Tag Archives: featured

79 – Way Of The Explorer: Remembering Dr. Edgar Mitchell

February 15, 2016 Mike Huberty 1 Comment

We recorded this episode on Valentine’s Day 2016, which is why we open with discussing Ghostbusters II (a film I feel is unfairly maligned because while the plot wasn’t as strong as the original, there were still some excellent jokes!), where the opening scene showed Peter Venkman hosting a paranormal show where he had two guests who predicted the end of the world.

One of the guests predicted the end to be February 14th, 2016 to which Bill Murray responds, “Valentine’s Day. Bummer.”

Well, the world didn’t end this last V-Day, so add it to another missed apocalypse date (a topic we discuss in Episode 58!), but on February 4th, 2016, we did lose an important figure in the world of psi research and astronautics. Dr. Edgar Mitchell was the Sixth Man on the Moon and while you expect that kind of journey to change your life, it did even more for Dr. Mitchell.

“On the return trip home, gazing through 240,000 miles of space toward the stars and the planet from which I had come, I suddenly experienced the universe as intelligent, loving, harmonious.”

Dr. Mitchell was already interested in psychic research (indeed, he even planned a telepathy experiment while he was on the lunar mission!), but his samadhi moment (that feeling of being one with the universe) directed the course of his life from then on.

Soon after his return to Earth, he founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences which is a research organization dedicated to exploring the mysteries of consciousness. He became an outspoken proponent of UFO disclosure as well, stating that “I happen to be privileged enough to be in on the fact that we have been visited on this planet and the UFO phenomenon is real, although it has been covered up by our governments for quite a long time.”

Dr. Mitchell brought a seriousness and authority to UFO and psychic research that few others could. Astronauts were not only in peak physical condition and Navy pilots, but they were also PhDs who were admired and respected among all kinds of Americans. Mitchell was no slouch, earning his Doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his death leaves a large hole in the credibility of the field.

He did bum around with Uri Geller for a time in the 70s and Uri tends to spike readings on people’s skeptic-meters, so that’s something we discuss in the podcast. But while Uri’s natural talent for show business might have killed his credibility with the psi research community, could there have been real some psychic phenomena in the beginning? Did we lose years of valuable research because Uri wanted to pal around with1970s celebrities?

Dr. Mitchell wrote a book about his experiences and his philosophy called The Way of the Explorer: An Apollo Astronaut’s Journey Through the Material and Mystical Worlds and he was a popular guest on shows like Coast To Coast AM as well as at UFO and paranormal conventions. Not only did he have great stories (an astronaut is automatically the most interesting person at every party), but a great attitude as well.

His bravery in the face of ridicule from the scientific community and his dedication to keeping an open mind in research serves as an inspiration to every explorer out there, paranormal or otherwise. And of course, if you’re brave enough to handle a rocket launch and re-entry from Earth’s orbit, ignoring a skeptical blogger doesn’t seem like such a big task!

What I find most heartening is his deeply held belief in the oneness of humanity and our connection to everything in the universe as well as each other. Most people get cynical as they get older and more set in their ways, but Mitchell kept his spiritual awakening spirit all the way to his earthly end.

Click on the pic to read NASA’s tribute to Dr. Edgar Mitchell

This week’s song is inspired by Dr. Edgar Mitchell and the optimism that came with the pioneering days of space exploration, “Shoot For The Stars” by Sunspot.

Not even that long ago,
you could look up to the sky and know,
that’s a place you could go.
Daydreaming of astronauts,
We weren’t just happy with what we got,
On this pale blue dot.

Back in my day, child, it didn’t seem so far.
Back in my day, child, we used to shoot for the stars.

Never thought that we’d still be here
Fifty years on, still stuck to the ground
and we’re still earthbound.
If the world has changed so much,
and those old dreams are out of touch, don’t you budge.
Just keep looking up.

Back in my day, child, it didn’t seem so far.
Back in my day, child, don’t forget Mars,
Back in my day child, or flying cars,
In my day, child, we used to shoot for the stars.

Podcast

78 – More Than Just Manimal: Understanding The Otherkin

February 8, 2016 Mike Huberty

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | More

There’s been plenty of times when I wished I wasn’t human. When I embarrassed myself or got in too much trouble, the fact that there’s no rules in the animal kingdom seemed to make a lot of sense. A bear never feels bad after killing and eating another animal while I feel bad if I eat something that has some gelatin (cow and pig toenails) in it.

Or even better, wishing that I was a fictional character instead of a human. I wanted to be Doctor Who for the longest time, after all you can regenerate your body when your sick or dying and you can travel through time, man, I used to think that would be the best.

But even though I wished for those things, I always felt entirely human deep down. The Otherkin do not. They feel so connected to animals (Therians) or elves or dragons (fictives) that they don’t feel one-hundred percent human. The name says it all, they believe they belong with a different group, not just of people, but species.

It’s an interesting phenomena that might have biological roots and that’s what we talk about in this episode and we also connect it to the legends of werewolves, skin walkers, and their portrayals in pop culture from Manimal to The 13th Warrior.

While in the recent past, the Otherkin might have felt more alienated, the Internet has once again brought people together. And please don’t confuse Otherkin with Furries, who just like celebrating anthropomorphized characters and dressing up as them, the Otherkin have the feeling that it’s not just dress up, but they’re actually a part of that group, even if it’s fictitious.

It’s all part of the very human quest for belonging.

Referenced in this episode:

Vice article, “Otherkin Are People Too; They Just Identify as Nonhuman”
Video Intro to the show “MANIMAL”:
Clinical Lycanthropy

This week’s song is a brand new Sunspot track called, “Another Skin”

Wake up,

Someone’s calling you,

You hear the sound, but you forget your name,

cuz everything has changed.

