Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. Hello, Welcome back to the show.
Speaker 1: My name is Matt, my name is known. They called
Speaker 1: me Ben. We're joined as always with our superproducer, all
Speaker 1: mission controlled decade. Most importantly, you are you. You are here,
Speaker 1: and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 1: Longtime listeners, you'll recall that we have often we've often
Speaker 1: touched on the subject of curses. Were often touched on
Speaker 1: the subject of people who have interacted with things in
Speaker 1: extraordinary ways they cannot explain. In fact, in an earlier
Speaker 1: listener Males segment, we explored the bizarre story of an
Speaker 1: anonymous tourists who stole an artifact from the ancient disaster
Speaker 1: side of Pompeii. This tourist came back fifteen years later
Speaker 1: and returned the object. It's not that she had some
Speaker 1: sort of sudden pang of conscience. Instead, she believed hardcore
Speaker 1: believed this object was cursed, that it was plaguing her
Speaker 1: with all sorts of terrible luck that simply could not
Speaker 1: be explained by mundane means. And I'm wondering a good
Speaker 1: way for maybe a good way for us to set
Speaker 1: off on our exploration of today's topic is to talk
Speaker 1: about these objects that surround us in our lives. Matt Nold,
Speaker 1: did you all ever have an object in your in
Speaker 1: your family, or in your childhood or even the current
Speaker 1: day that you felt was on some may be hard
Speaker 1: to explain, level unlucky, and there was something weird about it,
Speaker 1: some vibe that gave off as though you had psychometry,
Speaker 1: never been a big fan of like ceramic clowns for example. Uh,
Speaker 1: nothing specific, but uh you a mutual friend of all
Speaker 1: three of our Sarah cotton Off, um, who does like
Speaker 1: podcast ad sales stuff and we used to work with
Speaker 1: years ago. Uh, she is obsessed with haunted objects, so
Speaker 1: we should ask her. But um, we went to that
Speaker 1: store in New York once I believe it's called gosh
Speaker 1: came what it's called it. There was a show called
Speaker 1: Auditorium or Oddities on Science Channel that was like about
Speaker 1: these you know, quirky, this quirky couple that runs this
Speaker 1: oddity shop. And we went in there with Sarah and
Speaker 1: she immediately asked them or any of these objects haunted
Speaker 1: or cursed, and they're like, no, we we don't. We
Speaker 1: don't do that. M it's not haunted in the same
Speaker 1: way that we're gonna be talking about today. But this
Speaker 1: is my grandfather's wedding ring, and I've been wearing it
Speaker 1: for quite a while, and I have to say, I
Speaker 1: believe that it's just my knowledge that I'm wearing his
Speaker 1: ring and makes me think about him a lot. But
Speaker 1: I swear to you he just a his His voice
Speaker 1: appears to not in an actual manifestation, but like I can,
Speaker 1: I can hear myself thinking his thoughts way way more
Speaker 1: now that I've been wearing this ring. Um, this is
Speaker 1: also his stamp. I don't know if you probably can't
Speaker 1: read that this stamp. Okay, it's nice to stamp things
Speaker 1: with it, but yeah, I don't. I don't have anything
Speaker 1: that is unlucky necessarily. I've got a story I can
Speaker 1: tell you about this house in general and the luck
Speaker 1: or the unluck that it has brought. But that's for
Speaker 1: another day. Al Right, Okay, I'm writing it down. You
Speaker 1: guys know, I keep a little had here where I
Speaker 1: write things, and they my language, so we're going to
Speaker 1: follow up on that I've got. I've got a couple
Speaker 1: of slides. I've got a couple of I guess you
Speaker 1: would call them unusual possessions. Uh. And it's funny too
Speaker 1: that we call objects possessions. Don't wait. One that I
Speaker 1: can see off hour now is one that I personally
Speaker 1: hesitate to touch. It's a carving of mandrill from I
Speaker 1: believe West Africa. It's West West African in origin. And
Speaker 1: that is also how it came to me and why
Speaker 1: it stays in my house, even though I don't particularly
Speaker 1: like messing with it. I would say I respect it.
Speaker 1: But that story is a story for a another day
Speaker 1: as well. The point is that we all have things
Speaker 1: like this, things that we imbue with some sort of meaning,
Speaker 1: that we anthropomorphize in a degree. You know, like you
Speaker 1: might have something that you believe or you like to
Speaker 1: think it has a personality, even if you consider yourself
Speaker 1: a really skeptical person. Human beings will like name their cars,
Speaker 1: their ships and other vessels. There's even an old cultural
Speaker 1: belief I believe in Japan that once an object reaches
Speaker 1: a hundred years old, it acquires a kind of spirit
Speaker 1: of its own and these stories of objects inhabited by
Speaker 1: something good or bad. Uh, they occur throughout human history,
Speaker 1: they continue in the modern day ways that may surprise
Speaker 1: some of us. And not all of these objects have
Speaker 1: the same type of allegedly supernatural aspects. In fact, some
Speaker 1: people like the infamous Ed and Loraine Warren, will tell
Speaker 1: you that certain objects are not just bringers of misfortune,
Speaker 1: but their whole to something somehow sentient. So can an
Speaker 1: object be haunted? By the way the weather here in
Speaker 1: Atlanta today is perfect for this, This is stormy night weather.
Speaker 1: Tiny cathul who says an object can definitely be haunted, well, well, no,
Speaker 1: no matter what Fulu or any other ancient one says,
Speaker 1: there is no scientific proof at this moment that any
Speaker 1: object has ever been han did here are the facts? Yeah?
Speaker 1: First things first, at least at the time of this recording,
Speaker 1: there's no proof that's universally accepted that anything in history,
Speaker 1: including objects, has been haunted. And and by proof we
Speaker 1: mean there's no there's nothing in the world that we
Speaker 1: know of now that everyone can point to and agree. Yes,
Speaker 1: you know, there is a ghost in this toaster, and
Speaker 1: it speaks to us through messages burned into the bread
Speaker 1: that just hasn't happened yet, or something like that. And
Speaker 1: that's because for something to be haunted, there would have
Speaker 1: to be some kind of consciousness attached, right, some sort
Speaker 1: of sentience, And we don't know very much about our
Speaker 1: own conscious states. We don't even know what happens to
Speaker 1: the thing we call consciousness when our physical hardware breaks down,
Speaker 1: that's right, I mean, and you know it's obviously it's
Speaker 1: research is ongoing, and it's the kind of thing that
Speaker 1: can go deep in many directions, whether it's science or
Speaker 1: the study of the actual hardware you speak of ben
Speaker 1: the brain itself, or more into metaphysical or even spiritual
Speaker 1: realms as to you know, is the brain just a brain?
