Tag Archives: afterlife

Podcast

229 – Ringing Out The Old: Favorite Paranormal Stories of 2018

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Our New Year’s Resolution for 2018 was to hold ourselves to a higher standard of paranormal investigation. Did we do so? Well, we hope so! We hope we gave you guys a lot to think about these past 52 episodes and hopefully stretched your mind but not your credulity.

So, as we ring out the old of 2018, we wanted to talk about some of our favorite paranormal things of 2018. What exactly did we think was the most interesting. Allison Jornlin from Milwaukee Ghosts and Scott Markus from WhatsYourGhostStory.com join Wendy and I for a discussion of our favorite paranormal stuff from the year.

Wendy particularly enjoyed Josh Gates’ 4-part series, Expedition Unknown: Search for the Afterlife. In fact, here’s a particular scene with psychic Chip Coffey at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery that she really enjoyed.

Scott was excited about the idea of “timebleeds” that we might actually be haunting ourselves, that we’re seeing glimpses and hearing sounds not of dead people, but of people living in another time and somehow it’s bleeding through into our present. It’s a theory that he heard from Grant Wilson from SyFy’s Ghost Hunters talk about earlier this year as well as a remarkable story from Michigan supernatural shamus John Tenney and it captured his imagination.

It’s something that we discussed in our episode on precognition. According to the Block Universe Theory of Spacetime, the past, present, and future have already happened. Everything is actually happening at once, we are just experiencing it in a linear manner. When we see a ghost, we might be seeing someone who occupies that same space, but is living in a different time.

Allison’s favorite story of the year is the strange space object Oumumua, what astronomers originally thought was a comet about the size of the Empire State Building ended up having several unusual characteristics, but it didn’t have the regular comet tail of debris and it exhibited acceleration when it shouldn’t have. When a Harvard professor released a paper saying we should consider the proposition that it’s not just a space rock, but that it might be a craft of alien origin, the world sat up and listened.

Of course, Allison wanted to talk about it because she just visited the observatory in Hawaii that discovered it (hence the name Oumumua which means “messenger from the past”) but the reason she was most excited about it is because it helped bring respectability to the idea of talking about aliens. Usually as soon as you bring up UFOs you’re going to turn scientists off, but here’s the rub from the researcher that wrote the paper:

“The point of doing science is not to have a prejudice,” he says. “A prejudice is based on the experience of the past, but if you want to allow yourself to make discoveries, then the future will not be the same as the past.”

Theoretical physicist Avi Loeb 

And to that we say, BOOM GOES THE DYNAMITE.

Allison’s pic from the observatory
Wendy went there too, you’re so high up, you’re above the clouds, damn!

Okay, what was my favorite of the year? In 2018, tulpas blew my mind. The whole idea that our beliefs could affect reality so much, we could actually be creating the things that we see. Sure, I had heard of the concept before, and Alexandra David Neel’s famous story of seeing one in action in the mountains of Tibet, but I didn’t really buy it.

Then we did a whole podcast on Santa Claus sightings and we talked to Nick Redfern about how people are seeing the Slenderman in real life (and how the tragic stabbings that occurred in Waukesha, Wisconsin were the day AFTER they talked about it on Coast To Coast AM!) C’mon guys, this is exactly the plot of Wes Craven’s New Nightmare.

I never really entertained the possibility of it, but then Seth Breedlove’s The Bray Road Beast movie also discusses the idea that the beast wasn’t a cryptid, but something called forth through satanic rituals in the area. I witnessed the scene of at least two of those Satanic rituals not that far away from Bray Road and I just thought it was silly. Really, just stupid kids who listened to the wrong heavy metal records. But after talking to Dean Radin about his book, Real Magic, things started clicking.

Maybe there is something to these paranormal sightings and we’re creating them ourselves through the power of belief. That was something I hadn’t considered before (I’ve been a fairly hardcore materialist for most of my life) and it’s a road that I want to explore much more in 2019.

2018 was the Year Of The Dog in the Chinese Zodiac and for a lot of people it was foretold to be an unlucky one. This week’s song is all about the emotions of going through a rough patch in your life or relationship and coming out the other side. Some years are awesome, some are learning experiences, and sometimes you’re just glad they’re over. Here is Sunspot with “Year Of The Dog”.

When the screaming is over and the crying is done,
and we’ve forgotten every promise that we broke.
When there was nothing left to get mad at, the past was always there.
To get pissed at the punchlines of all our inside jokes.

