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Speaker 1: Fellow conspiracy realist. Have you ever found yourself in a

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Speaker 1: situation where stuff is flying around? You got an irritated

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Speaker 1: teenage teenager person in your household, and you think, what

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Speaker 1: can I do? How can I learn about this?

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Speaker 2: Well?

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Speaker 1: Call us right to us conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.

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Speaker 1: This is our classic episode. We are telling you that

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Speaker 1: we can help you separate the fact from fiction regarding Poultergeist.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, are there spooky clowns looking under your bed? Are

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Speaker 3: the shares and furniture inexplicably stacking themselves upon? We're talking

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Speaker 3: about the plot of the movie Poltergeist. Boy boy, what

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Speaker 3: a cool movie apparently ghost directed by Steven Spielberg.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, who ghost exactly?

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Speaker 1: You can tell?

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Speaker 2: You could tell.

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Speaker 1: We know that not everybody uses the name Poultergeist, but

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Speaker 1: legends of these invisible.

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Speaker 2: Super just like irritated creatures.

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Speaker 1: Uh, it occurs in numerous civilizations.

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Speaker 2: Like the Gremlins of the ghost world.

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Speaker 1: I mean, they're just so agitated, you know what I mean? Like,

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Speaker 1: what does a poltergeist have in a good day? Why

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Speaker 1: you have the power of telekinesis and you're not just gonna,

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Speaker 1: you know, save someone from dropping a glass or you're

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Speaker 1: not gonna You're gonna glass.

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Speaker 2: I want to watch the world burn.

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Speaker 1: Why are you helping people walk uphill in the snow?

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Speaker 2: Both ways?

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Speaker 1: Uh?

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Speaker 4: You know what, guys, I need to understand the nature

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Speaker 4: of Poltergeist is better.

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Speaker 2: Is there a way we could do that? I think

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Speaker 2: we all do.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Gosh, going back to our going back to our

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Speaker 1: hopefully endearing uh Ghostbusters esque called lights set up. Uh.

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Speaker 1: This is our classic episode on Poltergeist. Fact and fiction,

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Speaker 1: from UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is

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Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or

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Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know.

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Speaker 2: A production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 4: Hello, welcome back to the show.

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Speaker 2: My name is Matt, my name is Nolah.

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Speaker 1: They call me Ben. We are joined as always with

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Speaker 1: our super producer Paul, Mission control decand most importantly, you

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Speaker 1: are you. You are here and that makes this stuff

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Speaker 1: they don't want you to know. If you are watching

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Speaker 1: this on video, please pay no attention to the skeletons

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Speaker 1: slowly getting closer and closer to the camera on my end.

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Speaker 1: We've decided to just let that one ride. Surely nothing

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Speaker 1: weird will happen, but speaking of weird things, today's question

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Speaker 1: are you one of the people who's heard an inexplicable

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Speaker 1: bump in the night? You felt a sharp thump or

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Speaker 1: a pinch against your back, only to turn around and

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Speaker 1: find the room behind you is empty. For people who

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Speaker 1: believe in ghost or for any fan of horror movies

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Speaker 1: in general, today's subject will be familiar. We are exploring

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Speaker 1: the concept known as the Poltergeist, so here are the facts.

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Speaker 1: For a lot of us in the West, the term

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Speaker 1: Poultergeist is most often associated with a fictional film with

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Speaker 1: the same name, Poltergeist. In that film, there's a normal,

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Speaker 1: everyday family in California with the unfortunate surname of Freeling.

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Speaker 1: The Freeling family, they write, it's I don't know it's

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Speaker 1: a good script, but they fall victim to a malevolent

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Speaker 1: spirit or spirits that at first seem playful and friendly.

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Speaker 1: They communicate with the kids through a television screen, but eventually,

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Speaker 1: of course, they turned sinister. The youngest daughter of the

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Speaker 1: household disappears. This prompts her parents increasingly desperate to seek

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Speaker 1: help from a parapsychologist and an exorcist. And you know,

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Speaker 1: without debating whether or not Poltergeist is a horror film

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Speaker 1: instead of a horror themed family film. It's only rated PG.

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Speaker 1: By the way we can say this is this is

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Speaker 1: probably one of the things that people most associate the

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Speaker 1: idea of poltergeist activity with.

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Speaker 3: Ye wasn't there a line about a poultergeist in the

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Speaker 3: first Ghostbusters movie?

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Speaker 2: Doesn't he equate one of the one of the ghost

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Speaker 2: sightings to being a poltergeist.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's correct, And we also see poultergeist activity in Ghostbusters.

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Speaker 1: Remember in the library, books are flying off the shelves, right,

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Speaker 1: So that's a hallmark of what is often portrayed as

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Speaker 1: poultergeist activity. It's weird because all the stuff we call

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Speaker 1: poultergeist activity is a real thing in that there are

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Speaker 1: numerous cases of purported activity throughout history, so there are

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Speaker 1: real reports. The question is what exactly are people reporting?

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Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly. And by the way, Poltergeist too is the

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Speaker 4: one that gave me nightmares as a kid. So if

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Speaker 4: you're in the mood for a movie that might actually

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Speaker 4: scare you, I'd recommend that one.

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Speaker 2: I'll tell you what gave me nightmares.

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Speaker 3: That lady with the really creepy little baby voice. Was

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Speaker 3: she the Exorcist through the parapsychologist.

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Speaker 2: I care about.

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Speaker 4: This house is.

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Speaker 2: Very Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I think she's probably one of the most captivating parts

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Speaker 1: of that. And Matt is Poltergeist too. Is that the

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Speaker 1: one with the scene of the evil animated braces?

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Speaker 4: That's I believe, Maybe I'm incorrect, I believe that's the one,

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Speaker 4: and the one with the meat. There's like some scene

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Speaker 4: with meat that I remember watching in my cousin's house,

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Speaker 4: and from then on it was it was overly. I

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Speaker 4: couldn't look at steak the same way.

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Speaker 3: I have a real soft spot in my heart for

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Speaker 3: stop motion meat. There's a great stop motion meat scene

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Speaker 3: in that Peter Jackson movie Dead Alive I'm also known

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Speaker 3: as brain Dead. There's like a piece of meat that's

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Speaker 3: like kind of an adorable There's a part where it's

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Speaker 3: looking at itself in the mirror and like preening, like, oh,

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Speaker 3: look at me, I'm a beautiful piece of meat. And

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Speaker 3: then there's also obviously the films of Jan Swankmeyer. He

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Speaker 3: animates meat a lot as well, so I actually find

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Speaker 3: that stuff delightful. I haven't seen part two, though, I

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Speaker 3: have to check it out. I just remember the creepy

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Speaker 3: clown from one.

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Speaker 2: We have a speaking of meat.

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Speaker 1: We have an artist in our audience who does these

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Speaker 1: like photo realistic paintings of meat. I've got to actually

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Speaker 1: I have one of those hanging up in the house.

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Speaker 1: I'll put it up here when I get this set together.

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Speaker 1: But with Bolter guys, I think we can agree. One

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Speaker 1: of the other really compelling characters.

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Speaker 2: Is the villain.

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Speaker 1: No spoilers, but he's he's a really creepy guy who walks.

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Speaker 1: I remember being a kid and really catching his vibe

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Speaker 1: when he goes to the doors of houses and he's like, oh,

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Speaker 1: well goomh oh they're well goom. You guys may remember that.

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Speaker 1: But they didn't make up. The point of this is

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Speaker 1: they didn't make up all the stuff that happens just

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Speaker 1: in a brainstorming session in the writer's room. They were

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Speaker 1: taking accounts of things that have been reported as real

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Speaker 1: life events. And they didn't make up the word poultergeist either.

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Speaker 1: It comes from the German language. It's a it's a

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Speaker 1: combination of two words poultering making sound to rumble and

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Speaker 1: geist ghost or spirit. So it's not a huge plot

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Speaker 1: twist that we would call a noisy spirit of Poultergeist,

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Speaker 1: especially if we were German.

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Speaker 4: The phrase does go back a long time, right, eighteen hundreds,

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Speaker 4: I believe in Germany eighteen thirty eight something around then.

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Speaker 4: But it's not just Germany. That wasn't the only place.

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Speaker 4: Just because they came up with the name doesn't mean

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Speaker 4: they're the only ones experiencing something like this. In a

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Speaker 4: lot of places, there are other invisible entities that aren't

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Speaker 4: necessarily spirits or ghosts, that have the power to in

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Speaker 4: some way manifest in the corporeal world move things, push people,

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Speaker 4: interact with us and objects. It really there's a wealth

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Speaker 4: of historical tales, even if it's even if they're not true,

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Speaker 4: or perhaps you don't believe that they are true stories.

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Speaker 4: There are so many tales throughout time about this kind

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Speaker 4: of activity.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, collectively known as ghost lore instead of folklore sometimes,

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Speaker 1: which I think is just chef's kiss. So to your point, Matt,

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Speaker 1: there might be cases in mary Old England that were

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Speaker 1: blamed on a bogart instead of a poltergeist, but if

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Speaker 1: you look at what's happening or what's being reported to

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Speaker 1: have happened, the activities are very much the same. That

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Speaker 1: means that a lot of people throughout time and throughout

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Speaker 1: the geography of the world have been reporting similar things

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Speaker 1: under a different name. So the term poltergeist is an

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Speaker 1: umbrella label that we're using to describe any number of things.

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Speaker 1: And for the true believers, a poultergeist can be best

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Speaker 1: understood as sort of a genre of a ghost, a

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Speaker 1: type of entity or spirit, or it can also be

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Speaker 1: understood as just that set of activities or abilities attributed

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Speaker 1: to these.

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Speaker 2: Kinds of things.

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Speaker 3: I mean, if you wanted to assign like a personality

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Speaker 3: to a poltergeist, it's kind of the gremlin of the

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Speaker 3: ghost world, right, because it's like, you know, it's activities

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Speaker 3: can range from the mischievous, like we said in Poltergeist

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Speaker 3: the movie, where it's like stacking chairs or you know,

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Speaker 3: making books flutter around like in Ghostbusters, or a little

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Speaker 3: bit more devious, but they're not your exorcist level demonic power,

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Speaker 3: you know what I mean. They tend to be a

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Speaker 3: little more innocuous. But when we have examples where things

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Speaker 3: go a little.

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Speaker 2: Further than that.

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Speaker 3: So it is a genre, like you said, kind of

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Speaker 3: a wide swath of ghostly attributes.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, and we did talk about how generally whatever this

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Speaker 4: entity is purported to be, it is invisible to most observers, now,

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Speaker 4: if not all observers. It's just it's either invisible or

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Speaker 4: mostly invisible, and you might.

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Speaker 1: Hear it speak in some cases, usually just say some

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Speaker 1: like cryptic, epic, threatening stuff. Very rarely to say like hey, sorry,

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Speaker 1: I didn't know that was the good china.

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Speaker 2: That I busted.