Speaker 1: Is is it imbued with something more like that's that's
Speaker 1: part of some greater divine connectivity with the universe, or
Speaker 1: some sort of spiritual deity like a soul um. So
Speaker 1: there are billions of people across the world who might
Speaker 1: believe that they in particular or a group so that
Speaker 1: they're associated with no exactly what happens when you die,
Speaker 1: when the brain dies, whether it's instant nothingness, you know,
Speaker 1: that's that's what my that's what I typically picture and
Speaker 1: it's kind of scary. UM or reincarnation seems a lot
Speaker 1: more fun. Or a particular type of eternity or afterlife
Speaker 1: that might look a certain way, or feel a certain way,
Speaker 1: or be based around a certain set of rules. Are
Speaker 1: speaking of rules. If you don't follow them, you might
Speaker 1: go to the bad place, very bad place, depending on
Speaker 1: you know, what you've done in your life on this
Speaker 1: earth in the way you've chosen to use that equipment
Speaker 1: that Ben was talking about. Um. The problem is that
Speaker 1: among all of these folks, the scientists, the philosophers, the
Speaker 1: spiritual leaders, you know, they all might have a strong case,
Speaker 1: or at least they might think they do, as to
Speaker 1: what the real truth is behind sentience and and understanding
Speaker 1: and being. But as we all know, uh, no one
Speaker 1: really knows. No one really has that definitive proof that
Speaker 1: will shut all of those other perspectives down. There is
Speaker 1: no right or true answer that we know of. Therefore,
Speaker 1: a lot of this exists in the realm of belief,
Speaker 1: as does the idea of haunting. That is correct, and
Speaker 1: one of the primary reasons here is something that we
Speaker 1: covered a little while back. I can't remember the exact episode,
Speaker 1: but we discussed the current impossibility of measuring whatever the
Speaker 1: actual thing is, the energy that would transfer between a consciousness,
Speaker 1: a human or any animal or whatever into an object.
Speaker 1: Whatever that stuff is, whether it's physical, metaphysical, or whatever,
Speaker 1: we have no way of measuring that thing that's stuff yet,
Speaker 1: if there is any stuff at all. Right, right, we
Speaker 1: don't know what we're searching for. Necessarily, we don't know
Speaker 1: how to define it. And and to be absolutely fair,
Speaker 1: you know, when we're saying that no one has a
Speaker 1: right or true answer, what we what one way to
Speaker 1: look at it is the problem is that absolutely no
Speaker 1: one has ever been able to convince everyone else that
Speaker 1: their answer is correct. So there may be there may
Speaker 1: well be an answer about the afterlife. Uh, and it
Speaker 1: may be very specific and one of those many religions
Speaker 1: or many theories that arose since the dawn of a
Speaker 1: corded history, maybe in fact correct. It's just like, you know,
Speaker 1: it's almost eight billion people trying to order a pizza,
Speaker 1: and then you know, we can't even agree whether it
Speaker 1: should be a pizza. There's somebody, there's like a whole
Speaker 1: you know, group of a billion other people who say, guys,
Speaker 1: we should we should have salad. This is not a
Speaker 1: cheap day. That's that's kind of where we're at, and
Speaker 1: that's where we have been at for a long time.
Speaker 1: But we can't we don't know what to measure. Like
Speaker 1: if you lose your car keys, great because that means
Speaker 1: you know what you're looking for. We've lost we have.
Speaker 1: We are looking for something that we cannot really define.
Speaker 1: And yes, I think there is I think that story
Speaker 1: about the twenty one Grahams as the weight of the
Speaker 1: soul is amazing. But there are a lot of problems
Speaker 1: if you look into it anyway. So that's one side
Speaker 1: of it. There's another side here. There's a conflicting fact.
Speaker 1: It is a fact, in arguably that for thousands and
Speaker 1: thousands of years, people around the world, independent of one another,
Speaker 1: have decided to revere, to fear, to avoid, or in
Speaker 1: some cases, gather toward objects and places they believe hold
Speaker 1: extraordinary power. A god under a mountain, a ghost haunting
Speaker 1: the site of an ancient grave, an entity you know,
Speaker 1: maybe anchored to a sword or a staff or a spear,
Speaker 1: or a demon inhabiting a doll. So we're all of
Speaker 1: these people, these literally millions of millions of people across
Speaker 1: the span of human history, just collectively making it up.
Speaker 1: That seems really unlikely. That seems incredibly unlikely. And so
Speaker 1: because of that, it seems like we have two inarguable
Speaker 1: facts that appear to be in opposition, no scientifically accepted
Speaker 1: proof that ghosts exist, and countless examples again of millions
Speaker 1: and millions of people believing wholehearted that they do. So
Speaker 1: in today's episode, we're diving into the space between these
Speaker 1: two conflicting facts. And that's what I was gonna skip it,
Speaker 1: but you got me, You got me. It's just such
Speaker 1: a convenient phrase. We're diving into this space between these
Speaker 1: two conflicting facts, and let's see how we can respond
Speaker 1: to this question, can an object be haunted? We'll get
Speaker 1: into it after a word from our sponsor. Here's where
Speaker 1: it gets crazy. Oddly enough, the best place to begin
Speaker 1: here is with dolls. Did you guys like knowl you
Speaker 1: said you've got to You've got a particular weakness for
Speaker 1: creepy ceramic clown figurines. Those are kind of doll like.
Speaker 1: I was more, you know, dolls for for young boys,
Speaker 1: which we call action figures. I was very into human
Speaker 1: and ninja turtles, and you know, g I Joe and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. Um. I even had a weird like
Speaker 1: crossover interest in my little pony growing up. I remember
Speaker 1: that very distinctly. Uh dolls, Yeah, I mean they're really
Speaker 1: just dolls, are just posable figurines of some sort. I
Speaker 1: guess the idea of dolls tends to be associated with uh,
Speaker 1: young girls, but that also feels a little you know,
Speaker 1: in this day and age overly gender. I mean, dolls
Speaker 1: are obviously for anyone, but um, they certainly can be creepy,
Speaker 1: those porcelain ones with the very very white uh and
Speaker 1: and expressionless faces, um, and seemingly real hair. You know,
Speaker 1: gender is a construct. Dolls are for any kind of
Speaker 1: creep who wants one. Good good point people you think,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, we think of people's grandmothers, though, having rooms
Speaker 1: just overflowing with these things and just looking down upon
Speaker 1: you from high shelves. Thankfully, my grandmother was not one
Speaker 1: of those people. But but bless you to anyone who
Speaker 1: has one of those and had to grow up around
Speaker 1: that kind of horror. I'm just gonna posit something here.