And every second’s a page from the wrong story,

and every breath is unusual air.

You’re living a different life,

and it’s wholly unfair.

Under another skin,

and right before your eyes

everything begins again,

something survives.

The words,

come out differently,

you speak out loud,

but the meaning’s wrong,

there’s somewhere else you belong.

You’re moving inside an alien’s body,

and every feeling a foreign caress,

a stranger in a stranger land,

who can’t shake the separateness.

Under another skin,

and right before your eyes

everything begins again,

something survives.

Podcast

77 – Paranormal Plantation: The Haunting Of The Myrtles

February 1, 2016 Mike Huberty 1 Comment

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | More

The Myrtles Plantation in St. Francisville, Louisiana is reputed to be one of the most haunted homes in the United States. With a reputation of murder, treachery, and slavery, the Myrtles has dozens of ghost stories and the fact that it’s a bed and breakfast makes it a popular spot for amateur ghost hunters.

Back in 2000, My sister, Allison from Milwaukee Ghosts and I did an overnight at the Myrtles and had a good time while not really seeing anything spooky (I, however, was terrified the whole time because it’s hard to ignore all the stories!)

That was a fun trip, but Allison just wasn’t convinced of the veracity of the tales so in 2012, we worked on a video presentation to have the most balanced and well-researched look at the Myrtles Plantation and its history. While the Myrtles is featured on ghost hunting show after ghost hunting show (Ghost Hunters, Ghost Adventures, and Unsolved Mysteries have all famously featured the plantation) how accurate is the history that they tell us on TV?

We interviewed former owner Francis Kermeen, Myrtles curator and tour guide Hester Eby, paranormal researcher David Wiseman, and haunted historian David Young to talk about experiences, historical inconsistencies, EVPs, vengeful slaves, possession, and much much more in this detailed investigation of one of America’s most notorious haunts.

While we never ended up releasing the video that we made for this episode, I’m really happy that the information is seeing the light of day finally because it’s got stuff that you will absolutely not hear anywhere else.

The song we’re featuring in this episode is “Freakshow” by Sunspot, which was originally inspired by this particular trip to Louisiana (my first time in New Orleans) and we opened at least one-hundred shows with this song as we were touring in 2002 and 2003.

Featured Song: Freakshow by Sunspot

Hotter than hell in the shade today,
and I’m sweating bullets waiting for you,
jonesing for a fix of my favorite sin.
I walked the streets for days,
trying not to break my mother’s back,
looking for silence above the din.

Will I be the one,
who leaves a bad taste in your mouth?
Spitting out your teeth, just like a dream.
Or I could be the one,
who could turn your head around to see,
that damaged goods are much more valuable than what they seem.

Welcome to the Freakshow,
Don’t be a no-show,
Because this act is guaranteed to blow your mind.
Just a cross-section,
that’s perfect in its imperfection.
Take a look or you will never know,
just what you might find.

Take me where the saints go marching,
with the hookers and the vampires,
and everyone’s invited to the dance.
Sometimes we forget who we’re supposed to be,
the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak,
and every sinner deserves a second chance.

When you prick me do I not bleed?
I know I’m in no shape to judge.
Did you leave a second chance there for me…
or was that bad taste in your mouth too much?

Podcast

76 – In Pursuit of the Paranormal: An Interview with Matthew Jesso

January 27, 2016 Wendy Lynn Staats

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | More

Although we haven’t been hit by snow like the East Coast this week, we’ve been experiencing a nasty deep freeze here in the Midwest. I had the misfortune of catching a cold, but Mike was lucky enough to escape to California for a little sunshine and a whole lot of awesome musical instruments (and musicians playing them) at the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) 2016 convention.

While he was there, Mike searched high and low for anything paranormal, weird (aside from the wild assortment of freaky musicians everywhere- Hey, as one of them, I’m allowed to say that!), and/or otherwise interesting to those of us into that kind of thing. If you didn’t already get the chance to check out his blog posts, his intriguing investigative reporting and commentary can be found in articles such as The Best Occult Imagery at NAMM 2016 and Moog at NAMM 2016: Synthesizers and the Sound of Horror.

Back in Wisconsin, I had the pleasure of conducting my first interview with a paranormal investigator by the name of Matt Jesso. Another Midwesterner hailing from Minnesota, Matt has spent years working with people who have experienced the unknown or inexplicable phenomena, and works without compensation to help find resolutions – or at least clues – to many mysteries.

As a Parnormal Investigator, Matt reviews claims from people who experience something “beyond the realm of understanding”. After gathering information about what is happening, he determines whether an in-home investigation is appropriate. He does Electronic Voice Phenomenon analysis, both for recordings made on investigations in which he participated as well as recordings sent to him from other investigations. The goal of each investigation varies depending on the objective of the client, and depending on the nature of the claim, he may involve other members of his network experienced professionals in the paranormal (demonologists, psychics, mysticologists, mediums, remote viewers, and clergy people) to collect as much information as possible.

Matt had a curiosity about the paranormal from a very young age, reading everything he could about it. He discovered that, through information and understanding, he could overcome the fear that often accompanies experiences with the unknown.

One way people find Matt is through the web site Paranormal Societies, an “internet Rolodex of paranormal investigators” willing to help people in search of haunting assistance. Matt became friends with Bill Wilkins, the founder of Paranormal Societies, through Twitter, and joined the database so he could provide his service to those looking for help. Matt, like many other investigators, does not charge for his services, but offers to help as a kind gesture.