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Speaker 1: But we see in the cases where we see poltergeys

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Speaker 1: specifically portrayed or described as entities, we also see several

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Speaker 1: common threads. First, the big one, the one we've already

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Speaker 1: talked about a little bit, the movement of objects by

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Speaker 1: some undetermined means. Cutlery flying through the air, yeah, falling

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Speaker 1: out of the hutch, furniture being overturned, books zooming off shelves, mirrors,

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Speaker 1: cracking windows, doors slamming open then shut. Psychokinesis maybe, but

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Speaker 1: the best way to describe it right now in the

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Speaker 1: episode is movement of objects by undetermined means. That's the

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Speaker 1: first thread. But there are two other really big ones, right.

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Speaker 3: I mean, we often see these events centered around a person,

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Speaker 3: a haunted individual that is being visited by this you know,

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Speaker 3: somewhat malevolent spirit and often but not always it's an

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Speaker 3: adolescent girl, which is interesting.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, and we'll probably talk about this later in the episode.

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Speaker 4: But the concept of puberty and in the female body

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Speaker 4: specifically appears to be something that has been looked at before,

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Speaker 4: like through actual SCIENTI means it feels a little sketchy,

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Speaker 4: but well, we'll talk about it a little later.

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Speaker 1: It's dodgy for sure, Yes, and that's that's part of

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Speaker 1: our exploration today. Hinges on that aspect because it is

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Speaker 1: relatively unusual in the world of ghost lore to have

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Speaker 1: a specific person being haunted fitting that like, because of

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Speaker 1: that demographic there's a question of causation that's tremendously important.

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Speaker 1: The third big thread in this ghost lore is that

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Speaker 1: the poltergeist usually isn't just messing around. It has an aim,

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Speaker 1: a motivation, a cause. In the fictional film Poultergeist promised

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Speaker 1: last time, Last time, we'll bring it up, the antagonistic spirit,

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Speaker 1: the oh They're welcome, Oh They're welcome, character wants to

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Speaker 1: kidnap the youngest daughter of the again unfortunately named Freeling

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Speaker 1: family because it will be able to gain power by

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Speaker 1: consuming her light. And this is heavily implied to be

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Speaker 1: something innate to her, possibly at this time in her life,

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Speaker 1: although she's younger.

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Speaker 2: She's like eight years old.

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Speaker 1: It's heavily implied that it might also be like some

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Speaker 1: kind of shining esque nascent psychic powers. There's something special

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Speaker 1: about her. But with those three common threats, with the

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Speaker 1: idea of telekinesis, psychokinesis or moving objects, the idea of

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Speaker 1: a certain type of person being haunted, the idea of

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Speaker 1: the ghost or spirit or entity having an aim, we

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Speaker 1: can see examples of poltergeist, or i should say, examples

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Speaker 1: of poltergeist stories reported as fact throughout history. Like we

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Speaker 1: could there is probably a podcast that examines each one

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Speaker 1: of these in the Cannon, and that podcast could be

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Speaker 1: entirely dedicated to it. But we want to give you

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Speaker 1: a few examples of Poltergeis's stories. Some you may have

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Speaker 1: heard of before, some you may have not.

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Speaker 4: That's great, And we can start out with a haunting,

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Speaker 4: a purported haunting that occurred in Tennessee. It's known as

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Speaker 4: the Bell Witch of Tennessee. Now it's quite old. It's

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Speaker 4: quite a bit older than a lot of the ones

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Speaker 4: will be talking about. This one originates in the eighteen hundreds,

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Speaker 4: between eighteen seventeen and eighteen twenty one. And here's the

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Speaker 4: gist of the story. There's a family there in Tennessee.

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Speaker 4: The father or the head of the household, his name

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Speaker 4: is John Bell Senior, and the entire house, everybody living

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Speaker 4: in it begins to experience strange stuff. There's some entity

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Speaker 4: that they think is an entity at least DA has

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Speaker 4: the ability to speak to them, like directly to them

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Speaker 4: while they're in the house that is not a member

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Speaker 4: of the family, just somebody else, some disjointed voice that

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Speaker 4: talks to them. And it's also able to do things

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Speaker 4: that we've described earlier in a lot of these commonalities.

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Speaker 4: It's moving things, it's throwing things, it's able to affect

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Speaker 4: the physical environment, and it's able to they think, shape

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Speaker 4: shift into other things that they will then see maybe

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Speaker 4: around the house, maybe even within the house. But they

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Speaker 4: are attributing all of these sightings to the same, one thing,

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Speaker 4: the same entity.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and this, this story is one of the most

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Speaker 1: famous accounts of poltergeist activity in the US. You have

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Speaker 1: probably heard something about it. You've probably also, perhaps unknowingly

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Speaker 1: seen some piece of fiction based on this. The verdict

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Speaker 1: here that to organize these by time place just verdict.

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Speaker 1: So the verdict here is that there is a huge

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Speaker 1: problem with any research into this story. The huge problem

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Speaker 1: is this the first printed account, called the Authenticated History

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Speaker 1: of the Bell which was published in eighteen ninety four.

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Speaker 1: That's seventy five years after these events occurred. And for

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Speaker 1: this reason, the Authenticated History of the Bell Witch is

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Speaker 1: often treated as a work of historical fiction. Our modern

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Speaker 1: understanding of whatever the facts may be, is inevitably tainted

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Speaker 1: by all the embellishments that occurred, you know, in the

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Speaker 1: almost centuries worth of time before something happened and after

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Speaker 1: it got written.

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Speaker 4: About, and not I mean taking account all the embellishments

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Speaker 4: that have occurred since it was published in twenty twenty,

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Speaker 4: because there are videos you can find videos online right now,

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Speaker 4: pretty recent videos that claim a lot of things about

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Speaker 4: the Bellwish.

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Speaker 2: And there's an.

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Speaker 1: Important part of time here too. When we talk about

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Speaker 1: our observations, you'll notice that there's a sort of glory

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Speaker 1: days of poltergeist reporting, and it drops off around the

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Speaker 1: time that we entered into the glory days of the

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Speaker 1: technological revolution. So our when we hear stories about the belt,

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Speaker 1: which even if we go the closest primary source we

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Speaker 1: can find. We're still almost a century away from what happened,

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Speaker 1: so it's just very difficult to know what is true

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Speaker 1: what is not. So that's one example, and we're not

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Speaker 1: saying nothing weird happened. We're saying it is almost impossible

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Speaker 1: to figure out out of the things that are reported,

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Speaker 1: which are factual, in which are later rumors people added

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Speaker 1: because it made them sound cool at the general store

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Speaker 1: or at the local saloon.

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Speaker 3: Next, we have what's collectively referred to as the Great

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Speaker 3: Amherst Mystery that took place in Nova Scotia, Canada. As

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Speaker 3: another Canadian, pretty famous Canadian poultergeist story called the chill

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Speaker 3: Wack Poultergeist. I only say that because I did a

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Speaker 3: podcast about this part of Canada once and I pronounced

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Speaker 3: it chili whack and I got yelled at, so chill whack.

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Speaker 3: This one, though, is in Nova Scotia, Canada that took

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Speaker 3: place between eighteen seventy eight and eighteen seventy nine. An

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Speaker 3: eighteen year old female by the name of esther Cox

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Speaker 3: lived with her sister's family and was the victim of

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Speaker 3: an attempted sexual assault shortly after that took place there

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Speaker 3: came a series of knocks, bangs, rustles, and all sorts

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Speaker 3: of other again, like these noises that associated the whole

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Speaker 3: idea of the ghost what is it the noisy ghost

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Speaker 3: or the ghost clang as the name translates to in German.

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Speaker 3: These noises were plaguing the household, keeping people up all night.

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Speaker 3: Esther started having seizures. Parts of her bodies would swell,

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Speaker 3: and this is kind of the escalation we're talking about.

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Speaker 3: She was simultaneously feverish and then would get chills at

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Speaker 3: various different times, and objects in the house would appear

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Speaker 3: to fly around of their own volition, and visitors came

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Speaker 3: over the next few months. They left with the pretty

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Speaker 3: serious impression that this was actually happening, that there was

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Speaker 3: a poltergeist worker. This would have been a phenomenon that

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Speaker 3: would have been familiar to folks in those days because

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Speaker 3: of that lore and things like the bell witch.

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Speaker 1: And a lot of contemporaneous investigators believed this to be

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Speaker 1: a series of supernatural events, but there are later things

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Speaker 1: in the chronology that prove this might not be the

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Speaker 1: case entirely. For a time, Esther Cox fell ill with

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Speaker 1: diphtheria and which was confined to her bed for about

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Speaker 1: two weeks. I believe the activity ceased entirely. This is

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Speaker 1: one of the reasons that later investigators like Walter F.

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Speaker 1: Prince in nineteen nineteen built a pretty compelling case for trickery.

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Speaker 2: On the part of Esther Cox.

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Speaker 1: However, he was quick to say he thought this occurred

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Speaker 1: while in a disassociative state, so that would mean that

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Speaker 1: Cox herself was not like actively trying to make things worse.

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Speaker 1: And she got locked up for arson later in life.

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Speaker 1: She only served one month out of four, and when

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Speaker 1: she came back after that month in prison, the events

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Speaker 1: ceased entirely. She got married twice, she lived a normal

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Speaker 1: life until passing away at the age of fifty two.

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Speaker 1: So there are weird things that happened in her life

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Speaker 1: that seemed to coincide with drop offs in the ghost activity.

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Speaker 1: It was also not activity during that month she was

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Speaker 1: in prison.

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Speaker 3: Interesting if you blast a little bit later in history,

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Speaker 3: in nineteen sixty seven, you've got another one that has

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Speaker 3: some similar hallmarks. In a lawyer's office in Rosenheim, Germany,

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Speaker 3: there were a very similar series of occurrences that revolved

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Speaker 3: around a nineteen year old secretary named Anne Marie Schaubbery,

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Speaker 3: things like lights flickering and paintings, you know, going crooked

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Speaker 3: and falling off the walls, and you know, when the

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Speaker 3: fluorescent tubes were unscrewed, there would be like massive arcs,

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Speaker 3: electrical spikes and furniture moving things like that. And it

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Speaker 3: was investigated, and they called in physicists and parapsychologists by

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Speaker 3: the name of Hans Bender, and he investigated and couldn't

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Speaker 3: figure it out. But it was kind of believed pretty

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Speaker 3: widely that this was a hoax. There were apparently hidden

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Speaker 3: nylon threads found and a similar to the previous story

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Speaker 3: Ben the incidents stopped when the secretary left the employee

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Speaker 3: of the firm in nineteen sixty eight.

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Speaker 4: It's weird because if you believe that something is actually happening,

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Speaker 4: the leaving of somebody or the removing of someone from

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Speaker 4: a situation may make you believe or may make you

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Speaker 4: think that the haunting is attached to that person. So

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Speaker 4: when they leave, no more haunting.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, but poltergeist haunts a person, not a place, right,

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Speaker 1: that's one of the assumptions.

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Speaker 4: But if you're skeptical, well, obviously it's stopped when that

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Speaker 4: person is gone, similar to a crime being committed or

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Speaker 4: something like a serial killer being caught. Once you put

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Speaker 4: away that person, there's no more killings.

