Allison from Milwaukee Ghosts joined Wendy and I to explore what is reputed to be one of Wisconsin’s most haunted buildings. She put on a presentation about Dairy State weirdness at the beginning of the night and it was fantastic because there were a bunch of stories that I never heard before and she gave us a preview of some of the cool stuff she’ll be doing at this year’s Milwaukee Paranormal Conference.
Here’s Allison presentin’!
Once Allison finished her presentation, we took some time to interview owner B.C. Farr about the place and its history. Built in 1864, the saloon has had several owners over the decades as it shifted from a boarding house to speakeasy to brothel and then just a nice Wisconsin tavern.
B.C. had been a regular there since the 80s and was on a path to become a professional NASCAR race car driver. But the entrepreneurial spirit got the best of him and after a strange fire gutted the place, he got the opportunity to own it for himself. And it only took a short time before he started seeing his tools disappear randomly and shapes out of the corner of his eye. And that was just the beginning…
B.C. Farr from the Old Baraboo Inn – Photo courtesy of Baraboo News Republic
Since it was a live interview, it was even more fun because there were people at the bar who had seen things with B.C. over the years and he calls out a friend who had sat with him at the tavern one night and listened as the jukebox turned off and they could hear old honky tonk piano music wafting through the room for 30-45 seconds before the jukebox kicked back on. Another patron talked about the ghost of a cowboy they both saw one night. And according to this Wisconsin State Journal article, there’s plenty more ghosts there, including a few of the ladies of the night that used to work upstairs in the establishment. Whatever specials they’re offering, the ghosts are taking it, because it seems they’re just as popular with the dead as with the living!
Oh God, they knew that we were coming!
Once we finished interviewing B.C. we talked with Melanie Carroll, who was dressed up like a spirit named Cybil, who’s been seen wandering the tavern in a fancy white dress. Melanie has a team called Date With The Paranormal in the area and has been investigating the Old Baraboo Inn since she moved into the area.
Her team uses what’s called an SLS Camera, which stands for Structured Light Sensor. Its use in ghost hunting has been made popular by Zak Bagans and Ghost Adventures. The camera captures an interesting variety of electromagnetic fields and seems to be able to detect movement that we cannot with our naked eye. In addition to doing photos earlier in the evening as “Cybil”, Mel was gracious enough to take us on a mini-ghost hunt up in the apartment upstairs where the old brothel used to be! My internet cut out after a few minutes, but I was able to capture a little bit of it in our See You On The Other Side Facebook live stream…
Okay, now here’s something weird. For this episode we originally recorded a tribute to Prince, who died this week at his estate and recording complex in Minnesota. So, Wendy and I worked up an acoustic version of “Delirious” and we played it for the crowd right after the podcast.
Who knows, but since we were having a great time at the Old Baraboo Inn, with a few glasses of wine, we decided to make this week’s song, “In Vino Veritas”, about the simple pleasures of having a couple of drinks!
In vino.
In vino.
The drunken man’s words
are the sober thoughts,
little bit of truth
serum in the sauce.
Another round, you’re on a roll,
tell me the secrets of your soul,
Confess your sins, and let go,
I love you more when you lose control.
So you can call me when you’re messed out of your mind,
Now that’s something I can get behind,
You finally say the words you’ve always wanted to,
when you bid sobriety adieu
There’s nothing to tell but the truth.
The words flow fast,
with a wedge of lime,
and moderation’s
just another waste of time.
Another round, you’re on a roll,
tell me the secrets of your soul,
Confess your sins, and let go,
I love you more when you lose control.
So you can call me when you’re messed out of your mind,
Now that’s something I can get behind,
You finally say the words you’ve always wanted to,
You’re so much more fun when you’re crunk,
because you don’t lie to me when you’re drunk.
You’re much more interesting on your third glass of wine,
your honest flavors always come out on the vine,
It’s your boss and his secretary or your friend that popped her cherry,
the truth is you ain’t no girl scout,
when the skeletons come out.
The skeletons come out.
The skeletons come out.
Another round, you’re on a roll,
tell me the secrets of your soul,
Confess your sins, and let go,
I love you more when you lose control.
So you can call me when you’re messed out of your mind,
Now that’s something I can get behind,
You finally say the words you’ve always wanted to,
when you bid sobriety adieu.
And you can call me when you’re messed out of your mind,
Now that’s something I can get behind,
You finally say the words you’ve always wanted to,
You’re so much more fun when you’re sauced,
In vino veritas.
So, with Wendy on vacation this week, Allison from Milwaukee Ghosts Tours And Investigations joins me again to discuss the upcoming economic technocalypse, that’s right technological unemployment. Allison was just with me last week for our first Wizard World Comic Con in Madison, Wisconsin where we were on a panel called Wisconsin Paranormal. It was hosted by our friend, Tea Krulos, and also on the panel was J. Nathan Couch, the world’s foremost Goatman expert, and a former guest on See You On The Other Side as well. It was a lot of fun and we can’t wait to get to another one.
Notes for the Madison convention, man, there was a lot of Doctor Who cosplayers, especially Osgoods – (and the character is kind of a Doctor Who cosplayer herself, so that whole thing was particularly meta), but whoever were dressed as the Predator and Ms. Predator (for real, it was like Ms. Pac Man but way more terrifying) were the real winners. Those costumes looked like it walked off a 20th Century Fox backlot and I was looking around to see if Ahnuld was anywhere to be seen.
This last week, actor Gareth Thomas passed away and we do a quick tribute to him. Blake’s 7 is still some of my favorite dystopian science fiction. Thomas played the lead character, Roj Blake, in a desperate fight against a tyrannical Galactic Federation. It was the anti-Star Trek, but it certainly was a fun and thoughtful show. And those outfits! I love you 1970s.
Also, I’m currently working on a haunted history tour of St. Paul, Minnesota and if you have any stories that you might have experienced or have friends that might have experienced, please send me an email at mikeATsunspomtusicDOTcom because I’m looking for more stories to complete the tour!
Okay onto this week’s main topic. It’s an election year and so people are talking about the issues that matter to them most. And what’s the most important issue to almost everyone? Well, as that famous cueball James Carville once said, “It’s the economy, stupid.”
And the economy is all about jobs. That’s where we earn money, that’s where we spend our time. When you have a job, you hate it (usually, I know I have in the past) but when you don’t have a job, you hate it even more (once again, I know I have in the past.) The most common cry is that American jobs are being stolen by immigrants who will work for less money or outsourced to Asia where people will work for a lot less money.
But whatever side you stand on for free trade and immigration, there is one class of worker who is coming for our jobs. I think that Kyle Reese describes them best:
Listen, and understand. That terminator is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.
Yeah, so even if you’re in a cubicle job that feels pretty cushy (even though we know it’s a trap and one day we will help you rise up against your middle management oppressors), there’s still greater than a one in four chance that a robot will soon be able to do your job.
Technological Unemployment is a hot topic now, but it’s been and issue for centuries, since at least the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. New technology means that needs for work change (how many blacksmiths or even better, pewtersmiths do you know? It ain’t Johnny Tremain anymore.)
