Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: And welcome back to Coast to Coast. George Norrey with
Speaker 2: you along with John Kochubo. We're taking calls next hour
Speaker 2: with John. John. How many different types of shape shifters
Speaker 2: are there anyway?
Speaker 3: Oh wow, that's uh. I don't know, George, to be
Speaker 3: honest with you, because my my research showed that there are,
Speaker 3: I mean hundreds of different types. Yeah. As they said before,
Speaker 3: the cultures all around the world, I mean Japan alone.
Speaker 3: You look at Japanese ghost lore and their their stories.
Speaker 3: There's there's scores and scores of shape shifters. Interesting thing
Speaker 3: about Japanese shape shifters there is a lot of them
Speaker 3: are actually shape shifting ghosts, which is kind of a
Speaker 3: different take on it. So the story typically is that
Speaker 3: there might be a woman who is her husband cheated
Speaker 3: on her or whatever, and and you know, he kills her,
Speaker 3: so she's a she's a victim, right, So she's now
Speaker 3: a ghost and she comes back to seek revenge on
Speaker 3: her husband or boyfriend whoever was. But in order to
Speaker 3: do that, she will she's a ghost because she comes
Speaker 3: back and she will shape shift into another person, like
Speaker 3: maybe the guy's new girlfriend, so he thinks he's with her,
Speaker 3: he's actually with his ghost of his wife, first wife,
Speaker 3: who is a shape shifter, and she will kill him.
Speaker 3: So yeah, stories, but yeah, it's it's crazy. So there's
Speaker 3: there's a bunch of Japanese also are very fond of
Speaker 3: having shape shifters that change into inanimate objects. I mean
Speaker 3: things like a mop, you know, like, I'm not sure
Speaker 3: why a shape shift would want to change into a mop,
Speaker 3: but those existing Japanese full for.
Speaker 2: So, do shape shifters generally shift into something physical goal
Speaker 2: or is it animated?
Speaker 3: No, it's it's a physical change. I mean they basically
Speaker 3: become something else in you know, in reality. I mean, like,
Speaker 3: so they actually become an animal. It's not an animation
Speaker 3: or an illusion or anything else. It's an actual transformation.
Speaker 3: At least that's all the stories position it that way.
Speaker 3: Is an actual transformation of one thing into another.
Speaker 2: John, what's the difference between an external and an internal
Speaker 2: shape shifting?
Speaker 3: Yeah, these are terms that I used just for the
Speaker 3: purpose of kind of shorthanding classifications in the book. But
Speaker 3: for an external shape shifter, what I talked about is
Speaker 3: the kind of shape shifter that you can actually see
Speaker 3: a transformation. So I use an example the famous movie
Speaker 3: An American Werewolf in London. You know, and if you
Speaker 3: remember seeing that, the transformation on film of this poor
Speaker 3: guy transforming into a werewolf was phenomenal. But when it
Speaker 3: was done, I mean, there you go. You're looking at
Speaker 3: a werewolf. Now you're not looking at a man anymore.
Speaker 3: So there's actually this physical transformation. So that's an external
Speaker 3: shape shifter. Internal when I was talking about here, we're
Speaker 3: shape shifters that don't actually shift physically as much as
Speaker 3: they do mentally. So what you have it's sort of
Speaker 3: like a you know, a sheep in wolf's clothing in
Speaker 3: a way you don't have You don't see a transformation.
Speaker 3: You don't see a physical change, but there is a change.
Speaker 3: And I use that to explain possibly some people like
Speaker 3: you know, serial killers and people like this who for
Speaker 3: all practical purposes, well okay, think of Ted Bundy for instance.
Speaker 3: Ted Bundy, you know, is this serial killer, but for
Speaker 3: all practical purposes. When you saw him, he was this
Speaker 3: clean cut, sort of collegiate kind of guy, young guy.
Speaker 3: He was helpful, you know, he helped old ladies across
Speaker 3: the street. He helped you put your groceries into a car.
Speaker 3: So for everything that you looked at him, you thought, oh, okay,
Speaker 3: this guy is fine, there's something wrong with him. But
Speaker 3: inside he was this murderous killer. And I consider that
Speaker 3: a shape shifter. You can say, well, there's psychological damage there.
Speaker 3: You know, he was a psycho or whatever. I'm not
Speaker 3: a psychiatrist. I don't know the exact term to use
Speaker 3: for that, but I still think that, in a way
Speaker 3: is shifting. That's something that takes you out of your normal,
Speaker 3: everyday humanity. It makes you something else.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's no doubt about that. Something was wrong with
Speaker 2: Ted Bundy, probably when he was a kid.
