Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb. Julie Douglass, my co host,
Speaker 1: is on a well deserved vacation this week. So I thought, Hey,
Speaker 1: I wanted to invite the guys from Stuff They Don't
Speaker 1: Want You To Know over and we'll talk about some
Speaker 1: shadow people. So, hey, guys, how's it going. Hey, it's
Speaker 1: going really well. This is Matt and I'm Ben. Uh.
Speaker 1: We are thrilled to be here, so thank you for
Speaker 1: having us. This is uh one of the shows that
Speaker 1: I listened to. Oh, longtime fans, first time co host, Well,
Speaker 1: thank you. Well, you know this is uh, this is
Speaker 1: weird for me because Julie's had guests on here when
Speaker 1: I'm I've been out that this is the first time
Speaker 1: that I've been here without Julie, so uh, you know,
Speaker 1: she's she's kind of the rock of of the show,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, she's she's she's holding it together
Speaker 1: and now it's it's just me and hopefully you guys
Speaker 1: helping to uh to keep everything from falling apart. So man,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, well, possibly it's not just uh. The four
Speaker 1: of us, Robert, They're very well, could be some shadow
Speaker 1: people's right, what seriously? Yeah, yeah, yeah, guys, Okay, I'll
Speaker 1: roll with it. There are various takes on the on
Speaker 1: the idea of just even a shadow, right, I mean
Speaker 1: because obviously, um, the shadow has to do with the
Speaker 1: with the optics around us. So there's this you know,
Speaker 1: dark person shaped figure that is always a siwhere in
Speaker 1: our midst that the light is just right, and that
Speaker 1: has led to various uh, supernatural interpretations over the ages.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the shadow is a separate entity. Sometimes it is.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a representation of the immaterial soul. But
Speaker 1: what when I say shadow people to you guys who
Speaker 1: are steeped in conspiracy thinking and and uh and paranoid delusions.
Speaker 1: Not that yourselves are paranoid, but but this is your
Speaker 1: meat here, what comes to your when I say shadow people? Well, uh,
Speaker 1: if I'll take this one first man book. So uh.
Speaker 1: One thing that's funny is that we receive quite a
Speaker 1: few emails or contact via Facebook and YouTube from people
Speaker 1: who say, uh, please do an episode on shadow people.
Speaker 1: We've never actually had the chance. First things that we
Speaker 1: think about, first things I think about at least are
Speaker 1: things that audience members have reported to us, which might
Speaker 1: sound typically have something like this. Somewhere in their house
Speaker 1: or at a friend's house. They're asleep or they're dozing
Speaker 1: on a couch and all of a sudden, uh, something
Speaker 1: is out of the corner of their eye. And it's
Speaker 1: sort of like you know, when you have a floater
Speaker 1: in your eye and you're looking at the sun, and
Speaker 1: you you move your eye attempting to catch this strange
Speaker 1: and distinguishable thing, and it always lingers just on the
Speaker 1: corner of your vision. And and you know, as you said,
Speaker 1: one thing that's fascinating about this is that it's a
Speaker 1: very very old idea, you know, and and it it
Speaker 1: sort of cuts across cultures. So what I the first
Speaker 1: thing I think of are always going to be the
Speaker 1: strange stories that audience members have told us, either saying
Speaker 1: I believe it's a demon or can you tell me
Speaker 1: what's going on? You know. Yeah, it makes me think
Speaker 1: about all the things that are just on the outside
Speaker 1: of our periphery, and that can be the actual physical
Speaker 1: periphery or uh you know, uh deeper metaphysical periphery, something
Speaker 1: that we really believe is there but we can't ever
Speaker 1: quite catch it. We can't ever quite see it or
Speaker 1: grasp it fully. Yeah, I mean, because we're hardwired to
Speaker 1: pick up on that stuff. I mean, that's just part
Speaker 1: of our survival instinct. If there's something that we can't
Speaker 1: quite see, that's kind of hanging out just at the
Speaker 1: edge of our vision, of course, that's going to elect
Speaker 1: some some some shock or fear, or at least it's
Speaker 1: gonna you're you're gonna start asking questions in your head. Now,
Speaker 1: these individuals who write in about shadow people, it tends
Speaker 1: to be a negative interpretation or a fearful interpretation generally. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I haven't seen a positive man hanging out with my
Speaker 1: shadow people. Last weekend it was pretty great. We played cards.
Speaker 1: Who knows, maybe we'll get that letter via stuff to
Speaker 1: blow your minds after this. Maybe we're giving shadow people
Speaker 1: a bad name, but but yeah, in general, we we
Speaker 1: have the people who do report that kind of stuff
Speaker 1: or ask us about it, want to follow up to
Speaker 1: figure out some explanation because they are fearful of it,
Speaker 1: because it's not a positive experience. Now, one version of
Speaker 1: the the shadow person that I found when I was
Speaker 1: poking around in some folklore books was the idea of
Speaker 1: Mr Nobody. Mr Nobody is an English nursery spirit, never visible,
Speaker 1: but can be glimpsed as this diminutive, transient shadow. And
Speaker 1: so when something goes wrong in the house, something's broken,
Speaker 1: something's out of place, somebody didn't put their underwear back
Speaker 1: in the drawer, more than you blame Mr Nobody, which
Speaker 1: is you know what, it's a it's a you know,
Speaker 1: nur free book. So it's it's it's it's silly. Nobody's
Speaker 1: particularly taking Mr Nobody seriously, but it does have tinges
Speaker 1: of that, that idea of the of the shadow lurking
Speaker 1: at the edge of your perception. And then what is
Speaker 1: it up to? Probably nothing good. At least now we
Speaker 1: know where South Park got the underwear gnomes idea from
Speaker 1: Mr Nobody. Yeah, we've I'm glad we figured that out.
Speaker 1: I'm glad we we did that today. Another one I
Speaker 1: found that I was really excited to talk to you
Speaker 1: guys about um a tulpa from Tibetan mysticism. Pretty much
Speaker 1: just a thought form right created by pure will. Uh,
Speaker 1: this idea amongst people who have a belief for a
Speaker 1: conspiratorial belief, I mean or paranormal belief in shadow people.
