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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to coast AM on

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Speaker 1: iHeart Radio. John Kachuba back with Us now author, paranormal investigator.

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Speaker 1: He is a certified ghost hunter. He has investigated a

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Speaker 1: number of haunted locations. He is a frequent guest on

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Speaker 1: radio television and a noted speaker at paranormal conferences. He

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Speaker 1: has also written books unrelated to the paranormal, but teaches

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Speaker 1: creative writing at Ohio State University Ohio University. He lives

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Speaker 1: in Cincinnati, Ohio, one of America's most haunted towns. A

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Speaker 1: couple of his books include ghost Hunters and then Shapeshifters.

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Speaker 1: John Welcome back. How are you? Thanks, George. It's good

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Speaker 1: to be back. How did John Kachuba get involved in

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Speaker 1: all of this? Well, John Kachuba grew up in an

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Speaker 1: area that was steeped very much in a lot of

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Speaker 1: this ghostly paranormal lore. You know. I grew up in

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Speaker 1: New England, and I couldn't help a walk past some

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Speaker 1: old cemetery almost any town that I lived in. I

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Speaker 1: just really got involved with the story and the folklore

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Speaker 1: and all that, and started thinking, I wonder if there's

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Speaker 1: more to it, and just started investigating and pretty much

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Speaker 1: all my life, although not really writing about it until,

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Speaker 1: you know, maybe the last couple of decades. Wow, a

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Speaker 1: couple decades, so that's a long time. It goes by fast. Then. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: A couple of years ago you wrote an incredible book

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Speaker 1: called shape Shifter's a History. What exactly is a shape shifter? Well,

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Speaker 1: the simple definition is, you know, it's a person that

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Speaker 1: is able to transform himself into into usually an animal,

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Speaker 1: but it could be another person, it could be even

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Speaker 1: an inanimate object. So that that's kind of the general definition.

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Speaker 1: And you know, we find these characters way back in

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Speaker 1: ancient literature, we find them back in cave paintings, and

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Speaker 1: we're talking about them today in terms of real life

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Speaker 1: encounters from some people. Would this be a shape shifter?

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Speaker 1: I knew a person who personality would just change at

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Speaker 1: a whim and become a totally different person. Yeah, well,

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Speaker 1: you know, I think we all know people like that.

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Speaker 1: And when I talk about shape shifters, I frequently classify

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Speaker 1: them into two different ways. I talk about a voluntary

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Speaker 1: shape shifter and an involuntary And what I mean by

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Speaker 1: that is, you know, a voluntary shape shifter is the

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Speaker 1: typical person a shaman, a wizard, some of the ancient gods,

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Speaker 1: like the Greek gods like Zeus, who have some innate

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Speaker 1: power to say, hey, I'm going to just be something

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Speaker 1: different right now, and they can do it. Involuntary ones

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Speaker 1: are those that you know, are frequently under a curse,

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Speaker 1: like I think of some of the fairy tales like

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Speaker 1: Beauty and the Beast, the Prince. It's always a handsome yeah,

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Speaker 1: exactly exactly, so that kind of thing. And I think

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Speaker 1: what happens is, I think there are people that sort

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Speaker 1: of the voluntary the involuntary ones are more or less internal.

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Speaker 1: There's internal and external too. I talk about that as well,

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Speaker 1: and these are people who internal shape shifters are those

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Speaker 1: that don't ever manifest physically into something different, you know,

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Speaker 1: so they don't suddenly grow fangs and hair and howl

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Speaker 1: with the moon at night like a werewolf. Yet there's

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Speaker 1: something inside them that has this sort of I don't

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Speaker 1: want to say split personality because that's a very almost

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Speaker 1: bipolarish right. Yeah. Yeah, and certainly those some of those

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Speaker 1: folks do act out that way. But I'm talking about

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Speaker 1: something a little bit different that we don't really know

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Speaker 1: what it is. But there's an internal personality does not

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Speaker 1: match that exterior. And yeah, we all I think we

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Speaker 1: all know some people like that, and for the most part,

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Speaker 1: I think they're harmless. But every so often you get

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Speaker 1: somebody like like a Ted Bundy, you know what I mean.

