All posts by Mike Huberty

Co-Host of See You On The Other Side podcast Lead Vocalist & Bassist for Sunspot
Podcast

275 – Hellier 2: Hunting Indrid Cold With Greg Newkirk

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We’ve had Greg and Dana Newkirk from The Traveling Museum of the Paranormal and Occult on the show several times before and they’ve always got great stories, whether they’re talking about the beautiful story of how they met or reminiscing about Buffy the Vampire Slayer. We’ve hung out with them at numerous paranormal conventions and enjoyed their work.

So when the webseries Hellier came out last year, it was exciting. First of all, the series looked amazing. Director Karl Pfeiffer opted for a classic cinematic documentary style instead of the paranormal reality show style that we’ve been used to for the past decade and a half. It’s much more Errol Morris than Zak Bagans.

The Hellier Goblin

The first series was a slow deliberate blow-by-blow investigation into a series of emails that Greg Newkirk received in 2012 from a Kentucky man who said that goblins were emerging from a cave on his property. Greg sat on it for a long time, but eventually he and his wife Dana joined forces with paranormal researchers Connor Randall and Karl Pfeiffer who used to do paranormal investigations at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, as well as paranormal adventurer Tyler Strand, who took a job at Mammoth Cave to help with the production and is just about as fearless as they come.

In the end, the team didn’t get any goblins on video, so the people looking for a big reveal were disappointed. Most of the excitement happened through “synchronicities”, however, I applaud them for not making anything up. It still was an interesting methodical look into a paranormal investigation that used everything from tarot readings to “The Estes Method” (a mashup of a spirit box and the ganzfeld technique) in trying to discover the other side.

So, a year later, the adventure begins again as the team goes out to investigate more questions that were left hanging at the end of the first season. Expanding on the connections they found in Hellier to the original Mothman case in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, they start searching for how the mysterious Indrid Cold, who features prominently in John Keel’s Mothman Prophecies book might figure into their research. Their investigation leads them further down that rabbit hole and eventually deep into the Mammoth Cave.

Hellier 2 launched exclusively on Amazon Prime on Friday November 29th and it’s streaming on all services free starting on December 13th. We’ve watched several episodes that they’ve sent to the press and it still looks as amazing as ever. With the natural conversation segments, it often feels more like an episode of The Office than Ghost Hunters. But it’s that documentary-style and lack of flashy jump cut gotcha moments that make it feel much more real. It’s like a slice of life, albeit a slice of a weirdo’s life.

I’m not sure if we’re gonna get those goblin money shots in episodes 6-10 (they only sent the first five episodes for press review), but the fact that they’re not teasing us with them the whole time is refreshing. They never catch the Zodiac Killer by the end of Zodiac, but it’s still a great look into the mind of the investigators.

And we look into that investigator’s mind in this interview with Greg Newkirk, where we go in depth about:

  • What made them want to dive back into the world of Hellier
  • How did the first series change the investigative techniques of the second
  • Have more synchronicities have popped up since the shooting ended?

And speaking of synchronicities, there’s a scene shot at the very point where the Stillwater, Minnesota ghost tour starts (which is a company I run, but they shot in the winter so there wasn’t a tour running at the time!) Not a synchronicity, but something awesome, is that you’ll also hear a couple of Sunspot songs on the soundtrack of Hellier 2!

The first Hellier took the investigators onto a route inspired by John Keel’s The Mothman Prophecies. One of the characters that shows up in that book is a strange self-proclaimed alien observer with a big smile named Indrid Cold. Early on in the new series, they talk to a the daughter of Woodrow Derenberger, a man who said he was stopped along the road by Indrid and then had contact with him over the next several years. We have already done a song about Indrid called “The Grinning Man”, but we’re returning to Point Pleasant ourselves with his last quote to Woodrow Derenberger, “We’ll Be Seeing You Again”.

I’ve got so far to go it feels
like the road it never ends
Sometimes it’s just me and my shadow
it won’t stop til I am dead.

I’m the searching kind
with a curious mind
I will say it all with a grin
If I can be so bold
you can call me cold and
We’ll be seeing you again

I keep on walking under
The lights that dance in the sky
through the rain and through the thunder
trying to find a little sunshine.

I’m the searching kind
with a curious mind
I will say it all with a grin
If I can be so bold
you can call me cold and
We’ll be seeing you again

I picked you to share my tale
I picked you to show the way
And when those red eyes fly right out of Hell
I’m always a call away

I’m the searching kind
with a curious mind
I will say it all with a grin
If I can be so bold
you can call me cold and
We’ll be seeing you again

Podcast

274 – Tripping The Field: Lucid Dreaming With Ian Jaydid

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I used to be terrified of going to sleep. Everyone has a nightmare once in awhile, but starting when I was six years old, I’d have them almost every night. I couldn’t just fall asleep, I’d read until the book would fall out of my hands and my eyes closed involuntarily.

I would dread if my parents went to bed before I fell asleep because that would just make things more terrifying, I’d be facing entering the dream world alone. And my dream world hated me. It would find ways to torture me every night with monsters chasing me, child killers cutting me up, or zombies chewing my body parts. After awhile, I just expected it, I felt like the teenagers in A Nightmare On Elm Street, desperate not to fall asleep, because I knew who was waiting for me there, even though I wouldn’t see that movie myself until I was much older.

It wasn’t something that I talked about much because I didn’t expect other kids to understand it. Everyone has bad dreams, but not everyone has them every night. I didn’t want to seem weird or crazy, so I kept it to myself most of the time. And when I had a chance, like when I was at the library, I would look for books on how to control your dreams. I knew there had to be a way.

