WEBVTT - Bonus Episode: Sarah Krasnostein 0:00:00.920 --> 0:00:04.480 Strange Arrivals is a production of iHeart Radio and Grin 0:00:04.519 --> 0:00:08.760 and Mild from Aaron, making for the best experience listen 0:00:08.840 --> 0:00:09.520 with headphones. 0:00:15.400 --> 0:00:17.799 In the course of doing research for this season of 0:00:17.840 --> 0:00:22.560 Strange Arrivals, I ran across the book The Believer Encounters 0:00:22.600 --> 0:00:25.640 with the Beginning, the End, and Our Place in the Middle, 0:00:25.720 --> 0:00:30.240 by Sarah Krasnstein. Like Strange Arrivals, it is concerned with 0:00:30.360 --> 0:00:33.839 issues of belief, but approaches the topic a little differently. 0:00:35.120 --> 0:00:38.680 Here's my interview with Sarah. We talk about the creation Museum, 0:00:39.240 --> 0:00:42.640 UFO experiencers and people who will come to your house 0:00:43.159 --> 0:00:46.320 inclensed of evil or just annoying spirits. 0:00:47.640 --> 0:00:51.120 My name is Sarah Krasstein, and I am a writer, 0:00:51.440 --> 0:00:54.480 and you'll find that I have a very strange hybrid 0:00:54.720 --> 0:00:59.640 accent because I am a dual American Australian citizen, and 0:01:00.600 --> 0:01:04.080 I've spent probably about half my life in each country 0:01:04.120 --> 0:01:06.520 by this point, and I often forget what's the right 0:01:06.560 --> 0:01:09.920 word for the right country. And we're in the liminal 0:01:09.959 --> 0:01:12.320 podcast space, so I guess that doesn't matter, but I'm 0:01:12.360 --> 0:01:13.920 flagging it. That's me. 0:01:15.120 --> 0:01:17.240 What was the impetus behind writing this book? 0:01:18.000 --> 0:01:22.160 So it's probably generous to describe it as a process, 0:01:22.360 --> 0:01:26.520 but with each of my kind of book length work 0:01:26.680 --> 0:01:30.040 so far, it really just starts off as something that's 0:01:30.080 --> 0:01:33.600 not really even intellectualized. It's just a feeling that these 0:01:33.640 --> 0:01:37.600 are interesting stories that deserve kind of more than a 0:01:37.640 --> 0:01:42.600 magazine type treatment, and that if they're willing, these people 0:01:42.640 --> 0:01:45.520 that have kind of sparked my curiosity or interest, I 0:01:45.560 --> 0:01:48.760 would like over the next indefinite period, which so far 0:01:48.800 --> 0:01:52.680 has shaken out to about four years each book, to 0:01:52.720 --> 0:01:54.840 get to know them, like see the world through their eyes, 0:01:54.880 --> 0:02:00.720 their interior life. And with the Believer, it was disclosed 0:02:00.800 --> 0:02:04.280 over the process of those kind of four year interviews 0:02:05.000 --> 0:02:08.760 that it was different people speaking from vastly different perspectives 0:02:09.680 --> 0:02:13.120 about the grief in the gap between the world as 0:02:13.280 --> 0:02:16.440 it intractably is in the world as we'd love it 0:02:16.480 --> 0:02:19.639 to be, and what they did to make that gap 0:02:19.720 --> 0:02:21.880 cognitively or spiritually work for them. 0:02:22.800 --> 0:02:24.240 How did that become apparent to you? 0:02:25.320 --> 0:02:27.720 Well, again, like I say, it's just like and this 0:02:27.840 --> 0:02:30.600 is difficult because before I wrote full Time, I was 0:02:30.600 --> 0:02:34.040 a lawyer and I have a PhD in criminal appeals, 0:02:35.040 --> 0:02:38.919 and it is not a really intellectualized, repplicable process. It's 0:02:39.040 --> 0:02:42.040 much more intuitive. It's that there's something that they're telling 0:02:42.080 --> 0:02:45.440 me that is either immediately identifiable to me and I 0:02:45.480 --> 0:02:49.680 feel it too in some strange way, or alien to me, 0:02:50.360 --> 0:02:54.080 and I want to explore that difference. So I was 0:02:54.120 --> 0:02:56.440 hearing the same phrases again and again. And what the 0:02:56.480 --> 0:03:01.639 believer is is six braided together, very different stories that 0:03:02.080 --> 0:03:04.520 on the surface have nothing in common. And I was 0:03:04.560 --> 0:03:07.880 hearing this phrase