Speaker 1: What's that at the foot of my bed. It's spooky. Hey, jooky,
Speaker 1: I'm really sure it's dead. It's coming this way. Wait
Speaker 1: a minute, Hey, I ghosted I gos Nandaz Police. Hey boo,
Speaker 1: it's me Raz and welcome to Ghosted by Raz Hernandez,
Speaker 1: the podcast where I talk to people that I like
Speaker 1: about the paranormal. Oh my god. The guest on the
Speaker 1: show today, David. That's Mulchin. He is incredible. Okay. I
Speaker 1: was recommended him by multiple sources whose taste I trust,
Speaker 1: and I've known about him. I've never met him before,
Speaker 1: but he's constantly in movies and TV shows. And then
Speaker 1: I saw his recent film Late Night with the Devil,
Speaker 1: which is so fun and different and it's just a
Speaker 1: cool movie and he's the star of it, and I
Speaker 1: just get so excited about people doing new, different kinds
Speaker 1: of things and it's very retro and it's just cool.
Speaker 1: So check it out if you haven't seen it and
Speaker 1: you're into horror movies.
Speaker 2: Anyway.
Speaker 1: Turns out, yes, amazing guest for this podcast, so you
Speaker 1: will see that in just a moment. Let me read
Speaker 1: your story first. This one's from Jennifer, who writes, I
Speaker 1: moved into my current apartment in October of twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: It's a former hotel from the nineteen twenties. I live
Speaker 1: toward the back of the building and moving in. I
Speaker 1: was going in and out moving and I noticed a
Speaker 1: black veil like wavy shape at the top of the stairwell.
Speaker 1: I'm on the top floor. I thought it was a
Speaker 1: reflection or my hair in my eyes. I dismissed it.
Speaker 1: I love that you brought this up because as a
Speaker 1: owner of a set of bangs on my forehead, this
Speaker 1: happens to me constantly where I'm like, was that some
Speaker 1: kind of ghost or was it? Do I need a
Speaker 1: trim Okay, So the next day I see it again.
Speaker 1: I dismissed it. The third day, I stood and watched
Speaker 1: it moving, then it disappeared into the ceiling. I went
Speaker 1: to my friend's house and I was like, I know
Speaker 1: it was something because I had been telling him about it.
Speaker 1: Later on, I had a friend come over to help
Speaker 1: me hook up my cable. We were leaving and walking
Speaker 1: down the hallway to the elevator like those old pull
Speaker 1: accordion door ones.
Speaker 2: I hate those.
Speaker 1: My friend says, hey, you have shadow people here, and
Speaker 1: I stop dead. My head had been down and I
Speaker 1: missed it. He said that it walked from the elevator
Speaker 1: to the stairwell. Now I hadn't told this guy anything
Speaker 1: about what I had seen earlier. Later on, I would
Speaker 1: see stuff out of the corner of my eye, always
Speaker 1: in the hallway. Though. One day, going in my door,
Speaker 1: I look back to the stairwell and it looks like
Speaker 1: something is walking through it, like the lower half of
Speaker 1: a leg I saw. Next month, I have a friend
Speaker 1: over for Thanksgiving. I go down the back stairwell to
Speaker 1: let him in. A neighbor is coming in as well.
Speaker 1: I say Happy Thanksgiving and all of that, and I said, hey,
Speaker 1: do you notice anything weird in the building? And I
Speaker 1: don't mean the people who live here. Now, I had
Speaker 1: talked to this neighbor before and we always had a
Speaker 1: jokey interaction, so to ask him with familiarity wouldn't be weird.
Speaker 1: He says, oh, you mean that black thing at the
Speaker 1: top of the hallway. I was floored. I built an
Speaker 1: altar in my apartment and I have the Eye of
Speaker 1: Hamsa hanging on the wall across it. I had gone
Speaker 1: into my doorway and I said, I get it. You're here,
Speaker 1: please do not come in here. Thank you. A little
Speaker 1: while later, like a week or so, I'm sitting in
Speaker 1: my chair reading and it just feels lighter, the room,
Speaker 1: the air, it felt lighter, and I said thank you
Speaker 1: out loud. I hadn't really seen anything since. I think
Speaker 1: I see things in the back stairwell near my door
Speaker 1: out of the corner of my eye, but nothing as
Speaker 1: in your face as before. Okay, well, I'm glad that
Speaker 1: that works for you, because you know of at least
Speaker 1: two other people that have also seen this thing in
Speaker 1: your hallway, so we know it's not your bangs. Very validating.
Speaker 1: I love a shade ghost that also is respectful of boundaries. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's talk to you the iconic David DEAs Mulchin and
Speaker 1: with the show Oh my God. I am enjoined today
Speaker 1: by David Dysmulchin.
Speaker 2: Hello, Hello, it's so good to be here with you.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. You Okay, the first time you were
Speaker 1: recommended to me as a guest on this show, of course,
Speaker 1: I've known who you are for a minute, but the
Speaker 1: first time was Paton Oswald. He's like, you gotta get
Speaker 1: David on the show. He had a haunted doll themed
Speaker 1: party or something like that. And then another person, mutual
Speaker 1: friend slash former guest of this show, Brian Fuller, was
Speaker 1: like like, have you not had David Dismalchin on the show,
Speaker 1: And I'm like, no, I want to. And then now
Speaker 1: it's finally happening.
Speaker 2: It's happening.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're both such wonderful fellas and sweet baby Brian.
Speaker 3: His nickname to me is Naughty Brian because we're part
Speaker 3: of a gaming group and Naughty Brian has a really
Speaker 3: hard time following the rules sometimes when Brian wants to
Speaker 3: win a game and we have so much fun together.
Speaker 3: And yeah, it's interesting because I think it's the monsters
Speaker 3: and fear of the dark things, or maybe are the
Speaker 3: allure of the dark things that brought us together. And
Speaker 3: now yeah, he's like a brother to me. I love
Speaker 3: him so much.
Speaker 1: I saw him probably like I don't know, a month
Speaker 1: ago or something and he was like, telling me about
Speaker 1: the advertisements you've done for a coffin company.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, I've I did it at first kind of
Speaker 3: as a bit my friend Ilan Gale, who's this mastermind
Speaker 3: of all things. He's just an incredible human being. Shout
Speaker 3: out elaw Elan makes unscripted television. He writes with Mike
Speaker 3: Flanagan for his shows. He is a producer of Rockntur.
Speaker 3: I mean, he's the most knowledgeable diner I've ever known
Speaker 3: of every restaurant.
Speaker 2: In the world.
Speaker 3: But Elan came to me and he said, I'm working
Speaker 3: with this He does branding work as well as I'm
Speaker 3: working with this company that is like kind of struggling
Speaker 3: to get the word out there. They make and sell
Speaker 3: caskets on the open market, and they're trying to compete
Speaker 3: with kind of the monopoly that is being held over
Speaker 3: the kind of funeral industry where when you know you're
Speaker 3: in the crisis of trying to find all the necessary
Speaker 3: elements that go along with burying someone you love, if
Speaker 3: that's the way you choose to honor them, you're often
Speaker 3: only presented with a very limited number of options, and
Speaker 3: they go, well, there's the you know, if you kind
Speaker 3: of liked your your person that died, here's a six
Speaker 3: thousand dollars option, and if you really liked him, there's
Speaker 3: ten thousand.
Speaker 2: If you loved him, here's the fifteen. And it's just this.
Speaker 3: Wildly inflated, totally monopolized market and so I said, well,
Speaker 3: that sounds cool because the company that I that I
Speaker 3: started working with through along Titan caskets, they were selling
Speaker 3: them twenty five hundred three thousand dollars and they would
Speaker 3: also ship them anywhere you needed, and they're just these wonderful,
Speaker 3: lovely people. Well, that evolved and grew and I just
Speaker 3: was like, it became from this like kind of silly
Speaker 3: fun way of spreading a good word about things to me,
Speaker 3: wanting to talk more openly and candidly and with both reverence, irreverence, humor,
Speaker 3: and you know, somber approaches the whole notion that we're
Speaker 3: all going. I mean, it's one of the only things
Speaker 3: that all of us have in common. Not everybody can
Speaker 3: claim that like everyone of us says, oh love, it
Speaker 3: is same wepping. I don't think everybody necessarily needs to
Speaker 3: or falls in love in this lifetime, but one thing
Speaker 3: everybody does do is expire, and we just don't.