Speaker 1: The idea of a tulpa frequently pops up for Stephen
Speaker 1: King fans in the audience. In the novel It, the
Speaker 1: primary villain is heavily applied to be something like a
Speaker 1: talpa um. So the way that atalpa works is that
Speaker 1: ultimately it is the product of the person observing it right,
Speaker 1: which has all sorts of interesting correlations in the in
Speaker 1: an age where we have access to more modern interpretations,
Speaker 1: a better understanding of psychology and physics and biology. But
Speaker 1: it's it's fascinating to think that this belief in some
Speaker 1: kind of boogeyman that we create due to our thoughts
Speaker 1: could could dovetail so nicely that's the best thing I
Speaker 1: can find. Yeah, I remember correctly with the tulpa. It's
Speaker 1: it's really it's deeped in this idea that that if
Speaker 1: we believe in something, and we believe in it hard enough,
Speaker 1: we can actually bring this manifestation, this entity, out of
Speaker 1: the thought world, out of the dream world, into the
Speaker 1: real world um, which has some interesting connotations with some
Speaker 1: stuff we're going to discuss later. But I can definitely
Speaker 1: see where if if there are sort of shats to
Speaker 1: perceive in the corners of our perception, and if you
Speaker 1: are trying to drag something out of the immaterial, out
Speaker 1: of the world of dream and thought that you might
Speaker 1: easily pick up on those things because you're not only
Speaker 1: susceptible to these shadows, but you're you're seeking them out right.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you said that, because in our experience, one
Speaker 1: thing that is very, very different is that typically people
Speaker 1: who believe that share the shadow people phenomenon is paranormal
Speaker 1: also think it's different to a ghostly phenomenon. It's somehow
Speaker 1: a non human entity called forth froom somewhere often, whereas
Speaker 1: you know a ghost would be in in this context,
Speaker 1: the ghost would be different. Um, but perhaps the same
Speaker 1: phenomenon produced them. I don't know, is a ghost that
Speaker 1: told That's interesting you say that, man, because I was.
Speaker 1: I was trolling through the above top secret forums trying
Speaker 1: to find store reads of people who claimed to have
Speaker 1: seen shadow people, and I did notice that most of
Speaker 1: them were ascribing it to some other type of being.
Speaker 1: A lot of it was an angel or a demon
Speaker 1: usually um, but yet I also got aliens, like people
Speaker 1: really thought they might be aliens or time travelers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well it's I mean It's interesting you mentioned angels and
Speaker 1: aliens as well, because it does seem like one of
Speaker 1: the things that really separates a ghost from from those
Speaker 1: other entities is that to it with a ghost, we
Speaker 1: apply it personhood, even like specific personhood, like that is
Speaker 1: Grandpa Rosenberg, or that's that's just the dude who might
Speaker 1: have lived in this house a few generations ago. But
Speaker 1: an alien is just I mean, they're all alien stuff.
Speaker 1: We don't really know these these guys and gals. Likewise, angels, yes,
Speaker 1: you do have specific angels in in your religion and mythologies,
Speaker 1: but for the most part, we don't really we don't
Speaker 1: get to know them. They're unknowable beings and the shadow
Speaker 1: of people, the shades or whatever we want to call them,
Speaker 1: that that we worry about in the edge of our perception.
Speaker 1: They too, don't have a face, they don't have a
Speaker 1: they don't have a persona. They're just something dark and
Speaker 1: mysterious that has some sort of human esque shape to it. Right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One thing to add to the idea of angels and
Speaker 1: demons also would be the idea of gin in Islam.
Speaker 1: So ah, yeah, they were and I remember correctly the
Speaker 1: gin our creations of fire, whereas humans are creations of
Speaker 1: dust I believe, yeah, and I think angels are light
Speaker 1: and general smokeless fire. Um. But this this concept when
Speaker 1: one thing that's really interesting here is that what we're
Speaker 1: finding is a million interpretations. I'm being hyperbolic, but a
Speaker 1: bunch of interpretations at the very least of uh, something
Speaker 1: that could be could be the same thing, or at
Speaker 1: least has a quite a few similarities. Right. We have
Speaker 1: all these different scripts we can turn who to try
Speaker 1: and understand what the what these shadows are. And today
Speaker 1: we have even more scripts to turn to because we
Speaker 1: have a lot of a lot of shadows and shadow
Speaker 1: people in our in our pop culture, in our fiction.
Speaker 1: I mean, Game of Thrones just started up, and of
Speaker 1: course I'm not gonna give any spoilers for people catching up,
Speaker 1: but a shadow entity plays into a very important plot
Speaker 1: point in one of the previous seasons. Uh. You see
Speaker 1: shadow creatures all over Dungeons and Dragons. I think that
Speaker 1: was probably my first exposure to this, uh, and I
Speaker 1: was trying to look him up again. It seems like
Speaker 1: the the original shadow has kind of changed into various
Speaker 1: other shadowy monsters in the Dungeons and dragons. What is
Speaker 1: that they phased it out of the monster manual. Man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like I was finding I think at night Stalker or
Speaker 1: something that effect kept showing up. Um, how about some dementors.
Speaker 1: I know it's not exactly the same thing, but the
Speaker 1: I guess the image of a dementer from J. K.
Speaker 1: Rowlings World reminding me of these guys. And I'll tell
Speaker 1: you another pop culture reference that I had completely forgotten about.
Speaker 1: A little movie called Ghost Most Most Mostly we remember
Speaker 1: this for it's awesome pottery scenes, but there was a
Speaker 1: whole plot element to where these shadow creatures would come
Speaker 1: and drag ghosts away into the nether darkness. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: completely forgotten it. There was anything um, quote unquote cool
Speaker 1: going on in Ghosts, you know. Yeah, everybody only remembers
Speaker 1: that pottery scene. Uh, Robert, I don't know what else
Speaker 1: is going to happen in this show, but I want
Speaker 1: to personally thank you for making Redeeming Ghost for me.
