Speaker 1: You're listening to an airwave media podcast.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Monster Talk, the science show about monsters. In
Speaker 2: a typical Monster Talk episode, we highlight a monster to
Speaker 2: talk about his plausibility and find scientists and researchers who
Speaker 2: could help us better understand the details, facts and nuances
Speaker 2: of such creatures. We also occasionally talk to people who
Speaker 2: believe that such monsters are real and try to get
Speaker 2: their point of view. But this episode's a bit different
Speaker 2: from anything we've done before. Tonight, we're going to talk
Speaker 2: to a self described witch who has written a book
Speaker 2: on how to use magic to defend against a variety
Speaker 2: of monsters and monstrous forces. I think it's a fairly
Speaker 2: interesting conversation, and I hope you agree. It's actually quite
Speaker 2: unlike anything we've ever seen before.
Speaker 3: A giant very creature Part eight, part mat in Luckness,
Speaker 3: a twenty four mile long bottomless lake in the Highlands
Speaker 3: of Scotland.
Speaker 2: It's a creature known as the luck Nest.
Speaker 4: I was good Monster Talk.
Speaker 2: Hello. I'm Blake Smith, the host of Monster Talk. In
Speaker 2: this episode, we'll be talking with author, lawyer and self
Speaker 2: described which Emily Carlin. Ben Radford will be joining me
Speaker 2: for this interview. A few listeners may have noted that
Speaker 2: I promised our episode on the Kraken would be this week.
Speaker 2: That episode ran into some fairly serious technical problems and
Speaker 2: had to be postponed. But I have no fear we
Speaker 2: will engage the Kraken. We have some really interesting things
Speaker 2: led for twenty twelve, including more sea monsters, more zombies,
Speaker 2: shape changers, and even Satan. The upcoming interview is with
Speaker 2: a person who believes in the power of magic and
Speaker 2: teaches the use of it for defense against an astonishing
Speaker 2: array of ghulies and gremlins and ghosts and goblins and grumpkins.
Speaker 2: The book she wrote very interesting and entertaining. I know
Speaker 2: that our listeners know that we are very skeptical of
Speaker 2: magical claims, but I also expect that most of our
Speaker 2: listeners also love monsters and tells the paranormal, even if
Speaker 2: they don't find the underlying framework of plausibility to the tales.
Speaker 2: I'm pleased to say that our conversation was fun and interesting,
Speaker 2: and while we come from different approaches, I was happy
Speaker 2: with the dialogue, and I hope you will be too.
Speaker 2: But before we get started, let me remind everyone that
Speaker 2: while we are an official podcast of Skeptic Magazine. The
Speaker 2: views and ideas expressed herein are not necessarily the views
Speaker 2: of Skeptic Magazine or the Skeptic Society.
Speaker 1: Monstertal.
Speaker 2: I think I've mentioned it on Monster Talk before that
Speaker 2: before I became a self identifying skeptic. How about that
Speaker 2: someone with a someone who says they're a skeptic with
Speaker 2: a capital less. For years and years I read about
Speaker 2: the paranormal and didn't really experience anything until I finally
Speaker 2: did experience something that seemed like a classic haunting. And
Speaker 2: when that happened, it went on for quite a while,
Speaker 2: probably a year, year and a half, and I really
Speaker 2: didn't know how to deal with it. I didn't know
Speaker 2: what to do to stop it. My exciting defense mechanisms
Speaker 2: included sleeping with the light on, getting a dog, and
Speaker 2: letting him be my protector, which was more than just
Speaker 2: having a friend. I mean, I really thought about it
Speaker 2: in the sense of dogs are supposed to be able
Speaker 2: to see the spirits, and so he would, he would
Speaker 2: bark at unseen things, and you know, to me, that
Speaker 2: was just confirmation that interesting, that he was helping guard
Speaker 2: off the unknown.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 1: Well, I've i've always had cats, and cats, as you know,
Speaker 1: will stare at anything or nothing that they see in
Speaker 1: the room. So they they will give you lots and
Speaker 1: lots of red herrings and false leaves on ghosts.
Speaker 2: Yeah for sure. Yeah, but they're the best friend of
Speaker 2: a witch anyway. So actually what happened was, at one
Speaker 2: point I had a roommate and he was experiencing the
Speaker 2: haunting with me. I mean it was, you know, real
Speaker 2: things were happening, like I say. You know, we talked
Speaker 2: about the exploding light bulbs and bumps and noises and
Speaker 2: doors opening and closing by themselves, all the classic things, right,
Speaker 2: everything but a full ball and apparition, right. And at
Speaker 2: one point he got so upset that he decided he
Speaker 2: would do something about it, and he went and did
Speaker 2: a smudging ceremony. So he went and he got a
Speaker 2: smudge stick, and he walked around the property inside and outside,
Speaker 2: you know, smoking a smudge stick and do some sort
Speaker 2: of cleansing ritual. Now, it didn't actually stop my problem,
Speaker 2: but it made him feel much better. So you know,
Speaker 2: for him, he felt much more comfortable after the smudging.
Speaker 2: I felt much more comfortable after I learned about sleep
Speaker 2: paralysis and how that works, and then it explained a
Speaker 2: lot of my problems. But no, the smudging ceremony, I
Speaker 2: thought it was very interesting. It wasn't really part of
Speaker 2: my upbringing. It wasn't something I was really familiar with.
Speaker 2: But his wife was involved in WICCA, and she suggested
Speaker 2: it as a possible cure for the problem. So it's
Speaker 2: pertinent to our guest tonight, who's going to be talking
Speaker 2: about her book on Defense against the Dark.
Speaker 1: So yes, yeah, a field Guide to protecting yourself from
Speaker 1: predatory spirits, energy, vampires, and malevolent magic with magic spelled
Speaker 1: the c. K. Quasi authentic way, the Aleister Crowley way,
Speaker 1: not just not just Crowley, but certainly he was one
Speaker 1: of the bones of that. Yeah, you know, I have
Speaker 1: I kind of, to be honest with you, I kind
Speaker 1: of have mixed feelings about about the sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: I looked over the book of course and everything, and
Speaker 1: and from what I could tell, it's, you know again,
Speaker 1: it's it's a field guide protecting yourself from these spirits.
Speaker 1: And my some of my reservations about this come from
Speaker 1: having dealt with people who who really sincerely believe that
Speaker 1: they have ghosts in the house as you and our listeners. Know,
Speaker 1: I do a fair number of ghost investigations, and on
Speaker 1: more than one occasion, I've had people who have really
Speaker 1: been just you know, just really really terrified because of
Speaker 1: information they've gotten from TV shows, from books, from magazines,
Speaker 1: whatever else, from people who say, look, you know, ghosts exist,
Speaker 1: or these things exist, and these are the different types.
Speaker 1: They'll talk about, you know, residual hauntings, they'll talk about
Speaker 1: this or that, and of course, you know, my my
Speaker 1: issue is that, you know, let's first let's establish the
Speaker 1: ghosts exists before we start going to the subcategories of ghosts.
Speaker 1: You know, let's let's let's let's let's deal with the
Speaker 1: the the the assumptions and PREMI dies before sort of
Speaker 1: get you know, going too far down the track of
Speaker 1: you know, how to how do you know, if you're
Speaker 1: confronted with a cultural geist, what's the best way to
Speaker 1: address that? Whereas if you're confronted with a residual spirit,
Speaker 1: you know, what's the best we address that? And so
Speaker 1: so I guess one of my concerns about this is
Speaker 1: that again, the people are going to sort of take
Speaker 1: this stuff seriously and say, oh my god, you know
Speaker 1: this is this is just like what I saw on TV.
Speaker 1: They're sort of haunting themselves.
Speaker 2: It's really hard when you're dealing with something that doesn't
Speaker 2: have a physical manifestation, it isn't easily diagnosed through science,
Speaker 2: to treat it through science. I mean, that's not the
Speaker 2: way most people would approach it. I think if it
Speaker 2: fits into a common wisdom or a folklore background of
Speaker 2: a haunting, is science even part of the toolbox that
Speaker 2: you deal with it with, right? And I think maybe
Speaker 2: for most people it's not, especially based on what I've
Speaker 2: seen on television. That doesn't really mean, you know, that
Speaker 2: doesn't mean it's true. But you know, I think a
Speaker 2: lot of you use the toolbox you have, and I
Speaker 2: think a lot of Christians would use prayer, uh, you know,
Speaker 2: and maybe people with a more pagan background would use
Speaker 2: a cleansing ritual. It just kind of depends on what
Speaker 2: your cultural background is or how you've educated yourself the
Speaker 2: toolbox you've built. So it'll be interesting to talk to her.