Speaker 2: Talk about it.
Speaker 3: And the people who do get out there and talk
Speaker 3: about it tend to be really problematic. And so Elan
Speaker 3: was like, what do you think about laying in a
Speaker 3: casket next to another casket with one of our mutual
Speaker 3: friends and just talking. And so we've been doing that
Speaker 3: and it's on Instagram. It's called Grave Conversations. And maybe
Speaker 3: you'll come be a guest with me at some point.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I would be honored.
Speaker 2: Okay, great.
Speaker 1: I love talking about death. We talk about it all
Speaker 1: the time here on this podcast.
Speaker 2: It's an important conversation.
Speaker 1: What's the the Haunted Doll? You had a party that
Speaker 1: was Haunted Doll themed or something?
Speaker 3: I host a gathering around Sam Hayne every year.
Speaker 1: Are you a witch?
Speaker 3: I kind of don't take any label. I practice an
Speaker 3: openness to the magic of the universe, and I believe
Speaker 3: in higher power, and I believe that like things are
Speaker 3: conducted and exist through both manifest station of integration between
Speaker 3: the physical and the intellectual and the spiritual realms.
Speaker 2: Although I'm just so.
Speaker 3: Right now, only here's the only thing I believe in
Speaker 3: right now, at forty eight years old, after almost an
Speaker 3: entire lifetime dedicated to trying to dissect and understand this stuff,
Speaker 3: there's one thing I believe. There is a power that
Speaker 3: is greater than myself that can do for me what
Speaker 3: I cannot do for myself. That's where I've landed right now.
Speaker 3: Do I personally believe in ghosts most of the time,
Speaker 3: I really want to. I feel like I've had interactions
Speaker 3: and experiences with things. Do I believe in the power
Speaker 3: of magic the way that certain people define magic absolutely,
Speaker 3: the way other people define it, I don't think. So
Speaker 3: it's really interesting. It's a really beautiful complex soup, and
Speaker 3: I think obviously we could get into this during our
Speaker 3: conversation today. But I'm just learning so much, and I'm
Speaker 3: surrounded by some really powerful witches and oh my god,
Speaker 3: ritualists and even religious people. I'm kind of just observing
Speaker 3: everybody right now and seeing how their lives are existing
Speaker 3: and watching how incredible it is that the universe can
Speaker 3: find such specific ways to communicate with each of us,
Speaker 3: as opposed to like the blanket binary that I was
Speaker 3: raised with, which was there is one way, this is
Speaker 3: the way. If you don't do the way, then you
Speaker 3: go that way and you better watch the f out.
Speaker 3: Oh what a horrible way to approach the mystery of
Speaker 3: this beautiful, incredible space that we all get to share.
Speaker 3: So I just like, oh man, I'm doing so much
Speaker 3: work on it. But the celebration around Halloween. As a
Speaker 3: little boy, I had a lot of fear. It was
Speaker 3: really scared, really kind of combative household. A lot of love,
Speaker 3: which is confusing when there's a lot of love mixed
Speaker 3: with a lot of like conflict and you know, emotional
Speaker 3: psychic sometimes physical violence, but love and then really like
Speaker 3: heavy duty dogmatic religiosity and what kind I was raised
Speaker 3: in an intensely like evangelical community and belief system. That was,
Speaker 3: you know, this is the way you make this allegiance
Speaker 3: and if you don't, you burn. And to me, that
Speaker 3: was I think the initial emotional attachment wound that I
Speaker 3: probably suffered at the youngest age when I came to
Speaker 3: the realization that there was this that was It wasn't
Speaker 3: a realization I was told. I was led to believe
Speaker 3: that there was this power that loved me so much
Speaker 3: it would do anything for me, but if I didn't
Speaker 3: do things the way it wanted to, or if I
Speaker 3: failed in some way, I would be then cast into
Speaker 3: this eternal kind of void of suffering. And I thought, what,
Speaker 3: I don't think I was as conscious of it then
Speaker 3: as I grew to become it was that mixed just
Speaker 3: like a when you have parents, Like so many people,
Speaker 3: my parents loved me, but they also absolutely emotion and
Speaker 3: even physically abandoned me at times when I needed them
Speaker 3: the most. And so, as a little boy, because Halloween, horror, ghosts,
Speaker 3: and monsters, witchcraft, et cetera. Were so maligned in my household,
Speaker 3: they were considered gateways into the path to hell, I
Speaker 3: was always drawn to the monsters. I was always I
Speaker 3: had this special love in my heart for the artistry,
Speaker 3: the craftsmanship, the way that they were manifested in historical
Speaker 3: and contemporary art and film and comic books and masks
Speaker 3: that I would see at the woolworst of the Montgomery
Speaker 3: Wards around Halloween time, and I started to accumulate my
Speaker 3: own little boxes of Halloween stuff, and it was kind
Speaker 3: of much to my family chagrin that I would like
Speaker 3: decorate the front porch by myself and make content houses
Speaker 3: in the basement and go on explorations. I'd read every
Speaker 3: book at my school in public library about ghosts and
Speaker 3: the lore of ghosts and mythology and even movie things
Speaker 3: like those books about monsters.
Speaker 2: In the movies. I was so into that stuff.
Speaker 3: And then as an adult, I wonder, I've been thinking
Speaker 3: about this a lot, like I've been writing a lot
Speaker 3: of letters to like seven eight nine year old David
Speaker 3: and just being like, hey, you know what's kind of cool.
Speaker 3: I'm forty eight and I still love Halloween, and there
Speaker 3: was nothing wrong with you loving that stuff. And by
Speaker 3: the way, I throw the most kick ass party ever,
Speaker 3: and you're with me there every year helping me decorate.
Speaker 2: The word party.
Speaker 3: I feel tricky, more of a celebration because I'm sober.
Speaker 3: I serve alcohol, and you know, I always try and
Speaker 3: set up a nice bar and like food and stuff.
Speaker 3: But it's not like it's definitely not a rager. It's
Speaker 3: not really a dance party. It's an experience where I
Speaker 3: incorporate magic and storytelling and kind of interactive, immersive hopefully
Speaker 3: for people.
Speaker 2: That like that sort of thing magic.
Speaker 3: And each year there's a different theme. We held a
Speaker 3: really powerful stance. One year we held a really amazing
Speaker 3: kind of interaction with ideas about uphology, and and one year,
Speaker 3: as Paton pointed out to you, I think he skipped
Speaker 3: it because they were a little scared.
Speaker 2: I don't remember now. I have to look back.
Speaker 3: My wife, Eve, who celebrates as intensely as I do.
Speaker 3: She at one point wanted to buy oh a cursed
Speaker 3: supposedly cursed weediboard off of like eBay, and I was like,
Speaker 3: I'm not comfortable with that. I think we shouldn't mess
Speaker 3: around just because if it has bad energy. I still
Speaker 3: whatever our belief is, I don't want to. I don't
Speaker 3: like bringing the idea of bad energy into the house.
Speaker 3: But was in Germany and I found this doll that
Speaker 3: immediately had some kind of presence to it, and see
Speaker 3: it just felt like there was something off about the doll.
Speaker 3: And then of course she could be like, well, you're
Speaker 3: getting this cursed doll. I was like, well, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I brought it home back to the States. Immediately we
Speaker 3: started to have kind of odd energy around it, experiences
Speaker 3: around it, and so I brought in someone for one
Speaker 3: of the gatherings to do kind of a I guess
Speaker 3: like a blessing or a cleansing of the doll. It
Speaker 3: didn't go great because then like the speakers fritzed out
Speaker 3: and like went into like high pitched like feedback. Everybody's
Speaker 3: ears kind of got hurt. The doll didn't seem to
Speaker 3: really want cleansing. The doll is no longer my home.
