Speaker 1: Welcome to this edition of The High Strangers Factor. Copywriter
on the Paranormal UK Radio Network. I'm your host Steve Ford,
along with Annie Mercer and Susie Bastile. On The Highest
Rangers Factor, we explore all aspects of the paranormal and
the unexplained, with an emphasis on the underlying connections between UFOs,
cryptids and all manner of psychic phenomena. Andy and Susie
welcome back. We're hoping to get Oh, I get a
guest here. Another guest. This is Rosy by the way,
one of four kats some the cat dead. So hopefully
guest co host Brandy will return. But we've had had
some audio problems. Okay, so quickly, what's up? Susie. Tell
us about your your website and where people can reach you.
Speaker 2: The website is puckwagis dot blogspot dot com and my
YouTube is a Puckwagy Whisper. My blog is currently the
only place you can reach me except for Blue Sky,
because I've gone into stealth mode to work on some
top secret projects.
Speaker 1: Ah, but we'll hear about the top secret projects at
an opportune time.
Speaker 2: You will be the second people to know.
Speaker 1: Very good and Andy you are a publisher? Is that
not true?
Speaker 3: I am indeed, and it's been quite a day for
me today. The next book I am publishing was delivered
from the printers today, so it's been the entire day
unpacking fourteen books of books and putting them on the story.
Sheelf ready to launch it properly at the weekend, so
it's going to be an interesting busy time in the
next couple of months. It sounds out and where is
it you live in the UK? I'm in the West Country,
in Zummer Sectors. We'd call it fro around locals around
here home, you know. I moved away from near London
about two years ago to set up the publishing business,
having been a psychotherapist about twenty years before. I've had
enough of that now I want to take a break
from it. So enjoying life in the countryside. It's quieter here,
although unfortunately they're about to build some houses in the
field behind us, which is a bit of a shame,
so it could be a bit of a noisy summer unfortunately.
Otherwise it's much better than what I used to.
Speaker 1: Have to say. I always think that it sounds like
one of those British murder mysteries where it's just a
quiet little town and then all kinds of mayhem breaks loose.
Speaker 3: You watch me, and some have a murders too many times.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's true. Okay, well, let's uh, let's let's
introduce our guest. Richard had Them has a BA in
film production for the University of Southern California's School of
Cinema and Television. He has written screenplays including Under Siege, two,
Dark Territory, and The Mothman Prophecies. He co created the
ABC television series Miracles and The Gates. He executive produced
the Sci Fi Channel mini series event The Lost Room.
He has written and produced episodes of Supernatural, Grim, The
Dead Zone, which is of East End, Once Upon a
Time in Wonderland, Damian Dead, of Summer, Second Chance, and
No Tomorrow. He's also the creator and host of the
hit audio Boom podcast, Richard Adam's paranormal Bookshelf. Richard HadAM
lives in Pasadena, California with his family. Richard, Welcome to
the heighst Anxious Factor. Great to have you here.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: Very good boy. We're to start here. I've had million
questions but I guess I wonder, how is it that
you you found your way or stumbled your way or
or or or pushed your way into being a producer
and screenwriter.
Speaker 4: Oh that's yes, pushed my way pretty much. That's how
you do it. I wanted to. I was interested in
television writing from the time I was in high school.
I'm fifty eight. So when I was in high school,
there was this new TV show called The A Team.
Oh yes, and and it was it was at a
time in I was a junior in high school, and
it was sort of a time in my life when
I was beginning to realize, oh, people write television, you know.
And uh And I recognized the name of the guy,
Stephen J. Cannell, because he also wrote and produced one
of my favorite shows, The Rockford Files. Oh yes. And
then and I began to put this together, like, oh,
so he did The rock for Files and The Greatest
American Hero and now he's doing The A Team. And
I was like, this is the greatest thing ever because
it was like it was like action stuff, but it
was funny, because a lot of action stuff at that
time wasn't funny. It was pretty melodramatic and you know,
when you're James Garner and you're able to be funny
when you're scared, you know, and guys are trying to
kill you, and you're still cool. I mean, that's what
more can you be to a sixteen year old boy
that was like, oh, I would tell my I would
go to my parents and I'm like, I'm either going
to be an actor or a TV writer or a
private detective. Those were top three and I A two
out of three. Ain't bad, you know, And I've still
got time if I really want to hang out a
shingle and start taking on cases.
Speaker 1: And you know, poor Jim Rockfrey, every time he had
a knock on his door of it is his trailer,
I'm saying, don't open the door because I thought this
a couple of thugs there to beat the crap out
of them.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, I know. It's it's like, it is
funny to look back at it and go, Wow, you
lived in a trailer and you had guys shooting at
you like that is scary. So by the way, now,
I don't know if you guys have ever been to
Los Angeles, but where his trailer was is a place
that is called Paradise Cove, okay, and you can go there.
And the restaurant that he would go to that was
right across the parking lot front right is still there.
It's different now, it's a little bit you know, higher end,
and it's been re landscape. But you can go there
and as I often do, and sort of go okay.
So his trailer was pretty much like right here. And
then in that one episode when he got was bringing
in his groceries and he got punched, probably happened right
around here. It's the greatest.
Speaker 1: And also if you had any of the shots of
it where you're kind of looking back at it, there
were no power cables going in for power for lights
or for phone or thing like that.
Speaker 4: Hey yeah, I never thought of that. You're right, You're right.
And it's so funny because I mean, I'm sure you
guys know, but it's one of those things where the
interior of the trailer was in you know, Burbank run
a studio lot, and then the outside was in Malibu.
So they'd be in Malibu and he'd walk into the
trailer and then they'd cut it together with scenes they
shot the next day or four days later.
Speaker 1: And I was the weasel it. But always when they
would open the door, I'd look back there to see
the painted background or the photograph of the background, you know.
But yeah, so it's like one part of my brain
is analyzing it, like, okay, it's it's in the studio
or whatever, but the other part of my brain is saying,
it's a TV show. Just enjoy the damn thing, you know.
Speaker 4: Well, And to me it was that was the golden
age of television because they didn't spend here's the difference
as far as I can tell, because I didn't work
in television in the seventies or the eighties, but in
the I guess early two thousands is when I got
into it. And by then they were lighting every television
show like a movie. And it took an incredibly long time,
and I'm like, how did they even make these Rockford
Files episodes? And it's like, oh, that's right, they didn't
light anything. They just when I say they didn't light it,
they just they lit it a lot. They're just like,
throw light on it and let the actors do their thing.
And in a way, that was better. Just make a
show that's about the script and the acting and don't
worry so much that every frame has to be you know,
a Martin squasesey movie. Just look in the Rockford Files
dialogue and acting that did just fine. And they spent
their time on car chases.
Speaker 1: That's right, great, great car chases. And the guy that
played his father, Rocky, his name Noah Berrie, Noah Barry.
What a perfect casting job. I mean, you believed that
he was Jim Rockbridge's father totally.
Speaker 4: And he what a lovable actor, I mean exactly, I
just And what's funny is if you watch early on,
I think in the in the first episode or two,
it's a different.
Speaker 1: Actor, right right, The pilot was a different guy.
Speaker 4: Isn't that weird? You're like, who's that guy? Get out
of here?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're not Rockford's dad? For crying out?
Speaker 4: Who are you? I don't know who you are? Get andy?
Speaker 1: Did you ever see The Rockford Files over there?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, I remember. I was younger. My parents used
to watch it, so yes, I definitely remember that.
Speaker 4: What about you're a mere child? You know, grown up's
my age.
Speaker 1: Susan, What about you re runs Rockford Files.
Speaker 2: I've never heard of it.
Speaker 4: Oh no, no, no, no, this is great. No, Susie,
this is great because you're the only one here who
has all of the rock profiles ahead of you. Yes,
I am telling you. I don't know if you're familiar
with who James Garner is, but I can all put
in the chat a couple of episodes that you can
watch and you will go, oh, this is a new
thing that I can go watch. You'll love it.
Speaker 2: I've disappointed people before, but I'll give it a shot
for you.
Speaker 3: Funny enough, I'm watching a wife and I watching the
TV series Castle. Yes, and Steve's that's in that is
playing cards with a few episodes.
Speaker 4: Yes, how great is that? Like joke?
Speaker 3: It's a New York based detective comedy kind of thing.
Girls as a writer and he's he's with Kate Becket's
the detective and they're solving sort of crimes together and
solving her the murder of a mother. Ultimately, it's very
good show. But I've seen it a few times. But
in some of the early episodes, my brain's dying on me.
Steve Cavell's.
Speaker 4: Stephen J. Cannell.
Speaker 3: Yes, he's playing cards with Riot and James Pattison's there
as well.
Speaker 4: In another chat, they sort of played cards together. It's
a whole deal. It's it's an inside joke, the idea
that Castle is a novelist of mysteries, and then he's
and so he plays poker with these other guys who actually,
in real life not only write mysteries but are big
hams and dying again. I mean Cannell was dying to
get on camera. I mean even at the end of
his shows he was pulling the waving through the air
and turning into the logo and yeah, he loved doing that.
And I didn't know he was even a part of
that until long after that show. I'm like, wait, what,
I had no idea because I wasn't a show I
caught when it was on. But that, in a way,
that's an old fashioned kind of show. It's sort of
kind of like Remington Steel or Lighting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, exactly, you know, the old sort.
Speaker 4: Of male female romantic comedy, screwball comedy. But there's a
crime at the center. Just I mean, is there anything
more entertaining.
Speaker 1: Richard Andy, with all his other irons in the fire,
is actually writing a murder mystery?
Speaker 3: Yes, happy for about ten years now.
Speaker 1: It's like my paranormal book, you know, another another decade
or so.
Speaker 3: Well, in the space of starting that, I've actually written
six books to do something to do with the occult
and witchcraft, and they've been written and completed. For this
novel I've been working on for years. I started off
being set in America. I have to say that was
the idea. It was set in New York. I've been
quite a few times. Most people read it and yeah,
that's good. But one person who was a writer, who
Steve gave it to, said, now you can tell you're English,
you tell you're British Americas. Okay, so you're actually rewriting it,
said it in London instead. It's working. Actually it's a
slow progress, but it's working. We were all the backstories
of the characters, which is annoying.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, it's funny because one of the biggest
writers today is Lee Child. Oh yeah, British writing in
the American idiom. You know. I mean, I don't know.