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Speaker 1: Everybody talks about Ted Bundy being this clean cut, sort

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Speaker 1: of collegiate guy would help you change a tire, help

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Speaker 1: you bring your groceries into the house, and then became

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Speaker 1: a demon it. Yeah. Yeah, so you know there's that

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Speaker 1: kind of thing going on. Our shape shifters dangerous to

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Speaker 1: themselves as well. That's a good question. You know, I

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Speaker 1: really don't know. I think I think they can be.

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Speaker 1: I think in some of the cases that we hear

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Speaker 1: about from like the sixteenth seventeenth century of Chantherapy, for instance,

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Speaker 1: where people believe that they were turned into wolves. You know,

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Speaker 1: you look at them physically and they weren't. However, they

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Speaker 1: would act out, so they'd be scratching and tearing and growling,

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Speaker 1: and you know, sometimes do harm to themselves as well

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Speaker 1: as other people. So I guess there is that component

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Speaker 1: or could be that component. And it's fascinating now when

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Speaker 1: you were doing your book shape Shift, there's a history.

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Speaker 1: How did you begin to start the research for this?

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Speaker 1: I mean, you don't go door to door going do

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Speaker 1: you have a shape shifter who lives there? Well, you

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Speaker 1: know that you could try that. I'm not sure how

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Speaker 1: far you'd get. You know, people hear my dog barking

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Speaker 1: in the backyard and they think he must have a

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Speaker 1: werewolf there. It's possible, No, I think what I did.

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Speaker 1: First of all, I did a lot of reading, and

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Speaker 1: I did a lot of reading into some very old books.

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Speaker 1: For instance, one that I really found fascinating was called

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Speaker 1: a Treatise on the Apparitions of Spirits and on Vampires

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Speaker 1: or Revenants, And this was written by a Benedictine monk

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Speaker 1: named Augustin Kelmet in seventeen fifty one, and he runs

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Speaker 1: the gamut of almost every kind of paranormal experience one

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Speaker 1: can have with any kind of paranormal entity, but a

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Speaker 1: lot about shape shifters. So I was looking at those

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Speaker 1: kind of old, old manuscripts, and then it's easy to

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Speaker 1: do a research, do a search through newspapers and journals

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Speaker 1: and things like that to look for more recent reportings

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Speaker 1: or sightings. And once I found some of these areas particularly,

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Speaker 1: I did a lot of traveling for shape shifters. I

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Speaker 1: was in Oh my gosh, I was in France, Italy, Portugal, Belarus, Ukraine, Romania,

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Speaker 1: and some countries in Asia, Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand. So I

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Speaker 1: did a lot of traveling for it, to try to

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Speaker 1: go to locations where there were stories or legends about

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Speaker 1: shape shifters and to see what was actually there on

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Speaker 1: the ground. Was there any physical evidence, if you will,

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Speaker 1: or whatever. So I did a lot of research for it.

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Speaker 1: I guess that's the short of it. And do you

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Speaker 1: find John that nowadays more and more people are becoming

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Speaker 1: somewhere and my definition of a shape shifter is not

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Speaker 1: a physical change but a mental change. Do we are

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Speaker 1: we having more and more of those cases? I don't know.

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Speaker 1: I don't know if I can say we have more

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Speaker 1: and more. I think we've always had it, just don't

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Speaker 1: know if it was identifiable. I think maybe it's becoming

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Speaker 1: more identifiable because people are becatting more interested. It's sort

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Speaker 1: of a you know, which comes first. But I think

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Speaker 1: that's what you're sort of saying, is that I think

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Speaker 1: we're I think our knowledge of not just shape shifters,

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Speaker 1: but of paranormal events. Paranormal entities in general is becoming

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Speaker 1: much more widespread, and I think more people are interested

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Speaker 1: in it. So I think we're now maybe able to

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Speaker 1: identify things more more clearly and say, oh, that sounds

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Speaker 1: like a shape shifter episode, or that sounds like that

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Speaker 1: could have been a werewolf sighting or something along those lines.