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Speaker 3: It is problematic though, because you know, a lot of

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Speaker 3: the kind of debunking of these things revolve around, you

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Speaker 3: know what, kids like attention and kids like to you know,

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Speaker 3: maybe some with a little bit more of a sociopathic

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Speaker 3: desire for attention could possibly go to some great lengths

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Speaker 3: to say look at me, you know, and get that

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Speaker 3: desired attention. And so but it's interesting because because it's

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Speaker 3: a revolved on a person, when that person leaves, it

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Speaker 3: goes away, and so it's very easy to kind of

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Speaker 3: like get those things mashed up together, you know, which

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Speaker 3: which is it?

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Speaker 4: Well, And there's also there's something to talk about here

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Speaker 4: about the length of time of a haunting, how long

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Speaker 4: some thing actually lasts, because we've seen here already in

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Speaker 4: what we've been talking about that these can go on

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Speaker 4: for years or in the case of the events that

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Speaker 4: Noel you already mentioned here earlier, the Chiliwac poltergeist in Canada,

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Speaker 4: it only went on for I think two months, right.

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Speaker 3: And that's another thing that's associated with these poltergeist occurrences.

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Speaker 3: They're typically pretty short.

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Speaker 2: They're not years.

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Speaker 3: They're usually you know, three or four months, maybe five

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Speaker 3: months max, which still seems like an awful long time

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Speaker 3: to be tortured by a restless spirit. But yeah, this

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Speaker 3: was from I think two months between fifty one and

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Speaker 3: fifty two, and it's just the same kind of stuff,

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Speaker 3: loud sounds, bangings on the wall, flying objects and the like.

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Speaker 3: And then there's another case around the same time, the

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Speaker 3: Brother Dolly case where you had stains, which is a

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Speaker 3: new one, carvings of images and words in Welsh language

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Speaker 3: of a religious nature to your point bend of that

398
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Speaker 3: cryptic kind of religious language. And this one took place

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Speaker 3: for multiple years.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, So these commonalities should not be considered hard constraints.

402
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Speaker 1: They are always going to be things that occur on

403
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Speaker 1: the edges. Again, there are many examples. One thing I

404
00:24:17,720 --> 00:24:21,200
Speaker 1: love about them is they're odd, fascinating names. The marketing

405
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Speaker 1: is wonderful. You've got the Drummer of Tedworth, the Black

406
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Speaker 1: Monk of Pontrafract, and the Seaford Poltergeist.

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Speaker 2: And so on and so on.

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Speaker 1: But I want to I want to explore that one

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Speaker 1: common thread that I was saving till now, which is

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Speaker 1: simply put kids crave attention. So many parents in our

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Speaker 1: audience today likely recognize this idea. Kids want attention right

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Speaker 1: Sometimes they'll do weird things. Sometimes they'll do things they

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Speaker 1: know they're not supposed to do. Sometimes they'll do pranks,

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Speaker 1: even inappropriate behavior, to get some eyes on them.

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Speaker 4: Just so you know, my son, while we were recording

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Speaker 4: this has been he's coming like three times. You probably

417
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Speaker 4: haven't seen it or heard it, hopefully because Paul is

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Speaker 4: doing his job very very well. But by like the

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Speaker 4: Ben and Dole have probably seen him come in and

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Speaker 4: I'm having to mute and look at him. And it's

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Speaker 4: just because he needs attention right now and he knows

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Speaker 4: that I'm doing anything.

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Speaker 1: And he's great at it though, like he's he's he's

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Speaker 1: a charm.

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Speaker 2: He's attention ninja. I love it well.

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Speaker 3: Also earlier though, like there was like this very ghostly

427
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Speaker 3: plaintiff little piano line.

428
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Speaker 2: Wafting in the background. I'm like, what is what is

429
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Speaker 2: this ghostly piano? Like that's that's that's the boy.

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Speaker 3: Dad's recording, damn you.

431
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Speaker 1: I think I think he plays piano pretty well too.

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Speaker 2: It was awesome, Just just to point that out nine

433
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Speaker 2: inch nails or something. It was super spooky.

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Speaker 1: So this idea, right, which is something clearly we in

435
00:25:49,920 --> 00:25:52,919
Speaker 1: the show can identify with and clearly something you listening

436
00:25:53,000 --> 00:25:56,320
Speaker 1: can identify with. This This is a common thing, and

437
00:25:56,440 --> 00:26:00,480
Speaker 1: it's part of the reason that more skeptical investigators, people

438
00:26:00,600 --> 00:26:05,440
Speaker 1: like Joe Nickel with two L's, will argue that poltergeist

439
00:26:05,520 --> 00:26:09,439
Speaker 1: activities are typically caused by what he describes as an

440
00:26:09,520 --> 00:26:13,840
Speaker 1: individual motivated to cause mischief. So there is someone haunting

441
00:26:13,880 --> 00:26:16,959
Speaker 1: the house and throwing things, and they do have a mission,

442
00:26:17,520 --> 00:26:20,760
Speaker 1: and they just happened to be human rather than other worlds.

443
00:26:21,840 --> 00:26:24,919
Speaker 1: He notes that just something Matt, you and I were

444
00:26:24,920 --> 00:26:28,000
Speaker 1: talking about off air. He notes that a lot of

445
00:26:28,119 --> 00:26:31,879
Speaker 1: these seemingly telekinetic events when you look at the facts

446
00:26:31,920 --> 00:26:34,080
Speaker 1: of the case, the placement of the people and the things,

447
00:26:34,520 --> 00:26:37,159
Speaker 1: a lot of these things are events that could easily

448
00:26:37,200 --> 00:26:40,200
Speaker 1: be accomplished by a kid who's out to like plague.

449
00:26:40,280 --> 00:26:44,160
Speaker 1: There's somewhat gullible parents, and then of course when things

450
00:26:44,200 --> 00:26:49,320
Speaker 1: are told and retold and embellished, maybe maybe there's some

451
00:26:49,440 --> 00:26:52,200
Speaker 1: parents or people in authority who don't want to say, well,

452
00:26:52,240 --> 00:26:54,760
Speaker 1: it turned out my nine year old had figured out

453
00:26:54,880 --> 00:26:58,080
Speaker 1: like a pretty clever way to spook the shit out

454
00:26:58,119 --> 00:27:01,400
Speaker 1: of me by knocking on, you know, the upstairs bathroom

455
00:27:01,480 --> 00:27:05,400
Speaker 1: floor at three in the morning, and then we so instead,

456
00:27:05,440 --> 00:27:07,800
Speaker 1: I'm going to embellish it, and I'm gonna say, you know,

457
00:27:08,080 --> 00:27:10,560
Speaker 1: it went away when I prayed, not when my kid

458
00:27:10,680 --> 00:27:14,800
Speaker 1: went back to their grandparents for the summer. And that's

459
00:27:14,840 --> 00:27:18,040
Speaker 1: how you end up with strange stories of like Andrew

460
00:27:18,160 --> 00:27:22,159
Speaker 1: Jackson visiting the bell Witch before he became president. It's

461
00:27:22,200 --> 00:27:24,880
Speaker 1: a great yard, it's also completely untrue.

462
00:27:25,520 --> 00:27:27,720
Speaker 2: So that's why we.

463
00:27:29,240 --> 00:27:32,359
Speaker 1: See this idea now in less less anybody think that

464
00:27:32,440 --> 00:27:37,879
Speaker 1: we're being discriminatory against children who were obviously awesome. We

465
00:27:38,359 --> 00:27:43,280
Speaker 1: have to note that in numerous cases, numerous, numerous, numerous cases,

466
00:27:44,040 --> 00:27:50,320
Speaker 1: competent investigators found activity activities purported to be poltergeist provably

467
00:27:50,920 --> 00:27:55,120
Speaker 1: hoaxes perpetrated by children, such as the famous Fox sisters,

468
00:27:55,600 --> 00:27:59,400
Speaker 1: and proving the thing is proving that those things were hoaxes.

469
00:28:00,200 --> 00:28:03,480
Speaker 1: Nothing to stem the popularity of the story. Of course,

470
00:28:03,520 --> 00:28:04,240
Speaker 1: people loved it.

471
00:28:04,359 --> 00:28:07,680
Speaker 3: People people don't want the truth. People want a cool story.

472
00:28:07,840 --> 00:28:11,280
Speaker 3: People want like something that captivates their imagination. The truth

473
00:28:11,359 --> 00:28:14,040
Speaker 3: is always way less interesting, you know, It makes me

474
00:28:14,320 --> 00:28:17,280
Speaker 3: think some of these parents probably deserved it. You get

475
00:28:17,960 --> 00:28:20,359
Speaker 3: they were probably awful parents and they needed to have

476
00:28:20,440 --> 00:28:23,400
Speaker 3: a good lesson taught to him, like in Matilda where

477
00:28:23,440 --> 00:28:26,800
Speaker 3: she like you know, gradually files off the bottom of

478
00:28:26,880 --> 00:28:28,960
Speaker 3: her father's shoes or something like that to make him

479
00:28:28,960 --> 00:28:31,439
Speaker 3: think he's getting shorter, or him as his pants, does

480
00:28:31,520 --> 00:28:34,359
Speaker 3: something weird like that, but super covertly and over a

481
00:28:34,400 --> 00:28:36,200
Speaker 3: long period of time to make him think he's losing

482
00:28:36,240 --> 00:28:38,680
Speaker 3: his mind. That, you know, and they were horrible parents.

483
00:28:38,760 --> 00:28:40,080
Speaker 3: I mean, I know it's just a story, but you

484
00:28:40,120 --> 00:28:41,080
Speaker 3: know that stuff hold's true.

485
00:28:41,240 --> 00:28:41,440
Speaker 2: Yeah.

486
00:28:41,520 --> 00:28:44,600
Speaker 4: The reality is it appears that in several of these

487
00:28:44,720 --> 00:28:48,120
Speaker 4: cases there's there has been something terrible going on or

488
00:28:48,320 --> 00:28:51,880
Speaker 4: the one we just the one we just mentioned Esther

489
00:28:52,840 --> 00:28:55,840
Speaker 4: Esther Cox, Yeah, I mean sexual assault was involved. There

490
00:28:55,880 --> 00:29:00,320
Speaker 4: was trauma and there was a need for something, right,

491
00:29:00,560 --> 00:29:04,360
Speaker 4: but that she needed something it appears that way at least,

492
00:29:05,080 --> 00:29:08,920
Speaker 4: and it was probably attention and care, and you know,

493
00:29:10,640 --> 00:29:13,080
Speaker 4: it appears there are several that we've looked at. One

494
00:29:13,120 --> 00:29:16,120
Speaker 4: of them that occurs in Ohio, I think Columbus, Ohio

495
00:29:16,200 --> 00:29:18,480
Speaker 4: in nineteen eighty four that we can talk about maybe

496
00:29:18,480 --> 00:29:20,840
Speaker 4: a little later, where there's the same kinds of thing

497
00:29:21,520 --> 00:29:24,320
Speaker 4: happening there. There's somebody who is in great need, who

498
00:29:24,440 --> 00:29:28,400
Speaker 4: is a child, who is looking for something that maybe

499
00:29:28,440 --> 00:29:29,360
Speaker 4: they're not getting.