I bet, I bet with a couple of different you
know words, you know, just swap out bonnet for something.
Speaker 3: I think it was just the tone. I think your
friend sis, it was the tone. It was a certain
style to it. The words are correct, but the style
didn't seem to quite work.
Speaker 1: As long as you're not calling flashlights a torch.
Speaker 3: I think, and the sidewalks not pavements and trowsers. Yet
we've been for that before. No no prams, by the way,
no prams.
Speaker 4: I'm fascinating, you know, Andy, Also, I mean nothing. Look,
you know, as as an American, Oh wait, so or
Susie and Steve Frankly, nothing would be more charming than
a book about the Englishman in New York Franklin, you know,
I mean, we'd read that all day and night. You write,
you know, that's that's something you might want to It's
like you get the best of both worlds.
Speaker 1: So I have to ask, so, how did you get
around to where they are actually paying you? Richard?
Speaker 4: Whoa? It took a long time. Here's the thing, though,
I'm a maniac. So I started when I was in
high school. When I was a junior in high school,
I wrote my first television script and it was an
episode of The A Team, and I just sort of
felt like, well, I know this show. I love this show,
and if I can just spend more time in that
world by writing a script, then I'm going to do it.
But I was also like I want to I want
to sell something. I want to start my career. I'm
enough of this school bullshit. I'm not going to be
one of these dudes. I'm whatever whatever life is going
to hand me. I will never be the dude who
graduates college and is like, huh, I wonder what I'm
going to do. I'm like, I know what I want
to do. This is what I want to do, and
I'm going to do it, and if I sell it,
I'll drop out of high school. I'll start my TV
writing career right away. Well that didn't happen. But I
wrote A I wrote three A Team scripts. I wrote
a Hardcastle and McCormick. I wrote a Riptide, I wrote
Steel Equalizer, I wrote Cheers, Family Ties, Bueheart. I was
writing scripts, writing scripts, writing scripts, And the whole thing
was can I beat the clock? Can I sell something
before college graduation? So I graduated high school, went to
USC eventually went to USA Film School. But the whole
time I'm like, if I can just get out of
this quick and move into my career in TV writing,
And of course graduated college and nothing, I mean, I
was worse than nothing. I college destroyed every bit of
confidence I had in anything usc film school, I do
not recommend.
Speaker 1: Okay, good to know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, anyway, And it was not until after college graduation,
after you know, my best friend Matt Reeves, who is
now a hugely successful director and writer, we sat down
to write a movie, and about five years or so
after we graduated college, we sold it. And that was
Dark Territory, which became Under Siege two. Dark Territory.
Speaker 1: That was a great movie.
Speaker 4: It was.
Speaker 1: It was a worthy sequel. I mean, everybody loves the
first one, right, Actually it was excellent.
Speaker 4: Well, what's funny about it was when we were writing it, like,
we were totally influenced by Diehard. And by the way,
in film school they tell you, don't do this, don't
just take some big don't try to write Star Wars again.
No one wants that, you know, write your own personal
story about you know, the summers you spent on your
grandfather's far hold.
Speaker 1: On just a second, Richard, do you know what under
stage was? Susie with Steven singall big action flick on
a ship. Now, okay, well this was you wrote a
great screenplay for a movie. You have no idea what
it was.
Speaker 3: I've seen it.
Speaker 4: It's starring then in future Fascist Steven Sigaal, yeah, and
it was. But what I was going to say was
the joke is that, you know, Matt and I loved
die Hard so much, and we were like, what if
we could write a movie like that? And then we're like, well,
let's do it. Let's just write die Hard on a train.
Let's write die Hard at one hundred miles an hour.
That'll be great. So you know, I mean, we're twenty three.
It's like, let's do it. So that's what we wrote.
But of course when it's me and Matt, and especially Matt,
it's like we're not just on a lark. We're building
a machine, like this is going to be. This screenplay
that we write is going to be structured as good,
if not better than die Hard. We're gonna have planting,
we're gonna have payoff, we're gonna have these you know,
intricately designed action sequences that work like Rube Goldberg's Action
as Contraption was our buzzword, and we just wrote the
living hell out of this thing, and all along we
kept saying, God to be so good. If they could
make this into die Hard too, that would be the great,
you know, or get Harrison Ford. You know, it's like
all we knew is that. What we didn't want it
to be was like a Schwarzenegger movie, because we like Schwartzenegger.
But we're like, those movies are different. Those movies are
always like, you know, twenty terrorists who picked the wrong trained.
We're like, no, it's got to be like Diehard. It's
got to be like a guy he's in the wrong
place at the wrong time. He's hanging on by his
fingernails for two and a half hours and that's the
movie and just barely. And we love that because that's great.
So that's what we wrote. And then it's sold to
Warner Brothers and they're like, we're making under Siege too.
We're like, you know that was was that Catherine?
Speaker 1: A young Catherine?
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, okay, a young Morris chestnut like young Eric Bogosian.
Speaker 1: Okay, and that the I'm a huge film soundtrack freak.
Basil Podurus did the the the soundtrack and it, you know,
he is so man To score him for the soundtrack
was amazing.
Speaker 4: You're so right, Steve, I'm so glad you said that.
What a like, what a giant talent to be working
on that movie, which was our feeling about a lot
of people. We were very lucky we did. We didn't
at the time. It was we were a little ambivalent.
It's like, oh god, you know, our first our first
step into the professional world and it's a Stevenson gall movie.
You know, I don't know. It's like, is this going
to ruin our careers? But it's so funny because in
the years that have passed, it has I don't know.
It's like I'll I would tell people like I'll go
somewhere and I'll be in a cab or something and
and you know, or anywhere somebody. So what do you do?
You know, oh, I write movie? What'd you write? I'm
underseeged too. I love that movie? And then the next
sentence universal They always say me and my dad loved
that movie. We always watch it and I'm like wow,
And after the fifth or sixth time, I'm like, this
is funny. This is like some weird Father's Day bonding
ritual of man her somebody's to watch as Steven's a
gone movie. But everyone has really like sweet memories of
this movie. And I'm like, you know what, that's awesome.
I'm glad. I'm glad it's turned into something that isn't like, oh,
that piece of sh it is okay, it's like, you
know what, it's a goofy movie. But there's but it's
cool and I'm address I thank god, thank god people
are generous. That's very good.
Speaker 3: Well, I think she knows what she's watched you at
the weekend.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Susie's got a big weekend coming up.
Speaker 2: I'm taking notes over here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's it's a Benji Rockford and checking out under
Siege too. The first one, Susie, it's not that good.
Speaker 2: I was just gonna ask if I would be able
to follow along if I don't see the first one.
Speaker 4: Here's the thing, even if you do see the first one,
you won't be able to follow along.
Speaker 2: Well, now I'm intrigues.
Speaker 1: It was some of the same people that produced Under Siege.
I think we're involved with the Fugitive film. I'm not
sure if the some of the people behind it, certainly
some of the actors that were in it were I'm
talking about the one with Harrison Ford.
Speaker 4: I'm trying. I'm just I'm now, I'm I'm casting back
to find where the links are who what are you
thinking of?
Speaker 1: I'm thinking I thought that, uh maybe was it the
director or or or producer or whatever that would involved
in under Siege and yes, the Fugitive.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry, yes, not under Siege too, but I mean
the first one. Yeah, Andrew Davis directed Under Siege and
then went on to direct The Fugitive, which The Fugitive
is a wonderful movie. I've gone back to that one
a few times, and that's you know, I mean, these
are these are weirdly character driven movies, right, And I
don't know if there's a ton of examples, you know,
in the last twenty years of like that action movie
was great because of the conception of the main character
and placing them. I mean, I don't know. Maybe I'm
overlooking some no, I take that.
Speaker 1: I think that's right. And I and as a huge
fan of the original TV series still my favorite TV
series of all time with David Jansen, I was, you know,
I was kind of wondering, what are they going to
do to my TV show making this movie, you know,
because sometimes movies, I mean you can look at certain
TV series and they made the movie and it's like, Okay,
we need to Bury that movie in a Shallow Grave.
But with The Fugitive, it was it paid tribute to
the series. It was there were a lot of minor
details they brought forward and paid tribute to. And the
relationship between Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones and all
the supporting cast was phenomenal.
Speaker 4: So you you signed off, you were like, yes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah. I think it's I think it's
the of any that I've seen. It's the best translation
from TV show into film that's ever been done. Now,
I haven't seen everything.
Speaker 4: But well, wasn't the wasn't the concept of the television
show even based on Lame miserab Yes?
Speaker 1: Well, the uh uh Roy Huggins his original genesis was
he wanted to have a somebody moving from town to
town in a contemporary setting, but he didn't want to
drift her. He wanted something to drive him. Why has
he moved from town to town? And he came up
with the idea that he's falsely convicted of a crime
and has to stay ahead of the law and to
find this guy that really murdered his wife. So uh,
but then the screen the teleplay writer, uh god, Leonard Stansmore,
Maybe I can't remember his name, but he saw that
the relationship between Lei Muziob and this this situation. So
Gerard was named after Javert. You know that was not
a coincident. So yes, he saw the you know, here's
this this guy who is thrust into these situations where
he's he's he helps people, but he is putting himself
in jeopardy every week. This poor staff doctor Richard Kimball,
is thrown into a situation where he's got to put
his own safety in jeopardy to help somebody.
Speaker 4: There were so many shows like this. There were Your
Kung Fu, The Incredible Hulk, Have Gun, Will.
Speaker 1: Travel, Run for Your Life.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that that were just sort of like like we
will go to a new place every time, which is
not easy for television. That that is a that is
a real challenge because you have no standing sets. It's
like if you're doing Dragnet, it's like, well, we're in
their Dragnet office, you know, we can always go back there.
Most most TV shows depend on repeatable sets that they
can build and then amortize the lost over however many episodes.
It's very difficult to do a show where you're really
trying to pull off. No, no, every week we're in
a new town, a new place. You know, you shoot
in southern California, you can do it for a while.
You was gonna make sure you got a really good
production designer. But it's tricky. But it's funny how many
there were. There were a lot of them.