Part of our discussion touched on this blog article: “Too Many Ghost Hunters” written by our very own Mike Huberty, and Matt shared his opinion on the current trendiness of ghost hunting. Although he agrees that the field is a bit saturated at the moment, but the true professionals will continue to work together and have a very strong community that will thrive beyond the current ghost hunting craze .

Some of Matt’s expertise comes from reading works of famous parapsychologist Loyd Auerbach, who has an extensive history of his own in-home paranormal investigations. We learned a lot from Mr. Auerbach in our own Episode 27 – Parapsychology: Fact vs. Fiction, so I thought it was cool to hear Matt reference some of those concepts.

Audio and video recorders, EMF detectors and K-II meters are some of the tools used in Matt’s investigations.

The topic of orbs did enter our discussion when Matt shared the scariest experience he has had. Upon seeing a video of himself surrounded by many orbs, Matt admitted he was frightened. However, he uses prayer to protect himself from negativity and determined it was a positive, rather than a negative, sign.

I brought up that Mike is a “non-orb guy”, and Matt agreed that orbs are overblown. But he did have a story of a compelling video of an orb. Here it is… The original footage:

And in slow motion:

What do you think? Mike shares his opinion at the end of the episode.

You can reach Matt online through the following channels:

Twitter: @mattjesso
Periscope: @mattjesso (He broadcasts from “The Paracave” every Sunday at 5 PM Central Time) #paracave

Featured Song: Paranormal Sleuth by Sunspot

Searching for an answer
A paranormal sleuth
So many questions
But where can I find the truth?

I won’t be frightened, I won’t be weak
It’s only in my mind
My dread will be abolished
by the evidence that I find

I’ll keep on looking
listening, feeling for a sign
Power in the knowledge,
Whether sinister or divine

I won’t be frightened, I won’t be weak
It’s only in my mind
My dread will be abolished
by the evidence that I find

Podcast

75 – Starman: David Bowie’s Legacy of UFOs and The Occult

January 18, 2016 Mike Huberty

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | More

When you were born in the 1970s, David Bowie was a very different character than if you were born in the 1960s. The slick, well-dressed English gentleman that I remember in the videos for “Modern Love” and “Let’s Dance” is a far cry from the androgynous alien shapeshifter Ziggy Stardust. And most in my generation remember him for his performance in Labyrinth as Jareth the Goblin King even before his regular albums. His relevance changed from decade to decade, the Rock Star of the 70s became the Pop Icon in the 80s to the fading influencer in the 90s and then a revered Godfather in the new Millennium. Fluctuating public attention is the way of commercial art and artists, but what never changed was his hunger to constantly try something new and interesting. David Bowie was an engine of artistic innovation. Weirdly and wonderfully for us, much of his inspiration came from UFOs, spirituality, and the Occult.

david bowie ziggy stardust — Man, how awesome were the 70s?

In the episode, Wendy, Allison, and I discuss our first memories of Bowie and our favorite of his songs. Allison’s favorite David Bowie track is actually from an Adrian Belew solo album and the song is called “Gunman”, a hidden gem co-written by Bowie and Belew (Bowie’s musical director and one of his longtime guitarists) in the late 80s.

My personal favorite is from Ziggy Stardust (of course) and it’s the first song of his that I learned how to play (because I bought a guitar magazine with it in it the day I bought a bass guitar in 1990) and it’s “Suffragette City”! While the “Wham Bam Thank You Ma’am!” might enrage my sister, Allison, (her first memory of Bowie is wanting to punch him in the face for saying “shut your mouth” in “China Girl” – even though it’s the girl who’s saying it to the man, ha!) Wendy agrees by loving the entire Ziggy album and talks about listening to it over and over again in college with her roommate Erika (who now is on a lovely Doctor Who podcast called Verity! that you should check out if you’re a fan!)

The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars had an alien angle from its very inception. Ziggy Stardust was a rockstar who also was the human manifestation of a messenger for extraterrestrial beings bringing a message of hope to an Earth doomed in five years. And on this tour, he would often go to the windows and look out at the skies to check for flying saucers while doing interviews with reporters. But David Bowie was into UFOs long before he recorded this album.

Spiders from Mars guitarist Mick Ronson even said (as quoted in Michael Luckman’s book, Alien Rock: The Rock N’ Roll Extraterrestrial Connection) that “David became convinced that he was being stalked by men from Mars in 1969 or 1970.” He’s also been quoted as seeing UFOs when he was a kid. “They came over so regularly we could time them.”, he said. “Sometimes they stood still, other times they moved so fast it was hard to keep a steady eye on them.”

And then in the year on the Aladdin Sane tour (Bowie’s follow-up to Ziggy Stardust), his wife Angie Bowie tells the story of driving through Detroit and hearing about a UFO crash on the local news. Although the story goes that the news crew did the whole thing as a hoax and they were fired from the TV station, Angie swears the broadcasts exist (a documentarian with them recorded them on videotape) and that Bowie was keeping his eyes on the sky on their drive through the upper Midwest USA on the way to Minneapolis from Detroit, convinced that the aliens might want to make contact with him in particular.

david bowie alladin sane constellation — The Aladdin Sane makeup was such a good look for him, they’re making it his constellation…

But David Bowie didn’t just love aliens and UFOs, he also had a taste for sorcery! Bowie admitted that he dabbled in old-fashioned magic in the 1970s and he talks about about Aleister Crowley (an old friend to this podcast!) on one of his first albums, Hunky Dory (from 1971, it’s the one that has “Life On Mars?” on it) in the song “Quicksand” with the lyrics:

I’m closer to the Golden Dawn
Immersed in Crowley’s uniform
Of imagery
I’m living in a silent film

And when he moved to Los Angeles to record his album, Station to Station, Bowie went full Crowley.