We discussed this all the way back in our second episode, “Lucid Dreaming: A Beginner’s Guide for Psychonauts” about how I became obssessed with finding ways to escape my nightmares. “Lucid dreaming” means that you know you’re in the dream world and therefore you know that the things you’re seeing in your brain cannot hurt you. I eventually found a way to manage my nightmares through lucidity, but it took several years to get there. It was never as dramatic as the Dream Warriors for me, but it really wasn’t that far off, at least in the dream world.

We spend one-third of our lives unconscious. That’s a long time to be inside a world where everything is trying to kill you. And as I learned, you can’t escape sleep. Once a day, our minds need to be rebooted to function properly and that means that a major portion of our already too short existences are spent doing nothing. Most of the time, dreams don’t make sense, they don’t seem to mean anything. It’s just random synapses firing off little stories in your head.

Sometimes those stories are wonderful, and sometimes, like in my case, they’re horrific. But what if you could control those stories? What if you could do something useful with the hours you’re not awake? Wouldn’t that be awesome? And what if, sometimes in the dream world, you can leave your body behind?

Ian Jaydid is serious about lucid dreaming

Author, artist, and psychonaut, Ian Jaydid, had his first lucid dream when he was nineteen years old. Then, involuntarily, he started having those dreams every night. While he was always interested in the paranormal world, the experiences that he would have in his dreams would change how he fundamentally views existence.

He calls it “The Narrative”. In the real world, we all share certain beliefs about what is true and what is physically possible. You can’t walk through walls, you can’t fly, etc… In the dream world, “The Narrative” can be completely different. You might be able to talk to cats, you might be able to jump 10 feet high, people who you thought were dead are alive, etc… The rules are different. What’s possible is completely different.

In fact, one of the first things that regular lucid dreamers suggest to do is to try flying in your dreams. We’ve probably all done it involuntarily in a dream at some point, but when you do it purposefully it’s even more amazing. (Some people theorize that witches and broomsticks even come from them using hallucinogenics to simulate the fyling experience!) But we can’ t fly in real life, we don’t have ET helping us out with his psychic powers. It’s impossible. But that’s the kind of thing you can do in your dreams. You can transcend our physical limitations inside a lucid dream.

Ian was lucid dreaming so much that he started testing the limits of what he could experience. He started visiting his friends in his dreams and found out the things that he was seeing weren’t necessarily just in his dreams. His dream encounters changed his “Narrative” and altered what he believed to be possible.

His first book, Tripping the Field: An Existential Crisis of Ungodly Proportions (click here to check it out), is a fiction novel, but it contains the philosophy of what he’s learned in his nocturnal explorations.

In this interview, we talk with Ian Jaydid about his experiences and what inspired his novel and cover these topics:

  • Ways that you can try lucid dreaming tonight
  • How can you stop yourself from waking when you know you’re in a dream
  • Does lucid dreaming make you tired?
  • The evidence that caused him to believe he was doing more than just dreaming
  • Is it possible to astral travel in your dreams?

You can find more of Ian’s original artwork and writing at his website, ianjaydid.com

For the song this week, we were interested in how lucid dreaming can reframe what Ian Jaydid calls “The Narrative”. It’s like that old cliché, “Whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right.” Anything is possible in your dreams, the physical limitations in our material universe don’t exist there, anything goes.

There’s a movie from the late 90s called Mumford and there’s one scene that I think about often. In the movie, a man is describing one of his erotic fantasies to his therapist. In the fantasy, the male character is a stunning example of romance novel cover machismo who easily woos beautiful women, but in real life, the man is a total schlub. You think that the guy, Henry Follett, has a totally delusional sense of himself until the doctor is thinking about it later and says this:

“In these fantasies, Henry Follett is played by a handsome guy with biceps. Can you imagine that? Where your self-esteem has to be? Man, I’d just like to move the guy to the point where he gets to appear in his own fantasies.”

He wasn’t even fantasizing about himself. His dreams weren’t his own. Sometimes your narrative is so ingrained that you’re not even the main character in it. That’s when you have to reframe it. That’s the idea behind this song, “Dreams Belong”.

The world is ugly
the world is mean
we’re drowning in cruelty
and there’s only one place I can hide
where I feel like I am free.

Your head spins round and round
your soul trapped on the running wheel
You gotta get out of your mind
if you want to find out what’s real

When the neurons fire
it’s more than just electricity
you can have my body and take my life,
but my dreams belong to me
I’ll close my eyes and fantasize
escape to lucidity
you can have my body and take my life,
but my dreams belong to me

It’s all fake
It’s all a hoax
we’ve all been fed a lie
You’ll never see possibility
until you leave your shell behind

Your head spins round and round
your soul trapped on the running wheel
You gotta get out of your mind
if you want to find out what’s real

When the neurons fire
it’s more than just electricity
you can have my body and take my life,
but my dreams belong to me
I’ll close my eyes and fantasize
escape to lucidity
you can have my body and take my life,
but my dreams belong to me

Podcast

273 – Fractured Souls: Sylvia Shults and The Ghosts of The Peoria State Hospital

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Nothing gets a ghost hunter salivating like the opportunity to do an investigation in an abandoned sanitarium. It seems like we get our ideas of what life was like in a mental asylum entirely from movies like Return To Oz or Sucker Punch, where sadistic psychiatrists are hellbent and eager to perform lobotomies and shock treatment on innocent patients, living in squalor, surrounded by murderous lunatics and psychopathic nurses. The spiritual energy expended in such a place seems like a bonanza of pain and torment, which look great on a ghost’s resume. It’s usually cold, the lights are off because the power has been disconnected, the paint is peeling off the walls, anything metal is rusted, and sometimes the rooms are filled with antiquated medical equipment too big to move and not valuable enough to sell… it feels like you’re walking into a torture chamber set on a horror movie.

