Speaker 1: Welcome to Nightcall, a production of My Heart Radio. Hello,
Speaker 1: and welcome to a Nightcall holiday special release of a
Speaker 1: book club episode. Normally, these book Club episodes are reserved
Speaker 1: solely for our patreons, but we're opening it up for
Speaker 1: the holidays to try and convince more of you to
Speaker 1: join our book club Patreon, and also as a little treat.
Speaker 1: This book club episode is Communion by Whitley Striber, a
Speaker 1: very strange sort of holiday tale about an alien abduction
Speaker 1: that may or may not have happened. Please enjoy and
Speaker 1: we will be back with more night Calls in It's
Speaker 1: eleven PM in a cabin in upstate New York and
Speaker 1: you're listening to the Night Call book Club. Hello, and
Speaker 1: welcome back to the Nightcall book Club. My name is Tesline,
Speaker 1: I'm in Los Angeles, and with me I have Molly Lambert,
Speaker 1: name Emily Yoshida. Guys. For this month's book club, we're
Speaker 1: doing Communion and this was probably I thought this was
Speaker 1: our most difficult and dance book to get through. Because
Speaker 1: I show it, I'm excited of that challenge. But yes,
Speaker 1: it was like the first thing that felt like a
Speaker 1: primary source into the paranormal. Yeah, with all the baggage
Speaker 1: that comes with that. Um. But I'll just say up front,
Speaker 1: in the interest of total transparency, I did not finish
Speaker 1: this book this month. I'm very very sorry to all
Speaker 1: of our Patrion subscribers. I will always try to finish
Speaker 1: it from here on out. I was just in the
Speaker 1: middle of moving it. Also, if you don't finish the
Speaker 1: book club book, if life gets in the way and
Speaker 1: you don't finish the book, that's okay, well in this
Speaker 1: in this in the case of this one, it can
Speaker 1: be a book club for like Whitley Striber's personal website
Speaker 1: or media entry or like anything having to do with him.
Speaker 1: I generally hate book clubs actually because as soon as
Speaker 1: I get assigned a book, it's like the last thing
Speaker 1: I want to do. It just takes me to high
Speaker 1: school in that way always. You know, anytime I've ever
Speaker 1: been in a book club before, it's just been like, oh,
Speaker 1: what a big responsibility yourself up to get in trouble
Speaker 1: with your friends. But the book club is I love
Speaker 1: the night call book club because I also, yeah, I
Speaker 1: feel like nobody's judgmental about it's a cool book. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can read the book however you like. You can
Speaker 1: watch the movie. It's not like that Seinfeld episode. If
Speaker 1: you watched the movie of Communion and that's what you're
Speaker 1: working off of, that's fine too. I really wanted to
Speaker 1: see the movie at and I haven't yet the same. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we should maybe do a bonus up or something because
Speaker 1: I'm so I like because that was the first thing
Speaker 1: when we started reading it. I of course saw, oh
Speaker 1: there was a movie made with Christopher walking In. It
Speaker 1: must check this out and the images from it are incredible.
Speaker 1: Uh So I was very very area and the author
Speaker 1: didn't approve of it. Connect thought Christopher Walkin played him
Speaker 1: as a dick. Yeah, um, let's talk about what what
Speaker 1: communions about? How about you guys? So I let's talking
Speaker 1: about Whitley Striber too. Yeah. Well, Whittie Streiber is kind
Speaker 1: of the most interesting thing about because Communion derailed his
Speaker 1: entire career. So basically Communion they say, but it's like
Speaker 1: it started his career as a ufo ologist guy phthologist.
Speaker 1: He also post. So we should say about Whitley Striber.
Speaker 1: He's an author, He's a horror author. He was supposed
Speaker 1: to be like the next Stephen King. Almost, if not
Speaker 1: every single one of his books has been turned into
Speaker 1: a movie, most of them very high grossing movies. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: He wrote The Hunger, which is like turned into a
Speaker 1: movie with was a personal favorite of mine by Tony Scott,
Speaker 1: starting Katherine de Neve and David Bowie. He did The
Speaker 1: Day After the Book. The Day After Tomorrow was based
Speaker 1: on That was recently, and that was recently, and that
Speaker 1: was post his life getting ruined. I'm doing air quotes
Speaker 1: right now by Communion. So he's like done okay for himself,
Speaker 1: and he's made It's almost as if he's made a bargain.
Speaker 1: Part of what he talks about being exiled from is
Speaker 1: that his like super rich New York penthouse friends started
Speaker 1: to think he was too weird to associate with, which
Speaker 1: is well, to be fair, he started associating with a
Speaker 1: lot of upologists and you know, alien fans. Some of
Speaker 1: his friends were really fringy, right but right, But some
Speaker 1: of these people were like taking a plane to secret
Speaker 1: petto Island. So I'm just saying, maybe Whatley Striper chose
Speaker 1: the right stripe of the conspiracy world towards being those
Speaker 1: like secretive petto Island New Yorker conversation. So you could
Speaker 1: be talking about what did he say he like hung
Speaker 1: out with lou Reid and they talked about about UFOs
Speaker 1: with lou Reid like spiracy theories. I don't know, it
Speaker 1: seems pretty chilled me with a striper. It's from Texas.
Speaker 1: He's from San Antonio or near San Antonio originally, and
Speaker 1: then he wrote a bunch of horror novels that got adapted,
Speaker 1: and then Communion he started writing in the eighties. It's
Speaker 1: based on it's based on a bunch of experiences. But
Speaker 1: the primary experiences, the one that started all happened in
Speaker 1: UM late nine October and December nineteen, the day after Christmas,
Speaker 1: after he had finished his Christmas Goose, finished his Christmas
Speaker 1: Goose and working on a hearty novel about the Russian Revolution,
Speaker 1: and he's cross country skiing a lot. Um. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: he had two experiences, I believe in one in October
Speaker 1: and one the day after Christmas are the two that
Speaker 1: he kind of focuses on. Both at this upstate house,
Speaker 1: UM that he's gotten with his Hollywood riches. It's his
Speaker 1: weekend house. UM. But then yeah, over the course, so
Speaker 1: the book was published in seven very soon after these
Speaker 1: events transpired. UM and then over the course of the
Speaker 1: book he kind of goes back into his past via
Speaker 1: regressive hypnosis and discovers that he has had earlier contacts
Speaker 1: with visitors. But also one of the weird things about
Speaker 1: Communion is that it's kind of credited with like establishing
Speaker 1: the gray as the stereotypical alien form. But he Whitley Striver,
Speaker 1: is really clear throughout the book that he has no
Speaker 1: reason to believe that these are extraterrestrials, right, He's kind
Speaker 1: of like, I think maybe, but I have no evidence
Speaker 1: that they when people say that that's what it is,
Speaker 1: because he's like, I never said that, And he said
Speaker 1: it could be just crazy military experiments where they come
Speaker 1: kidnap people in the night and do things on them,
Speaker 1: which is way scarier. Well, there's a interview that was
Speaker 1: earlier this year, so a very recent interview that I
Speaker 1: think test linked to for us UM and will included
Speaker 1: in our notes. He says something, and I think this
Speaker 1: is sort of similar to some some things he said
Speaker 1: in the book where he says, I've also unfortunately had
Speaker 1: an influence on modern UFO folklore. I think it's all folklore.
Speaker 1: It's something that people don't understand and they generate stories
Speaker 1: about it. What I'm interested in is this something that's there?
Speaker 1: What's behind them? Um and so. Yeah, And he talks
Speaker 1: a lot about like he's he goes and does research
Speaker 1: on other people's UFOLK experiences prior to that, kind of
Speaker 1: comparing recurring images and experiences and commonalities and stuff and like,
Speaker 1: and that approach to it is like one of the
Speaker 1: things where I'm like, this feels like a very rational
Speaker 1: way too if you have an experience that feels unexplained
Speaker 1: like this, Like he's going about like he's doing what
Speaker 1: I would do basically. So I feel like all that
Speaker 1: is super interesting because it's not it's not like, oh,
Speaker 1: I've been visited by aliens. It's like I'm having an
Speaker 1: experience that's similar to these other kind of abnormal experiences
Speaker 1: that other people have had. What can we learn from
Speaker 1: the sum total of these experiences? No, I mean, as
Speaker 1: a testimonial, especially from the beginning, it's free really well.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously he's a horror novelist. It's sort of
Speaker 1: written like a horror novel. It reminded me a lot
Speaker 1: of some of the HP Lovecraft stuff of just like
Speaker 1: was living my life in a weird part of the
Speaker 1: East Coast, and then an inexplicable thing completely out of
Speaker 1: my frame of reference happens that completely horrifies me and
Speaker 1: makes me unable to function in life. Ah After he
Speaker 1: has one of the experiences, he tries to kill his
Speaker 1: son accidentally, sort of, doesn't he like pull a knife
Speaker 1: on his son or something. I don't think. There's a
Speaker 1: part where he's talking about it has like this weird
Speaker 1: encounter with his son, which again we'll get to that later.