david bowie cocaine — I’m never going to bed… EVER…

Fueled by mountains of Star-Spangled Powder, rockstar confidence, David Bowie and his wife Angie rented a house in LA while he spent ten months recording the album at Cherokee Studios, a place that even George Martin called “the best studio in America”. The persona that he was creating wasn’t an alien rock star anymore, but an ultra-Aryan Fascist known as The Thin White Duke. During this period (that he claims he remembers very little of because he was doing drugs constantly) he became interested in the Nazis use of sacred symbols (like the Swastika) and their quest for religious artifacts (think Raiders of the Lost Ark.) He talks about how he was fascinated that the Germans might have been looking for the Holy Grail in England in the 1930s. Okay, it’s the 70s, it’s LA, being weird is par for the course, so it’s magick time, baby!

david bowie sieg heil — Seig Hei…hiiiiiiiii guys, just ya know, trying some fascism on for size. Anybody else have a nosebleed?

Here’s Cameron Crowe (who was a rock journalist before he was a director, see Almost Famous for more info on that) interviewing Bowie during that time (and read the whole thing sometime, it covers the recording of Iggy Pop’s demo, hanging out with Ron Wood from the Rolling Stones, and what kind of celebrity life that Bowie was living at the time):

Suddenly – always suddenly – David is on his feet and rushing to a nearby picture window. He thinks he’s seen a body fall from the sky. “I’ve got to do this,” he says, pulling a shade down on the window. A ballpoint-penned star has been crudely drawn on the inside. Below it is the word “Aum.” Bowie lights a black candle on his dresser and immediately blows it out to leave a thin trail of smoke floating upward. “Don’t let me scare the pants off you. It’s only protective. I’ve been getting a little trouble from … the neighbors.”

But who exactly were the “neighbours” that Bowie was talking about? Well, his ex-wife Angie, believes that her husband was talking about the Devil himself. She talks about him saying that he saw the Beast rising out of the indoor pool and that they had to perform an exorcism.

So they did and she claims that the water started bubbling that in no way could have been caused by the air filters of the indoor pool and then she saw a large shadow at the bottom of the pool that she said looked “in the shape of a beast of the underworld; it reminded me of those twisted, tormented gargoyles screaming silently from the spires of medieval cathedrals. It was ugly, shocking, malevolent; it frightened me.”

He started getting into the Kaballah and there’s even a picture of him drawing its central mystical symbol, the Tree of Life. He mentions more Kaballah in the first verse of “Station to Station” as well (and since the Kaballah is Hebrew mysticism, it’s a pretty good sign that even though he might have been into Nazi occultism, he didn’t partake in their anti-Semitism.)

Even before his death on January 10th, people were already claiming that his last album, Blackstar, was more than just a musical statement. Some are claiming the album is a message from Bowie that the Illuminati are preparing for Planet X to come back into the solar system and we’re all going to be enslaved.

What’s Planet X? Why it’s Nibiru, the tenth planet in the solar system where the Annunaki live who control the Earth and it orbits around the sun every 3600 years (which is why most astronomers haven’t noticed it.) The leading proponent of this theory was Zecharia Sitchin and his evidence is slim, but it does make for some fun sci-fi tinged conspiracy reading.

david bowie blackstar — Hey, have you heard the Good News?

That doesn’t mean that Blackstar isn’t chock full of occult-y sci-fi goodness, though, and blog Vigilant Citizen has an excellent piece on all the symbols of Blackstar (even connecting it to Bowie’s outfit on Station To Station.) And the director of the ten-minute video that accompanies the title track had something to say about the video’s occult inspiration:

“Well, I’m a huge Crowley fan, I’ve always been. I tried to make a movie on his life a few years ago but we didn’t manage to put it together. I love Crowley for being an audacious man at certain point in time. I think he’s greatly misunderstood. He was a good guy, but he was portrayed as an evil man and he wasn’t.”
– Vice News, Behind “Blackstar”: An Interview with Johan Renck, the Director of David Bowie’s Ten-Minute Short Film

And you just gotta hand it to Bowie, he stayed true to his weird sensibilities right to the end. While we’ve discussed his inspired music, his film roles were inspired by the paranormal as well. His first big role was the lead character of The Man Who Fell To Earth as an alien who was trying to bring water back to his dying planet.

He also shows up in The Hunger, an erotic Vampire thriller from 1983 based on a book written by Whitley Strieber (the man who brought us modern alien abduction with his book Communion, however, The Hunger, is decidedly fiction.) Some people have made this connection with Strieber and the video for Bowie’s song “Loving The Alien” where he suffers a nosebleed (something that happens to many abductees), to infer that Bowie was making a statement about alien abduction, but I bet he had a lot different inspirations for nosebleeds in his time that had nothing to do with extraterrestrials.

But the biggest of his roles was the Goblin King in Labyrinth, and made a new generation of little ladies fall in love with him. However you feel today, this video of David Bowie dancing and singing with goblin muppets and a baby will put you in a good mood:

Some of his other roles that merit paranormal attention are Pontius Pilate in The Last Temptation of Christ (a controversial film in 1989, but almost tame now) and the strange ghost of an FBI agent in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.

He was in a mediocre video game that had excellent music called Omikron: The Nomad Soul. I bought it for my Sega Dreamcast and Wendy bought it for her PC, but you can get it free right here until the end of the week. A science fiction-y 1984 or Brave New World, Bowie was helping your character escape mechanical oppression.

His last really memorable role was that of the eccentric inventor Nikola Tesla (himself deserving of his own episode!) in Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige.