But what if it wasn’t like that at all? Author and paranormal investigator Sylvia Shults has written several books on the spirits of the Peoria State Hospital in Illinois and her latest work, Fractured Souls, talks about the history of the sanitarium and the ghost experiences that people have had there. But instead of the ghosts being traumatized, they’re grateful they were taken care of by a doctor who was more interested in compassion and healing than mad science and brain surgery.

Purchase Sylvia’s book on Amazon

Dr. George Zeller came to Peoria in 1902 and he had the bars removed from the windows and the mechanical restraints taken off the beds. He was a new breed surgeon that believed the “incurables” (and the hospital was originally known as the Illinois Asylum for the Incurable Insane) would do better when treated with kindness than restriction.

One of the prime examples is the case of Roda Derry, who Shults also wrote a book on called 44 Years in Darkness:  A True Story of Madness, Tragedy and Shattered Love. Roda withdrew from the world after the mother of her lover threatened to curse her if she didn’t leave her son and spent twenty years in a Utica Crib, which is like a crib for adults that locks on the top. Roda eventually clawed her own eyes out inside it.

Yeah, that looks humane.

When Doctor Zeller heard her story, he had her transferred to Peoria immediately and let her out of the crib. During her last years she was surrounded by people that took care of her instead of locking her away to forget and she flourished there. She might be one of the most famous ghosts of the hospital and people still see and hear her spirit today.

However, it seems that she was treated better by Dr. Zeller than some modern ghost hunters. When the team from the paranormal television show Ghost Asylum came to Peoria, they disregarded the advice from Sylvia and decided to use a Utica Crib as a “ghost trap” to try and draw her spirit out. Once again, humans are crueler than the supernatural.

You can check out the episode where the Tennessee Wraith Chasers used a Utica Crib to “ghost trap” Roda Derry

Another TV show that tried to use the history of the asylum was Ghost Hunters. They were intrigured by the story of A. Manual Bookbinder, a mute patient who wouldn’t speak so they never knew his name (they gave him the name Bookbinder as a kind of joke), but he would attend every funeral at the hospital and he would cry his eyes out. “Old Book” wept for the people who had no one to weep for them and there’s a terrific ghost story that Doctor Zeller told about him. The TAPS team thought they might have gotten him on video, but Sylvia has some different ideas.


Here’s the shadow figure that the Ghost Hunters captured by the cemetery that they thought might be “Old Book”, but Sylvia has another idea of who she thinks it might be.

In this episode, Sylvia shares her favorite ghost stories from the Peoria State Hospital and discusses the investigations that led her to write Fractured Souls. We cover some of these questions in the interview:

  • What’s the truth about the Old Book ghost story?
  • Who was giggling in the autopsy room?
  • What’s unusual about how Roda Derry’s apparition appears
  • Who is the boy in the basement?
  • What mysterious object did Dale Kascamarek from Ghost Research Society capture on video and call “The Thing”?
Here’s the video of “The Thingie” that Ghost Research Society captured while they were doing a tour and investigation. Just what is that?!

Probably the most shocking and cruel image for me of the whole conversation was Syliva discussing the Utica Crib. With a hospital bed in the crib, the patients only had twelve inches of vertical space to live in. It was a bed where you could never get up and you were never let up. They justified the practice because they said that they restrained patients who might be suicidal or cause self-harm, like Roda Derry did by ripping out her eyes with her own bare hands. And at the time, they might have thought it was more comfortable than a straitjacket.

It shows how far we’ve come in the treatment of mental illness that we’re horrified by such a device. But it also shows that even our better natures need to be checked sometimes, the proverbial “Road to hell is paved with good intentions” because what starts as compassion can turn into cruelty.

Stretched to the point of breaking
so deep the body’s shaking
Feverish and frenzied
flight of fantasy

They never even bother to put up a fight
because we’re on the side of right

Dear Father hear my confession
This crusade has become obsession

Welcome on the road to Hell
We’re gonna break your shell

Tear you apart to make you whole – make you whole

We know your best interests
It hurts more when you resist
The only way to save your soul – save your soul

Broken bodies, broken minds,
dead spirits with clawed out eyes
Fragmented and fractured
compassion casualty

They never even bother to put up a fight
because we’re on the side of right

This crusade has become obsession
Dear Father hear my confession

Welcome on the road to Hell
We’re gonna crack your shell

Rip you apart to make you whole – make you whole

We know your best interests
It hurts more when you resist
The only way to save your soul – save your soul

Podcast

272 – Southern Gothic: Ghost Stories and Legends Featuring Steve Gorman of The Black Crowes

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To say that the American South has a complex history is an understatement. To us in Wisconsin, it sometimes feels like a different country entirely and 99% of our touring experiences down there have been amazing. There is something to Southern hospitality and friendliness that makes it a pleasure for us to visit.

But the South also has its share of darkness. We live in a racially charged society. It’s not something our band, as three white people from the frozen North, have had to deal with much, but you don’t have to believe in ghosts to know that the specters of slavery and the Civil War hang over the place. And those are the focus of many of the ghost stories of the area. It’s part of the place, but it’s not the be all and end all of it.