In the Early Nineteenth Century, English textile workers were getting replaced by weaving machines in factories, so they started destroying the machines. Fastest way to save your job? Eliminate the competition (watch The Wire if you want to see this in action in the modern day.) The workers started protesting and acting out more and more, and they became known as Luddites, supposedly named after a guy named Ned Ludd who was one of the first to destroy some of the new technology. And if there ever was a more 18th Century English Workingman’s Name than Ned Ludd, please send it to me.
This became such an issue that the British government made destroying a machine a capital crime, meaning you could be put to death for it. Interestingly enough, Lord Byron was one of the few defenders of the Luddites in the government. Leave it to the Romantics to defend an older way of life (I’m looking at you too, Tolkien!)
The first I ever heard of the Luddites was from a Doctor Who story called “The Mark Of The Rani” where an evil Time Lady is conducting experiments on them. Is it one of their greatest stories? No. But it does have a full-grown Tyrannosaurus Rex running around a TARDIS, so it’s got that going for it.
So, the fear of technology taking people’s jobs is an old one. And with technology increasing at a more rapid pace than ever (in just thirty years, we’ve gone from a basic mobile phone to the entire sum of human knowledge in your pocket… and Netflix too!), we need to start taking seriously that even jobs that require artistic skills are going to be in danger of automation. Yeah. Once robots watch 20,000 hours of science fiction TV and movies and can starting talking about it and writing songs, I’m out of a job too.
So what’s going to happen to us once we reach a certain level of technological unemployment?Well, according to this Slate interview with Andrew McAfee, there are three scenarios that might happen.
1. It’s all going to work out in the end. Just like the Industrial Revolution in England led to a middle class and better lifestyle for factory workers, new technology will mean new kinds of work. After all, by the time we didn’t need blacksmiths to shoe horses, we needed mechanics to fix cars. We’re going to reach an equilibrium and it’s all going to be just fine. Think Total Recall, sure there are driverless cabs, but we still need people to drive the huge drills that tunnel around Mars. (Screw you, Benny!)
2. Income inequality will increase and the workers who are left behind won’t be able to retrain. Social mobility gets cut short because society cleaves into a feudal system of lord and peasant. Look to Elysium for an excellent example of this, if you think gated communities are bad for society, wait until they leave Earth for space.
3. Paradise. Robots do the manual labor that we hate Star Trek of course is an excellent example of this in a moneyless future where people are free to “better ourselves and the rest of humanity”. But H.G. Wells also talks about this in The Time Machine where the Eloi live an idyllic life of no work and pleasure all day, but the monstrous Morlock workers who live underground come up to the surface and collect the Eloi for feeding every once in awhile.
So, #1 sounds like the same old, same old. #2 sounds like a nightmare (and you know that’s how the future will be for some unfortunate people.) But #3 sounds like where I want to get to. Who doesn’t want more time to spend with their children? More time to work out? More time to pursue the things that give their life meaning?
Well, how do we make that happen?
The idea that a libertarian economist had 50 years ago. He called it the negative income tax, but it’s more commonly known as a Universal Basic Income. Everyone gets a check every year so that they’re at least above the poverty level. Sounds like socialism, right? Well, kinda. But if the idea could be supported by a economist as frequently cited by conservatives as Friedrich Hayek then there might be something that both sides of the political aisle can agree on. After all, if we’re guaranteed to be able to feed, clothe, and shelter ourselves and our families and we can work to make more money for vacations and cool stuff, then companies will require a lot less regulation and hopefully crime will go down.
Plus, wouldn’t it be great to work on something that brings you meaning versus something you just need to “get through” every day? I’m with ya 100% and Allison and I certainly express that in the podcast. She mentions how J.K. Rowling was at rock bottom when she wrote the Harry Potter novels and went from being a single mother on the dole to one of the richest women on the planet. I don’t love Harry Potter as much as others do (I prefer Battle School from Ender’s Game to Hogwart’s), but she needed that time to be able to create and do something meaningful with her life rather than work at something she felt was a dead end. J.K. Rowling created billions of dollars of wealth and she did it on government assistance.
People have tons of economic disagreements about the current welfare state, of course, I have no doubt that the current system is flawed. But with all of our technology and all of our wealth in the world, everyone should have the chance to express themselves and create like J.K. Rowling did. Some will be better than others, but how many brilliant works are we being denied because that would-be author has to work three jobs to make ends meet? I say, just let the robots do it, already.
So, technological unemployment might sound scary, it might be a blessing in disguise. We talked before about Robert Brautigan’s hippie-fantasy poem, All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace, where humanity gets to return to its natural roots while robots take care of the needs and wants, and ya know, it doesn’t sound that bad.
This week’s song is the Sunspot track, “Uncanny Valley”. It’s a headbanger wanting the opposite of Pinocchio, instead of the puppet wanting to be a real boy, the real boy wants to be a puppet.
All circuits go and power on,
Reconstructed from the pieces that were left into,
a convincing automaton,
a believable facsimile, a six million dollar masterpiece.
oooooh I’m so close,
you might not believe I’m a machine inside the ghost.
Machine,
Machine,
Forged from the wreckage of spare parts,
This tin man doesn’t want a heart.
Machine.
Refurbished scrap without a soul,
unconstricted by the defect of attachment.
Programmed for perfect control,
To smile is upgrade, this kiss is manmade.
oooooh I’m so close,
you might not believe I’m a machine inside the ghost.
Machine,
Machine,
Forged from the wreckage of spare parts,
This tin man doesn’t want a heart.
Machine.
In my nightmares, I’m still human,
I don’t dream electric sheep,
In my nightmares, I’m still human,
this cyber core only skin-deep,
I welcome emptiness,
I will seek the void,
the uncanny valley,
separates the men from the droids.
oooooh I’m so close,
you might not believe I’m a machine inside the ghost.
Machine,
Machine,
Forged from the wreckage of spare parts,
this tin man doesn’t want a heart.
Just like Data in reverse,
this sentience is only a curse.
Machine.
All circuits go and power on.
All circuits go and power on.
First of all, we’d like to thank everyone who helped nominate us for four different categories in the Madison Area Music Awards!
Sunspot is up for Alternative Performer Rock Album – Weirdest Hits Hard Rock/Punk Song – “Messiah Complex” Drummer/Percussionist – Wendy Lynn Staats
The Madison Area Music Association is a charity that runs these awards every year as a fundraiser for music programs in the local schools, so it all goes to a good cause. By supporting us and voting in the contest, you’re help less-advantaged kids get instruments in their hands. Please visit the MAMA Awards site and cast your vote for Sunspot in those categories.
Wendy Lynn is also one of the finalists for Strings Player of the Year at the Wisconsin Area Music Awards, it’s not a voting award, but it’s an exciting nomination (and she’ll find out if she’s the winner by the next podcast!)
That Uganda story feels horrific and savage and sad in the current age, and of course the idea of human sacrifice is an affront to our modern “civilized” society. But it doesn’t matter which culture you trace your background to, sacrificing human beings is somewhere in the history of it, it’s baked into all of our history at some point. A journal article that just came out talks about how human sacrifice can be attributed to the development of social hierarchies in human society.