Speaker 1: Wait wait, wait, what was happening with the doll to begin.
Speaker 3: With, well, I don't know, you know how you know
Speaker 3: what it's like. It's so like people always roll their
Speaker 3: eyes and raise their eyebrows and sigh heavily when you
Speaker 3: say things like it was an energy. It felt weird,
Speaker 3: but like it felt like my kids on several occasions,
Speaker 3: who at that point were extra young. Now they're ten
Speaker 3: and seven. I think my kids were like four and
Speaker 3: maybe four and seven at that point. We're like, the
Speaker 3: doll was, you know, saying stuff to me and I
Speaker 3: don't but I couldn't understand it, and I felt like
Speaker 3: at one point it was an implication that it almost
Speaker 3: sounded like a different language with them, which then freaked
Speaker 3: me out because I was like, oh, I did get
Speaker 3: this doll in Berlin, and then I was trying to research,
Speaker 3: like do like Google image searches to figure out like
Speaker 3: where this doll had actually come from, and because it
Speaker 3: was like a thrift store that I found it, you know,
Speaker 3: it's just some crazy like side of the road in Berlin,
Speaker 3: you know, discovery. But they were and I trust my
Speaker 3: kids intuitions too, when they're like this this is I
Speaker 3: don't like this. It's like okay, all right, well we'll
Speaker 3: cleanse this thing. Well, we'll try.
Speaker 2: I believe in that. I believe in the power of cleansing.
Speaker 3: It's such a beautiful like you could you could you
Speaker 3: could say, you know, a shaman with the power of
Speaker 3: energy fields can cleanse or eck art Toole's like ideas
Speaker 3: behind just intentional cleansing, regardless of how you want to
Speaker 3: break it down scientifically. When I walk through a space
Speaker 3: and I put that intention and even maybe use some
Speaker 3: medicinal elements if it's burning herbs or if it's doing
Speaker 3: you know, anything ritualistic, it's just cleansing. So didn't seem
Speaker 3: to work. Got rid of the doll, have had some fun.
Speaker 1: Wait, so you just how did you get You just
Speaker 1: gave it to someone or threw it away or something.
Speaker 3: This woman who came who I had found through somebody,
Speaker 3: I have to look back, but she had like an
Speaker 3: experience in like folklore and mythology, and you know she
Speaker 3: was was it was kind of tongue in cheek, you know,
Speaker 3: like I've got these like cleansing rituals and I will
Speaker 3: read this for you guys and give a little mini
Speaker 3: lecture on objects and the power of objects and belief
Speaker 3: systems and I mean, you tell anybody the power of
Speaker 3: objects and belief systems, especially when it comes to the
Speaker 3: supernatural and things that are, you know, beyond the veil.
Speaker 3: You know, people maybe laugh at folks like you and
Speaker 3: me who really like think.
Speaker 2: About this stuff a lot.
Speaker 3: But I'm like, there's millions of people that will and
Speaker 3: I'm not mocking them at all. I think that there's
Speaker 3: a power in it that hold a rosary and feel
Speaker 3: an incredible amount of total spiritual power. There's people that
Speaker 3: keep the you know, the the the collar from the
Speaker 3: pet that was gone and that pet is still with them,
Speaker 3: and there's power and objects there is you know, what
Speaker 3: is Freud say?
Speaker 2: What does Mary Shelley say? I don't know.
Speaker 3: I think everybody has a cool opinion about this stuff.
Speaker 1: What happened when you did the seance? You were talking
Speaker 1: about like, who were you contacting the seance?
Speaker 3: It was we were contacting any one present. Because the
Speaker 3: house that we own only one family lived in it.
Speaker 3: I don't know who or if anyone passed in the house,
Speaker 3: but in just the surrounding area, the space we've always
Speaker 3: felt there there were presences and I feel a positive energy,
Speaker 3: energetic presence in the house.
Speaker 2: That I live in.
Speaker 3: It's it's in Los Angeles, and it's a strange house.
Speaker 3: It's kind of you feel like Aleister Crowley would have
Speaker 3: liked this house. The design, the layout of it's very
Speaker 3: It seems at some points like they were just throwing
Speaker 3: stuff at the wall and seeing what's stuck, and other
Speaker 3: times like this seems wildly intentional, like this strange angle,
Speaker 3: this strange archway, whatever. But I just love it because
Speaker 3: it's so unique and it always makes you feel like
Speaker 3: you're looking at a space that wasn't approached with any
Speaker 3: forms of cookie cutter, which is how I like to
Speaker 3: look at most things life.
Speaker 2: Anything.
Speaker 1: Damn.
Speaker 3: So we had this, say as a friend of mine
Speaker 3: who had good experience, it was tricky because we didn't
Speaker 3: get to you can't follow all the rules when you've
Speaker 3: got seventy people up in the upper like balcony looking
Speaker 3: down and people gathered around and there was I want
Speaker 3: to say eight or a dozen of us at the table,
Speaker 3: you know, participating in the in the sands. And it
Speaker 3: was done in a style that I'd never seen before
Speaker 3: experienced with a pendulum which went all the way up
Speaker 3: to the third floor and came down and it was
Speaker 3: perfectly still.
Speaker 1: Oh wow.
Speaker 3: And the questions that began as as simple things, you know,
Speaker 3: oh man, I can't, like, are you someone with us
Speaker 3: this evening? And Dad, and you know, the movement in
Speaker 3: this pendulum was so awesome and so exciting, and everything
Speaker 3: was going pretty well. And at one point, and I
Speaker 3: think it was just so crowded in the dining room
Speaker 3: in the area around. We had like plastic fake candles
Speaker 3: for decoration that went like on each of the windows
Speaker 3: of each of the levels of the home, which were
Speaker 3: a pain in the ass to get into their places.
Speaker 3: And I wondered if it's because so many people were
Speaker 3: like leaned up against that wall or something. But so
Speaker 3: at one point and people had said to me, I
Speaker 3: don't I'd like to leave, or I.
Speaker 2: Don't think you should do this.
Speaker 3: So there's all there's already this tension in this space.
Speaker 3: So I was like, guys, relax, we're not inviting negativity
Speaker 3: in here. We're just we're communicating. But a candle fell
Speaker 3: from the third floor window and it caused such a
Speaker 3: ruckus people scattered. The energy was broken, the connection was broken,
Speaker 3: and that was that wow. And I was like, sorry,
Speaker 3: I don't you.
Speaker 1: Know, well, like some people would be like, now you're
Speaker 1: opening up but poured, or like you know, you're opening
Speaker 1: the doors to the ghosts and the house coming through.
Speaker 1: Like did was that the case for you?
Speaker 3: There was a couple of people who pulled me aside
Speaker 3: very seriously, and I didn't you know, I took them serious.
Speaker 2: I listened to them. I said, thank you.
Speaker 3: For your input. I appreciate it. I I feel comfortable
Speaker 3: with you know. That's like saying this might sound like
Speaker 3: a weird thing to say, but it's like, I don't
Speaker 3: just bring strangers in off the street into my home.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but if I did, out.
Speaker 3: Of a million strangers walking past my house, if I
Speaker 3: just were to open the door every time a stranger walk,
Speaker 3: I was like, hey, come in for five minutes. Out
Speaker 3: of a million of them, pray, nine hundred ninety nine thousand,
Speaker 3: nine and ninety nine of them, I would have like
Speaker 3: some kind of interesting conversation with their human beings that
Speaker 3: just are existing on this very difficult plane of existence
Speaker 3: called trying to be a person. Now, maybe one in
Speaker 3: a million of them is a complete, utter, sociopathic psychopath
Speaker 3: that I would never want in my home. And like,
Speaker 3: I feel pretty good about my vibe check that I
Speaker 3: would sense that as they're walking up the driveway and
Speaker 3: be like, you know, what a wrong person.