And when the whiskey turned us sour,
yeah we could always blame each other
And when the anger turned to sadness,
hating you was easier than hating myself,
yeah hating you was easier than hating myself.

Welcome to the worst year of your life,
I almost can’t believe we made it out,
Screaming and crying, drinking and fighting,
This past life is one I can live without,

The year our conversation almost turned to monologue
good riddance to the Year of the Dog
good riddance to the Year of the Dog.

I might come back as a bug,
for the stupid things I’ve done,
Or maybe I might not come back at all.
But I’m trying to learn the lessons of all my failed attempts,
I want you to know I’m an older soul,
and we’ll never do that again

And when the whiskey turned us sour,
we could always blame each other, yeah.
And when the anger turned to sadness,
hating you was easier than hating myself,
hating you was easier than hating myself.

Welcome to the worst year of your life,
I almost can’t believe we made it out,
Screaming and crying, drinking and fighting,
This past life is one I can live without,

When our story almost turned from romance to epilogue
good riddance to the Year of the Dog
good riddance to the Year of the Dog.

Podcast

163 – Flatliners: Hollywood and the Near Death Experience

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Looks like there is no intellectual property that the great minds of Hollywood are afraid of resurrecting. Twenty seven years after it originally premiered, they’re bringing back Flatliners as a quasi-reboot / stealth sequel. They’re probably getting the message that us geeks are getting tired of rebooting properties when they could basically create a new story with new characters while keeping it in the same universe and even just some kind of nod to the original can satiate fans who are looking for a continuation of the story.

Joel Schumacher made one of the 1980s most stylish and inventive horror films with The Lost Boys (a film we’ve talked about on this podcast a hundred times) and he took the main heavy from that film (a little actor by the name of Kiefer Sutherland) and made him the lead of his next movie, Flatliners.

Flatliners is a film about medical students who create Near Death Experiences for themselves (the flatline of the title) and then get resuscitated back to life. They’re looking for the last frontier, what happens after we die, what Shakespeare called “the undiscovered country from whose bourne no man returns”, well, unless you’re Kiefer Sutherland, Kevin Bacon, Billy Baldwin, Oliver Platt, or Julia Roberts.

What they find is a cosmic justice waiting for them, an accountability for their sins in life waiting for them. And those sins can now come back to haunt them in our world, brought back through the portal of the Near Death Experience. That’s the gist of the story and it’s still an effective horror film. We’ll see about the remake starring Ellen Page and Diego Luna (who are usually pretty great) and directed by the original The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo director, Niels Arden Oplev (and written by the dude who wrote Source Code which is a solid Twilight Zone episode of a movie!)

Anyway, when you think of a Near Death Experience, you think of your life flashing before your eyes, a tunnel with a light at the end, and sometimes an Out of Body Experience where your spirit leaves your body and you watch what’s happening to you.

Well, science seems to have an answer for some of those aspects of NDEs, there are others that consistently confound modern science, including Out Of Body Experiences during clinical death (cardiac arrest at least) that are not quite explainable and in one case, seemingly impossible.

Then we go into celebrity Near Death Experiences, from Kiefer Sutherland’s own father Donald, to Johnny Cash, Gary Busey, and many more.

You know theyre father and son, right?
You know they’re father and son, right?

This week’s song is based on Dylan Thomas’ classic poem “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”, with our own track about raging against the dying of the light. Here’s a headbanger about going out with a fight form our own flatline, “Pre-Emptive Strike”.

And when I’m hanging by a thread,
Tied to machines and half-dead,
and when you think it’s my final act,
don’t pull the plug,
I’m coming back.

Hey!
The strength of my will protects me from harm,
I’m not going out with a needle in my arm.

I’ll not go down without a fight,
my will is my pre-emptive strike,
I’ll not go down without a fight,
I’ll not go gently into that good night.

And when you think I can’t go on,
And when you think I’m not that strong,
I will not die by my own hand,
I’ll hold my ground, I’ll make my stand.

Hey!
The strength of my will protects me from harm,
I’m not going out with a needle in my arm.

I’ll not go down without a fight,
my will is my pre-emptive strike,
I’ll not go down without a fight,
I’ll not go gently into that good night.