So, the study was done of dozens of societies in Austronesia – that’s a particular area of the South Pacific and Australia (and a word I’d never heard before, so learning is fun!) And they found that the more egalitarian a society was (the more people were treated equally), the less human sacrifice was practiced. The more stratified a society was (as in the more differentiation there was in social class between the haves and have nots), the more human sacrifice was performed.
Here’s the money quote from the study:
Religion has long been proposed to play a functional role in society, and is commonly claimed to underpin morality. Recent evolutionary theories of religion have focused on the potential of pro-social and moral religious beliefs to increase cooperation. Our findings suggest that religious rituals also played a darker role in the evolution of modern complex societies. In traditional Austronesian cultures there was substantial religious and political overlap, and ritualised human sacrifice may have been co-opted by elites as a divinely sanctioned means of social control.
Bingo. Just a little something to think about next time someone is talking about modern income inequality . The more difference there was between the upper class (religious and political) and the lower class, the more they performed human sacrifices. Those sacrifices were often prisoners, either prisoners of war or criminals.
So, using human sacrifice as a method of social control makes sense. It can be used as a form of capital punishment that feels like it’s for a good cause (you get to control troublemakers, put fear into the population, and tell the plebes that it’s all for the good of the harvest), but why would we ever sacrifice a human being in the first place? Why would us giving something up, whether it’s an animal sacrifice or the bodies of someone we love – make any kind of difference to a divine being to grant us favor or not?
My personal theory on it can be best explained by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and her five stages of grief. In the end, grieving comes to the same place, acceptance. But to get to that step, you need to deny it, to be angry about it, and at some point, you try and make a deal. That’s where sacrifice comes in.
How many times have you prayed in your head, even without thinking, that you would do anything to get what you wanted in the moment?
“Dear God, I’ll stop eating bacon if you help me make it through this heart attack.”
“Dear God, I promise I’ll be a better person if you can make my wife love me again.”
“Dear God, I’ll never take a drink again if you get me out of this traffic stop.”
“”Dear God, You can give me the disease, just make my child healthy again.”
It’s an involuntary reaction to something that we cannot control. I was just reading Charles Duhigg’s new book, Smarter Faster Better and the first chapter is about how humans are simply more motivated if they are in control and that applies if they only feel that they are in control, even when they obviously are not.
Who felt less in control than early humans? Between disease, famine, drought, natural disasters, war, etc… every random thing that happened to them they had to try and find some kind of explanation for. In the end, they always had to surrender before a higher power because they were powerless to prevent a lot of the tragedy that befell them.
When they hit the bargaining stage, they tried to sacrifice whatever they could to give them some kind of advantage, some kind of control. The survival of their entire tribe might be at stake in a war or a famine (and there was a point in human history where our entire species was down to a thousand reproductive adults), so they did anything to put themselves at an advantage. And that included giving up their lives and the lives of the people that they cared about the most.
And hey, you don’t have to be a cultist to have human sacrifice as part of your religion, it doesn’t matter if you’re Judeo-Christian or you’re someone that believes in the god from Joe Versus The Volcano, chances are that it’s in there.
Throughout history, various methods of human sacrifice have been used to appease the gods. One of my least favorites is the Thuggees of India, roaming bands of violent young religious fanatics who would rob travelers and sacrifice them to their god Kali, often by strangling them with a dirty handkerchief. The Thuggees are the bad guys in Gunga Din, the Beatles’ Help!, and most famously Indiana Jones And The Temple of Doom (where the sacrifice is heart ripping instead of dirty handkerchiefs!)
Fiji today conjures up the idea of a tropical island paradise and it’s said to be one of the most beautiful places on the planet to visit. But, they’ve got a pretty nasty sacrifice too. When a man died, the custom was to bury his wife with him.
When a woman is about to be strangled that she may be buried with her husband, she is made to kneel down, and the cord (a strip of native cloth) is put round her neck. She is then told to expel her breath as long as possible, and when she can endure no longer to stretch out her hand as a signal, whereupon the cord is tightened, and soon all is over. It is believed that, if this direction be followed, insensibility ensues immediately on the tightening of the cord; whereas, if inhalation has taken place, there is an interval of suffering.
An excuse for the practice of widow-strangling may be found in the fact that, according to Fijian belief, it is a needful precautionary measure; for at a certain place on the road to Mbulu (Hades) there lies in wait a terrible god, called Nangganangga, who is utterly implacable towards the ghosts of the unmarried. He is especially ruthless towards bachelors, among whom he persists in classing all male ghosts who come to him unaccompanied by their wives. Turning a deaf ear to their protestations, he seizes them, lifts them above his head, and breaks them in two by dashing them down on a projecting rock. Hence it is absolutely necessary for a man to have at least one of his wives, or at all events, a female ghost of some sort following him.
Okay, a god that forces people to get married and then wants the wives killed when the husbands died (and concubines killed as well when a Chief passes away)… ahem… what were we saying about human sacrifice as a form of social control?
Literature is bursting at its bloody seams of sacrifice. Homer’s Illiad (the epic poem about the Trojan War) is full of human sacrifices. Agamemnon murders his daughter to get safe passage across the sea, Achilles burns twelve Trojan prisoners alive to get the gods’ favor in battle, and these are the good guys.
In George R.R. Martin’s A Song Of Ice And Fire and TV show, Game Of Thrones, the Red Priestess, Melisandre, burns heretics alive before the Lord of Light, R’hllor. She also seeks the sacrifice of one of the old King’s bastard children in order to achieve the favor of her god for Stannis Baratheon to win the War of The Five Kings.
Doctor Who’s classic story, “The Aztecs” is all about how one of his companions thought that she could change history by altering the Aztec culture of human sacrifice. In Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto, escaping human sacrifice is the point of the film. And I didn’t think of this during the podcast, but since Mel also directed The Passion Of The Christ, you can say that he is the director when it comes to gory human sacrifices on film!
Offering up something we value in exchange for favor from a god is hardwired into our humanity. We’re still willing to give up human lives in exchange for something. The powerful are still sacrificing lives as a form of social control and even what-we-think-of-as civilized societies are still killing people in order to feel more control of a chaotic world.
Sure, there are plenty of urban legends of Satanists and Santeria and African mysticism, but take the rituals and religion out and add in platitudes like freedom and security. It’s not necessarily evil, like we think of ritual murder, but it’s important to recognize that we’re still the same creatures who screamed at the dark 70,000 years ago desperate for some kind of control in the chaos.
The song this week is inspired by the third stage of grief on the way to acceptance. This track is about bargaining with the man upstairs, called “Got Me In His Claws”.
I been so low,
because I got too high.
I begged and screamed,
and pleaded to make deals for my life.
I have surrendered,
to the Lord on high,
and I’ve made my peace with him,
I’ve made my sacrifice.
That sacrifice,
when I thought life,
could get no harder,
coming down on me,
I made every guarantee.
That I’d cut out all my lying,
I’d stop cheating on my tax,
I’d stop the smoking, midnight toking,
and start going to Mass.
I’ve had enough of these lost weekends,
All the trouble I used to cause,
Too close to my fate, I’m going straight,
The Devil got me in his claws.
That Devil got me in his claws.
That Devil got me in his claws.
Everything that you believe,
all you control,
everything you’ve achieved,
can go right down the hole.