Speaker 2: I thought you were somebody else. Go ahead. Yeah, So
Speaker 2: that's kind of how I feel about it.
Speaker 1: So many people are just so convinced that it's demons,
Speaker 1: you know, and I think it comes from religion where
Speaker 1: people think like there's basically God and angels and saints
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, but then anything else is just
Speaker 1: a demon.
Speaker 3: Well, if you're a ghost, that means you're not in heaven,
Speaker 3: and if you're not in heaven, then you're and you're
Speaker 3: not in hell like humans according to you know, the
Speaker 3: principles of certain dogma would say you're either in purgatory,
Speaker 3: which means you're not allow you're not a wandering earth,
Speaker 3: then you're in hell or you're in heaven. So if
Speaker 3: you're not in one of those places, if you're wandering earth,
Speaker 3: then you must be. And it's interesting to me that
Speaker 3: you know, exorcism, law and mythology and demonology, you know,
Speaker 3: it's it's all to me a really incredible, fantastic, mythological, beautiful,
Speaker 3: folkloric way of us trying to grapple with the pain,
Speaker 3: the baffling the insidious nature of how our bodies, minds,
Speaker 3: and even if you so believe spirits interact when in crises.
Speaker 3: I think it's really sad to think about the number
Speaker 3: of people historically who wrestled with some form of you know,
Speaker 3: mental illness combined with physical ailment, combined with some kind
Speaker 3: of you know, spiritual crises, probably instigated by either early
Speaker 3: childhood trauma or brain you know, disorders that were you know,
Speaker 3: thrust into the designated role of possess. I've been thinking
Speaker 3: about that a lot lately, because I think so it's interesting.
Speaker 3: We always see in stories and movies it's like, then
Speaker 3: you bring in the religious person who has the religious
Speaker 3: power to cast out the thing, but they never really do,
Speaker 3: do they. It always continues to like, you know, move on.
Speaker 3: And that's not to say that if somebody was suffering
Speaker 3: that I wouldn't absolutely want to enlist the power of
Speaker 3: prayer from someone who believes in the power of asking
Speaker 3: a higher power, asking a loving God to like, you know,
Speaker 3: intervene in whatever way is possible, because it's all beyond
Speaker 3: our understanding. You know, our brains will never be able
Speaker 3: to rationalize or understand how all of this stuff really works,
Speaker 3: but I certainly wouldn't want to put that upon some
Speaker 3: poor child, you know, wrestling with that. And I think
Speaker 3: it's been an easy way for thousands of years for
Speaker 3: us to look at the gross, embarrassing, darker, self centered,
Speaker 3: self pitying natures that exist within us because we're so
Speaker 3: scared and we're trying to keep ourselves safe, and we
Speaker 3: do behaviors sometimes that are utterly unreasonable and embarrassing, and
Speaker 3: we go, oh my god, I cannot believe I acted
Speaker 3: like that. Well, part of you acted that way because
Speaker 3: you're trying to keep yourself safe, because there's a part
Speaker 3: of you that's still a little kid inside who's afraid
Speaker 3: of so many things. But it's so much easier to
Speaker 3: go the devil.
Speaker 2: The devil.
Speaker 1: Well, and so many times too, I think it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: people just had a different interest than everyone else, or
Speaker 1: they looked at things a different way or whatever, and
Speaker 1: it's like, well, then you're possessed your demon Burnham.
Speaker 3: Oh well, sure, think about witches. Think about the history
Speaker 3: of witches. I am. I've been, you know, self promotion time.
Speaker 3: I've been writing a comic book I'm very proud of
Speaker 3: for many years called Count Crowley, and it's about a
Speaker 3: woman who wants to be a legitimate news broadcaster, but
Speaker 3: she In nineteen eighty three, she gets assaulted by like
Speaker 3: the lead anchor on a news program, and no one
Speaker 3: believes her because he's the like, the shining star of
Speaker 3: the network and she is an alcoholic. So she goes
Speaker 3: back to her hometown in Missouri, which is near where
Speaker 3: I'm from, and she's just like so depressed, drinks herself
Speaker 3: nearly to death, and her brother runs this little small
Speaker 3: town station where their parents used to run it, and
Speaker 3: the only job he can get her employed on is
Speaker 3: as a late night horror host, which for me were
Speaker 3: kind of gateway into my love of horror. We had
Speaker 3: one in Kansas City where I grew up. But anyway,
Speaker 3: my character Jerry, she does it reluctantly because she's going
Speaker 3: to get evicted, and she gets wasted, and she puts
Speaker 3: on this makeup and she shows up as Count Crowley.
Speaker 3: I know you're not probably showing this, but for you
Speaker 3: to see, that's what she looks like. And she ends
Speaker 3: up fighting out that the person she replaced who used
Speaker 3: to be the horror host was actually one of the
Speaker 3: world's last monster hunters, and I grew up reading and
Speaker 3: loving these old monster hunter magazines and comic books. But
Speaker 3: I thought about it, and I was like women who
Speaker 3: take on the system, women you know, historically who would
Speaker 3: have been considered like the heroes of their time, fighting
Speaker 3: against the true, you know, evil, because we see it
Speaker 3: in our time. We see people that to me are
Speaker 3: the bad monsters taking strong positions of power in our
Speaker 3: government and our in our society, and they're wielding that
Speaker 3: power to maintain authority and control over others that they
Speaker 3: would choose to marginalize and wound in some sick kind
Speaker 3: of feeding upon their own, you know, unrelenting quest to
Speaker 3: control everything. And so a woman historically who would stand
Speaker 3: up and make that, you know, make that battle was
Speaker 3: it was so easy to go, oh my god, she's
Speaker 3: she's a witch, or if she was even unbridling her
Speaker 3: own sexuality. Let's say, at a time when and it's
Speaker 3: still dangerous for so many people to do that, whatever
Speaker 3: their gender they would be. You know, it's wild. They
Speaker 3: put them in a chair, strap them into the thing,
Speaker 3: and dip them in the river. Let's see if they
Speaker 3: can breathe underwater.
Speaker 2: Wild.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, and I think about all of that all
Speaker 1: the time. I think about the mental illness, you know,
Speaker 1: side of it, where it's like the all these times
Speaker 1: where we, yeah, we didn't have the research and technology
Speaker 1: and and doctors didn't have the training and understanding of
Speaker 1: different any kind of differences where they just would blame
Speaker 1: it on, blame it on the devil, the devil, the devil. Well,
Speaker 1: I also think with like mental health stuff ghosts, Like
Speaker 1: I wonder how many of them if they just like
Speaker 1: went to therapy, if they had it when they were alive,
Speaker 1: if they would like get over that lover that they
Speaker 1: wander the hallways searching for after all these years or whatever.
Speaker 1: But it's like people didn't do that.
Speaker 3: You know what, that's a great idea for a show
Speaker 3: where there's a therapist for the afterlife. There's a therapist
Speaker 3: for those ghosts to really help them, you know. I mean,
Speaker 3: I guess medium she kind of tried to do that,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm a sober person and I'm a therapy person.
Speaker 1: I'm not a trained none of that, but I've dealt
Speaker 1: with a lot of it in my own life, and
Speaker 1: when I do go ghost hunting sometimes I apply some
Speaker 1: of that to you know, trying to understand what's going
Speaker 1: on here. I don't know. I think it's a good
Speaker 1: way to look at it.
Speaker 3: Have you ever considered I sometimes think about you know,
Speaker 3: there's lore that was discussed in a lot of some
Speaker 3: of the cinema that we got from like Japan, say,
Speaker 3: in the nineties, and it opened my eyes to thinking
Speaker 3: more about ways in which poltergeist activity isn't necessarily even
Speaker 3: just like the resurrected spirits, say of some angry First
Speaker 3: Nations person whose grave was you know, mishandled, which is
Speaker 3: kind of a trope at this point, but I think about, like,
Speaker 3: what about like the person who was hit by a
Speaker 3: car and there's this echoing reverberation of that.
