What a fantastic weekend as Wendy and I attended the Paradigm Symposium in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The mission of the event is to bridge the gap between academic thinking and alternative studies and you could see it in action because the speakers treated each presentation like it was a college lecture.
Mike, Scotty Roberts, John Ward, and Wendy Lynn
The guys behind the event were Scotty Roberts and John Ward from Intrepid Magazine, which is a publication after my own heart, dealing with everything from science fiction to alternative history and archaeology. It was a massive undertaking, but completely worth it, because it provided us with a ton of inspiration for new episodes, new friends, and of course, lots of new things to ponder.
In the episode, Wendy Lynn and I cover all of the speakers that we got to see during the convention and tell a little bit about the topics that they covered.
Me and Peter Capaldi, I mean the brilliant Micah Hanks!
Here are some links to the speakers so that if you hear about something you like during the podcast, you can come back and click on the link to learn more (and of course, we’re going to be asking all of these fascinating people to come on the podcast sometime soon!)
Micah Hanks – Secret societies, Yale’s Skull and Bones and its connection to America’s foreign policy think tanks. This dude can speak! And he’s got one of the best paranormal podcasts out there, The Gralien Report.
Jeffrey Daugherty (The Christian Whistleblower) – Was Jesus an alien? He doesn’t answer that for you, but his literal translation of the books of the New Testament certainly makes you think and it’s delivered in a helluva style!
Laird Scranton – Connecting the ancient abandoned site of Skara Brae on Scotland’s Orkney Islands with Africa’s Dogon Tribe and ancient Egypt. Heavy on the symbolism and linguistics, he’s obviously done his homework.
Dr. Rita Louise – Did aliens mess with our DNA early in our history? Could humanity be a lot older than we suspect? Lots of alternative history here!
Lon Milo Duquette – Revelations about King David and Solomon and their possible connections to the Knights Templar and Freemasonry.
Peter Robbins – The Rendlesham UFO Incident – it’s the United Kingdom’s very own Roswell and he can deliver the case for it as convincingly as they come.
Paranormal Sarah – Sarah Soderlund is a Twin Cities-based parapsychologist and author who also goes by the online name Paranormal Sarah.
Rocci Stucci – Political talk radio host and paranormal investigator, his EVP from an investigation with Scotty and John almost made me lose voluntary bladder control.
Travis Walton – The world’s most famous alien abductee and the man behind the classic Fire In The Sky, which was very influential on me when I was younger, watching the new documentary, Travis The Movie, which gave the non-Hollywood perspective of his incredible experience.
Listening to him talk was really one of the major highlights for us because there are few people on Earth who have been more affected by the UFO phenomenon than him. Most of us who love aliens and the paranormal choose this field. He did not. He was thrust into the situation out of his control and it’s affected the course of his entire life. But forty years later, plenty of polygraph examinations, and six men whose story hasn’t changed a bit mean that he’s part of the lore forever now and has one of the most convincing cases out there.
And he’s a guitar player too, so that makes him extra awesome.
Holy cow, it’s Mike and Wendy Lynn with Travis Walton!
Dan Madsen – Star Trek fan club president with an inspiring story of how the vision of Gene Roddenberry forever changed the life of a young man.
John Ward – Real deal archaeology and adventure into ancient Egypt. Some of it was above my head, but it looked like a lot of fun!
Richard Dolan – Fantastic UFO researcher who gives an outline of the possible alien agenda. Will we ever see disclosure? What do the aliens want? Why won’t the government tell us. He connects all the dots and gives a plausible case of the reasons behind the secrecy.
Scott Wolter – Forensic Geologist behind the TV series, America Unearthed. His research into a Minnesota artifact known as the Kensington Rhinestone discovered in 1898 leads him on a search for Norse expeditions into North America in the 14th Century (the original Minnesota Vikings – were they still a losing team even back then? Ha!) or maybe he suggests, the Knights Templar tried to claim the continent for themselves after being banned from Europe. Lots of symbolism, history, and fun.