Speaker 1: And Richard I was the guy that when he was
supposed to be in Michigan or wherever, I'd be looking
in the background to see that palm tree that they
didn't cover up, or if they shot just right and say, hey,
you're in California, you can't fool me, man. But it
didn't matter. And again the music, Peter Ruggalow did the
basic score for The Fugitive and then they used something
called the CBS Library of Music where they used music
from Jerry Goldsmith, Bernard Hermann that they had originally composed
for things like The Twilight Zone and so forth. So
I had as a kid, I had a real ear
for music. I couldn't compose one note of music, but
I was very attuned to the music they were using
in these shows.
Speaker 4: That's so funny. I didn't know that. I mean, again,
for TV production at the time, it makes perfect sense
that they would repurpose music they already owned. Oh sure,
which is a wise financial choice, but that's amazing picked
up on it.
Speaker 1: Yeah and so and I even I even tuned into
the music before when I was a kid, before, I
actually was very aware of composers of who they were,
and then later on I figured out, oh, that's the
same guy. You know.
Speaker 4: So shows were you like, I'm trying to think of
what other shows like were sort of character. I mean,
the Stephen Kennell shows were all Mike Post and Pete Carpenter,
and they had their sound. I'm just trying to tak
o Lalo Schiffrin. You probably had a lot of Lallo
and Henry Matts. Could be for the Sunday Night Mystery movie, right.
Speaker 1: Oh sure? But in the UH, I didn't really realize
that the Fugitive had used all that music until you know,
they put up a whole bunch of Twilight Zone music
out on LPs, originally like maybe six of them. So
I'm listening to these, I'm thinking, hey, wait a minute,
that's Fugitive music, you know. Jerry Goldsmith, Bernard Herman, Fred Steiner,
Nathan Van Cleeve, Yes.
Speaker 4: Van Cleve, total Twilight Zone. I've been rewatching The Twilight
Zone and I see Van Cleeve all the time. Well
he did.
Speaker 1: Maybe you know that they would all do anywhere from
four to six to whatever shows and then they would
become stock music for the TV show.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I and I do recognize ques being reused.
It's funny that they didn't necessarily like Bernard Herman did
some like they sort of rotated their composers.
Speaker 1: Right right. So so boy, you know, I could go
on till midnight with this, well midnight for for you
and for me. But I guess maybe it's.
Speaker 4: Like you're talking about six am. Let's wrap this up.
Speaker 1: Maybe we should move ahead a little bit to you know,
I listened what's what's the name of your podcast?
Speaker 4: By the way, oh, Richard Hatham's paranormal bookshelf. Okay, I
listen to everybody write that down.
Speaker 1: Actually, I put it up on my Facebook page, so
there's looking look for your logo.
Speaker 4: And the and the link.
Speaker 1: And uh. I listened to the the episode of the
Gray Barker's They do too much about flying saucers and
ladies and gentlemen. You've got to listen to that one.
Not only does Richard talk about this amazing book Bye
by Gray Barker, and I have some things to say
about that, about the Man in Black, that was published
way back in the fifties. I actually met Barker for
a few minutes. I'll tell you about that later. Uh
and uh. But but Richard gets into the what the
torture you went through and when you were starting to
have the concept for the Mockman Prophecies film. And here's
one thing I did not realized. I had this vision
that that you know, the powers that be came to
you had said, Richard, we need you to write a
screenplay for the Mothman Prophecies. That's not what happened at all.
Please tell us that unfolded.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the Mothman Prophecies was on no one's radar. This
was not something anybody wanted, which was cool to me.
I mean that that's what made it cool, was that. Okay,
so at that time I had well, okay, there's a
lot going on, but let's let's start at the point where,
of course I had spent my life reading books about
people who had seen UFOs and Bigfoot and ghosts and
and and I was very sort of I was at
that age, I was kind of obsessed with these with
the notion of people having these transcendent experiences of well
high strangeness, and and I was like, you know, that's
always been an interest of mine. There should be a
way to write a movie about it. But every movie
is sort of so elevated, Like I love Poltergeist. I
love that movie, but it's not there's no it's not
about a Poltergeist no, you know. And The Changeling with
George C. Scott has some really cool, kind of realistic,
you know, parapsychological stuff going on, but at a certain
point it just becomes a murder mystery. It's just like,
who's the kid? What are these bones we found in
the basement? We need to solve the crime. And I'm like,
that's the problem. All these movies start out with all
these really intriguing questions, but then they have to answer them,
but in real life those questions never get answered. And
I was like, isn't there a way to tell a
movie that reflects that somehow? But I'm like, well, I
don't know how to do that, because how do you
do a movie that does not have an ending? You
just have a middle. It's like, well, we tried everything
we could to figure it out, and we couldn't get
out everybody.
Speaker 1: And that was that was the Mothman Prophecies the book.
Speaker 4: Right, Okay. So then, as all this is sort of
boiling through my mind for a few months, I go
to a bookstore in Los Angeles on a Sunday. We're
hanging out with friends on the West Side, and it's
a place called the Bodi Tree, which is no longer there,
but it was a new age bookstore in an old
rambling house at the very end of Melrose Avenue. And
I'm wandering around and Illuminet had come out with their
their reprint of The Mothman Prophecies, with the Frank Frizetta recover. Right,
So I'm like, what is this and it's vaguely I'm like,
moth Man, I think I've heard of. So I pulled
the book out, I read the back, and by the
time I'm done reading the back of the book, I'm like,
this is a movie and this is my movie. I
buy the book. And of course, when you get that feeling,
you're like, oh God, please let me let this instinct
be correct. Don't let me start reading his book in
twenty pages, twenty pages in go this is ridiculous. So
I buy the book, read it. Never don't know John
Keel from anybody read. I read the book and it
is like the top of my head came off. I've
never read anything like it. And and the fact that
it began to involve him. I'm like, I've never read
a book about the supernatural where it's the author suddenly
is the focus of the phenomenon. Like this is insane.
I'm like, this is the greatest thing ever. There's no
story here. It's all over the place. There's a million
things going on. I don't know what I'm going to do,
but this is it. So yeah. So I got in
touch through my agent, got in touch with John Keel,
who had had a bad experience you know he had.
When I spoke to him, he's like, you know, you're
not the first one to try to make this movie.
I'm like, what are you talking about? And he said,
he said, you know, ten fifteen years ago, I got
a call from my lawyer that they were making the movie.
Someone was just making the movie. They'd never come to
me for the rights to my book. It was it
was what is it called? You know? Sun Classic International
or something. The people who made In Search of Noah's Ark.
Speaker 1: Oh no, oh, no.
Speaker 4: Those guys, and I love those movies, but they were
pretty shady their whole operation. And so Keel's lawyer, a
man with the deathless name of Knox Burger, shut them down.
And when you've been shut down by Knox Burger, you've
been shut down. We shut them down. So he was
just like, well, thanks at least for calling me up,
you know. And I'm like, no, I love your book.
I I want to try to I want to try
to do this, and I can't do the whole book,
but I love this sort of the whole philosophical approach
of you know, when you get into these areas, you
may never get out, and that was part of his
story also obviously. So he was like, oh, well, okay,
so I you know, we wrote him a check for
a one year option, I think, and an option deal
allows me to sort of go into meetings at the
various Hollywood studios and say, Hi, here's the book, here's me,
here's the movie I want to write. Would you pay
me money to write it? So that was the plan,
but my problem was I was a writer, not a salesman,
and I'm like, I don't really know if I can
do this, so I've really got to figure this out.
So I spent I ended up spending months writing notes
for a pitch, and then I had a forty page outline.
So I called up my agent and I'm like, because
he's like, are you ready to pitch this thing yet?
I'm like, well, I've got an outline. Can I come
read it to you? And I don't know why I
needed to read it to him, but I couldn't just
give it to I'm like, I need to read it.
Can you just block out an hour let me read
it to you. He's like, okay. So I drive out
to you know again, Century City. I go up into
my agent's office and I'm like, okay, sit down, lock
your door, turn off your phone. Here we go, fade
in and I start reading him an outline, which is, oh,
basically the movie and you know, and I keep looking
up at him. He's like, oh, I'm listening. And when
I finished, he's like, well, how long would it take
you to just write the script? And I'm like, I
don't know, a month, six weeks. He's like, then, just
go write it. Just go write it. We'll sell it
as a script. You'll make more money anyway. So I'm
like okay. So then I went wrote the script, gave
it to him. He read it. He's like, this is
the best specscript I've ever read. This is gonna sell
for a million dollars. So if you're an agent, never
say to your client this is gonna sell for a
million dollars. You're setting the bar too high. He sends
it out. It sells for zero dollars to nobody. The
script goes, It goes all over town. Everyone. Ron Howard
reads it. You know. Ron Howard's like, I can't make
this movie. It's a tweener. It's it's in between. It's
not horror. It's not something that's a tweener. Like, Okay,
there are people who are upset. They're like, well, this
is great, but like at the end, shouldn't he fight
the mothman on the bridge? And I was like, no,
that's just not what this movie is. So it's like, okay,
you know what, it didn't sell. I'm happy with what
I did. I'm I'm you know, I'm proud of the thing,
but I don't want someone making a shitty version of it,
so it's like, okay, didn't sell, Fine, didn't sell. Then Uh.
Then one of the producers on Under Siege Too, a
guy named Gary Goldstein, uh, calls me up and he's like, hey,
so I hear you went around town with a script.
Oh what happened? I'm like, I went around and didn't sell.
He's like, can I read it? Sure, he reads it.
He says, this is really great. And he's a producer,
you know, a you know, creative producer. So he says,
let me ask you a question. Did you take it
to hear? Did you take it to hear? Did you
show it to this guy at this company? Did you
show it to this guy at this company? These are
his connections. One of them was Lakeshore and my agent
and I are like, noose those three four places we
didn't go to. He's like, would you allow me to
walk it in? Walking it in means that he goes
in with the script and says, I've worked with Richard,
this is a great script. I'm bringing it to you
if it sells. I am one of the producers simply
for bringing it to your attention, which is totally legit.