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Speaker 1: What about Dracula, you mentioned them a little bit, We've

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Speaker 1: mentioned where wolves. Would you call Dracula a pure shape shifter? Well,

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Speaker 1: it depends on which Dracula are talking about. If we're

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Speaker 1: talking about the fictional Dracula, you know, or TV or

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Speaker 1: the movies. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I would say yeah, although

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Speaker 1: he seems too in most of the movies. He seems

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Speaker 1: to restrict himself to the form of a bat, which

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Speaker 1: Braham Stoker does mention. You know, he does have that

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Speaker 1: transformation of Count Dracula into a bat in his novel Dracula.

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Speaker 1: But you know, the real life Dracula, or who we

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Speaker 1: think maybe sort of who Dracula was modeled on, was

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Speaker 1: Vlad the Impaler, you know, a prince in Wallachia in

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Speaker 1: the sixteenth century, in Romania, Transylvania actually particularly and uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, he was not a shape shifter. He was

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Speaker 1: a pretty ruthless prince that executed thousands of people. But

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Speaker 1: I have to say probably not more ruthless or bloodthirsty

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Speaker 1: than most medieval princes of his time. You know, they

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Speaker 1: that's that's how they got things done. And John, what

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Speaker 1: do you mean by biblical shape shifters? Well, it's you know,

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Speaker 1: it's interesting. Um. I came across a guy named Roloff Vandenbroke,

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Speaker 1: who was a professor of history, the history of Christianity

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Speaker 1: at Utrek University in the Netherlands, and he he was

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Speaker 1: in interpreting a Coptic text that was that's held in

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Speaker 1: the Morgan Library. And as he was translating this thing

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Speaker 1: and looking at it, he came across the passage that

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Speaker 1: indicates to him that Jesus may have been a shape shifter.

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Speaker 1: And let me, yeah, I just I have a book

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Speaker 1: in fund me. Let me just read a quick line

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Speaker 1: here and this is from this is his translation he said.

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Speaker 1: Then the Jews said to Judas, how shall we arrest him?

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Speaker 1: And him meaning Jesus, For he does not have a

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Speaker 1: single shape, but his appearance changes. Sometimes he is ruddy,

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Speaker 1: sometimes he is white, sometimes he is red. Sometimes he

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Speaker 1: is wheat colored, sometimes he is pallid like ascetics. Sometimes

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Speaker 1: he is a youth, sometimes an old man. So that's

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Speaker 1: that's an incredible passage. Now, of course that's not in

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Speaker 1: the Bible. That's in a Coptic text that refers to Jesus.

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Speaker 1: But there are other examples in the Bible. The Book

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Speaker 1: of Daniel, the King Nebuca Danizer is basically cursed by

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Speaker 1: God and is turned into some kind of a beast.

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Speaker 1: We don't know what, but they say that he ate

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Speaker 1: the grasses, and he had claws, and he had like fur.

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Speaker 1: It sounds almost like a werewolf. And there's other issues.

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Speaker 1: There's other examples too. You can look at the transfiguration

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Speaker 1: of Jesus where he goes up to a mountain. He

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Speaker 1: has the disciples at the bottom. He goes up as

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Speaker 1: a person, as a man, and something happens to him,

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Speaker 1: some remarkable transformation where he becomes this celestial light being right.

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Speaker 1: He glows as radiance, and the disciples are beside themselves.

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Speaker 1: They don't understand what it is. And he comes back

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Speaker 1: down from the mountain and he's normal again. And the

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Speaker 1: Buddha too, by the way, went through transfigurations at least

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Speaker 1: twice in his life the same kind of thing. So

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Speaker 1: I talk about that as being biblical, because well, it

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Speaker 1: occurs in the Bible. And I had a review. This

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Speaker 1: is interesting, George. They had a review from a Catholic

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Speaker 1: journal that reviewed shape shifters of all things. I don't

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Speaker 1: know how they got that or why they decided to

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Speaker 1: review it. They gave it a pretty decent review until

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Speaker 1: they got to the part about where I said Jesus

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Speaker 1: could have been a shape shifter, and they raised me

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Speaker 1: over the coals. Nuts on that one they raised over

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Speaker 1: the coals. But I have to say, I mean my

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Speaker 1: reply I couldn't actually apply to it. But my reply