Speaker 2: I'm really curious to see what she has to say
Speaker 2: about it. Can I quickly say this? I was looking
Speaker 2: at the tool section in the back of the book.
Speaker 2: It had a section totally said I take this as
Speaker 2: said protective herbs, and it says bay leaves, cinnamon, cloves, finnel, garlic, rosemary, sage.
Speaker 2: What I got out of that is Thanksgiving lunch and
Speaker 2: dinner are fantastic protective tools. So that's why you're almost
Speaker 2: never haunted on Thanksgiving Day.
Speaker 1: I hadn't thought about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And in her appendix, not not her physical appendix, no.
Speaker 1: Not her actual appendix I have, which I haven't touched
Speaker 1: or examined it, but in the Dependence of the book,
Speaker 1: she has an index of symptoms, which is interesting, and
Speaker 1: it's about two or three pages worth of everything from
Speaker 1: an imbalance of nature, ill health, feeling watched, phantom sounds,
Speaker 1: pantom smells, nightmares, tripping on nothing, objects being moved, just amnesia,
Speaker 1: unexplained scratches, bad luck, things like that. What's interesting is
Speaker 1: that apparently, and again I haven't really discussed it with
Speaker 1: her yet, but apparently these are sort of these are
Speaker 1: you know, things that are symptoms that you're being attacked
Speaker 1: by or manifested by these creatures. And of course one
Speaker 1: of the problems is that many of these are so
Speaker 1: vague in general that they could apply to anybody. I mean,
Speaker 1: who hasn't you know, lost their balance at one point,
Speaker 1: or lost their keys, or you know, had bad luck
Speaker 1: or whatever else. And so that's one of the one
Speaker 1: of the problems where you know, I can see someone
Speaker 1: who really believes that there's a ghost in their house
Speaker 1: going to this appendix and saying, oh my god, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, I've been acting out a character I had
Speaker 1: a bad nightmare the other night, and sort of convincing
Speaker 1: themselves that these rather banal, ordinary, otherwise ordinary experiences are
Speaker 1: symptomatic I'm an attack by a predatory spirit.
Speaker 2: Well, true enough, And that's the same sort of thing
Speaker 2: you find on demon defense pages, is that are you
Speaker 2: being bothered by demons? You get this some sort of
Speaker 2: general list of malaise that you might have from what
Speaker 2: an average person might consider part of life, you know,
Speaker 2: just regular life events. But they become more sinister when
Speaker 2: you start to think about it in terms of am
Speaker 2: I being oppressed by a demon or possessed by a demon?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: So it'll be interesting to talk to her. I did
Speaker 1: notice one of the quick things that she's apparently not
Speaker 1: making this up. I'm not making a joke out of it.
Speaker 1: She's apparently the Gray school of Wizardries dean of the
Speaker 1: Dark Arts I know.
Speaker 2: And she's also apparently in a law school graduate so.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so an interesting blend it'll be. It'll it'll
Speaker 1: be fun to talk to her and hopefully we can,
Speaker 1: uh we can get through it without any screaming you're yelling.
Speaker 2: Oh well, I'm hopefully it'll be great. So yeah, it's
Speaker 2: I had to say this, regardless of where we fall
Speaker 2: from a philosophical perspective, it's an entertaining book. I really
Speaker 2: found it entertaining, so.
Speaker 1: I did as well. In fact, I mean that's that's
Speaker 1: one of the things that I would uh uh, I
Speaker 1: would recommend the book, and of course it's I have
Speaker 1: to be careful. I say that I would recommend the
Speaker 1: book as folklore and she I mean, this isn't bashing
Speaker 1: the book. I mean she she refers to folklore over
Speaker 1: and over again. So, you know, for people who are
Speaker 1: interested in, you know, in knowing the folklore behind fairies
Speaker 1: and genies and elves and goblins and pixies. Uh, that's
Speaker 1: that's fascinating. I mean my only caution would be sort of,
Speaker 1: you know that the transition between folklore and claiming that
Speaker 1: this is you know, actual information that's you know, reflects
Speaker 1: the real world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's true, key, isn't it, Because as skeptics do
Speaker 2: we really believe in demons? So therefore, what is the
Speaker 2: proper defense?
Speaker 1: What is?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 2: I don't know. For me, being educated to turn out
Speaker 2: to be the best defense, but maybe that doesn't work
Speaker 2: for everyone. I don't know. Let's let's move on. That's
Speaker 2: a debate for another day.
Speaker 1: There you go, more obstrutle.
Speaker 2: Okay, so, Emily, we're calling from Monster Talk and I'm
Speaker 2: going to read your description from the back of your
Speaker 2: book here, right. So, you're Emily Carlin and you've been
Speaker 2: a magical practitioner for more than a decade, and you're
Speaker 2: the Gray School of Wizardries dean of Dark Art, specializing
Speaker 2: in defensive magic and creatures of the night, and you
Speaker 2: teach magical protection to people of all ages and skill levels.
Speaker 2: And also have a BA in philosophy from Wellesley College
Speaker 2: and a Juris doctorate from Seattle University School of Law,
Speaker 2: and are a member of the Washington State Bar.
Speaker 1: That's me super interesting mix. Awesome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is a surprising mix. Quite a pot pourrie
Speaker 2: of background angles.
Speaker 5: I have a short attendancepan. So I just do everything.
Speaker 2: So how did you get involved in the dark arts
Speaker 2: or in defense against dark arts or dark a defense
Speaker 2: against the dark? I got this, Harry Potter bleed in,
Speaker 2: I apologize, it's all good.
Speaker 5: How did I get into the stuff that I do? Well?
Speaker 5: I have seen stuff that I couldn't explain and experience
Speaker 5: things I couldn't explain since I was a very young child.
Speaker 5: As I grew up, I learned that people had labels
Speaker 5: for those experiences that I had, and so I decided
Speaker 5: I would learn about them so I didn't have to
Speaker 5: be scared anymore. And then I just kind of kept
Speaker 5: going what.
Speaker 1: Sort of what sort of experiences did you have that?
Speaker 1: I mean, was it something that you personally experienced You're like,
Speaker 1: oh my god. You know, you're reading an article or
Speaker 1: you're reading a book and you're like, this person is
Speaker 1: describing something that happened to me.
Speaker 5: I have definitely had that experience. When I was a kid,
Speaker 5: you know, our house had ghosts, and ghosts would talk
Speaker 5: to me and I could hear them, and when they
Speaker 5: figured that out, they would then swarm around me, which
Speaker 5: was very disconcerting for a ten year old. And then
Speaker 5: I kind of shut it out and got older and
Speaker 5: then started reading books and go, wait a minute, that
Speaker 5: happened to me. Oh oh, that happened to me. Oh crap.
Speaker 2: When you say they swarmed you, did you physically see
Speaker 2: them or you could feel them around you?
Speaker 5: A little bit of both. When I quote unquote see ghosts,
Speaker 5: it's usually a combination of you know, when you are
Speaker 5: driving down the highway and it's really hot and you
Speaker 5: see that the heat vapor. Yeah, it's like a shimmer almost,
Speaker 5: It's like a different density in the air. That's how
Speaker 5: I tend to see that kind of thing with my eyes.
Speaker 5: And I also feel kind of a presence and a
Speaker 5: pressure shift.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The reason I ask is because I I read
Speaker 2: your book and I wasn't sure it had a real
Speaker 2: role playing game source book feel to it, you know,
Speaker 2: and so I wasn't sure if you were you know,
Speaker 2: one hundred percent. Yeah, basically, yeah, let me just stop dancing. Yeah,
Speaker 2: were you serious? So that's yes, Okay, so you're you're
Speaker 2: totally serious about it.
Speaker 5: I am quite serious about this stuff.
Speaker 2: Cool. Well, the Weird Skeptical Show, We're not gonna mock
Speaker 2: you or anything, but skeptics we need believers, I guess,
Speaker 2: or we wouldn't have any kind of discussion here.
Speaker 1: Right there you go, And let me just let me
Speaker 1: just drive in as someone who spent far too much
Speaker 1: of my my teenage years playing D and D and
Speaker 1: memorizing all the monster manual and you know, each of
Speaker 1: the each of the different characteristics of all that stuff.
Speaker 1: I I I thought it was really cool to sort
Speaker 1: of see at least the folklork aspect in the in
Speaker 1: your book.
Speaker 2: So that was cool. Well and just as a quick
Speaker 2: Dan D shout out, you got ghouls in there, and
Speaker 2: that's uh, my favorite monsters.
Speaker 5: So you know, I first played D and D like
Speaker 5: three months ago. I'd never played it.