But that’s a great way to remember David Bowie, just like in The Prestige. When he shows up in the film, you’re like “Aw yeah, it’s David Bowie doing something weird and cool!” That’s the kind of reaction that he got out of me whenever I saw him because he was always doing something weird and cool (except for the “Dancing in the Street” video with Mick Jagger, but hey, nobody’s perfect.) He was even able to do the impossible was even able to turn what should be a lame Pepsi commercial into a totally sweet Frankenstein homage where he creates, and then sings and dances, with Tina Turner.

Making anything he touched into something cool, now that’s a talent that we can remember and appreciate.

For this episode’s song, we decided to forego an original track and the week that David Bowie passed on, we sang a tribute to him at our Sunspot concert at Shank Hall in Milwaukee. We did an acoustic version of the Ziggy Stardust song, “Starman”, and we had someone in the audience record it “bootleg-style” and play it in the podcast.

“Starman” – music and lyrics by David Bowie

Didn’t know what time it was and the lights were low
I leaned back on my radio
Some cat was layin’ down some rock ‘n’ roll ‘lotta soul, he said
Then the loud sound did seem to fade
Came back like a slow voice on a wave of phase
That weren’t no D.J. that was hazy cosmic jive

There’s a starman waiting in the sky
He’d like to come and meet us
But he thinks he’d blow our minds
There’s a starman waiting in the sky
He’s told us not to blow it
‘Cause he knows it’s all worthwhile
He told me
Let the children lose it
Let the children use it
Let all the children boogie

I had to phone someone so I picked on you
Hey, that’s far out so you heard him too!
Switch on the TV we may pick him up on channel two
Look out your window I can see his light
If we can sparkle he may land tonight
Don’t tell your poppa or he’ll get us locked up in fright

La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la

Podcast

74 – Science of the Supernatural: An Interview with Dr. Nancy Zingrone

January 11, 2016 Mike Huberty 1 Comment

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | More

Ever since seeing Bill Murray use the Zener Deck in an experiment in the beginning of Ghostbusters, I wanted to become a parapsychologist. After all, what could be cooler than investigating psychic phenomena? There’s a “science of the supernatural”? People get paid to do research into ESP? You can have that as a job? Sign me up!

I even made my own Zener Deck in fifth grade and did an experiment with the other kids in the class. Sunspot’s guitarist, Ben and I got 21 out of 25 cards correct when we did it. And spookily enough when I did a Ganzfeld procedure (that’s a sensory deprivation experiment) in college, Ben and I got a 100% hit rate when it was our turn the experiment, so I guess we don’t have an excuse when we mess up onstage anymore!

ganzfeld procedure — I can’t believe that ping pong ball eyeglass invention hasn’t taken off yet!

Well, as the years passed and I started getting more and more into music and entertainment, my dreams of becoming a research scientist faded into the background for the glamorous life of being an independent musician (ha!) But I always told people (with my tongue only half in my cheek) that being a parapsychologist was my Plan B. Now, with the podcast and haunted history tours I get the best of both worlds, but a part of me still yearns to do research of a more scientific kind into the unknown. That’s why it was such a delight to have Dr. Nancy Zingrone on the show to talk about her parapsychological journey. She’s a parapsychologist and professor originally from the Chicago area who has been conducting research in the field for over three decades.

We start this episode with a quick aside about Lemmy Kilmister from Motörhead, who passed away shortly after Christmas. In his last interview, he must have known that the end was coming because he talked a lot about death as well as if he ever came back to haunt other musicians, it would be Tears for Fears! We always loved a little Motörhead in the Sunspot van while traveling, where Lemmy would sometimes make his presence known by one of us singing “It’s time to play the game!” at random times.

Interviewing Nancy was especially exciting because she worked as a Visiting Scholar at the Rhine Research Center at Duke University for over a decade. Just a little background, J.B. Rhine and his wife Dr. Louisa Rhine were scientists who viewed psi phenomena as a branch of abnormal psychology and they worked to professionalize the field in the United States in the first half of the Twentieth Century. They developed a research center at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina where they studied phenomena like ESP, poltergeists, ghosts, and telekinesis.

In the interview, Nancy tells us how she got interested in the field, how she found love in psychic research (her husband Dr. Carlos Alvarado is a formidable researcher and teacher in his own right) and some her favorite experiments. She also discusses the challenges that a budding scientist faces in a field that’s often considered outside of the scientific mainstream. In fact, many of the research centers that are set up (like the Koestler Parapsychology Unit at the University of Edinburgh) only exist because of a monetary donation from someone rich that’s fascinated with the topic. Like in Scotland, the research unit exists because an author named Arthur Koestler donated his entire estate to a university that would research the paranormal. Oxford and Cambridge declined, Edinburgh University didn’t.

Nancy has some excellent advice, though, for people who are looking to get into the field:

Follow your passion
If you’re interested in history, physics, psychology, etc… then get trained in it. You are encouraged to start on the conventional academic path and develop your science-y skills (even J.B. Rhine started out as a botanist!)
Get collateral education in parapsychology
There are lots of courses that you can take online from real scientists so that you can get introduced to the methodology. Nancy and Carlos have a Massively Open Online Course that starts this month and is FREE, so you can see lectures and discuss these topics with top experts in the field. Really, you should sign up for this right away if you’re interested!
Find a professor that will let you write your papers on parapsychological themes
When I was an undergrad at the University of Wisconsin, I had the chance to write some of my reports on parapsychological topics in my psychology courses. That was in the 90s, but there should even be more opportunities now. After all, universities are the cultural center for independent thought, right?
Check out the schools that take on graduate and doctorate students in parapsychology and go there!
Sure, you might have to go to Germany or Brazil, but travel is good for you! Here’s an awesome list of resources of universities and colleges that offer courses in parapsychology.