Speaker 1: Well you're welcome. All right, Well we're gonna take a
Speaker 1: quick breaking when we come back. We're going to get
Speaker 1: into the science of shadow people. Yes, the science of
Speaker 1: what is actually going on when you perceive some sort
Speaker 1: of shadowy monstrosity creeping out at the edge of your reality.
Speaker 1: All right, we're back now. You guys deal with paranormal
Speaker 1: experience a lot on your show. Now for for for
Speaker 1: new listeners, for people who maybe aren't it's familiar with
Speaker 1: uh stuff they don't want you to know. Um. Where
Speaker 1: do you guys stand when it comes to skepticism when
Speaker 1: it comes to scientific explanations of perceived paranormal events and
Speaker 1: the the magic and mystery of paranormal events? Okay? For me,
Speaker 1: it's all about the want to believe. Uh. I currently
Speaker 1: don't believe in much of it personally, However, I have
Speaker 1: a deep desire to not only understand, but to explore
Speaker 1: those outer reaches. Like we're talking about earlier, UM, for
Speaker 1: paranormal experience, if we're talking about shadow people, I think
Speaker 1: as we will find very shortly that we can explain
Speaker 1: much of the phenomena. UM. If we go a little
Speaker 1: deeper towards alien abductions and some of that stuff, I
Speaker 1: tend to lean a little bit more towards the possibilities
Speaker 1: of it being true. Um, but I would say two
Speaker 1: out of ten. Okay, that's fair. Yes, So Matt and
Speaker 1: I often have similar conversations like this. When it comes
Speaker 1: to the paranormal specifically, it's very important, I think, to
Speaker 1: remember that human understanding is a in a continual state
Speaker 1: of progress, and many of the things that once upon
Speaker 1: a time were miracles or curses later became, um, something
Speaker 1: that we could understand through our current framework of science.
Speaker 1: I don't think that makes any of those things any
Speaker 1: less terrifying or any more amazing, because um, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's all kind of uh, it's it's all kind
Speaker 1: of like a magic trick, or or learning the the
Speaker 1: behind the scenes of someone writing your face rich story.
Speaker 1: Is Is it possible that we will run into phenomena
Speaker 1: that can just never be explained. It's possible. I hope
Speaker 1: it doesn't happen. But when we when we look at
Speaker 1: things that are on the fringes of mainstream science or
Speaker 1: orthodox understanding, we do find things that have no no
Speaker 1: physical or quantifiable proof. And those things would be experiences
Speaker 1: or anecdotes about ghosts, or you know, the the idea
Speaker 1: of alien visitation, which is um mathematically staggering just given
Speaker 1: the scale of time and space. But then we also
Speaker 1: find things that I think are magical regardless of it,
Speaker 1: and I don't mean magical in a sweet Disney way.
Speaker 1: I mean freaky man like. The idea of of quantum entanglement,
Speaker 1: uh should make everyone really, really really weirded out. No
Speaker 1: matter what you're doing. If you're eating a sandwich right now,
Speaker 1: think about how that sandwich might be entangled with something
Speaker 1: later in the universe, carefully consider your condiments. You know,
Speaker 1: there was there was a guy in New York that
Speaker 1: for a while, maybe still doing it, who was offering
Speaker 1: quantum entanglement marriage ceremonies. Well, and I forget the exact
Speaker 1: way the specifics of how this worked, but you know,
Speaker 1: two people would would enter and he would somehow quantumly
Speaker 1: entangle the two of you so that, you know, no
Speaker 1: matter where you go in this universe, there would there
Speaker 1: would be that bond between you, a quantum bond. Do
Speaker 1: you think it has any effect on there are other
Speaker 1: multiplicities of them that exist in the other multiverses. You know.
Speaker 1: I don't know how it affects quantum divorce rights either. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you can. I'm sure you can pay extra
Speaker 1: right for service there. But but yeah, so that's that's
Speaker 1: that's the point is that typically I think there's often
Speaker 1: a false dichotomy um in in some realms of the
Speaker 1: conspiracy world, between a conspiracy theorists and a skeptic, because really,
Speaker 1: what we should only be talking about this critical thinking.
Speaker 1: And the fact of the matter is, with the vast
Speaker 1: majority of paranormal phenomenon, the stuff that the stuff that
Speaker 1: has been closely examined has often been explained, just not
Speaker 1: in a way that is perhaps as exciting or as
Speaker 1: sexy as some people would want it to be. But
Speaker 1: I don't think that makes it any less amazing, and
Speaker 1: I don't think that means that we should stop investigating. Yes, indeed,
Speaker 1: and uh. And one of the things too, that I
Speaker 1: think is important to point out about paranormal experience is
Speaker 1: that you know, we can we can sit around all
Speaker 1: day and say, all right, well, you know, mathematically, alien
Speaker 1: abductions are not occurring, or the likelihood of a ghost
Speaker 1: existing an angel existing theories existing, though you know, we
Speaker 1: and we can call that hogwash all day. But but
Speaker 1: but ultimately, a paranormal experience is real. People do experience
Speaker 1: something that they cannot explain, and in lieu of an
Speaker 1: actual explanation, they end up applying other explanations to it.
Speaker 1: They draw from existing scripts of folklore, existing scripts of
Speaker 1: of religion, existing scripts of science fiction pop culture. Those
Speaker 1: end up being, uh, the buckets we turn to to
Speaker 1: try and explain things that happened to us that do
Speaker 1: not match up with our normal procept perception of reality,
Speaker 1: or are our normal experience of life. Yeah. That you know,
Speaker 1: when you say that, that makes me anything one of
Speaker 1: the one of the perfect, and I don't want to
Speaker 1: derail us here, but one of the perfect. Examples of
Speaker 1: that would be some of the hallucinations that people take
Speaker 1: on spiritual journeys, especially given that that is such a
Speaker 1: a long standing tradition across so many cultures. Uh. One
Speaker 1: thing that we have always found, we being the human
Speaker 1: race entire, is that those experiences, UM, regardless of how
Speaker 1: somebody might examine neurochemistry or attempt to you know, quote
Speaker 1: unquote debunk the nature of whatever that spirit journey is. Uh,
Speaker 1: these people do have legitimate and valid experiences. And I
Speaker 1: really appreciate UM you pointing that out, because Matt and
Speaker 1: I go out of our way to um be as
Speaker 1: respectful to people who genuinely have had an experience as
Speaker 1: we can. You know, we don't we don't want to ever,
Speaker 1: you know, purposefully irritate or ever. Uh, I guess, denigrate
Speaker 1: somebody for telling us honestly about something that they experienced.