Speaker 2: Are you serious?
Speaker 5: That's serious?
Speaker 2: You started with audition or did you start with fourth forty?
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Okay, well there you go. Well well hopefully not. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well let me let me let me just just throw
Speaker 1: this in here. I mean, I'm old school. So like,
Speaker 1: if if you're my opinion is that if you're going
Speaker 1: to get into D and D, get into like first
Speaker 1: edition advanced D and D, that's like that's the stuff
Speaker 1: that you know, I mean, because I you know that
Speaker 1: the kids they had like a sixth edition, Like no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: this is you got to go back to you know,
Speaker 1: the d twenties and the you know, the when I
Speaker 1: was your age, we used to never mind.
Speaker 2: How did you come to write a book about defending
Speaker 2: against the dark?
Speaker 5: Well, circumstances conspired to make it happen. Basically, two things
Speaker 5: kind of came together. One, you know, I had all
Speaker 5: these experiences when I was younger, and then when I
Speaker 5: got to colle and things exploded, and there were no
Speaker 5: books out there that gave me the information I wished
Speaker 5: I had had, which is, you know, the I'm in
Speaker 5: a panic, what do I do right now so that
Speaker 5: I don't have to panic? There were lots of things
Speaker 5: with wonderful stories that were great stories, but not particularly useful,
Speaker 5: and so I had always wished something like that existed.
Speaker 5: And then, you know, I joined the grade school and
Speaker 5: became a professor, and I started writing all these classes
Speaker 5: about these creatures. And I looked up one day and
Speaker 5: I'm like, I got one hundred you know, creatures and
Speaker 5: forty thousand words. Hey, in three weeks, I can turn
Speaker 5: this into a book, And so I did so.
Speaker 1: In my understanding is sort of a you were looking
Speaker 1: for a practical sort of aspect to it instead of
Speaker 1: just stories. You're wanting something that was concrete that people
Speaker 1: could actually use. Is that right?
Speaker 5: Basically, my whole idea with this book is stuff happens,
Speaker 5: people don't understand what's going on, and if there's something
Speaker 5: like what my goal was to make a book where
Speaker 5: someone who was in a panic because they had things
Speaker 5: happening they didn't understand, could look at this book, read
Speaker 5: through descriptions, find whatever was closest to what they were experiencing,
Speaker 5: and then have two or three concrete things they could
Speaker 5: do to make those weird things stop if they needed
Speaker 5: them to.
Speaker 1: MM, that was okay. So now, because you talked about,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of you were writing this stuff and
Speaker 1: writing and stuff, You're suddenly like, oh my god, I've
Speaker 1: you know, I almost got a book here where I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a pretty amazing collection of information. How did you
Speaker 1: assemble it? Was this? Did you was it mostly on
Speaker 1: books on folklore? Did you interview people who personally defended
Speaker 1: themselves against evil entities like ghosts and goblins and pixies
Speaker 1: or what? Where did you get the information that's in
Speaker 1: the book.
Speaker 5: All of the above. I've been researching this stuff since
Speaker 5: God ninety nine earlier. And I have a really nerdy library,
Speaker 5: so I have lots and lots and lots of books
Speaker 5: and folklore, and I also have a lot of personal experience.
Speaker 5: I know a lot of people that have personal experience,
Speaker 5: and so it's a combination of the two that really
Speaker 5: went into this.
Speaker 1: I'd love to be a flight on the wall where
Speaker 1: you're like, yeah, hey, Dave, I heard that you defended
Speaker 1: yourself against the goblin the other day. Can you tell
Speaker 1: me about that? I mean, is that kind of how
Speaker 1: it went? Or I mean, how do Yeah?
Speaker 5: Okay, and okay, you have to understand. I teach at
Speaker 5: an online school of magic.
Speaker 2: That's what I was going to ask. What is the
Speaker 2: Gray School.
Speaker 5: We have a club that is all about defending yourself
Speaker 5: and I can say, Hey, anyone have any stories they
Speaker 5: want to share, and I get fifty responths of going, hey,
Speaker 5: this thing happened, and this thing happened, this thing happened.
Speaker 5: The Gray School is a online magical school and we
Speaker 5: teach pretty much everything. It's non religious. It's multinational, ages
Speaker 5: eight through one hundred. I think my oldest student is
Speaker 5: seventy four. We teach everything from you know, herbalism to
Speaker 5: terror reading to defensive magic to you know, Alistair Curley
Speaker 5: kind of ceremonial magic, and we teach everything, and yes,
Speaker 5: we do take it seriously.
Speaker 2: Gotcha. So what kind of dangers a weight the unprepared
Speaker 2: or people who don't have some kind of protection, what's knows?
Speaker 2: What's the kind of the worst case scenario from a
Speaker 2: paranormal attack that you've run into?
Speaker 5: Worst case scenario that I can verify actually happened? Women
Speaker 5: had infernal inner house. It pushed her down the stairs.
Speaker 5: She broke both legs and basically a vanishing was done
Speaker 5: and this stopped.
Speaker 1: She makes sure understand. So she she was at the
Speaker 1: top of stairs and some entity pushed her.
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, yeah, it does happen. It is obscenely rare,
Speaker 5: like I think it probably happens once every thirty years
Speaker 5: on the planet.
Speaker 1: How would just put putting on my skeptical hat here?
Speaker 1: How would one distinguish that from just sort of tripping
Speaker 1: on stairs?
Speaker 2: As sure?
Speaker 5: Oh totally. There's a couple different ways, and I'm not
Speaker 5: sure any of them would really satisfy a hardcore skeptic.
Speaker 1: Well, I'll throw something out, We'll see what sticks.
Speaker 5: But I'll put forth and you may take as you will. First,
Speaker 5: for me, it was the fact that I knew the
Speaker 5: people that were telling me about this, and I know
Speaker 5: that they're not really sredulous people. They are people who
Speaker 5: have very long kind of standing history with me of
Speaker 5: being quite on the ball. So I trusted that. What
Speaker 5: then they said, I felt two hands that pushed me.
Speaker 5: And you know, there isn't a history of in her
Speaker 5: ear problems. The stairs are level, there was no heat fluctuations.
Speaker 5: There were other witnesses present that watched her lurch from
Speaker 5: the wrong part of her body for tripping kind of things.
Speaker 5: I am just as skeptical as most skeptics, because I
Speaker 5: get a lot of crazy people saying, Oh, my house
Speaker 5: is haunted, Come and save me. You have bad wiring.
Speaker 5: Call an electrician. So, yes, I do believe all this
Speaker 5: stuff happened. Do I believe it happens anywhere near as
Speaker 5: often as people think it does. No, No, I don't.
Speaker 2: You've got a lot of very specific guidance for how
Speaker 2: to handle different kinds of attacks, and you know, being
Speaker 2: interested in monsters and RPG background, reading monster books, watching
Speaker 2: monster movies, every monster movie, sort of follows that formula.
Speaker 2: Oh there's a monster. What do we do to fight it?
Speaker 2: We build? You know, what works, what doesn't?
Speaker 1: We'll find the necronomicon, right, you know, you know three
Speaker 1: times the words?
Speaker 2: Okay, so the you know, So have any of these
Speaker 2: things been field tested? I guess is the question?
Speaker 5: Yes? Okay, oh yeah. So I have been practicing magic
Speaker 5: for a while now, and there's kind of a Bell
Speaker 5: curve of magical asininity where when you're first starting, you're
Speaker 5: not doing anything, so you're not attracting anything to you.
Speaker 5: And as you learn just enough, you start to attract
Speaker 5: things to you, but you're not actually learned enough to
Speaker 5: not be completely vulnerab and unprotected. And then you learn
Speaker 5: more and then you can do things without being incredibly
Speaker 5: vulnerable and unprotected. When I was at the top of
Speaker 5: that Bell curve, I was with a group of about
Speaker 5: ten other people that were at that same point in
Speaker 5: that Bell curve. Bad things happen. It's all a matter
Speaker 5: of energy, and you can just look at quantum physics.
Speaker 5: You've got waves and particles, thoughts, equal waves of energy
Speaker 5: moving through your brain. You know, in some theories, those
Speaker 5: waves then emanate out from your body and can interact
Speaker 5: with other waves and particles when they come out of you,
Speaker 5: and when they all come together in one big heap,
Speaker 5: all doing the same thing, the entrain and get the
Speaker 5: same resonance, and then insane things happen. I went to
Speaker 5: a women's college. It was crazy.
Speaker 1: There you go. Well, let me just fallow up on that.