Speaker 1: Whether well it's after the it's after the October incident
Speaker 1: where they have friends over and everybody at least shares
Speaker 1: a recollection of like strange lights and a sound a
Speaker 1: blue light and crashing noise, like things clattering down. And
Speaker 1: then he talks to his son about it. And this
Speaker 1: is so like you said, it was like a horror book.
Speaker 1: This this book scared me more than like most other
Speaker 1: books ever have, because there's this part where he goes
Speaker 1: to like ask his son and he's like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: was worried for a second, but then the little doctors
Speaker 1: came and told me like it was all going to
Speaker 1: be okay, And I was just like, it's so like
Speaker 1: the and those those sort of unexplainable things. I mean,
Speaker 1: it really gets into kind of like subconscious stuff. It
Speaker 1: gets into a lot of like like childhood memories and
Speaker 1: the weird foggy you're not really quite sure what was
Speaker 1: a dream and what wasn't that comes out of childhood memories,
Speaker 1: including his own. That stuff is all super super interesting
Speaker 1: to me. Yeah, And actually I think that's the scariest
Speaker 1: part is just this unrelized the the idea that your memories,
Speaker 1: that some of your memories are are what he calls
Speaker 1: screen memories or memories that replace And I mean a
Speaker 1: lot of if you, if you kind of go down
Speaker 1: the web hole from Whitley s Driver to his friend
Speaker 1: Bud Hopkins UM, who's mentioned in the book as for
Speaker 1: the hypnosis he guides the with Dr Klein. But Bud
Speaker 1: Hopkins kind of became famous in his own right because
Speaker 1: he he would observe these hypnosis sessions and then he
Speaker 1: kind of started these like therapy groups for survivors of
Speaker 1: alien abductions. Um. But he had no background in psychology
Speaker 1: and he was kind of playing fast and loose with
Speaker 1: people who were describing like really intense and you know,
Speaker 1: often the experiences were a lot like rape or child abuse. Um.
Speaker 1: And Bud Hopkins was very sure that the alien abductions
Speaker 1: were real and this is like the only answer. And
Speaker 1: so the regressive memories through hypnosis and the screen memories,
Speaker 1: they just obviously as you're reading the book, there's a
Speaker 1: feeling of being you know, the fact that that is
Speaker 1: like a very dangerous kind of thing to do. There's
Speaker 1: something so eighties about it. So that is what I
Speaker 1: remember being the big like panic constantly in the eighties
Speaker 1: was things like that was repressed memories. People doing regressions
Speaker 1: that lead to like recovered memories that aren't real. And
Speaker 1: that was like how they did all the satanic panics
Speaker 1: stuff supposed to be like hey do you remember when
Speaker 1: this crazy thing happened? And kids are like, oh, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember that happened. Yeah. I mean, you're still kind
Speaker 1: of getting out of the trend of analysis as as
Speaker 1: your main kind of form of therapy, and that very
Speaker 1: kind of old school still for Freudian way, because screen
Speaker 1: memory is like a freud thing, um and all this
Speaker 1: sort of like psycho sexual such a scary idea, but
Speaker 1: I totally it makes sense though. But again, like in
Speaker 1: that case, a lot of this stuff does feel like
Speaker 1: a you stories, like it has the pattern of it,
Speaker 1: the kind of yeah, the way that the mind shields
Speaker 1: it from from oneself is it feels really um and
Speaker 1: then that makes it even scarier than like that's not
Speaker 1: less scary than you epposed. And I think the tricky
Speaker 1: thing is that Willie Striber has I think the forward
Speaker 1: to this book, which was written much later, but when
Speaker 1: he talks about how depressed he became and how you know,
Speaker 1: he was just so frustrated because he feels as though,
Speaker 1: you know, he's been cleared by neurologists. He doesn't they
Speaker 1: thought maybe at temporal lobe epilepsy or something very clear
Speaker 1: about that. He talks about it a lot, but he's
Speaker 1: just saying, just take me at my word what I'm describing.
Speaker 1: There were physical symptoms in some cases witnesses who who
Speaker 1: were at the cabin, who saw something weird happening. So
Speaker 1: I think he was finding it very upsetting. Like we're
Speaker 1: not obviously the first people to say this is not
Speaker 1: probably what happened. What happened could have been something real.
Speaker 1: All of that stuff, when you're saying it does just
Speaker 1: sound like such abuse stuff, like you're telling everybody what happened,
Speaker 1: but nobody believes you, well, even like the one thing.
Speaker 1: So maybe we should go through and just like talk
Speaker 1: about at least the ive incidents. And because one thing
Speaker 1: that I think happens in the the first one he
Speaker 1: talks about, not the first one chronologically, the day after
Speaker 1: Christmas one is like this recurring thing that also happens
Speaker 1: in the the one on the train when he's a kid,
Speaker 1: is like this feeling of like, oh, and then suddenly
Speaker 1: I was above whatever was going on, Like I was
Speaker 1: seeing everything from a bird's eye view, which is just
Speaker 1: like I'm just like, oh, that's an out of body experience. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like that's what that feels like. Yeah, that stuff all too.
Speaker 1: I was just because somebody who's had like anxiety attacks
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh, yeah, like disassociating because you're
Speaker 1: having something happened that you'd like you have to leave
Speaker 1: your body for him. But the day after Christmas one, yes,
Speaker 1: he had his Christmas goose went crossing. He went cross
Speaker 1: country skiing later afterwards and was like unusually fatigued by it.
Speaker 1: That was like one of his first symptoms that something
Speaker 1: wasn't right. But click interjection. I hate cross country skiing
Speaker 1: so much, and it's such a like weekender thing to
Speaker 1: do at your country home, where I'm just like, you
Speaker 1: take something that's like fun and dangerous, you suck the
Speaker 1: fun out and then you're like take a walk, but
Speaker 1: we're gonna make it hard. Always I fully understood it.
Speaker 1: I always thought it was like a competitive sport where
Speaker 1: you just like ski for a really long time, like
Speaker 1: just I mean, that's what it is. But it's like
Speaker 1: you're walking on ski literally what you're on an order chack.
Speaker 1: You're hiking on ski. It's not snowshoeing some you know.
Speaker 1: I always thought it sounded delightful because like all activity
Speaker 1: so bundled up and having to swish, swish swish, any
Speaker 1: winter activity. I was like, God, that must be the
Speaker 1: most fun thing ever and I'll never get to do it,
Speaker 1: so I'll never know sledding skiing that I did for
Speaker 1: so long because my mom used to live in Minnesota
Speaker 1: and so she had ski still then like downhill skiing
Speaker 1: was too expensive you had to get the real or
Speaker 1: in the lift pass and all that stuff. But like
Speaker 1: we would go to Mount Rainier and go cross country skiing,
Speaker 1: and I hated it when I was little. The biggest,
Speaker 1: biggest fight I ever had with my parents as a
Speaker 1: child was they would beg me to go across country
Speaker 1: skiing with them, and for some reason I just always refused.
Speaker 1: And it was like a two year battle because your
Speaker 1: parents were no anyway, we digressed. I just wanted to
Speaker 1: go on the way tree Wood for the walk off
Speaker 1: some of that Christmas goose. I would be home eating
Speaker 1: my goose and my gams. So it's like he gets
Speaker 1: a little guy comes into his room, a little guy
Speaker 1: wearing like a plate of armor or something, yeah, which
Speaker 1: he thinks is like because they've found his gun and
Speaker 1: they think he's going to shoot him, so they've like
Speaker 1: pre armed themselves or something. Um, and he just like
Speaker 1: suddenly is standing up with his clothes off in his
Speaker 1: room and then is being transported outdoors. He kind of
Speaker 1: it's like he describes a bunch of like witless hands
Speaker 1: with gentle hands like shuttling him out the door, and
Speaker 1: he's like frozen. Yeah, he can't move. Um. It's very dreamlike.