You can find more about Nancy and her husband’s teaching and research at The AZIRE website (The Alvarado Zingrone Institute for Research and Education) where they have lots of information about their online courses (they’re even in Second Life, which sounds like a lot of fun!) and you can even read their published papers.

And make sure to check out their Facebook community for Parapsychology Online, it’s a great place to talk more about research, experiences, and advances in the field of easily the coolest science!

This week’s Sunspot song is all about reading minds, just like that “Zener Deck” experiment.

Can you read my mind?

do you know what I mean?

Can you tell what I’m thinking?

Because there’s nothing clean.

You’re inside my head,

it’s just a bottleneck,

these words don’t need to be said,

like a Zener Deck.

I felt you on the edges, taking a peek inside,

Seeing a couple stick figures making wavy lines.

You don’t need to be psychic to unlock,

my intentions are as clear as circle, a cross, a star, and a box

Can you read my mind?

do you know what I mean?

Can you tell what I’m thinking?

Because there’s nothing clean.

You’re inside my head,

it’s just a bottleneck,

these words don’t need to be said,

like a Zener Deck.

What do you think you’re going to find out?

I don’t know what you think you know.

A brain on the lookout for a freakout.

I don’t know what you think you know.

Can you read my mind?

do you know what I mean?

Can you tell what I’m thinking?

Because there’s nothing clean.

You’re inside my head,

it’s just a bottleneck,

these words don’t need to be said,

like a Zener Deck.

I can read you like a Zener Deck.

Podcast

73 – Monster Hunters: Tea Krulos’ Search For The Unknown

January 4, 2016 Mike Huberty 4 Comments

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | More

When we last caught up with author and blogger, Tea Krulos, he’d been directing the Milwaukee Paranormal Conference, which was the first conference of its kind that Wendy and I had attended. We had a blast and it was our second most downloaded episode of 2015 (so you guys must have liked hearing about it too!) So, we’ve talked to him about his conference and about his experiences working with Real-Life Super Heroes (yes, that’s a thing, and it’s awesome. Listen to our episode on it!) But we haven’t talked yet about his book, Monster Hunters, which was named by cryptozoology Godfather Loren Coleman as the top cryptozoology book of 2015. In that book, he meets with ghost investigators, UFO researchers, Bigfoot trackers, cryptozoologists, and more in search of what brings these people together to try and discover the truth behind weird creatures and haunted legends. With that exciting news of Tea’s book being named top read by one of the best in the field, Wendy, Allison, and I dragged Tea back into the conversation to learn more.

UFOs, Bigfoot, and the paranormal are exciting to think about it in pop culture. Everyone loves Star Wars right now with The Force Awakens on its way to become the biggest movie of all time and Star Wars has basically all of the paranormal categories in one movie. You’ve got aliens, Bigfoot (Chewbacca), psychic powers (The Force), and ghosts (Obi-Wan is always showing up post-mortem!)

While most people love this stuff in their movies and their religion (praying is basically asking God to do magic for us, isn’t it?), they often scoff at others who want to take it a step further. Our lives are lived almost exclusively in the physical world. You might know people that have a ghost story or have seen a UFO, and you might think they believe them… but UFOs and ghosts don’t do much to help you shovel snow or fill out the paperwork at your job. So, why do people care so much?

When Tea Krulos talks about why he’s interested in subcultures outside of the mainstream he talks about his purple mohawk and spiked leather jacket in high school. Or he mentions his Goth and Metalhead friends. Music and the fashion associated with its different genres are the first things that we often bond over in modern society. It’s one of the first ways we differentiate ourselves. The more extreme the fashion, the more of an outlier you usually are.

sarah jessica parker mohawk — Even Sarah Jessica Parker “rocks” a mohawk now…

But mass media and the products that are constantly pitched to us isn’t about outliers, it’s about conformity and commonality. It’s meant to find the biggest audience to sell to. Think Coca-Cola, Pop-Country music, or even Disney’s Star Wars (TM). It’s great that these things exist, Pop songs are catchy, Star Wars is awesome, Coca-Cola is delicious. But they’re ubiquitous. You can find them in the most backwoods store of the most backwoods place in the United States.

Tea Krulos finds the people that you won’t hear about in the mainstream. Punk fashion went into mass culture over a decade ago (chances are there’s a Hot Topic in your town) and tattoos and piercings are hardly the taboo they used to be. And while the Ghost Hunters show certainly popularized the genre of investigating the paranormal on reality TV, there is still a little bit of a stigma surrounding local paranormal groups, Bigfoot hunters, and UFO enthusiasts, precisely the people that Tea set out to document in his book.

Because of that stigma, there’s a natural distrust of reporters and authors in the community and that means that most paranormal groups aren’t as inclusive as you’d expect them to be. I always thought that was unusual, wouldn’t you think that a subgroup would be interested in bringing more people in! Not when you could be the object of ridicule or derision. In the past, you might have to worry about a newspaper having an unflattering article or a book maybe making your group look foolish in a chapter, but now with social media, everyone is a publisher and everyone has an opinion and isn’t afraid to broadcast it (just look at your Facebook feed for reinforcement.)

Since Tea wasn’t interested in ridiculing these groups, but rather understanding them (and to some extent, celebrating them), he was welcomed into the circles of groups like the Paranormal investigators of Milwaukee and places like Loren Coleman’s Cryptozoology Museum or the International UFO Arizona (where a meeting with George Noory at a casino led to a successful appearance on Coast to Coast AM!)