500
00:29:30,120 --> 00:29:33,479
Speaker 1: I deeply appreciate that point because it's something we had

501
00:29:33,560 --> 00:29:41,520
Speaker 1: explored in our earlier look at exorcism, specifically non Western exorcism.

502
00:29:41,640 --> 00:29:46,280
Speaker 1: There are socio political factors inherent in this, because all

503
00:29:46,400 --> 00:29:52,120
Speaker 1: people are intelligent, even children, or have the potential to be. So. Yeah,

504
00:29:52,200 --> 00:29:56,520
Speaker 1: children are terrifyingly intelligent. They're brilliant until about.

505
00:29:56,280 --> 00:29:57,000
Speaker 2: Puberty, I guess.

506
00:29:57,280 --> 00:30:02,440
Speaker 1: But we see people who are traditionally left voiceless through

507
00:30:02,480 --> 00:30:06,600
Speaker 1: one avenue or another in society finding innovative ways to

508
00:30:06,760 --> 00:30:11,160
Speaker 1: make their voices heard. So it shouldn't be surprising that

509
00:30:11,280 --> 00:30:15,160
Speaker 1: children who are often not listened to will do their

510
00:30:15,760 --> 00:30:17,720
Speaker 1: level best to be heard.

511
00:30:18,120 --> 00:30:19,440
Speaker 2: And just like in the case with.

512
00:30:21,680 --> 00:30:25,080
Speaker 1: A lot of non Western exorcisms, many of the possess

513
00:30:25,640 --> 00:30:29,160
Speaker 1: are themselves children, or they are people identifying as women

514
00:30:29,320 --> 00:30:33,440
Speaker 1: who are in societies that oppress women. So now it's

515
00:30:33,520 --> 00:30:38,040
Speaker 1: not me voicing a problem, says the possessed or the haunted.

516
00:30:38,480 --> 00:30:42,680
Speaker 1: Now it is another entity, a powerful one one that

517
00:30:42,960 --> 00:30:47,480
Speaker 1: society must pay heed to. There's a very interesting sociological

518
00:30:47,600 --> 00:30:51,760
Speaker 1: argument there. But what gives you might be saying, are

519
00:30:51,800 --> 00:30:54,960
Speaker 1: you all out here to ruin my Wednesday or Friday

520
00:30:55,040 --> 00:30:58,320
Speaker 1: by telling me that all Poltergeist are hoaxes? Are they

521
00:30:58,400 --> 00:31:02,240
Speaker 1: just misunderstandings of Monday phenomenon? Could there be any real,

522
00:31:02,560 --> 00:31:05,760
Speaker 1: provable sand to at least some of the stories.

523
00:31:06,000 --> 00:31:06,400
Speaker 2: I hope not.

524
00:31:07,480 --> 00:31:11,160
Speaker 1: Maybe we'll tell you after a word from our sponsor.

525
00:31:18,400 --> 00:31:20,240
Speaker 1: Here's where it gets crazy.

526
00:31:20,720 --> 00:31:23,000
Speaker 3: So, I mean, you know, we've we've been through, We've

527
00:31:23,080 --> 00:31:26,280
Speaker 3: spent the first part of this episode kind of debunking

528
00:31:26,360 --> 00:31:28,719
Speaker 3: as we go a little bit. And indeed, there are

529
00:31:28,880 --> 00:31:31,240
Speaker 3: hoaxes of plenty in the world of poulter Geist, just

530
00:31:31,320 --> 00:31:34,840
Speaker 3: like there are in the world of psychics and mediums

531
00:31:34,880 --> 00:31:38,400
Speaker 3: and all those a lot of pageantry involved. I'm fascinated

532
00:31:38,440 --> 00:31:41,840
Speaker 3: by the angle of children being kind of forgotten and

533
00:31:42,120 --> 00:31:45,680
Speaker 3: mistreated and using this kind of behavior as a way

534
00:31:45,680 --> 00:31:48,720
Speaker 3: of acting out or or you know, giving themselves a voice.

535
00:31:49,080 --> 00:31:52,600
Speaker 3: But while the vast majority of the events paranormal researchers

536
00:31:52,800 --> 00:31:56,520
Speaker 3: taut as solid proof of poulter Geyser are often pretty

537
00:31:56,560 --> 00:32:01,840
Speaker 3: readily dismissed by academics and skeptics, science does have some

538
00:32:02,040 --> 00:32:06,840
Speaker 3: interesting ideas about what might actually be happening to folks

539
00:32:06,840 --> 00:32:09,640
Speaker 3: who would be unfortunate enough to be actual victims of

540
00:32:09,800 --> 00:32:13,480
Speaker 3: some sort of antagonistic supernatural force.

541
00:32:14,240 --> 00:32:17,520
Speaker 2: So poltergeist as a natural.

542
00:32:17,240 --> 00:32:20,200
Speaker 3: Phenomenon is super unsettling.

543
00:32:21,440 --> 00:32:23,320
Speaker 2: Is it a figment of the mind or something more?

544
00:32:23,640 --> 00:32:27,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's no secret that scientists have for a long time.

545
00:32:28,600 --> 00:32:30,840
Speaker 1: If we want to be polite, we will say scientists

546
00:32:30,880 --> 00:32:35,800
Speaker 1: have for a long time suspected the ghosts are an illusion,

547
00:32:36,200 --> 00:32:41,800
Speaker 1: or they're a cultural lens through which we interpret other events.

548
00:32:42,640 --> 00:32:45,200
Speaker 1: There are a series of sensations, maybe created in the

549
00:32:45,320 --> 00:32:48,360
Speaker 1: mind of us as observers. This is compounded by the

550
00:32:48,480 --> 00:32:53,360
Speaker 1: fact that patients who suffer from specific types of neurological

551
00:32:53,600 --> 00:32:59,520
Speaker 1: or psychological conditions often have reported strange presences around them,

552
00:33:00,280 --> 00:33:04,640
Speaker 1: voices right from no discernible source. This is not just

553
00:33:04,800 --> 00:33:08,200
Speaker 1: something that happens through the lens of mental illness as

554
00:33:08,240 --> 00:33:13,800
Speaker 1: we now understand it. This is also probably neurology probably

555
00:33:13,840 --> 00:33:17,280
Speaker 1: plays a huge part in the role of historical prophets,

556
00:33:17,440 --> 00:33:21,640
Speaker 1: visionaries and saints and so on. But dismissing every alleged

557
00:33:21,720 --> 00:33:24,640
Speaker 1: case of a poltergey's haunting as the product of an

558
00:33:24,800 --> 00:33:29,440
Speaker 1: unsound mind doesn't give due diligence to the events themselves.

559
00:33:29,600 --> 00:33:34,240
Speaker 1: We never want to be that jerk in any horror

560
00:33:34,320 --> 00:33:38,000
Speaker 1: movie or story who says it's only the wind and

561
00:33:38,160 --> 00:33:41,560
Speaker 1: someone's like, ah, I'm bleeding out of my eyes. That's

562
00:33:41,880 --> 00:33:44,120
Speaker 1: that's the wind. It just it looks like blood because

563
00:33:44,120 --> 00:33:46,800
Speaker 1: it's in your eyes. We don't want to be those people.

564
00:33:47,240 --> 00:33:49,400
Speaker 4: Yeah, we don't. And we also don't want to be

565
00:33:49,560 --> 00:33:54,120
Speaker 4: those people that you know, believe that because someone is

566
00:33:54,240 --> 00:33:59,360
Speaker 4: experiencing something like that that I don't know. I have

567
00:33:59,440 --> 00:34:02,719
Speaker 4: problems with thinking about it as an unsound mind, right.

568
00:34:03,360 --> 00:34:06,280
Speaker 4: I do wonder sometimes if there is something more to

569
00:34:06,760 --> 00:34:12,560
Speaker 4: that connection beyond you know, to maybe seeing someone or

570
00:34:13,000 --> 00:34:16,000
Speaker 4: hearing the voice of a muse or someone like that

571
00:34:16,160 --> 00:34:20,399
Speaker 4: that isn't truly there. I wonder we would say it's

572
00:34:20,400 --> 00:34:24,560
Speaker 4: an unsound mind because it's not a nominally functioning mind. Right,

573
00:34:24,719 --> 00:34:28,400
Speaker 4: it doesn't That person doesn't experience that the world the

574
00:34:28,440 --> 00:34:31,480
Speaker 4: way that many of us do. But I think there's

575
00:34:31,680 --> 00:34:36,000
Speaker 4: I think there is a there's something special to that experience.

576
00:34:36,760 --> 00:34:39,239
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a I mean, there's a profound link, isn't there.

577
00:34:39,360 --> 00:34:43,240
Speaker 1: We don't understand the brain fully. We don't really understand

578
00:34:43,280 --> 00:34:47,960
Speaker 1: the creative process, not one hundred percent. Uh, And we also,

579
00:34:48,680 --> 00:34:52,560
Speaker 1: I don't know, I agree. I think it is dismissive

580
00:34:53,040 --> 00:34:56,080
Speaker 1: to immediately say it's the same thing as saying you're crazy,

581
00:34:56,239 --> 00:35:04,440
Speaker 1: and honestly, honestly, the way we use normal for most

582
00:35:04,840 --> 00:35:12,640
Speaker 1: conversational descriptions of this stuff, that's borderline ridiculous. Normalcy in

583
00:35:12,760 --> 00:35:16,239
Speaker 1: that sense is a myth and never really existed. It's

584
00:35:16,480 --> 00:35:19,359
Speaker 1: as made up as some of the more skeptical folks

585
00:35:19,480 --> 00:35:23,200
Speaker 1: might think ghos star. But the point of this is

586
00:35:23,880 --> 00:35:27,640
Speaker 1: to what you're saying, Matt. If we dismiss any kind

587
00:35:27,680 --> 00:35:30,520
Speaker 1: of description like this automatically as the product of a

588
00:35:30,840 --> 00:35:35,280
Speaker 1: quote unquote unsound mind, then we are not exercising critical thinking,

589
00:35:35,760 --> 00:35:41,080
Speaker 1: and we are not conducting good science, and maybe more importantly,

590
00:35:41,200 --> 00:35:44,400
Speaker 1: we're not helping a person who is convinced that something

591
00:35:44,880 --> 00:35:48,160
Speaker 1: is making their life horrific. So we have to look

592
00:35:48,200 --> 00:35:51,840
Speaker 1: at the studies, and luckily there are studies about this.

593
00:35:52,440 --> 00:35:58,000
Speaker 1: There's one really interesting one we found that that happened

594
00:35:58,160 --> 00:36:01,360
Speaker 1: because some people in Switzerland and got together and they

595
00:36:01,480 --> 00:36:08,000
Speaker 1: wanted to see whether they could recreate the experience of

596
00:36:08,440 --> 00:36:12,279
Speaker 1: being physically touched by a ghost, not only whether they

597
00:36:12,320 --> 00:36:16,680
Speaker 1: could recreate it, but whether they could provably reproduce it

598
00:36:17,239 --> 00:36:21,000
Speaker 1: multiple times. And the crazy thing is they did.