Speaker 1: There's one part where he talks. I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's when he's leaving his room or some other part
Speaker 1: where they're moving him but it's like he talks about
Speaker 1: being like he's like mid stride and frozen and getting
Speaker 1: like shuttled out, like floating out, and I just like
Speaker 1: that just sounds like dreams I've had. It's very it's
Speaker 1: very evocative. It also sounds like sleep paralysis. That's what
Speaker 1: I also is like, this just sounds like you had
Speaker 1: a really vivid nightmare that you had sleeper. But he
Speaker 1: would say that the physically he had been you know,
Speaker 1: it looked as though he had been roughed up. So
Speaker 1: that's his defense against the sleep paralysis argument, is there
Speaker 1: were physical marks. But yeah, so he is he's brought
Speaker 1: to this like clearing in the woods. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: forget if something happens there, does he get some kind
Speaker 1: of that's where he goes up? He goes up and
Speaker 1: then he's in a ship. Yeah, but he's just like
Speaker 1: he's like, I'm chamber room and he's up and then
Speaker 1: he's brought into the reality of the experience when he
Speaker 1: smells the Yeah, she's like, what can we do to
Speaker 1: get you to stop screen? When it's like a two
Speaker 1: thousand's parenting thing of the like how can we help
Speaker 1: your body? And he's like, let me, let me smell
Speaker 1: your hand, the only normal response. Doesn't it smells like cinnamon? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And he's like, that's how I knew it was real
Speaker 1: because I can smell the cinnamon so strongly. I mean again, like,
Speaker 1: can you remember a smell from a dream? Like I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't think dreams have something I can, but I can.
Speaker 1: I can't remember smelling something in a dream, but I
Speaker 1: can remember like everyone acknowledge ideas. Yeah, yeah, um, that
Speaker 1: part is so compelling to me. You would think he
Speaker 1: would have asked to read something because you can't read
Speaker 1: and dream. That's true. That's like the litmus test that
Speaker 1: supposedly in dreams you can, like you can't look at
Speaker 1: a page of letters. There are no rules and dreams.
Speaker 1: Have you ever read a book in a dream? Probably
Speaker 1: you can. You can be holding a book, and you
Speaker 1: can be understreading. You can be understanding a story, but
Speaker 1: you can't physically read in a dream. I don't have
Speaker 1: dreams anymore because I spoke too much pot. But when
Speaker 1: I stop, I have the type of vivid nightmares such
Speaker 1: as might produce a communion dream. I'm so very clear
Speaker 1: that he doesn't do any drugs, although then He's like,
Speaker 1: he's such a liar about that, talks about in interviews
Speaker 1: he'll talk about like he went to England. He was
Speaker 1: like in and out of Eric Clapton's child, Like, come on,
Speaker 1: many there were zero cocaine. Yeah. I mean again, that's
Speaker 1: another possible explanation. A lot of that stuff causes very
Speaker 1: infect psychological side effects down the road, especially um but
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm not going to diagnosequally striper. I'm
Speaker 1: just saying other people have tried and failed. Yes, um so, yeah,
Speaker 1: he that was his first experience. He was returned eventually.
Speaker 1: I forget did they sample him and then they did? They? Okay,
Speaker 1: the anal probe and that is where that comes from.
Speaker 1: It's what I've learned. That was like the beginning of
Speaker 1: that being south Park because he says it ruined his
Speaker 1: career because that was the first South Park episode. Was
Speaker 1: I guess entirely about this particular alien abduction book. That's
Speaker 1: so weird. I never know. I think I just thought
Speaker 1: these were even older tropes of alien abduction. But now
Speaker 1: that I think about it, it's very eighties for somebody
Speaker 1: to introduce like and also their sexual assault involved, you know,
Speaker 1: because it does seem like in the fifties and sixties,
Speaker 1: it's sort of just like and then the cow comes
Speaker 1: back down weird. Um. I mean obviously because I was looking,
Speaker 1: I was like, where when did they first start documenting
Speaker 1: UFO sightings? Well, this is what's interesting. So there was
Speaker 1: an I say, it was like actually a back and
Speaker 1: forth between two people on we are the Mutants. It
Speaker 1: was so fascinating to me because they talked about how
Speaker 1: I think it was in this one, Um, how in
Speaker 1: the fifties the the UFO was seen as a largely
Speaker 1: like non intervening kind of thing. It was just sort
Speaker 1: of like an observational thing. Um. But then in the
Speaker 1: eighties this is when there was like this explosion of
Speaker 1: people claiming to have had interactions. And one of the things, um,
Speaker 1: that they say that I think is really interesting is
Speaker 1: just how this is a book that is completely really
Speaker 1: about Striber's fear and the way that he tries to
Speaker 1: protect and arm this cabin in the woods. So he
Speaker 1: has an apartment in New York. He doesn't even really
Speaker 1: talk about his sense of fear there. He talks about
Speaker 1: how in the country he's afraid and he's installed like
Speaker 1: motion sensor lights and has a shotgun. There's a security system.
Speaker 1: So eighties. It is eighties, but it's also it is
Speaker 1: very strange to go from a city where you would
Speaker 1: understand feeling like, especially if you're from like urban Texas.
Speaker 1: But I just thought of that, like he's clearly such
Speaker 1: a paranoid person, and he talks about how, like the
Speaker 1: reason they went to the country was because he was
Speaker 1: having like nervous breakdowns in his apartment in the city
Speaker 1: where he was ready to be a paranoid person to
Speaker 1: have nervous breakdown, right, he was having nervous takedowns, and
Speaker 1: he was having like intruder famas, like like nightmares, specifically
Speaker 1: intruder nightmares and like home invasion nightmares, which I feel
Speaker 1: like we're also just like super stoked by news all
Speaker 1: the time in the eighties. Yes, well, also he had
Speaker 1: this experience. I don't know if he talks about it
Speaker 1: in the book, but he talks about it in the
Speaker 1: medium interview about like his parents left him alone for
Speaker 1: two nights or something when he was eleven. I was,
Speaker 1: I feel like, a totally normal thing back then, but
Speaker 1: it's still so striking that they took the rest at
Speaker 1: they took his siblings and then just left him. And
Speaker 1: they just left him at home, and then he looked
Speaker 1: into a room and there was like the window above
Speaker 1: an air conditioning here and it was open. And he
Speaker 1: called his parents and like, well, if you think of
Speaker 1: someone who's like come in and call the cops. And
Speaker 1: then the cops came, and he said they were really
Speaker 1: freaked out, and then they just left. But I feel
Speaker 1: like that will put like a fear of an intruder.
Speaker 1: I mean I had intruder fears really home alone had
Speaker 1: I had a wicked fear of being home alone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think everybody does at a certain point. Also just
Speaker 1: because again like local news especially as always like putting
Speaker 1: that out there. It's like a reason to be afraid
Speaker 1: and to never leave your home. I feel like that
Speaker 1: was why in the eighties people were supposed to never
Speaker 1: leave their homes, and that's why you turn your home
Speaker 1: into a fortress. Well, this is kind of like the
Speaker 1: other element of eighties man to it is the kind
Speaker 1: it's like the boomer idea of I am a chosen
Speaker 1: This is they also talk about this and that we
Speaker 1: are the mutants thing where they were just like it's
Speaker 1: so boomery to be like, I'm gonna like overarm my house.
Speaker 1: I'm so afraid of someone like sneaking in and disrupting
Speaker 1: this like perfect whatever. But then also I am like
Speaker 1: extra specially I've been chosen for observation by aliens. And
Speaker 1: then at the same time, in the second half of
Speaker 1: the book, he I mean, it was really Throughout the book,
Speaker 1: he talks a lot about how stable his family is.
Speaker 1: He loves his wife, he loves his son, he doesn't drink,
Speaker 1: he doesn't do drugs, and then occasionally he'll kind of
Speaker 1: slip and be like, well, I mean I was like
Speaker 1: drinking myself to sleep during that time. I was having
Speaker 1: a bad period between October and December. There are some
Speaker 1: real Stephen King stuff in there where Stephen King the
Speaker 1: first abduction. My whole family was like really stressed out
Speaker 1: all the time by me sort of losing it. But
Speaker 1: it's it's these conflicting reports of how life was, and
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's you can't fault him for
Speaker 1: being something was going. He was allowed to be this
Speaker 1: We're just presented as a novel, it would be just
Speaker 1: like an amazing horror novel. But the but he was
Speaker 1: very firm that it's nonfiction. And then it's follow up
Speaker 1: that was on the best seller list in New York
Speaker 1: Times was like, we will not classify this as nonfiction.