again from all these people, whether they 0:03:07.919 --> 0:03:13.080 were the ghost hunters or the Eufologists, or fundamentalist Christians 0:03:13.280 --> 0:03:16.640 or Buddhists, that this life can't be all there is. 0:03:16.680 --> 0:03:19.840 There has to be something else out there. And whether 0:03:19.919 --> 0:03:22.840 they came at that from a you know, Kingdom come 0:03:23.880 --> 0:03:29.240 evangelist perspective, or a Buddhist non attachment perspective, or a 0:03:29.280 --> 0:03:34.840 personal kind of agency perspective or literal alien perspective, it 0:03:35.080 --> 0:03:38.320 was this longing for something more, for some meaning, for 0:03:38.400 --> 0:03:41.280 something greater than we appeared to be able to produce 0:03:41.320 --> 0:03:44.560 for ourselves in this kind of quotidian, daily daily life. 0:03:45.920 --> 0:03:49.040 Was it just these six groups that you looked at, 0:03:49.120 --> 0:03:51.120 or were there other ones that that you sort of 0:03:51.160 --> 0:03:54.040 started with that kind of fell away as time went on. 0:03:55.160 --> 0:03:58.960 As a writer's question. That's right, Yeah, there were there's 0:03:59.000 --> 0:04:00.880 always what are they say? You've got to have a 0:04:00.880 --> 0:04:03.880 lot of milk to get to the cream, you know. 0:04:04.520 --> 0:04:07.320 There's there were a number of others which I wished 0:04:07.640 --> 0:04:11.080 could have worked, but for whatever reason, usually because they're 0:04:11.120 --> 0:04:15.440 coming to me with kind of a prepackaged story, or 0:04:15.600 --> 0:04:18.960 they are kind of to screen ready or camera ready 0:04:19.880 --> 0:04:22.200 and I don't feel I'm getting the kind of true 0:04:22.360 --> 0:04:26.480 emotional honesty or depth, they fall away. But it could 0:04:26.480 --> 0:04:28.760 be for a range of reasons. So the process kind 0:04:28.760 --> 0:04:31.000 of self selects people that are happy to speak to 0:04:31.040 --> 0:04:33.280 me honestly and who I'm happy to spend time with. 0:04:33.320 --> 0:04:35.919 And that's not going to be everyone that I initially 0:04:35.920 --> 0:04:37.000 thought at the beginning it would be. 0:04:38.400 --> 0:04:41.239 I've got a bunch of just I mean, they they're 0:04:41.960 --> 0:04:44.880 like slightly detailed, but I think they kind of hit 0:04:44.920 --> 0:04:47.160 it different. Things. I thought was that I thought we're 0:04:47.160 --> 0:04:52.919 interesting in the book, so and I think this is 0:04:54.320 --> 0:04:59.760 answers in Genesis, which I've been interested in for years. 0:05:00.160 --> 0:05:05.719 Just bizarre, bizarre that ken Ham is such an odd 0:05:05.800 --> 0:05:09.040 the idea that you're trying to prove Noah's ark, and 0:05:09.080 --> 0:05:12.560 that there are like triceratops is on the arc is 0:05:12.680 --> 0:05:16.000 just so strange. But I think it's in one of 0:05:16.040 --> 0:05:21.640 those sections that you make a point about tolerating uncertainty 0:05:21.720 --> 0:05:25.679 versus defending a point just for the sake or defending 0:05:25.760 --> 0:05:29.200 a solution just for the sake of like having that solution. 0:05:30.120 --> 0:05:31.800 Can you talk about that a little bit? I thought 0:05:31.839 --> 0:05:33.159 that was an interesting point. 0:05:34.680 --> 0:05:38.359 Yeah, And it's something that you know, again kind of 0:05:38.400 --> 0:05:41.239 I see across all these stories, or I saw across 0:05:41.320 --> 0:05:44.279 the stories, whether it was the paranormal researchers, the ghost 0:05:44.320 --> 0:05:49.120 hunters at work, or some of the euthologists, the kind 0:05:49.120 --> 0:05:51.839 of inability which is a very human, universal inability. We 0:05:51.880 --> 0:05:55.880 all do it in different ways to have difficulty tolerating 0:05:56.200 --> 0:06:01.880 uncertainty and therefore our own actual lack of control over 0:06:02.080 --> 0:06:05.360 daily circumstances, yet alone the larger course of a life 0:06:06.440 --> 0:06:10.760 manifested in Kentucky. As you know, it's in the literal 0:06:10.839 --> 