Speaker 1: My son is five. We've talked about him a couple
Speaker 1: of times. He loves stuffed animals, So not quite dolls,
Speaker 1: but similar because a lot of dollmakers, you know, especially
Speaker 1: when we're gonna talk about in a little bit, we're
Speaker 1: originally making a stuffed animal or stuffed animals as a product,
Speaker 1: and then dolls came later. Generally not always that, that's
Speaker 1: not always the case, but stuffed animals. You guys, I
Speaker 1: think you've seen it before, maybe just the everybody on
Speaker 1: this call, But my son was gifted a Mickey Mouse
Speaker 1: doll that is like human sized. It's bigger than my son. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: is that one of those gifts as a parent you're
Speaker 1: kind of like, thanks. Well, I mean, he loved it
Speaker 1: at the time when he first got it. He still
Speaker 1: loves it now, calls him Big Mickey. At night when
Speaker 1: I'm putting my son to sleep and that thing is
Speaker 1: in the room, I am telling you, no matter what
Speaker 1: my personal beliefs, just sitting in the corner in the
Speaker 1: shadows and seeing its dimensions there, there is something utterly
Speaker 1: creepy about it, and I don't know how it It
Speaker 1: doesn't give my son nightmares, he says. He feels safer
Speaker 1: knowing that it's there, you know, like I've got um
Speaker 1: I probably had a different background from you guys, because
Speaker 1: in my earlier years, my very early years, I did
Speaker 1: have some sketchy family characters with my loved dearly. One
Speaker 1: of them, I may have mentioned to you guys off
Speaker 1: air before, was my great aunt nine spelled like the
Speaker 1: spelled like the number. And she was regarded as a
Speaker 1: practitioner of things that might be considered you know, hedge
Speaker 1: magic or folk magic. And she had quite a collection
Speaker 1: of all sorts of interesting things and artifacts. And this
Speaker 1: was the first person I met who had dolls that
Speaker 1: she considered dangerous dolls that were made for a purpose
Speaker 1: of specific types. And this is something that is going
Speaker 1: to be familiar with a lot of the folklorist in
Speaker 1: the crowd today. It's also an ancient practice, and it's
Speaker 1: practice I was not aware of at the time. But
Speaker 1: we'll we'll get to it. So I guess in a way,
Speaker 1: I had early experiences with dangerous dolls, and my Aunt
Speaker 1: nine has passed on to whatever is on the other
Speaker 1: side of this crazy improv exercise we call life. But
Speaker 1: I also I think that colored my perception of dolls
Speaker 1: in general, you know, And I would see other people
Speaker 1: with these things. I would inevitably think like, oh, what
Speaker 1: are they what are they doing with this one? Is
Speaker 1: this like a is this like a barbie? Or is
Speaker 1: this like a don't touch it, someone will get sick
Speaker 1: kind of thing. Uh, we all have this place. And
Speaker 1: I love the point about dolls versus action figures. They're
Speaker 1: really the same thing. They're figurines, right, of different genres
Speaker 1: or types. But yeah, we're talking about the things that
Speaker 1: are commonly regarded as toys or collectors items here in
Speaker 1: the modern age. For some of us, those are very
Speaker 1: nostalgic relics of childhood. For others, they're irredeemably creepy. It's
Speaker 1: no surprise that when people talk about haunted objects nowadays,
Speaker 1: they tend to talk most often about dolls and and
Speaker 1: there are a couple of pop culture reasons that are
Speaker 1: very obvious that will get to. But one of the
Speaker 1: most infamous haunted objects is a doll called an About.
Speaker 1: And this comes to us from the warrants that we
Speaker 1: mentioned at the top that we also did an episode
Speaker 1: on I Forgot about that. Is it a two part No,
Speaker 1: it's just a one partner. It's great, really great info
Speaker 1: in the Warrens. So let's talk about him. Um, they
Speaker 1: are paranormal investigators. They are I believe they style themselves
Speaker 1: as demonologists. Is that true, Ben, I think demonologists Ed
Speaker 1: Warren the or Ed Warren passed away, I believe. But um,
Speaker 1: he was a demonologist and Annabelle uh first, like was
Speaker 1: made known to them way back in nineteen seventy and
Speaker 1: you probably know it because of the film series. But
Speaker 1: this was a real doll that these paranoral investigators and
Speaker 1: demonologists like encountered. There was a student nurse who contacted
Speaker 1: them because they were already kind of known for what
Speaker 1: they did. Um. She claimed that the doll was just
Speaker 1: being weird, like, hey, I got this doll in. It's weird.
Speaker 1: It's not just weird looking, it's being weird, it's doing stuff.
Speaker 1: She said that, uh, a psychic told her it was
Speaker 1: inhabited by the spirit of a dead person, a girl
Speaker 1: named Annabelle, And immediately the Warrens are like, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: we need to see this doll. Let's check it out.
Speaker 1: And the legend was born, right Yeah. According to the
Speaker 1: accounts from the Warrens, this nursing student had a roommate
Speaker 1: and she and her roommate when they had learned from
Speaker 1: a psychic that this doll was inhabited by a spirit
Speaker 1: of a of a dead human girl. They tried to
Speaker 1: make peace of sorts to arrive at an armistice, you know,
Speaker 1: and respected space pebesiance to it, etcetera. But they had
Speaker 1: no luck. The events continued, and they accelerated, and they
Speaker 1: became worrisome and frightening and potentially to pay on how
Speaker 1: you hear it described dangerous, So in desperation, the student
Speaker 1: reaches out to the Warren's. Just like you said, Matt,
Speaker 1: Long story short. You can hear more about it in
Speaker 1: our previous episode. The doll Annabelle is currently contained in
Speaker 1: a glass display box at the Warren's Occult Museum there
Speaker 1: in Monroe, Connecticut. You can go look at it. It
Speaker 1: doesn't look like the Annabelle of the movies. I would
Speaker 1: argue it looks a little more creepy. But as you
Speaker 1: can imagine, skeptics have some issues with the story here. Uh,
Speaker 1: they're not They're not quite accusing. Not everybody is saying,
Speaker 1: you know, these folks are con artists or anything like that.
Speaker 1: There's a guy named Joseph Laycock wrote a fantastic article
Speaker 1: about this at the time, it was a Texas State
Speaker 1: University assistant professor of religious studies. He thinks the story
Speaker 1: may have been influenced by the cultural ecology of the time,
Speaker 1: by the zeitgeist, because you said, right, that's when when
Speaker 1: the story of Annabelle again begins. According to the Warren's
Speaker 1: something else happened a few years prior. There were other
Speaker 1: scary doll tropes, like a great Twilight Zone episode called
Speaker 1: Living Doll, which came out just about five years before
Speaker 1: that Warren story. And this doesn't prove anything, but the
Speaker 1: character of the mother in that episode is also named Annabelle.
Speaker 1: So if you're really skeptical or you're kind of cynical,
Speaker 1: do you think ed Warren found this doll and kind
Speaker 1: of thought about the Twilight Zone and then said we'll
Speaker 1: call it Anabelle. You know, maybe or even the if
Speaker 1: it's true that this nursing student really was experiencing something weird,
Speaker 1: maybe it was because of that Twilight Zone, the episode
Speaker 1: that she caught. I mean, you know, who knows there
Speaker 1: it's all in a conjecture, right, Hey, can we just
Speaker 1: take a moment and really appreciate Nohl's hat right now,
Speaker 1: just before we do anything else. Well, can we appreciate
Speaker 1: the fact that this hat was gifted to me by
Speaker 1: the magnanimous Ben Bolan. Uh. It says Illuminati on the bottom,
Speaker 1: and what is this on the top. Don't trust anyone? Yes,
Speaker 1: not haunted by the way, definitely not haunted. I do
Speaker 1: trust some people. Definitely trust you too, mostly, But but
Speaker 1: I I do like the hat and I wanted to
Speaker 1: rocket today. So thank you Ben. Sorry for Well, we're talking.
Speaker 1: We're talking about objects, right, That's that's another object. There's
Speaker 1: the there's the nihilistic argument that we're all just objects,
Speaker 1: you know, floating in space. And and really, if you
Speaker 1: think about it, I was going to save this for later,
Speaker 1: but if you think about it, you are listening from
Speaker 1: a haunted object right now. You are as a consciousness,
Speaker 1: as a mind, You are inhabiting a body. You are
Speaker 1: haunting it, you are possessing it. Your body is a
Speaker 1: haunted house just happens to be growing all the time.