Speaker 1: It's fiction. And he was furious about it, which is
Speaker 1: again also understandable. I mean, he's very sure that he
Speaker 1: lived it. And they also talked about he introduced this
Speaker 1: early on about his own conflicting memories and how the
Speaker 1: shooter he thought he was. He said he would tell
Speaker 1: people he was on campus for the University of Texas shoot,
Speaker 1: but he wasn't, but he had a very specific false
Speaker 1: memory of it. Um So a lot of it does
Speaker 1: sort of sound like compulsive liar stuff for people makeup
Speaker 1: stories that are interesting to be He says something odd
Speaker 1: of you know, he was like they were lies, but
Speaker 1: they weren't lies because I believed them. Hold up, that's
Speaker 1: still that's that is a lie. Like that's still a lie,
Speaker 1: you know if you know that it doesn't line up.
Speaker 1: But then he's just like there's that stuff. There's all
Speaker 1: the animal memories to where he's like, I saw an owl,
Speaker 1: but like I knew I didn't see an Now I
Speaker 1: don't know where I said I saw an owl. Like
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff where it would have been
Speaker 1: so weird to have a barn owl right, right, You're
Speaker 1: in the country in a barn. Yeah, is it weird?
Speaker 1: Or is that why people always say that owls are
Speaker 1: what they see instead of aliens because it's only people
Speaker 1: in country houses their barns. It all sounds like it
Speaker 1: made me be like, is everybody Upstates seeing aliens? Just
Speaker 1: like had a little bit too much wine after dinner
Speaker 1: and they don't want to talk about it. Had one
Speaker 1: drink and one glass of wine. I mean, that's the
Speaker 1: other kind of thing where as a person who would
Speaker 1: desperately like want to give myself credibility, where that's like
Speaker 1: the obvious answer is that I was just so drunk.
Speaker 1: It's like I'll tell you I had one drink and
Speaker 1: one glass, and it's like you don't remember, like it
Speaker 1: was like how many years ago and you're remembering how
Speaker 1: many drinks yet I don't know. But that's the sort
Speaker 1: of thing to you where if somebody like interrogated you
Speaker 1: relentlessly about like, okay, then what did you do? Then?
Speaker 1: What did you do? Like your own story might start
Speaker 1: to slip just because like if you tell it over
Speaker 1: and over again, it's going to shift and you start
Speaker 1: to question things that you would take for granted, like
Speaker 1: because it's being called into question again, we're back in
Speaker 1: the land of trauma and all of that. But um,
Speaker 1: I also wanted to talk about the October Internet because
Speaker 1: that one is interesting just because there are other witnesses there. Um.
Speaker 1: And this is again one of these things where it's like,
Speaker 1: this is one of the things that it's hard to
Speaker 1: write all the stuff off because they go to the
Speaker 1: cabin with Annie and what's her husband's saying? So frasier.
Speaker 1: They're like, like, you know that thing where you invite
Speaker 1: your friends over to your cabin for a weekend and
Speaker 1: then you have a lovely weekend of cross country skiing
Speaker 1: and you make it. Of course, you make a delicious
Speaker 1: brunch in the morning, but not until after you've like
Speaker 1: threatened everybody with a gun because you maybe saw an alien. Yes,
Speaker 1: he doesn't threaten them with a gun, he just has
Speaker 1: like he has a gun. I thought that's what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about. I thought that he like brought the gun out.
Speaker 1: Everybody was like, what are you doing? No, I think
Speaker 1: he just mentions that he has it right, But like
Speaker 1: that's crazy. I don't think he mentioned it to them.
Speaker 1: He just mentioned it in the course of the like
Speaker 1: he says that he so, I think it's after the
Speaker 1: October thing when he was feeling really unsettled and felt
Speaker 1: like something was like at the house or somebody was
Speaker 1: like coming to the house. But he still hadn't kind
Speaker 1: of decided it was these visitors that he bought the shotgun. Um,
Speaker 1: which I mean, okay, we don't condone guns on this podcast,
Speaker 1: but again, if you think I don't know, like it,
Speaker 1: doesn't it sound crazy to me that he has a
Speaker 1: gun in a cabin in the middle of the way.
Speaker 1: To me, the security system is the crazy thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and he acknowledges that too. He says, like, there's
Speaker 1: no reason I should have this stuff, that I got
Speaker 1: it because I was just feeling so nervous yuppie in
Speaker 1: the eighties and some but he's like, we can sell
Speaker 1: you this and it'll keep you safe. I lived for
Speaker 1: many years with the eighties yuppies in the country, and
Speaker 1: nobody had a security system they do now, And it's
Speaker 1: like a point of pride to your house unlocked, yes, exactly,
Speaker 1: doors open. It would have been very very rare. I mean,
Speaker 1: he was definitely super du preparanoid. But yeah, so let's
Speaker 1: go to the October incident with Jacques um. This is
Speaker 1: the one where he's very clear about who has their
Speaker 1: doors open, but and like but that there's a light
Speaker 1: that comes in through a window in the living room
Speaker 1: that I guess all the rooms open out onto and
Speaker 1: he sees it because their door is open. And then
Speaker 1: what does he say. He says something to his wife
Speaker 1: like no, he says that the house is on fire.
Speaker 1: He starts freaking out the houses on fire, like did
Speaker 1: I leave a stick? Doesn't he say? Like did I
Speaker 1: leave a cigarette burning or something? I don't know, but
Speaker 1: he's like something must have been burning and I must
Speaker 1: have fallen asleep. But then he's like instantly also like
Speaker 1: never mind, is fine, go back to sleep, And then
Speaker 1: he apparently goes back to sleep. So yeah, well his
Speaker 1: he says, my mind inventory the possibilities as I watched
Speaker 1: this blue light because it was a blue light, so
Speaker 1: that's what made it super weird, slowly creep up the
Speaker 1: ceiling as if whatever was causing it was slowly moving
Speaker 1: down into the front yard from above. Finally I hit
Speaker 1: on what seemed to me to be a sensible solution.
Speaker 1: The chimney must be on fire, and dropping sparks into
Speaker 1: the chimney must be had to do something about it
Speaker 1: at once. Then I fell into a deep sleep. Great,
Speaker 1: but that's something where it's like, yeah, that's what he
Speaker 1: goes back. And that's the thing that feels really nightmarish too,
Speaker 1: is that thing of like when you're in a dream
Speaker 1: and you try to like run and you can't. That's
Speaker 1: what all his abduction experiences are like. When he also
Speaker 1: has I mean, he also just has these unaccounted for
Speaker 1: like blank spots and like there's a missing time. The
Speaker 1: missing time in Texas is terrifying. Oh my god, Austin
Speaker 1: stuff where he's like I was, I was heating up
Speaker 1: my food and then uh, I looked down and the
Speaker 1: food was totally cold because six hours had gone by, right.
Speaker 1: And so Bud Hopkins, his friend who later like observes
Speaker 1: his hypnosis, he wrote a book called Missing Time because
Speaker 1: that apparently is like the the thread that goes through
Speaker 1: all of these abduction experiences, and that people who are
Speaker 1: abducted once will be abducted again and have been abducted before,
Speaker 1: he claims, and the evidence of this abducted. You know
Speaker 1: the fact that they've been abducted is the missing time.
Speaker 1: These like blank spaces and they'll talk. He talks a lot.
Speaker 1: I don't remember if this isn't communion or in the
Speaker 1: Bud Hopkins thing, but um, people driving and then like
Speaker 1: coming to and it's been a while and there's like
Speaker 1: a white driving. Yeah that's I designed a night Night
Speaker 1: Call event poster based on the drive being abduction. Wait,
Speaker 1: remember when we had rush Field on the show and
Speaker 1: talked about it. No, I thought of that too. I
Speaker 1: had the experience where they were like Brand Park. They
Speaker 1: went to the park and they like walked up the
Speaker 1: weird hill and they were all of a sudden in
Speaker 1: a car driving. Yeah, what if they got abducted? Something
Speaker 1: similar happened to me. I'm not going to like go
Speaker 1: it go into it, but I don't think it was
Speaker 1: an abduction. I should go into it. No, there was
Speaker 1: there was a time when I was not drinking or
Speaker 1: doing anything. I had one drink and you know I
Speaker 1: was the dead because we I went to a party
Speaker 1: this was a very long time ago, with friends and
Speaker 1: I wasn't like very comfortable with the crowd. So it
Speaker 1: was like i'll drive, and we were on the freeway
Speaker 1: and there was like a you know, I have no
Speaker 1: idea how much time elapsed, but all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: I was like in a different lane, had missed the exit,
Speaker 1: no idea what had happened. But I had been having
Speaker 1: fainting spells at the time, and I assumed I had, like,
Speaker 1: you know, had a fainting thing. But normally with the
Speaker 1: fainting spells, I would like collapse kept and I didn't.