The South has its own vibrant and beautiful culture. Part of what makes it great is the blending of all the cultures that has gone on to create art that’s really unique and incredibly popular.

Mike on the left on the bass and Wendy in the back on the violin, playing some Southern Rock in a band called Michael Alexander & Big Whiskey. Photo by John Flores.

Southern Rock for example is one of those artistic gumbos. A mixture of blues, folk, rock ‘n’ roll, and country music, it takes elements of several traditions, black and white, to make amazing music. Even in Wisconsin, when the opening riff to “Sweet Home Alabama” starts, people lose their shit. Women want to dance to it, men want to sing along to it. And one of the most successful Southern Rock bands of all time is The Black Crowes.

Steve Gorman on the far right with his band Trigger Hippy. Photo by Scott Willis.

Steve Gorman was a founding member of that rock ‘n’ roll powerhouse. It’s his drumbeat you first heard on “Hard To Handle”, their original hit (and we covered their version for years.) They sold over thirty million albums in their time but the usual rock n’ roll story of excesses and egos eventually imploded the group. He currently drums with a rock n’ soul band called Trigger Hippy and they are playing in Madison at the High Noon Saloon on November 13th. I interviewed Steve to preview the show (and click on this article if you’d like to read more about the concert) but he also gave me a ghost story, here’s him telling it directly:

Yes, I do have a ghost story. And I say that as a guy who always rolled my eyes at other people’s paranormal experiences and I still do! Despite the fact that I had one.

It wasn’t at a venue or a gig, but a friend’s house in LA. This was in 2003 and our neighbor was having a backyard cookout. I had a toddler and a baby and so did everyone else on the block so we were constantly all hanging in someone’s backyard. And when you live in LA you’re outdoors all year round which is why you wanna go there if you have babies, because it helps. People in Wisconsin can follow that train of thought real easily.

Year-round, your backyard is another room of the house. There’s no mosquitoes, there’s no humidity. It’s pretty great. For awhile anyway.

Everybody’s in the backyard, the grill’s fired up, we’re listening to music, it’s a really nice neighborhood get-together. It’s my buddy Jared’s house and I walked into the kitchen and I was standing at the sink and I realize that there’s a woman standing right next to me. And I hadn’t even noticed her, and I did that thing where I’m went, “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t see you” because I was crowding her by going to the sink… I think I was washing my hands.

I just looked to my right and I said “Oh, I’m sor…” but there was nobody there. And out of the corner of my eye peripherally I saw an older woman who was wearing a red bandana in her hair. An older lady with a red bandana with a pattern on it. And as I went to say “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t even notice you/” there was nothing there.

And it really impacted me. I felt something inside like, “Oh what the Hell was that?” Nine times out of ten I would have thought “oh, I’m seeing something” or my brain had a weird synapse misfire. But it really moved me.

And I walked outside and I went over to Jared my friend and I go, “I just had the weirdest thing happen.” And he goes, “What?” I go, “I was just in your kitchen and I swear there was this old woman that was standing next to me, but she just wasn’t there.” And my friend Jared goes, “Did she have a red thing in her hair like a bandana?” And I just stared at him in absolute disbelief. And I said, “Yeah.”

His daughter’s name is Sadie and he said, “Sadie sees that woman all the time.” And that’s a true story and I have goosebumps right now re-telling it. And I know the look on my face must have been great because he was like, “Dude, that’s alright, don’t worry.” And I was like “What the fuck, man?!” I thought I was losing my mind. He’s like, “It’s fine, she’s always in the house and Sadie just sees her.” So, great, me and a three-year old girl are connecting over this.

Steve Gorman, Drummer of Trigger Hippy and The Black Crowes

While the South creates amazing music, their unique history makes for some one-of-a-kind hauntings. In this episode, we talk about some famous stories and what makes ghost stories in the American South unique. Here are some of the topics we cover, in addition to hearing Steve Gorman tell his story for himself:

  • Haunted plantations across the South
  • Confederate ghosts in Nashville, Tennessee
  • The curse of The Bell Witch and An American Haunting
  • The pirate Jean Lafitte who haunts New Orleans
  • Why Madison, Wisconsin has its own Confederate ghosts

For this episode, we decided to do a version of the old English folk song, “The Unquiet Grave”. American folk music, particularly in Appalachia and the Ozarks, directly descends from the ballads of the English, Scottish, and Irish who settled The New World. In fact, the accent of Shakespeare’s time sounds somewhat more like an American Southern accent than it sounds like the accent of Ian McKellen or Patrick Stewart (as much as everyone loves those guys!)


“The Unquiet Grave” has been covered by everyone from to Joni Mitchell to Ween and it weaves the tale of a pair of lovers where one died too young. In some versions, it’s a girl who died, in others it’s the boy, but what remains the same is that they lay on their lover’s grave until the ghost appears to them. When the lover left behind begs for a kiss, the ghost warns that even a kiss from their lips would kill them and it’s not worth losing your life over lost love.

How cold doth blow the wind tonight,
I feel some drops of rain.
I never had but one true love
And in greenwood she was slain.
I’ll do as much for my true love
As any young man may.
I’ll sit and mourn all on her grave
For a twelve month and one day.

The twelve-month and one day being up
The dead began to speak.
“Oh, who sits weeping on my grave
And will not let me sleep?”
“‘Tis I, my love, sits on your grave 
And will not let you sleep,
For I crave one kiss of your lily-white lips
And that is all I seek.”