Speaker 1: We might not agree on the causes, but also we
Speaker 1: weren't there. So yeah, anecdotal evidences, it's it is easily discounted. Um,
Speaker 1: But like you said, it's it's real or something happened. Now,
Speaker 1: one example of certainly paranormal experience, I mean right here
Speaker 1: in the room. Uh no, our normal producer is is
Speaker 1: that on vacation as well, or something like vacation. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure. I'm not getting into his business, but in
Speaker 1: his place, candlers here and and Candler's just telling us
Speaker 1: about paranormal experiences that he has encountered. And by this,
Speaker 1: I mean he does see shadow people when he's sleep deprived,
Speaker 1: and he has experienced, um, sleep paralysis. Um. So just
Speaker 1: to refresh a sleep paralysis is all about what does
Speaker 1: what does our body do when we're dreaming. Ultimately, the
Speaker 1: idea is that when the when the body shuts down
Speaker 1: for sleep, it's got the muscles are going on kind
Speaker 1: of a lockdown. Because in your dream you may be
Speaker 1: having a karate battle with a dragon, but you don't
Speaker 1: need your limbs to be having that same battle, because
Speaker 1: you know, you may have the dogs or cats or
Speaker 1: humans laying around you sleeping. You may have lamps that
Speaker 1: you don't want destroyed and windows you don't want to
Speaker 1: plunge through. So sleep paralysis is just the locking down
Speaker 1: of the muscles. Is there to keep things from getting crazy. However,
Speaker 1: sometimes things get out of sync a bit and uh,
Speaker 1: and in sleep proalysis, what happens is that the is
Speaker 1: that you wake up. The conscious mind is waking up
Speaker 1: from from slumber and from dream, but the body is
Speaker 1: not unlocked yet, So you're waking up into a locked body,
Speaker 1: and you're you're not completely awake either as well. We'll
Speaker 1: discussing a bit. These phases of moving into and out
Speaker 1: of sleep are the perfect zones to see things that
Speaker 1: are not there, or apply non rational explanations for things
Speaker 1: that are there. Exactly, You've you've been having some pretty
Speaker 1: crazy hallucinations for the past few hours. If you're experiencing
Speaker 1: sleep paralysis, you're in a completely another world. You're, like
Speaker 1: you said, perhaps let's let's use the dragons example. So
Speaker 1: you've been fighting a dragon. You wake up, you're in
Speaker 1: your bed, but you can't move it all, and you're
Speaker 1: still seeing like at least a shadow of this dragon
Speaker 1: form that is still trying to attack you while your
Speaker 1: body is not functioning. If you if you don't know
Speaker 1: what sleep paralysis is, this is the most terrifying moment
Speaker 1: in your entire life. And it just made me think
Speaker 1: about all of the people that experienced this before we
Speaker 1: had the the tool of science and had to be
Speaker 1: able to look at this and figure out exactly what
Speaker 1: it is. And there were several something that you had
Speaker 1: written about before in your Monsters of the Week. Were
Speaker 1: several The first one was nightmares about this? Uh, can
Speaker 1: you explain that just slightly? Oh? Yeah, I mean the
Speaker 1: nightmare the night mara. It's an idea that you just
Speaker 1: see in culture after culture after culture, and it's the
Speaker 1: idea that you're waking up and there's some oppressive force
Speaker 1: pressing down on you that you know, just either setting
Speaker 1: on your chest or just just an oppressive force that's
Speaker 1: keeping you from moving and uh, and and you just
Speaker 1: see it again in culture after culture after culture, different
Speaker 1: different explanations, slightly different different shades of what exactly the
Speaker 1: the entity is, but it's it's everywhere and a lot
Speaker 1: of people who experience sleep paralysis. Fine, see this thing,
Speaker 1: it's been called the intruder um, it's been called a
Speaker 1: succubus or an incubus, but they have very specific things
Speaker 1: that they do. If if it's going to be named
Speaker 1: incubus or succubus. But you wrote in your one of
Speaker 1: your articles or the blog post about how these creatures
Speaker 1: are mimics, and uh, it made me think about what
Speaker 1: we're about to go into the science at least from
Speaker 1: this one study that we looked at about how these
Speaker 1: things are almost a a mimic of ourselves or a
Speaker 1: version of ourselves. Yes, not mimicry, Robert, mimicry I Okay,
Speaker 1: So clearly Matt and I are big fans of the show. Uh.
Speaker 1: One of the one of the things that we find
Speaker 1: fascinating about human experience in general, or the way human
Speaker 1: beings participate in the outside world, is that the our
Speaker 1: entire species has this compulsion to to classify, to anthropomorphize,
Speaker 1: to make um, to make a coherent picture from the
Speaker 1: raw shack blot, you know. So it's it's strange to
Speaker 1: me when we hear when we hear stories of people
Speaker 1: saying you know, I saw this mysterious figure, and it's always,
Speaker 1: you know, humanoid, or at the very least it's always
Speaker 1: in some cultures it's a it's a specific shade of
Speaker 1: an animal or something, but it's always a common animal too.
Speaker 1: Um And I think it's interesting because it says a
Speaker 1: lot about the way our brains deliver this sort of
Speaker 1: sensory information to us. Now, just a touch base again
Speaker 1: on on sleep paralysis. Researchers are not sure why exactly
Speaker 1: normal paralysis happens during conscience for victims of sleep proalysis,
Speaker 1: but the studies have confirmed that the attacks are particularly
Speaker 1: likely to occur the person enters r e M sleep
Speaker 1: quickly after hitting the pillow, bypassing the stages of non
Speaker 1: rim sleep that usually happen first. So some of the
Speaker 1: factors that are often involved here are drifting off while
Speaker 1: lying on your back, if you're feeling stressed, if you're
Speaker 1: experiencing a disruption in your normal sleep patterns, such as
Speaker 1: you like a weird work schedule, jet lag, you're having
Speaker 1: a little bit too much caffeine, a little bit too
Speaker 1: much alcohol. But at the end of the day of
Speaker 1: the normal adult population has experienced sleep paralysis at least once,
Speaker 1: and around five percent of the population has experienced one
Speaker 1: or more of other disturbing symptoms associated with the disorder.