Speaker 2: They just the trauma of that, Because trauma.
Speaker 3: Is at the root of all of our If anybody's
Speaker 3: been in therapy, anybody who struggled with addiction, anybody who
Speaker 3: struggled as a human being, we all, all of us
Speaker 3: carry trauma, and we just get into the game of
Speaker 3: like justding ourselves because well, oh, my tea is little tea.
Speaker 3: It's not as big as their tea. Their tea is
Speaker 3: so much bigger. So how am I suffering so much? Like,
Speaker 3: who gives a crap? You guys, we all carry it
Speaker 3: with us. So imagine wham, just hit by a car
Speaker 3: out of nowhere and you're gone. That trauma of that moment,
Speaker 3: like reverberating echoing in a space. There's elements of physics, particles,
Speaker 3: you know, the atomic relativity, things that we just can't
Speaker 3: even begin to think about or understand. There's there's how
Speaker 3: many thousands of conic colors that our eyes don't even see,
Speaker 3: So like what if that is the reverberation of that
Speaker 3: and it would know? How powerful could it be someone
Speaker 3: like yourself who can find some way of connecting with that,
Speaker 3: that person's echo that's still there, like experiencing that trauma
Speaker 3: and being able to help like ease that.
Speaker 2: That's to me, that's really beautiful.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, I mean there's a lot of things we
Speaker 1: can't see. Doesn't mean they're not there at all times.
Speaker 1: Like I can't see the internet, like working, Like I
Speaker 1: can see the results of it, but like I don't know,
Speaker 1: like I can't see you can't see certain I can't
Speaker 1: see germs, right, but they're there.
Speaker 3: I love that argument when people try to say to me,
Speaker 3: like there's never you can't you can't explain the unexplained
Speaker 3: or whatever, And I go, Okay, I'm going to give
Speaker 3: you five minutes. I want you to explain to me
Speaker 3: how television works. Seriously, I don't explain that to me
Speaker 3: because I've heard things. I've seen things that I can't explain.
Speaker 3: So if you're telling me that they can't be rolled,
Speaker 3: and just please please, with our very capable brains, explain
Speaker 3: to me how the internet freaking works? How is my
Speaker 3: cell phone work?
Speaker 1: But you know what, I love not knowing like I
Speaker 1: love just I love especially the unknown. The all of
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff is so fun for me to
Speaker 1: just if I had the answers. First of all, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't have a podcast. It would be so boring. We
Speaker 1: would know everything, you know, it's keeping me in business
Speaker 1: not knowing everything. Yes, wait, I have to talk to
Speaker 1: you about Late Night with the Devil.
Speaker 2: Ooh.
Speaker 1: I love this movie. Thank you, And if anyone listening
Speaker 1: has not seen it, oh my god. First of all,
Speaker 1: your performance is.
Speaker 2: Incredible, thank you.
Speaker 1: And it's just such a different kind of movie. It's fun,
Speaker 1: it looks cool, it's scary. It's just like everything I love.
Speaker 1: I love aesthetics and colors and then also spooky and
Speaker 1: just ugh, it's such a me movie. I love it.
Speaker 2: To me the movie. Thank you for saying that.
Speaker 3: By the way, I really appreciate this, and I appreciate
Speaker 3: the shout out and the plug too. So I do
Speaker 3: hope anyone who is a fan of yours will now
Speaker 3: take your lead and go and give this movie a chance.
Speaker 3: It's called Late Night with the Devils, written and directed
Speaker 3: by two brothers who are Australian named Colin and Cameron
Speaker 3: Karen's and the Karens brothers grew up just like me,
Speaker 3: obsessed with late night horror hosts and late night talk show.
Speaker 3: Well I wasn't as obsessed with late night talk shows
Speaker 3: as I was with just like classic horror cinema, eighties
Speaker 3: cinema that was, you know, from the likes of John
Speaker 3: Carpenter or David Cronenberg or any of these you know,
Speaker 3: awesome filmmakers we had at that time, Toby Hooper. So
Speaker 3: they write this film about a guy who's, you know,
Speaker 3: the host of late night talk show and he's in
Speaker 3: second place to Carson and he's going to get canceled
Speaker 3: because he's just getting clobbered by you know, a ratings loss,
Speaker 3: and he's recently widowed in the last year, and he's
Speaker 3: this guy just has never processed any of the going
Speaker 3: back to the trauma, Like he's never processed the trauma
Speaker 3: of losing the love of his life, of his fumbling career,
Speaker 3: of the fact that he has to be mister happy
Speaker 3: and charming guy in front of the national audience every
Speaker 3: night while behind the scenes he's drinking himself and stressing
Speaker 3: and overworking himself to an early grave. So to me,
Speaker 3: when I've read the script, I was like, Oh, I
Speaker 3: can latch on all that stuff because I know psychologically,
Speaker 3: emotionally how all of that stuff can feel. Now it's
Speaker 3: Halloween Night, nineteen seventy seven. The show is going to
Speaker 3: be canceled any second. So in order to try and
Speaker 3: resurrect his show, he brings on this young woman and
Speaker 3: the doctor who's been caring for her, who he has
Speaker 3: started to develop feelings for. And this young girl was
Speaker 3: recently rescued from a ritualistic cult and it is believed
Speaker 3: she believes that she's possessed by a demon. And so
Speaker 3: his hope is that things will go bananas. Maybe he
Speaker 3: can even have an exorcism on live TV and it
Speaker 3: will goose his ratings. And I love that notion of
Speaker 3: the script too, because I've definitely done things in my life,
Speaker 3: whether it was career wise or even just relationship wise,
Speaker 3: where I've bent the little calibration on my ethical compass
Speaker 3: just a smidge because I thought that the ultimate goal
Speaker 3: was worth it, right, Like, well, if I can make
Speaker 3: this good thing happen, then maybe it's okay. If I
Speaker 3: just just in my compass a little bit, Wow, it
Speaker 3: never goes well, and it certainly doesn't in the movie,
Speaker 3: and I think it it's just like what we were
Speaker 3: talking about, that meeting point between fractured psychees, untreated trauma,
Speaker 3: emotional dysregulation, and the way in which psychic energy and
Speaker 3: manifestations can just erupt. And I really loved getting to
Speaker 3: make the film. I'm so glad you liked it.
Speaker 1: Ah, Yes, And I'm I'm also such a huge fan
Speaker 1: of well sixties and seventies, like paranormal studies and like
Speaker 1: it's definitely the era of like parapsychology and ESP and
Speaker 1: all of this, the warrens Adam Lorraine Warren and anyway,
Speaker 1: now when you're doing this kind of movie, of course
Speaker 1: you hear these stories, weird things are happening on set
Speaker 1: or did any of that that happen.
Speaker 3: I had two incidents that were tricky for me, and
Speaker 3: it was really fun. I didn't ever feel in danger,
Speaker 3: one of which I just want to attribute to good acting,
Speaker 3: because I would never want to put it out there
Speaker 3: into the interspheres that she would be that she was possessed,
Speaker 3: because she's a wonderfully sound minded young actor out of
Speaker 3: Australia named Ingridterrelli, who plays Lily, the girl who is
Speaker 3: supposedly possessed in the film.
Speaker 2: We shot.
Speaker 3: This is a This is like a Friends and Family Productions,
Speaker 3: very small production. We were on a little stage in
Speaker 3: Australia in Melbourne called Docklins, and there was little we
Speaker 3: didn't have, like trailers or these little dressing room areas
Speaker 3: that were kind of off the stage. It was like
Speaker 3: doing a play, to be honest, which is something I
Speaker 3: loved about it as an actor.
Speaker 2: But I was walking past.