“My lips they are as cold as clay,
My breath smells earthy strong.
If you have one kiss of my lily-white lips,
Your life will not be long.”
“My life be’t long or short sweetheart,
But that is all I crave.
Then I shall be along with you
A-lying in my grave.”

“‘Tis down in yonder garden green,
Love, where we used to walk.
The finest flower that ere was seen
Is withered to a stalk.
The stalk is withered dry, my love,
So will our hearts decay,
So make yourself contented, love,  
Till God calls you away.”

Podcast

271 – Milwaukee Mafia: Gangsters and Ghosts Of Brew City With Gavin Schmitt

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I first encountered criminal historian Gavin Schmitt while looking up information on my grandfather. My mother had told me about how her Polish cobbler father supported a family of six children through the Great Depression. One way was through being a groundskeeper at the local parish to get a discount on tuition at the Catholic School there. Another way, however, was by distributing payments in a not-quite legal local lottery operation called they called “Policy”. She talked about how her aunt had sewn special pockets in her father’s jacket to hide the winning numbers for when he went on his rounds. Sometime when my mother was a little girl in the mid-1940s, my grandfather was arrested as part of a John Doe gambling investigation and his picture was in the Mliwaukee newspaper. He was released and in the end, not charged with anything, but she was hoping I could find the paper.

So after exhausting the online archives of The Milwaukee Journal and Milwaukee Sentinel and not having much luck looking for my not quite-notorious criminal ancestor, Leon Bohn, I found Gavin Schmitt’s book, Milwaukee Mafia: Mobsters in The Heartland. We tend to think of Chicago as the place for gangsters and it certainly was, and it seems like every dive bar in Wisconsin has a story about Al Capone coming to vist (indeed, if I were to believe all of them, I doubt Capone would have had a chance to actually commit any crimes!) But the Milwaukee mafia was able to get up to plenty of trouble on their own, the mob boss was nicknamed “The Mad Bomber” because of his penchant for blowing up people’s cars, for God’s sake!

Gavin Schmitt wrote the definitive work on organized crime in Milwaukee

Sixty years after our grandfather is arrested, my sister Allison was working on a special haunted history tour for the Italian Community Center in Milwaukee. She thought she might go to some older Italian hangouts and ask if they had any ghost stories, not even thinking about the Milwaukee mafia. One place that she visited on Brady Street, when she mentioned something about ghosts to the owner, he said, “Allison, I like your smile, but snitches end up in ditches.” And then he screamed at her, “Leave it alone! Leave it alone! Leave it alone!” I remember getting the call from her directly after and it was a mix of disbelief, sheer terror, but also, a fair share of amusement, that she’s gonna stumble onto some criminal conspiracy while looking for ghost stories for little old Italian ladies on Halloween.

Gavin Schmitt at the Fox Cities Book Festival

Flash forward ten years after that, and while working on a new ghost tour route in Milwaukee, Allison uncovered some previously unheard hauntings of the old Italian neighborhood. So, it’s the perfect time to interview Gavin Schmitt about how some of his Milwaukee Mafia stories tie in to the various ghost stories of Cream City. Here’s some of the topics we cover:

  • Milwaukee’s scariest Polish one-armed man
  • How Milwaukee’s mob lawyer became obssessed with Nichelle Nichols (Uhura from Star Trek)
  • The Milwaukee Mafia’s Greatest “Hits” like Augie Mianaci and Louis Fazio
  • Allison’s ghost story from a potential mob hangout in Mequon (and a mobster that ended up in a ditch out there)

For the song this week, it was just too easy to take Allison’s experience at being yelled at by the old Italian bar owner and his simple and unforgettable rhyme, “Snitches End Up In Ditches”!

Money 
Women 
Sex 
all your heart’s desire. 

Power 
Respect 
Wealth 
you best not wear a wire 

Mr. Big made all this happen, so you better not betray 
Turn the keys to the ignition and you might get blown away. 

You like the parties, ladies, and the things so nice. 
you had to know there was a price. 

Now you’re in it for life 
with the gun and the knife 
a world of violence 
a code of silence 
You spill the blood on the saint 
you cut a deal with your fate 
but if you give it up to the feds 
then you’ll wind up 

Dead men tell no tales 
about the made men who made them rich 
stoolies might stay out of jail 
but a snitch ends up in a ditch 

Lucre 
Hookers 
Lust 
whatever you may feel 

Fortunes 
Gambling 
You can bet your life 
we’ll kill ya if ya squeal 

Mr. Big made all this happen, so you better not betray 
Turn the keys to the ignition and you might get blown away. 

You like the parties, ladies, and the things so nice. 
you had to know there was a price. 

Now you’re in it for life 
with the gun and the knife 
a world of violence 
a code of silence 
You spill the blood on the saint 
you cut a deal with your fate 
but if you give it up to the feds 
then you’ll wind up 

Dead men tell no tales 
about the made men who made them rich 
stoolies might stay out of jail 
but a snitch ends up in a ditch

Podcast

270 – I See Dead People: The Paranormal Influences Behind The Sixth Sense

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We’re back live from Wizard World Madison 2019 where we celebrate the 20th anniversary of one of the scariest movies of the 1990s, The Sixth Sense. A story about a boy who is visited by the spirits of the dead and the child psychologist that is trying to help him, it was the most financially successful horror film of all time until it was finally surpassed by 2017’s It: Chapter One. The movie turned child actor Haley Joel Osment into a star and it skyrocketed the career of its writer-director, M. Night Shyamalan, who became particularly known for his use of Philadelphia as a location and a penchant for Twilight Zone-style twists.