While researching the book, Tea had his own “weird experience” while he was out with Bigfoot Hunter, Jim Sherman, in the forests of Central Michigan. It’s late in the middle of the night and he’s in his tent, while his Sasquatch tracking partner was in his truck finishing up the watch for the night. As he’s about to drift off to sleep, Tea hears a terrifying scream outside his tent. He opens the front zipper carefully and looks around and dashes to his Jim’s truck, where he finds Jim texting him about the same scream. As they sit and try to analyze what they heard, they see a strange light in the sky, a white object with a green and red light orbiting it, something neither of them had seen before or could identify. While they seem like they’re not in the same realm, there’s been a strange Bigfoot-UFO connection for a long time where sightings of the beast are often followed by visions of something strange in the sky… that sounds like something we should do an episode on in the future.

So, it was a lot of fun to talk about Monster Hunters and Tea’s new book, which is going to be about doomsday prophecies and people who are prepping for the end of the world (we have a related episode on apocalypses that never happened), he also gave us some exciting news about the 2016 Milwaukee Paranormal Convention.

The 2016 convention will take place October 14th through 16th at the Zelazo Center on the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee campus and will feature cryptozoology founding father Loren Coleman, fellow See You On The Other Side podcast guest Chad Lewis, our co-contributor Allison Jornlin from Milwaukee Ghosts, Wendy and I will be broadcasting from the convention as well as I’ll be hosting a panel called Paranormal Road Trip!

It was fun to have Tea on as we celebrate going into 2016 because we love to surround ourselves with cool people doing interesting paranormal projects just like us. We hope everyone out there has their best year yet and let’s use the time we have to the best all of our abilities!

As Delmore Schwarz wrote in “Calmly We Walk Through This April’s Day”

What will become of you and me
(This is the school in which we learn …)
Besides the photo and the memory?
(… that time is the fire in which we burn.)

Memory in soft focus,
dreams of the past,
a little crutch we can hold on to.
Some things weren’t made to last.

Don’t look back,
it will only make you slower,
Don’t question,
the things you cannot change.
This moment,
the only thing you can hold onto,
don’t spend it in a cage.

You are free,
choose to be.
The Fire in Which We Burn.
You are free,
choose to be.
The Fire in Which We Burn.

A hazy wave of rumination,
days gone by,
An unreliable narration,
A well that ran dry.

Don’t look back,
it will only make you slower,
Don’t question,
the things you cannot change.
This moment,
the only thing you can hold onto,
don’t spend it in a cage.

You are free,
choose to be.
The Fire in Which We Burn.
You are free,
choose to be.
The Fire in Which We Burn.

It’s later than you think,
it’s later than you planned,
It’s over in a blink,
it’s over in a flash.

And the hourglass runs out of sand.

You are free,
choose to be.
The Fire in Which We Burn.
You are free,
choose to be.
The Fire in Which We Burn.

Podcast

72 – The Year In Weird News: 2015’s Most Popular Episodes

December 28, 2015 Mike Huberty

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | More

The last week of the year is finally here! And depending on how your 2015 was, well, that’s going to make the difference whether you’re excited or depressed this week. I’m a little bit of both, we did so many great podcasts on weird news in 2015 and I met a ton of new people in the paranormal field. That was pretty awesome. And consistently Sunspot wrote more songs than any other year, so that was pretty awesome.

But as a band, we took time off from playing a lot of live shows and so we didn’t get to hang out with as many people around the country as we usually like to. I was in awesome shape the first two months of the year and not so much at the end, ha. I had my best and worst marathons this year. I re-dedicated my life to my band, music, and our search for the unknown this year, and that was life affirming! But was always, figuring out the economics of being a full-time creative type is a constant challenge.

Highs and lows. Every year is a little mix of good and a little mix of bad and we’re all hoping that the next year brings more good than bad. Take stock and appreciate the great things that happened while figuring out ways to keep improving. Today, we’re focusing on the highs as we go into 2016. Wendy, Allison from Milwaukee Ghosts, and I discuss the most downloaded episodes of 2015 and what we loved about the weird news that they contained.

10. DOCUMENTING THE PARANORMAL: AN INTERVIEW WITH THE GRAY BROTHERS

This was one of Allison’s ideas because she really loves the movie The Nightmare from these guys. It’s a tale of the legendary Old Hag and how visits from strange creatures when we wake up from sleep is something that happens cross cultures and in certain Southeast Asian cultures, has shown that it might be deadly. I shared my own story of being visited by little beings that I thought were aliens (but was really my twelve-year old imagination… or was it?!)

9. FALSE MEMORIES: ALIEN ABDUCTIONS, PAST LIFE REGRESSION, AND SATANIC RITUAL ABUSE

This is an important one for paranormal research I believe, because when you’re interviewing someone who’s had a strange experience, it’s not just about whether you believed something happened, it’s about whether you believe that someone else believes it. The mind will create its own narrative to match a certain view of events, whether those things actually happened or not. Eyewitness reports were considered “smoking guns” for a long time and now we now that memory can be very very deceptive…

8. DARK SIDE OF PARADISE: HAUNTED HAWAII

Allison got to go to Hawaii and of course it wouldn’t be a vacation for her unless she got to visit some haunted sites. Her adventures with Lopaka from Mysteries of Hawaii were a lot of fun as she provided eyewitness reports right from several mystical and haunted locations. And you know that means we’re going to have to follow up and investigate some more of those haunted and spooky places!

7. SILVER SCREEN SAUCERS: AN INTERVIEW WITH ROBBIE GRAHAM

This was one of my favorite episodes all year, not only because Robbie Graham really knows his stuff when it comes to UFO movies (and I’m a crazy movie buff that always enjoys a conversation with aficionado like myself) but it really had me thinking about disinformation. Is there nothing that our government wouldn’t do to gain some kind of strategic advantage during the Cold War?