Speaker 1: I mean, like, for example, I just recently finished reading
Speaker 1: a very good book actually on genies and gin and
Speaker 1: I know and I noticed that, of course you cover
Speaker 1: some of that as well. But for example, it's said
Speaker 1: in folklore that both fairies and genies are repelled by
Speaker 1: iron and salt and other things as well. But but
Speaker 1: I guess one thing that I always sort of come
Speaker 1: back to is that how do we know that's true?
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not I'm not saying it's not true.
Speaker 1: I'm not. I'm just saying how other than you know,
Speaker 1: somebody said, how do we know that genies are afraid
Speaker 1: of iron? How do we know that fairies? I mean,
Speaker 1: so how do you address that?
Speaker 5: Well, that is not one of the things that I
Speaker 5: have personal experience in, So the way I look at it,
Speaker 5: it would make sense to me if a nature spirit
Speaker 5: was repelled by man made technology that in my brain
Speaker 5: works for gin. I I don't see a real logical
Speaker 5: reason why gin would be repelled by iron, because I
Speaker 5: mean in traditional lore there you know, Allah made them
Speaker 5: from like ocalist fire. Right, So I don't quite know
Speaker 5: how that and iron would not work together.
Speaker 1: Right, you would think that iron being a what could
Speaker 1: be more earthly than iron? It's mineral all over the place.
Speaker 1: So I don't understand why that would be selected or
Speaker 1: why anybody would have thought that that would be anathema
Speaker 1: to either gin or ferries or anything else.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, iron, iron and steel have been traditional
Speaker 2: tools or protection against the supernatural for a long time.
Speaker 5: Well, it's usually not lumps of iron ore, it's some
Speaker 5: kind of rot metal. Yeah, you know the horseshoe, you've
Speaker 5: gotten iron nails, and the rot metal has been worked
Speaker 5: upon by man in such a way I could see
Speaker 5: how those connotations were created.
Speaker 2: Well, it probably means that cars being made of iron
Speaker 2: or protect protection from gen though, right, that.
Speaker 5: Would be a very heavy car. I'm thinking it's some
Speaker 5: kind of like World War One tank.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well there you go that my neighbor has one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there you go.
Speaker 2: Further subject to grimlins, right.
Speaker 5: They are subject to grimlins?
Speaker 2: Are grimlins subject to grimlins? Because that would explain a
Speaker 2: lot they kind of.
Speaker 5: I would think they're kind of tempting fate by calling
Speaker 5: them grimlins.
Speaker 1: There's a certain twisted logic to that. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I just Luis warned you. Blake has as this annoying
Speaker 1: tendency to throw some puns. I've tried to cure them
Speaker 1: of it in the year and a half we've been
Speaker 1: doing this podcast, and apparently it's failed miserably. So if
Speaker 1: there's any bad puns that come out, just just beware.
Speaker 1: That's what that is.
Speaker 5: Oh, it's all good. I can ignore them with the best.
Speaker 2: Well, a friend of mine actually called me earlier today
Speaker 2: and was having internet problems while I was reading your
Speaker 2: book preparing for this, and I suggested that we try
Speaker 2: cleansing ritual. But apparently there was an evil spell that
Speaker 2: someone had comcast on him.
Speaker 5: It does happen, oh my isp But they are also
Speaker 5: the devil.
Speaker 2: Seriously, was I think it was that you recommend?
Speaker 5: Yes? Actually, in folklore, he's kind of the patron saint
Speaker 5: of technology.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 5: Why, I don't really know.
Speaker 2: I let's be honest, there's technology and folklore. I mean,
Speaker 2: technology is pretty new compared to folklore. Yes, I saw
Speaker 2: that there was like a demon protection that you had
Speaker 2: in here that involved Collie, and I found that a
Speaker 2: little disturbing because he is I don't know if I
Speaker 2: want his protection.
Speaker 5: Or notice that that particular ritual was in the space
Speaker 5: saying don't ever use this unless you think you're going
Speaker 5: to die.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a.
Speaker 5: Reason it was under that section around unless you have
Speaker 5: no choice.
Speaker 1: I mention that was like a you know, in case
Speaker 1: of fire, break.
Speaker 5: Glass emergency, break the glass, Yeah.
Speaker 1: You hide away in the back. All right, let me
Speaker 1: let me let me go back to the folklore and
Speaker 1: myths here, because I've researched quite a bit of folklore.
Speaker 1: In fact, later this year, I'm actually presenting at the
Speaker 1: American folk or Society UH conference in Indianapolis and Bloomington
Speaker 1: on actually on the folk lore that Chipokaba.
Speaker 2: I heard that from a friend of a friend.
Speaker 1: Now, O good one, so so again sort of just
Speaker 1: from a folklore point of view. I enjoyed the book.
Speaker 1: But one of the of course, one of the problems
Speaker 1: is that is that you know, folklore and myths aren't
Speaker 1: always true. You know, a lot of things that people believe,
Speaker 1: like not swimming for thirty minutes after eating, or you know,
Speaker 1: if you if you go in front of a mirror
Speaker 1: and see bloody Mary three times, you know her goes
Speaker 1: to pop out. Or if you know a girl won't
Speaker 1: get pregnant she jumps backward three times after sex. There's
Speaker 1: all sorts of things that, you know, we believe in folklore,
Speaker 1: but we believe that folklore says is true but is
Speaker 1: completely untrue. So how how do you tease out, you know,
Speaker 1: give given that so much of this with drawn from folklore,
Speaker 1: how do you how do you assure not only your
Speaker 1: readers but yourself that you're not just simply passing along
Speaker 1: bad information that came from another book.
Speaker 5: Well, the way I look at it in a couple
Speaker 5: of ways. First, in terms of the folklore stuff. You know,
Speaker 5: like you said, folklore is folklore, which is why it's
Speaker 5: under the lore section and not necessarily in the back
Speaker 5: of the book with all the actual tools.
Speaker 1: Mhm.
Speaker 5: Do I think scattering, you know, grains of rice in
Speaker 5: front of a vampire will make them stop and compulsively
Speaker 5: pick them up one by one so you can have
Speaker 5: time to run away. I'm thinking no, okay, Well, now,
Speaker 5: to be fair, that put it there.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, well, but that falls in the folklore of
Speaker 2: both Eastern and Western culture vampires. So it's OCD for vampires.
Speaker 2: Does seem to be consistent.
Speaker 5: It seemed to be quite consistent.
Speaker 2: I'm a skeptic, right, but I'm telling you it shows up
Speaker 2: in the folklore over and over and over again. If
Speaker 2: you really think you're facing a vampire, if you really
Speaker 2: really think you are if everything says it's a vampire,
Speaker 2: I gotta say, I'm gonna throw some rice.
Speaker 5: You've got some rice, handy, go for it? Why not?
Speaker 1: Well, look, let me lee. I have to interject here
Speaker 1: because because I've researched my answers quite a bit, and
Speaker 1: bigfoot in choop of Coppa and lake monsters and that,
Speaker 1: and my position has always been this that if I'm
Speaker 1: ever confronted by a bigfoot or Chupcaba, or a lake monster
Speaker 1: or or the undead, I want to experience that. I
Speaker 1: I don't want to run from it. I don't want
Speaker 1: to confuse the vampire, make him count a bunch of
Speaker 1: grains of rice. I want to, you know, if I'm
Speaker 1: out there count if I'm out there in the in
Speaker 1: the wilderness, and I hear something that might be big
Speaker 1: foot outside my tent, I'm gonna go look. And if
Speaker 1: if the if the end result is that I'm the
Speaker 1: first person who have been proven to be killed by
Speaker 1: a bigfoot, all the better. So So that's that's my
Speaker 1: position on this is that instead of and I guess
Speaker 1: this kind of in a weird way sort of contradicts
Speaker 1: the premise of your book. But you know, I I
Speaker 1: don't want to say that I wouldn't want to protect
Speaker 1: myself from these things, but just as as an inquisitive
Speaker 1: human being, I would. I would almost kind of rather
Speaker 1: be attacked and just sort of I mean I would.
Speaker 1: I would find it fast. Yeah, I would find it fascinating. Seriously,
Speaker 1: I'm not joking. I would. I would find it fascinating
Speaker 1: to be by a vampire, especially a succubist.
Speaker 2: I want to say, yeah, but yeah, but man, yeah,
Speaker 2: but if you throw that rice, you're not killing the vampire.
Speaker 2: You're doing science. Man, You're doing science. You're testing a theory.
Speaker 2: And if the vampire goes and counts that rice, and if.
Speaker 5: You do it again, you've reproduced the results.