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Speaker 1: here is, you know, if you are a Christian, you

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Speaker 1: believe that Jesus is the son of God and is

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Speaker 1: God and is capable of doing all things. He can

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Speaker 1: walk on water, he can raise the dead, he can

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Speaker 1: heal the blind and the lame, etc. Etc. How difficult

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Speaker 1: is it for him to change his appearance? That would

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Speaker 1: seem like a parlor trick in shape shifting doesn't necessarily

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Speaker 1: mean evil or bad, doesn't, No, not at all. And

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Speaker 1: that's the thing. Shape shifters have a connotation because of

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Speaker 1: Overman was a shape shifter. Oh yeah, there you go,

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Speaker 1: exactly he was. And actually that's interesting. There's a lot

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Speaker 1: of sort of you know, Marvel comic heroes that man. Yeah, right,

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Speaker 1: almost any of the superheroes are has some kind of

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Speaker 1: an incognito right as a human, and yet they have

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Speaker 1: these miraculous powers. Look at the Hulk. I mean, this

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Speaker 1: poor guy is just a you know, a normal being

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Speaker 1: and all of a sudden turns into this you know,

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Speaker 1: gigantic green green monster machine. You know, well, you mentioned

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Speaker 1: Ted Bundy, but what about people at work at your office,

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Speaker 1: who you know, come across as hard working, deliberate and stuff,

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Speaker 1: and then at night they you know, jump on their

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Speaker 1: suits and throw them off and go out and have

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Speaker 1: a great party. Well yeah, yeah, and you know is

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Speaker 1: that evil? Yeah? I mean they're having a good time

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Speaker 1: and they're shape shifting, and the shape shifting well, and

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Speaker 1: I think I think this is the key to shape

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Speaker 1: shifting is that I think the term that I Okay,

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Speaker 1: when I use the term of shape shifter, I do

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Speaker 1: use it very badly. I do certainly talk about the

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Speaker 1: classical shape shifters that we're sort of talking about. You

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Speaker 1: even talked about alien shape shifters exactly into the exactly

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Speaker 1: that David kind of things the reptilian alien shape shifters.

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Speaker 1: But I also think that the whole idea of the

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Speaker 1: shape shifter. I think the whole reason why the character

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Speaker 1: of the shape shifter is so appealing to us is

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Speaker 1: because I think all of us sometime in our life say,

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Speaker 1: you know, we say, well, I wish I was stronger,

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Speaker 1: I wish I was better looking, I wish I was smarter,

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Speaker 1: I wish I was you know fill in the blank.

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Speaker 1: We all sort of have that, right, I mean, all

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Speaker 1: of us have some little insecurity in our lives, maybe

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Speaker 1: not all the time, but once in a while, And

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Speaker 1: so I think the shape shifter offers us kind of

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Speaker 1: that a way out. Yeah vicariously right, let me you say, wow,

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Speaker 1: you know I can be Superman? You know, don't we

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Speaker 1: shape shift on Halloween? I just going to say, that's

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Speaker 1: part of Halloween. That's what Halloween is about in a

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Speaker 1: lot of ways, right, I mean, how do you decide

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Speaker 1: on the costume you're going to where there's some psychological

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Speaker 1: process going on in your head that says I want

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Speaker 1: to be super And I have seen people become that costume.

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Speaker 1: When they shape shift, I mean their hope, their personality changes,

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Speaker 1: they're having a good time, but I mean they're into it.

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Speaker 1: It's like it's like an acting role. Yeah, but they

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Speaker 1: do shape shift like that. Well, for part of my research,

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Speaker 1: I went to some of these costplay conventions, you know,

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Speaker 1: and costplay for your audience. They probably do know, but

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Speaker 1: it's short for costume play literally, meaning that you dress

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Speaker 1: up as a character, and you don't just dress up

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Speaker 1: like you say, George. You get into that role. So

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Speaker 1: if the character that you're impersonating speaks with a Scottish accent,

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Speaker 1: well you speak with a Scottish accent some of you know.

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Speaker 1: If that character eats nothing but cheerios every morning, you

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Speaker 1: eat cheerios every morning. I mean, you get into the

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Speaker 1: role just like actors. And I think actors are shape

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Speaker 1: shifters too in some way because they do get into

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Speaker 1: that role. Yeah, the good actors are, yes, right, absolutely absolutely.