I was 22 when I saw the movie the first time and I don’t think I’ve ever been as scared in the theater as I was coming home from that film. I was walking with my girlfriend at the time up a dark staircase into my apartment and we were convinced that when we got to the end of the stairs and unlocked the door there was going to be a dead person behind it.

Re-watching it after twenty years, it’s at first most shocking to see Bruce Willis’ gorgeous hair or how skinny Donnie from the New Kids On The Block looks, but then you start seeing all of the clues that Bruce Willis’ character was dead the whole time and it feels so obvious, which why it was such a great trick the first time around.

But while The Sixth Sense might have been a completely fictional film, it doesn’t mean that a lot of the concepts in the movie aren’t taken from real-life hauntings and paranormal experiences and here’s what we talk about in this episode:

  • Everytime a ghost gets mad, the temperature drops, so what’s up with cold spots in real hauntings?
  • What do psychic mediums in real life actually see when they hear messages from dead people?
  • Bruce Willis’ character Malcolm becomes convinced after hearing an EVP, what’s the history of EVP phenomena?
  • Olivia Williams talking about how an object can be imprinted by its former owners. Does that mean an object can be cursed?
  • Poltergeist activity, apporte hauntings, and Munchhausen-Syndrome-by-Proxy as a potential explanation for paranormal activity

So, for the song this week we reached back into the archives for a track that we released not too long after The Sixth Sense came out. We thought that the chorus fit perfectly for this film where a child finally finds someone that believes in him and can stop being afraid of the ghosts that surround him. Here’s our old-school Sunspot song, “Flower-Child”.

Seeds of irresponsibility, 
and a selfish kind of love, 
birth the flower-child, 

Neglected with the grey sky, 
Beaten with the drought, 
Treated as immaterial grass, 
Cut down and shut out. 

Withering away, 
Dying slowly. 
Withering away. 
Dying slowly. 

Will you ever bloom? 

Don’t cry child of darkness, 
The sky will open up to dawn. 
The life-giving rains, 
will wash your flood of tears away. 

You’re not alone anymore

Podcast

269 – The Haunting of David Oman: Sharon Tate and The House At The End of Cielo Drive

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When David Oman woke up in 1999 to his Los Angeles real estate developer father finding a lot in the newspaper for $40,000, he thought it was a typo. Cielo Drive in Benedict Canyon, on the edge of Beverly Hills. It was the former address of Hollywood royalty like like Cary Grant, Henry Fonda, and Candice Bergen. But it also was the same street where Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski lived in 1969 and the site of the most infamous of the Manson Family murders. But that house was torn down after Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails famously recorded The Downward Spiral there and called his studio Le Pig, a kind of disgusting homage to Sharon Tate’s blood being used to scrawl the words “Pig” on the front door. He later regretted treating the murders with that kind of levity. But still, there’s no way a lot in that neighborhood would go for that kind of money.

However, it wasn’t a typo, it was a zoning issue. The city had zoned the street incorrectly and that meant that the owners of the lot weren’t able to develop it. They started building a house into the side of the hill and had to quit after laying the foundation. Oman’s father realized the mistake, so they bought the lot and petitioned the city to rezone the street. It worked and they were cleared to develop the house. Originally David Oman’s father wanted to sell the place, but David knew that it was his dream home.

David Oman with Lance Henriksen

Not long after moving in, Oman started having haunted experiences, including a full-bodied apparition of Jay Sebring, the famous Hollywood hairdresser who was murdered right down the street in th Sharon Tate home. He invited a ghosthunting team to investigate and they started to get strange readings, particularly their EMF and magnetic readings (we covered this earlier in our episode about the Manson Family as well, so you can get a little background there.)

Dr. Barry Taff of The Entity fame investigated and has seen some amazing things there, SyFy’s Ghost Hunters and of course, Zak Bagans and the Ghost Adventures team have been there as well.

Zak Bagans talking to Dr. Barry Taff about his experiences at the Oman House

Oman also had flashes of movie scenes come to him. Scenes that he believes were shown to him by the ghost of Sharon Tate. These would eventually culminate in the film, House at The End of the Drive, produced in 2015.

In October of 2019, David Oman released a book, The Ghosts of Cielo Drive where he talks about his experiences and we talked to him extensively about the book and the paranormal encounters including:

  • Oman’s encounter with Lindsay Lohan when she showed up wanting “to see a ghost”
  • Why David Oman isn’t scared of the paranormal phenomena in his home
  • Why he feels the place called to him to build there and reveal its secrets
  • More of the electromagnetic anomalies people have experienced

For the song this week, we were inspired by the cult of celebrity around Sharon Tate, Charles Manson, and true crime. We just can’t get enough of real life drama with these entertainers we’ve elevated to princes and princesses. But fame has its price and sometimes it’s a “Pound of Flesh”.

A map to the stars
and a map to graveyards
I want to know where the bodies are buried
Where history comes alive
like on Cielo Drive
I want to be as seen on TV

Lifestyles of the rich and famous
this appetite is heinous
hey now they’re just like us
when they’re all blood and guts

Another piece of me
another piece of meat
another pound of Flesh
for the paparazzi
You know the bourgeoisie
love their crime scenes bloody
And we’ll dance on the graves
of dead celebrities

Podcast

268 – What Really Happened To Jimmy Hoffa? Psychics, UFOs, and The Irishman

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July 30th, 1975. Former Teamsters Union President James R. Hoffa is scheduled for a 2PM meeting at the Machus Red Fox Restaurant in Bloomfield Township, Michigan with reported Mafia members, Anthony Provenzano and Anthony Giacalone. At 2:15pm he calls his wife and expresses his annoyance that no one is there. At 3:27pm, he calls his friend Louis Linteau and says he was stood up. After that, no one hears from him again.