So he brought it around and Lakeshore read it and
called me up and said we'd like to have a
meeting with you. So I'm like, wow, okay, well maybe
there's this. The heartbeat has come back, the near death
experiences has ended. So I go to the meeting at
Lakeshore and it's the worst meeting I've ever seeks. It's
like literally everything they're saying. I'm like, no, not really,
it's actually this and they're like huh. They're like, well,
what we really loved was that you did this. I'm like,
well that's not what I did. I was actually trying
to do this other thing, and they're like huh. I
walk out listen. Usually I walk out thinking it's been
the greatest meeting ever and there's no way it can't sell.
I called up my agent, I'm like, this was bad.
This was a bad meeting, so let's just move on.
Two days later, he calls me up. Lakeshore wants it,
and I'm like what this is insane. He's like no, no, no,
They really love it. They apologize for they know the
meeting was weird, but they actually love it. They get it,
they do know what it is, and they want they
want to buy it. Now, they're not going to pay
you much. They was gonna pay you a little, but
I think you should do it. And I'm like, well why.
He's like, here's the thing about Lakeshore. They have no money.
Everything they buy they make. They have to. That's their
financial model. They have no choice. They can't buy one
hundred things and then discard ninety of them. If they
buy five things, they make those five things. He said,
if they buy your script, they will make it. And
I'm like, you know, I want Okay, that's all. I'll
believe you. What else am I going to do? So?
And sure enough they bought it, they understood it, they
got it to Mark Pellington, they got it to Richard
Gear and the movie got made and it was it
was what I wrote. I mean, that movie is what
I wrote, which is that never happens, especially when it's
something a little offbeat I got. I won the movie
lottery with Mark Pellington, Richard Gear the whole deal. I
just I'm luckiest screenwriter in the world.
Speaker 1: You really did. And I have to tell you your presence
is felt at the Mothman Museum because they have we
have five documentaries going at the same time, including the
Mothman legacy. Now I have I'm very humble to say this,
but I'm also in that as a talking head. So
I know when when you show up on the Mothman
Legacy Richard had on screenwriter of the Mothman prophecies, I'm
soon to follow. So I'll just kind of hang around
and I'll point to get somebody's attention back there and say, hey,
look at that guy. He's strikingly handsome, but he's so
full of them, you know. Anyway, So but honestly, and
we're all the way in the back, you know. But
but but the Mothman Legacy keeps cranking along. And what
reminded me you're in there saying that you had when
you first got into this, you wanted to solve the
mystery of the parent ormal. And then it's like hitting
tell us what you you know, what you came up
against when when you really thought you were gonna solve
the mystery?
Speaker 4: Well, I don't you know, I don't remember what I
said in that documentary. It's so funny that there's a
documentary playing in a store in a place I've never been.
People walk through, they see my face. I don't know
what I'm so excited to go. And by the way,
if you're within this out of my voice, this is
the year I will finally be at the Mothman Festival
in Point Pleasant.
Speaker 1: That'll be awesome.
Speaker 4: I can't wait to see you there, Steve. But anyway,
but I think I'm like everybody. I think a lot
of people kind of go through their life. They're aware
of UFOs and stuff. Especially with UFOs. I think UFOs
is sort of the the classic experience of people going okay, wait,
I'm hearing a siren. Is everyone okay, yeah, oh.
Speaker 1: Here, that's I think that was my signiren over here?
Speaker 4: Is that your ride something?
Speaker 1: I'm right on? Uh on when it was Vyan Street,
which is around sixty two with the Scaraberris on the
mallets fled the Mockman from the T and T area,
So there's there's there's fire stage. My cats, you know,
they're used to it by now. But it's uh that's
probably just normal traffic over here.
Speaker 4: It's killing me that you're right there, but I'll be
there soon. But anyway, I think I think what people
tend to do is something will happen, a project will
come along, or they'll decide to write an article or
do a podcast or something, and then they're like, you
know what, I'm finally going to like really take a
look at this UFO thing. And they get a handful
of books and they start read them, and I think
there's like these stages you go through, and I think
everyone goes through them of I'm gonna read that I
am a reasonable person. I'm not a believer. I'm not
a skeptic. I am willing to be I want to
hear some arguments. And you get some books and you
read the books, and the books are fascinating and they
run the gamut now of course, and then but they
always end with like, wow, that's not that's not the
full answer. Like these people are sort of like we
think we know, but then you read another one and
then you're like huh. And then you keep reading, and
then you get to a point of like, well wait
a second. Then you get into the weird stuff. Then
you get into the Whitley Streeber and the John Keel
cause you're like, maybe I have to, like I got
to stop reading the Nick Pope and the all the
government stuff, and I gotta let me, let me see
if I can find out what those then you read
that stuff and then your head really explodes and you're like,
none of this stuff is making sense. And then you
begin to sense that there's two camps. You know, You've
got the etahs and then the other and it's like
it's like there's it's like, okay, one side thinks physical
biological aliens and visiting Earth and crashing their discs, and
the government's got them and the reverse engineering this and
they're doing an autopsy on that, and they've made a
treaty and there's a deal and we're going to let
them abduct people in this whole like what. And then
on the other side, it's just people going I had
an experience and it's not totally physical. I mean you
really get into sort of the psychic element of what
these encounters are like, and they're not purely physical. And
that's why it's so hard for the experiencers to articulate
what they went through, because it's like, how do you
describe a thing that you experience as physical but then
also partially not. For it's like I don't I don't
know how I got in, I don't know how I
got out, but I know I was there and I
had physical sensations and it wasn't a dream and I
don't know what it was and it scares the hell
out of me. And then you're really up a tree
and you you know, you either again, you either go,
you know what, Maybe this UFO thing is best left
to somebody else. I got a life. I gotta go
live it. See you later, folks. Or it becomes the
question of your life, it becomes your thing. You don't golf,
you don't play video games. You read about UFOs and
you you don't do crossword puzzles, you don't do sudoku.
You read about UFOs and you just go, how right?
It's like, how do There's got to be a way
to connect all these dots and I've got to do
You guys know Rob Christofferson with his R Strange Skies podcast,
I do not know. Rob is a guy who lives
in upstate New York, and he's like an autodidac. He
remembers everything about every UFO case he's ever read. Probably
about forty years old, lives a small town, but he
knows like there's not a UFO encounter that he isn't like, oh, yes,
that was in France in nineteen fifty one, and let
me tell you exactly what it was. He knows everything.
So I go on his show and I'm like, Rob,
I've solved it. I've solved the alien abduction thing. I've
got the answer. And then I give him my answer
and he's like, thank you, Finally it's solved. But it's
like it's impossible. It's like it's it literally is the
perfect puzzle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let me do my station identification.
Speaker 4: Here.
Speaker 1: You are listening to the High Strangeress Factor Concrarator in
the Paranormal UK Radio Network. Today, Andy Susie and I
are talking to Richard Hannam, the screenwriter of the mockband
Prophecies about all kinds of good stuff. Now I have
to mention Brent Rains. Brent Rains is someone that never
met John Keele, but he corresponded with him and talked
him on the phone many times. He has a Facebook
page called Alternate Perceptions. And there was even a time
when he published a magazine that you could hold in
your hands and read the print and keep it in
a box somewhere. But he wrote a great book called
John Keele. Now nobody can see this on the podcast,
but John Keel, the man the Myths and the Ongoing Mysteries.
And in here he's talking to Sandra Martin, who was
the literary agent for John Keele. And she used to
publish self help books and that sort of thing, but
she loved people like Keel. She thought he was a
great writer, and she wanted to help promote his stuff.
She's the one that produced the Complete Guide to Mysterious Beings,
which was a reprint of Strange Creatures from Time and Space,
which I had that other great Frankfurzet of pen on
the cover. Anyway, uh he uh, he was. He was
complaining about the the the scripts that were coming, he says, uh.
He would call me at my office to complain bitterly
about how they were butchering my story. After a few
years of this, he called and said, Sandra, I finally
got a really good script for the Mothband Prophecies. And
he said, well, let me preface this first.
Speaker 4: And he was.
Speaker 1: He said, well, they've updated it, They've got him married
and so forth, you know. So he you know, I
mentioned that, but he said they were all these things
were not true. But he said, but this is this,
this particular screenplay was true. To the heart of the story.
They were true to the things that happened and and
didn't exaggerate. And he's talking about your screenplay, Richard, and
he she says, he was laughing on the phone. He
was so happy, and I mean, this is such a
change from I imagine he was getting screenplays where they
were turning Mothman into a monster or something like that.
But uh, so that, you know, that was really cool.
He loved your screenplay. And also I heard him back then.
You know, he had done very few interviews, so when
the film was coming out, he was actually on Coast
to Coast am And this is back when Art Bell
was still at the Helm, right, And now Art Bell
didn't know anything about Mothman. I'm thinking, what's the matter
with you? And there were other people that didn't know.
There was one guy that was promoting some kind of
a event and John Keel might be there and he's saying,
I'm sorry, this is a UFO guy that's been around
a while, but I don't remember his name, and I'm going,
this is sacrilege, you guys. So Keel was being back then,
Keel was being forgotten and a lot of his stuff
was not in print anymore. That's all changed. But so anyway,
art Bell asked him out right, he said, well, what
did you think of the movie? He said, and you
know how Keel talked, very kind of soft spoken. He says, well,
I like the movie, and he said, the thing it
really captured was the paranoia I felt at that time.
And you all, we've all read them A Band Prophecy
if you remember the chapter called PARANOIAX are Made not Born,
that that really brings it home. So well, you hit
a home run with John Keel, that's for sure.
Speaker 4: You know. Hearing stuff like that is so great. I
should get Brent's book. I unfortunately have not read it yet.
I would love to see it. You know, it was
it was an odd thing. Okay, So I read the
book and I really felt like, well, this is really
something like this, but I know that no one really
knows what this is. So in a way that was good.
I was sort of like I can be the person
bringing this in. It's you know, it's not Harry Potter.
I can walk in. No one else has got this,
but I'm like, this guy is onto something and and
you know, and then of course you read the book
and you're like I want to This guy's a living legend.
I want to talk to him. And so I was
very I wanted to impress him. I wanted him to
be I wanted him to like what I did. I
wanted there to be this connection like you do. Like
if I was adapting a Stephen King novel, it would
be like, well, I want to write it, but do
I get to meet him? Can I have coffee with
Stephen King? Can I tell him why my whole career
is based on him? Please? That's what it felt like.