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Speaker 1: What got you interested in this and shape shifters particularly, Yeah, Well,

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Speaker 1: I mean because you've been a ghost hunter for years, right,

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Speaker 1: and I'm still you know, I'm still doing the paranormal

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Speaker 1: stuff with the ghosts and everything too. But I think

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Speaker 1: what happened is that I do a lot of public appearances.

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Speaker 1: I do a lot of programs like yours, and so

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Speaker 1: people hear me. And as I was speaking about ghosts

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Speaker 1: and speaking to my audiences frequently, people would relate their

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Speaker 1: ghost stories to me. And sometimes the stories that they

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Speaker 1: would talk about didn't sound like a ghost, like, well,

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Speaker 1: I'm not sure, you know. They would say, well, you know,

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Speaker 1: I saw this figure. I saw a misty figure and

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Speaker 1: then suddenly it was gone and there was something else

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Speaker 1: in its place, or I saw it sort of metamorphosed

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Speaker 1: into something. And so I think, well, I'm hearing a

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Speaker 1: lot about what sounds like shape shifters. So I just

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Speaker 1: started doing some research on their prevalence, on cultures that

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Speaker 1: have shape shifts characters and everything, and the world just

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Speaker 1: opened up in terms of shape shifters. I mean, it

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Speaker 1: was amazing. I don't know how many. I probably have

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Speaker 1: a couple of different hundreds different kinds of shape shifters

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Speaker 1: mentioned in the book, you know, and really a lot

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Speaker 1: of them just mentioned because there are so many. Every culture,

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Speaker 1: every culture in the world seems has some shape shifter

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Speaker 1: character absolutely, and sometimes they're tied to religions, sometimes they're

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Speaker 1: not right right exactly? Have you ever met a human

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Speaker 1: shape shifter? Well, you know, um, that's a good question.

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Speaker 1: I don't know that I've I don't know that i've

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Speaker 1: met one personally, but I know that I've spoken to

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Speaker 1: some or people that have said they have shape shifted.

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Speaker 1: An alcohol will shape shift you. It will, yeah, probably

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Speaker 1: not in a good way. I've seen that happen a lot. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and there's a lot of things that will do that.

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Speaker 1: I just got finished. This is a little bit off

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Speaker 1: the idea to say we'll not off shape shifting, but

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Speaker 1: an explanation perhaps of what happens. I just got finished

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Speaker 1: reading a novel in which the character developed rabies. And

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Speaker 1: you know, rabies is an incredibly awful disease to have

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Speaker 1: if you if symptoms appear before you can get treatment,

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Speaker 1: you're shy, you're in bad shape, you start foaming and

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Speaker 1: everything else. Yeah, and so when you read somebody whose

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Speaker 1: accounts there's something actually called furious rabies furious and what

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Speaker 1: happens is, you know, as you can imagine people that

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Speaker 1: unfortunately suffer from that, they're hyperactive, they hyper salivate, they

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Speaker 1: have agitation sometimes you know, sort of back and forth

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Speaker 1: between being agitated and having some lucidity, but they have delirium,

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Speaker 1: they have a normal behavior, frequently violent hallucinations, confusion. I

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Speaker 1: think that a lot of what we talked about in

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Speaker 1: the past, you know, a couple hundred years ago, as

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Speaker 1: being shapeshifters or being werewolves particularly, could have been people

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Speaker 1: that were affected with rabies. I mean, I think that

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Speaker 1: was you know, there sly was no treatment a couple

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Speaker 1: hundred years ago for rabies. If you got it, you

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Speaker 1: got it, and people didn't understand the nature of that disease.

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Speaker 1: And so was that a shapeshifter you know, I don't know.

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Speaker 1: I mean certainly would seem to be to the average person,

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Speaker 1: you would say, this guy is just transformed into a

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Speaker 1: raving beast, a werewolf. Listen to more Coast to Coast

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Speaker 1: AM every weeknight at one am Eastern, and go to

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Speaker 1: Coast to Coast am dot com for more