,
and like you have family and otherpeople in your house and it's happening to

(01:03:46):
them too, Like how could youever in good conscience, Like I would
never invite you to my house Richard, And you would never invite me to
your house if you knew that,like I was being abducted by aliens every
now and then, Like oh hey, by the way, Richard, if
alien subduct us all in the middleof the night, like you could have
prevented it by never having invited meto your house. Whitley's wife and died

(01:04:08):
several years back. He's had postdeath communication with her. But Whitley Streeber
also has kids who are now adults, and not to infringe on their privacy
at all, but I do.It's I'm curious if I ran into one
of his kids at a party whatthey would say, Like, I'd be
like, wait, Whitley, WhitleyStreeber's your dad? I mean, what

(01:04:30):
do you think? And I wonderwhat they would say and what they're like,
because clearly they are not also experiencingwhat he's experiencing, but they were
close by, and they've lived withhim and they know him as a person.
I'd be curious as to what theyhave to say. Yeah, and
well, And that's the other thingabout all of this that I do think
about it is, you know,again the effect that it has on the

(01:04:51):
people around them. You know,the Lutz family is kenna notatorious exactly though,
right, Like, what are thosekids saying, like, Hey,
it was all bullshit. I don'tknow, Like I don't know, and
nobody's asking those questions. Well,they were pretty little and they've talked about
it. But but I think they'resomeone on board was what happened, or

(01:05:11):
at least on board that Daddy wasreally upset now that I believe we have
no way to pay for this home. I got to invent something about demons
and flies and get out to bringthis full circle. I wanted to talk
to you about something that I guaranteeyou you've never heard of, but it's

(01:05:31):
something that I would be curious togauge your thoughts on it. So friend
of ours, father Malone, heused to work a museum. And I
won't say whose museum it is,but if it's in Las Vegas, it's
in Las Vegas. He's a ratherwell known ghost hunter who goes on adventures
with ghosts. Okay, okay,okay. In his museum, he has

(01:05:54):
a room dedicated to a woman whosename is Lee sober Shapiro. Okay,
guarantee you've never heard this name before. And there's well, we'll talk about
the controversy surrounding it when I getto the end of the story. But
this woman, smart woman, apparentlyone of those kind of you know,
like a immensely talented at everything shedid. She played it, you know,
she could play an instrument, pickit up and just play it,

(01:06:15):
you know, immensely smart, wentto Juilliard, all all these things that
they're kind of talking about a kindof exemplars to this woman in her kind
of mental acumen. But I guesslater in her life she began to become
obsessed with the idea of talking tothe other side and communicating with the other
side again, as you know we'vekind of been talking about in this episode
at the spear, come, youknow, what does that mean to talk

(01:06:38):
to the other side? Can Italk to the other side? And if
I can talk to the other side, what happens then? So supposedly get
According to this museum in Las Vegasowned by a famous ghost hunter, this
woman figured out a way to communicatewith the other side through some machine that
she built. And this machine sheturned it on one evening and throughout the

(01:07:01):
course of the evening was taking polaroidpictures of herself, and throughout the evening
she started to deteriorate, and thena family member came to check up on
her the next day and found herdead in the middle of the room,
surrounded by all of this machinery turnedon. Okay, so what you're really
saying is that a woman was ina room and then later people came into

(01:07:23):
that room and she was dead.They found her dead in a room surrounded
by her technology that she supposedly hadconcocted and crafted to contact the other side,
and the way the story is toldat the museum is that she may
have contacted demons, and in theprocess of contacting the other side, these

(01:07:45):
demons came through and caused her tocommit suicide or die or something. But
there are like a series of images, like four or five polaroids in the
museum wherein the first one she looksnormal, the second one she looks a
little rougher, through one she looksa little rough. For fourth one she
looks really rough. The fifth oneshe looks like death. And that's it.
Well, okay, I mean,I've there's so many questions. I

(01:08:06):
mean, when you say she looksrougher, like what, she starts to
look more gaunt and pehid and paler, and she just starts. I mean
again, maybe that's what happens whenyou have a heart attack. Well again,
like it's clear that these photos weren'tbeing taken all at the same time.
It's like through the span of theeye. But the kind of the
question, though, and similar tothe spirit calm, is you know,

(01:08:29):
well, actually, let me letme finish the finish the story. So
then once the story is told toyou by the docent at the museum,
they then go and on the otherside of this door. If you open
it, it will turn on themachine that's in the room on the other
side of the door, and sothey go. If you want to,
you can go up to the doorand open it and peek in and look,
and the machine is on and makingnoise, and it's it's unlike any