Speaker 1: So so so I love that John Mayer song Your
Speaker 1: body is a haunted house. Yeah, I have to go
Speaker 1: and go. It's better than the temple one. Uh. This
Speaker 1: this brings us to the idea of haunted dolls in
Speaker 1: the modern day, so excellent horror franchise, The Conjuring. They
Speaker 1: get ahold of this story. It's been in, it's been
Speaker 1: around before you know. They're like the spooky docuseries unsolved
Speaker 1: mysteries type investigations, but the Conjuring takes it to the
Speaker 1: world of fiction, or people might argue even further into
Speaker 1: the world of fiction. And Annabel goes from being an
Speaker 1: oddity and a small Connecticut museum to a global phenomenon,
Speaker 1: the subject of three different films, and it cements its
Speaker 1: status as the world's most famous haunted doll, if not
Speaker 1: most famous haunted object. But it's not alone. There is
Speaker 1: another ext There actually multiple examples of allegedly haunted dolls. Specifically,
Speaker 1: and uh, we found one that you might not have
Speaker 1: heard of unless this was already very much your bag
Speaker 1: of of badgers, your bag of stuffed badgers, your stuffed
Speaker 1: bag of stuffed badgers, anyway you would. You might be
Speaker 1: surprised to hear of another doll that came to prominence
Speaker 1: around the same time, whose name is simply Robert full name,
Speaker 1: Robert the Doll. You just want to go ahead and
Speaker 1: apologize to Robert before we even start talking about him. Um,
Speaker 1: just Robert, We're sorry. We were just talking about you
Speaker 1: for the purposes of this show. Yeah, you've done a
Speaker 1: lot for the podcast, Robert. We just feel like this
Speaker 1: is a story we need to tell. In full disclosure,
Speaker 1: Robert may or may not be on the board of
Speaker 1: Illumination Global Unlimited, so we want you to know that
Speaker 1: we're doing our best to be fully transparent and did
Speaker 1: not exhibit a conflict of interest. Um, Robert's a real
Speaker 1: physical doll. And you guys know how I hate uh
Speaker 1: all right, I just I don't respect clowning people for
Speaker 1: physical features or anything like that. I guess we can
Speaker 1: get away with it, maybe with Robert. Can we see
Speaker 1: can we say it? Can we just say the quiet
Speaker 1: part out loud? He is creepy looking? Yeah, he really
Speaker 1: is creepy looking. Um. You can go online to a
Speaker 1: lot of places and see actual images of Robert first
Speaker 1: and foremost, Robert the doll dot Org. Just have to
Speaker 1: throw that out there. I love love that you are
Speaker 1: l exists. That is what he looks. He's like a
Speaker 1: creepy sailor. He looks like kind of like a doll.
Speaker 1: Where it's like, show me where the bad man touched
Speaker 1: you kind of doll. Um also like like like maybe
Speaker 1: like a dummy he would use to do like CPR
Speaker 1: practice or something like that. But very uncanny, these weird
Speaker 1: segments of fabric that are joined together to make the
Speaker 1: different sections of his face. That seems very Hannibal lecter e.
Speaker 1: That's see, it's I don't know, that's I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: no offense. Robert h no offense. So let's talk about Robert.
Speaker 1: Robert was let's say, the possession of it's a doll,
Speaker 1: it's a thing. So it was owned by Robert Eugene
Speaker 1: Auto as a person. I propose we call Robert Eugene
Speaker 1: Auto Gene for the purpose of this story, just to
Speaker 1: keep it, keep it clear fully, Gene was Roberts caretaker.
Speaker 1: Let's say. Um, and you can read a lot of
Speaker 1: different stories, origin stories, some that claim to be original,
Speaker 1: some that seem to be sort of fan fiction. Um,
Speaker 1: you can read it just a ton of different versions
Speaker 1: of Robert's story. But let's let's just talk about the
Speaker 1: official one that you can find there on that website
Speaker 1: you just mentioned. Nor. Yes, it was created as a
Speaker 1: one of a kind creepy doll by the Steve Company.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, as Steve might be stife, I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: Steve Company of Germany near the turn of the century.
Speaker 1: Um it, I don't want to hear ta rary. He
Speaker 1: is forty inches tall and stuffed with wood wool, which
Speaker 1: is known as excelsior, which I am tickled by because
Speaker 1: excelsior is also a term that journalists would maybe used
Speaker 1: to define something of excellent quality, maximum luxury, and it
Speaker 1: was a Marvel Comics legend, stan Lee's personal life motto
Speaker 1: excelsior with the exclamation market them. But it's also wood
Speaker 1: wool shavings. It's basically it's like wood sawdusty type shavings
Speaker 1: that you can use to stuff something with. So probably
Speaker 1: already has a bit of a you know, shed like
Speaker 1: smell to it. And yes, he is in fact dressed
Speaker 1: like a sailor in a little stay other suit. And
Speaker 1: at one point he was painted kind of like a
Speaker 1: court jester. Um. But but all that stuff is worn
Speaker 1: off over the years. Um. And he is quite large, right, Yes,
Speaker 1: yeah he's Ah, he's a big mickey all his own.
Speaker 1: So the the official story is that, uh, the Auto
Speaker 1: family was a pretty prominent family in Key West Florida,
Speaker 1: and Otto's grandfather was on a trip to Germany in
Speaker 1: nineteen o four. This is where he is believed to
Speaker 1: have picked up Robert as a gift for his grandson.
Speaker 1: The story is as as Matt said, a little murky
Speaker 1: at this point, because the legends get a little bit juicier.
Speaker 1: You'll see one that claims a young woman of quote
Speaker 1: Bahamian descent gave Otto this doll, either as a gift
Speaker 1: or as a curse, kind of a poison apple for
Speaker 1: some unspecified slight. And whatever the case, and whether the
Speaker 1: legend or the official story, the truth of the matter
Speaker 1: is that Auto becomes incredibly enamored of and attached to
Speaker 1: this doll. He names it after himself, Robert the Doll.