Speaker 1: And yeah, and it's and what's weird apparently, is that
Speaker 1: the car continues. Like people aren't usually harmed in these instances,
Speaker 1: to my understanding, when they're I mean, I don't think
Speaker 1: I was like missing time. I think I was zoning
Speaker 1: out board. Yeah, my mind wandered and I drove badly.
Speaker 1: But it's interesting because you're like, oh, one of the
Speaker 1: things that they point out is like you would think
Speaker 1: if you were zapped away that you would your car
Speaker 1: would crash, But it seems to be not the case
Speaker 1: that the car continues on the path. It's just that
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, you're like somewhere you shouldn't be. Well.
Speaker 1: There's also the idea that you're like entering a parallel
Speaker 1: dimension multiverse. Still there, right, the arrival thing where time
Speaker 1: moves differently when she's in this ship spend I forget
Speaker 1: which way it is. If she can spend like four
Speaker 1: hours in there and like thirty minutes have cone back,
Speaker 1: I can't remember. Or is that is that an arrival
Speaker 1: or something else? I know what you're talking about, my
Speaker 1: arrival contact? Yeah, Well I want to talk about contact too,
Speaker 1: because there's another there's another common trope that that contact
Speaker 1: uses as well, which is like like the idea of
Speaker 1: these visitors being interested in our minds and our subconsciousness
Speaker 1: and so like gathering data from them and then using
Speaker 1: that to talk to us or communicate with I just
Speaker 1: watched Stargate again, which is a great movie, um about
Speaker 1: what's kind of about each and aliens? Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: I watched it last year in parallel dimension. My mom's
Speaker 1: a big fan. Yeah, that movie is amazing. James Spader
Speaker 1: plays like a wholesome virgin and that is like the
Speaker 1: most perverse do I mean the movie He plays a
Speaker 1: guy who can only get it up for some weird thing,
Speaker 1: and like in that movie, it's like Pyramids, me too,
Speaker 1: James Spader, Um, so I wanted to talk with you
Speaker 1: guys about what you thought about whether at least Striver
Speaker 1: was so one of the theories I read about, and
Speaker 1: I don't remember where, but was that the he talks
Speaker 1: a lot about the female alien who he's kind of like,
Speaker 1: I don't know if he exquistly says he's attracted to
Speaker 1: her hate her, but like I'm like for some reason,
Speaker 1: I'm like, they have a real salm and Diane. But
Speaker 1: he's like also like physically aroused in her presence. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he and he's like uncomfortable, but he also is like,
Speaker 1: we don't know if they have genders. We can't write.
Speaker 1: So this is like in in some of Striver's fiction,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of like, you know, vampires having babies
Speaker 1: with humans, about mating with mating with the ancient mystical
Speaker 1: creature um, but what's kind of weird, you know. So
Speaker 1: so basically he had also written speculative fiction about both
Speaker 1: nuclear apocalypse and climate apocalypse, and he he was like
Speaker 1: super then, like for war Day, which I think was
Speaker 1: the lard day he had done before this all happened.
Speaker 1: Term stuff happened to him. I think he had been
Speaker 1: super steeped in it. But yeah, the his fears, like
Speaker 1: he clearly was just so freaked out by the speculative fiction.
Speaker 1: And he definitely and some of the stuff too, You're like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's what a lot of people are going through that now,
Speaker 1: that's what I was going to say. And so he
Speaker 1: kind of was. I think he was basically in the
Speaker 1: position where he was like, well, we have to like
Speaker 1: think about alternatives to Earth. And he had a son,
Speaker 1: which also is stressful because he's like, even if I'm fine,
Speaker 1: like he might not be fine. And he he kind
Speaker 1: of was calling the climate crisis in the eighties, like
Speaker 1: he was one of the first people to be actively
Speaker 1: upset about like what Earth was going to be. Like
Speaker 1: he was totally right, but I think, you know, inventing
Speaker 1: this kind of race of like beings who are smart
Speaker 1: enough to be able to like so they implay did
Speaker 1: a chip in his ear, which then he thinks now
Speaker 1: can read his thoughts and also like suggest things to him,
Speaker 1: like the number A hundred and thirty seven where it's
Speaker 1: just like seven, and then he has to figure out
Speaker 1: what it means or whatever. Um. But it's almost like
Speaker 1: he was so panicked about what he thought would happen
Speaker 1: to the world that he had to kind of invent
Speaker 1: a way out and he had to be chosen to
Speaker 1: be the messenger and like the mother alien who can
Speaker 1: save us all. I'm sure he would hate that reading
Speaker 1: on it, but well, but he does. Isn't isn't there
Speaker 1: some point where they are talking about climate change the
Speaker 1: aliens are or like talking about the future of the planet.
Speaker 1: I feel like I didn't make this up. No, that
Speaker 1: sounds familiar. It was. Also he gets a like a
Speaker 1: weird visit in the night, this is not in the book.
Speaker 1: Later he gets basically the suggestion for day after tomorrow.
Speaker 1: This is crazy from some like dude in a trench
Speaker 1: coade who walks into his a hotel room and after
Speaker 1: midnight and tells him like, we can't abandon our plan.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about that stuff. Okay. Yeah, So some of
Speaker 1: Whitley Strieber's later books, so his his work is generally
Speaker 1: like this horror novels and then sort of communion and
Speaker 1: post communion work that is all supposed to be nonfiction,
Speaker 1: but well, and there's also a lot of like apocalyptic
Speaker 1: stuff around around communion and post communion too. So he
Speaker 1: wrote this book The Key, which is about the visitor
Speaker 1: who was supposed to be the man in the Trench
Speaker 1: codeh came to him from the future probably and like
Speaker 1: told him a bunch of secrets. People have pointed out
Speaker 1: that all of the secrets he heard from this man
Speaker 1: actually come from Uh George Gerda Jeff, who is this
Speaker 1: philosopher that Whitley Striber was really into studied for a
Speaker 1: million years, and uh, we should talk about him a
Speaker 1: little bit. Yeah, he's I'd never heard of him. I
Speaker 1: never heard of him either, an Armenian mystic and philosopher.
Speaker 1: And Gerd Jeef I think it's Gerd Gff Jeff Jeff.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know how to read this
Speaker 1: pronunciation thing on here. He came up with what he
Speaker 1: called the Fourth Way, which was a self help method
Speaker 1: um that involves o a like dancing is exactly. He
Speaker 1: invented something called the the ger gf movements, which are
Speaker 1: a combination of other sacred dances. Basically, this guy was
Speaker 1: sort of early on the kind of synthesizing Eastern religions
Speaker 1: with New Age stuff tip um, and so when he
Speaker 1: brought it to America, a lot of people got into it.
Speaker 1: Frank Lloyd Wright there's thirty nine movement Henry Miller. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it looks like what he did. I mean,
Speaker 1: the the ger Jeff stuff is not super quacky. It's
Speaker 1: actually like it's very mindfulness. One of the conscious labor
Speaker 1: is mindfulness and then intentional suffering. It's and there's and
Speaker 1: it's got a little bit snacking. There's a whole like
Speaker 1: it's got a little bit of like matrix c nest
Speaker 1: to it, because it's all about like everyone is asleep
Speaker 1: until you wake up. You have to wake up and
Speaker 1: like live your life consciously because otherwise you're just going
Speaker 1: through the movements. And I think the ger Jeff movements
Speaker 1: help you wake up. I want to learn them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: somebody want to teach them to us. Yeah. Well, he
Speaker 1: gave the first public demonstration of the Sacred Dances in
Speaker 1: so he was like he sort of gathered followers throughout Europe.
Speaker 1: I mean, britt Marlein absolutely like took this from for away, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, it seems it seems like it has to be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's so interesting. I can't wait to read more about this.
Speaker 1: So interesting. Um. But he also did like angiogram stuff
Speaker 1: as well, So he image of book called Balzebub's Tails,
Speaker 1: which is allegory about an alien for his grandson. We
Speaker 1: his grandson. It's about an alien and the aliens grandson
Speaker 1: and they like go through a bunch of trials on
Speaker 1: this new planet, and it's like a metaphor for something,
Speaker 1: but it's also about aliens. So the guy who came
Speaker 1: to striverers hotel room and told him, So that guy,
Speaker 1: the guy who showed up in his hotel room, didn't
Speaker 1: he say that. He He was like, hey, um, I
Speaker 1: I'm trying to make sense of my notes on this.