Jimmy Hoffa

In a mystery that has never officially been solved by law enforcement and has been the basis of massive speculation as well as the source of a million late night comedy jokes over the years. Jimmy Hoffa, one of the most well-known figures of all time in organized labor politics, just vanished without a trace.

He wasn’t an angel. Hoffa had already been convicted of fraud and illegal wiretapping and had served several years in prison, and he several of his associates had admitted that they were in the mafia. In order to unify local trucking unions and rise to power, he had to cut deals with organized crime figures who were central to the running of the unions. He was the focus of Robert F. Kennedy’s corruption investigations in the early 1960s. Jimmy Hoffa was surrounded by criminals and eventually he angered the wrong people. But who did he anger and how did he disappear? That’s the mystery.

And the story is back in the news because it’s one of the central tales in Martin Scorcese’s new film, The Irishman, coming out this month. It’s based on the life of Frank Sheeran, a union leader, Hoffa associate, and a hit man for the Bufalino crime family. Sheeran claims to have killed Hoffa in his book, I Heard You Paint Houses (which was the code phrase people used to approach him to perform an assassination.) While that’s one theory of what happened to him, we delve into far-out ones in this episode. Some topics we cover:

This week’s track, inspired by the idea of vanishing without a trace is called “The Disappeared”.

When I say your name
There’s no answer on the way
I forget you were erased
because you were here one day
and it’s almost like I imagined

It’s a mystery
how you disappeared from my history
Oh It’s like you never existed
Oh It’s like you never existed.

Exit reality
to only remain in my memory
oh It’s like you never existed
Oh It’s like you never existed.

Just a fantasy
a phantom limb that itches me
Just a missing piece of meat
a sailor lost at sea
vanished and abandoned

It’s a mystery
how you disappeared from my history
Oh It’s like you never existed
Oh It’s like you never existed.

Exit reality
to only remain in my memory
oh It’s like you never existe

Podcast

267 – Multidimensional Evolution: Exploring Consciousness with Kim McCaul

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When anthropologist and consciousness researcher Kim McCaul talks about “multidimensional evolution”, it’s a concept that sounds like it might be a little bit woo-woo New Age-y. Kinda like when paranormal people talk about quantum physics. Yes, Einstein called it “spooky action at a distance”. No, it doesn’t provide a scientific explanation for ghosts, psychics, demons, etc… When you put scientific words into non-materialist concepts, things can often get dice-y quickly, which always makes me think of one of my favorite of Damon Wayans’ characters on In Living Color (sorry Homey The Clown!)

But when Kim McCaul breaks it down, the idea of “multidimensional evolution” isn’t complex or trying to ape modern science, it’s simply the idea that our consciousness doesn’t just have one dimension (or manifestation.) We have

  • the soma (our physical body)
  • the psychosoma (our spiritual body)
  • the mentalsoma (our analytical manifestation)
  • the energosoma (our manifestitation in energy).

And while a couple of those might hew close to the Freudian model of the psyche, the idea that we have more than one body is as old as humanity itself. When we talked to Jan Van Ysslestyne about her book The Spirits from The Edge of the World which is about the shamanism of the Ulchi people of Siberia, the idea of multiple bodies for one person is natural to their thousands-year-old Shamanic tradition. And Kim has been studying the Aboriginal civilization in Australia, whose spiritual tradition goes back tens of thousands of years, and there he finds many of the same concepts.

Click here to purchase Kim’s book, Multidimensional Evolution

Which is why it’s funny that these ideas are often called “New Age”. New?! It’s the oldest religion in civilization. Our world around us is all alive and is all a different expression of this life energy that we call consciousness.

And there was something from the book and our conversation that I found particularly interesting. I’m sure you’ve heard the expression that in this life we are “a spiritual entity having a physical experience” but Kim McCaul says that it’s more like “we are a consciousness having a spiritual and a physical experience”. That struck me because it seemed to make more sense to me.

If consciousness is an energy that all comes from the same place and we are bits of that consciousness that differentiate from each other through the experiences we feel in our bodies (and Kim would say in many bodies over many lifetimes), then that unity that we all feel sometimes after meditation or through a psychedelic drug, that oneness, is because consciousness itself isn’t different, it’s the bodies that consciousness expresses itself through that are different. That whole “namaste” thing is even more powerful when you realize that other people are built from the same stuff as you, their experiences have just led them to where they are, even if they’re in opposition to you. It just helps to engender a little empathy when you realize that everyone else is dealing with their own $h!t too. Consciousness exists as a universal force that we have all come from and we all will go back to, there’s not as a finite number of “souls” that exist independently of each other.

Anyway, my mind was blown for a short time, but in the interview you’ll find more great tidbits like:

  • How Kim’s spiritual journey took him from the UK to Indonesia to Rio de Janeiro and to Australia
  • What kinds of meditation can help you open yourself up to discovering your different somas
  • What’s an “intruder” vs a “helper”
  • How to avoid ‘spiritual superiority disorder”

Kim’s thoughts about consciousness reminded me of the Divine Spark from the Gnostics who believed there was a bit of the divine in each of us, no matter who. It’s the Aristotlean “Breath of Life” that unifies us, even when it’s hard to see that. That’s the inspiration for this week’s song, “Breathe”.