0:06:13.680 name of the ministry. It's answers in Genesis. Anything you 0:06:13.720 --> 0:06:16.520 want to know, there is an answer, a solution, a 0:06:16.560 --> 0:06:20.000 certainty for and I'm jealous of that. I found myself 0:06:20.040 --> 0:06:22.680 increasingly jealous of it over my time there, which was 0:06:22.720 --> 0:06:24.920 the shortest of any kind of the stories in the book. 0:06:24.920 --> 0:06:26.560 It was only a week, although it felt like a 0:06:26.600 --> 0:06:31.279 million years. It was you know, any any question, any 0:06:31.360 --> 0:06:36.680 kind of gotcha moment that science could provide, would have 0:06:36.720 --> 0:06:42.479 a neatly wrapped up, seemingly watertight to them answer. And 0:06:42.800 --> 0:06:46.279 I was not really interested in defeating religion with science, 0:06:46.640 --> 0:06:50.080 you know, as the ministry specifically, you know, has been 0:06:50.080 --> 0:06:53.200 the subject of Bill Nye's work, and you know, it's 0:06:53.360 --> 0:06:56.920 something that's easily mockable and easily kind of defeated. It's 0:06:56.960 --> 0:07:00.719 just like cotton candy, these arguments. But I was interesting 0:07:00.839 --> 0:07:04.120 more in what was underlying that impulse to kind of 0:07:04.160 --> 0:07:08.200 have a complete explanation for circumstances that you know, the 0:07:08.200 --> 0:07:12.080 best astrophysicists will tell you are still not fully understood, 0:07:12.080 --> 0:07:14.800 and that's part of the joy in the glory of science. 0:07:15.240 --> 0:07:17.880 They couldn't sit in that space. And then it led 0:07:17.880 --> 0:07:20.200 to the question, well, where can the rest of us 0:07:20.280 --> 0:07:22.800 not sit? What is intolerable to the rest of us? 0:07:22.840 --> 0:07:25.360 What kind of magical thinking do we do reflexively on 0:07:25.400 --> 0:07:28.520 a daily basis. It might not be as extreme as 0:07:28.600 --> 0:07:34.480 having a big, perfectly articulated argument why dinosaurs had to 0:07:34.480 --> 0:07:37.200 be on Noah's ark and they were vegetarians and whatnot, 0:07:37.520 --> 0:07:40.480 but we might do it, you know, nonetheless in smaller, 0:07:40.480 --> 0:07:47.360 trickier ways, and there's universal kind of touching vulnerability to that. Yeah. 0:07:47.400 --> 0:07:49.600 I feel like a lot of the UFO people end 0:07:49.720 --> 0:07:53.640 up talking to would say the same thing about like skeptics, 0:07:53.240 --> 0:07:57.640 in that it's like, you like the you like to 0:07:57.640 --> 0:08:01.280 be able to sort of get rid of the uncertainty 0:08:01.320 --> 0:08:02.880 of what's up in our skies and that we just 0:08:02.880 --> 0:08:07.080 can't really comprehend it by by providing explanations that are comprehensible, 0:08:09.120 --> 0:08:12.320 which I think is sort of the flip side of 0:08:12.320 --> 0:08:16.000 the coin that I look at them at. But it's, uh, yeah, 0:08:16.040 --> 0:08:21.800 it's an interesting thought. And Georgia, I can't even read 0:08:21.800 --> 0:08:26.440 my own handwriting. Yeah, so she seems like she's almost 0:08:26.440 --> 0:08:28.920 like the ultimate of that in which it's She kind 0:08:28.920 --> 0:08:31.840 of makes the argument at one point that essentially like, Wow, 0:08:31.880 --> 0:08:35.320 when people take issue with something I say, I just 0:08:35.360 --> 0:08:37.280 like I realized that it's not really me they're taking 0:08:37.320 --> 0:08:39.880 issue with, it's the Bible. And so if they want 0:08:39.880 --> 0:08:41.880 to take on the Bible, And it's like this sort 0:08:41.880 --> 0:08:45.760 of complete confidence that her interpretation of the Bible is 0:08:45.840 --> 0:08:49.840 absolutely correct, So any criticism of her is actually sort 0:08:49.880 --> 0:08:51.719 of a criticism of God. So she's not going to 0:08:51.840 --> 0:08:54.240 like get too worried about it. I thought was kind 0:08:54.240 --> 0:08:54.920 of interesting. 