599
00:36:21,800 --> 00:36:24,719
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I believe that that two of the

600
00:36:24,840 --> 00:36:28,319
Speaker 3: volunteers got so freaked out that they like pieced out

601
00:36:28,360 --> 00:36:32,560
Speaker 3: and like I'm done, We're done with this. And it's

602
00:36:32,760 --> 00:36:35,560
Speaker 3: really interesting the way they set up this experiment. They

603
00:36:35,600 --> 00:36:41,080
Speaker 3: actually used robotics and they allowed twelve volunteers to control

604
00:36:41,200 --> 00:36:45,640
Speaker 3: the movement of this like jointed robot arm using their

605
00:36:45,719 --> 00:36:50,480
Speaker 3: index fingers, and the first volunteer of volunteers were blindfolded

606
00:36:50,800 --> 00:36:55,000
Speaker 3: and those movements rather were relayed to another robotic harm

607
00:36:55,280 --> 00:36:58,920
Speaker 3: which would touch the volunteers back. I'm assuming, you know,

608
00:36:59,280 --> 00:37:01,400
Speaker 3: I mean, obviously it would be in pure darkness as

609
00:37:01,400 --> 00:37:05,719
Speaker 3: they're blindfolded. When both the finger pushing and the back

610
00:37:05,840 --> 00:37:10,200
Speaker 3: touching occurred at the same time, it created a compelling illusion.

611
00:37:10,680 --> 00:37:13,720
Speaker 3: I'm trying to picture this, so it's another individual touching

612
00:37:14,000 --> 00:37:18,600
Speaker 3: the device and then it's syncing up with another device.

613
00:37:19,120 --> 00:37:20,879
Speaker 2: I'm a little bit Oh yeah, good man.

614
00:37:20,920 --> 00:37:23,240
Speaker 4: I'll paint a picture for you. Imagine you were standing

615
00:37:23,280 --> 00:37:25,440
Speaker 4: in a room, you got your blindfold on right in

616
00:37:25,520 --> 00:37:28,880
Speaker 4: front of you, where like at arm's reach. There is

617
00:37:29,000 --> 00:37:32,480
Speaker 4: a device that you can control right here, right doing it.

618
00:37:33,040 --> 00:37:37,000
Speaker 4: Right immediately behind you, there is a robot that's on

619
00:37:37,080 --> 00:37:40,320
Speaker 4: a shelf, and it's got an arm that can extend

620
00:37:40,400 --> 00:37:45,400
Speaker 4: out and come back. And all you're doing is manipulating

621
00:37:45,520 --> 00:37:48,319
Speaker 4: what's in front of you. And then, in real time,

622
00:37:48,360 --> 00:37:50,520
Speaker 4: the way you would with a video game controller, that

623
00:37:50,719 --> 00:37:53,000
Speaker 4: robot is touching your back as you are telling it

624
00:37:53,080 --> 00:37:53,759
Speaker 4: to touch your back.

625
00:37:54,560 --> 00:37:57,080
Speaker 1: They were not aware of this robotic arm at the

626
00:37:57,160 --> 00:37:57,800
Speaker 1: back though.

627
00:37:58,040 --> 00:38:00,960
Speaker 4: Yes exactly. They just thought there werenipulating this thing in

628
00:38:01,040 --> 00:38:03,520
Speaker 4: front of them. So when it was working like that

629
00:38:03,840 --> 00:38:08,640
Speaker 4: in real time, it gave this the volunteers the sensation

630
00:38:08,800 --> 00:38:12,120
Speaker 4: that they were touching their own backs somehow because it

631
00:38:12,239 --> 00:38:16,560
Speaker 4: was in sync. But the weird stuff occurs when they

632
00:38:16,719 --> 00:38:20,000
Speaker 4: gave the the pushing of the button and then the

633
00:38:20,080 --> 00:38:22,120
Speaker 4: actual action of touching the back. They gave it a

634
00:38:22,239 --> 00:38:25,400
Speaker 4: delay of about five hundred milliseconds.

635
00:38:25,480 --> 00:38:30,040
Speaker 1: Very slight delay, right, just ever so slightly off, just

636
00:38:30,120 --> 00:38:34,160
Speaker 1: a little bit of kind of a tactile uncanny valley

637
00:38:34,200 --> 00:38:36,680
Speaker 1: makes sense vibe, that is how I would describe it.

638
00:38:37,160 --> 00:38:42,279
Speaker 1: And so when this happened, suddenly the volunteers did not

639
00:38:42,520 --> 00:38:47,800
Speaker 1: feel this like I'm unsettlingly touched touching my own back. Somehow,

640
00:38:48,200 --> 00:38:51,320
Speaker 1: they felt that they were being touched by something else,

641
00:38:51,640 --> 00:38:56,120
Speaker 1: something inhuman, by a ghostly presence. And then they also, additionally,

642
00:38:56,680 --> 00:38:59,680
Speaker 1: again just because of that delay, had the feeling that

643
00:38:59,719 --> 00:39:04,279
Speaker 1: they were being watched. They reported that they had they

644
00:39:04,360 --> 00:39:08,280
Speaker 1: felt as though they were drifting backwards toward this unseen

645
00:39:08,320 --> 00:39:12,120
Speaker 1: ghostly hand, which means their pro preception your sense of

646
00:39:12,200 --> 00:39:15,960
Speaker 1: your body in space was being fundamentally influenced. And then

647
00:39:16,200 --> 00:39:22,560
Speaker 1: they also reported on average the strong sensation of two

648
00:39:22,719 --> 00:39:26,920
Speaker 1: invisible presences standing very very very very very very very

649
00:39:27,040 --> 00:39:28,879
Speaker 1: close to them, like when you you know, how if

650
00:39:28,880 --> 00:39:32,520
Speaker 1: you put your hand close enough to the skin of

651
00:39:32,640 --> 00:39:35,440
Speaker 1: someone with a fever, you can feel the warmth, right,

652
00:39:35,880 --> 00:39:39,040
Speaker 1: So something like that, And several volunteers reported up the

653
00:39:39,160 --> 00:39:43,399
Speaker 1: four presences. So a five hundred millisecond delay made them

654
00:39:43,480 --> 00:39:46,960
Speaker 1: think there was a gang of ghost that was just

655
00:39:47,080 --> 00:39:51,040
Speaker 1: sort of tapping them, you know, doing whatever their robot

656
00:39:51,120 --> 00:39:54,960
Speaker 1: hand was instructed to do. And two volunteers got to

657
00:39:55,120 --> 00:40:01,600
Speaker 1: use the scientific term severely freaked out, harsh, harsh their mellow,

658
00:40:01,719 --> 00:40:04,440
Speaker 1: you know, and they refuse to continue the experiment. So

659
00:40:04,880 --> 00:40:09,720
Speaker 1: the report argues that these sensations, these things we call ghosts,

660
00:40:10,160 --> 00:40:15,120
Speaker 1: do not haunt the waking world. Instead they haunt our brain.

661
00:40:15,719 --> 00:40:17,400
Speaker 3: Now that makes sense, And I mean honestly, like, as

662
00:40:17,440 --> 00:40:19,239
Speaker 3: you were walking through these descriptions and I'm kind of

663
00:40:19,280 --> 00:40:21,680
Speaker 3: closing my eyes and trying to picture this, I kind

664
00:40:21,719 --> 00:40:24,000
Speaker 3: of started freaking myself out a little bit because it

665
00:40:24,120 --> 00:40:28,960
Speaker 3: is a very strange, disfluent sensation to like think you're

666
00:40:29,000 --> 00:40:32,800
Speaker 3: in control of something and then introduce that lag and

667
00:40:32,920 --> 00:40:36,080
Speaker 3: introduce that other element where yeah, I could see how

668
00:40:36,160 --> 00:40:39,000
Speaker 3: like if I was facing forward and I'm touching something

669
00:40:39,040 --> 00:40:40,600
Speaker 3: that's in front of me, and then all of a sudden,

670
00:40:40,640 --> 00:40:43,360
Speaker 3: I feel it like the feedback loop of that is

671
00:40:43,600 --> 00:40:46,920
Speaker 3: a little disconcerting, But then you introduce that delay. Not

672
00:40:47,080 --> 00:40:50,560
Speaker 3: to mention the sensory deprivation of just being blindfolded alone,

673
00:40:51,040 --> 00:40:54,320
Speaker 3: That's probably a big part of it too. I imagine

674
00:40:54,320 --> 00:40:57,960
Speaker 3: if you did this in a purely sensory deprived environment,

675
00:40:58,040 --> 00:41:02,400
Speaker 3: it would probably amplify those sensations a lot, because the

676
00:41:02,640 --> 00:41:04,960
Speaker 3: feeling of moving backwards or the feeling of like being

677
00:41:05,040 --> 00:41:07,960
Speaker 3: disjointed in space and time a lot.

678
00:41:08,040 --> 00:41:09,600
Speaker 2: You know, you can you can trick yourself into a

679
00:41:09,640 --> 00:41:10,240
Speaker 2: lot of things.

680
00:41:10,080 --> 00:41:12,520
Speaker 3: Just by closing your eyes really hard and seeing visual

681
00:41:12,600 --> 00:41:16,040
Speaker 3: distortions and sun spots and all the little flashy things

682
00:41:16,080 --> 00:41:19,919
Speaker 3: that happen. I could imagine this harnessed that pretty damn well,

683
00:41:20,120 --> 00:41:21,960
Speaker 3: pretty How do you come up with this? What a

684
00:41:22,040 --> 00:41:24,200
Speaker 3: weird concept, what a weird experiment.

685
00:41:25,120 --> 00:41:27,239
Speaker 1: I guess they got a good deal on robot arms.

686
00:41:27,280 --> 00:41:31,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, some other thing exactly knew I got.

687
00:41:32,239 --> 00:41:34,920
Speaker 1: Also, if you if you want to experience, there are

688
00:41:34,920 --> 00:41:36,839
Speaker 1: a lot of interesting hacks you can do to your

689
00:41:36,840 --> 00:41:41,960
Speaker 1: own sense of proprioception. One one thing for the gamers

690
00:41:42,040 --> 00:41:44,560
Speaker 1: in the crowd, you can play a game called Mirror's Edge.

691
00:41:44,680 --> 00:41:48,759
Speaker 1: It's a first person pov parkour game. Matt, I think

692
00:41:49,080 --> 00:41:51,120
Speaker 1: you and I may have talked about this year's back

693
00:41:51,160 --> 00:41:51,839
Speaker 1: when it came out.

694
00:41:52,200 --> 00:41:55,879
Speaker 4: Yeah, oh yeah, that's a that's a really fun strange game.

695
00:41:56,600 --> 00:41:59,359
Speaker 4: In fact, you can just do virtual reality of any

696
00:41:59,440 --> 00:42:01,480
Speaker 4: kind in a lot of ways. You can experience some

697
00:42:01,560 --> 00:42:05,120
Speaker 4: of that stuff, true, Yeah, Or you know, just take

698
00:42:05,160 --> 00:42:06,600
Speaker 4: a shower in the dark, That's what I do.