Speaker 2: That's true. Look at that. I have to say that's
Speaker 2: I would feel pretty good about that test. Okay, fine,
Speaker 2: and worst case and I just kept you have to
Speaker 2: say worst case scenario, it's not a vampire. And they're like,
Speaker 2: why did you throw rice at me?
Speaker 5: Dude?
Speaker 2: You're like, oh, I thought we were in a wedding,
Speaker 2: right right? Yeah? The folklore that's a dude. Sorry at this.
Speaker 2: So under vampires you talk about psychic vampires, sanguinarian vampires,
Speaker 2: and lifestylers, and I have to say, you're really okay,
Speaker 2: so quickly, for people who haven't read the book, Psychic vampires, uh,
Speaker 2: drain you psychically, They drain your psychic energy. Sanguinarians are
Speaker 2: people who really real people who drink your blood voluntarily,
Speaker 2: like they want to drink your blood to get your permission.
Speaker 2: And lifestylers are people who want to look like vampires
Speaker 2: and call themselves vampires but don't really like gamers. Right, Okay,
Speaker 2: So but you you dismissed them as being goth inspired
Speaker 2: and not dangerous. But what if they get you in
Speaker 2: a corner and keep wanting to tell you about their
Speaker 2: favorite character. You don't have any defense for that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but that's not the dark art. That's that's annoying
Speaker 5: people that expertise.
Speaker 1: There's not blake. There's nothing we can do about that.
Speaker 1: She's she's protecting us from vamage.
Speaker 2: Okay, so it's useless and convince.
Speaker 1: It's some If it's some goth asshole, that's that's your
Speaker 1: own problem.
Speaker 5: Notice how I say, if you know, if a sanguinary
Speaker 5: and vampire comes after you with a knife, run away,
Speaker 5: call the cops. You do say that anyone else running
Speaker 5: after you with a knife.
Speaker 2: Right right, yeah, you absolutely run away, scream, call the cops.
Speaker 5: You do say that if a large predator is coming
Speaker 5: after you, you want a gun, not magic pixie dust. Yeah,
Speaker 5: it's just common sense.
Speaker 2: It is, you know.
Speaker 5: The magical stuff is for the stuff that you can't see,
Speaker 5: that isn't going to you know, rip your throat out.
Speaker 2: Well, you do say if they won't stop talking to you,
Speaker 2: use common sense and run away, get help or call
Speaker 2: the police if necessary. So there is that.
Speaker 5: Well, but journey I have to say stuff like that,
Speaker 5: call the cops.
Speaker 1: Well right, but all right, well, all right, let's say
Speaker 1: you do this. Okay, you believe you just encountered one
Speaker 1: of the various types of vampires, and and you go
Speaker 1: to your local police station, You call nine one one,
Speaker 1: You say, Hi, I'm I believe that I have just
Speaker 1: been attacked or tried to have been lasted by a
Speaker 1: particular sub subtype of vampire. What do you think the
Speaker 1: reaction is going to be?
Speaker 5: Well, I wouldn't put it that way. I would say,
Speaker 5: this dude came after me and tried to bite me.
Speaker 5: I think he's crazy. Can you have him committed? He's dangerous?
Speaker 5: You can say that to a cop.
Speaker 1: But but hold on here, But but isn't there an
Speaker 1: ethical issue? Because if that, in fact is a vampire,
Speaker 1: the cop that you send after maybe.
Speaker 5: No, no, no. If you read this, modern vampires, sanguinary
Speaker 5: psychic vampires and lifestylars are just people. They are just right.
Speaker 1: But but but yes, but what if? What if? What
Speaker 1: if you've mistaken? And actually is.
Speaker 5: If it's if it's like some ancient classic vampire like exactly,
Speaker 5: you know what I'm.
Speaker 2: Gonna I'm gonna come them's defense here that that's their
Speaker 2: job to protect and serve.
Speaker 1: Oh man, you know that is cold, dude. That is
Speaker 1: the risks.
Speaker 2: They knew the risks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they knew the risk that's what they get, you know,
Speaker 1: they get their blood sucked out, they get raped by Golam.
Speaker 1: And then you're like, oh, they knew the risk, they
Speaker 1: knew when they signed out rate by Golam.
Speaker 5: Really you're a really impressive Golm.
Speaker 1: Well I've seen the big one and never mind, Blake,
Speaker 1: give a question.
Speaker 2: Moving on. Okay, So, so the books divided in basically
Speaker 2: the two parts, and in the first half you're kind
Speaker 2: of describing all kinds of dark, malevolent creatures, and in
Speaker 2: the second half you go into a lot more detail
Speaker 2: about how to do the defensive part. So now I
Speaker 2: looked at your spells, and the majority of them start
Speaker 2: with where it's like in vision or imagine and thinking
Speaker 2: about these sort of ideas. But I didn't see as
Speaker 2: much of the Eye of New Feather of Eagle kind
Speaker 2: of my I was gonna say in RPG terms, there
Speaker 2: were lots of verbal components, but not many reagents required
Speaker 2: for these spells.
Speaker 5: No. Basically, tools like that and ingredients like that are
Speaker 5: generally props and they're all well and good and they
Speaker 5: can make things more powerful, but you don't need them.
Speaker 5: And my point with this book was the stuff that
Speaker 5: you know Joe Schmoe is freaked out in his house
Speaker 5: because it's making freaky sounds. Picks up. This book can
Speaker 5: do everything in it with what he's already got in
Speaker 5: his house. The idea that you have to go and
Speaker 5: get some crazy arcane ingredient that is gathered by virgins
Speaker 5: in the dark of the moon when it was boyd.
Speaker 5: Of course that's ridiculous.
Speaker 2: This is interesting because it posed an interesting intellectual question,
Speaker 2: all right, and which is this if the majority of
Speaker 2: your magic involves envisioning or imagining protections for yourself, but
Speaker 2: you're serious skeptic. When they are encountering these same sort
Speaker 2: of things, they think to themselves, what is that that is?
Speaker 2: That's not a ghost? That is the sound of my
Speaker 2: house creaking.
Speaker 5: Uh huh.
Speaker 2: Almost the same thing in a sense in that you're
Speaker 2: visualizing mentally what it is it. Yeah, well, yeah, you're
Speaker 2: nullifying the danger by giving it a rational explanation.
Speaker 5: Absolutely.
Speaker 2: So that's interesting. I don't really have anything to go
Speaker 2: there's no questions, just an interesting parallel in that.
Speaker 5: It's absolutely true my husband.
Speaker 2: Psychological right, So yeah, the.
Speaker 5: Biggest skeptic in the world. And it's almost like he eats.
Speaker 2: How big is he that weigh three hundred pounds? No, no, there, he's.
Speaker 5: A big guy, but like he's almost like magic comes
Speaker 5: near him and then just dies under the weight of
Speaker 5: his power of disbelief.
Speaker 4: So it's yeah, well all right, let me let me
Speaker 4: pick up on that, because I've written in research of
Speaker 4: fair amount on ghost and I was actually pleasantly surprised
Speaker 4: to see a somewhat skeptical bit of a chapter five
Speaker 4: there where you talk about the undead and you get
Speaker 4: some good advice on not.
Speaker 1: Jumping jumping to conclusions about what someone's experiencing is necessarily
Speaker 1: a ghost, evilentity. But that raises the question, well, in fact,
Speaker 1: I got it right here you're talking about one of
Speaker 1: the first things you should do is is you know,
Speaker 1: look at you have several different criteria here. There's misidentification
Speaker 1: of natural phenomena, hoaxes, hallucinations, psychosomatic constructs, energetic memories, time slips,
Speaker 1: diseased humans, and other metaphysical beings. From my experience in
Speaker 1: doing some of these investigations, typically I think this is
Speaker 1: actually a pretty good list. But typically what I find
Speaker 1: is that the vast majority, if not all, the the
Speaker 1: the phenomena fit under your first category, which is miss
Speaker 1: misidentification of natural phenomena. You know, and the examples you give.
Speaker 1: You know, just because you're hearing a creaking in your
Speaker 1: house doesn't mean the ghost, just because you're just because
Speaker 1: you misplaced your keys doesn't mean that you know poultrygeist
Speaker 1: is playing with you. But that that then reads the question, well,
Speaker 1: how do you know? I mean, given that so many
Speaker 1: of these these in fact this also you know in Europe,
Speaker 1: you have an appendix here that talks about some of
Speaker 1: the different symptoms. So given that so many of the
Speaker 1: symptoms are sort of banal ordinary, you know, feeling watched
Speaker 1: or feeling not your symptoms.