0:08:55.120 --> 0:08:59.240 Yeah, Like I think all kind of the executive positions 0:08:59.280 --> 0:09:02.080 that they use. Everyone I spoke to kind of had 0:09:02.160 --> 0:09:07.640 this very neat reply to these issues of meaning and 0:09:07.760 --> 0:09:13.080 answers being somehow entirely external from them. And again, it's wonderful. 0:09:13.080 --> 0:09:16.079 I'm jealous of that kind of faith that there's a plan, 0:09:16.400 --> 0:09:19.400 it's explicable. This is not my thing. I didn't come 0:09:19.480 --> 0:09:23.040 up with this. I'm just you know, discovering or you know, 0:09:23.240 --> 0:09:29.360 going along with something that exists objectively and independently, and 0:09:29.440 --> 0:09:33.520 anyone else who can't see that is wrong. And again, 0:09:33.640 --> 0:09:37.560 underneath that kind of maddening logic is you know, a 0:09:37.679 --> 0:09:43.120 very young part wanting certainty and justice and fairness and control. 0:09:43.720 --> 0:09:46.800 But yeah, I mean at the level of conversation or discourse, 0:09:46.880 --> 0:09:50.120 it's really not good enough. It's quite unsatisfactory. 0:09:51.280 --> 0:09:56.000 Yeah, So I want to talk about this spirit section 0:09:56.280 --> 0:09:59.440 a little bit. So it's just kind of interesting because 0:09:59.440 --> 0:10:02.319 I didn't know I have any background in it. What 0:10:02.760 --> 0:10:05.560 was your what's your take on that experience? 0:10:06.840 --> 0:10:11.440 So you know, it was like take your writer to 0:10:11.520 --> 0:10:15.400 work day for the paranormal investigators who agreed to let 0:10:15.440 --> 0:10:20.760 me watch them at work, and they're clearing haunted houses, 0:10:20.840 --> 0:10:25.240 and they're leading kind of workshops and conferences into how 0:10:25.280 --> 0:10:28.320 people can do this for themselves, or little field trips 0:10:28.320 --> 0:10:34.120 into haunted places, and again a very unlikely place to 0:10:34.240 --> 0:10:38.200 end up. I had no independent interest in this before 0:10:38.320 --> 0:10:42.640 I was in Kentucky at Answers and Genesis and at 0:10:42.679 --> 0:10:46.800 the Creation Museum, which you know, after that week it 0:10:46.960 --> 0:10:51.720 became clear that this really wasn't about any kind of 0:10:52.520 --> 0:10:56.160 ethical system or morality, and it was more about kind 0:10:56.160 --> 0:10:58.800 of this fundamental injustice of how can we explain the 0:10:58.840 --> 0:11:02.240 fact that all this and everyone we love, including ourselves, 0:11:02.240 --> 0:11:06.800 will die? And what will we do with the idea 0:11:06.920 --> 0:11:11.439 that death just exists? Can we make it less scary 0:11:11.520 --> 0:11:15.360 by conceiving it as a punishment for sin? And is that? 0:11:15.720 --> 0:11:18.920 Is that really kind of a form of grief or 0:11:19.000 --> 0:11:23.840 longing for something that feels more comfortable? And so I thought, well, 0:11:23.840 --> 0:11:28.840 who can I find that has a more spacious attitude 0:11:28.880 --> 0:11:31.120 towards death? And that opened up a whole bunch of 0:11:31.160 --> 0:11:35.199 stories and the paranormal researchers were one of them, because again, 0:11:35.880 --> 0:11:39.960 death becomes explicable, becomes friendlier, it becomes something that you 0:11:40.000 --> 0:11:43.480 can wish away or think away more to the point. 0:11:44.200 --> 0:11:46.480 And I didn't expect to be as freaked out as 0:11:46.559 --> 0:11:52.560 I actually was, so more fool me. But I mean, 0:11:52.640 --> 0:11:55.120 I think most of the time. Well, firstly, I have 0:11:55.200 --> 0:11:57.240 to say that these were some of the most pleasant 0:11:57.240 --> 0:11:59.720 people to spend time with that I've worked with. They 0:12:00.280 --> 0:12:06.440 were universally quite intelligent, universally very kind, and self aware 0:12:06.679 --> 0:12:11.200 in many ways. So one of them was a neurophysiologist 0:12:11.200 --> 0:12:13.600 whose kind of leisure time on the weekend is spent 0:12:13.679 --> 0:12:17.959 looking for empirical proof of ghosts. Another one is kind 0:12:18.000 --> 0:12:20.079 of comes at it from a more kind of depth 0:12:20.160 --> 0:12:25.000 psychology background. But