Speaker 1: The man warned him about climate crisis by way of
Speaker 1: a strange anecdote about a child who could have invented
Speaker 1: extraterrestrial travel but had never been born because his or
Speaker 1: her parents died in the Holocaust, is like what the
Speaker 1: synopsis that like I took from what the man said
Speaker 1: to Whitley Striverer, which seems like, well, there is an
Speaker 1: episode described in Communion about him trying to build some
Speaker 1: kind of spacecraft as a child because he received instruction
Speaker 1: from he told his friends. His friend had the memory
Speaker 1: of telling him as a kid, which seems like out
Speaker 1: of context, like some something that kids says, like oh,
Speaker 1: an alien came and visited me and told me how
Speaker 1: to make a spaceship. I'm gonna make one, and then
Speaker 1: he like knocked out the power in their house. It
Speaker 1: was using magnets, some kind of magnetic connectic whatever the funk. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that that's just what I thought of when
Speaker 1: I heard except for the whole Holocaust, the Holocaust reaction, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean some of the later stuff, it starts to
Speaker 1: seem to rope in more just kind of conspiracy theory,
Speaker 1: things from other corners and sort of be you know
Speaker 1: in the way that people start to be like just
Speaker 1: asking questions. Yeah. Um, like maybe it doesn't add up
Speaker 1: to anything. I was reading a lot of stuff about
Speaker 1: there's like this new book about the Manson family murders
Speaker 1: that was written by somebody who sort of like researched
Speaker 1: it for a million years and like didn't necessarily find
Speaker 1: anything new, but then took that as evidence that like
Speaker 1: one was lying because they didn't want to talk about it.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, yeah, I feel like but it's like just
Speaker 1: I read an interview with that guy where it was
Speaker 1: just felt very similar to the Striber interviews where it's
Speaker 1: like at a certain point, once you start to unravel.
Speaker 1: It's like it all starts to it kind of falls apart. Well,
Speaker 1: and part of me is just like it's like when
Speaker 1: we talk about ghosts and stuff like that. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've never seen a ghost. I also just like pretty
Speaker 1: much like I'm interested in the idea of ghost but
Speaker 1: I pretty much fundamentally don't believe in them at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, if you're really going to ask me,
Speaker 1: so like, is that why I've never seen a ghost?
Speaker 1: It's that kind of thing. Or it's just like he's
Speaker 1: had this sort of paradigm shifting experience. We don't really
Speaker 1: know the truth of it, what actually happened, but whatever
Speaker 1: it was, it has opened him up to a plethora
Speaker 1: of possibility. What couldn't be happening in the I mean,
Speaker 1: here's my reading a lot of his books also in
Speaker 1: the way that they are about like communing with some
Speaker 1: other species. Well, it's so interesting that he's so boring
Speaker 1: and straight, because all of his books are like really
Speaker 1: queer and weird, you know, and that is like he's
Speaker 1: also a Catholic guy, and there's Catholic esotericism in there.
Speaker 1: But to me, I was a little bit like, is
Speaker 1: this about a closeted guy. Yeah. Again, that goes back
Speaker 1: to the thing of like, oh, my life is your
Speaker 1: own because I can't hang out with my like wasping
Speaker 1: New York friends, Like he still considers that to be
Speaker 1: something that's like missing that that like this, he he
Speaker 1: will like stick to the truth of his truth is
Speaker 1: truly his truth here of what happened to him. But
Speaker 1: he's still like hanging on to some idea of like
Speaker 1: normalcy or and like and his his case, it's a
Speaker 1: very like white bread American normalcy. Yeah, and he's not
Speaker 1: he's not like willing to give that up totally because
Speaker 1: he's like, everyone should be listening to me because I'm
Speaker 1: the I'm the smartest man alive. Obviously, I'm telling the truth.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, he's so forthcoming. I think, what what you know.
Speaker 1: What makes it hard to completely dismiss what he says
Speaker 1: happened to him is that he is so he seems
Speaker 1: so open to any number of possible explanation as long
Speaker 1: as it stays true to like, the only things he
Speaker 1: does know are he was physically affected. Sometimes there were
Speaker 1: witnesses he apparently approached people, um, you know, about things
Speaker 1: and didn't didn't tell them like what it happened to him,
Speaker 1: and they kind of knew. Yeah. We got a night
Speaker 1: letter about this where somebody brought up the possibility that
Speaker 1: this book was about child abuse and about the author
Speaker 1: character abusing their son, and the whole thing being an
Speaker 1: elaborate sort of way to try and make sense of that,
Speaker 1: which again we don't know, we're just speculated ing, but
Speaker 1: definitely it has a lot of similarities to the Shining
Speaker 1: to me, Yeah, yeah, I'm like, this feels like a
Speaker 1: dad with a problem in some secrets trying not to
Speaker 1: like ruin his kid's life by being a real person,
Speaker 1: but like inevitably well yes, I mean, I think it's
Speaker 1: really important for us to state that all of you know,
Speaker 1: any kind of speculation into whatever happened is purely speculation,
Speaker 1: because I really feel like what happened is a person
Speaker 1: with a very vivid imagination became completely paralyzed with fear,
Speaker 1: and it was like a kind of you know, it
Speaker 1: was informed by the books that he was writing, the
Speaker 1: research he was doing, like he was hanging out with
Speaker 1: Art Bell right in the book that would become The
Speaker 1: Day after Tomorrow, and like, you know, he there was
Speaker 1: this weird overlap for him between his friends who were
Speaker 1: kind of fringey and his friends who are intellectuals, and
Speaker 1: he kind of got this weird, uh you know, slice
Speaker 1: of the pie where he was getting really really smart
Speaker 1: conspiracy theorists and that's who he was surrounding himself with,
Speaker 1: and they really reinforced like you should be terrified, you
Speaker 1: should be terrified in your cabin, you should be terrified
Speaker 1: that the planet's going to explode. And I think he
Speaker 1: had like and then against totally speculative, I think he
Speaker 1: had a psychotic break and then I think he kind
Speaker 1: of recovered from it but couldn't integrate that into like
Speaker 1: his experience unless he found some other explanation. And he's
Speaker 1: open to that being a possibility to and kind of
Speaker 1: kind of he says, like something happened, Yeah, but yeah,
Speaker 1: he's always he's that's yeah, exactly what he said. Like
Speaker 1: he the fact that he leaves that possibility open, that
Speaker 1: he's never really actively trying. He's not a bias. There's
Speaker 1: a word for this, and like the scientific method where
Speaker 1: where you're um whatever, it's like confirmation bias or something
Speaker 1: like that. He's like, well, he claims he's not somebody
Speaker 1: who was looking to a UFO abduction. But it does
Speaker 1: feel like all of his fiction is about like special
Speaker 1: people being chosen to commune with another worldly being, and
Speaker 1: like his most recent book is like his wife died
Speaker 1: and then I guess he keeps a blog where he's
Speaker 1: like channeling her. He met. He has to meditate twice
Speaker 1: every evening in this special way because if he doesn't,
Speaker 1: then the aliens will tap him and kiss him and
Speaker 1: wake him up. And when he meditates, he is able
Speaker 1: to feel his wife's presence and also his wife. He
Speaker 1: and his wife had made a deal before she died.
Speaker 1: She was sick for a long time. They said, after
Speaker 1: we die, whoever dies first, don't directly try to contact
Speaker 1: me as a ghost. Do it through our friends, which
Speaker 1: like what Okay? So apparently his wife passed away and
Speaker 1: then contacted his friends and would be like call Whitley
Speaker 1: and there's like an hour and a half after she died,
Speaker 1: which is bizarre. I wonder how his son is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: me too, I just can't imagine. Yeah, it is like
Speaker 1: the shining and it's like what do you what is
Speaker 1: that like to go through that when you're because when
Speaker 1: you're a kid too, it's like you need your parents
Speaker 1: to be stable, even if they're not so like maybe
Speaker 1: they like try to hide the fact that, like they
Speaker 1: also don't know what's going on and are afraid of things.