Speaker 5: Can be written off if you if you if you
Speaker 5: want to say, okay, there's no way this you know, X,
Speaker 5: y Z explanation is completely impossible, so I know that's
Speaker 5: not an option. Therefore this must be misidentification. Any skeptic
Speaker 5: can take that view, and there's nothing anyone can say
Speaker 5: that will change that. If you think that it is impossible,
Speaker 5: that it's a metaphysical explanation, then you are never going
Speaker 5: to go that route. If you're someone like me, when
Speaker 5: I go into a location that someone has said is haunted,
Speaker 5: you know, I people know that I'm good at this stuff,
Speaker 5: so I get all kinds of weird phone calls. If
Speaker 5: I walk into a location, I can generally tell within
Speaker 5: minutes if there's actually something going on, because to me,
Speaker 5: it feels different. But I've experienced this stuff continually my
Speaker 5: entire life and have been able to kind of hone
Speaker 5: what that feeling feels like. And if you haven't ever
Speaker 5: felt it before, you have no frame of reference.
Speaker 1: So right, But for example, I mean I and just
Speaker 1: just to clarify, I mean, I would never assume that
Speaker 1: there is not a ghost in a haunted location or
Speaker 1: reputed to hunt location. I'm just trying to figure out
Speaker 1: what's going on. And if the answer is there's a ghost,
Speaker 1: then that's great. I don't you know, it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: me either way. But I guess the guess I guess
Speaker 1: what I'm trying to get is where is the line
Speaker 1: between saying I've looked at enough mundane phenomena and I
Speaker 1: can't explain it, therefore it must be X. Where do
Speaker 1: you draw that line? Because oftentimes people people just you know,
Speaker 1: they'll give up right away like, well, I don't know,
Speaker 1: must be a ghost. Well no, just because you don't
Speaker 1: know what it is, does not mean it's a ghost.
Speaker 1: That's a fallacy.
Speaker 5: I don't think you can really draw any kind of
Speaker 5: hard and fast line universally because it's so dependent on
Speaker 5: the situation. You know, if one person tells me, I
Speaker 5: think my house is haunted because of X y Z,
Speaker 5: and another person tells me, I think math is using
Speaker 5: the same X y Z. Depending on the people, I
Speaker 5: may or may not believe them. You know.
Speaker 2: Well, there's that too, and then there's also the the
Speaker 2: like I see a lot of paranoal investigations where the
Speaker 2: angle is they're going to try to help, and they
Speaker 2: go in and they try to gut do imagery to
Speaker 2: guide a ghost home. You know, guy goes to the light,
Speaker 2: and then somebody else might come to the same site
Speaker 2: and say, no, no, no, it's not a ghost. It's a demon.
Speaker 2: You need to do a cleansing ritual and a prayer.
Speaker 2: And it's like, well, okay, well what's really going on?
Speaker 2: And the skeptic comes in and says, okay, well, what
Speaker 2: exactly the lights are flickering, you know, or whatever. We
Speaker 2: try to look at each individual aspect of it, but
Speaker 2: but it is, it's a it's a tricky problem for
Speaker 2: everybody who's interested in the paranormal of how do you
Speaker 2: draw lines and clearly delineate what the appropriate response is.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's it's kind of I look at it kind
Speaker 5: of like the psychiatric diagnostics where it's like, if you
Speaker 5: have five of the fifteen symptoms, you should see a
Speaker 5: healthcare professional kind of thing. Or if it's if it's
Speaker 5: you know, things are moving out of the corner of
Speaker 5: your eye, you're seeing sparklys and you have high tension
Speaker 5: power lines running over your house. That's one scenario. If
Speaker 5: you watched a book rise up and float across the room,
Speaker 5: or your child is saying that they're talking to a
Speaker 5: little boy in the corner. That's different for me. You know,
Speaker 5: I'm kind of paranoid, and I liked the air on
Speaker 5: the side of being overcautious. So if something looks like
Speaker 5: it's possibly you know, one, two, or three, I will
Speaker 5: do whatever is necessary to get rid of the strongest
Speaker 5: one of those things. Because whatever we'll get rid of
Speaker 5: the stronger one, we'll get rid of the weaker ones.
Speaker 2: So you try the shotgun approach.
Speaker 5: Or I tend to go with the nuke and page
Speaker 5: most of the time, I air on the side of overkill.
Speaker 5: I've gotten a lot better in the last few years
Speaker 5: than I was when I was younger and terrified of everything.
Speaker 2: So how does it is living with a skeptic problematic
Speaker 2: or you'll just leave that part of things out, or.
Speaker 5: We'll be been together for a really long time. So
Speaker 5: he's kind of used to it. He tries not to
Speaker 5: make on of me too much. Well, I try not
Speaker 5: to poison.
Speaker 1: That sounds fair. Yes, you've come to a good a
Speaker 1: good arrangement there, especially considering that you remember the bar.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I was gonna say the in uh
Speaker 2: you know, and where it's monster talk, not marriage talk.
Speaker 2: But I tell my wife, like, you know, we live together.
Speaker 2: You know, sniping at each other is not a good
Speaker 2: idea because the targets are always here.
Speaker 5: You know. I'm also a trained mediator, so I'm pretty
Speaker 5: good at liaising things.
Speaker 1: Well, because when I've talked to to you know, ghost
Speaker 1: hunters typically people who are somewhat less skeptical than I am,
Speaker 1: And I've run into psychicmediums or whatever else, and they
Speaker 1: they they they believe they're communicating with ghosts, and I can't.
Speaker 1: I of course can't prove or disprove that because they're
Speaker 1: saying I'm sensing something and it's telling me something, well, I.
Speaker 5: Call it unverified personal nosis exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: But I had an interesting discussion with when an invest
Speaker 1: to get up in Ontario a while back, and I
Speaker 1: suggested to him that there needed to be more scientic
Speaker 1: methodologies introduced into ghost hunting. And one of the ways
Speaker 1: that I thought we might do this would be to
Speaker 1: have people who claim to be able to communicate with
Speaker 1: ghosts and meetings whatnot, have them do set up some
Speaker 1: double blind tests and have them go to different locations,
Speaker 1: some of which are reputed to contain ghosts and some
Speaker 1: of which are not, and just have you know, have
Speaker 1: a set of you don't know, eight, ten, twelve different mediums,
Speaker 1: whatever it would be statistically significant, and just go in
Speaker 1: there and say, you know, are you picking up anything here?
Speaker 1: And if one of them says, yes, oh my god,
Speaker 1: there was a six year old girl that was murdered
Speaker 1: here twenty years ago and her spirit is hunting the hallway,
Speaker 1: another person says nothing at all. Another person says, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm only getting an old man who died, you know,
Speaker 1: in a car accident. I mean, you put, that's one
Speaker 1: way to go about it. I don't know that anyone's
Speaker 1: really done that, and I'm not sure why that is.
Speaker 1: Do you think that would be viable uh effort?
Speaker 5: You know? Okay, now here, I have a personal prejudice
Speaker 5: against mediums. I don't think getting a group of mediums
Speaker 5: to go through a house would tell you anything about
Speaker 5: the house. It would tell you a lot about the mediums.
Speaker 1: I would agree.
Speaker 5: And I also believe that different people have access to
Speaker 5: different energy frequencies. So one person might only get stuff
Speaker 5: from the faint past, some people might get stuff from
Speaker 5: the presence. Some people might be any weird ship from
Speaker 5: the future. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Well, no, fair enough. But if they're getting if they're
Speaker 1: getting verifiable information, I mean either either there was a
Speaker 1: six year old that died in that house or there
Speaker 1: was not, And if there was not, is wrong medium?
Speaker 1: Well yeah, and that's and that would be the whole
Speaker 1: point would be Yeah, I mean, you're exactly right, it's
Speaker 1: not gonna tell anything about the house. But if the
Speaker 1: question is, can can dis bird mediums come up with
Speaker 1: the same verifiable information? I mean, so far in my
Speaker 1: research the answer is almost certainly no. But although I'm open,
Speaker 1: I'm open minded to it. I mean, if they can
Speaker 1: do it, then let's test it. But that's I think.
Speaker 1: I think you're exactly right. They wouldn't tell anything about
Speaker 1: the house. It would definitely tell you whether any of
Speaker 1: these people are coming up with with legitimate, verifiable information
Speaker 1: at a rate higher than you would expect.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Well, the other thing with mediums is the other
Speaker 5: reason I'm not a huge fan of mediums is that
Speaker 5: I don't necessarily think all mediums are picking up on
Speaker 5: what's there. I think some of them are calling things
Speaker 5: that might show up while they're there and then go away. Again.
Speaker 5: I have no way of proving this pet theory, but okay,
Speaker 5: because I don't, I have never met a medium that
Speaker 5: impressed me.