Speaker 3: I would go say hi to everybody in the morning,
Speaker 3: and you know, after you've done hair and makeup and
Speaker 3: you're just getting ready to start, and I'm walking down
Speaker 3: the hall and I walked past the Lily's room, her
Speaker 3: doors open, and I went to say hi to her,
Speaker 3: and she was staring at herself in the mirror, and
Speaker 3: I got this like perspective as she's like staring at herself,
Speaker 3: getting herself into character for this this possessed young woman,
Speaker 3: and it sent chills down my spec. She had no
Speaker 3: she didn't hear me, and she didn't have any awareness
Speaker 3: of my presence, and it scared me so bad. I
Speaker 3: really like, it gave me the chills. And then we're
Speaker 3: shooting a sequence where there's a lot of cool, very
Speaker 3: old school, rudimentary special effects tools at play. We did
Speaker 3: this film again with not a lot of money, very
Speaker 3: little money in fact, and so most of the things
Speaker 3: we did we did practically. And there's a moment where
Speaker 3: like a table starts shaking and some glasses explode, and
Speaker 3: this is all done with little motors and little remote controls,
Speaker 3: and it's very fun, you know, it's like old school filmmaking.
Speaker 3: So while that's happening, my character is really supposed to
Speaker 3: be taking in his environment and being like this this
Speaker 3: wasn't are these are like did we do this? Did
Speaker 3: we plan this little thing? Or is this like or
Speaker 3: is this actually really happening, So it starts happening. But
Speaker 3: in addition to the loud noise of the table rattling
Speaker 3: and the theorem and player making noise the walls of
Speaker 3: the stage in the are areas where there's no hallways.
Speaker 3: So there's areas around this stage where there are no hallways.
Speaker 3: This is literally just the edge of the wall of
Speaker 3: the stage, which are all soundproofed. It sounded like I
Speaker 3: don't know how I can recreate it where I am
Speaker 3: right now, but like like things were shaking out in
Speaker 3: the outer realm. It happened once, and I will always
Speaker 3: wonder if they found some way to mess with me,
Speaker 3: to like go bang on things, because I asked, and
Speaker 3: they genuinely seemed to be that. People were like, I
Speaker 3: don't think did anybody hear anything? I was like, did
Speaker 3: you guys hear that?
Speaker 2: That was really scary?
Speaker 3: So I don't know, I don't know, I don't need
Speaker 3: to know. All I know is that I had a blast.
Speaker 3: I felt completely safe making that movie, and I mean
Speaker 3: safe not in a supernatural way, but in an emotional,
Speaker 3: like psychological wake. The character he had to go to
Speaker 3: some really dark places, and when you're with people making films,
Speaker 3: who approach it with so much love and consideration and
Speaker 3: create a real safety net you can just jump into it.
Speaker 3: It was such a great experience. I'm so happy. I'm
Speaker 3: so proud that people seem to really dig it. It means
Speaker 3: so much that you liked it.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you should be proud anytime people are just like
Speaker 1: doing things different. Oh my favorite. You know, it's like
Speaker 1: a completely original It's it's just a beautiful, a beautiful
Speaker 1: thing to see and I want everyone to see that movie.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: It's funny because like I feel like it's the devil
Speaker 1: whenever the Devil is mentioned in these movies. That's why
Speaker 1: I ask if anything happened on set, because it seems
Speaker 1: like I feel like the people I've talked to that
Speaker 1: have done movies that are about a haunted house, like
Speaker 1: it's not really that, but it's like it's anytime it's
Speaker 1: a possession movie or whatever, there's like a couple of
Speaker 1: weird little things that will happen. So I'm taking your
Speaker 1: stories and saying, yes, there was some weirdness, but nothing
Speaker 1: too bad.
Speaker 2: Thank you. I choose to believe.
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen a ghost or you know, had
Speaker 1: an experience where you're like, I'm that's a ghost.
Speaker 3: When I was eleven going twelve, coming out of like
Speaker 3: a really tumultuous divorce that my parents had, and it was
Speaker 3: really really dark.
Speaker 2: I was.
Speaker 3: I was deep in the throes of my first very
Speaker 3: long battle with depression, suicidal, ideation, isolation. I was, like
Speaker 3: I said, raised very religiously, and I was struggling with
Speaker 3: that relationship with concepts of spirituality. My sexuality was beginning
Speaker 3: to you know, really grow. I was on the verge
Speaker 3: of puberty, and I was definitely told by like a
Speaker 3: religious counselor that my thoughts of suicide were probably tough.
Speaker 3: I do the fact that I was having, you know,
Speaker 3: sexual fantasies or masturbating and just all kinds of real
Speaker 3: problematic stuff was being plumped into my brain while at
Speaker 3: the same time I was doing my own dabbling with
Speaker 3: the occult and trying to learn about stuff that I
Speaker 3: found really fascinating, and it all kind of cal It
Speaker 3: was really interesting with this little house in South Kansas
Speaker 3: City where there was like six people living there, including
Speaker 3: siblings and parents, and then within a very short time
Speaker 3: amount of time, it's just like me and my mom
Speaker 3: and there's me and my mom and my sister, because
Speaker 3: my sister got really sick and needed to be home.
Speaker 3: So you have a very sick sibling, very dark house,
Speaker 3: windows are all closed up. You know, I'm in deep depression,
Speaker 3: and I was really wrestling with insomnia, deep insomnia. I
Speaker 3: really had like one friend, and my mother was you know,
Speaker 3: very religious, but also a bit unavailable in ways that
Speaker 3: I would have been helpful at that time. And I
Speaker 3: had no relationship with my father at that point. So
Speaker 3: all this to say, I give you this lead up
Speaker 3: because I think any psychiatric psychologist, counselor listening would be
Speaker 3: able to go, well, this is why these things happen.
Speaker 3: I wonder often if it's a marriage between of course,
Speaker 3: the psychological and the hormonal and the things that were
Speaker 3: going on with me meeting something else and I don't
Speaker 3: know what it is, and I will never know what
Speaker 3: it is, and maybe even when I die, I'll never
Speaker 3: get to know what it was. But I started hearing conversational,
Speaker 3: very whispery voices late at night. I was having auditory
Speaker 3: experiences where I was hearing things. I for a long
Speaker 3: time believed that my radio turned to certain dials would
Speaker 3: help me tune into extraterrestrial life based on something that
Speaker 3: I'd read at one point, so I would turn on
Speaker 3: radio late late at night and then turned way to
Speaker 3: the far right dial and just like lay there and
Speaker 3: hope for listening for something. And maybe I was just
Speaker 3: hoping and my imagination was hearing these voices. But what
Speaker 3: would happen is these soft, soft voices. I would lean
Speaker 3: in and lean in and lean in, and then all
Speaker 3: of a sudden the screen would would ring out, Oh God,
Speaker 3: but it would scare the crap out of me, and
Speaker 3: I couldn't sleep. And then I started hearing footsteps coming
Speaker 3: up and I was sleeping in an attic at that point,
Speaker 3: coming up and down the stairs to my attic, and
Speaker 3: then I would go and check, and the next day
Speaker 3: ask my mom, you know what was going on last night,
Speaker 3: and then she would say nothing, it's sleep. And at
Speaker 3: one point I came home and my mom was mad
Speaker 3: and frustrated. I was like, what, and she thought I
Speaker 3: had done it. I know I had not done it.
Speaker 3: I don't know who else could have done it, but
Speaker 3: someone had pulled all the drawers out of the bathroom
Speaker 3: that was like at the bottom of those stairs that
Speaker 3: then led to where my mom's room, and my mom
Speaker 3: and my sister were sleeping in the same room because
Speaker 3: my mom was taking care of my sister. At that point,
Speaker 3: the running up and down the stairs got more and
Speaker 3: more intense, the sounds got more intense. Was it my
Speaker 3: little self grappling with my first severe anxiety and panic attacks?