Speaker 1: And in this we're talking about getting into hallucinations, shadows
Speaker 1: and light, human animal figures, auditory hallucinations, hearing voices or footsteps,
Speaker 1: and and even that strong sense of a presence something menacing,
Speaker 1: or even an esthetic sensation such as the feeling of
Speaker 1: being dragged out of bed or vibrating, flying, falling, which again,
Speaker 1: all of these things can easily play into a fantastic
Speaker 1: interpretation involving of you know, demons soaring through the air
Speaker 1: and taking you off to some sabbath on the other
Speaker 1: side of the hill, or aliens taking you up and
Speaker 1: probing you. And on the probe note, it's also worth
Speaker 1: noting that a lot of these sleep browses encounters do
Speaker 1: end up having a kind of sexual overtone to them, because,
Speaker 1: I mean, sleep itself, the dream world often has shades
Speaker 1: obviously of sexual desire in there, and seen as the
Speaker 1: human brain in the state of sleep is still relatively
Speaker 1: mysterious in some fronts, um it makes sense that we
Speaker 1: don't we don't completely understand what triggers this arrhythmic cycle
Speaker 1: or synchronous zation between the conscious mind and the human body.
Speaker 1: But we also know that the human mind is not
Speaker 1: dichotomous when it comes to waking and sleeping. Right, there's
Speaker 1: sort of a spectrum and we all kind of slide
Speaker 1: along it on our way to sleep and then our
Speaker 1: way to hitting the snooze button again. And there's this
Speaker 1: really weird sort of twilight zone sweet spot if you will,
Speaker 1: where in you can have dreams or hallucinations that are
Speaker 1: more vivid even then. You know, any high school comedy
Speaker 1: you've seen where someone accidentally takes acid. Yeah, you when
Speaker 1: you're drifting into sleep or coming out of it, you
Speaker 1: kind of have a leg in both worlds. Now, in
Speaker 1: my own experience that, like, the two examples that I
Speaker 1: come back to on this are pretty much any night
Speaker 1: that I'm I'm sleeping, I'm I'm drifting off the sweep,
Speaker 1: but I'm still reading. I don't know if you guys
Speaker 1: encount of this. If you reach that point where you're
Speaker 1: still reading, but you're not reading the book like you're
Speaker 1: somehow reading a made up book off the very real
Speaker 1: pages that you're looking at, and and generally that's the
Speaker 1: point where you where I'm just kind of think, oh, well,
Speaker 1: I'm not reading the real book anymore. Time to go
Speaker 1: to sleep. But when you stop and you look back
Speaker 1: and you really you know, you end up doing a
Speaker 1: double tick on that, Like that is that is a
Speaker 1: cue that there is this very weird twilight zone that
Speaker 1: you're trouncing through on your way to slumber. Have you
Speaker 1: guys evergotten the I don't know a better way to
Speaker 1: explain it besides the the blue falling hallucination of it's
Speaker 1: just kind of blue light that falls in front of
Speaker 1: your eyes. Did do either of you guys wear contacts? Yes? Yes? Okay,
Speaker 1: So when I sleep without my contacts, and I've got
Speaker 1: extremely close um near sightedness, and sometimes when I wake
Speaker 1: up and everything is very blurry, I'm still in somewhat
Speaker 1: of a dream state, and I'm just trying to decide
Speaker 1: whether or not I want to actually get up or
Speaker 1: not I will if I close one eye, I can
Speaker 1: see this kind of blue falling light. Um, I guess
Speaker 1: in the eye that I have clothes, but it's by
Speaker 1: doing so it ends up being transferred onto my left
Speaker 1: eye that is open in this case, and I've been
Speaker 1: trying to figure out exactly what that is, and and
Speaker 1: it has something to do with the this type of hallucination,
Speaker 1: hallucination what is it called? These types of hallucinations? All right,
Speaker 1: there to two different states, two different hallucinations we're talking
Speaker 1: about here. One is the hypnopompic state. Now, this is
Speaker 1: a state of consciousness leading out of sleep, and in
Speaker 1: the opposite, the state leading into sleep is the hypnogogic state.
Speaker 1: And in theory, the hypnogogic state, again, you're going to sleep,
Speaker 1: and so the rational waking mind is trying to make
Speaker 1: sense of nonlinear dream images and association. Uh so again
Speaker 1: you're you're seeing pages that aren't there, and you're trying
Speaker 1: to figure out why am I seeing pages that aren't there?
Speaker 1: You know that kind of thing. Meanwhile, the hypnopompic state
Speaker 1: is the emotional and naive dreaming mind trying to make
Speaker 1: sense of real world sights and sounds. So this is
Speaker 1: where we get this, this waking dream. So there might
Speaker 1: be some sort of weird shadow in the room, the
Speaker 1: light is strange on the ceiling, we hear the sound
Speaker 1: of the cat scratching on something, and we still have
Speaker 1: that crazy open dream mind that's trying to make sense
Speaker 1: of it, the same mind that totally buys into whatever fantastic,
Speaker 1: crazy dream you're having. Of course, I'm fighting a dragon,
Speaker 1: this is what I do. That mind is suddenly trying
Speaker 1: to figure out what the cat is doing under the bed.
Speaker 1: So maybe it's a dragon, right, Yeah, And then that's
Speaker 1: that's perfect because we can make we can make a
Speaker 1: few examples here that will be clearly understandable to anyone
Speaker 1: who has missed their alarm clock a couple of times.