Did the US Air Force give Bob Lazar the information about aliens at Area 51 on purpose because they knew he would leak it? It was to their advantage that th American people believed that we had access to alien technology because it meant that the Soviets might believe we had access to otherworldly weapons. One of the reasons cited for the fall of the Soviet Union was their desperate spending to keep up with the United States War Machine (they had a great military but people waiting in line for bread), could our extraterrestrial disinformation have something to do with it?

And if it did, what’s the disinformation now and who’s in on it? Who’s controlling the narrative, from Donald Trump to ISIS…

6. HAVE AN OUT OF BODY EXPERIENCE: WITH LUIS MINERO

We knew that this was going to be a popular one because we get into the nitty gritty of ways that you can meditate your way into having an Out-of-Body Experience. Dr. Minero’s job is to train people how to do it. Allison has had an OBE when she was a teenager and she’s been trying to recreate it ever since. There is some research behind determining whether OBEs are people really leaving their bodies or just a feeling of dissociation from the physical self (I’ve definitely felt that dissociation in meditation but I have yet to actually leave the body.)

In the research, they’ll place something somewhere in the room that you can only see if you’re actually up at the level of the ceiling, the subjects can’t see it form a sitting or laying position. What are the results of that research? We’ll be doing a follow up episode to go more in depth on the science of Out-of-Body Experiences.

5. THE GHOSTS OF HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD: A HAUNTED TRAVELOGUE

Hooray for Hollywood! A little bit of Terrifying Tinseltown and the supernatural stories of its most famous thoroughfare. In a town where stars are launched and thrown away, dreams and wishes get granted and crushed, it’s the stories of the colorful personalities that never wanted the movie to end. Most interesting thing I thought was that Americans were fascinated with the Orient in the first couple of decades of the Twentieth Century, so that’s why there are theatres called “The Egyptian” or the famous Chinese Theater (indeed, Milwaukee has its own Oriental Theatre as well – that’s where Allison and I saw Rocky Horror for the first time.) Asia and the Middle East were considered exotic and that was used in the marketing. What marketing today are we going to look back on in eighty years and wince a little bit? (I sure hope it’s aliens!)

4. AMERICAN MONSTERS: AN INTERVIEW WITH LINDA GODFREY

From a little town in southeastern Wisconsin, Linda Godfrey established herself as quite an expert in the paranormal pantheon of authors and experts. The Beast of Bray Road and the strange red-eyed bipedal canine “werewolf” terrorizing the good people of Elkhorn, Wisconsin has led Linda writing books on cryptids and monsters all over America and the world. A true expert and a delightful person, this is the perfect place to start if you want to learn about what makes a great cryptozoologist!

3. BEYOND THE SMILEY FACE KILLERS: LOOKING FOR THE HIDDEN TRUTH IN LA CROSSE

Drunken young men are falling in the Mississippi River in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Why? The official story is that they just got too wasted and fell in. A “death by misadventure”. Two New York City police detectives believe there’s gang of serial killers roaming the Interstate 90 and 94 corridor and they’re targeting young men across the country.

The Deputy Medical Examiner started looking for a paranormal explanation. The investigation encompassed nineteenth century shipwrecks and ancient Native American legends of dangerous water spirits that call to their victims. The Lakota and Chippewa tribes both have stories of sirens that call to men from the water to lure them to their death. European settlers brought over their legends of “the water man” who is just waiting to pull you under. Something is killing young men in La Crosse, and whether it’s a killer gang, the demon alcohol, or something more sinister and paranormal (like Stephen King’s IT), the mystery is still unexplained.

2. BIGFOOT AND ALIENS AND GHOSTS, OH MY! BEHIND THE SCENES AT MILWAUKEE PARANORMAL CONFERENCE 2015

Hey, it was our first paranormal conference and we loved it! Whether it was interviewing the attendees to hear about their personal ghost stories, running into the speakers who were guests on our podcast (and there were many!), or just soaking in all the weird weird love, it was some of the most fun we had all year. Plus, Allison said that her favorite song of the dozens that we’ve recorded for the podcast this year was from the conference. The track was “The Bigfoot Polka” and we think it pretty much encompasses everything unusual that we love about the Brew City!

At that conference we also discovered that Bigfoot is real and we’ve got the proof right here…

1. SECRETS OF THE VATICAN: POPE FRANCIS AND UFO DISCLOSURE

We heard an Internet rumor in June that the Pope was finally going to reveal the existence of aliens and that we’ve already had first contact. Okay, well, Pope Francis does seem to be the most liberal since Vatican II after the hardline of Benedict. Gays, okay. Divorce, we can deal with it. Aliens… Come again? Needless to say, disclosure never happened.

Look, the Vatican owns to observatories and pays special attention to what’s happening in the night sky. Whether it’s because they’re all aliens (like the South Park episode where all the sexually abusive priests are from another planet with a gigantic spider leader) or its just because they’re looking for the next Star of Bethlehem (or the sign of the apocalypse like they find in Ahnuld’s millennial (End of Days) the Catholic Church is really into space and has their own scientists studying it. Why? Well, they say they’re studying the heavens but maybe they’re keeping they’re eye out for something that we don’t know about. John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness posits both Jesus and the Devil as extraterrestrials, does he and the Pope know something that we don’t?!

Here’s the article about the UFO Disclosure lobbyist that I reference in the podcast as well.

So all in all, it was a most excellent 2015 and we’re excited to bring you a lot more awesome content in the New Year, especially as we follow up on these topics and get you some new interviews and advanced discussions thwt really further the fun and your knowledge. We hope that your good things all outweigh your challenges over the holidays and don’t party too hard, that’s our job.

Goodbye 2015, see you on the other side!

Featured Song: Auld Lang Syne (arranged/performed by Sunspot)

Should old acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind?
Should old acquaintance be forgot,
and old lang syne?