699
00:42:07,520 --> 00:42:11,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think it's weird that people shower with

700
00:42:11,560 --> 00:42:14,120
Speaker 1: the lights on, you know.

701
00:42:14,080 --> 00:42:16,359
Speaker 3: What I mean, It's like unrelated if you guys, ever,

702
00:42:16,480 --> 00:42:18,480
Speaker 3: drink a beer in the shower. It's apparently a thing

703
00:42:18,560 --> 00:42:19,920
Speaker 3: people love to do. And I did it for the

704
00:42:19,960 --> 00:42:22,040
Speaker 3: first time the other week, and let me report back.

705
00:42:22,280 --> 00:42:26,360
Speaker 3: It is a delightful little luxury, a shower beer. Just

706
00:42:26,400 --> 00:42:28,560
Speaker 3: putting that out there, unrelated please continue.

707
00:42:29,840 --> 00:42:33,480
Speaker 1: So a co author of this study, by the way,

708
00:42:33,760 --> 00:42:36,120
Speaker 1: we would be remiss if we didn't mention. The study

709
00:42:36,239 --> 00:42:40,520
Speaker 1: came about in twenty fourteen, led by a professor Olag Blanc,

710
00:42:40,960 --> 00:42:44,279
Speaker 1: and as co author summed up their findings by saying

711
00:42:44,360 --> 00:42:49,319
Speaker 1: the following quote. Our brain possesses several representations of our

712
00:42:49,440 --> 00:42:53,239
Speaker 1: body in space. Under normal conditions, it is able to

713
00:42:53,360 --> 00:42:58,480
Speaker 1: assemble a unified self perception of the self from these representations.

714
00:42:58,800 --> 00:43:02,120
Speaker 1: But when the system functions because of disease or in

715
00:43:02,200 --> 00:43:05,560
Speaker 1: this case, a robot, this can sometimes create a second

716
00:43:05,800 --> 00:43:09,680
Speaker 1: representation of one's own body, which is no longer perceived

717
00:43:09,840 --> 00:43:14,080
Speaker 1: as me, but as someone else, a presence. So also

718
00:43:14,200 --> 00:43:15,719
Speaker 1: shout out to stuff you should know.

719
00:43:16,520 --> 00:43:17,120
Speaker 2: Did they do that?

720
00:43:17,920 --> 00:43:22,359
Speaker 1: They did an episode on that rare psychological condition where

721
00:43:22,400 --> 00:43:24,359
Speaker 1: someone feels like their hand is not their own?

722
00:43:24,640 --> 00:43:26,279
Speaker 4: Yeah, oh, what is that called?

723
00:43:26,960 --> 00:43:31,319
Speaker 3: What is that called phantom hand? I'm kidding, I don't

724
00:43:31,320 --> 00:43:34,279
Speaker 3: know what the hell's called. That sounds very unsettling, though

725
00:43:34,320 --> 00:43:35,440
Speaker 3: I don't like it one bit.

726
00:43:36,200 --> 00:43:38,799
Speaker 4: That was in the TV show. Were we on set

727
00:43:38,880 --> 00:43:39,719
Speaker 4: for that episode?

728
00:43:40,000 --> 00:43:42,359
Speaker 1: I think we were. Yeah. The characters based on us

729
00:43:42,920 --> 00:43:46,960
Speaker 1: play play a role in that alien hands syndrome, I

730
00:43:47,080 --> 00:43:50,279
Speaker 1: believe is the name. And then there's phantom limb. But

731
00:43:50,360 --> 00:43:52,919
Speaker 1: I like phantom hand. That also sounds like a cool

732
00:43:53,040 --> 00:43:55,840
Speaker 1: martial arts move that you would see in a in

733
00:43:55,920 --> 00:43:59,719
Speaker 1: a kung fu movie. But so there we have these

734
00:43:59,800 --> 00:44:04,280
Speaker 1: feelings of presence. The researchers call them fops. These feelings

735
00:44:04,320 --> 00:44:07,920
Speaker 1: of presence, again through a cultural lens, are often interpreted

736
00:44:08,200 --> 00:44:14,120
Speaker 1: as spirits, angels, demons, other supernatural creatures because many of

737
00:44:14,200 --> 00:44:18,759
Speaker 1: these reports occur before the rise of modern psychology or

738
00:44:18,960 --> 00:44:22,719
Speaker 1: modern research into neurology. And we do have one last

739
00:44:22,800 --> 00:44:29,440
Speaker 1: note that pertains to our earlier conversation about neurological disorders,

740
00:44:29,560 --> 00:44:33,800
Speaker 1: because you see, before the researchers took these volunteers and

741
00:44:34,400 --> 00:44:37,640
Speaker 1: subjected them to the terror of the unknown robot hand,

742
00:44:38,760 --> 00:44:43,400
Speaker 1: they scan the brains of people who had neurological disorders

743
00:44:43,480 --> 00:44:48,320
Speaker 1: and had also encountered feelings of presence.

744
00:44:48,120 --> 00:44:48,920
Speaker 2: In the past.

745
00:44:49,640 --> 00:44:54,400
Speaker 4: That's right, and They identified disturbances within those brains in

746
00:44:54,560 --> 00:45:00,520
Speaker 4: three specific regions, the insular cortex, the parietal frontal cortex,

747
00:45:00,640 --> 00:45:05,400
Speaker 4: and the temporo parietal cortex. Now that may mean nothing

748
00:45:05,480 --> 00:45:08,560
Speaker 4: to you, as it does to me, a guy who

749
00:45:08,640 --> 00:45:12,680
Speaker 4: doesn't know much about parts of the brain. But these

750
00:45:13,600 --> 00:45:16,799
Speaker 4: sectors within all of our heads, we've all got these.

751
00:45:17,080 --> 00:45:21,400
Speaker 4: They're involved in self awareness, our understanding of where we

752
00:45:21,480 --> 00:45:23,640
Speaker 4: are in space and time, and who we are, what

753
00:45:23,800 --> 00:45:28,200
Speaker 4: we are in the sensations of movement, in creating movement

754
00:45:28,320 --> 00:45:32,480
Speaker 4: within our bodies, and our sense overall of where we

755
00:45:32,719 --> 00:45:38,920
Speaker 4: exist in physical space and time. So kind of weird, right,

756
00:45:39,280 --> 00:45:43,279
Speaker 4: those are important things to just be able to function right,

757
00:45:43,719 --> 00:45:47,360
Speaker 4: knowing where you are, what you are, and how to

758
00:45:47,920 --> 00:45:53,960
Speaker 4: move about. So we're gonna continue down and find some

759
00:45:54,120 --> 00:45:59,520
Speaker 4: things that are even spookier in this world of scientific

760
00:45:59,600 --> 00:46:04,840
Speaker 4: research into what causes possibly poltergeist and other ghost encounters.

761
00:46:05,160 --> 00:46:07,680
Speaker 4: But first we're gonna hear a word from our sponsor.

762
00:46:14,360 --> 00:46:15,279
Speaker 2: And we come to it.

763
00:46:15,640 --> 00:46:19,520
Speaker 1: This is this is my favorite part. This is the weirdest,

764
00:46:19,719 --> 00:46:25,520
Speaker 1: most out there part. This involves two Italian researchers, Piero

765
00:46:25,680 --> 00:46:31,120
Speaker 1: Brovetto and Vera Maxia. They sought to explain the origin

766
00:46:31,440 --> 00:46:35,719
Speaker 1: of poltergeist phenomena through the lens of what they would

767
00:46:35,760 --> 00:46:41,800
Speaker 1: describe as a quantum mechanical vacuum. Let us pause and

768
00:46:42,080 --> 00:46:45,480
Speaker 1: participate in the silent groans that every physicist in the

769
00:46:45,560 --> 00:46:47,200
Speaker 1: audience just expelled.

770
00:46:47,840 --> 00:46:51,359
Speaker 4: Here's the deal at the top, by the way, right right,

771
00:46:51,680 --> 00:46:52,880
Speaker 4: and this is you know.

772
00:46:53,080 --> 00:46:56,880
Speaker 1: This is an argument familiar to people who perhaps delved

773
00:46:56,920 --> 00:47:02,759
Speaker 1: into a speculative science for characters like Carrie in the

774
00:47:02,840 --> 00:47:07,000
Speaker 1: Stephen King novel and later film. These researchers argue that

775
00:47:07,160 --> 00:47:13,440
Speaker 1: children during puberty undergo tremendous physiological changes various parts of

776
00:47:13,480 --> 00:47:18,160
Speaker 1: their bodies, including, of course, the brain. That's not controversial.

777
00:47:18,360 --> 00:47:22,799
Speaker 1: That's something we can all agree on. Most of us

778
00:47:22,960 --> 00:47:26,120
Speaker 1: listening to the show today have probably experienced puberty firsthand.

779
00:47:26,440 --> 00:47:29,960
Speaker 1: If you have not, you're in for a wild ride.

780
00:47:30,160 --> 00:47:31,080
Speaker 4: Congratulations.

781
00:47:32,360 --> 00:47:35,680
Speaker 2: Yes, make the most of it, super fun. Yes.

782
00:47:35,760 --> 00:47:39,680
Speaker 1: So here's where these researchers' ideas take a sharp turn

783
00:47:39,880 --> 00:47:43,440
Speaker 1: into fringe science. Roveto and Maxia did not stop there.

784
00:47:43,800 --> 00:47:48,440
Speaker 1: They argue that changes in the adolescent brain, particularly that

785
00:47:48,560 --> 00:47:55,120
Speaker 1: of biological females, somehow involve fluctuations in electron activity. Long

786
00:47:55,200 --> 00:47:59,680
Speaker 1: story short, that can somehow create disturbances up to quote

787
00:47:59,719 --> 00:48:04,040
Speaker 1: a few meters around the outside of the brain. And

788
00:48:04,719 --> 00:48:07,400
Speaker 1: these disturbances, they say, would be similar in character to

789
00:48:07,480 --> 00:48:12,920
Speaker 1: the quantum mechanical fluctuations that physicists believe occur in the vacuum,

790
00:48:13,239 --> 00:48:17,560
Speaker 1: in which virtual particle and anti particle pairs pop up

791
00:48:17,719 --> 00:48:20,799
Speaker 1: for just a fleeting moment before they annihilate each other

792
00:48:21,120 --> 00:48:23,160
Speaker 1: and disappear again.

793
00:48:23,320 --> 00:48:27,240
Speaker 4: And then it starts over right. They just something strange

794
00:48:27,280 --> 00:48:31,279
Speaker 4: happens with those virtual and anti particles, and they go

795
00:48:31,480 --> 00:48:36,200
Speaker 4: on to say that within the pubescent brain, the extra

796
00:48:36,640 --> 00:48:40,200
Speaker 4: fluctuations that are triggered because of that what the brain

797
00:48:40,320 --> 00:48:45,080
Speaker 4: is going through, they believe that the number of virtual

798
00:48:45,200 --> 00:48:50,399
Speaker 4: particles surrounding the person is increased, which again, like I'm

799
00:48:50,440 --> 00:48:53,320
Speaker 4: still wrapping my head around just the concept of virtual particles,

800
00:48:53,840 --> 00:48:57,160
Speaker 4: but it's all good. The concept here is that it

801
00:48:57,200 --> 00:49:01,480
Speaker 4: would slowly increase the presence of air around them.