Speaker 1: You guys, So if you're listening, you've probably had this
Speaker 1: moment where you're in a dream and then there's a
Speaker 1: fire alarm somewhere in the distance, or a car alarm,
Speaker 1: or if you use a ring tone on your cell phone,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, your strange dream with uh, your
Speaker 1: old high school buddy and I don't know, Vladimir Putin,
Speaker 1: what something topical? All of a sudden this ring tone
Speaker 1: you love comes on and you and your high school
Speaker 1: chum and Vladimir Putin are dancing to every day I'm hustling.
Speaker 1: And then you wake up, which I assume is someone's
Speaker 1: ring tone, And then you wake up and you realize, oh,
Speaker 1: it was all. It was all a dream that these
Speaker 1: things happening in the outside world went through this this
Speaker 1: internal script that I had that might have been influenced
Speaker 1: by historical older scripts, religious scripts, folkloric stuff. And to
Speaker 1: me that's fascinating because when I fall asleep with a
Speaker 1: ray Deo on or something like that, Um, you know, Robert,
Speaker 1: I recently got a dog and the dog makes noises
Speaker 1: that my sleeping mind is not used to write because
Speaker 1: you're you're a new dog owner, right, the cat person
Speaker 1: up upol Now, yeah, yeah, and uh, I've had a lot.
Speaker 1: It turns out the dog snores, So I've had I've
Speaker 1: actually had a couple of sleeping dragon dreams and waking
Speaker 1: up and finding out that thank god, it's just a
Speaker 1: puppy and not smell. You know, I have a very
Speaker 1: clear memory from when I was like a young kid,
Speaker 1: definitely in an age where every toys are everything, you know,
Speaker 1: action figures are everything, and and you know, you end
Speaker 1: up do you see these pictures in like the serious
Speaker 1: catalog and you just you obsessed about it, like I
Speaker 1: would love to have that Transformer one day. And I
Speaker 1: distinctly remember waking up from a dream of having some
Speaker 1: sort of fancy Transformer former toy and seeing it next
Speaker 1: to me in the bed for were you know, for
Speaker 1: this very small amount of time, but enough time to
Speaker 1: make an impact on me as a child. Now, Grant
Speaker 1: it's a memory. And we've on this podcast, we've talked
Speaker 1: plenty of times about how uh, how how many opportunities
Speaker 1: we have to mess up a dream, especially every time
Speaker 1: we drag it out of the box. But but it
Speaker 1: but it had an impact on me because I saw
Speaker 1: how there was this possibility for something in a dream
Speaker 1: to sort of follow you out of the dream for
Speaker 1: a little bit before it scampers back to the the subconscious. Uh.
Speaker 1: That is a beautiful and terrifying thought. Yeah, well that's
Speaker 1: the thing. It is that beautiful and terrifying, just like
Speaker 1: all these various interpretations of the paranormal. Yeah, and when
Speaker 1: we're talking about shadow people, it's it's fairly apparent that
Speaker 1: you know, this this falling into waking and sleeping and
Speaker 1: and the weird twilight zone between those two points. It's
Speaker 1: fairly apparent that this is a very old thing, and
Speaker 1: that what we call shadow people today in the age
Speaker 1: of the Internet, have been called many other things and
Speaker 1: often behaving in some of the same ways. But we
Speaker 1: have an advantage, um, an advantage that was one through
Speaker 1: bloody centuries of experimentation and breaking ethics, we know a
Speaker 1: little bit more about the human brain. Right, and you
Speaker 1: sent us some some fascinating information regarding uh kind of
Speaker 1: a look behind the curtain explaining that feeling of a presence, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's a really fascinating study came out in two
Speaker 1: thousand six, Uh, Swiss study public in the journal Nature.
Speaker 1: And uh no, it was not a study that was
Speaker 1: specifically targeting the shadow people, because I guess you tend
Speaker 1: to have trouble getting funding for that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: But the thing is, this sort of apparition, this kind
Speaker 1: of shadow figure, does play into the experiences of psychiatric
Speaker 1: and neurological patients. So the researchers made this discovery while
Speaker 1: evaluating a perfectly norm twenty two year old woman for
Speaker 1: surgical treatment of epilepsy, and when they electronically stimulated her
Speaker 1: brains left temper operato junction, or t PJ, they repeatedly
Speaker 1: gave her the sensation of a lurking shadow man in
Speaker 1: her presence. Uh. She perceived the shadow person is just
Speaker 1: behind her. She perceived the figure as interfering with her
Speaker 1: attempts to read a book, like trying to snatch it
Speaker 1: out of her hands. And when the researchers stimulated her
Speaker 1: in a seated position, this is the best part for me.
Speaker 1: She perceived herself to be seated in the entity's lap
Speaker 1: and he had he she had its arms around her,
Speaker 1: and she described this as being an unpleasant feeling. That's
Speaker 1: that's really interesting, just the idea of she basically was
Speaker 1: having an out of almost this strange out of body
Speaker 1: experience in a way where she was I guess her
Speaker 1: her feeling of this is hard for me to explain.