again, it's been actively clearing haunted houses 0:12:25.000 --> 0:12:29.000 for about three decades, and lovely people to spend time 0:12:29.040 --> 0:12:33.560 with their work, their hobbies or interests. They approached this 0:12:33.679 --> 0:12:37.600 in a very utilitarian, pragmatic way. It's almost bureaucratic, and 0:12:37.640 --> 0:12:41.800 it's mundanity that they're just there clearing another house. And 0:12:41.960 --> 0:12:44.240 so I had come along with that. I was just 0:12:44.280 --> 0:12:46.240 doing my job as well. And then you're sitting there 0:12:46.600 --> 0:12:49.120 at midnight and a you know, one hundred and twenty 0:12:49.200 --> 0:12:52.840 year old building, and I found myself very nervous to 0:12:52.840 --> 0:12:56.040 go to the bathroom by myself down a long, dark hallway, 0:12:57.320 --> 0:12:59.920 or you know, wondering about the space at my bed 0:13:00.320 --> 0:13:02.719 and finding myself more freaked out than I thought I 0:13:02.720 --> 0:13:07.680 would be. So isn't it interesting where we end up? Yeah? 0:13:07.720 --> 0:13:09.400 I thought when I was reading that part, I was 0:13:09.440 --> 0:13:12.720 thinking about how important setting is for so much stuff 0:13:12.800 --> 0:13:16.679 that you know, and that being in some abandoned place 0:13:16.679 --> 0:13:20.040 that's really dark and quiet and like every creek like 0:13:20.120 --> 0:13:24.840 sort of sets a tone for certain moods or perceptions 0:13:25.000 --> 0:13:31.040 or whatever. I really liked the Vlad. I just I 0:13:31.160 --> 0:13:33.319 kind of kind of felt bad for him because he 0:13:33.400 --> 0:13:36.240 wanted so badly to perceive the stuff that all these 0:13:36.240 --> 0:13:39.960 other people were just like, you know, supposedly perceiving with 0:13:40.040 --> 0:13:42.080 like no problem, and just like, oh, look at all 0:13:42.120 --> 0:13:44.040 these people, Look at all these spirits hanging out in 0:13:44.040 --> 0:13:45.520 this room. It's like I can't see any of them. 0:13:45.520 --> 0:13:47.640 I can't feel it. I want to get back to that. 0:13:47.720 --> 0:13:50.120 A second part of one of the things that you 0:13:50.160 --> 0:13:52.000 brought up in here that I thought was interesting is 0:13:52.040 --> 0:13:56.880 you talk about the god helmet and how you know, 0:13:56.920 --> 0:13:59.120 which I guess is a contraption that somebody came up with, 0:13:59.240 --> 0:14:02.240 and that if you use weak magnets can initiate a 0:14:02.360 --> 0:14:04.720 sounse that there's something in the room with you, and 0:14:04.840 --> 0:14:07.840 if you, you know, stimulate another part of the brain, 0:14:07.920 --> 0:14:09.880 you can like kind of give it sort of positive 0:14:09.960 --> 0:14:12.959 or negative. What was your thought about including that? 0:14:13.920 --> 0:14:19.120 So Latt is a he's an academic. He teaches neurophysiology 0:14:19.360 --> 0:14:22.520 at a university, and he has a very kind of 0:14:22.600 --> 0:14:26.960 intellectualized approach to the world. Super smart guy, loves a footnote, 0:14:28.360 --> 0:14:32.200 loves the small print, and presents in every way like 0:14:32.240 --> 0:14:34.960 a professor. And then, as you say, has this real 0:14:35.200 --> 0:14:37.920 longing to kind of experience what many of these more 0:14:38.200 --> 0:14:43.120 very intuitive, kind of hippyish people were experiencing spiritually when 0:14:43.160 --> 0:14:45.440 they walked into a space. There was something that he 0:14:45.520 --> 0:14:50.400 told me once about how the brain responds to the 0:14:50.400 --> 0:14:53.400 physical stimulus of you know, for instance, if you like 0:14:53.440 --> 0:14:57.600 touch someone's wrist and then you touch further up their arm, 0:14:58.280 --> 0:15:01.680 the brain will register touch at every point in between. 