802
00:49:02,080 --> 00:49:04,400
Speaker 3: I was just trying to google virtual particles and it

803
00:49:04,440 --> 00:49:07,320
Speaker 3: came up with virtual party ideas, which I guess.

804
00:49:07,160 --> 00:49:10,600
Speaker 2: As a product of COVID. Please Matten, please continue.

805
00:49:10,680 --> 00:49:14,000
Speaker 4: So sorry, Oh yeah, okay, So, increasing the number of

806
00:49:14,080 --> 00:49:17,080
Speaker 4: virtual particles around a person in theory, according to these guys,

807
00:49:17,120 --> 00:49:21,800
Speaker 4: would also increase the air pressure surrounding them. And the

808
00:49:21,920 --> 00:49:26,080
Speaker 4: thought is maybe the way the air pressure then is

809
00:49:26,160 --> 00:49:30,080
Speaker 4: altered could make a physical object, a paper or something

810
00:49:30,360 --> 00:49:33,440
Speaker 4: with very little mass would be much easier to manipulate

811
00:49:33,520 --> 00:49:36,759
Speaker 4: than maybe a telephone or something like that. But they're

812
00:49:36,800 --> 00:49:41,320
Speaker 4: saying they could move an object potentially by changing this

813
00:49:41,440 --> 00:49:44,640
Speaker 4: air pressure with their virtual particle pubescent brains.

814
00:49:45,080 --> 00:49:49,440
Speaker 1: And yeah, if that is you believe them, Yeah, because

815
00:49:49,480 --> 00:49:53,279
Speaker 1: think about the tremendous change in air pressure that would

816
00:49:53,320 --> 00:49:58,080
Speaker 1: be needed. To your point, Matt, move very heavy objects,

817
00:49:58,280 --> 00:50:02,160
Speaker 1: piece of paper maybe, yeah? Why not slam a door?

818
00:50:03,040 --> 00:50:03,239
Speaker 2: Yeah?

819
00:50:03,719 --> 00:50:05,600
Speaker 1: An Oxford English dictionary?

820
00:50:06,239 --> 00:50:06,399
Speaker 4: Right?

821
00:50:07,320 --> 00:50:10,880
Speaker 1: Two? Three very different objects in space. So, as we

822
00:50:11,000 --> 00:50:14,680
Speaker 1: previously established in earlier episodes, everything we know about the

823
00:50:14,719 --> 00:50:17,800
Speaker 1: brain right now seems to indicate that this would be

824
00:50:17,840 --> 00:50:21,279
Speaker 1: at the very least an implausible series of events. This

825
00:50:21,440 --> 00:50:25,440
Speaker 1: paper was published by the Way in the journal NeuroQuantology.

826
00:50:26,120 --> 00:50:30,960
Speaker 1: One note that I find hilarious. Brian Josephson, a Nobel

827
00:50:31,080 --> 00:50:36,080
Speaker 1: laureate physicist who is on the editorial board of NeuroQuantology,

828
00:50:36,640 --> 00:50:40,359
Speaker 1: was contacted for his input about the paper, and while

829
00:50:40,440 --> 00:50:43,440
Speaker 1: he was trying to be nice, he said. It sounds

830
00:50:43,560 --> 00:50:47,120
Speaker 1: distinctly flaky to me, at which point reading this, I

831
00:50:47,280 --> 00:50:52,720
Speaker 1: rolled my eyes and thought, editors. But you know, despite

832
00:50:52,920 --> 00:50:55,319
Speaker 1: being a little tight on time here, this is all

833
00:50:55,400 --> 00:50:58,080
Speaker 1: to prove that there is research happening in this field.

834
00:50:58,160 --> 00:51:00,279
Speaker 1: We've got like a brief shout out towards the very

835
00:51:00,360 --> 00:51:03,440
Speaker 1: end to one of my favorite hobby horses in this realm.

836
00:51:03,880 --> 00:51:05,960
Speaker 1: But nol, you wanted to tell us a little bit

837
00:51:06,040 --> 00:51:08,839
Speaker 1: about the work of one Ian Stevenson, Right.

838
00:51:09,120 --> 00:51:13,120
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right, only to kind of highlight the idea

839
00:51:13,160 --> 00:51:16,040
Speaker 3: that you know, we know from folks like Russell targ

840
00:51:16,520 --> 00:51:20,560
Speaker 3: you know, who is a very renowned physicist who did

841
00:51:20,640 --> 00:51:24,000
Speaker 3: work with MIT in their research labs, but then ultimately

842
00:51:24,040 --> 00:51:28,399
Speaker 3: went on to focus his life's work on developing technology

843
00:51:28,680 --> 00:51:33,360
Speaker 3: and methods for harnessing psychic ability, something that the scientific.

844
00:51:32,960 --> 00:51:35,759
Speaker 2: Community at large doesn't believe to be a thing.

845
00:51:36,080 --> 00:51:38,040
Speaker 3: And this is a guy who comes from that world

846
00:51:38,080 --> 00:51:40,840
Speaker 3: and I'm always fascinated by and it always gives a

847
00:51:40,840 --> 00:51:42,600
Speaker 3: little more credence to some of these claims when you

848
00:51:42,680 --> 00:51:45,080
Speaker 3: see people that kind of make that transition from the

849
00:51:45,239 --> 00:51:48,480
Speaker 3: scientific to the more spiritual or fringy or what have you.

850
00:51:48,600 --> 00:51:50,880
Speaker 3: So This is a good example of that. This guy

851
00:51:50,960 --> 00:51:58,680
Speaker 3: Ian Stevenson. He was a Canadian psychiatrist, a Canadian born psychiatrist,

852
00:51:58,800 --> 00:52:02,000
Speaker 3: but did his work in the US at the University

853
00:52:02,040 --> 00:52:04,879
Speaker 3: of Virginia School of Medicine. He worked there for fifty years.

854
00:52:05,160 --> 00:52:07,359
Speaker 3: He was the chair of the Department of Psychiatry from

855
00:52:07,400 --> 00:52:11,120
Speaker 3: nineteen fifty seven to nineteen sixty seven and a Carlson

856
00:52:11,200 --> 00:52:14,760
Speaker 3: Professor of Psychiatry from nineteen sixty seven to two thousand

857
00:52:14,760 --> 00:52:18,239
Speaker 3: and one. And I happened upon him in preparing for

858
00:52:18,320 --> 00:52:21,719
Speaker 3: this episode from a paper that he wrote in the

859
00:52:21,880 --> 00:52:27,759
Speaker 3: Journal of American Society for Psychical Research, and this is

860
00:52:27,840 --> 00:52:30,600
Speaker 3: from volume sixty six from June of nineteen seventy two,

861
00:52:31,120 --> 00:52:35,320
Speaker 3: and the title of the work is are Poltergeist Living?

862
00:52:35,840 --> 00:52:36,680
Speaker 2: Or Are They Dead?

863
00:52:38,200 --> 00:52:40,360
Speaker 3: And the thing I liked about that is that it

864
00:52:40,520 --> 00:52:44,520
Speaker 3: kind of presupposes that poltergeist are real phenomenon, you know,

865
00:52:44,680 --> 00:52:47,799
Speaker 3: It like launches in with that kind of preconceived understanding.

866
00:52:48,000 --> 00:52:50,920
Speaker 3: And I appreciated that because it's not trying to debunk it,

867
00:52:51,200 --> 00:52:53,400
Speaker 3: it's kind of trying to explain it a little bit

868
00:52:54,000 --> 00:52:57,120
Speaker 3: and go through some examples that he found in his research,

869
00:52:57,680 --> 00:53:00,319
Speaker 3: most of which took place in India, and a lot

870
00:53:00,320 --> 00:53:01,799
Speaker 3: of the things we're talking about. There is one called

871
00:53:01,840 --> 00:53:06,400
Speaker 3: the case of Cecere Kumar, which he acknowledges had some

872
00:53:06,560 --> 00:53:09,080
Speaker 3: problems in it because there was a long gap from

873
00:53:09,160 --> 00:53:11,560
Speaker 3: when the events of the case actually occurred and then

874
00:53:11,600 --> 00:53:16,760
Speaker 3: when they were recorded, largely by folks who didn't necessarily

875
00:53:16,840 --> 00:53:20,200
Speaker 3: witness it. But he goes through and describes them very

876
00:53:20,280 --> 00:53:22,960
Speaker 3: matter of factly, things like books flying off shelves and

877
00:53:23,120 --> 00:53:27,640
Speaker 3: food disappearing and other you know, some of these kind

878
00:53:27,640 --> 00:53:31,160
Speaker 3: of run of the mill Pultergeist type activities, and a

879
00:53:31,239 --> 00:53:33,799
Speaker 3: lot of his work wasn't so much focused on Poultergeist.

880
00:53:33,800 --> 00:53:37,759
Speaker 3: It was more focused on proving the existence of the afterlife,

881
00:53:38,160 --> 00:53:40,560
Speaker 3: so it didn't want to go too teep into him.

882
00:53:40,560 --> 00:53:42,960
Speaker 3: But if anyone wants to read this paper, I definitely

883
00:53:43,000 --> 00:53:45,239
Speaker 3: recommend it. You can find the full text of it

884
00:53:45,520 --> 00:53:48,160
Speaker 3: as a PDF online and it's called Our poulter Geist

885
00:53:48,239 --> 00:53:51,279
Speaker 3: Living or Are They Dead? And just an interesting dude.

886
00:53:51,400 --> 00:53:53,839
Speaker 3: I think he'd be good to dive into a little

887
00:53:53,840 --> 00:53:56,719
Speaker 3: bit more. But there are examples of folks from the

888
00:53:56,719 --> 00:54:00,000
Speaker 3: scientific community that do put some credence into this whole phenomenon,

889
00:54:00,160 --> 00:54:02,279
Speaker 3: and then they don't just think it's you know, our

890
00:54:02,400 --> 00:54:03,600
Speaker 3: mind playing tricks on us.

891
00:54:03,719 --> 00:54:09,200
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, So these Italian researchers and then researchers like Stevenson,

892
00:54:09,800 --> 00:54:14,000
Speaker 1: he also has some interest in work on reincarnation, which

893
00:54:14,200 --> 00:54:16,520
Speaker 1: makes the same kind of assumption. It starts from the

894
00:54:16,560 --> 00:54:20,400
Speaker 1: assumption that reincarnation exists and attempts to prove the process

895
00:54:20,800 --> 00:54:23,279
Speaker 1: that it that it occurs through a.

896
00:54:23,320 --> 00:54:26,120
Speaker 4: Cool thought experiment, a cool thought A million yes.

897
00:54:26,200 --> 00:54:28,360
Speaker 3: But again he gets shredded by a lot of colleagues.

898
00:54:28,400 --> 00:54:31,480
Speaker 3: He's not you know, he has definitely has his critics.