Blog

RIP Angus Scrimm – The Tall Man and Phantasm’s Paranormal Influences

Actor Angus Scrimm passed away yesterday at the age of 89. If you’re a horror fan, then you’ll remember him as the evil undertaker, The Tall Man, from the Phantasm film series (the one with the flying silver balls that stick in people’s heads.) Number one, what an awesome stage name (he was originally born Lawrence Rory Guy). Number two, he was the one guy in the Phantasm movies that looked like he was some kind of an actor in real life. You can see why he was such a memorable presence in this supercut of his greatest moments from the highlights of the franchise (namely Phantasm 1 and 2).

Phantasm was mostly recently making the sci-fi news rounds because Star Wars: The Force Awakens director J.J. Abrams mentioned how much that he loves the movie and that he created one of the characters (Captain Phasma) as an homage to the film, the character even wears a special reflective mirrored armor like the scary balls that fly through the air in Phantasm. Abrams also gave Scrimm a recurring role in his TV show, Alias, because he was a fan of the actor.

Not that the other characters and actors in Phantasm weren’t memorable and  didn’t give it their best shot. Especially Reggie Bannister, you just gotta love that guy. I still use the phrase “Hot as love” sometimes when I’m done playing a song.

Angus Scrimm’s late in life success in the horror genre was preceded by a long career in entertainment journalism as well as being a go-to guy for writing liner notes on the insides of records – which was a thing back in the day when people used to buy albums, and he even won a Grammy for his work in the music industry!)

I always heard that he was a nice guy at horror conventions and his dedication to the character even as the budgets of the Phantasm sequels started getting less and less. So, I’m raising a glass to a life well lived.

I celebrated my eighteenth birthday with my first meal as a full vegetarian, a trip to the adult book store (who knew that Al Bundy’s favorite magazine was a real thing?), and a viewing of Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead, so the series has always been close to my heart. My friends and I were big fans of the series in high school because we appreciated Reggie’s dirty innuendos, the gross-out horror of the flying balls killing people, the surreality of the filmmaking, and the mashup of (spoilers for a 37-year old movie) beings from another dimension that enslave human souls after we die.

The Tall Man’s most memorable quote besides bellowing “Boyyyyyyyy!” is “You think when you die, you go to heaven. You come to us!” which is a special kind of terror. You grow up your whole life thinking that when you die, you go to a  “better place” (unless you’re a Calvinist that just believes most people are going to Hell anyway). But Phantasm introduced to me the idea that maybe the afterlife wasn’t wonderful at all, that there is something worse than death, a place you could never escape where you were turned into a zombie Jawa slave for eternity.  A reimagining of Hell where The Tall Man took the place of Lucifer and owned you.

Now, that’s some scary business right there and in some of the world’s earliest cultures, the Afterlife isn’t fun at all. In fact, if you’ve ever studied the Epic of Gilgamesh (the world’s first action hero!) you’ll know that death to the ancient Sumerians meant unpleasantness for the rest of eternity. They feared the dead who “live in darkness, eat clay, and are clothed like birds with wings” and would eat the living if they escaped the Underworld.

In Maori culture in New Zealand, the bodies of the recently deceased needed to be brought back to their families immediately and rituals performed or the spirits might become angry and decide to bring more family members to the other side. 

So, while there might be an evolutionary advantage to believing in the afterlife, it doesn’t mean that we necessarily believe in a Heaven filled with naked angels strumming on harps, but also that Hell could be programmed into our primordial belief systems and it’s that antediluvian angst that Phantasm excels at accessing. In the world of the film, there is no “happily ever after”, The Tall Man is coming from another dimension to enslave the souls of the Earth and the main characters have to figure out how to stop him.

 

But interestingly enough, Whitley Strieber’s sequel to his book Communion (who in my opinion has influenced our modern views ideas of aliens more than any other creator) was called Transformation, which came out in 1988, the same year as Phantasm II. The main idea of Transformation was that the aliens that he claimed to have been abducted by all his life in Communion, were here in a spiritual capacity and not just a scientific experiment (and I don’t know if that would have been a relief to South Park‘s Eric Cartman or not…)

But in Transformation, the aliens are here and visiting us to help recycle our souls, which starts blending two formerly very different strains of paranormal belief into one (albeit Mormonism and Scientology have been doing this for a longer period of time, but Transformation is really when I got my first taste of it.) This mixture of aliens and an inescapable afterlife of servitude is what makes Phantasm such an mindtrick and it was all brought to life in such effective terror by the performance of Angus Scrimm as The Tall Man. Thanks Lawrence Rory Guy, for the awe-inspiring personification of a perfectly horrifying, yet ancient, idea.