Speaker 1: And so he's pretty clear. In a few different moments
Speaker 1: he talks about the fact that he tried to keep
Speaker 1: you know, anything that would disturb his like he he tries,
Speaker 1: according to what he says, he tries really hard to
Speaker 1: like preserve normalcy for his son Um and seems to
Speaker 1: feel really guilty about the times when his son became
Speaker 1: aware that something was going on. But it also kind
Speaker 1: of reminds me of you know, um More Gallons or Morgellons,
Speaker 1: for instance, where it's something that you know, no one
Speaker 1: believes you, and of course there's that element to it,
Speaker 1: and it's so isolating that if you find other people
Speaker 1: who claim to have experienced this, and you know, again,
Speaker 1: like the folklore kind of builds on itself and people
Speaker 1: have more similar experiences because of that. But you just
Speaker 1: form this really tight community and it kind of asters
Speaker 1: like you're bound together by the only people. They're the
Speaker 1: only people who think you're saying and well, there's a
Speaker 1: really great X Files episode about Communion. UH. One of
Speaker 1: the best X Files episodes of all time called jose
Speaker 1: Chungs from Outer Space UM, which is about Charles Nelson
Speaker 1: Riley playing a Whitley Striber type guy named jose Chung
Speaker 1: who has a book called from Matter Space and the
Speaker 1: cover is exactly the cover of Communion, but with the
Speaker 1: alien smoking a cigarette. UM. But it's like a classic
Speaker 1: episode also because it's kind of like a comedy episode UM,
Speaker 1: and it is about people's different stories, different overlapping stories
Speaker 1: about an alien abduction and how they all It's like
Speaker 1: a Rashaman thing where nothing really lines up at the end,
Speaker 1: you know, it kind of like seems like he's a kook,
Speaker 1: but then it seems like, what if he's not, Maybe
Speaker 1: he's telling the truth. Great episode, recommended to everyone. But
Speaker 1: that's where I encountered this for the first time. I
Speaker 1: had never heard of this book until you suggested it,
Speaker 1: and now I have found out that it is so
Speaker 1: deep in the cultural consciousness. Also just because it derailed
Speaker 1: this poor man's writing career, and so I mean it's
Speaker 1: like a hard book to read. Also because it's like
Speaker 1: in the way that when you read a book where
Speaker 1: it feels like somebody is having a mental breakdown in
Speaker 1: the writing, and that it makes you feel like you're
Speaker 1: having a mental breakdown. And the timing of reading this
Speaker 1: was also I thought really heavy because um, in the
Speaker 1: past week since we've been reading this book, the Jeffrey Epstein,
Speaker 1: the whole thing went from being a pretty straightforward but
Speaker 1: crazy story to a completely plausible conspiracy theory. It's not
Speaker 1: a theory that it's not. Yeah, but that's the thing
Speaker 1: is that all of a sudden you're you are reading
Speaker 1: mainstream news and completely entertaining that there's a conspiracy, which
Speaker 1: makes you feel well. It made me feel it made
Speaker 1: me feel crazy because some of the stuff they were
Speaker 1: posting on crazy days and nights, and you know, at
Speaker 1: a certain point, with the lightest like hornor of where
Speaker 1: that stuff, I thought, I was like, oh, this is
Speaker 1: just going into pizza Gate stuff. It's just part of
Speaker 1: pizza Gate. But then it was like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: this is like the grain of truth that was apparently
Speaker 1: in the telephone game of pizza Gate. I got stuck
Speaker 1: down a very regrettable rabbit hole that did not start
Speaker 1: with me looking into Epstein stuff. It started with something
Speaker 1: very too weird to to explain here right now, take
Speaker 1: too long. But I ended up I ended up on
Speaker 1: a very fringe e. I wouldn't say it was like
Speaker 1: a q and on message board, but it was like that.
Speaker 1: It felt like it was two steps away from that.
Speaker 1: I was looking at rational Wiki. Cool. Yeah, but like,
Speaker 1: but they were talking about there there was a threat
Speaker 1: on Epstein and they were just saying, like, this is
Speaker 1: a thing. Like people make fun of Pizza Gate because
Speaker 1: they think it's like about Hillary Clinton has a sex
Speaker 1: ring in comic Pizza or whatever that place is called.
Speaker 1: But like we're talking about like a whole phenomenon ship
Speaker 1: And I was like, for the first time, I was like, oh, ship,
Speaker 1: And I was seeing like in a weird way, like
Speaker 1: because as that story started to zoom out, I went
Speaker 1: on this other podcast, true and on that's just about
Speaker 1: that stuff slipping. No, it's like that's the thing. We're
Speaker 1: bringing conspiracy theories back for the left. That's what we
Speaker 1: set out to do. You know. Somebody is saying Inherent
Speaker 1: Vice is like the actual best movie for the Trump era,
Speaker 1: because it's about all how all those things do line up,
Speaker 1: how it feels conspiratorial um in cities, especially when you're
Speaker 1: just like, oh, like this person is in the pocket
Speaker 1: of this person really knows that, you know, people who
Speaker 1: shouldn't know each other for any reason except that money
Speaker 1: and power is changing hands. Uh eyes wed Shut is
Speaker 1: a documentary, but yeahwi Shut is real. I'm not over that.
Speaker 1: I do feel like I've become Whitley Striber a little
Speaker 1: bit because all this stuff has broken my brain a
Speaker 1: little bit of like oh wait, like there are like
Speaker 1: evil ritally heats offering sex trafficking rings in broad daylight
Speaker 1: in front of people, just using the fact that they're
Speaker 1: rich just cover for crimes. Nobody should be able to
Speaker 1: get away with Ye, that's real. Then anything can be real.
Speaker 1: Well it's not, but that's so rap like that when
Speaker 1: you look back that with hindsight, with like OCAM's rais
Speaker 1: or you're like, yeah, of course, but when but when
Speaker 1: it came up on crazy days and nights, I was like,
Speaker 1: this is so detailed, how could it be fake? But
Speaker 1: it's like who, Like it's too crazy and far fetched,
Speaker 1: and like once it clearly started implicating the Clintons, I
Speaker 1: thought it was just right wing stuff. But then it
Speaker 1: came out to be like just beat for beat true
Speaker 1: And then one of them not empty but him with
Speaker 1: many as the other one was posting about some of
Speaker 1: that stuff. He posted a great, like three part blind
Speaker 1: item about it, again not saying any of this is true.
Speaker 1: It's a great three I could not read it for me.
Speaker 1: It was just too but his hand is it's terrible.
Speaker 1: But it's like, but it's it's zoomed out on the
Speaker 1: stuff where it was like, it's not even about the
Speaker 1: sex trafficking ring. It's about different nations having like secret
Speaker 1: deals with each other involving Massad. You know. In that
Speaker 1: part again broke my brain. I was like, Epstein is
Speaker 1: just the fall guy. It's all like this everything is connected,
Speaker 1: and then you can't do anything again. After that, you
Speaker 1: just start thinking that way about everything. Um, and suddenly
Speaker 1: you're writing books about UFOs instead of just cat magic.
Speaker 1: Well it happens. I would encourage people to go to
Speaker 1: at least Striper's website, which is called Unknown Countries. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He also does the podcast Dreamland, which was a former
Speaker 1: art bell podcast. He's like an active content maker, which
Speaker 1: is kind of interesting. Uh. Yeah. Then this interview that
Speaker 1: we can link to of his recent I mean he's
Speaker 1: still like, I mean he's still on the thing that's
Speaker 1: funny about his website is that it is it is
Speaker 1: all this stuff and and stuff about climate change, like
Speaker 1: really passionate, like cogent stuff about climate change. If he
Speaker 1: wants to come, if he wants to come collect his
Speaker 1: awards for being right about climate change, that would be
Speaker 1: a great time for him to reappear and be like, hey,
Speaker 1: guess what ye called it? Called it? I also, oh,
Speaker 1: this is one last thing I wanted to say, just
Speaker 1: as far as like believing him about this stuff, I
Speaker 1: just like so I kind of started to play the
Speaker 1: game of like if I was an alien civilization that
Speaker 1: was coming to study another species, how would I go
Speaker 1: about it? What would be the way fun nerd game?
Speaker 1: Because that's like a lot of the like a lot
Speaker 1: of the stuff on First Blush does look very dreamlike
Speaker 1: and kind of random and like it feels like cobbled
Speaker 1: together from like some real corporeal experiences, the way that
Speaker 1: it always sounds like surgery. But the one thing that
Speaker 1: I was thinking about is like the repeat things, like
Speaker 1: like this thing of like once you've had an experience,
Speaker 1: you're going to have more, and you've probably had once before.
Speaker 1: It's just like, well, that's just having a control Like
Speaker 1: if you're if you are studying monkeys in the wild,
Speaker 1: you're going to tag them and you're going to come
Speaker 1: back and study the same Certain people are acting as
Speaker 1: control subjects for the aliens. Well yeah, I mean that
Speaker 1: that makes sense to me that like, how are they
Speaker 1: being chosen? I don't know, because they're very special and
Speaker 1: they write great novels. But oh my god, what if
Speaker 1: what if there's like an Epstein island but it's a
Speaker 1: Planetble know what I'm saying. What if there's like evil elite,
Speaker 1: you know, they already have colonized. Would you be surprised
Speaker 1: if Elon Musk already owned a secret planet. I'd be
Speaker 1: so surprised. He would have stopped tweeting and you would
Speaker 1: have just gone, nobody should own a planet or an island?