And so we talked and he was a nice guy.
I will tell you when I sent him the script,
at first, the impression I got was that he was
not all that thrilled. And I think it actually took
him a minute and the reality of the film, the
fact that oh it now has been purchased by a
production company and they're taking it seriously and now they're
actually going to get a movie star, and he was
so thrilled. That is well. I think with Richard Gear,
they've really captured the resemblance.
Speaker 1: I remember hearing him saying that, yeah, they got somebody,
you know, as ugly as Richard Gear to portray him.
Of course he was kidding, but he was really tickled
about that.
Speaker 2: So it's probably not as big of a deal as
keel approving of it. But this is the first movie
we've talked about that I've actually seen.
Speaker 4: Oh but you haven't mentioned your opinion of it, But
that's okay.
Speaker 2: So you did try to ruin it with romance a
little bit, but I'll forgive you for that because the
rest was great.
Speaker 1: Well, wait a minute, tell Richard about the part that
you wish had been put in the in the movie.
I don't remember this part in the book.
Speaker 2: So there is a part of the book that I
seem to be the only one who noticed there is.
It's it's towards the beginning of the book that he
is talking about somebody's standing on the river bank and
they look across the river and they see a red
orb and then a little person. I seem to be
the only one that pays attention to that. I happen
to research puckwadgies and little people lore and in the
area which I live in, they are commonly spotted right
after a red orb of light, and it's folklore that
started pre colonization. So going back hundreds and hundreds of years.
So I read that part and I said, there was
a puckwadgie during the Mothman flap. And I don't think
anyone has really ever mentioned it besides me, and no
one ever seems to remember reading it either.
Speaker 4: So can you I've heard of the puckwajie. I love
the name. Can you tell me about the puck? Like?
What what makes a puckwajie?
Speaker 2: So it's an Algonquin word. They are commonly in the
Northeast United States. They are little people similar to you know,
little people in other cultures. You know, gnomes, dwarfs, fay creatures,
small mischievous creatures. Puck wedgies are come what they're called
in this area. But there, you know, you have little
people lore in every single culture throughout the world. It is,
as far as we can tell, one of the oldest
kind of folklore stories creatures.
Speaker 4: And then and then so the and the red orb
is because not people. I don't think there's a ton
of people who know a ton about puck wedgies off
the top of their head. So is that an associated phenomenon?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So here they're called type wonkas. In back in
England they're called will of the wisps, I believe, but
that they're yeah, they're very it's in this area they
are spotted first, and they will kind of float along
and bring you to the creature, so they kind of
you kind of want to follow them to see what's
going on, and that's they kind of draw you in.
Speaker 4: It is funny how often light or some sort of
light phenomenon is. It's fucking one of these things that
makes me feel like God the answers is right in
front of us, and we're just it's got something to
do with light, you know. Recently, and I think I
talked about this on one of the more recent podcasts,
the amount well a couple of things, but the amount
of phenomenon that involve electricity, yes, yep, and people talking
about electricity and and it's like, what is that the
ultimate nature of everything, of the of the not the
our physical incarnation, but sort of the world of consciousness
is electricity, the the terra firma, if you will, that
it exists on because it seems like that there's this
other thing that I was noticing that when people have
UFO experiences, like if they're in their home and they
they wake up and there's like the room is filling
with light. So often they will say I thought I
thought the house was on fire. They'll mention fire. They won't.
They won't say, oh, it seemed like there was a
police helicopter outside, like shining one of those you know,
search lights or the neighbor's floodlights came on. It's like,
I thought the house was on fire or it looked
like a fire or a fire in the sky, and
I'm like, what is that. That's that does not seem
like the go to thing or word you would use
to describe a light that you see. And that bugs me. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I last year I talked to an eyewitness, a puquag eyewitness,
who said that after the sighting, it smelled like Ozone
and there were a ton of lightning bugs around that
he didn't notice before.
Speaker 4: Interesting, Yeah, there's something. I think. It's those details. It's
that small, it's that small stuff. But no, no, so,
but the red the red orb that's worldwide you're finding.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's always other creatures spotted in the same area.
So I mainly focus on the Bridgewater Triangle which is
southeast Massachusetts, and there's there's UFO sightings, there's Bigfoot, there
are giant snakes. We had a winged humanoid figure that
looked like a man and then all of a sudden
sprouted wings and flew straight up into the sky. And
that was reported by a police officer. So it's another,
you know, kind of high strangeness area, right.
Speaker 4: So wait, so, Susie, what do you like Do you
have like a oh, your blog is how you communicate
with the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have the blog and I have a YouTube channel.
The YouTube channel has kind of gone a little bit
off the rails to be honest though.
Speaker 4: So well, why because you're always drunk or something.
Speaker 2: I that is my place to do what I want
to do. So sometimes you have me wandering through a
swamp looking at stone walls. Other times you have me
and my friends watching Bigfoot videos and laughing at him.
Speaker 4: So you never know where you're going to get.
Speaker 1: Listen, Listen, Susie is as sober as a judge, then
you can bet on that.
Speaker 4: Well, if you're talking about the judges, I know I
love that yet and I will tell you no, here's
the thing about the Mothman prophecies, and you you kind
of you kind of hit the nail on the head
there is so much. There's so much going on in
that book. I mean, I mean, and now add Puck
Wadgis to the list. But from Mothman to Thunderbirds to
Tulpa's to Men in Black, you know, weird you know,
phone calls from weird entities, Poltergeist Actagy, there's it's almost
And I remember telling my agent about it, uh, when
I was sort of like, oh, well, there's this book
I read that I'm kind of interested in, and I
described it to him and from then on he referred
to it as my haunted town idea. And I'm like,
he's calling it a haunted town. I'm like, oh, because
from his agent's mind, you know, you can do a
haunted house movie, but this is a haunted town movie.
The whole town is haunted. It takes it up a level.
So I'm like, yeah, I guess it is a haunted town.
And then it kind of was it kind of is,
but I don't know, Steve. I mean, it's stuff still
going on in Point Pleasant.
Speaker 1: That it seems to have torn down a bit. People
in the T and T area. People will see shadow
people and that sort of thing. Did you did you
know that the about half the Moth Banded Prophecies manuscript
was cut out when Kiel went to publish it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, when it was called Year of the Garuda, and.
Speaker 1: That was his original title, but they they cut out
half of it. Now, a lot of that's preserved in
the Eighth Tower, which is kind of the sequel to
the Right to the Moth band Prophecies. But one thing
back to the movie. You said you struck gold with
the cast and so forth. Uh, the scenes between Richard
Gear and Alan Bates, My god, those those that's so
pivotal in the movie. And the one scene toward the
end where Richard Gere's character he's at his WIT's end.
He's trying, he wants to protect these people, he wants
to understand what's going on. And Alan Bates character has
been through all this, his life has been destroyed. He
wants nothing to do with it. And Richard Gear says,
didn't you need to know? And Adam Bates plays it
so well, the pause, the way he cocks his head
and so forth, and says we're not allowed to know. Yeah, yeah,
what a great scene.
Speaker 4: Okay, So a couple things, so many things. Alan Bates
brilliant and I love that, and I love what he did,
and I am I have no complaints. As we say,
zero notes, no notes. But when I wrote it, I
was like, you know, in a way, that character is key,
that's future zeal right. So in my mind I really
wanted like Robert Duval or Harvey Kaitel. I just wanted
someone who felt very blue collar, very non academic, just
sort of like a cab driver, just sort of like, look,
you know, I've been through the you know, it's like
the opposite of the guy who's coming to your haunted house. Andy.
I'm sorry, but you know, you slap a British accent
on someone and suddenly they sound smart, and I know
you've been trading on that for decades in America. We
all think you're smart. Frankly, up until Ricky Gervais, I
think we were goods. You can keep them both. We
got a little David Brent and we're like, oh, they're
just like us. But then they got Alan bas. I'm like, okay,
you went British, you went that fine, and it was
it was great, but but okay, So so Lakeshore calls
me up and they're like, okay, look, we're trying you know,
Richard Gear is the guy we want, and he is
currently filming a movie right now for us called The
Runaway Bride with Julia Roberts. Gary Marshall's directing, and they're
in Baltimore, of all places. So pack your bags. Next week,
we're going to Baltimore and we're gonna meet with Richard
Gear and have a preliminary sort of like hey, so
here's kind of you know, here's the This is before
Mark Pellington was on. There was another director named Carl Franklin.
Great guy, super talented, really nice guy. And it's like, well,
let's let's begin the seduction of Richard Gear because apparently
they told me it takes him years to commit to
a movie, like he just at that point, you'd have
to seduce him for years. So I'm frigging twenty eight
or whatever, thirty, you know, the youngest neophyt in the group,
and we all fly to Baltimore and we meet up
with Richard Gear. So here are the two Richard Gears
stories of meeting him at that okay, in that weekend.
The first is we're you know, we're in Baltimore. It's
not exactly Hollywood, it's not New York. We're at a
you know, we're all meeting for brunch at a Hilton
or something, and we're in like a little conference room
justuse I got one for like, you know, ten people
around a round table and they're gonna serve us breakfast
and we're gonna talk. So we're in Baltimore and this
the woman she probably you know, thirty five. She comes in.
She's wearing the the Hilton costume whatever it is, and
she's taking orders and she suddenly realizes, what the fuck
that's Richard Gear. So so she's like, oh, oh my goodness.
So she's going around taking orders and she takes my order,
and then she she gets over to Richard and he's
like leaning over the Kilton brunch menu like it's the
Dead Sea scrolls, you know, and he's like and she
kind of comes up to him, and he's like, oh,
oh uh, skip me, skip me, and she like takes
a step past, and then she turns back and says, well,
I would never skip you, mister Gear. And everyone at
the table is like, oh god, that's and Richard Gear
like takes a beat, puts down that mate, looks up
at her, leans back, just pulls her into the biggest hug,
just the most gallant, charming. Everyone just breathes a sigh
of relief, like, oh thank god, sweetest moment, and I
just he won me over. I'm like this, okay, thank you.
This is a good guy. And she loved it. This
is I'm sure a story she's told more than I
have in her life. And it was just a beautiful moment.