I’ve seen this cruel and angry place from every way,
I’ve seen what people do when they need to survive,
I’ve seen the ugly face of the human race,
I’ve watched people each other alive.

There’s a spark inside, that’s what starts the fire,
But sometimes that light, it doesn’t shine so bright,
Oh I know there’s supposed to be a part of you that’s part of me,
But sometimes I need a little help to breathe.

All the times where I’ve been drowning in my own skin,
And all the moments when I thought I had enough,
But I’ve felt the guiding hand and I’ve seen the promised land,
and once that switch is flipped, it never can turn off.

There’s a spark inside, that’s what starts the fire,
But sometimes that light, it doesn’t shine so bright,
Oh I know there’s supposed to be a part of you that’s part of me,
But sometimes I need a little help to breathe.

Podcast

266 – MOMO: Tracking Down The Missouri Monster with Seth Breedlove

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Small Towns Monsters filmmaker Seth Breedlove has been bringing to life they mysterious cryptids from America’s out-of-the-way locations. We’ve already talked to him about The Beast of Bray Road as well as the strange flying beasts of Illinois and now he’s returning with another tale of large hairy beast sightings from the 1970s, Momo (which is a cute name for Missouri Monster).

But while Momo is a cute name, what people saw in the summers of 1971 and 1972 in Louisiana, Missouri, was anything but sweet and friendly. Louisiana is a sleepy Mississippi River town of less than four thousand people that straddles the border with Illinois in the northeastern part of Missouri. So when two girls reported seeing a seven-foot tall furry beast whose face was covered by hair and was accompanied by a foul stench that cornered them in their car and ate their peanut butter sandwich before it disappeared back into the wilderness, it caught people’s attention.

It was a year later though, when the story would capture the nation’s attention after three children saw the monster by a riverbed holding a dead dog that set off a flurry of monster sightings, huge tracks in the dirt, and lights in the sky. They told their father, Edgar Harrison, and he says that he saw two of the creatures himself, “almost like a human except it had black hair all over it.” Eventually the sheriff even organized a posse to look for the creature while Harrison camped out for 21 straight days to look for the beast. Alas, no creature was every capture, alive or on film, but some strange tracks were found (even though one famous footprint was admitted to be a hoax by one of the perpetrators.)

Edgar Harrison’s children still stand by what they saw in that summer of 1972, and Edgar is the closest thing to a protagonist in Momo: The Missouri Monster‘s film-within-a-film recreations. Seth and his team pretend their re-enactments are from a long-lost 1970s Z-grade horror film about the monster that is rediscovered for the documentary and cowboy cryptozoologist Lyle Blackburn is the horror host who leads you through the movie.

Lyle Blackburn talking about Momo

And Lyle (who has also been on the podcast) is no stranger to Momo himself, he wrote a book about the creature earlier this year and has his own fascination with the Missouri Monster.

This is probably the most fun of the Small Town Monsters series because while it takes the evidence seriously, and you can see that in the interviews with the local historians and townsfolk, they don’t take themselves too seriously. They embrace the 1970s grindhouse vibe with the film-within-the-film, but when it comes to the actual characters, they respect the humans who had to deal with the experiences and the aftermath of it.

That’s something that Seth gets into in the interview, how important it was to him to try and honor the experiencers while finding a novel way to tell the stories. If you haven’t seen Momo: The Missouri Monster yet, then this is an insteresting episode about paranormal storytelling, but if you have seen it, think of it like a special features interview with the director.

And in this episode and our conversation with Seth Breedlove about Momo: The Missouri Monster, we go over:

  • The timeline of the Momo sightings
  • How to properly create the 70s atmosphere in the movie
  • The town of Louisiana today and how they feel about the sightings
  • The recurring themes that come up in the Small Town Monsters series and what has tied them together for the filmmakers
  • The possibliity that Momo might have been an alien instead of a cryptid
  • How Allison (my sister) and I, who were superfans of Chicago ghost hunting legend, Richard Crowe, completely missed that he was the one who wrote the seminal news article about the creature in the first place for Fate magazine

You can watch Momo: The Missouri Monster right now by renting it from Amazon or you can purchase the DVD from the Small Town Monsters shop.

For this week’s song, we wanted to evoke the 1970s just like Seth’s movie did, so we went for a classic style Hard Rock song that might fit into the soundtrack for a grindhouse horror flick, here’s us going dad rock on “Momo”!

Baby I said you don’t have to believe me
but I will tell you it’s true
I was down Louisiana Missouri
when you thought I was stepping out on you

Something hairy something nasty something filthy
smelling like death itself
That furry bastard coming out of the woods
Had me screaming for help

Baby I was gonna run home to you
just as soon as I could flee
but the Sheriff, he enlisted me in his posse
to go up the hill and find that beast

looking for…
Something hairy something nasty something filthy
smelling like the Devil himself
That furry bastard coming out of the woods
Had people screaming for help

Fireballs o’er the Mississippi
Footprints on the ground
Momo’s stalking the hills of Missouri,
And he don’t wanna be found.

Something hairy something nasty something filthy
smelling like the Devil himself
That furry bastard coming out of the woods
Had people screaming for help

Fireballs o’er the Mississippi
Footprints on the ground
Momo’s stalking the hills of Missouri,
And he don’t wanna be found.

Fireballs o’er the Mississippi
Footprints on the ground
Momo’s stalking the hills of Missouri,
And he don’t wanna be found.