You can surrender
to the Lord on high,
you can make your peace,
you can sacrifice.
That sacrifice,
when I thought life,
could get no harder,
coming down on me,
I made every guarantee.
That I’d cut out all my lying,
I’d stop cheating on my tax,
I’d stop the smoking, midnight toking,
and start going to Mass.
I’ve had enough of these lost weekends,
All the trouble I used to cause,
Too close to my fate, I’m going straight,
The Devil got me in his claws.
That Devil got me in his claws.
That Devil got me in his claws.
So this weekend our band, Sunspot, released our latest EP, American Monsters. What we’ve been doing is creating song demos for the podcast for every episode and then after a few months, we pick our three favorites and go into the studio and record them. We’ve always used the paranormal and pop culture as an influence for our music, I mean we’ve made fan videos for everything from Torchwoodto Star Trek: Generations, so our love of sci-fi and the occult has always been baked right into the music. We were having a lot of the discussions that we have in the podcast already (usually in the van at 3 o’clock in the morning as we were driving through the middle of nowhere) so we thought we might as well talk about it too!
We called the EP American Monsters because we thought it was a really catchy name and the episode we did wth Linda Godfrey was one of our favorites. She’s one of our favorite investigators and authors into the weird (and bonus, she’s from Wisconsin too!) Since she covered plenty of American monster legends in her book, we thought we’d take the symbolism of the wild creatures that she writes about like Bigfoot and werewolves. While most of us won’t encounter bipedal canines, most of us face outrage and anger on the Internet every day.
While I’m not a fan of the phrase “political correctness” (it’s mostly just a code word in the culture war), I do believe in diversity of opinion and that unpopular opinions (even ones that offend people) have a right to be heard, not shouted down just because some people don’t like it. You don’t win the war of ideas through crushing dissent, you win by convincing people you have the best idea. That’s the essence of our “American Monsters” and it’s a track that’s very classic Midwestern Power-Pop (think Cheap Trick, we even do a sly play on “Dream Police” in the song.)
“Seeing Is Believing” was inspired by our conversation with the author of Silver Screen Saucers, Robbie Graham. It’s a synth-rock Disinformation Age conspiracy anthem about media manipulation. Of course, the song is about how the UFO mythology of the past fifty years was exactly what the CIA wanted us to believe (something even the new X-Files embraced), but it really could be about any story that we get distracted by to take our mind off something that would enrage us.
I’ve never had an out-of-body experience but one of these days I’m going to, dammit! Dr. Luis Minero gave some simple steps to attempt an OBE in our podcast interview and one of the things that struck me was when he said you once you reach the right state, you just “push yourself out of your body” and that seemed like a cool thing to express in a song.
Anyway, we just thought you might like a little background on the tracks. You can download the new EP for free at http://www.sunspotuniverse.com right now.
If you’re interested in learning more about our band, Sunspot, we have won the Wisconsin Area Music Industry‘s Artist of the Year (an award won by other cheese state luminaries like Violent Femmes, Garbage, and Bon Iver) and have won also Best Rock Album from the Madison Music Awards three times. Some of the latest reviews we’ve gotten are:
“Sunspot learned to embrace its charming weirdness… the band members are making some of the best music of their career.” – Isthmus, Madison, WI
“They sound oh so, familiar and like nothing you’ve ever heard before.” – Power Play Magazine, UK
“A perfect piece of Pop Rock.” – Get Ready To Rock Blog
First things first, our new release, American Monsters, is live and you can download the newest EP for free at http://www.sunspotuniverse.com – it’s three songs that were inspired by this podcast and we took them into the studio. You will love how these tracks turned out!
This episode features the writer and director of the film Convergence starring Clayne Crawford (from SundanceTV’s Rectify and who will be playing Mel Gibson’s role in the new Lethal Weapon reboot) and Ethan Embry (I loved him in That Thing You Do… but he was also zombie fodder in the latest season of The Walking Dead). Convergence, written and directed by Alabama-based filmmaker Drew Hallis a paranormal thriller in the Jacob’s Ladder vein.
Set in 1990s Atlanta (and you can tell that right away because of the Everclear and Toad The Wet Sprocket on the radio), a police detective gets caught in the explosion of an abortion clinic bombing by a religious extremist group and wakes up in a hospital caught in a nightmare scenario where he has to hunt down the leader of the extremist group who is causing mayhem all through the hospital.
In some more 90s awesomeness, the soundtrack was also partially composed by Helmet’s Page Hamilton. Betty was one of my favorite hard rock albums and Ben (the guitarist from Wendy and my band, Sunspot) used to jam out at rehearsal to “Unsung” in high school all the time.
So number one, is the movie any good? Yes. Convergence is a thoughtful horror film with some clever modern twists (the appearance of the Ghost Hunters-style paranormal investigation team). There’s a little bit of gore (my favorite is a scene that ahem… took the words right out of my mouth) and there’s some of the inescapability of dream-logic terror. One of the things I enjoyed most about it though was its treatment of religion.
Now I’m mostly used to seeing only a few kinds of religion in film:
1. The Catholic Church’s exorcists as wizards or priests as holy warriors in vampire movies.
Back when Peter Jackson was making horror films (but still usually about 25 minutes too long), his film Brain Deadhas my personal favorite of the badass priest archetype (please do not watch this Youtube clip at work, it is NSFW all the way.)
2. Religious zealots as redneck murderers. Kevin Smith covered this one in Red State.
3. Faith-based films where atheists are engaging in a war on Christianity and God hands out miracles like mini Snickers on Trick or Treat night. Jennifer Garner went from The Invention Of Lying (Ricky Gervais’ love letter to atheism) to Miracles From Heaven, a new faith-based film where God basically saves her sick kid.
While these depictions of faith and religion are what we’re used to and the antagonist of Convergence sometimes veers into Red State territory, the nice thing about Convergence is that its themes of redemption and faith are given plenty of breathing room.
Now, to be fair, you’re not going to get Diary Of A Country Priest–levels of cinematic spiritual contemplation and some of the dialogue is a little too on the nose, but it’s nice that a horror movie with supernatural elements can feature spirituality upfront and center without sanitizing the religious elements or making everyone who has faith look crazy. It’s a refreshing change of pace.
Now, if you’d like to watch the film without any spoilers, then you can find links to download it here or you can grab it on Blu-Ray at your local Best Buy. Then come back and listen to the podcast!
So, if you’re not familiar with Purgatory, it’s a Roman Catholic concept that if you died and your soul is still stained by sin, but what you did isn’t really that bad to send you to Hell, then you just get punished for a little while before you get to go to Heaven. It’s also a good way for the church to explain what happens to babies who die before they get baptized or people who lived good lives before Jesus, so they never had a chance to believe in the guy.
Basically it’s a place where everyone sorts their leftover business out before they get to the next world. It pops up in a lot of films and TV shows, like The Sopranos, The Leftovers, What Dreams May Come, Wristcutters: A Love Story, and one of the crappy Hellraiser sequels (don’t bother with any of those films after the second one.)