So so we have our little meeting and then it's like, okay,
now now so that was preliminary. Now tonight we're all
going out to dinner. So now it's you know, the
night you know, there's booze. So we're at some restaurant
in the Baltimore Harbor and we're at a you know,
sort of a longish table again about ten people. I'm
at one end and Richard Gears at the other end,
so you know, we're facing each other like you know,
Bond and Blowfeld or something, and and everyone's talking and
then the script comes up. And then suddenly people are
just having like this weird, supernatural conversation and we're talking
about the script and and someone turns to me and
asks me something and I'm like, well, that's the whole
point of the movie, and I know Gears like like
his eyes are on me, but I'm talking like off
to the side to somebody else. But I'm like, I'm
basically talking to him, and I can see. And that's
the whole theme of the movie is that you can
search for answers, you can look for answers, but at
you know, in this world, in this life, we will
never get those answers. And in my memory, he like
slams his hands down on the table and stands up
and says, that's where you're wrong, because I think you
can like the hell. And I'm like, oh, right, right,
because the whole Dali Lama, the Buddhism and the Godhead
and the Nirvana, and there is a way in his
philosophy that you can transcend and you can have elevated
sort of knowledge of the inner workings of the universe.
And I'm like, oh, yeah, okay, but not in this movie.
So we're clear on that, right, you're playing a character.
I didn't say anything, but anyway, as it turns out, luckily,
it was just we'd all too much wine. So anyway,
the only movie got made. Whatever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I might say.
Speaker 3: One of my favorite lines in the whole movie is
said by Alan Bates, goes exactly what. It goes along
the lines of you noticed them, and they noticed that
you noticed them, and that was like, that gave me chills.
And I heard that line and he was the way
it was delivered as well. It was just really good.
It's just that sense of you are being watched. You know,
they know what's going on, you don't. You're not going
to find out that they're watching you because you saw them.
Speaker 2: I think that's true for everyone except Steve. No one
has seemed to notice. Steve has noticed them.
Speaker 4: Yeah. We hang out stands there in the museum going hello,
anyone want to buy me a beer?
Speaker 1: Look, I'm an altra terrestrial, you know, I'm just masturbating
as human, that's all.
Speaker 4: Hey, Andy, I gotta call it out. You know. Mark
works with two writers, Ernest Morero and Lewis Lewis Clark,
and they were they were on set. I was not
on set. I was not part of the actual making
of the movie, but they are part of his creative team.
And some of the most memorable lines from the movie
are theirs. And that's one of them, and it's a
beautiful It's a line I wish I had written because
they and that's what I'm so thankful for is that
is that everyone making the movie was making the same
movie and was sort of plugged into that same you
know vein of yes, it's like how do we how
do we reckon with the inexplicable? And it's a perfect line.
I love it. So yeah, it's just just another way
in which everything's sort of gotten better. I mean, it's
a I talk about it a lot, but there's a
scene in the movie that people love. It's it's almost
it's a very brief, but it's when Richard gear is
in bed and he's sort of like, you know, thinking
about everything he's been through, and he's like he can't sleep,
and he turns over, and as he turns over, his wife,
his dead wife is in bedneck and it's just this
The whole audience just I mean, everyone jumps. It's a
it's a perfect jump scare, not in the script. So
in this case, it was one of the producers, Gary Lukesey,
who had been seeing cut sequences from the dailies and
and he's on set and like a good producer, he's
talking to Mark and he's like you know, everything is
like everything's working, it's all good, but but pacing wise,
I almost feel like we kind of need a zoo,
we need a jolt and maroxigin. And he's like, yeah,
we need like a like a Johnt Like we don't
want a cat jumping out, but we need a cat scare,
you know, we need a thing. And it's like, what
what is our version of a jump scare in Mothmann prophecies?
And and I think between them or maybe it was
Mark and and and and his uh and Ernest and Lewis,
but they they were like what about this? And that
camera move where it just sort of like sort of
pushes up over him as he turns and reveals her
is so effective. I mean that's very Mark Pellington. And
they came up with it, and that's the sort of
thing that if you would if I had been on set,
I would have been like, no, don't do it. I
wrote this to be a certain way. But here's what
I learned. I'm writing a reading experience, but they're making
a movie, and they know that they're making a group
viewing experience and that it has to be paced a
little differently, and it has to be orchestrated toward that
consumption experience basically, And so when I saw it, I'm like, oh, okay,
I get what they're doing. Okay, they were right, Okay, good,
I'm glad they did it, you know. But it's fascinating
and it's a learning experience, and I feel so lucky
to have had that opportunity to not only on the
one hand, have the material respected so much, and on
the other hand, have it elevated to such a degree.
So again I hit the lottery.
Speaker 1: And also at at the Mothman Museum, we have a
whole wall full of props from the movie that Jeff
Wansley got ahold of, including the illustrations that Debra Messing's
character is supposed to be illustrating. I mean, that's just
it's framed and everything very cool. We even Richard have
the watch and the chapstick and it's framed a little glass.
Speaker 4: Well, let me tell you, I've got it too.
Speaker 1: Okay. I don't know if it was the original chapstick
from the movie, but it looks good.
Speaker 4: The original.
Speaker 1: Is that the original?
Speaker 4: I've never used it until No, this is just my okay, no,
but that's the joke, is that is that when when
I wrote that scene, I'm like, Okay, so it's got
to be it's got to be something that no one
in the world knows. It's got to be like, I
know what's in your pocket and I can't just be
car keys. And I'm like, well, in my pocket is
gonna be chapstick, So I'm gonna have it. And I
did this really stupid thing in this script. I had
the voice on the phone go cream Stick because I'm like, well,
it won't know what chapstick is. It'll just like be
trying to figure it out, but it'll be right, but
it'll be off. Because that was my whole take was
that was that what makes these things scary is that
they're they're trying to act like they get people. Hey everyone, Hi,
I'm Andrew Cold. How are you? You know? It's like, ah,
you're trying to be human, but it's the Uncanny Valley
You're terrifying. Absolutely, So I was trying to do that
and it didn't sell, and so then they just said
Chapstick and I sort of got Chapstick Show. The only
two movies that have correctly used Chapstick Mothman Prophecies and
Napoleon Dynamite.
Speaker 1: Very good. Now we have to talk a little bit
about Gray Barker because that podcast you're talking about the
Flying Saucers and the Three Men.
Speaker 4: And uh wait, no, no, they knew too much about it.
That's right.
Speaker 1: That was Bender's Benders book that was kind of like
very bad amazing stories pulp writing. But anyway, of course,
Albert Bender was the one of the first people that
is supposed to encounter the Men in black and been
silenced and he folded up his group and so forth.
But the uh, they knew too much about Flying Saucers.
John Keel that there are several uh lectures by him
that are you can find online. And also he was
interviewed at the two thousand and three Mothman Festival with
the unvail the Mothmand statue for the first time. It's
very cool because you know he was he was covered
on CBS Sunday morning and you see him standing there
in his white suit and the and the and the
cover comes off the uh the uh the statue. But
uh he uh uh Okay, where.
Speaker 4: Was I going with this?
Speaker 1: I had a great point, But okay, I know, I
know when he was interviewed he said. The guy was
interviewing him, Uh, you know, was was kind of into Barker,
and he said he was said, you have to be
very careful with Greg Barker. He said that when he
was writing The Three Men at the UH, they knew
too much about flying saucers. He got about halfway through
being serious and then he just kind of threw up
his hands and started making it up. In fact, one
of the one of the guys in there, uh lives
in the town I used to live, John Sherwood. He
was just a young kid. He wrote. He wanted to
write a book on the uh, the UFO flap in
Michigan in sixty six, you know, the swamp gas stuff
and uh he uh and and I guess Greg Barker said, Hey,
if you pretend to be this person that was silenced
by the Man of Black, I'll publish your book. So
he said, okay. Then later on in the nineties he
came forward and said, okay, I was a young kid,
and you know it.
Speaker 4: Was just a hoax.
Speaker 1: And so that part of the they knew too much
about flying saucers is a hoax.
Speaker 4: So well, no, which guy I mean it wasn't Bender
was it.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, not bender. It was know that it
was supposedly some kind of a scientist or whatever. I'd
have to go through the book and try and figure
it out, but I don't.
Speaker 4: Know what it was.
Speaker 1: But anyway, I have to tell you that in nineteen
seventy six I attended the Meufhon Symposium. This is ten
years after the swamp Gas fiasco. Doctor Heinik is there,
long separated from Project Blue Book, had started the Center
for Your Host Studies. And he's speak he's speaking there
and the name of his talk is Swamp Gas plus
ten and counting. So he reflects on those days, you know,
the mistakes he made and so forth, and what he
was doing presently. But Gray Barker was there. Now of
course they wouldn't let him speak, but he was there
with an armful of his magazine. So he was handing
out and the you know, the Socearian and that the
cover had vegetable man on it attacking somebody. This is
typical Barker. So I, you know, I kind of cornered him.
My friend of mine had met him years before at
the nineteen sixty seven congressome scientific ufologist. Get a load
of that at the Commodore Hotel in New York City.
It was James Moseley had run that, you know, the
editor of Saucer News anyway, so I think, oh Man
Grave workers, so I kind of like interviewed him. I
asked him all kinds of questions. And I asked him
about his book, The Silver Bridge, you know, because I
didn't have a copy of it, and I had heard
that some people were saying, oh, John Keele just ripped
off Gray Barker, and I didn't buy it. So I
asked him. I said, well, you know, some people said
that that John Keele kind of borrowed, you know, stuff
from your book. And he said, he's this super tall guy,
long hair. I mean, I've only seen photographs of him
with very close cropt hair, very thick glasses. And he says, oh,
you know, none of us like to get our literary
toes stepped on. But I'm sure John Keele wrote his
own book. And so it was just it was just
it was so cool. I asked him about some of
his publications, and uh and John Keel, and one of
his interviews said that when Barker wrote The Silver Bridge,
the chapter in which John Keel is there he said,
Barker got it all wrong. So Keel had to rewrite
that chapter. So Keel actually wrote part of the Silver Bridge,
the chapter that dealt with him. So that's my that's
my Gray Barker story.
Speaker 4: You know which is I mean, and you you're the
guy who knows because you met him. That's definitely the feeling,
the impression that I get of of what Gray Barker was.
I think he started out briefly being super super interested.