Speaker 1: Something interesting happens psychologically. He builds, or he gets his
Speaker 1: folks to build a boy's home, a boy's room in
Speaker 1: the attic and the family attic just for Robert, you know,
Speaker 1: complete with toys, chairs, a bed, the whole nine. And
Speaker 1: then he started blaming anything wrong that he did on
Speaker 1: this doll. So someone would say, hey, did you track
Speaker 1: in mud on the floor or sand or something like that,
Speaker 1: and he would say that wasn't me. That was Robert,
Speaker 1: and they would say, oh, okay, Jean, but this is
Speaker 1: starting to get a little weird, you know, as this
Speaker 1: your imaginary friend, et cetera. They probably didn't think about
Speaker 1: it at the time, but I know a lot of
Speaker 1: our fellow conspiracy realist in the audience are wondering, was
Speaker 1: this boy making a tulpa a thought form interesting yeah,
Speaker 1: or what was he dealing with something, you know, mental
Speaker 1: health like in his life that some kind of disassociation
Speaker 1: or some kind of you know, application of his own
Speaker 1: actions onto this thing as a Anyway, I'm not a
Speaker 1: psychologist who knows what was going on inside Jean and
Speaker 1: or Robert, but it's a it's definitely strange because it
Speaker 1: wasn't just a childhood thing, right, This relationship between Robert
Speaker 1: the Man and Robert the Doll continued. Yes, Jean became
Speaker 1: a pretty well known regional artist who is widely considered
Speaker 1: an eccentric. The partnership between Robert the Guy and Robert
Speaker 1: the Doll continued well into adulthood. Um, that's an interesting
Speaker 1: point about disassociation too. We would have to ask where
Speaker 1: it came from. Could there have been some sort of
Speaker 1: traumatic situation occurring if so, that's lost to history. Eventually,
Speaker 1: Robert the Man, Robert Eginato, passes away. His wife, who
Speaker 1: survives him, has always hated this thing, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. She's she's of the mind that you know,
Speaker 1: call her conservative, but she's thinking a marriage is between
Speaker 1: two people, not two people in a doll. Anyhow, as
Speaker 1: soon as he passes away, she orders that this doll
Speaker 1: be locked up in a cedar chest and hidden in
Speaker 1: the attic, never touched again. She passes away, and years
Speaker 1: and years after her death, this doll Robert is rediscovered.
Speaker 1: And now if you wish, you can visit Robert at
Speaker 1: the East Martello Museum. Oh, we should mention it wasn't
Speaker 1: just a situation of Gene. Robert the Man be weird
Speaker 1: it around the doll. Other people said the doll would
Speaker 1: do weird stuff, like it would move, it would exhibit
Speaker 1: facial expressions. Maybe it would change. It would change, Uh,
Speaker 1: it would People would hear voices around it, things like that.
Speaker 1: And now if you wish you can visit Robert. He
Speaker 1: still has his stuffed teddy bear too, because he had
Speaker 1: his own toys. Remember, Oh, dude, I forgot about that.
Speaker 1: That was that was the whole thing. If you if
Speaker 1: you check out Robert at the museum right now, he's
Speaker 1: holding a doll himself, So it is uh, I don't know, man,
Speaker 1: I wonder if that Teddy Bear then becomes the next
Speaker 1: thing somehow infected or it's a host. But this it's
Speaker 1: strange because if you look at the history of this
Speaker 1: of this guy, it came into the public eye kind
Speaker 1: of around the same time as Annabelle or its discovery,
Speaker 1: which means it was also a few years after that's
Speaker 1: Twilight Zone episode. Just Teddy Rucks been figure into all this,
Speaker 1: that's my big question. My Teddy Rucks been asked me
Speaker 1: not to include them in this episode. Fair enough, my
Speaker 1: Teddy Rocks, but also has a bit of a hold
Speaker 1: over me, so we'll just change the subject. Still my
Speaker 1: absolute favorite thing as a kid. When did you put
Speaker 1: the other tapes in like that many tapes? Yeah? But
Speaker 1: did you put in like your Mega death tapes? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: well no, it was um guy with Michael W. Smith.
Speaker 1: Well that's not evil at all. Takes on a whole
Speaker 1: different feel when you put in like some satan music.
Speaker 1: Did you hear that? Holy cal al right? When I
Speaker 1: said satan music, there's this huge thunderclap. It's been great.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you guys can hear it on
Speaker 1: my end, but it's still going. It's been going. That
Speaker 1: was the big one, the first big one I've heard
Speaker 1: in this recording, and you just right after you said that.
Speaker 1: So we know that when people go to visit Robert
Speaker 1: at this museum, they some some people will still report
Speaker 1: that they've experienced something they can explain, and a lot
Speaker 1: of people right to the doll after visiting him, isn't
Speaker 1: that correct? That's right. Apology letters are often written to
Speaker 1: Robert for visiting him without his permission. If you go
Speaker 1: to many YouTube videos about Robert the Doll, you will
Speaker 1: see in the comments section, post after after post after
Speaker 1: post of people saying, hey, sorry, Robert, just we want
Speaker 1: to learn about your story. Didn't mean to disturb you
Speaker 1: or you know, sorry for watching or learning about you
Speaker 1: without your permissions. One joking about that earlier, I for one,
Speaker 1: would like to extend a heartfelt apology to Robert for
Speaker 1: all the terrible things I said earlier in the podcast.
Speaker 1: So please for my humblest apologies, Robert, and please please
Speaker 1: forgive me. Forgive me, Robert. I hope you're doing well.
Speaker 1: I feel no need to apologize to you. Um I
Speaker 1: do wish you the best, but I will call that
Speaker 1: you seem to be treated better than a lot of
Speaker 1: human beings these days. Throwing shade at Robert. I'm so
Speaker 1: glad that we have an image like looking behind you, Ben,
Speaker 1: so when Robert just kind of creeps up behind your shoulder,
Speaker 1: we'll be able to give you just a split second warning.
Speaker 1: That's not a ding That's not a ding on Robert.
Speaker 1: That's a ding on the human species treat each other better,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Who else should you be
Speaker 1: apologizing to folks anyway? That's anyway anyway. Those are the circumstances.
Speaker 1: We just thought that's an interesting story because it shows
Speaker 1: that there's not just one example of this. In fact,
Speaker 1: there are multiple other examples. There's Letter the Doll in Australia,
Speaker 1: there's Okiku in Japan. The list goes on and on.
Speaker 1: So we have these caces of things that pre date Annabel,
Speaker 1: the most famous haunted doll, by a bit. But the
Speaker 1: truth of the matter is that the story goes much
Speaker 1: much deeper. You see, haunted dolls, or some version of them,
Speaker 1: date back into antiquity. What are we talking about. We'll
Speaker 1: tell you afterward from our sponsors. We're back and we're
Speaker 1: going back in time. We're going far far earlier than
Speaker 1: the turn of the twentie century. We're going far far
Speaker 1: past the creation of the US. We're looking at early civilization,
Speaker 1: the earliest predecessors of things like Annabelle and Robert. We're effigies.
Speaker 1: There was something called poppets p O p p e
Speaker 1: t s and folklore. These are dolls that are made
Speaker 1: to represent a specific person for a specific reason. Uh,
Speaker 1: and they were created by all sorts of early civilizations. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it wasn't there a thing about poppets in the Crucible
Speaker 1: about that being sort of a witchy item, a puppet,
Speaker 1: And if I'm not mistaken, it's something that you hear
Speaker 1: kind of stylized, which is say, oh, my poppets, my
Speaker 1: little poppet, referring to children they're about to eat or something.
Speaker 1: But yeah, no, I'm pretty sure that was definitely a
Speaker 1: cursed object or it was in our our item in
Speaker 1: the Crucible that maybe was tied back to the bewitching
Speaker 1: of of many of these children in them in the village. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're correct. There's a cousin to the poppet that we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about. That's basically the thing that you
Speaker 1: probably have in your mind even while we're talking about them,
Speaker 1: if you are not remembering the crucible stuff. But but
Speaker 1: these were made all over the place. We're talking rome
Speaker 1: Um in Africa, West Africa and Egypt. These these puppets
Speaker 1: were used or these specific types of effigies um and
Speaker 1: a lot of times it wasn't necessarily for a bad thing.