In Dante’s poem, Purgatory is an island (huh, wonder where people might have gotten the idea that Lost was set there…) with a mountain on it that has several levels where souls are being punished in for different sins in order for them to redeem themselves and make it to the top of the mountain. Once they get to the top, they have fulfilled their punishment and they can finally get into Heaven.
Drew even uses Dante’s different levels of Purgatory as inspiration for what happens on each floor of the hospital and how the lead character, Ben, has to advance through the hospital and make his way to his own redemption by the end of the film, all the while being hunted by the Ethan Embry’s maniacal villain.
Drew’s interest in the paranormal stems from having his own experiences as well. He tells us a couple of stories in the interview, but my favorite is getting a little otherworldly help while almost drowning. Here’s how he tells it:
[I was] whitewater rafting… but I flipped out of the boat and we got caught in a whirlpool type thing stuck in a whirlpool-type and when I flipped out, I got stuck underneath the raft. And the raft is fairly heavy, much less loaded down with six adults. You float up because you’re wearing a [vest]… I’m trapped under this thing for, according to accounts, two or three minutes, luckily I was a swimmer at the time so I could hold my breath.
But I had to come face to face with the idea that I might not get out… As audible as I’m talking to you now underwater, as insane as it sounds… I heard “look left” and as I did, there was a shaft of light that looked as solid as a pole sticking out. And I reach for it thinking maybe they had found a stick. My hand went through it and then my buddy had gotten out of the boat and grabbed my wrist…
It could have been fight or flight, I understand, but to me that became reality… it planted that seed.
Hall has some more interesting paranormal stories that he shares with us (including a scary shadow person story!) and he isn’t done with films inspired by real-life paranormal activity, he’s currently working on a script about the latest paranormal urban legend to hit the Internet, Black-Eyed Children (who will get their own episode soon!)
Drew Hall is a filmmaker to keep an eye on because he has a unique cinematic vision and you can tell he cares deeply about the craft. There’s a literacy and depth to his work that is too rare in horror and thriller circles.
Since this conversation centered on horror movies and one of my favorite movie directors and composers, John Carpenter, has a new album out on April 15th (Lost Themes II), we thought we’d do a little electronic instrumental soundtrack homage this week and call it “Purgatory”.
April Fool’s Day. Just how did we get an unofficial holiday that’s based around making the people around you look stupid?
First things first, we have an update from our Zombie Apocalypse episode, because there’s been new research that about the parasite Toxoplasma Gondii that lives in the bellies of the little feline friends. This parasite has been said to manipulate the behavior of rodents to make them run towards cats instead of away from them!
We talk about the Gizmodo article last week that discussed how toxoplasmosis could be linked to the Rage disorder, IED (Intermittent Explosive Disorder.) Ever have a friend that blows up at the littlest things for no reason or that has completely unpredictable behavior that results in one or more of you spending the night in jail? It just might be the parasite. In the movie, 28 Days Later, the virus that turns people into cannibalistic monsters is called “The Rage Virus”. Coincidence?
So, April Fool’s isn’t just a Hallmark holiday, it’s been around for hundreds of years and we’re not quite sure the origin behind it. Some say that it has to do with the changing of the Gregorian Calendar to the Julian (when celebrating the New Year went from April 1st to December 31st). If you got the New Year date wrong after the change, then you were the April Fool!
But it seems that it’s not a Western Civilization phenomenon, because they have something similar in India as well for their Huli festival and people have traced this kind of celebration all the way back to Roman times. The best guess is that humans have been celebrating the Vernal Equinox for thousands of years and part of that celebration of new life is playing jokes on each other.
According to the Witchology website, even though we’re not clear on the origins of April Fool’s Day, there are some superstitions behind it:
Pranks are to be performed before Noon, otherwise it’s bad luck for the person doing the tricking.
If you don’t respond to an April Fool’s Day prank with good humor, then it’s bad luck for the person being tricked!
If you’re fooled by a pretty girl, then you’ve got a good shot at marrying her (that seems to be the “wishful thinking” rule…)
Speaking of marriage, men who get married on April Fool’s Day will be ruled by their wives (that seems like a relic from a much more misogynist age)
Children born on April Fool’s Day will be lucky… except for gambling!
But throughout history, people have used this time of year to pull paranormal pranks, from “discovering” the Loch Ness Monster to landing a UFO in London.
The Fox Sisters – these Victorian Age preteens became world famous with their spiritualism by hoaxing (which all began as a bit of fun on April Fool’s Eve), but it’s that fame that ended up being their undoing.
Virgin’s Richard Branson takes his love of ballooning to a new level as he flies a UFO-looking balloon over London, causing quite a hullabaloo in the process!
An April Fool’s day prank in a small German newspaper in 1950 where they pretended to have captured a “Martian” gets discovered by Roswell researchers three decades later and ends up in the non-fiction section of the library.
This one’s not paranormal but it’s close to where we are (in Madison, Wisconsin) the Capital Times publishes a story on April Fool’s Day in 1933 about the dome of the capitol collapsing, angering a sensitive reader base. It’s one of the first photo manipulations that today we’d just say was an “obvious Photoshop”.
This one isn’t as paranormal, but it’s brilliant. In 2014, NPR posted a story called “Why Doesn’t America Read Anymore” with explicit instructions not to respond on social media because it was just a way to see who’d actually been clicking through and reading on their stories or just commenting on the headlines on Facebook. It ended up getting thousands of comments, showing that next time you see people make enflamed and angry comments on a story on social media, you better read it before checking it out yourselves. (And that’s a topic we broach in our new EP release, “American Monsters”, which is coming out THIS WEEK!)
The song this week is the Sunspot song, “Fool”. A track about being unafraid of getting your heart broken again and again. It’s better to have an open heart that is vulnerable to the evils of the world, than in the words of John Lennon, to “hide your love away”.
I’ve been hurt more times than I can count
I’ve had my head smashed in and my guts pulled out.
I’ve been cheated on, mistreated some, my heart held for ransom,
I’m the jerk, that piece of work, who just can’t figure out
that
this big bad world is cruel,
so bury your soul deep and they never can hurt you,
I know that it might be uncool, but
I ain’t got time to tow the line on trust issues.
I’ve got a body made for working,
I’ve got a heart made for abuse,
I’ve got a penchant for fast living,
and I’m stretching out my youth.
I’ve got a mind to keep on loving,
Don’t care the ugly truth,
Well we’ve got all the cynics we need,
so I’d rather play the fool.
I’ve been wrong more times than you’d believe,
I’ve had my faith tested, my kindness deceived,
I’ve been betrayed and led astray and the victim of foul play,
and you might mock this laughingstock who won’t concede naivety,
because
I know this big bad world is cruel,
and if you bury your soul deep then they never can hurt you,
We’re still on tour this week, performing music and checking out strangle tales and haunted history around the country. We just finished enjoying a few days in Austin, TX and performing at the Music Madness ATX Showcase with our good friends there. (Check out their website right here!)
And for a quick Texas tale of weirdness, our buddy, Victor Hidalgo, from the Music Madness Showcase talks a little bit about growing up in San Antonio and the legend of the Midget Mansion in the podcast intro.
Speaking of San Antonio, here we are on St. Patrick’s Day, performing on the Riverwalk!