0:15:01.720 --> 0:15:04.720 It just kind of fills it in as a shorthand 0:15:05.400 --> 0:15:09.240 for that explanation of why it physically felt something at 0:15:09.240 --> 0:15:11.240 the start and at the finish of the space of 0:15:11.280 --> 0:15:15.840 your arm. And I thought that was really interesting also metaphorically, 0:15:16.160 --> 0:15:20.160 for how we tend to fill in these creepy spaces 0:15:20.280 --> 0:15:23.800 or empty rooms or the quieter parts of our lives 0:15:24.640 --> 0:15:28.520 with a story that might not be comforting but makes 0:15:28.520 --> 0:15:34.200 sense to us, or a story that is suspiciously comforting. 0:15:34.680 --> 0:15:38.040 How bad we are at something that's unknown or not 0:15:38.120 --> 0:15:42.040 yet proved, or that we can't make sense of, or 0:15:42.040 --> 0:15:46.560 that we wish was different. So I found kind of 0:15:46.640 --> 0:15:49.360 that correspondence between what the body does physically and what 0:15:49.400 --> 0:15:53.400 the mind does cognitively through a whole range of cognitive 0:15:53.440 --> 0:15:57.680 dissonance biases. We have confirmation bias and conformity bias and 0:15:57.720 --> 0:16:02.640 normalcy bias and nego bias, and what it lacks in accuracy, 0:16:02.720 --> 0:16:06.760 it really makes up for in comfort uncertainty. And we 0:16:06.800 --> 0:16:09.520 say that in a range of ways. So you know, 0:16:09.560 --> 0:16:11.880 it played out in the kind of ghost hunting sense 0:16:12.040 --> 0:16:17.080 in that way, a willingness to approach evidence or the 0:16:17.120 --> 0:16:22.560 possibility of kind of collating what would ideally be a 0:16:22.600 --> 0:16:27.960 peer reviewed standard of academic scientific proof on the one hand, 0:16:28.240 --> 0:16:30.800 and kind of the reality of this is not a 0:16:30.840 --> 0:16:33.960 space that lends itself to that sort of proof and 0:16:33.960 --> 0:16:36.720 what are we going to do? How we're going to 0:16:36.960 --> 0:16:42.120 you know, think about that in that glaring gap. So 0:16:42.400 --> 0:16:43.960 all of that was kind of at play. It was 0:16:44.000 --> 0:16:50.200 what I was seeing, but it was more more creepy 0:16:50.360 --> 0:16:52.360 that I thought it would be. While having all of 0:16:52.400 --> 0:16:55.200 these kind of thoughts. 0:16:54.600 --> 0:16:58.560 You know, two things. At one point, I think it's 0:16:58.600 --> 0:17:03.320 flat who says we don't know what caused it, so 0:17:03.360 --> 0:17:08.080 we just assumed it was something genuinely paranormal, which I 0:17:08.200 --> 0:17:14.399 just thought was kind of nice but also interesting. The 0:17:14.480 --> 0:17:18.520 other thing that I was kind of, you know, troubled 0:17:18.520 --> 0:17:21.960 by is that is that Spirits seemed like kindergarteners in 0:17:22.000 --> 0:17:24.600 some ways in the way that Rob was kind of 0:17:24.640 --> 0:17:27.600 dealing with them. So you've got this sort of scene 0:17:27.600 --> 0:17:32.080 where he goes to this guy, Ah, is it George 0:17:32.840 --> 0:17:33.400 or Jane? 0:17:33.800 --> 0:17:36.280 Oh, I think Jane at the old Man's house. 0:17:36.320 --> 0:17:38.760 I think it's Gene George. It's somebody's different. Yeah, And 0:17:38.760 --> 0:17:41.399 he's like clearing out his house and he kind of 0:17:41.440 --> 0:17:44.320 carries on this sort of you get one side of 0:17:44.359 --> 0:17:48.200 this conversation he's having with this with Spirits, but he's 0:17:48.280 --> 0:17:50.280 essentially like kind of disciplining him and telling him to 0:17:50.440 --> 0:17:53.320 like do what he wants them to do. And apparently 0:17:53.400 --> 0:17:56.240 that's what it takes. Can you do that if you're 0:17:56.280 --> 0:17:59.239 not an intuitive apparently. 0:17:58.720 --> 0:18:03.600 Not strictly, not in according to the rules of that discipline, 0:18:04.680 --> 0:18:09.640 But the upshot is that if you're not intuitive or psychic, 0:18:09.720 --> 0:18:12.560 you won't be seeing the ghosts so often in these spaces. 