Speaker 1: I can't explain this. Maybe you guys will be better
Speaker 1: at this, but just that I've had feeling before, but
Speaker 1: not because my brain was being electrocuted. Well, it's kind
Speaker 1: of like some some part of her sensory interpretation got
Speaker 1: was hijacked. You know. By this, by this simulation, we
Speaker 1: know that in terms of evolution, it's been necessary and
Speaker 1: advantageous for people to have that feeling of you know,
Speaker 1: a sixth sense or shining or whatever. In short, it's
Speaker 1: it's really good for the human race at large. If
Speaker 1: a lot of us are paranoid in uh, in strange situations,
Speaker 1: but also finding the finding the neurological button or one
Speaker 1: of the neurological buttons that can trigger this reminds me
Speaker 1: of some some earlier stuff that you guys have done
Speaker 1: on this show about finding a specific part of the
Speaker 1: brain that is responsible for, you know, experiencing the presence
Speaker 1: of God for instance. Right. Um. The the thing about
Speaker 1: this is that, um, Matt and I are pretty into
Speaker 1: self experimentation, so I would love to figure out a way.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you should shock your brain. Do
Speaker 1: you have a tDCS or some form of electrical brain
Speaker 1: show working on all kinds of stuff? What are you
Speaker 1: making it yourself? I would not you like off the
Speaker 1: plans off the internet, or you're buying one at a
Speaker 1: at a punch shot. Look, Robert, the FDA are trying
Speaker 1: to trying to stop the progress of my experimentation, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know I've I've tried several different methods. It is
Speaker 1: true that there are now finally some commercially available t
Speaker 1: DCS devices that do not require you to be a
Speaker 1: doctor in charge of a clinical study, But those devices,
Speaker 1: uh leave a lot to be desired, and if you
Speaker 1: want something done right, you often need to do it
Speaker 1: yourself before you go shocking your left temporo parato junction
Speaker 1: of t VJ. UH. Let's let's just take it apart
Speaker 1: for a second for the listeners here and go through
Speaker 1: what the the t PJ does. The TPJ concerns self processing, UH,
Speaker 1: self other distinction and multisensory body integration info UH. The
Speaker 1: the electrical stimulation in this case of this again UH
Speaker 1: perfectly normal otherwise patient, it's thought to have caused her
Speaker 1: to attribute her own actions to this alien entity, to
Speaker 1: her to her shadow, to something just a few degrees
Speaker 1: left of her actual location or a little bit behind
Speaker 1: her um and uh. And so the researchers proposed that
Speaker 1: electrical stimulation to this area in the patient disturbed again
Speaker 1: multisensory but also um sensor motor integration of the information
Speaker 1: with respect to her body, leading to the appearance of
Speaker 1: a of what what is otherwise the first rank symptom
Speaker 1: of schizophrenia in this a person with no psychiatric history.
Speaker 1: Along those lines, um, so we're getting we're getting down
Speaker 1: to the perception of not only reality, but the perception
Speaker 1: of self in reality, which which we often take for Granted,
Speaker 1: you know, we think that we know who we are
Speaker 1: because we're looking out of this body and we're seeing
Speaker 1: the world, and and then a lot of it's based
Speaker 1: on site. But clearly it's more complex than that, right,
Speaker 1: And we see here the line between our same perceptions
Speaker 1: of reality and self and the insane or the magical
Speaker 1: being just uh, a far slimmer line than the most
Speaker 1: of us assume unders the daily basis. It makes me
Speaker 1: wonder if one day we will ascribe a sixth sense
Speaker 1: as our sense of just that overall sense of self
Speaker 1: that we're describing here, of where we are in reality.
Speaker 1: It's not necessarily touched, not necessarily site or any of that.
Speaker 1: It's just your own, your brain's own understanding of where
Speaker 1: it is in spacetime. Yeah, it's almost like if you're
Speaker 1: watching a movie and the film quality blurs, or the
Speaker 1: or the boom mic is suddenly in shot, like to
Speaker 1: a certain extent, seeing shadow people or experiencing and out
Speaker 1: of body experience. That which we'll get into a second here,
Speaker 1: is kind of like the boom mic getting in the shot.
Speaker 1: But it's like if you saw the film though, and
Speaker 1: you didn't say, hey, there's a boom mic. You might
Speaker 1: think there is a demon on the ceiling in this room.
Speaker 1: What are our characters going to do to survive it? Like,
Speaker 1: we don't have the processing, you know, like the brain
Speaker 1: you can get in that area with the brain cannot
Speaker 1: stand outside of itself and perceive itself. What were you
Speaker 1: gonna say about astral travel or out of bodies well,
Speaker 1: you know, out of body experiences or O b ees
Speaker 1: And apparently somebody calls them um the you know these happen.
Speaker 1: People do experience these is It's not just unsolved mystery stuff.
Speaker 1: They most commonly happen to people with neurological disorders such
Speaker 1: as the chronic migraine strokes, epilepsy, brain tumors. UH. Some
Speaker 1: also estimated five of perfectly healthy people also have the
Speaker 1: sensation at some point UH. And we can actually a
Speaker 1: connect out of body experiences again to that TPJ researchers
Speaker 1: have used transparano magnetic stimulation on the t p J
Speaker 1: to impair mental transformations of the body in healthy volunteers,
Speaker 1: so essentially able to UH to stimulate that part of
Speaker 1: the brain to reduce a kind of out of body
Speaker 1: experience without the aid of you know, near death experience.
Speaker 1: Or astral projection or strain or whatever they did in flatliners.
Speaker 1: The funny side note for that, uh, the United States
Speaker 1: government actually poured quite a bit of money into ob research.
Speaker 1: You there's a there's a film loosely based on that
Speaker 1: called The Menu Steric Goats. Uh. They have, but they
Speaker 1: they have people who were professional astral travelers, the most
Speaker 1: famous of which was a guy named Dingo Swan. I
Speaker 1: should go ahead and say, in the interests of fairness,
Speaker 1: that this program was, to our knowledge, canceled because it
Speaker 1: was not as cost effective as you know they had hoped. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and there was remote viewing. I guess that would be
Speaker 1: a form of astral travel. Yeah, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of interesting things. It was that Project stargates, Project Stargate fascinating. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, if you look at it, I guess from
Speaker 1: the government's point of view, if perceivably there might be
Speaker 1: a window open there, you don't want to just be
Speaker 1: there one day when the Soviets come crawling through that window.
Speaker 1: You want to explore that window and make sure that
Speaker 1: it is indeed closed or at least maybe I'm I'm
Speaker 1: hopeful that that is the mindset that's precisely actually, that's
Speaker 1: exactly the reasoning that we That's the closest thing we
Speaker 1: could arrive at. So So, Robert, have we found the
Speaker 1: explanation behind shadow people? I think so. I think it's
Speaker 1: if it's not again you get into shadow people, this
Speaker 1: seems to be varying um degrees of it, Like, this
Speaker 1: is definitely a case where someone is perceiving a very
Speaker 1: near um entity, something that is basically living just a
Speaker 1: few degrees away from their own body. Uh. And I
Speaker 1: think that we can definitely see with with these experiments
Speaker 1: with the t PJ. Now when you get into some
Speaker 1: of the other scenarios where someone's viewing a shadow on
Speaker 1: the other side of the room, I think maybe we
Speaker 1: need to turn more towards that that realm of sleep
Speaker 1: paralysis and those waking or plunging into slumber hallucinations. But
Speaker 1: but I think we have some strong ammo here to
Speaker 1: to explain some of the cases and and throw a
Speaker 1: lot of rational thinking at other cases. I don't know, guys,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna hold out judgment until Game of Thrones concludes
Speaker 1: in like, oh man, if he ever finishes those books,
Speaker 1: it's get it's the races early on to see what's
Speaker 1: going to happen, not in terms of the storyline just
Speaker 1: that one, but t V versus versus the novels which
Speaker 1: finished first. Well, I would just like to say it
Speaker 1: feels like we're concluding here. I would just like to say, Robert,
Speaker 1: thank you again for having us on. It's been a pleasure.