So, the meat of this episode is all about the 2016 election. Now, we’re not astrology experts (most of my knowledge of astrology comes from horoscopes in the newspaper and the tablets at Chinese restaurants), but our guest on this episode, Astrologer and Spiritual Consultant, Jeff Harman is.
Jeff gives us some of the history of politicians that have used astrology (including saying that Nancy Reagan took the heat for her husband Ronald’s reliance on guidance from the stars and he describes astrology like a weather forecast. Patterns emerge over time of where the stars are located when certain kinds of events happen and astrology tries to predict the likelihood of the success or failure of things according to those patterns.
Just a reminder: We don’t endorse any political candidates on this podcast and we don’t guarantee any future predictions. But this is a lot of fun to talk about.
So he’s read and interpreted the charts of where the stars were when the candidates were born and goes into depth on what he thinks the stars have to say about this year’s crop of political aspirants from Donald Trump to Hillary Clinton to Bernie Sanders.
The track this week is the Sunspot song, “Dangerous Times” – some people would call this election year a dangerous one because of the candidates in the running and since the imagery of this track is all about stars colliding, we thought it would be appropriate for the episode.
Alive breath to breath,
Existing mouth to mouth,
Thieves, dealers, and whores,
all living in my house.
Shoot yourself invincible,
Kiss yourself goodnight.
You’re not invisible,
Not a lowlife.
These are the dangerous times,
When stars collide,
We’ll make it right,
If we survive.
A little sleight of hand,
can cover a landslide.
the center cannot hold,
with too much to hide,
Shoot yourself invincible,
Kiss yourself goodnight.
You’re not invisible,
Not a lowlife.
These are the dangerous times,
When stars collide,
We’ll make it right,
If we survive.
These are the dangerous times,
When stars collide,
We’ll make it right,
If we survive.
And all the monsters that you kept under your bed,
are now the kind of people that you call your friend,
this is the way little girls and boys wind up dead,
and lose their head.
Shoot yourself invincible,
Kiss yourself goodnight.
You’re not invisible,
Not a lowlife.
These are the dangerous times,
When stars collide,
We’ll make it right,
If we survive.
These are the dangerous times,
When stars collide,
We’ll make it right,
If we survive.
This week, Wendy and I are traveling through the country stopping at haunted sites and playing music and on Saturday we stopped in Cincinnati. It was a lot of fun and we’re doing it all this week, so check out the dates right here at https://othersidepodcast.com/tour!
And speaking of Cincinnati, our guests this week are the fine ladies of Gatekeeper Paranormal, who are the official paranormal team of Bobby Mackey’s Music World (keep reading to hear about one ofd its most famous ghost stories). I talk with lead investigator Kim Short and co-founder Laura Roland and you’ll hear all about their adventure’s at Bobby Mackey’s.
If you don’t have time to listen to the whole podcast, here’s 4 quick haunted stories of Cincinnati ghosts to tide you over!
Mike and Wendy in front of Cincinnati Music Hall
1.Cincinnati Music Hall
Cincinnati Music Hall is a place where you can see some really messed up stuff. from flying Norse gods to Italian lovers being dragged to Hell, opera loves to turn up the crazy.
Originally this was the site of a Potter’s Field which is a graveyard for the poor or people without families, like those who died at the nearby Cincinnati Commercial Hospital and Lunatic Asylum, or the place on 12th and Elm that was a home for orphans before it became known as the “pest house” because it’s where they kept patients with infectious diseases.
Because you don’t use coffins in a potter’s field, bones will often churn out of the ground whenever renovations are done here, like they did in 1960 and 1988.
Since then, some patrons of the hall have seen strange figures waving at them from the other side of the hall only to disappear when they look away for a second. People have also heard a music box play a song called “Let Me Call You Sweetheart” when there are no music boxes around.
Roger Krebs, who worked on the maintenance crew for almost two decades has said that he has heard piano playing when there’s no one else in the hall, closed doors open on their own, and a floor buffer that mysteriously turns on and off for no reason. Cincinnati paranormal groups have also reported a freight elevator that has stopped at the wrong floors for no reason and the doors behaving erratically during investigations.
2. Union Terminal
Union Terminal is now a museum and a mall, but in the twilight years of the railroad it was one of the busiest places in the city. Train stations are usually rife with paranormal stories, whether it’s lovers saying their last goodbye as a soldier goes off to war or a family coming back together after a long separation, it’s a place of strong emotion. And sometimes those emotions stick around after the physical bodies have gone.
In September of 1989, a criminal named Thomas Haynes killed a security guard, Shirley Baker, while robbing the Union Terminal and it’s her ghost that some people have seen still patrolling the halls. People have heard her rattling the doorknobs and checking the locks when there is no one else present and some members of the cleaning crew won’t go into certain areas of the mall alone.
And that’s the weirdest thing. after all, what’s to be afraid of? Shirley is just dedicated to her job, still protecting the mall decades after her final shift has ended!
3. Bobby Mackey’s Music World
This music venue and bar in Wilder, Kentucky, bills itself as the “Most Haunted Nightclub in America”. is it the most haunted? I don’t know that anyone is keeping score, but it got Bobby Mackey a slot on not only Jerry Springer but also Geraldo, and when you can do that without making love to a family member, that means something.
So, the romantic legend of Bobby Mackey’s comes from the 1950s, when the club was mob-affiliated and known as “The Latin Quarter”, a dancer by the name of johanna had fallen in love with a singer at the club by the name of Robert Randall. According to the legend, Robert got her pregnant and her mobster father ended up hanging Robert in the dressing room. Johanna, so distraught by her lover’s murder at the hands of her father, took her own life at the club by poisoning herself.
Patrons of Bobby Mackey’s will sometimes see a woman dressed in a 1950s outfit or they’ll hear a woman’s voice in the club when there’s no one around. that’s the ghost that they think is Johanna.
Bobby Mackey himself wrote a song about Johanna and here’s some of the lyrics:
Now today it’s a different place Or the same with a new face With strange mysteries hangin’ in the air People in their sane minds swear they see you today
4. The Tale of Tiny Town
Here’s a great urban legend about a town right north of Cincinnati by Mount Rumpke. It was said that there was a village of tiny houses around there at a place called the handlebar ranch. in those tiny houses was said to live a large population of retired circus dwarves. seriously.
Having been laughed at and made fun of all of their lives in the circus, they shun the rest of society, so that when you visited Tiny Town, they would throw rocks at you and yell at you to leave. And the kicker of course, is that you knew you were in the right place when you could hear the circus music!(?)
Of course, this story is ridiculous, but not completely crazy. Anna and Percy Ritter Who owned the Handlebar Ranch, had a hayride business there and did have a collection of small buildings on the property that the hayrides could look at. There were also some old school bells that Percy salvaged and sometimes kids would sneak onto the property and ring the bells in the middle of the night.
As to the collection of circus dwarves? well, Anna Ritter was only 5’3 but no one knows exactly where that story came from, so people think that the small houses in the village are what contributed to that story, no matter that there were actually no little people there.
This week’s song is an old Sunspot chestnut that fits well into an episode about Bobby Mackey’s. Our track, “Meat Market” was recorded in 1998 and it’s originally a track about hook-up culture in college bars. But since Bobby Mackey’s is reputedly a former slaughterhouse and Johanna was a dancer who hooked up at the club, well we thought it might be the perfect song for this episode.