Speaker 1: That's what's kind of cool about these. Sometimes it was
Speaker 1: almost like us, like a sin eater, spirit eater kind
Speaker 1: of thing, where the poppet could help somebody, like you
Speaker 1: could remove a curse from somebody by using one of
Speaker 1: these things. You could heal somebody perhaps by using one
Speaker 1: of these things. And if it was made of, you know,
Speaker 1: a specific human, specific person. But the other thing is,
Speaker 1: and this is where the kind of cousin to it
Speaker 1: comes in. You could perhaps make one of a person
Speaker 1: and then curse the doll, and then it would imbue
Speaker 1: that curse into the actual person that it represented, right,
Speaker 1: break the legs, put nails into the eyes, things things
Speaker 1: of that nature. That's correct. Versions of this practice continue
Speaker 1: in the modern day, it's not you know, as widespread
Speaker 1: and the right you hear that or is it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is the perfect weather to record this. So versions
Speaker 1: of it do continue, they're probably just not as widespread. Uh,
Speaker 1: we do at this point we want to make an
Speaker 1: important statement about so called voodoo dolls, and that is
Speaker 1: the cousin that I was referring to. Got it, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: You can find them in novelty stores. There's even a
Speaker 1: couple of like instructible or wicki how articles about how
Speaker 1: to make your own legit ones. Uh. The term voodoo
Speaker 1: doll usually describes several different kinds of effigy creation and
Speaker 1: these different cultures across the world. But to be absolutely clear,
Speaker 1: these kinds of things don't really have a prominent place
Speaker 1: in Haitian voodoo or Louisiana voodoo, which are two distinct
Speaker 1: yet related actual religions. So the a lot of the
Speaker 1: conflation of um, these sorts of effigies with the practices
Speaker 1: of that we would term loosely voodoo, uh, come about
Speaker 1: from racism in the past. This this is more this
Speaker 1: was probably more common like the people practicing that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff in the crucible or being accused of doing so.
Speaker 1: They're being accused of having a lineage dating back to
Speaker 1: European uh, pre Christian or pagan practices. It's it's just
Speaker 1: it's a very important distinction. Dolls are not the only
Speaker 1: thing that has been alleged to be haunted. They steal
Speaker 1: the spotlight today, but let's remember fiction is full of
Speaker 1: things like haunted cars, a love of Stephen King's, haunted boxes,
Speaker 1: haunted houses, haunted shoes, etcetera. It turns out there is
Speaker 1: an entire cottage industry of haunted objects out there today.
Speaker 1: And thanks to the great work by a New York
Speaker 1: Times journalist, Alicia De Santis, uh, you can take a
Speaker 1: closer look at this subculture that is selling haunted items
Speaker 1: on eBay, and they want to give you an opportunity
Speaker 1: to buy one. Uh spoiler. Most of them are dolls,
Speaker 1: but there's other stuff too there. I'll give you an
Speaker 1: example right here. I am looking at an active item
Speaker 1: for sale right now. It is titled Haunted Active Dolls
Speaker 1: Paranormal Spirit of Vanessa, and it is a It looks
Speaker 1: like an American girl doll, maybe a little maybe even
Speaker 1: a little better made. I don't know the craftsmanship on
Speaker 1: American Girl Dolls is very high. But this looks pretty incredible.
Speaker 1: The blue eyes are haunting. Here we go. Uh, I
Speaker 1: found one that I was I was reading earlier. Just
Speaker 1: I just felt the vibe of this gothic cursed item
Speaker 1: devil Satan, legia board, baffroom, that paranormal psychic tarot. That
Speaker 1: is a winning combination there, my friend on itemte watchers
Speaker 1: right now. Yeah, it's all one night. It's only fifty
Speaker 1: five bucks o bio or best offer. So for that
Speaker 1: in fourteen dollars shipping, you could get all those keywords
Speaker 1: together today. That's like a cursed tur ducan is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's say it cursed your ducket. Uh, dude, I just
Speaker 1: you guys, I'm looking at I don't know what this is.
Speaker 1: It's an authentic bo that's a that's a gremlin or
Speaker 1: goblin from the Jewish faith. I'm not mistaken. You are correct,
Speaker 1: a malevolent spirit that can enter and possess the body
Speaker 1: of a living person unless they're exercise. And uh, there's
Speaker 1: an idea that has something in common with the myths
Speaker 1: about jen that they could be restrained in a specific
Speaker 1: type of container under the correct type of ritual. Well,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of these for sale on eBay.
Speaker 1: Can you can you imagine like what it must be
Speaker 1: like on like the dark web, that's where the real
Speaker 1: stuff is. Yeah, so you can you can go and
Speaker 1: see this stuff yourself right now. And if you peruse
Speaker 1: e Bay like Noel, Matt and I are doing, you'll
Speaker 1: find everything from haunted jewelry too, haunted ups boxes for
Speaker 1: some reason, feathers, pieces of frankly ordinary looking wood. But
Speaker 1: the sentis has uh has something to note about this.
Speaker 1: I like the way she put it. She said that
Speaker 1: they might be said not to be haunted so much
Speaker 1: as enchanted for specific reasons for luck, for fortune. Uh
Speaker 1: that you have to you have to have a positive environment,
Speaker 1: you have to have a good attitude when you're handling
Speaker 1: this stuff, and that not all good luck applies the same.
Speaker 1: So there are notes in these things. Are these biddings
Speaker 1: where they'll say things like this chip is for money
Speaker 1: luck only, not general good fortune or finding love, which
Speaker 1: are different spells. And one thing that I one thing
Speaker 1: I enjoyed was the disclaimers, because you know, when you
Speaker 1: buy a lot of stuff online, you will see the
Speaker 1: fine print and the notices, Like someone will say Okay, hey,
Speaker 1: this is PS five or whatever, but it ships without
Speaker 1: the box. Or I've got this, um, I've got this
Speaker 1: g I Joe, but it doesn't have the little backpack.
Speaker 1: They are there are things like this on the paranormal listings,
Speaker 1: and they say stuff like, quote as required per Ebase
Speaker 1: policy on the sale of paranormal items. This is for
Speaker 1: the sale of the tangible item only, no promise of
Speaker 1: a spirit attached. Sorry, sorry, it's yeah, this is just
Speaker 1: the box to be cleared. Yeah. The the complaints can
Speaker 1: give you a chuckle to because there are people who
Speaker 1: are you know, seem to be genuinely concerned that shipping
Speaker 1: this item may disassociate it from the spirit or they
Speaker 1: feel like they ordered something believing it to be paranormal
Speaker 1: or inhabited by something and they're just not catching any
Speaker 1: any Jeff Goldblue Mask vibes off of it, so they
Speaker 1: think that it's um. Now, the typical there is a
Speaker 1: typical response to from the sellers. They say, it takes time.
Speaker 1: You have to spend time with it, you have to
Speaker 1: be familiar with it so that feels comfortable enough, you know,
Speaker 1: to speak with you. You know what we should do
Speaker 1: been we should build a panopticon and then in every
Speaker 1: cell put one of these haunted objects and lock it
Speaker 1: in there, and then you know, just observe them with
Speaker 1: cameras and other sensors for I don't know, twenty years
Speaker 1: something like that. Yeah, I think we could. We could
Speaker 1: probably work a work something like that out in the
Speaker 1: show budget. Uh, folks, me volunteers, let us know what
Speaker 1: your favorite haunted objects are that could occupy our panopticon.