I think if I had to, you know, reconstruct reality,
I think that the Bender story was true to a
large extent that someone did or some people did come
to him and say stop it. I mean, I think
we've learned enough about you know, government disinformation to believe
that that is within you know, well within the realm
of possibility. But here's the weird thing, and and again
it's all throughout the history of UFOs. The people who
get really into it, you can get a little like
drunk on the stuff, and you can get a little
freaked out, and paranoias are made, not born. And then
you add to that the gasoline or the I guess
in this case, the the the match of someone in
real life coming to you and going. You need to
stop it, and man, you will start spinning and you'll
never stop. And I don't think people who are interested
in this area are are any more psychologically unstable than
anyone else, but it is kind of crazy making when
you really think about this stuff a lot. I mean,
the only thing that you know, my thirty years of
psychic research have given to me is the hope that
I never experience any of it. And I used to
be one of those guys who was like, I want
to stay at the Haunted hotel and I want to
see the thing and hear the EVP. And now I'm like,
I don't want any of it.
Speaker 2: So you've never had even a little tiny bit of
an experience.
Speaker 4: I had a little bit of a precognition, like and
not even cool, not even like, no, the blimp is exploding,
Like literally it was I dreamed something. In the next
day it happened, and what happened was a meaningless encounter
at work, and I'm like, Okay, that happened, and here's
the weird thing. Is one of those things where it's like, well,
the completely impossible thing just happened. Okay, it has gone
with your life, you know, it's like, what are you
going to do? It's the subjective experiences, And man, hats
off in respect to anyone who comes forward with this stuff,
because it is so subjective and there really is no
reward other than just logging in and going, hey, that
thing everyone's talking about happened to me too. So add
my name to your petition of people who have been
taking a board to craft and you know whatever, there's
not a lot of reward for it, and there aren't answers.
My god, I look at Whitley Strieber. No one has
no greater intellect an abstract thinker has ever. I love
your cat. I'm sorry, I'm looking at Susie's cat right now.
Speaker 2: And it's his name is Alistair, Polly.
Speaker 4: Alistair. Oh my god, you're a hero. Anyway, Whitley Streeber
has spent what forty years now doing simultaneously trying to
cleep a keep a clear head, and also figure out
the phenomenon. And I don't know. I've read some of
his recent stuff and I find it fascinating, but I
don't know that he is better for the experience. I
gotta be honest.
Speaker 1: Right now, John Keel came to your house and you
served him dinner, right.
Speaker 4: Yes, My wife, my ex wife wife at the time,
was under strict I'm like, okay, look, he doesn't, he can't.
It's got to be low sugar. He's on a low
sugar diet. And it's like, okay, well, we'll just keep
it simple. We'll make pasta, but we will use a
tomato sauce that doesn't a lot of sugar. And it
was fairly simple. But it was like, oh my god,
this guy's coming to my house. It was it was
my like literally, you you know, Paul McCartney could have
shown up and it would not have freaked me out
more than Keel is coming in the house. And yeah,
he came. He came to the house. And I had
little kids at the time, and I'll never forget my son,
My you know, two year old Spencer just jumping up
and down in his diaper on a chair, going drunk
keel drunk keel, drunk keel, drunk keel.
Speaker 1: What didn't he ask him some questions about uh, oh,
give idea.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Then Owen Owen came up to Owen, who was
like four at the time, He's like, ah, messed Keel.
Who would win and a fight between a dog and
a bear. And he's like, he's like my kids in
his underwear leaning against John Keel's knee. Kids, he doesn't
have grandkids, like this gotta be weird than Bigfoot for
him as a puck watchee in the house, he was great.
Keel was great. He's like, well, he's like, you'd think
the bear would have the advantage. But the thing is,
if a dog is protecting his master, he'll never stop fighting.
And of course we had dogs. There were dogs wandering
around the room as he's telling the story, which is
such and it was such a great thing to say
to a kid, you know. And I'm like, god, Owen,
you're so lucky, you know, and are you taking that
into your heart? And of course Owen being Owen was
just like, what about a dog and a shark? And
Keels like, depends on how well the dog can swim?
Move this along? You can? Is he bed time for
the kids? Maybe he was so patient and he was
so great, And of course it's so funny. I remember
it so clearly and it is part of what I
consider modern history. But it was nineteen ninety nine, maybe
two thousand. There was no iPhone. I didn't have a
video recorder. I should have been documenting this night. Beyond
I have no photographs. I have no I got nothing.
I'm like, literally five years later I could have recorded everything,
and it's like like I have no pictures of any
part of my life before two thousand and eight, and
now I have sixty million pictures.
Speaker 1: Okay, I have to ask. I read somewhere that I
think you and Pennington wanted to honor. Now, there were
forty six people that died on the bridge that night,
but the powers that were wanted to reduce it to
something like twelve people dying on the bridge. A that
was there some kind of a weird negotiation that you know,
of going back and forth to get to the actual number.
Speaker 4: No, I will tell you what happened, because I have.
The answer is very There is an answer, and the
answer is that when I when I was writing the script,
I purposely updated the timeframe. I did not place it
in the sixties. I wanted it to be modern day
at that time, which was late nineties. And the reason
I wanted to do this is that I didn't want
it to feel like, oh, this is some weird period
piece about back when people believe in UFOs. I wanted
to sort of take it out of its literal context
and make it more about this is a movie about
how people experience mysterious phenomenon and this is what they
really go through. And I'm using the point pleasant and
Mothman as a way to illustrate a broader thing. So
I'm not writing I'm writing about a snowstorm, but I'm
not writing about the snowstorm of nineteen sixty six in
some town. I'm writing about here's what happens in a snowstorm.
Here are the things a person will go through, as
it were. When I got to that point, I realized
this is not a literal retelling of his book, nor
is it a literal retelling of reality. I'm not using
those characters. I'm not using the ones whose streak you
know you live on. I Mary Hyer was never a
part of the book. I'm like, I need to make
it very clear that while it is based on that,
it is not a retelling of real events, because, as
Keel pointed out, there's still people living in the town
who lost loved ones in that tragedy. And I'm like,
so weirdly, I now have to write a sort of
on screen crawl coda that misstates the facts intentionally. So
I intentionally, I'm like, I can't end this movie and
then go forty two B and then realistically recount the
people who died in a way that's almost more insulting
to their memory. So I'm just going to go, here's
how many people died in this retelling, you know, of
if I wrote a movie about Gettysburg, maybe I would
knock go out of my way to get the exact number.
I'd go it was twelve thousand or whatever. But I said,
here's how many people died. And the Mothman has been
seen then never again in Point Pleasant, but has been
seen other places. Because again, I just wanted to my
point with the movie was this sort of shit happens, okay,
and we're not closing the book on this at the end.
It goes on. Weird stuff goes on, and so really
the studio totally behind everything I wanted to do. The
only thing they did, the only note they had, and
I think it was a good one, was they said
in my script, they said, take all the UFO stuff
out and take every reference to UFOs out, because UFOs
are things that movies have been made about, and people
have a certain believe when they hear UFO, they immediately
slot into an opinion. And we'd rather they not that.
We'd rather they approach everything that happens in this movie
as if it is sort of new stuff that they
haven't formed an opinion on. And I thought that was
a great idea, and so I went through and took
out I don't think the word UFO except a character saying,
you know, hey, sometimes people see UFOs and now they
see Mothman to differentiate. But otherwise the UFO phenomenon, all
the UFO stuff was was sort of taken out of
the movie.
Speaker 1: And if people you know the deluxe edition, some of
the deleted scenes you can see when there was an
attempt to get more of the book in the movie,
saying where Richard Jerry goes into a motel that he
didn't plan on going and all those notes are there,
and the scene where there's no special effects where they're
standing on the ridge and they're seeing the strange lights
going through the color spectrum like Keel talked about in
the book, So you know, there was a there was really,
you know, an attempt to get more of the book
I was. I remember being a little disappointed at first
that there that the classic keel men and black stuff
wasn't in it. But you know, they'd already had the
silly men in black slapstick movie. There's no way, you
know that the the the parallels would have been laughable.
Speaker 4: Unfortunately, if that's totally correct, it did sort of and
and that stuff would have been difficult to fold in
any way, you know. The the deleted scenes were part
of the original script that that were Ultimately it was like, okay,
well we're cutting for time, and we're just right things
we're going to do. But but there was a there
was a scene that's in the book that I really loved,
and I totally get why was not ever even filmed.
But it was a It was a woman in town
who has had weird stuff happening in her house. So
Keil goes to her house and it's this friendly old
lady and you know, you got to picture Betty White,
you know, and she's like, oh, hello, come in, come in,
you know, and she's nervous and making tea and trying
to be you know, welcome the person from the big
city of New York. Into her humble, little West Virginia
home and he's like, so, what's going on. She's like, well,
I don't even know how to explain it. It's ridiculous.
And as they're talking, a book flies off the bookshelf
and just hits the table and he looks over and
she's like, you like more cream? And then the lamp
falls over and then another book flies out in lands
and he's like and she's like, I can get you.
I'm making some scones. Let me go get you some scones.
And she's so embarrassed that the Poulter guyst is acting
up in front of the guest, and I just loved it.
I'm like this, there's something about this that is just
so odd. I've never seen it, but a person who's
embarrassed by the paranormal phenomenon in their house. And it
was just tonally. It just did not fit with anything else.
And so one day somewhere maybe but yeah, they took
that out. But I was just I love that scene,
you know.
Speaker 1: I talked to a survivor that went down on the
Silver Bridge, a sweat driver at the twenty seventeen Remembered ceremony,
and he was eighty eight when I talked to him,
which means he was thirty eight when he's crossing the
bridge in his semi hauling material to Michigan, and it
described how the bridge went down in like three to
forty seconds. He was forced through the passenger window right
arm first, and he went to the bottom of the river.
The currents pulled him up, and a tug captain saw
him and pull him up out of the water. So
his name was Bill Edmondson, and he's meant to he's
in an article in the Mothman Museum. So that was
that was bizarre. I mean, it was his experience with
much more detailed than that. But you know, wow, you
know you And of course in the movie Richard gear
has a lot of time to try to warn people
about the bridge, you know, making it more more dramatic
and so forth. But in reality, it was like with
thirty to forty seconds.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's amazing. I've never heard that story. That's incredible.