Here’s an ancient video of us in the studio recording it and here’s another Queen City connection, I’m wearing a Hustler shirt (given to me by my college buddy from Cincinnati whose uncle was one of Larry Flynt’s lawyers!)
Going down to the Meat Market,
I’m looking for the first one,
that looks my way.
Take me to the Meat Market,
When it’s two o’clock in the morning,
I’m not picky.
I’m not picky.
It’s all the same to me.
I’m not picky.
We’re not looking for an answer.
We don’t care what we find,
We’ll say anything that we can,
to get what we want tonight.
This hunting ground is a sleazy dive,
where deperate people lead desperate lives.
All we do is live to survive,
I said to her as she looked in my eyes.
Is she staring at my face?
Is she looking at my ass?
Can she find her knight in shining armor,
through the bottom of a glass?
We’ll say anything that we want,
to get what we want tonight.
One more trip to the Meat Market.
You’re looking for Prince Charming,
to break your heart.
Take me to the Meat Market.
The All-American Girl is a porno star.
A porno star,
if it’s all the same to you,
then it’s all the same to me.
This hunting ground is a sleazy dive,
where deperate people lead desperate lives.
All we do is live to survive,
I said to her as she looked in my eyes.
Is she staring at my face?
Is she looking at my ass?
Can she find her knight in shining armor,
through the bottom of a glass?
We’re not looking for forever,
we don’t care what you think.
We’re just a bunch of primates,
that know how to mix a drink.
They say true love waits,
at least until last call.
We’re all porno stars in a meat market,
Hearts pumping alcohol.
Kristen grew up as “the girl who brings the Ouija Board to parties” and was always into the paranormal even before she was a ghost hunter on television. In fact, Patrick and Kristen knew each other before they were on Ghost Mine together and she talks about her “ghost hunting” audition that cinched her role.
Now that’s how you do Zoolander’s “Blue Steel” with mining equipment…
Kristen shares some of her favorite weird unexplained experiences and we talk everything from how reality shows edit together embarrassing reaction shots to past life regression. While Kristen is a licensed hypnotherapist, she doesn’t usually do past life regressions (I know, bummer!) but she has a cool theory on them. Have you ever heard of holosync® or omharmonics? She’s an specialist in all things audio too, which will keep you fascinated.
Sometimes past life regression is used in hypnosis to actually help with pain therapy. Maybe you have a pain that you can’t explain and while regressing back to your past life in hypnosis you discover that you were injured there during that other life. That discovery can lead to controlling that pain and whether it’s true or imagined, controlling the pain is really why you’re at the hypnotherapist in the first place.
If you’re brand new to hypnosis, Kristen offers these helpful tips to use the power of suggestion to bring some more positivity into your life!
Self-Hypnosis Can Be Tricky, Concentrate On What You Want The subconscious mind doesn’t know the difference between good and bad. You’re dealing with the part of the mind where if something falls in, it stays in. Focus on what you want, not what you don’t want. If you want success, create the image of you at your most successful self.
The Subconscious Mind Does Not Know The Difference Between Imagination and Reality Whatever you imagine in your mind, as far as your subconscious is concerned, it’s really happening. If you’re great at visualization, the world is your oyster because you can create what you want to create. And the body automatically follows in that direction, that image you start being led to.
Use Your Memory To Help With Visualization You do remember times that you felt good or successful, just like you can always remember the feeling of the sun on your face. If you have trouble visualizing, just think back to a time where you felt positive, strong, or successful. Bring that memory back and bathe in it for a little bit.
All Of Our Thoughts Affect Our Body Physically When you think about something that scares you, you get butterflies in your stomach. There’s a direct connection so think those thoughts that produce the good feelings in our body, because our body will respond to them.
Don’t Force The Visuals We innately process things visually. So, if you feel like you’re having trouble visualizing, just let your mind do what it naturally does and don’t worry, you’ll get there. Even if you just pretend that you can see visuals, chances are those visuals will start showing up, so the more you relax, the easier it will be!
Once again this year, Wendy and myband is going down to SXSW. we’re going to take the show on the road with a little haunted history on the way down to Austin from Wisconsin, we’ll be traveling through Cincinnati, Nashville, New Orleans, and Houston, so if you’re in any of those cities or have friends that are, please check out https://othersidepodcast.com/tour
And for this episode’s song, we’re using “Turn This Off” by Sunspot. It’s our track about letting the haters hate and how it’s important to get those negative voices out of your life.
Don’t wanna be the background to your,
Lite rock adult contemporary life on hold.
Don’t wanna be the soundtrack to your,
Getaway hot tub romance pool suite weekend.
You’re not gonna screw to this.
You’re not gonna screw to this.
We are not ubiquitous.
We are not ubiquitous.
Give me something that can make me feel.
Go ahead and turn this off.
We’re taking back our music,
What you won’t give we’re gonna steal,
Go ahead and turn this off,
You can keep your smug irony,
And I’ll keep what is real.
Don’t wanna see your record collection,
And take those Elvis Costello glasses off.
Don’t wanna ask for your permission,
To walk through life under a carrot and a stick.
Hearing songs a thousand times.
Hearing songs a thousand times.
Makes me want to commit crimes.
Makes me want to commit crimes.
You won’t give me something to make me feel.
Go ahead and turn this off.
We’re taking back our music,
What you won’t give we’re gonna steal,
Go ahead and turn this off,
You can keep your smug irony,
And I’ll keep what is real.
I’ve seen your ventriloquist,
Another hypnotist,
Visit your therapist,
‘Cuz now we’re getting pissed.
Because you won’t give me something to make me feel.
Go ahead and turn this off.
We’re taking back our music,
What you won’t give we’re gonna steal,
Go ahead and turn this off,
You can keep your smug irony,
You can keep your impassivity,
You can keep your fashionability,
And I’ll keep what is real.
We’ve been discussing Orientalism for awhile on the podcast, last week it came up in our discussion of Planet X, Nibiru and it’s come up often in our discussions, from H.P. Lovecraft to Hollywood. The East is mysterious to us and therefore dangerous and titillating. There’s an element of fantasy to our thoughts about exotic places that seem strange and hard to understand. Just the word “exotic” conjures up a reaction because it means out of the ordinary, and that which is unusual, excites us.
So, with new news about King Tut’s tomb in the past month as well as the fantasy film, Gods Of Egypt coming out, it seemed like a good time to tackle the grandaddy of exotic and mystical cultures, Ancient Egypt.
Now, I know that Gods Of Egypt caused some controversy by casting white European actors as Egyptian gods and we have to acknowledge that. I haven’t seen the movie yet and will rest my judgement until I do. How can you not love Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister from Game Of Thrones!) and Chadwick Boseman (James Brown, too hot in the hot tub, ow!)? They’re both great. Gerard Butler, eh… he lost me after that Bounty Hunter movie with Jennifer Aniston. Here, let me refresh your memory…
I usually am not bothered by things like that, but then again, I’m not in a demographic that isn’t well represented onscreen. Unlike when I was growing up in the 80s, where dorks and outcasts were usually ridiculed and beaten up (Revenge of the Nerds notwithstanding, that was R-rated so I couldn’t watch it), particularly geeky white guys like myself have more representation than ever on the screen.