(01:08:53):
machine I've ever seen, but youknow, it's very theatrical, right,
I mean, go open the doorand the machines on the other side of
the door, and the machines going, and the machine was going the night
she died. There is no proofof any of this information outside of the
museum. There's no other newspaper articles, no family members, no independent One

(01:09:14):
family member supposedly has been tracked downby people who have investigated this outside of
the museum. And there's a coupleof websites that if you type in the
name Lee's ober Shapiro, they willcome up and they have links to investigations
that they've done about this, andone of them even has a picture.
You're not supposed to take pictures insidethe museum, so I'm assuming someone took
a picture inside the museum unbeknownst toanybody else on the tour But what's weird

(01:09:36):
is I can't figure out if thisis a real story like the one you're
talking about with the spirit com orsomething actually fucking horrifying happen, or if
it is again this whole problem thatwe're having here of it's just a really
good story, and I want somebodyto I want a really good story to
somehow continue to facilitate the conversation,because that's almost what I have to wonder

(01:09:58):
here, is like, is thatnecessarily a bad Well, I don't know.
Yes, no, everything is questionAnd I love the story you just
told, and it makes me wantto go to that museum, going back
and like you said, bringing afull circle. As we conclude to the
Ghost of twenty nine megacycles, thereare people in the world of parapsychology,

(01:10:20):
of the world of people who areinvestigating techniques of electronic voice phenomenon who become
infuriated by the lingering legend of theSperrit Calm because people still talk about it.
I mean, it's still you know, the dream of the Spirat Calm.

(01:10:41):
And then it's like, well,why are you so angry about it?
And it's like, because it doesn'twork and it and it draws people
down a blind alley. We alreadyknow it doesn't work. Why are we,
forty years later talking about a thingthat didn't work and that is overwhelmingly
believed to be a hoax and asnever been replicated. Is it overwhelmingly believed

(01:11:02):
to be a hoax? Online?It is? And and but pre pre
online? Was it considered to bea host early on? Yes, okay,
okay, I was just curious.I was just curious very early on
in Fate magazine, and I don'thave the guy's name in front of me,
but a guy, a guy wrotean article saying, I've listened to
these tapes and I have a Ihave a theory. And he was not.
And again, in the great traditionof unmasking hoaxes, it was not

(01:11:26):
a skeptic. It was another parapsychologistwho was pissed off because that's you know,
it makes sense. It's like,well, wait a second, I've
been doing research in this area andyou claim success. Well, I cry
foul stories like that abound, uhAnd and those people have a bone to
pick and they, I mean,they're like a skeptic schmeptic that these guys

(01:11:47):
are barracudas. I mean they willcome for your bones. Uh, because
it's now now you're in my house. Soh. And again I don't have
the guy's name in front of me. But he wrote an article in Fate
magazine soon after the the information wasmade public and started tearing it apart,
and was later much of what heaccused Bill O'Neill of was seemed to be

(01:12:14):
true because no one and but butthe most damning bit of evidence. I
mean, I'm not I have nointerest in standing here saying Bill O'Neill was
a fake. Therefore everything's bullshit becausethat's not my belief and that's not my
game or that's not my interest.Well, I don't holistically discount stuff either,
right, I'm I'm open. Iwant to hear the story. I

(01:12:34):
want to and if you and ifyou can disprove it, disprove it.
Don't disprove things in general because peopleare goofy the so yes, it is
it is believed that that he fakedthe sparat Com tapes, and the sparat
Com tapes are not what he saidthey were. And so as we were

(01:12:57):
saying, people are like, wellthen move on. And what i would
say is aside from just pointing afinger at him and saying you're a fake,
the biggest sort of indication that thiswas not real is that it's never
been replicated. Now EVP gets excuseme, replicated all the time, right
if it doesn't. If it doesn't, you're really disappointed. See me going

(01:13:17):
to the Sally House. Will youknow? And I don't know how many
times you got to do it beforeit works? Or some people do it
five times, some people do itfive hundred times, some people get a
lot of results, some people don't. Is it because of the person who
knows? But there's too many peopledoing it for it to be now no

(01:13:38):
one understands how it's done, andpeople are doing it in different ways.
But EVPs out there and people cantry it, and there's I would say,
a better than fifty percent chance thatif you practice with EVP you will
one day get something that you cannotexplain. Agreed, all right, so
but spiracom hasn't happened, so soYeah, there's an argument to be made

(01:14:01):
that hoaxes do hurt. They absolutelydo. And when people who are famous
psychic mediums are revealed to have faked, even some of their results. It
taints the entire field, and andit baby out with bath right, and
and so you tend to then notlisten very hard when people are like,

(01:14:26):
but wait a second, what aboutthis evidence, because no, well that's
compelling until someone tells me it's fake. So all of these journeys become individual
journeys. Bigfoot doesn't exist because PattersonGimmelin is fake according to people. That's
that's that fatalistic view that I cannotget behind any more than you can,
right, Or there's a fake UFOpicture. Therefore, no one has ever