Speaker 3: I don't know what was it. I don't know visually,
Speaker 3: I never saw anything, but I do know that I
Speaker 3: came down I finally fell asleep one night, I got
Speaker 3: a very good night's sleep for the first time in
Speaker 3: a very long time. And by the way, this is
Speaker 3: while I was preparing for my first like serious contemplative
Speaker 3: attempt on my life, and I was really thinking I
Speaker 3: was going to do it like that week. And I
Speaker 3: came downstairs and my mom, my sister and I hadn't
Speaker 3: my sister hadn't really left her bed in a while,
Speaker 3: but they were sitting in the living room with someone
Speaker 3: a friend of my mom's was very religious from church,
Speaker 3: and they were very upset, And I said, what's going on.
Speaker 3: I thought maybe they'd found my note, but they said,
Speaker 3: do you remember last night? And I said no, And
Speaker 3: apparently in like a complete glazed over fog. I had
Speaker 3: walked throughout the house not responded to anybody, like sleepwalked.
Speaker 2: I guess you would say, if you're a scientist, in a.
Speaker 3: Way that really creeped everybody out. And then I went
Speaker 3: back to bed and fell asleep, and whatever it was
Speaker 3: that they saw, it freaked them out. So then of
Speaker 3: course they go go in my room and they find
Speaker 3: all this stuff that I've been like looking at, and
Speaker 3: so then they did like a whole like blessing over
Speaker 3: my room, and dah dah da da da. I looking
Speaker 3: back at that kid, I wish a that he'd been
Speaker 3: listened to a lot more, and I wish that he
Speaker 3: had been taken to like a really good therapist. I
Speaker 3: feel like that could have had a huge impact. And
Speaker 3: I think that anybody who's listening to this, whether you're
Speaker 3: forty eight like me, or you're twelve, or maybe there's
Speaker 3: a twelve year old or a nine year old in
Speaker 3: your life that is struggling and you just don't know
Speaker 3: how to reach out to them, but you know their
Speaker 3: behavior is changing and it seems like they're in darkness.
Speaker 3: Whatever your belief system, whatever your faith, whatever your family
Speaker 3: of origins, traditions are there's great powers spiritually as well
Speaker 3: as medically in getting them to talk to a professional.
Speaker 3: And I really wish that that had happened for me
Speaker 3: at that point, but it didn't, and I survive, and
Speaker 3: here I am today to live to tell.
Speaker 1: Have you sleepwalked?
Speaker 3: Since then, I have never sleepwalked. I've had some interesting
Speaker 3: verbal moments where my wife dreads this story.
Speaker 2: Scares are so bad.
Speaker 3: But one time I sat up, I guess, and I said,
Speaker 3: she's there.
Speaker 2: She's in the corner. There she is.
Speaker 3: I woke up and my wife, who's very tiny, teeny tiny,
Speaker 3: she was like crouched like a little chinchilla on the
Speaker 3: pillow next to my head. I was like, what are
Speaker 3: you doing there? She was like, no, no, no.
Speaker 1: That is very scary. What about sleep paralysis? Is that
Speaker 1: a thing?
Speaker 3: I've not wrestled with sleep paralysis? But as a little
Speaker 3: boy I had this. I've always been obsessed with the
Speaker 3: concept of infinity, and I was always really scared of
Speaker 3: infinity since I was very small, and I used to
Speaker 3: have this reoccurring vision late at night when I was
Speaker 3: very little. I would lay on my back and I
Speaker 3: would see what looked like this giant meat ball spinning
Speaker 3: above my bed, and it was like to me, it
Speaker 3: felt like it was eternity, the concept of eternity, which
Speaker 3: has always been so overwhelming for me that I can't
Speaker 3: even think about it now at forty eight without getting
Speaker 3: a bit of a headache or like feeling a little
Speaker 3: sick to my stomach, because it's just so overwhelming. It's
Speaker 3: so hard for my tiny brain to comprehend it. But
Speaker 3: I've known a few people who have struggled with sleep
Speaker 3: paralysis and shadow people because I was I spent I'm
Speaker 3: twenty two years dry. I've kind of stopped saying twenty
Speaker 3: two years sober. I stopped shooting up and drinking twenty
Speaker 3: two years ago. I have had numerous emotional relapses, so
Speaker 3: I don't think I've behaved necessarily like a sober person
Speaker 3: these past twenty two years. But I certainly haven't used
Speaker 3: you know, heroin or alcohol, which is thank goodness. But
Speaker 3: when I was using heroine at one point, I was
Speaker 3: experimenting with speed and doing speedballs and kind of going
Speaker 3: into you know, darker corners of the Midwest where meth
Speaker 3: was starting to really rise in the early two thousands,
Speaker 3: and I interacted with a number of people who had
Speaker 3: lots of stories about the shadow people, and I felt
Speaker 3: like there was times when I'd been sleepless for a
Speaker 3: day or two and I could see them, you know,
Speaker 3: out in the woods around whatever creepy house I was
Speaker 3: using at. I think that that's I don't know what
Speaker 3: it is.
Speaker 2: I don't know. Is it alien research? Is it you know?
Speaker 3: Is it ourselves that is we're so out of touch
Speaker 3: with our own souls in those moments of you know,
Speaker 3: self abuse, drugs, just destruction, that like our souls trying
Speaker 3: to reach out to us. Is it our higher self
Speaker 3: that's so disconnected from us? Is it our ego? Is
Speaker 3: it our shadow like a Freudian shadow, it's come to
Speaker 3: life now and is out to like just wreck destruction.
Speaker 3: I don't know, but it scares the crap out of me.
Speaker 1: I think it could be any of those things, because
Speaker 1: I think about that too. I'm I'm nine years yeah,
Speaker 1: and I guess. I mean, I always just say sober
Speaker 1: because it's easiest. But yeah, I totally get what you're
Speaker 1: saying about all that.
Speaker 3: Oh boy, I mean I have been on some benders
Speaker 3: and I didn't pick up a drug to save my life,
Speaker 3: but boy, oh yeah, there's people who've been in who
Speaker 3: love me, who are like, oh, that guy was a
Speaker 3: monster because I wasn't working the prob I wasn't doing
Speaker 3: what I needed to be doing.
Speaker 1: Totally no me and the the Krispy Kreme, those people
Speaker 1: are like, uh, oh, she needs to talk to someone. Anyway.
Speaker 1: When I think about that darkness and the people place
Speaker 1: the things that I was surrounded by in those dark times, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like I was kind of like an empty
Speaker 1: shell of a person or whatever, and like not connected
Speaker 1: to the spiritual side of me. And I can see
Speaker 1: how darkness is attracted to darkness, and yeah, could it
Speaker 1: be my shadow has left my body or my soul
Speaker 1: is leaving my body or floating around? I mean, it
Speaker 1: doesn't feel very closely tethered when you're in those moments,
Speaker 1: and who knows what kind of weird other worldly things
Speaker 1: can happen. Yeah, and you could. It's very easy to go, oh, well,
Speaker 1: it's just you're on drugs, so it's not like real.
Speaker 1: I think. I think that, like, especially when people are
Speaker 1: doing drugs or drinking or whatever, your your inhibitions are
Speaker 1: lowered obviously, and you're you're not focused on all the
Speaker 1: things in life that we're always thinking about, much like
Speaker 1: how animals and children, they say, are a lot of
Speaker 1: times closer to the other side, are more open to
Speaker 1: the other side. They're not focusing on all these other
Speaker 1: things that we're focused on, And I think we're in
Speaker 1: a more state of openness or something like that.
Speaker 2: I agree.
Speaker 3: I think there are countless ways to lift the veil.
Speaker 3: Two of the most prolific throughout human history have been
Speaker 3: either one inebriation or be kind of like a monastic
Speaker 3: real intentionality and anyone who's curious. I found a lot
Speaker 3: of magic and inspiration in a book called The Teachings
Speaker 3: of Don Juan by Carlos Costeneda, about a researcher who
Speaker 3: goes to work with the First Nation's medicine man shaman,
Speaker 3: who teaches him the way of the payote and the
Speaker 3: way of all of these incredible, you know resources the
Speaker 3: Earth has given us to try and you know, tap
Speaker 3: into the other And at a certain point, this very
Speaker 3: you know, academic, scholarly guy who's gone down this credible
Speaker 3: rabbit hole of astral projection and telekinesis and all kinds
Speaker 3: of magical, wonderful stuff realizes that his guru isn't taking anything.