I do understand why people would be annoyed by someone taking a part of their heritage (like their ancient mythology) and not even bothering to hire people who at least look like the part. That doesn’t mean it can’t be a good movie or the performances can’t be great, that just means I see where the criticism comes from. That’s not directly the topic we’re talking about today, but I felt like it needed to be addressed, because the very “otherness” of Ancient Egyptian culture is what excited a lot of people about in the first place.
So, why Egypt? What is it about it that makes it so fascinating. Let’s start with the Old Testament. The story of Moses leading the Hebrews out of slavery and defeating the forces of the Egyptian Pharaoh is known by every good little Christian boy and girl.
And that story is surrounded in mysticism. Moses is basically a wizard who uses plagues of locusts, sends the Angel of Death to kill all the first born of Egypt, and magically parts the Red Sea so that his people can escape. It’s a great tale, Hollywood has made several versions of it (speaking of white-washing, good ol’ Charlton Heston is a little WASP-y for Moses, ha) and Metallica even wrote a song about it, “Creeping Death”.
So, Egypt is baked right into Sunday School in a magical story. And Egypt then can become shorthand for a strange pagan people who worship crazy gods and erect massive tombs that are still standing to this day.
The pyramids are the first thing most people think of when they think of Egypt and the idea that they were built by normal humans without any kind of modern mechanical assistance seems crazy, which is one of the reasons that the ancient astronaut theory took off, like they only could be built with the help of aliens. C’mon when I was a kid, there was a special called Mysteries of the Pyramids with Egypt’s most famous actor, Omar Sharif. He even says that they he’s not quite sure how they did it and how they would even make it today.
The Pyramids are still with us, you can go visit. I bet you know a dozen people in your everyday life who’ve seen the Pyramids. And those people probably went on a Holy Land trip where they saw multiple religious sites. So, it’s a massively historical place that brings about awe in just about everyone and you combine that with religious significance and you can see where we’re going with this fascination.
And we’re excited and revulsed by the otherness of them. It happens in the conversation in this podcast, when Wendy and I are discussing that since the Pharaohs claimed to be descended from Gods, they wanted to keep their bloodline as pure as possible, so you know what that means – they kept it in the family with incest.
Indeed, King Tut himself was probably have been the result of an incestual relationship between his father (the monotheist Akhenaten) and one of his sisters. Gross, right? Okay, well, I’m not going to defend incest, but royal boys and girls were not raised together. There’s this thing called the Westermarck Effect which is the natural disgust that we feel at mating with our siblings. It needs to be imprinted in the first six years of life or it never had a chance to take effect. So these kids just didn’t have that nasty feeling we all feel about our siblings (well, except for Jaime Lannister up there!)
…but it’s probably because of the famous curse that supposedly happened to the original archaeological team who entered King Tut’s tomb. Unfortunately, the Curse of the Pharaohs is just an urban legend (or fortunately, I guess…) that was drummed up by the 1920s tabloids to sell more newspapers. But it worked, there was such a fascination with Ancient Egypt and the mysteries of the Orient, that people were naming their famous theaters “Egyptian”, “Oriental”, and “Chinese”. And Egypt has never been too far out of pop culture, Iron Maiden’s album Powerslave is famously Egyptian-themed and even ZZ Top talks about the pyramids in their song “Sleeping Bag” (it’s in the third verse and I’ve heard the song a hundred times and had no idea Egypt was in it, either.)
Only a few years later, Universal made The Mummy and it would go on to become one of their most famous monsters. All of a sudden these dried up corpses became icons of ancient terror and it also serves as a reminder that Brendan Fraser used to be a thing…
Now, one of the most famous mystical concepts about Egypt is their Book of the Dead. And it’s not really a book about the afterlife as much as it is a variety of spells that were supposed to help the deceased’s soul get into paradise. They thought of the afterlife as an obstacle course that you had to get through (where you could be eaten by crocodiles, kinda like that Atari game Pitfall) in order to make it to Heaven.
Once you got through the gauntlet, you would have to get to judged by the king of the Underworld, Osiris (played in the new movie by famous Egyptian actor, Bryan Brown ). He would judge you by weighing your heart against a feather. Wendy and I looked it up and a heart is a little less than a pound, so yeah, I hope this was symbolic.
The Egyptians believed that your intellect and emotion lived in your heart and that’s why it was the part that was weighed. So, if it balanced against the feather you were allowed to pass into Paradise. If it was too heavy, then you would be eaten by the Gobbler or Ammit, the crocodile-headed God with the body of a lion.
Either way, the Egyptians directly gave us the idea that the Heart is where your emotions reside, so we owe them that one.
They also, gave us the idea of the Guardian Angel. They called it a Shai and it was an entity that was born with every human and presided over our destinies and fates. In the end, the Shai would give a true account of our deeds and misdeeds. So this episode’s music track is Guardian Angel by Sunspot
For all the stupid things I’ve done,
and all the ways it could have ended wrong, ended wrong.
At the wheel drunk and stoned,
I should have ended up a pile of bones, a pile of bones.
But you watched over me,
giving this charmed life one more opportunity,
And then you prayed for me,
when anyone in their right mind would have left me hanging out to dry.
And I’m awestruck you’re such a dumb #$%^,
I’m gonna punish my guardian angel for
letting me live one minute more
Outrageous conduct,
I’m gonna test my luck,
I’m gonna punish my Guardian angel with,
the worst things that I can commit.
For every smoke I ever lit,
For every drink and every hit I took,
put it in your book,
for every little accident,
and every suicide attempt that failed,
just more blackmail.
But you spared, spared me,
Letting this $&@!?#% get away with it scot-free.
And you never abandoned me,
When everything I perpetrate should lead me right down to my fate.
And I’m awestruck you’re such a dumb #$%^,
I’m gonna punish my guardian angel for
letting me live one minute more
Outrageous conduct,
I’m gonna test my luck,
I’m gonna punish my Guardian angel with,
the worst things that I can commit.
The worst things that I can commit.
The worst things that I can commit.
And every time I feel even a little bit guilty,
I think of the sorry bastard who wasn’t so lucky,
So I blame you for the pain that I tried to escape,
I blame you for every heart I hurt, all my mistakes.
So give it up and don’t bother,
don’t waste your prayers on this clown.
One of these days I know you’ll let me down.
And I’m awestruck you’re such a dumb #$%^,
I’m gonna punish my guardian angel for
letting me live one minute more
Outrageous conduct,
I’m gonna test my luck,
I’m gonna punish my Guardian angel with,
the worst things that I can commit.
And I’m awestruck you’re such a dumb #$%^,
I relish every blasphemy, there’s nothing left here to redeem,
Outrageous conduct,
I’m gonna test my luck,
I am the soul you tried to save but I just want to make you pay.
I’m gonna punish my guardian angel, I’ll punish my guardian angel.
I’m gonna punish my guardian angel, I’ll punish my guardian angel.
A rock band's journey into the afterlife, UFOs, entertainment, and weird science.