All the guests for the final panel
Overall, what really made the event was the incredible access to these great researchers, the open minds of every one, and the absolute friendliness of the group. Wendy and I felt tremendously welcome by people we’d never met before and by the end we were looking forward to the next time we could see them and share more stories, adventures, and just discussions about all the things that we don’t quite understand in this universe, but love to explore. That’s the kind of atmosphere of positivity and a judgement-free zone that we all hope to find ourselves in every once in awhile, to be free to find our own truths.
Since we were quite affected by hearing the real story of Travis Walton, for this weeks’s song decided to use a cover we recorded awhile back where we actually used a little bit of Fire In The Sky in the video we made. Since we borrow footage from that movie, Communion, Close Encounters, and A Trip To The Moon we thought it would be the perfect time to introduce the Sunspot version of one of the The Killers’ best tracks, “Spaceman”, their song about UFO abduction, into our podcast.
Also in more fun haunting news, I just launched St. Paul Ghost Walks which is the first haunted history walking tour of downtown St. Paul, Minnesota (I like to call it the Evil Twin) and that launches this Friday the 13th!
And there’s still time to vote for our band, Sunspot, in the Madison Area Music Awards – if you voted in the first round, it doesn’t cost anything to vote for us in the FINAL round (ends May 19th). If you haven’t voted, it’s five tax-deductible dollars and every penny goes to helping out music education in Madison area schools. It’s a cause we believe in deeply and are proud to have been supporting this charity since the beginning.
This week, I got to take some time to talk to a creator after my own heart, Christopher Saint Booth. As a musician, film producer, and paranormal investigator with a superb sense of style, he and his brother Philip bring glam chic and a distinct sophistication to the world of the weird.
Christopher Saint Booth at the Chicago Paranormal Convention
In our conversation, we start with his career as a musician on the Sunset Strip in the late 70s and early 80s and his move into art director on various films (hey man, he got to work on Dreamscape, the film where people could travel into each other’s dreams and we’ve talked about it on this podcast a bunch of times!)
In addition to some fun Hollywood stories, Christopher shares with us some of his real life paranormal experiences that he’s also documented in an autobiographical book calledPARANOIA – The Strange Case of Ghosts, Demons, and Aliens.
While he’s always been into horror movies, what I think is interesting is how the brothers stumbled upon becoming paranormal filmmakers. They were filming a movie called Death Tunnel at Waverly Hills Sanatorium in Kentucky, a legendarily haunted hospital that has been closed for decades. In the script, they used the real legends of the sanatarium for inspiration.
But the real show was what was happening behind the scenes. They got so much footage of weird stuff occurring while they were filming that they were able to make a documentary, SPOOKED – The Ghosts of Waverly Hills Sanatoriumwith weird footage, EVPs, and haunted history of the famous building.
And that documentary led them into a brand new direction, being able to create fictional movies based on the historical legends and then going in depth on the truth behind them, a real mix of the paranormal and pop culture. This was a fun interview full of anecdotes, paranormal tidbits, and a discussion on following your passion, whether it’s musician or filmmaker or gourmet hamburger artist (or a veggie burger artist for me!)
It’s that discussion of living your life with passion that inspired this week’s song, “The Wilderness of Almost Was and Never Were”. Everyone has their own definition of “selling out”, so the trick is to make sure you understand it or someone else will define it for you.
What happened to the kids who got lost in the blur,
The wilderness of almost was and never were.
You used to plan, you used to scheme,
We used to curse the old regime,
What did you surrender. for legal tender,
Was your price more than your dreams?
When they come to you to sell out,
Just promise to put up a fight,
And realize you’ll never be so close as you are tonight.
Drowning in your memory, and you’ll drown right in your hurt,
The wilderness of almost was and never were.
We used to fight and get worked up,
We said up.
What do you remember about your surrender?
Did you get your damn closeup?
When they come to you to sell out,
Just promise to put up a fight,
And realize you’ll never be so close as you are tonight.
When they come to you to sell out,
Just promise to put up a fight,
And realize you’ll never be so close as you are tonight.
So, Wendy and I recorded this episode while on a trip to the sunny California Dream Factory and saw the previews for a show we’d talked about all the way back in Episode 36 – Paranormal Lit 101: Victorian Horror with Brian J. Showers. Houdini & Doyle is the show that turns the friendship between escape artist Harry Houdini and Sherlock Holmes author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle into a crime solving duo. We haven’t seen it yet, but we thought we’d talk about the real relationship between the two men, who were on very different sides of the Spiritualism equation in the 1920s.