899
00:54:32,239 --> 00:54:35,520
Speaker 1: And there's an elephant in the room that we have

900
00:54:35,640 --> 00:54:37,239
Speaker 1: to address. We set up at the top. We said,

901
00:54:37,239 --> 00:54:40,480
Speaker 1: it's one of the most prominent. Not your room, Mett.

902
00:54:41,600 --> 00:54:44,160
Speaker 1: There's an elephant in the room inside all of us. Right.

903
00:54:45,120 --> 00:54:48,520
Speaker 1: Elephants are amazing, Yeah, and the or whatever we have

904
00:54:48,680 --> 00:54:53,800
Speaker 1: that passes for such. So this elephant in this episode

905
00:54:54,320 --> 00:54:58,400
Speaker 1: is the concept of psychokinesis telekinesis Why is all this

906
00:54:58,680 --> 00:55:03,040
Speaker 1: weird moving? That's the question that so many people have

907
00:55:03,120 --> 00:55:06,040
Speaker 1: asked over the course of human civilization. While we have

908
00:55:06,280 --> 00:55:12,000
Speaker 1: explored a few common causes or explanations for poltergeist pranks

909
00:55:12,080 --> 00:55:16,600
Speaker 1: by the living often children, scrambled sensory processing in our brains,

910
00:55:16,880 --> 00:55:20,880
Speaker 1: and the possibility of a still unproven in tropic neural

911
00:55:20,960 --> 00:55:25,360
Speaker 1: activity related to puberty. There is this one big, ghostly,

912
00:55:25,520 --> 00:55:31,359
Speaker 1: spooky Carrie esque elephant things moving without physically touching them.

913
00:55:31,680 --> 00:55:34,240
Speaker 1: This has been treated as a distinct type of research,

914
00:55:34,880 --> 00:55:38,640
Speaker 1: one without the trappings of campfire tales and ghost stories

915
00:55:38,800 --> 00:55:42,040
Speaker 1: and spooky stories to tell in the dark type approaches.

916
00:55:42,520 --> 00:55:45,360
Speaker 1: There has been a ton of research into psychokinesis, and

917
00:55:45,440 --> 00:55:48,440
Speaker 1: some of it is very easily dismissed, and there's some

918
00:55:48,719 --> 00:55:51,960
Speaker 1: that's more interesting. In a future episode, I would love

919
00:55:52,000 --> 00:55:55,279
Speaker 1: for us to dive deeper into the strange experiments at

920
00:55:55,360 --> 00:55:59,080
Speaker 1: Duke University beginning in the nineteen thirties. This is when

921
00:55:59,120 --> 00:56:03,960
Speaker 1: the university opened an official parapsychology lab, headed by one

922
00:56:04,400 --> 00:56:08,480
Speaker 1: jb Ryan. Jb Ryan may be familiar to some of us.

923
00:56:08,760 --> 00:56:12,320
Speaker 1: He is the guy who literally coined the term parapsychology.

924
00:56:13,400 --> 00:56:15,920
Speaker 1: So we're going to get into that later. And I

925
00:56:15,960 --> 00:56:18,000
Speaker 1: think you're right, we have to get into Stevenson later.

926
00:56:18,600 --> 00:56:22,279
Speaker 1: We may even get into specific, more robustly documented poltergeist

927
00:56:22,600 --> 00:56:24,640
Speaker 1: cases later in the future. If this is of interest

928
00:56:24,680 --> 00:56:28,400
Speaker 1: to our fellow conspiracy realist to bring it all back around. However,

929
00:56:28,640 --> 00:56:32,520
Speaker 1: for our purpose is today, we're not saying that strange

930
00:56:32,600 --> 00:56:37,720
Speaker 1: things did not occur and later become recognized or called

931
00:56:37,840 --> 00:56:41,760
Speaker 1: poltergeist cases. We're saying that the causes of these things

932
00:56:41,840 --> 00:56:46,000
Speaker 1: were often misattributed. That part is inarguably true. We're also

933
00:56:46,080 --> 00:56:49,680
Speaker 1: saying that as time went on, society began to shape

934
00:56:49,840 --> 00:56:53,600
Speaker 1: the original stories to something that would fit their own

935
00:56:53,920 --> 00:56:59,440
Speaker 1: larger or smaller narratives, and they became embellished with multiple retellings.

936
00:57:00,000 --> 00:57:06,760
Speaker 1: It became increasingly compelling at the cost of becoming decreasingly factual.

937
00:57:07,440 --> 00:57:10,000
Speaker 1: That's that's what happened, especially with the older ones in

938
00:57:10,080 --> 00:57:12,320
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, when we're looking at you know, the

939
00:57:12,440 --> 00:57:17,000
Speaker 1: rise of spiritualism and so on, and you know, Poultergeist

940
00:57:17,080 --> 00:57:19,960
Speaker 1: in the crowd. If you feel like we got it wrong,

941
00:57:20,880 --> 00:57:24,960
Speaker 1: let us know. Yeah, did you hear that?

942
00:57:26,160 --> 00:57:29,800
Speaker 2: Stop it. I don't know what's going on as or

943
00:57:29,800 --> 00:57:30,480
Speaker 2: a bunch of jerks.

944
00:57:31,400 --> 00:57:34,240
Speaker 4: Somebody's playing drums on my desk underneath it.

945
00:57:34,320 --> 00:57:36,680
Speaker 3: Don't make me actually go play the actual drums to

946
00:57:36,840 --> 00:57:40,360
Speaker 3: to spook the Poultergeist, because I'll do it well.

947
00:57:40,440 --> 00:57:45,040
Speaker 1: That the skeleton behind me. Agent Scullies seems to keep

948
00:57:45,320 --> 00:57:47,560
Speaker 1: creeping a little bit closer to the camera.

949
00:57:47,400 --> 00:57:49,720
Speaker 2: As we can do like that.

950
00:57:50,200 --> 00:57:53,800
Speaker 1: Yes, so that's it for us today. But we passed

951
00:57:53,840 --> 00:57:57,919
Speaker 1: the otherworldly torch to you yours to hold it spookily high.

952
00:57:58,280 --> 00:57:59,320
Speaker 2: What do you think about this?

953
00:58:00,000 --> 00:58:03,920
Speaker 1: What would there be some sort of compelling, provable, reproducible

954
00:58:04,120 --> 00:58:07,640
Speaker 1: cause for Poultergeist activity. Could it be a mystery in

955
00:58:07,760 --> 00:58:11,200
Speaker 1: the developing brain of a young adult. Could it be

956
00:58:11,440 --> 00:58:14,760
Speaker 1: just a cultural lens through which we view weird things?

957
00:58:15,560 --> 00:58:18,280
Speaker 2: Yes, who knows?

958
00:58:18,360 --> 00:58:18,440
Speaker 3: Well?

959
00:58:18,520 --> 00:58:20,960
Speaker 4: We want to know what you think, so find us

960
00:58:21,240 --> 00:58:25,600
Speaker 4: on social media. We are conspiracy stuff on Twitter and Facebook.

961
00:58:26,160 --> 00:58:30,640
Speaker 4: On Yes, on Instagram, we are conspiracy Stuff Show. If

962
00:58:30,680 --> 00:58:33,920
Speaker 4: you also go on Facebook, you can find our community

963
00:58:33,960 --> 00:58:36,640
Speaker 4: page is called Here's where it Gets Crazy. We highly

964
00:58:36,680 --> 00:58:40,360
Speaker 4: recommend you check it out spend some time there. If

965
00:58:40,440 --> 00:58:44,680
Speaker 4: you don't want to do that stuff, you can give

966
00:58:44,800 --> 00:58:45,280
Speaker 4: us a call.

967
00:58:45,640 --> 00:58:48,800
Speaker 1: All you have to do is dial one eight three

968
00:58:48,960 --> 00:58:55,320
Speaker 1: three sdd WYTK. Let us know your story and most importantly,

969
00:58:55,560 --> 00:58:57,840
Speaker 1: let us know whether you are comfortable with it being

970
00:58:58,000 --> 00:59:01,360
Speaker 1: used on the air, because we need to know. While

971
00:59:01,360 --> 00:59:03,560
Speaker 1: we're on the subject of listeners, we do have to

972
00:59:03,600 --> 00:59:07,760
Speaker 1: give a shout out to Victoria w Over on our

973
00:59:07,920 --> 00:59:10,400
Speaker 1: Facebook page. You mentioned Matt Here's where it gets crazy,

974
00:59:11,360 --> 00:59:19,120
Speaker 1: just because they were they started a drinking game based

975
00:59:19,240 --> 00:59:22,160
Speaker 1: on catchphrases we've used in the show. So I hope

976
00:59:22,200 --> 00:59:26,160
Speaker 1: nobody gets alcohol poisoning. But also want to shout out

977
00:59:26,200 --> 00:59:28,960
Speaker 1: all the people who have written in and decided to

978
00:59:29,360 --> 00:59:32,240
Speaker 1: in place of identifying one of the hosts to get

979
00:59:32,280 --> 00:59:35,120
Speaker 1: onto that page. You have been telling us some jokes

980
00:59:35,520 --> 00:59:38,800
Speaker 1: that are amazing. So shout out to Jordan S who

981
00:59:39,320 --> 00:59:43,240
Speaker 1: gives us the correct term for Pinterest users her husband

982
00:59:43,320 --> 00:59:48,360
Speaker 1: calls them pin terrorist. And shout out to Gerald T

983
00:59:49,000 --> 00:59:54,000
Speaker 1: who says, here's my current favorite joke. Two windmills built

984
00:59:54,120 --> 00:59:57,320
Speaker 1: close together. We're getting to know one another. What kind

985
00:59:57,360 --> 00:59:58,200
Speaker 1: of music do you like?

986
00:59:58,320 --> 00:59:58,760
Speaker 2: Asked one.

987
00:59:59,160 --> 01:00:03,280
Speaker 1: The other reply, well, I've always been a big metal fan.

988
01:00:05,600 --> 01:00:11,640
Speaker 4: Wow, sometimes woulden, sometimes woulden a lot of times wouldn't.

989
01:00:12,280 --> 01:00:16,160
Speaker 2: But okay anyway, so we're rival with that.

990
01:00:16,280 --> 01:00:19,160
Speaker 1: But what if you don't like phones, if you don't

991
01:00:19,320 --> 01:00:24,200
Speaker 1: like social media or amazing memes and awesome jokes, there

992
01:00:24,320 --> 01:00:27,200
Speaker 1: is still one way you can always contact us, regardless

993
01:00:27,320 --> 01:00:30,160
Speaker 1: of the day of the week. The time, your position

994
01:00:30,280 --> 01:00:34,080
Speaker 1: on Poltergeist, whether you are or are not currently haunted.

995
01:00:34,240 --> 01:00:37,280
Speaker 1: You can send us a good old fashioned email where we.

996
01:00:37,400 --> 01:00:39,840
Speaker 2: Are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.

997
01:00:58,400 --> 01:01:01,600
Speaker 4: Stuff they don't want you to know is production of iHeartRadio.

998
01:01:01,960 --> 01:01:06,080
Speaker 4: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

999
01:01:06,200 --> 01:01:08,040
Speaker 4: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.