Speaker 1: Extra points for a big Mickey esque figure, yeah, or
Speaker 1: a like a fridge that you know survived an earthquake
Speaker 1: or something, or a building collapse and then if you
Speaker 1: if you there is a person actively looking at it,
Speaker 1: it does something. We're like, Uh, a telephone that's that
Speaker 1: is detached but still speaks to forces beyond our dimension. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would be amazing. Or a microwave, just like a
Speaker 1: badass crazy microwave. I don't know it just can't you know.
Speaker 1: It's like the Wolverine of the crew. I don't know. Um,
Speaker 1: the brave little toaster was haunted, Ben, Do you think
Speaker 1: he was somehow embodied by some sort of malevol a spear.
Speaker 1: I mean, I know he was brave and super cute,
Speaker 1: but toasts aren't supposed to hop around like that and
Speaker 1: go exploring, going on adventures. Even the Ghostbusters Toaster just
Speaker 1: kind of jumped around a little. Yeah, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I would be all four haunted kitchen appliances. As a
Speaker 1: matter of fact, that's gonna kind of come into play,
Speaker 1: because we have a twist for you at the end
Speaker 1: of this, folks. But here we have it as it stands.
Speaker 1: Ancient folklore spiritual practices live on co modified to a
Speaker 1: degree due to the nature of the society in which
Speaker 1: we live. Some people just doubtlessly enjoy the stories. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's cool, you know, like, hey, I got this haunted
Speaker 1: according on eBay, that's a true story of my part.
Speaker 1: It was advertised as haunted, and I was like, the
Speaker 1: price is right. Uh if I haunted they meant some
Speaker 1: of the reeds were broken, then yes, I guess it
Speaker 1: is haunted. But but other people, you know, really enjoy
Speaker 1: the mythology of these things. And then some people truly
Speaker 1: do believe there's something inexplicable and supernatural a foot. We
Speaker 1: can say there's psychology you behind it, definitely right, there's
Speaker 1: this urgent need to anthropomorphize everything because it's our way
Speaker 1: of explaining the familiarity or discomfort we feel around certain objects.
Speaker 1: Like almost everybody has a lucky insert here, right, this
Speaker 1: is my lucky hat. These are these are my this
Speaker 1: is my lucky shirt kind of thing, right, mostly underwear,
Speaker 1: but yeah, mostly underwear. Yeah, this is these are my
Speaker 1: These are my business under ruse. These are my going
Speaker 1: out under ruse. These are my business Tommy John's of
Speaker 1: two Flight of the Concords. Uh. It makes sense then, though,
Speaker 1: doesn't it, Guys that dolls would be so prominent in
Speaker 1: this kind of folklore because they already looked just enough,
Speaker 1: like for sure, I I wonder, I wonder if you
Speaker 1: guys are doing this more recently actually anthropomorphy rising stuff
Speaker 1: in your house or or any of you guys doing
Speaker 1: that right now? I always have the one more ifies
Speaker 1: the backs of trucks that they have faces on them.
Speaker 1: Let's see, like, yeah, and cars are designed in the
Speaker 1: in the front end at least a look kind of
Speaker 1: like face. Like you could just have one big headlight
Speaker 1: that goes across. You could have three, you could have
Speaker 1: eight and have like a spider looking car, but no
Speaker 1: two and a grill, little mouth, little face as their
Speaker 1: hurdles towards you at eight five plus miles an hour
Speaker 1: and you have just enough time to go. Ah, I'm wondering.
Speaker 1: I'm wondering all about the backs of truck backs of trucks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like a semi semi you sort of have like you know,
Speaker 1: the seam going down the back of it is like
Speaker 1: the bridge of the nose, and then like the little
Speaker 1: guardrail is sort of the nose. And sometimes it's like
Speaker 1: mud flaps are like the teeth kind of you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. Okay, I see it. So are the
Speaker 1: are the doors the loading doors for the trailer they
Speaker 1: like big eyes or they more like the cheek area.
Speaker 1: It depends. It depends on where the lights are attached
Speaker 1: and whether they're in the's any signage or anything that
Speaker 1: adds to the illusion. But yeah, they certainly can be
Speaker 1: ben they can be cheeks. Um. I'm having a hard
Speaker 1: time explaining it. Something you just have to see for yourself.
Speaker 1: But be on the lookout next time you're stuck behind
Speaker 1: a semi. Just look for the face, LORI, for any
Speaker 1: anyone LORI. Indeed. Uh. One of the last thing for
Speaker 1: me is even those little hooks you used to hang
Speaker 1: coats on. They look like drunken octopuses that are trying
Speaker 1: to put their dukes up to fight with you. M
Speaker 1: I saw it. It's something they're reading about that they
Speaker 1: can't unsee it. It's like, especially when they're screwed in
Speaker 1: with two screws and they're offset a little bit, so
Speaker 1: it's like one of them is kind of like a
Speaker 1: little bit little it's a drunk Yeah, yeah, it's trunk
Speaker 1: ard octopus. But we all have things like this. There's
Speaker 1: so many things that you have probably encountered in your
Speaker 1: life where you thought that looks like a ace, that
Speaker 1: looks like a figure, a humanoid figure, And that's because
Speaker 1: your brain has been evolved to see those sorts of patterns. So,
Speaker 1: like I'll admit, during this pandemic, as you said, Matt,
Speaker 1: we all kind of because we were in a smaller
Speaker 1: environment most of the time, we may have accelerated some
Speaker 1: of this anthropomorphization. About eight months in, you know, I
Speaker 1: looked around. I realized all this in my kitchen has
Speaker 1: a personality. Now there's the good bowl, the trustworthy one,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. There's there's there's the fork,
Speaker 1: there's kind of bold, it has panash and then there's
Speaker 1: that one spoon. You can't trust it. There's that one spoon.
Speaker 1: It's the Judas spoon. And that's like, clearly, that's just psychology.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's just the force of boredom and a bottle.
Speaker 1: We're all just terribly damaged by all of this. But
Speaker 1: it's okay. I think it's gonna stay with us. I
Speaker 1: think no one is still going to be seeing truck faces.
Speaker 1: I think all our listeners are gonna still see weird
Speaker 1: things and like vacuums or trash can lids that open
Speaker 1: up like mouths, and uh yeah, I don't trust that spoon,
Speaker 1: and I know it knows what it did. So for now,
Speaker 1: the answer to Canton object be haunted seems to be
Speaker 1: primarily something like, yes, at least it can be haunted
Speaker 1: by the human need to explain the inexplicable and to
Speaker 1: create personalities as a way of defining our own self
Speaker 1: perceived relationships with things. And yes, of course copy If
Speaker 1: science achieves a breakthrough improves that non physical events can
Speaker 1: indeed leave impact on physical objects, this changes everything. This
Speaker 1: changes absolutely everything. We'll have to redo this episode until then.