0:18:13.480 --> 0:18:17.399 I was the only admitted non psychic, and I was 0:18:17.440 --> 0:18:23.880 therefore spared the possibility of seeing or experiencing any kind 0:18:23.920 --> 0:18:28.280 of paranormal interference. So you won't see it, and you 0:18:28.320 --> 0:18:34.040 can't kind of show them away. And again, I mean 0:18:34.440 --> 0:18:39.040 thinking of it more kind of metaphorically or at a 0:18:39.080 --> 0:18:42.879 deeper level. He said to me, this is his name 0:18:42.960 --> 0:18:46.639 is Rob Tilley, and he's been clearing haunted houses for 0:18:46.680 --> 0:18:52.200 thirty years and a lovely guy, very smart, very creative, 0:18:52.560 --> 0:18:55.560 really wonderful person to hang out with. He was like, 0:18:56.280 --> 0:19:00.320 you know, they're just like annoying people. They're just of 0:19:00.400 --> 0:19:03.000 like bullies, and if you don't give them attention, they 0:19:03.000 --> 0:19:05.400 go away. So what does it mean to be haunted 0:19:05.440 --> 0:19:09.440 by something? What does it mean to feel a threatening 0:19:09.720 --> 0:19:14.879 presence or the yeah of the past where you are now? 0:19:15.680 --> 0:19:18.560 And how comforting might it be to have someone in 0:19:18.600 --> 0:19:22.480 there who seems to control what is uncontrollable and hurting 0:19:22.480 --> 0:19:25.000 you and scaring you. And it was a very beautiful 0:19:25.080 --> 0:19:28.119 kind of human moment. There's nothing kind of exploitative about 0:19:28.119 --> 0:19:31.840 what he's doing. He does charge like the bare minimum 0:19:31.840 --> 0:19:34.520 to cover his travel costs, but if he's dealing with 0:19:34.560 --> 0:19:36.880 a client who can't afford it, he will he will 0:19:36.920 --> 0:19:39.520 do it for free. And so I have to say, like, 0:19:40.200 --> 0:19:43.439 I didn't expect this at all from myself, but you know, 0:19:43.520 --> 0:19:46.040 we had moved into a new house during the course 0:19:46.119 --> 0:19:48.480 of that research, and I remember it's a very old house. 0:19:48.480 --> 0:19:50.840 My house was built in eighteen eighty and I remember 0:19:50.840 --> 0:19:53.480 having a thought, well, oh, there's something creepy here. I 0:19:53.520 --> 0:19:55.320 can call Rob and he'll take care of it. And 0:19:55.359 --> 0:19:58.439 it was so comforting. So, you know, I didn't expect 0:19:58.520 --> 0:20:00.840 to have that thought me and go through my mind, 0:20:00.880 --> 0:20:01.600 but there it was. 0:20:02.560 --> 0:20:04.720 You've got a guy in the industry, I know a guy. 0:20:04.840 --> 0:20:05.959 Yeah. 0:20:06.440 --> 0:20:10.879 My conversation with Sarah Kraststein will continue after the break. 0:20:20.200 --> 0:20:22.959 For people who are listening, there's there is like at 0:20:22.960 --> 0:20:27.280 the end of this, you write, I think very sensitively 0:20:27.480 --> 0:20:33.520 about Jean's experience, and he I mean, he basically says that, well, 0:20:33.560 --> 0:20:35.840 his wife died and you know, that's fine. What he 0:20:35.880 --> 0:20:39.320 really misses is his dog. And then you have this 0:20:39.480 --> 0:20:42.800 kind of two paragraphs, one talking about what it's like 0:20:42.840 --> 0:20:45.719 to have lived with somebody for however many years and 0:20:45.840 --> 0:20:49.320 just not really miss them when they're gone, and then 0:20:49.760 --> 0:20:52.800 what his life is like now he's sort of adopted 0:20:52.840 --> 0:20:57.520 this sort of spiritual view of things, and how that's 0:20:57.560 --> 0:21:00.359 not really worked out exactly the way that he he 0:21:00.840 --> 0:21:02.560 most likely would have liked to. So he's gone to 0:21:02.640 --> 0:21:05.960 this new world with its own set of problems for him, 0:21:06.520 --> 0:21:10.119 which I thought was sort of insightful of moving. The 0:21:10.200 --> 0:21:12.359 other thing before we kind of move on is that 0:21:12.400 --> 0:21:14.320 there's every once in a while like something would pop 0:21:14.400 --> 0:21:16.000 up in a couple of places in ways that were 0:21:16.000 --> 0:21:18.399 sort of unrelated. And one of those things in the 0:21:18.440 --> 0:21:21.840 first section of the book is dragons, because I believe 0:21:21.920 --> 0:21:25.320 there's some conversation about how, because dragons are mentioned a 0:21:25.359 --> 0:21:28.240 couple times in the Bible, that they definitely did exist 0:21:28.560 --> 0:21:32.800 and existed with people. And then there's also I don't 0:21:32.800 --> 0:21:35.280 know if it's rob but he has to rid a 0:21:35.440 --> 0:21:38.520 Chinese gentleman. I think is how he described him house 0:21:38.760 --> 0:21:40.800 of a dragon, and it was just so big that 0:21:40.800 --> 0:21:42.840 he ended up just like wrapping it around the outside 0:21:42.880 --> 0:21:43.320 of the house. 