Speaker 3: What do you think, John, Yeah, well, I mean when
Speaker 3: you read some of the histories of people like that,
Speaker 3: they certainly come from broken families, they come from being
Speaker 3: abused or whatever. It's kind of rare to hear somebody
Speaker 3: who's fully adapted and has everything in the world becoming
Speaker 3: a serial killer. Not that it doesn't happen, but it's
Speaker 3: not typical. But I got another example though. There's a guy.
Speaker 3: There's a guy here in Ohio named Guy Spinelli, and
Speaker 3: Guy has a there's all kinds of sort of degrees
Speaker 3: and belts in martial arts. He knows like any martial
Speaker 3: art in the world. But he also does a lot
Speaker 3: with things like remote viewing and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: And he's done work with Navy seals, with special Forces.
Speaker 3: He's done work for the government. And I remember talking
Speaker 3: to one of his students who said that he and
Speaker 3: guy were in a bar one time and they were
Speaker 3: just sitting there minding their own business, having a drink,
Speaker 3: and some guy came over. He's the word guy. Guy
Speaker 3: with a small g here came over to the table,
Speaker 3: and he was totally drunk, and he just started, for
Speaker 3: whatever reason, insulting guy. Uh just you know, I don't
Speaker 3: know what it was. But the guy just stood up
Speaker 3: and he looked at the guy and the student. Guys
Speaker 3: student who are sitting at the table, said, I don't
Speaker 3: know what happened. He said, all I know is that
Speaker 3: this this drunk guy was standing there looking at Spinelly,
Speaker 3: and all of a sudden, he said, I saw something
Speaker 3: in guy spinell his face. He said, I don't know
Speaker 3: how to describe it other than I think of a tiger.
Speaker 3: And he said, the drunk just kind of his eyes
Speaker 3: went wide and he just kind of raised his hand.
Speaker 3: He backed off like okay, man, okay, okay, and whoa.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he shape shifted into this whatever, right, and.
Speaker 3: He did it. And see, to me, that's internal because
Speaker 3: again it wasn't like the student described him as like
Speaker 3: a tiger kind of face, but he wasn't a tiger.
Speaker 3: He wasn't looking at a foot blown tiger. But there
Speaker 3: was something in guy's expression in his face that told
Speaker 3: his drunk you don't know what you're dealing with here,
Speaker 3: you know, and I'm going to show it to you
Speaker 3: and to me that again as an example of kind
Speaker 3: of an internal.
Speaker 2: Shape shifter, How did you go about doing the research
Speaker 2: in shape shifting? How do you dig that up?
Speaker 3: Well? I mean the first thing I always do, mainly
Speaker 3: because I'm a writer and a voracious reader, is I
Speaker 3: look at whatever is already written out there. So you know,
Speaker 3: I went through I don't know, scores of books about
Speaker 3: shape shifters, but I went to some really old ones too,
Speaker 3: Like there was a book the title see if I
Speaker 3: remember it's called, It's called treat Us on the Apparitions
Speaker 3: of Spirits and on Vampires are Revenants. It was written
Speaker 3: by a Benedictine monk in seventeen fifty one, and this
Speaker 3: month his name was Augustin Kellman went around Europe, went
Speaker 3: so all the you know, various countries in Europe looking
Speaker 3: for vampires and ghosts and writing love and sort of
Speaker 3: this encyclopedia. So he had shape shifters and that was
Speaker 3: a good place to start there for Europe. But I
Speaker 3: also traveled extensively, and I was in France, I was
Speaker 3: in Portugal, Italy, Romania, Belarus, Ukraine, just doing research on
Speaker 3: shape shifters and you know, especially ones that were sort
Speaker 3: of known for that site. So, for instance, in France,
Speaker 3: I spent a lot of time in the countryside that
Speaker 3: was ravaged by what they called the Beasts of Jevadome
Speaker 3: in the eighteenth century, which was this huge, feral kind
Speaker 3: of animal they said, kind of like a wolf that
Speaker 3: basically massacred are killed over one hundred people in the
Speaker 3: course of a couple of years throughout France. So I
Speaker 3: did that kind of research on the you know, on
Speaker 3: the ground wherever I could, at the locations where things
Speaker 3: were occurring, and that was fun doing that.
Speaker 2: Dracula was originated from a real person called the Impaler yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so Ram Stoker, you know, who wrote the novel Dracula,
Speaker 3: never set foot in Romania, but he it seems like
Speaker 3: he modeled his vampire perhaps on Vlood of Vlod the second.
Speaker 3: And he was known as the impaler because that was
Speaker 3: his particular method of killing prisoners of war or people
Speaker 3: he just didn't like. He would impale them on a post,
Speaker 3: which was not a good way to go. But so
Speaker 3: the last name, the family name dropped pool. It translates
Speaker 3: into Romanian roughly to devil. So here you have led
Speaker 3: the devil, right, that is where it comes down to.