Speaker 1: I agree, um us, what do you think? Do you think?
Speaker 1: What do I think about? What? Should people own islands?
Speaker 1: Why are people chosen? I mean so this, I think
Speaker 1: for anyone who wants to answer that question, go look
Speaker 1: at the Bud Hopkins Wikipedia because I felt like it
Speaker 1: gave me such a good frame on this. I mean,
Speaker 1: I do think that it's that you know, people who
Speaker 1: are Willie Striver is a really good writer. Like, granted,
Speaker 1: he lost me by the end of the book, and
Speaker 1: I was like, I cannot, I can because I didn't
Speaker 1: trust him and I didn't enjoy being mired in the conspiracy.
Speaker 1: Start to feel like you were losing it a little bit.
Speaker 1: It has has because that's like I've only had to
Speaker 1: put down a book once before because it had that
Speaker 1: effect on me. And it was this Oliver Sacks book
Speaker 1: about hallucination that yeah, yeah, it was like I literally
Speaker 1: had to stop reading it because if you're someone who's
Speaker 1: ever had mental health and you start think think about
Speaker 1: your brain in the ways in which it can fail,
Speaker 1: weaknesses of the human brain. Definitely, the screen memories in
Speaker 1: this was like, Okay, definitely, sure, I have screen memories, right.
Speaker 1: I think at least Driver would say he was chosen
Speaker 1: because he's a really good communicator with a very open mind,
Speaker 1: and he I think that he would say that like
Speaker 1: the creatures that he had written about in fiction, um
Speaker 1: that then ended up resembling the creatures that he meant
Speaker 1: in the eighties when he was abducted or whatever, that
Speaker 1: they had always been with he was writing book already
Speaker 1: been encountering. Yeah, I mean I have to say, like,
Speaker 1: before reading this book, I was way more open to
Speaker 1: the idea that this dude had met extraterrestrials, And by
Speaker 1: the end of it, I was like, I don't think
Speaker 1: that happened. I haven't gotten to that part yet because
Speaker 1: I'm still like pretty like I'm I'm not. My first
Speaker 1: my first instinct is not to be like, he's out
Speaker 1: of his mind. Yeah, I don't think. I don't think
Speaker 1: he's It's not quite like a psychotic break either to me,
Speaker 1: because what it really sounds like, and again he's Catholic,
Speaker 1: it's like enlightenment. You know, it's like your special you
Speaker 1: ascended and now you come back to Earth with knowledge
Speaker 1: that nobody else has and you have to live among
Speaker 1: regular people knowing more than they do, which was what
Speaker 1: he was feeling about climate change. That's true. That's true.
Speaker 1: It's like like it's like an actually inconvenient sort of
Speaker 1: an inconvenient truth. Yeah, well, an extra inconvenient truth. Because
Speaker 1: on top of that, if al Gore was like and
Speaker 1: by the way, I got this from Aliens, right, even
Speaker 1: less would be done about Gore was an alien? Would
Speaker 1: you be at all surprised. He's like the most lizard
Speaker 1: person presented. It would make me so happy. If he
Speaker 1: was an alien, I would be like, if that's it,
Speaker 1: like bring it on. Uh yeah, Well anyway, I still
Speaker 1: recommend people read this book. It's super interesting that first
Speaker 1: hand account. Yeah, I'm putting that in air quotes retrograde,
Speaker 1: but retrospectively, the cinnamon hand account. And as he said himself,
Speaker 1: if they are they can't be lies because even if
Speaker 1: they're not true, he believes them. And I'm like, okay,
Speaker 1: that that I can digest. I mean, something happened to
Speaker 1: this man. He's trying to process. I honest, he's honestly
Speaker 1: trying to process it, and it's working. It if nothing else,
Speaker 1: If it's not a book about UFOs, which I think
Speaker 1: he would probably even you did not say it's a
Speaker 1: book about UFOs called Communion, it's about communion, Well, it's
Speaker 1: about the human mind. It's about like the processing anything.
Speaker 1: In his case, he has a lot of crazy stuff
Speaker 1: to process. But like you know, I think it makes
Speaker 1: you think about your own experiences and stuff that you've
Speaker 1: been through, which is like why it's so scary, and
Speaker 1: honestly the scariest I think one of the scariest things
Speaker 1: is the is the hypnosis and the regressive memories and
Speaker 1: stuff like that, and that is a very it's a
Speaker 1: very good, unintentional warning against doing that because without any
Speaker 1: for me, I was like, Wow, without any of that,
Speaker 1: I think this book would have gone in a totally
Speaker 1: different direction. And the more you know about that, the
Speaker 1: more you think that's a very shaky foundation to feel.
Speaker 1: It's like, we're also the thing about hypnosis. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just the human mind is vulnerable easily. Somebody poke around
Speaker 1: in there. That is the scariest idea. I am scared
Speaker 1: of it for those reasons. But I was also just
Speaker 1: like what would what would come out? Right? Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like an eclonic It is like, get what what would
Speaker 1: you what kind of alien do you like to meet? Um?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean I like the idea of well,
Speaker 1: I actually do like the idea of like the contact
Speaker 1: like alien, like, especially after reading this, like the alien
Speaker 1: that like minds your subconscious and presents as something that
Speaker 1: is um compelling to you, Like it's like a it's
Speaker 1: like a workshock test of it, but it's it is.
Speaker 1: But it's like very because I would want to know
Speaker 1: what what would it be? It's like or it's like
Speaker 1: even like stupid shit like Captain Marvel. There's like a
Speaker 1: thing where they go and talk to whoever, like the
Speaker 1: great great authority takes the form of like whoever in
Speaker 1: their mind is like the most admirable person to them.
Speaker 1: So she sees it at Betting, I personally don't care
Speaker 1: for in a space movie when they finally meet the
Speaker 1: alien and it's like your dad, wife, oh yeah, or
Speaker 1: like your child self, you know. You know I would
Speaker 1: like is the little ones in the jars from Flight
Speaker 1: of the Navigator. Those are my platonic aliens. I want,
Speaker 1: like who are those little weird guys from Final Fantasy,
Speaker 1: Like yeah, oh yeah, those would be cute or like triples, yeah,
Speaker 1: like like something docile, all overbearing, Like it's something that
Speaker 1: purs Yeah, something that purs like a furbyby, you know,
Speaker 1: the cat from sailor Moon. Yeah, shows up in the
Speaker 1: first day and starts talking to you. That's what I want. Well,
Speaker 1: she's an alien, yeah cat, Well that's what I'm sain like.
Speaker 1: That's the cat who comes to tell you that you're
Speaker 1: also an alien. That's my favorite thing about sailormen. Also
Speaker 1: is that they're all technically aliens reincarnated. First start us
Speaker 1: after UM, well, I think that's that's it for Communion.
Speaker 1: Thanks everybody for reading along with us, taking the ride
Speaker 1: with us on Communion. Um. We're going to announce our
Speaker 1: next book soon, but we're not at this moment going
Speaker 1: to do it because we don't have it yet. I
Speaker 1: got some thoughts. Yeah, we'd also love to continue to
Speaker 1: take your suggestions for our next book. UM. Yeah, let
Speaker 1: us know you. We we had to. We we're still
Speaker 1: in the process of moving and starting at our new
Speaker 1: our new Nework. We're so close. We're so close. Were
Speaker 1: you hear this? It's probably going to be old news
Speaker 1: and we'll be up, but you'll be ascended. And once
Speaker 1: we do that, I think we'll announce our next book. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But in the meantime, if you have any thoughts or questions,
Speaker 1: you can contact us at two four contact us. You
Speaker 1: can make Communion with us to four oh four six
Speaker 1: Night or Nightcall podcast at gmail dot com. Um, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for supporting the Patreon. If you want
Speaker 1: to tell other people to support it as well, it's
Speaker 1: patreon dot com, slash Nightcall and as always. When we're
Speaker 1: back on the air, please give us a rating and review,
Speaker 1: and don't forget to subscribe. But I think you already
Speaker 1: have because you're supporting Patreon, So thank you again. Yeah
Speaker 1: you better be all right. Thanks everybody. We'll see you
Speaker 1: next month. Bye Nightcall is a production of I heart Radio.
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