Speaker 2: B yog. Yeah, if I could.
Speaker 5: I summon forth a ghost? Yeah? Yeah, I could. Would
Speaker 5: I know it's completely unethical and stupid, but.
Speaker 1: I guess the question is could you could you summon
Speaker 1: a ghost that that would make its presence known to skeptics?
Speaker 5: Probably not?
Speaker 1: And but why why would that be? Would that be
Speaker 1: because the ghost would refuse or what? Why why would
Speaker 1: that be?
Speaker 5: One? If I was a person and I got some
Speaker 5: in someplace I didn't want to go. I would not
Speaker 5: perform like a trained bear. So there's that aspect. And
Speaker 5: you know, when I experienced a ghost, it is the
Speaker 5: most incredibly faint back of your brain, shadowy weirdness that
Speaker 5: I can possibly express. It is not a concrete thing.
Speaker 5: I have had experiences where I looked in a corner,
Speaker 5: saw something and it had two people next to me
Speaker 5: immediately turn and look at it, and each one describe
Speaker 5: half of what I just saw. I have had that
Speaker 5: experience and it freaked me out. So yes, there are
Speaker 5: some ghosts that can come solid enough to make themselves known.
Speaker 5: Is it repeatable in any kind of scientifically proven way?
Speaker 5: Certainly not in my experience. And I completely accept the
Speaker 5: fact that most of the things that I believe were
Speaker 5: things that I could never prove to anybody else. And
Speaker 5: I'm okay with that.
Speaker 2: Well, does that pose a problem to you coming from
Speaker 2: a legal background, if you had to like prove these
Speaker 2: things in court? And do you think of things that
Speaker 2: if you don't think of it in terms of skeptic
Speaker 2: believer type, do you think of it in terms of
Speaker 2: legal burdener proof kind of ways?
Speaker 5: You know, I have a whole thing about you can't
Speaker 5: do banishings unless you have standing in a court of
Speaker 5: law kind of thing. The legal brain does come in
Speaker 5: on occasion for this kind of thing. It's really more
Speaker 5: that I'm very scientific. I mean, I did a lot
Speaker 5: of computer programming. I've always been a big geek. MythBusters
Speaker 5: is my favorite TV show kind of thing where the
Speaker 5: fact that there is no tendently verifiable, repeatable way of
Speaker 5: testing this stuff that I've ever seen used reliably means
Speaker 5: that we don't have the technology to do it yet.
Speaker 5: Because I know in my experience that certain things exist.
Speaker 5: Can I prove it? No? Do I think someday we
Speaker 5: may have the ability technologically to verify I think sure.
Speaker 5: But I could say the same thing about the Lawless
Speaker 5: Monster and UFOs and you know Paris Hilton's soul.
Speaker 1: So yeah, but no, well no, but you know, but
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know about Paris Hilton. But there's
Speaker 1: no There's another element here, which is that is that
Speaker 1: you know, as you know, there are already people who
Speaker 1: claim and I've met many of them, and I'm sure
Speaker 1: you have as well. They are already ghost hunters and
Speaker 1: ghosts investigators who claim that they are the equipment they're using,
Speaker 1: whether it's cameras, infrared, take a pick, that they are
Speaker 1: already detecting ghosts and they are detecting spirits. So see,
Speaker 1: you can't really have it both ways. On one hand
Speaker 1: saying well, the reason we don't have a good evidence
Speaker 1: for these things that we haven't evolved the technology yet.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, you have all these people
Speaker 1: who are who are pointing to orbs and and you know,
Speaker 1: cold spots and this and that and saying or emf
Speaker 1: variations and saying that this is a ghost.
Speaker 2: So actually say, as Emily made a she stayed a
Speaker 2: position on the use of equipment, I didn't hear you.
Speaker 1: I was I wasn't asking her to defend it. I'm
Speaker 1: just I'm just pointing out that that we have this,
Speaker 1: you know, on Yeah, they kind of want to have
Speaker 1: it both ways.
Speaker 5: Yeah, No, that's absolutely true. I have never used ghost
Speaker 5: hunting equipment, so I don't have a real hands on
Speaker 5: kind of a pinion on it. I would have to
Speaker 5: see more than what I have seen on television to
Speaker 5: really have a lot of faith in it. You know,
Speaker 5: if you see an object moving and there's nobody there,
Speaker 5: you've captured something is that necessarily a ghost? Not necessarily,
Speaker 5: but you've.
Speaker 1: Keptured probably depending on what it.
Speaker 5: Is, you know, it all depends, you know, And with
Speaker 5: the kinds of you know, post production editing techniques that
Speaker 5: are available today. Unless I was there and could see
Speaker 5: the entire post production process, I don't know that I
Speaker 5: would believe it even if I was seeing it. You know.
Speaker 5: That's the problem with man made tools is we are
Speaker 5: interpreting the data and you can't have a double blind
Speaker 5: with a ghost hunter. You know, when you watch like
Speaker 5: some of these shows, some of them are relatively rigorous about,
Speaker 5: you know, saying, oh, look that fluorescent light bulb is
Speaker 5: giving off an EMF field of fifty or whatever, and
Speaker 5: the other one's going, oh my god, there was a noise.
Speaker 5: It must be a demon. So I have yet to
Speaker 5: meet people that use them that I've known enough to
Speaker 5: have respect for to say yes or no. Is it possible? Sure?
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Well, let me ask you this, the of all the
Speaker 1: of the creatures that you talk about, the spirits and
Speaker 1: the vampires and all these different things and including ghosts,
Speaker 1: is it your opinion that they want themselves to be
Speaker 1: known or they don't want themselves to be known.
Speaker 5: I think it depends on what works best to their advantage.
Speaker 5: Some of them really like scaring people, and so if
Speaker 5: they can just be up just enough that you know
Speaker 5: something's wrong but you don't know what, that might be
Speaker 5: better for them than for them for you to know
Speaker 5: exactly what's going on. Certain other ones might be you know,
Speaker 5: a ghost with physics visions that needs you to, you know,
Speaker 5: dig a box out of the wall. They want you
Speaker 5: to know that they're there and to do what they
Speaker 5: need you to do. It really really depends and.
Speaker 1: Well, because it seems to me that that you know,
Speaker 1: if if a if you know, if collectively the spirits
Speaker 1: or these entities or even one particular one, one particular
Speaker 1: ghost really really wanted to prove its its its existence
Speaker 1: and wanted to I mean, there are ways that this
Speaker 1: could be done. I mean, I I there's just so much,
Speaker 1: particularly when you're talking about ghosts, there's so much very nominal,
Speaker 1: ambiguous stuff and that and that, you know, if I mean,
Speaker 1: I was doing a ghost out one time and I
Speaker 1: was talking to a guy there and he's like, well,
Speaker 1: you know what will convince you that there there's ghosts here?
Speaker 1: And I said, well, there's a Grandfather clock over there.
Speaker 1: If that, you know, did some tumbling in the air
Speaker 1: and right in front of me and there's no one
Speaker 1: near it, I would say that's pretty good evidence. And
Speaker 1: so I don't think it's that skeptics. So so I
Speaker 1: guess part part of my question is is that, you know,
Speaker 1: it just seems curious that that all the ghosts so
Speaker 1: far U at least the ones that I'm aware of,
Speaker 1: they they they just give little tidbits, little hints. They
Speaker 1: don't they don't. They either don't exist, or they they
Speaker 1: don't or they they're they're teasing for some unknown reason.
Speaker 1: Because if he seems to me, if they really wanted
Speaker 1: to clearly make themselves known, same thing with Bigfoot or
Speaker 1: UFOs or extra tractics, if they if they're like, I
Speaker 1: want humanity to know that we exist, then they could
Speaker 1: have done that. By now.
Speaker 5: I think that's probably true for ghosts. You know, I
Speaker 5: don't know that they necessarily have the amount of energy
Speaker 5: necessary to do that kind of thing. You know, on
Speaker 5: Q is it has some ghosts throughout history had that ability. Sure,
Speaker 5: probably I would imagine, you know, are some of these
Speaker 5: creatures capable of doing that? Yeah, is it in their
Speaker 5: you know, best interest to do so? Not necessarily.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, but at that point, you're reading the mind
Speaker 1: of a ghost, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Well is exactly what you're asking me to do.
Speaker 2: Though. I was to say, you're kind of saying that though,
Speaker 2: I mean, you're we're kind of describing human intent on
Speaker 2: something that we can't even prove.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, but that happens all the time where someone says, well,
Speaker 1: the reason, you know, the reason this this ghost appeared
Speaker 1: to me was, I mean, people ascribe reason human reasons
Speaker 1: to ghosts all the time.