For a fun little side note, we not only went back to visited with rock photographer Jimmy Steinfeldt, the Rock n’ Roll Lens (get his awesome book of rock photography here!) at his studio in Laurel Canyon . Fun fact, it was formerly the home of Gary Kurtz, a producer on Star Wars, but more importantly for us, producer on Return To Oz (which I’ve referenced in this podcast way too many times!) So that was a nice little dose of extra nerdery for me.
Spiritualism was the movement that grew to massive heights in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries. With so many people dying in the American Civil War and the massive loss of life that occurred in the First World War, people were desperate for ways to contact their deceased loved ones. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was one of these, he was always interested in the supernatural, but became obsessed after losing his first wife in 1906 and his son shortly before the end of World War I.
Here’s Sir Arthur Conan Doyle with that smoking walrus look that was so hot at the turn of the century.
Spiritualist mediums would hold séances where spirit faces would appear, strange knocks and sounds would respond as answers to questions, ectoplasm would manifest seemingly from nowhere, fingerprints would show up on the table that weren’t from any of the attendees. The mediums said that they could talk to the dead and Conan Doyle ate it right up.
Houdini gonna getcha!
Harry Houdini was the most famous magician in the world and it wasn’t uncommon for performers like himself to claim that they had real supernatural powers. But when his beloved mother passed away, Harry was desperate to talk to her again. He attended séance after séance to try and find some evidence of the paranormal, of a connection to the afterlife. But he knew the stage and he knew sleight of hand, he knew how to trick people and he knew when he was being tricked. Houdini debunked every one of the mediums he came into contact with.
Peanut butter and chocolate, at last!
They met in New York City in 1920 when the author was doing a weeklong stint of speeches at Carnegie Hall about Spiritualism. Houdini found Conan Doyle an intelligent counterpoint to his skepticism and Doyle thought that Houdini had magical powers and that he was just covering up his supernatural abilities by saying it was all illusion. They even went on a little jaunt to Atlantic City together where in the swimming pool, Houdini amazed the old Scotsman with how long he could hold his breath underwater.
Eventually things started going south when Sir Arthur had his wife do a special medium session where she claimed to be able to contact Harry’s mother through automatic writing (that’s where spirits take over the hand of the writer or influence their subconscious to communicate with the living .) It went on for hours but Houdini was just disappointed in the end when the mother wrote in perfect English (she was Hungarian and knew very little of the language of their American adopted home) and also when she made no mention of it being her birthday on the day she made contact (a fact that only Houdini knew in the room.)
But even the world’s most famous escape artist couldn’t escape the Grim Reaper. He died on Halloween in 1926. His wife Bess held a séance every year on the anniversary of his death until after ten years she quit, believing that she never got the special message that Harry promised to send her from the other side.
Because this episode really is about being desperate to know that there’s something wanting to contact the loved ones who have gone before them, we thought that our track, “Viking Funeral” would be appropriate because it’s a tribute to those we’ve left behind.
To the dearly departed,
and all the human sacrifice,
and to all the broken hearted,
who never got to roll the dice.
For tonight we ride,
with ghosts at our side,
of all the ones whom fate was so unkind.
All the promises unkept,
and the tears we never wept,
this one goes out to the left behind.
For all the broken arrows,
who never hit the mark,
We’ll see you on the flambeaus,
as we sing dirges in the dark.
For tonight we ride,
with ghosts at our side,
of all the ones whom fate was so unkind.
All the promises unkept,
and the tears we never wept,
this one goes out to the left behind.
For tonight we ride,
with ghosts at our side,
of all the ones whom fate was so unkind.
All the promises unkept,
and the tears we never wept,
this one goes out to the left behind.
For tonight we ride,
with ghosts at our side,
of all the ones whom fate was so unkind.
All the promises unkept,
and the tears we never wept,
this one goes out to the left behind.
credits
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.
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.
A rock band's journey into the afterlife, UFOs, entertainment, and weird science.