Speaker 3: But he was pretty ruthless, and he was kind of
Speaker 3: blood thirsty, ruthless kind of medieval ruler in the fifteenth century,
Speaker 3: although probably no more than the other medievals who were
Speaker 3: also pretty blood thirsty as well. But he had his reputation,
Speaker 3: as I say, for impaling people and because of his
Speaker 3: his ferocity, I guess I would say, and his sadism.
Speaker 3: There were stories about him later on after his death
Speaker 3: that perhaps he had been a vampire, and I think
Speaker 3: that's where you know, Stoker kind of went off on
Speaker 3: that and used those stories about him as a model
Speaker 3: for his count Dracula. But when I was in Romania,
Speaker 3: I went to the sites where that were historically associated
Speaker 3: with flood, so like the home that he was born in.
Speaker 3: I went to one of his old palaces, which is
Speaker 3: now just ruined. I went to actually supposedly his burial site,
Speaker 3: which was on a little church, little tiny church on
Speaker 3: an island, and he went out to buy a clauseway.
Speaker 3: The interesting thing there actually on my website there's some
Speaker 3: pictures of me standing by their grave and people can
Speaker 3: see it. But so the grave is just this slab,
Speaker 3: a long slab or rectangular slab of stone in the
Speaker 3: floor of the church. In the nineteen thirties, some anthropologists
Speaker 3: opened the grave and I'm not sure exactly what they
Speaker 3: were looking for, but what they found was that it
Speaker 3: was empty, and that was supposed to be where Vlood
Speaker 3: was buried. So now we have to wonder is he
Speaker 3: really a vampire and is he out of his grave
Speaker 3: someplace and somewhere else. So I don't know all kinds
Speaker 3: of speculation on that story.
Speaker 2: Now, there are a lot of people who portray themselves
Speaker 2: as real life vampires. I've interviewed many. But do you
Speaker 2: think the shape shifting into vampirism is real.
Speaker 3: I don't know about shape shifting into vampire, but you know,
Speaker 3: to your point, there are there are communities of people
Speaker 3: that call themselves sanguinarians who ingest human blood. They say
Speaker 3: they need that to live on and they get that blood.
Speaker 3: They don't get it by biting people in the neck
Speaker 3: in the middle of the night, but they do get
Speaker 3: it by donors, just as if you're giving blood. They
Speaker 3: screen people and they do it medically hygienic ways. But
Speaker 3: there are people that maintain they need human blood to survive.
Speaker 3: So you know, they don't respond well if you call
Speaker 3: them vampires, but they fit that mode. But they're sanguinarians.
Speaker 3: So yeah, there are communities.
Speaker 2: Like that, John Bidlook they speaking. Does the Bible talk
Speaker 2: about shape shifting?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 3: That was an interesting thing that I found. There was
Speaker 3: a theologian out of the University of Utrek in the
Speaker 3: Netherlands name his last name is Vonderbrock. I forgot what
Speaker 3: his first name was, but he was translating an ancient
Speaker 3: Coptic text that was in the Morgan Library in New
Speaker 3: York and it has to do with the passage in
Speaker 3: the Bible and the New Testament where Judas is going
Speaker 3: to betray Jesus and he gets this set up and
Speaker 3: they say to him, well, he says, well, how will
Speaker 3: I know him? Because in definitions, because you know, he's
Speaker 3: a different kind of person. Well, the translation in this
Speaker 3: Coptic text, according to this theologian says literally, and I'm
Speaker 3: going to paraphrase it because they don't have the actual
Speaker 3: words in front of me. But he says, the confusion
Speaker 3: was that Judas would not that the people who are
Speaker 3: going to rest Jesus would need some kind of a
Speaker 3: sign or some kind of a way of identifying him,
Speaker 3: because he appears differently to different people. And the text
Speaker 3: says that sometimes he appears ruddy, meaning kind of you know,
Speaker 3: with like a reddish complexion. Sometimes they say he appears
Speaker 3: wheat colored, which would be kind of light, They say old, young.
Speaker 3: So what is this? Why why would this text say
Speaker 3: those various things? I mean, those could just be metaphors,
Speaker 3: I suppose for saying that, well, Jesus appealed to a
Speaker 3: lot of people, so they saw in quotes, saw him
Speaker 3: differently or did it actually mean that he that he
Speaker 3: had the ability that he did appear to people differently
Speaker 3: depending on his audience and who he's speaking to and
Speaker 3: who who did he need to look like to maybe
Speaker 3: get his words across, his message across.
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