(01:14:47):
seen a truly unidentified flying object whatever. Typically these are individual journeys. People
who are interested set off. Theyvisit a psychic, they've visited me medium,
they try EVP, they visit ahaunted location, they read a million
books, and they come to someconclusion it's all bullshit, it's all absolutely

(01:15:12):
true, or something in between.And as we say goodbye to summer right
now, we're in the first weekof September, you and I and we're
heading into the spooky season. Thesethings come up for people, and I
would encourage everyone who has an interestto read up, explore safely, and

(01:15:33):
answer the question for yourself. Don'tlisten to a true believer, don't listen
to a skeptic. Be skeptical,but be open minded and see what results
you get. And most of all, don't use Aluiji board because those things
they fucking dangerous than a Luigi board. You mean, right, don't don't
use a Luigi board, an Ojoboard. God, Hey, you know

(01:15:57):
what, I have heard the Wuijiboard thing before. I got no interest.
I have one in my house,but I've never touched it. I
almost bought my wife like a vintageone at an antique mall, and she
was very glad that I did not, but those are very expensive for a
piece of cardboard and a piece ofplastics for fuck sakes, people. But
no, no, I'm with you, and you know again, I you
know, feel like I'm I justedited the episode I did with my mom.

(01:16:20):
So we were talking about that samething, about like this journey is
very personal and that ultimately what itshould be for everybody is personal and not.
I mean, if you wanted tobe a shared journey organized religions,
perfect, but I think nowadays anymore, for most people, it's personal.
It's a personal journey. Spirituality isvery much something that you should hold near

(01:16:41):
and dear to yourself, because likeso many other things, you cannot give
it away and it is yours andyou should. You know, even if
you're an atheist or agnostic like that'sthere's still a belief system behind that.
It's not like you're just a completenihilist, which even if you're a nihilist,
there's a belief system behind that.So I don't know, Like I'm
with you ultimately, you know,my belief in something or lack of belief

(01:17:03):
is dictated less on one specific thingand more on a wide scope of things.
And I tend to air on theside of, you know, skeptic,
less like or not skeptic. ButI guess you know, I'm you
know, like Fox Moulder, Iwant to believe, so whatever that is,
So whatever that is, you know, that's everybody wants me Fox Molderike
who doesn't want to be David toCoveney, right like you me, everybody

(01:17:25):
else who watched that show in thenineties. So or I guess you want
to be cold Check, which isright, same same Amphitheater different too.
You want to be free to askyour questions, right, or you want
to be free to turn away andsay that is garbage, it's foolishness.
And you know I have more importantthings to do, and you probably do.

(01:17:46):
But but not looking at something doesn'tmean it goes away. It's fair,
It's very fair. So until thenext time, Richard, you join
me again to talk about literally whoknows what? Where can people find you
and what are you find Well?They can find me on Twitter. If
you want to get in touch,you can always find me on Twitter.
No one ever does. What isn'tone of your live whoever's listening to this,

(01:18:08):
just hit me up on Twitter andjust say I heard you on Scary
Stories. We tell just so Iknow you're out there. And then you
don't, you don't have enough tellme if you liked it or not,
because I'm going to assume for mybenefit. For my benefit, yeah,
don't tell them that. Don't don'ttell don't tell us if you like this.
But otherwise I'm on the picket linewith Writers Guild of America hoping for

(01:18:30):
a fair deal from the AMPTP,the armpit, the armpit people who make
a lot of money but don't payus our share. So anyway, hopefully
that gets resolved soon. Like Isaid, we're in the first week of
September right now that we're recording this. We'll see what happens. And as
for me, you can find meon Weirdingwaymedia dot com, where this show
and so many other shows like hiswife's show Eighties TV Ladies can be found.

(01:18:55):
If you're into TV shows from theeighties that feature ladies, I think
that's the show for you. Andif you or not, well you should
be and you should go listen tothe show anyways. Oh yeah, and
Richard and I and Mike White sharethe audio space together once a months talking
about ranking and bass and that's quicklycoming to an end, soon to be
replaced by another project that has actuallynothing to do with that project other than

(01:19:15):
the fact that three people are workingon it together. So yeah, you
can find all those things at weirdingwemediadot com. As for this show,
Scary Stories weetell dot com is whereyou can go like rate and review the
show wherever you get it. Bigthanks to Maggie, Dustin and everybody else
who put their time, effort,in creative energy into making this show what
it is. Richard, thank youso much for joining me. As always
a pleasure as always Man, andwe'll catch on the next episode. No

(01:19:39):
mystery is closed to an open mind.