0:21:43.800 --> 0:21:45.840 And that was a purely like that was a water 0:21:45.920 --> 0:21:50.600 cooler conversation between two kind of house clearers about how 0:21:50.600 --> 0:21:54.480 they dealt with these dragons and where they put the dragons. 0:21:54.920 --> 0:21:56.680 Very you know, it was like they were talking about 0:21:56.680 --> 0:22:00.960 the traffic. It was beautiful to behold. Carl Jung wrote 0:22:00.960 --> 0:22:04.840 a book on flying saucers where he was interested not 0:22:04.960 --> 0:22:07.480 at all and whether they were real or not, and 0:22:07.520 --> 0:22:12.320 more in the kind of archetypal or symbolic experience of 0:22:12.440 --> 0:22:15.760 all of us. All cultures have recourse to this shared 0:22:15.800 --> 0:22:19.320 repository of images, and what did they serve? What purpose 0:22:19.359 --> 0:22:23.040 do they serve in human society and personal meaning making? 0:22:23.800 --> 0:22:26.440 And the idea that this dragon, which if you think 0:22:26.520 --> 0:22:29.119 spent enough time thinking about the physicality of a dragon, 0:22:29.240 --> 0:22:34.040 is an actual thing is quite terrifying. What role do 0:22:34.200 --> 0:22:39.360 these kind of fearsome, mystical, beautiful, you know, literally awesome 0:22:39.480 --> 0:22:43.720 beasts continuously playing in these different cultures and our different 0:22:43.800 --> 0:22:48.000 kind of personal outlooks. So again, you know, between six 0:22:48.080 --> 0:22:51.560 stories that on the surface have nothing in common. I 0:22:51.760 --> 0:22:53.919 kept on saying they were like harmonies. They were just 0:22:54.000 --> 0:22:57.639 kind of like these little resonances and echoes. And it 0:22:57.840 --> 0:23:01.199 was this notion that let's not try to defeat this 0:23:01.320 --> 0:23:04.600 with logic, because if fact moved the world, we wouldn't 0:23:04.640 --> 0:23:07.160 have any of the stories that are in the newspaper 0:23:07.200 --> 0:23:11.800 every day. What can we where can we go emotionally 0:23:12.040 --> 0:23:15.639 that makes us recognizable to each other and might create 0:23:15.760 --> 0:23:20.040 some chance of understanding mutual dialogue or not. I'm not 0:23:20.119 --> 0:23:23.480 that hopeful about the actual reality of that manifesting, but 0:23:23.520 --> 0:23:27.240 I think it's a really interesting space to wonder about. 0:23:28.440 --> 0:23:31.160 I want to get into the UFO stuff a little bit. 0:23:33.520 --> 0:23:36.320 So you talk about I guess kind of the two 0:23:36.359 --> 0:23:42.200 biggest Australian UFO stories. Why did you pick these two? 0:23:42.440 --> 0:23:44.400 And that was kind of interested, like your entry point 0:23:44.440 --> 0:23:45.240 to them as well. 0:23:46.040 --> 0:23:49.960 So I'm not a UFO person. I'm not interested. I 0:23:50.000 --> 0:23:52.720 had not before I found these stories been at all 0:23:53.200 --> 0:23:58.320 across or interested in becoming across the areas. And I 0:23:58.400 --> 0:24:01.600 was looking at one of those websites says like what 0:24:01.680 --> 0:24:06.359 happens on this day randomly, so it wasn't I didn't 0:24:06.359 --> 0:24:09.960 even set out looking for a UFO story, and that's 0:24:10.040 --> 0:24:13.280 when I first learned about Frederick Valentiche and that was 0:24:13.359 --> 0:24:15.840 kind of in my back pocket for a couple of years. 0:24:16.119 --> 0:24:18.439 And then when I had spent that time with the 0:24:18.440 --> 0:24:22.480 ghost Hunters and the other Australian story in the book, 0:24:22.480 --> 0:24:25.080 which is a woman who helps people die is a 0:24:25.119 --> 0:24:27.439