Speaker 1: Andy, you've been very quiet. Do you have any burning
questions before we move.
Speaker 3: On to Honus know, I've been listening very intently to
the whole thing. It's absolutely fascinating to talk about a
movie that we will enjoy toth we find very interesting.
And I was going to say that this whole film
about lights we were talking about a little while ago,
that seems to be a very common feature of the
initial beginnings or anything paranormal, should we say, begins with
anonymous lights, not just orss in the dust part. He
was getting photographs, actual light anomalies, and then they begin
to transform to other things. And the whole notion again
which was mentioned earlier, the idea that fundamentally we are energy.
You know, if you go down scientific quantum theory reached,
then we are just energy anyway. So these things could
be energy manipulation as well as experiencing things as if
they appear to be physical, solid objects, and then somethings
start to change and behaving very strange ways that define
normal physics. So I find all that absolutely fascinating.
Speaker 4: Certainly. Yeah, there's a book I feel like running over
and getting it. I forget the author, but it's a
book called light Forms that that sort of, and it's
a fairly recent book. So if you you know, go
on you know, bookshop dot org or something, you can
find it pretty quick. But yeah, it's called light Forms
and it's I think what we're getting now, and I
love it, and I think Joshua Cutren's is sort of
oh yeah. The main example is that is people coming
in now and study in like writing about the phenomenon
from from very unique angles, just like I'm gonna I'm
gonna sort of focus on this. I'm going to talk
about all of it through this one door that no
one's walked through yet, which is what made his first book,
Trojan Feast so interesting. It's like, this is just a
book of people who have eaten stuff that has been
offered to them from supernatural beings, and it's like, whoa, Okay,
all right, all right, okay. And then he was able
to do you know, the Brimstone Deceit, and he's gone
on to write I mean, he's he's getting into like
a Jacques Valet level or John Keel level of philosophy
of this stuff. I haven't even caught up. I've got
the Ecology of Souls and I haven't even cracked it
open yet.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, God, have you read his Bigfoot books?
Speaker 4: Yes? I read the first one. I don't have the
second one. I want the second one. The second one
is you know, ghost Bigfoot. That's what I want. And
I believe in ghost Bigfoot. I'm sorry and and and
I don't. And here's the thing, because like it's fun
to talk about, you know, the parties I go do.
I like to ask people, so ghost Bigfoot or pause
and Claus Bigfoot, and then people just slowly back away.
But but it's all of it. It's like there's no
I keep discovering that the dividing lines just dissolve. It's
all of it. It's ghost Bigfoot, it's flesh and blood Bigfoot,
it's it's you know, extraterrestrial biological entities. And it is complete,
you know, sort of psychic, weird alien ghost it's But
but I think what is so challenging about it is
that there is a non physical aspect to it. And
I don't know that there's anything else in our existence
that works as a metaphor for that. We don't. It's
hard for us to go, well, it's not physical in
the way that you know, those those other animals are not,
or this other aspect of our life is non physical,
and then physical and then non physical again. There's no language,
and you immediately start sounding non scientific and then you
know our debunker friends just sort of shake their head
sadly and then go to the manage of castle.
Speaker 3: The fundamental problem we have is the notion of subject relations.
My backge in philosophy, so I've done a little bit
of research into this. But this notion that we have
are physical objects and we're subjects in an object world,
that they are fundamentally divided between the two. But that's
not the case. You know, our understanding of how physical
matter works is based on Newtonian concepts are still very
much in play, but when you get to the quantum level,
all that changes. It all becomes fundamentally different. And of
course modern science is trying to bring the two together
into a single, unified theory that is, now they're going
to work because they don't work like that. So that's
often we get caught up in that whole notion those
are physical things, it's either physical or it's not physical.
That there's a third state somewhere between the two. That
we experience phenomena outside of ourselves, but we should play
an integral part in that phenomenon, that experience that you know,
it's not just happening and we're watching, we're engaged in
those experiences and those formal experiences I've been My mold
background is paranormal ghost investigation, but definitely forty years so
I've seen all sorts of ghostly phenomena. But I've come
to conclusion the very much that ufis goes pal It's
all the same thing, just manifesting differently depending on your
own interests and background. So you supplant ideas if you like,
go into what you're observing, and how you observe these things,
how you experience them is depend upon your own belief system.
So that's why I think you can find cultures around
the world having different backgrounds, different ideas, different religions, but
can have similar kind of experiences, but for them they
appear different. We were talking about the fay earlier on
and faaries that kind of thing. Obviously, in over the
UK we've had thousands of years plus, two thousand years
plus of these sort of things, and they were always
seen as coming from the ground, coming from other places,
physical places like coming out of hills, that kind of thing,
whereas now you have a modern phenomena of lights in
the sky and UFOs coming down and things coming out
of those. So it's always been this notion that come
from some elsewhere place, whether it's from underground or from
spaceships or whatever, there's always been that sense of otherness
has come in from outside somewhere. So that's why I
find the ulter terrestrial explanation makes more sense because it
works in all levels of all forms things that go
send UFOs and up into section. So I find that
very fascinated that we we're still caught in this Cartesian
notion of the mind and body being somehow separate from
each other. We're in natural fact, it's definitely not I'll stop.
Speaker 4: At that point. Yeah, I think, I mean, I think
that that is that's the final cul de sac that
we get caught in And because materialism has been the
dominant paradigm exactly that that it's sort of the presumption
is that, well, all questions are framed in that way,
and if you cannot demonstrate the consistent material aspect of
a thing, then it doesn't really exist. Like you can
talk about psychology because that is entirely subjective, and so
it's like that's fine, or you can talk about chemistry,
which is entirely material and that's fine. But when there's
something in that middle zone there really is no language
in I think in sort of Western culture, there's really
there's nowhere to stand and have that conversation. Now there's
other cultures where they this sort of phenomenon is very
much accepted into a way of life, and you know,
obviously in those places they have doctors and scientists and stuff,
but their worldview encompasses other things. And what they're not
doing in those cultures is trying to prove it. They've
already accepted it absolutely, and I think, you know, and
no one's upset and no one's pissed off, and it's like, yeah,
and we have doctors do a doctor stuff, and we
have shaman doing shaman stuff, and we don't have a
problem with that. But then like in our culture, I
think there is a problem. And I don't know, if
I honestly, I sometimes I think, oh, it's changing. I
don't know, maybe it is, maybe it isn't. Maybe it's
okay that it isn't. And I never thought it was
okay until I read the Tricks during the Paranormal and
it was the first time someone sort of floated the
notion maybe the skeptics are doing us a favor in
a particular way. Maybe we do need a bit of
a membrane between us and it, and maybe that's the function.
Maybe it's not healthy for human beings to be totally
in parlance in communication with these other things, especially not ours,
because we don't have any we have no way of
understanding it. So we're really, you know, stepping off that
thirteenth step and you know, falling down.
Speaker 1: So the trickster certainly had a presence with John Keel's
silent contact ease and the way people were being misdirected
over all that period of time. But I had to
tell you my one of my favorite phrases that John
Keel gave us was transmorifications of energy. I think I
should have a bumper sticker made of that.
Speaker 4: Steve, aren't you considered a pariah enough at this point
about a bumper sticker on your car?
Speaker 1: Well, I've got I've got a plug wedgie sticker with
with Susie's countenance on it.
Speaker 4: I'm like, I'm like waiting, how I was noticing that.
I'm like, you've got the puckwodgy sticker. But then Susie
is the puckwodgy expert.
Speaker 1: Well, she said me, the sticker, you know, kind of
an advertising boy. I guess it's fading.
Speaker 4: Oh I thought that was you pressure. I'm sorry, I
thought you had a mohawk. I thought that was in
the eighties when you were in your punk band, you know,
Susie and the Puck Watches.
Speaker 2: That would be an I'm good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, they probably find me more in a Lawrence
Wealth band or something like that, you know.
Speaker 4: Oh God, bless you for the.
Speaker 2: Lawrence we Unfortunately, I have seen Lawrence Welk because my
mother was in love with the accordion player guy. I
think his name was Myron or Byron or something. You
forced us to watch it.
Speaker 4: That is amazing because that is again the universal experience.
I only know Lawrence Well because that's what my grandfather watched.
So we would be waiting, you know, it's I go
from seven to eight o'clock. He's got to watch his
Lawrence Well. Yeah, whatever, you know, love boat or whatever.
Speaker 1: Well, I think I think we'll wrap it up now, Richard.
I hope you'll come back because so much more to
cut to talk about, and this has been so much fun.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this has been a total honor you guys. I
love meeting Kindred spirits and people who are who are again?
You know, like Susie sort of finding your own doorway
into this and uh and grabbing that end of the
yarn and pulling to see what what's at the other end. Andy,
I love what you're talking about. I've got to check
out I've got to check out some of the books
you actually did complete and publish with good thoughts for
the mystery novel coming up? Well, gee, I don't know, Steve.
I guess I'm going to see you in Point Pleasant
in a few months.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that that's yeah, the coming September, that would be.
It'll be a blast. Yeah yeah, wait man, you're going
to be like a rock star there. Man, you know,
and I'll say, oh, yeah, I'm.
Speaker 4: Really doing rails of coke off some prostitute. That's how
we Yeah, me and Richard.
Speaker 1: We go way back, way way back.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: That's right, five or ten minutes so.
Speaker 4: We're in Cisy in the puckwadries. Man.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm going to do the close out. Everybody sit
tight and we'll we'll wrap it up again. Thank you, Richard.
The High Strangest Factor was created by Steve Ward and
Andy Mercer and his copyrighted on the Paranormal UK Radio network.
I want to thank our fearless leaders here at the
network Iron ammen, block Mark Johnson and Andy Mercer. Also
Andy is producer and composer of the closing theme from
his Dark Ambient music and Brian Zeller for the opening theme.
You can hear all of us from time to time
on Macloney's Military X Files in real time or in
the archives on this same network. And I am Steve Ford.
You're a humble host here on the High Strangers Factor,
a displaced Michigander deep in the Ohio Valley, living on
the same road that chased two couples in their Chevy
Only Tulane in November of nineteen sixty six. Thank you
all for listening. We will see you all again in
a fortnight or thereabouts. Take care,