Speaker 1: Right now, as as much of a bummer as it is,
Speaker 1: to say it. There is no proof, universally accepted proof
Speaker 1: of genuinely haunted objects. But there is one last twist,
Speaker 1: something we wanted to save until the end. In the
Speaker 1: very near future, we may have haunted objects. Fellow conspiracy realists,
Speaker 1: We may very well build our own ghost. Uh. Yes,
Speaker 1: we may build ourselves into ghosts or build a ghost
Speaker 1: out of some I think it will be some very
Speaker 1: very smart person that we want to keep around to
Speaker 1: be like, no, don't go. We we we need you still.
Speaker 1: We need to know what we need to do next. Um,
Speaker 1: so you know, Mark Zuckerberg or somebody anyway, But no,
Speaker 1: it's it's so true because we've talked about this before.
Speaker 1: In our attempts to achieve immortality in some way or another,
Speaker 1: we are using computer simulations, attempts at computer simulation and
Speaker 1: very very very fast computers with tons of memory to
Speaker 1: be able to simulate a person or a consciousness. And
Speaker 1: we've we've been attempting to do this and we may
Speaker 1: perfect it. Yeah, which is terrifying. Should be terrified. If
Speaker 1: you're if you're more excited than you than terrified, then congratulations.
Speaker 1: Kind of like me and we both have a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff we should work on. In that case, Yeah, Matt,
Speaker 1: you're on the money. The first truly haunted object on
Speaker 1: the way is probably not a dusty stuffed animal. It's
Speaker 1: probably not some cursed spear from an ancient war. Will
Speaker 1: instead be the result of something called whole brain emulation
Speaker 1: or w b E, the idea of uploading the entirety
Speaker 1: of human brain, modeling it thoughts, memories, feelings, personalities, putting
Speaker 1: it on a hard drive, putting it in the cloud.
Speaker 1: This is a possibility. There are now like conceptually we
Speaker 1: can understand, we we can understand how it would be done.
Speaker 1: We can see the horizon where this occurs. We have
Speaker 1: a lot of technological hurdles there, we have a lot
Speaker 1: of ethical hurdles that we haven't considered yet. The main,
Speaker 1: the main obstacle right now, ship of thesis aside, is
Speaker 1: that first we have to manage to achieve something called
Speaker 1: the connect dome, just like connect O m E. A
Speaker 1: complete map of the human brain. Uh. We have been
Speaker 1: able to do one complete map of one creature. It's
Speaker 1: a nematode, so we know it can be done in theory.
Speaker 1: But a nematode has about three neurads. Human brain has
Speaker 1: about eight six billion, so we can't. We don't know
Speaker 1: how to map. We just need a couple of thousand
Speaker 1: more years and we'll be there. We'll be good. Well,
Speaker 1: we'd also want to map a living human brain, right
Speaker 1: ethics socide. Would it be easier to map a living
Speaker 1: human brain if you didn't have to worry about what
Speaker 1: happened to that brain? Yeah, I know it gets sticky
Speaker 1: really quickly. And I was gonna say, I'm wondering if
Speaker 1: there's some kind of because obviously it's our inability to
Speaker 1: see into the brain, deep into the brain enough with
Speaker 1: enough resolution to be able to pick out those, you know,
Speaker 1: each neural pathway, because then you could definitely get a
Speaker 1: pretty cool image of brains just by scanning them. But
Speaker 1: it's not the same thing as looking at, like you said,
Speaker 1: all of the neurons, right, and we uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the tools we have, things like m R I and
Speaker 1: so on. It's exactly as you described. There's just not
Speaker 1: the level of sophistication we need here. But if someone
Speaker 1: can map a brain and all its interconnections, the next
Speaker 1: step would be trying to make an emulation of it
Speaker 1: that could run, you know, run the copy of Paul
Speaker 1: Mission Control decond creating something that will call a substrate
Speaker 1: independent mind, or to be cut about it, a sim
Speaker 1: this sim could exist, then it would inherently be conscious,
Speaker 1: even if we don't understand what consciousness is for us.
Speaker 1: It would be literally a ghost in the machine. For now,
Speaker 1: this is hypothetical. For now, this is hypothetical, but the
Speaker 1: technology and the research are continuing at a breakneck pace.
Speaker 1: I think it's very optimistic that that you say, the
Speaker 1: first immortal, the first ghost, first thing to haunt an
Speaker 1: object like this, might be one of the world's smartest people.
Speaker 1: I intended to say, I think it would be one
Speaker 1: of the world's wealthiest people who was terrified of dying.
Speaker 1: What do you guys think about that? I think my
Speaker 1: example would hold true for probably both of those. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: did nail it on that one. Then that's exactly I
Speaker 1: can't remember which season of West World it is, but
Speaker 1: that's exactly one of the main plot points in one
Speaker 1: of the HBO's West World seasons where it's essentially ghosts
Speaker 1: in the machine. It's it's physical, well, it's programs that
Speaker 1: are software built into hardware that then the software gets
Speaker 1: transferred as a ghost into a server where now they
Speaker 1: only exists exist virtually, but it's the full consciousness of
Speaker 1: that of those at one point physical beings. Wow, that's interesting,
Speaker 1: like San Junipero. Right, Uh, this there, there's a reason
Speaker 1: that fiction centers on this kind of stuff and orbits,
Speaker 1: these sort of concepts, you know, science fiction in particulars.
Speaker 1: The genre is often prescient and in one way or another.
Speaker 1: So don't be surprised if, uh, within your lifetimes, humanity
Speaker 1: finally has the haunted dolls it has loved and feared
Speaker 1: since the dawn of recorded time. They may just end
Speaker 1: up being computers. At one of those ghosts one day
Speaker 1: might be you. So what do you think, folks, have
Speaker 1: you had any experience with mysterious or cursed objects? Let
Speaker 1: us know where what objects appeared at, personalities and faces
Speaker 1: for you, that's that's a very interesting question to write.
Speaker 1: Oh and if you if you have those things, like,
Speaker 1: I want to see pictures of the thing from your
Speaker 1: point of view, I definitely want to see that. I'll
Speaker 1: take a picture of the container that holds all my
Speaker 1: dog food that has a giant flap on it, and
Speaker 1: it's exactly how you described it, Ben. It totally talks
Speaker 1: and yeah, it's it's pretty amazing. Does it have its
Speaker 1: own favorite dog food? Oh? Yeah, it gets so upset
Speaker 1: if I give it the grain free stuff because it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, this is bad for these dogs, and I'm like, god, man,
Speaker 1: it's talking trash to you. It's like, oh, oh, Frederick
Speaker 1: came to play today. Well guess what, buddy, no games.
Speaker 1: I thought green free dog food was good for my dogs.
Speaker 1: I thought that's how it worked, but apparently it's not.
Speaker 1: So sorry, and send us, yes, send us your favorite
Speaker 1: pictures of things that appear to have faces. Bonus points
Speaker 1: if they are trucks, automobiles, uh, send us to your
Speaker 1: classics and let us let us know seriously what you
Speaker 1: think about what we've touched on here. And if you
Speaker 1: believe that you have found a genuinely haunted object or
Speaker 1: you have witnessed one, of course we want to hear
Speaker 1: about it. We try to make it easy to find
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Speaker 1: where it Gets Crazy. Just navigate over to Facebook, type
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