Speaker 2: That sure they do.
Speaker 1: It's warnings.
Speaker 5: I'm supposed to be dead people. Therefore they are human
Speaker 5: and think humanly.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 5: I can't describe the same kind of motivations to you know,
Speaker 5: a gin or a lenin she that you would to
Speaker 5: a ghost.
Speaker 1: Well, there's also never were, But there's also non human ghosts.
Speaker 5: There's a lot of non human metaphysical entities like.
Speaker 2: Dog ghosts or horse.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's there's stage ghosts, there's train ghosts, and those.
Speaker 2: Residuals which are broken down here. Yeah. Interesting anyway, Okay,
Speaker 2: so clearly you know we're skeptics, obviously, you know that's
Speaker 2: cool and and I want to say, I really appreciate
Speaker 2: you coming on and talking to us, because I think
Speaker 2: I would say, I'm guessing our audience is probably ninety
Speaker 2: percent skeptical people. And then you know passers by who
Speaker 2: get interested in a particular topic. You know, as each
Speaker 2: episode is on a particular monster type. So here we're
Speaker 2: doing a why a range of monsters, and your book
Speaker 2: covers all kinds of monsters. And again, although I'm a
Speaker 2: skeptic and don't necessarily believe the contents of your book,
Speaker 2: I did find it very fun reading it, so I'm
Speaker 2: excited to have it as part of my library.
Speaker 1: And Blake, let me just say that that just you know,
Speaker 1: whether you believe what you wrote or not, if you
Speaker 1: encounter these things.
Speaker 5: I will say, you will be testing exactly what to do.
Speaker 2: And I can tell you one more thing this you
Speaker 2: may even if you may find interesting.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 2: While I don't know if any of your spells work
Speaker 2: or not, I can guarantee you that when you talked
Speaker 2: about quantum energy earlier, you made half my audience's head explode.
Speaker 5: We have several classes on quantum physics at the grade
Speaker 5: school in our magical.
Speaker 2: Science there with the other half of my audience. So
Speaker 2: it's like for them when they hear someone who's on
Speaker 2: the new age side of things talk about quantum energy,
Speaker 2: it's like an it guy hearing his grandma asking about
Speaker 2: Linux device drivers.
Speaker 5: It's I think I came on the show. We're not
Speaker 5: all crazy people with tinfoil hats. I swear some of
Speaker 5: us are totally normal weirdos.
Speaker 1: All right, there you go, and you fit right in.
Speaker 2: All right. So here's my question for you that we
Speaker 2: always like to ask our guests. What's your favorite monster? Hmm?
Speaker 2: It could be any kind of depends on the day.
Speaker 2: That's why.
Speaker 5: At the moment, I think the Wild Hunt is my favorite. Okay, okay,
Speaker 5: just so unfathomable. I love it now.
Speaker 2: No, I don't want to like Okay, I don't want
Speaker 2: to be wrong. I hate being wrong on my own show.
Speaker 2: But that's isn't that like a spectral event that happens
Speaker 2: sometimes we're Yeah, okay.
Speaker 5: It's a big horde of special writers that you know,
Speaker 5: depending on which country and folklore you're looking at, are
Speaker 5: either going to come down to you know, sweep up
Speaker 5: the souls of the bad deep, or just to run
Speaker 5: down whomever happens to be on their road at night.
Speaker 2: The classes don't be caught on the moors at night
Speaker 2: kind of things, right, So.
Speaker 5: Exactly like I think in like Sweden, there are certain
Speaker 5: roads that are old and completely defunct that they refuse
Speaker 5: to kind of like re root because it's the root
Speaker 5: of the wild hunt nice, cool, good as I just
Speaker 5: think it's the most fascinating experience. And because in America
Speaker 5: we have the ghostwriter phenomenon, it's really cool.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I've always wanted to see Will of the Whisp too,
Speaker 2: which just speaking of swamp I.
Speaker 5: Have seen those. It's weird. It's really weird, particularly when
Speaker 5: you're not anywhere near swamp gas.
Speaker 2: Would you, I was gonna say, would you classify that
Speaker 2: as a supernatural event or a natural event? When you
Speaker 2: saw it? What did it look like? Something that was
Speaker 2: mundane or are you know?
Speaker 5: I have seen some weird, weird stuff in my time.
Speaker 5: I have to have Internet action of it did not
Speaker 5: seem natural to me.
Speaker 2: Okay, the way it moved.
Speaker 5: It moved at like weird spastic right angles with reading speeds,
Speaker 5: which to me does not seem natural. Could be sure,
Speaker 5: but it didn't seem that way to me.
Speaker 2: I love swamp fishing, and I spent a lot of
Speaker 2: time in the summertime at night, you know, out at
Speaker 2: the swamps fishing, wishing so badly that I would see
Speaker 2: something like that and there were sausages, and so that's
Speaker 2: my bad luck, all right. So what do you have
Speaker 2: anything else upcoming in the future, new books or other
Speaker 2: projects you're working on.
Speaker 5: I'm writing my second book, which will be even more
Speaker 5: credulous than the first or.
Speaker 1: Now man book now.
Speaker 5: Now, the my second book that I'm writing is kind
Speaker 5: of for people, kind of that other people will already
Speaker 5: go to when there are problems, kind of an advanced book,
Speaker 5: so pretty much I teach it.
Speaker 2: I was gonna say, if my listeners want to get
Speaker 2: to the Gray School and take one of your magical
Speaker 2: defense classes, where would they go.
Speaker 5: It's www dot Gray School dot com. And you can
Speaker 5: go to my website, which is, you know, www dot
Speaker 5: e diet Dashcarlin dot com. You can email me Emily
Speaker 5: at Dashcarlin dot com. And uh, I'm happy to talk
Speaker 5: to skeptical people. I have no problem talking to people
Speaker 5: that actually think they make me happy as opposed to
Speaker 5: the opposite.
Speaker 1: That's why you wanted to have you on, because I
Speaker 1: could tell just from from the book. I'm like, you
Speaker 1: know what, I think she'd be fun to talk to,
Speaker 1: and I was right.
Speaker 2: So there, this was very entertaining and I really appreciate
Speaker 2: you coming on. I always worry that I don't want
Speaker 2: to get a bad reputation with people who believe in
Speaker 2: the paranormal. Uh you know, if you know, I don't
Speaker 2: see enough proof, but I've had lots of interesting experiences
Speaker 2: and I just I'm it's really nice. So thank you
Speaker 2: very much for stating some time with us.
Speaker 1: It was good, fun, cool, awesome, good luck with the book.
Speaker 2: Thanks Morebstertle. Thanks for listening to this episode of Monster Talk.
Speaker 2: You heard Blake Smith, My Ealth and Ben Radford interview
Speaker 2: author Lawyer and which Emily Carlin about her book Defense
Speaker 2: against the Dark. A link to Emily's website and her
Speaker 2: book will be in the show notes at monster talk
Speaker 2: dot org orskeptic dot com. I want to thank everyone
Speaker 2: for their continued support of our transcript project. We have
Speaker 2: several episodes up now and these transcripts help us in
Speaker 2: several ways, including helping people find the information from our
Speaker 2: show using search engines, making the episodes more easily referenceable.
Speaker 2: On Wikipedia and for use in a future video project,
Speaker 2: which I'm going to be doing. If eleven people donate
Speaker 2: five dollars, it pays for a transcript, which is fantastic
Speaker 2: and I really appreciate all the people who've helped with this.
Speaker 2: If you can't afford such a donation and you still
Speaker 2: want to help us tell other people about our show,
Speaker 2: we'd love to have new listeners or give us a
Speaker 2: positive review on iTunes and help strangers find us. And
Speaker 2: thanks again to everyone who contributed to the munster Talk
Speaker 2: t shirt contest. We had some fantastic interries and we're
Speaker 2: just judging them now. The finalists will be posted on
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Speaker 2: own votes and comments, which will be a factor in
Speaker 2: the final selection. More on that later. Monster Talk is
Speaker 2: an official podcast of Skeptic Magazine, and the content of
Speaker 2: the show does not necessarily reflect the views of the
Speaker 2: Skeptic Society or of Skeptic Magazine. Monster Talk's theme music
Speaker 2: is by Pete Stealing Monkeys, and really thank you very
Speaker 2: very much for listening.
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Speaker 1: All right, how's my audio testing?
Speaker 5: Now?
Speaker 1: It's good now check check check check check check check, check.
Speaker 2: Off, check off, cough check off.
Speaker 1: Oh, good time.