Speaker 1: Oh well, thank you guys for joining me. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: we just have a few minutes here before the shadowy
Speaker 1: entities creep in and drag us away. But uh, we
Speaker 1: should probably go ahead and just chill absolutely everything. So
Speaker 1: first of all, of you guys have been doing this
Speaker 1: awesome video series for a while and your efforts have
Speaker 1: just recently expanded. Uh, please share with with our listeners
Speaker 1: everything you're working on right now, not the top secret
Speaker 1: stuff or the illegal stuff involving brain stimulation, but all
Speaker 1: the on the board stuff area. But okay, sure, well
Speaker 1: if okay, if you want to learn more about our show,
Speaker 1: you can go to the longest r L in history
Speaker 1: called stuff they Don't Want You to Know dot com,
Speaker 1: or you can find us on YouTube. We are conspiracy
Speaker 1: stuff on there. Um. We make shows three shows a week.
Speaker 1: There might be more, sometimes it might be less. Who knows.
Speaker 1: Who knows. We also make an audio show No True Yeah,
Speaker 1: where we reference stuff to blow your mind as well,
Speaker 1: and let's see. Oh, we're also on Twitter. Uh, but
Speaker 1: I'd like to spend some time, uh talking about some
Speaker 1: stuff to blow your mind, things that I think everybody
Speaker 1: should check out. If you're listening to this and you
Speaker 1: haven't visited Stuff to Blew your Mind dot com, to
Speaker 1: check out the amazing blog our our mutual favorite met
Speaker 1: is always monster related right. Oh, yes, and there's something
Speaker 1: very special coming up. I don't know if have you
Speaker 1: been talking about this yet. Yeah, I've been mentioning a
Speaker 1: little bit and it should be out at for anyone
Speaker 1: listening to h the show right now. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: do this Monster of the Week blog series where I
Speaker 1: take a take something in the monster's realm, be at
Speaker 1: you know, pop culture or movies, X files or something
Speaker 1: more chloora myth based and then try and get at
Speaker 1: the science of it. For instance, with the Shadow People,
Speaker 1: it is a direct study that linked it. Other times
Speaker 1: I'm kind of taking something that that that that isn't
Speaker 1: about that monster. But if you start bringing the two together,
Speaker 1: then you can see, uh, you can see the connections Basically,
Speaker 1: the idea is that whatever we attribute to the fantastic
Speaker 1: in a made up monster, if you look close enough
Speaker 1: in the natural world, you'll find something just as fantastic. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and that's ultimately the connection I try and get
Speaker 1: out there. And so now we have a video series
Speaker 1: based on this. Uh. They we running six episodes off
Speaker 1: called Monster Science, where with Dr Anton Jessup who is
Speaker 1: a disgraced curator of monster Sciences at the university, and
Speaker 1: we were able to get him to do this a
Speaker 1: series for us right there in his basement. It's yeah,
Speaker 1: well hopefully so and you know, and and if it's
Speaker 1: a success, will do more of them. If not, then
Speaker 1: the Dr Jessup may may may vanish for a while
Speaker 1: and your mysterious circumstances I hope not cool. All right, well, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, check it out. You can find it on
Speaker 1: our YouTube channel, Mind Stuff Show. It's also all over
Speaker 1: stuffable your mind dot com. That's our mothership. That's where
Speaker 1: all of the podcasts episode live. That's where the videos are,
Speaker 1: that's where the blog posts are, and that's where you
Speaker 1: also find links out to these various social media accounts
Speaker 1: like Facebook, Tumbler, Twitter, etcetera. Um. Also, I mentioned this
Speaker 1: on the Facebook some of you you had asked me
Speaker 1: about this, But I also personally have a collection of
Speaker 1: short stories out called eight Black Offerings. So if anyone
Speaker 1: out there is interested in h some rather bleak, gruesome
Speaker 1: horror tales that I wrote previously and had been published previously, Uh,
Speaker 1: that book is available. Can search for it on Amazon.
Speaker 1: And it's only for grown ups. Oh yeah, live testimonial.
Speaker 1: I picked up a copy of this book, and I
Speaker 1: don't know if we talked about it, but I really
Speaker 1: enjoyed it personally, and the only thing I was gonna
Speaker 1: say is that it's probably only for adults. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's some grooms up that It's not the
Speaker 1: kind of stuff I would even write today. But anyway,
Speaker 1: I bring it out because because I know some of
Speaker 1: your listeners had asked about it. H And in the future,
Speaker 1: I'm hopefully gonna have some stuff out that is uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's more for a general eye Getting dark with
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb. Yeah yeah, that's the next and the next
Speaker 1: video series. So anyway, Hey, you guys have an email address,
Speaker 1: right If people want to reach you on email, where
Speaker 1: do they send those uh, those those queries about shadow people.
Speaker 1: You can send all of your complaints to conspiracy at
Speaker 1: Discovery dot com. Wait wait, you can. You can send
Speaker 1: any questions about shadow people to conspiracy at Discovery dot com.
Speaker 1: If you have complaints, please do forward them to our
Speaker 1: official complaint department, Jonathan Stricklands over back stuff. So that's
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland at Discovery dot com. Cool and as always,
Speaker 1: our email address is blow the Mind at Discovery dot com.
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topic is
Speaker 1: it how stuff Works dot com m