Speaker 3: It is a discipline, you know, and it's it's kind
Speaker 3: of it's kind of fascinating.
Speaker 2: But yeah, and I and I agree with you.
Speaker 3: I think that the children element too is really it's
Speaker 3: really fascinating.
Speaker 2: I remember my my sister.
Speaker 3: My nephew miraculously beat cancer when he's two years old.
Speaker 3: But he used to have to go to the hospital
Speaker 3: and he would get treatments and you know, da, da da,
Speaker 3: And he woke up one night and said that he
Speaker 3: had seen this girl who came to check on him,
Speaker 3: and he wondered how she was doing, a girl that
Speaker 3: he had been at the hospital with and she had passed.
Speaker 3: It really moved my sister and my sister, by the way,
Speaker 3: after my mother, my mother passed and I got lots
Speaker 3: of little signs. And again psychologists and scientists listening to
Speaker 3: me right now will go, well, that's because you're looking.
Speaker 3: When you're looking for signs, you're going to see the science.
Speaker 3: And I say, okay, that doesn't dissuade them from my truth.
Speaker 3: My mom loved yellow butterflies, and right after she passed away,
Speaker 3: I was inundated with yellow butterflies everywhere I went. I
Speaker 3: felt like one almost saved my life, and my sister
Speaker 3: started to really have connections to the other side because
Speaker 3: both of us, in fact, I think most of the
Speaker 3: people in my family reached a point where we had
Speaker 3: to be liberated from the chains of spiritual belief systems
Speaker 3: that we were indoctrinated to believe that had really held
Speaker 3: us back. And she literally heard a voice saying like,
Speaker 3: let go, you can let go of all that crap.
Speaker 3: And she's one of the most spiritual people I know.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm looking at the time, this just flew by.
Speaker 1: I had some real silly, dumb stuff that we could
Speaker 1: have done, but we didn't have to get to any
Speaker 1: of it because this has been so amazing.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you.
Speaker 2: I'm honored.
Speaker 3: I'm honored because you care about this subject in a
Speaker 3: way that means a lot to me. I know there's
Speaker 3: a lot of approaches to this stuff, and I mostly
Speaker 3: work with people in the entertainment side of things, which
Speaker 3: I love. I love talking about ghosts and the supernatural
Speaker 3: and monsters from the realm of how do we entertain
Speaker 3: people and how can we I even have my own company,
Speaker 3: Good Feeing Films, where we're trying to like utilize spooky
Speaker 3: stories and ghost stories and supernatural stories and mythology just
Speaker 3: as a form of entertaining people through which we can.
Speaker 2: Tell meaningful stories.
Speaker 3: But when someone wants to really get down and talk about,
Speaker 3: like the real.
Speaker 2: Stuff, I get very excited.
Speaker 3: So I was very honored that you wanted me to
Speaker 3: come and shoot the breeze with you, and I hope
Speaker 3: I didn't bore your listeners, and I hope I didn't
Speaker 3: bore you. I know I can be a gab fest sometimes,
Speaker 3: but this is a subject that I just think is
Speaker 3: so cool.
Speaker 1: Now. You make my job real easy. I could listen
Speaker 1: to you talk about this stuff for hours, and I
Speaker 1: hope one of these days you'll come back and we
Speaker 1: can get into more of those because we have a
Speaker 1: lot to talk about. We didn't even get to aliens,
Speaker 1: we didn't get to know Bigfoot, we didn't talk about psychics.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a lot I have a.
Speaker 3: Lot of friends in this in the community as well.
Speaker 3: It would be fun if you ever want to do
Speaker 3: a round table or we should do it get together
Speaker 3: at some point. I mean, I think my friend Zach
Speaker 3: and Alex twin Temple, they they really are the people
Speaker 3: that know the most about magic of anybody I know,
Speaker 3: and I think they're fascinating.
Speaker 1: The musicians, yes, yes, Twin Temple, I know them, aren't
Speaker 1: they amazing? Or I don't know them personally, but they're
Speaker 1: really cool.
Speaker 2: They're so cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I have a I call it my our coven,
Speaker 3: but really we just get together and play like board
Speaker 3: games and it's like the Boulets and.
Speaker 2: You know, Twin Temple and.
Speaker 3: Some of our spooky goffe friends Ed Brian and more,
Speaker 3: people that are so cool. But I like, I love
Speaker 3: it because I think if any of my neighbors see, like,
Speaker 3: who's coming into my house, they're probably like, what crazy
Speaker 3: Satanic orgy or the Desmulchions up to tonight And we're
Speaker 3: in there, you know, playing like some very sophisticated, weird
Speaker 3: version of battleship with like.
Speaker 2: No you did not think mine. It's like quite a
Speaker 2: bunch of nerds. I love it.
Speaker 1: I love that. I love spooky weirdos, especially when you
Speaker 1: find out that they're like not that spooky. That's like
Speaker 1: my favorite thing. Hey, where do you want people to
Speaker 1: find you? And you know, what do you want them
Speaker 1: to see? Tell them? Oh?
Speaker 2: Thanks?
Speaker 3: I try to share information about things I'm working on
Speaker 3: at my Instagram page, which is at desk Mulchin, so
Speaker 3: it's just my last name. I have Count Crowley currently
Speaker 3: in publication from dark Horse. If you like monsters and
Speaker 3: all Manner of the Supernatural. That's a really beautiful comic
Speaker 3: that I'm very proud of. This summer, we launch a
Speaker 3: new comic that I've created called Nights Versus Samurai from Image.
Speaker 3: Super excited about that. I'm making a couple of other
Speaker 3: announcements at San Diego Comic Con. I have Late Night
Speaker 3: with the Devil, which is currently streaming. And yeah, I
Speaker 3: just I hope that I can come back and talk
Speaker 3: to you again and that our paths cross somewhere out
Speaker 3: on some investigation somewhere. It'd be really fun.
Speaker 1: Yes, all right, Well, thank you so nice meeting you.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you so much. To David Desmalchin. I
Speaker 1: definitely want to have him back on this podcast at
Speaker 1: some point. Oh my god, he's so cool. Anyway, Hey,
Speaker 1: thanks for listening. Make sure you you know Greatest five Stars,
Speaker 1: Tell your friends about the show, follow us on social media,
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. I love you all, both
Speaker 1: living and dead. But if I didn't ask you to
Speaker 1: haunt me, don't haunt me came back. This has been
Speaker 1: an exactly right production. Want to share your paranormal experience
Speaker 1: on the podcast. I read stories out loud and sometimes
Speaker 1: I'll even call you, So email me at ghosted by
Speaker 1: Roz at gmail dot com. You can send a DM
Speaker 1: or voice message to the show's Instagram at ghosted by Roz.
Speaker 1: Give us a follow while you're there, and follow me
Speaker 1: Roz on Instagram at Roz Hernandez and on TikTok and
Speaker 1: Twitter at It's Roz Hernandez. My senior producer is the
Speaker 1: Startling Jiha Lee. Associate producer is the alarming Christina Chamberlain.
Speaker 1: This episode was mixed and sound designed by the Eerie
Speaker 1: Edson Choi. My guest booker is the Petrifying Patrick Kuttner.
Speaker 1: Additional production support from the hair Raising Hannah Kyle Crichton.
Speaker 1: My theme music is by the spine Chilling Brendan Lynch Salomon.
Speaker 1: Artwork by the Spooky Vanessa Lilac, Photography by the Terrifying
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Karen. Executive produced by the Chilling Karen Kilgareth, the Spookky, Georgia,
Speaker 1: Hard Start, and the Frightening Danielle Kramer,