Tag Archives: conspiracy

296 – Dark Skies: TV Fact And Fiction with Matthew Kresal

After The X-Files set the world on fire in 1993 and helped establish the fairly new FOX Network as a major player in television, other networks tried to jump on the bandwagon with similarly-themed paranormal shows. There was the small-town horror of American Gothic, the supernatural drama of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, the government conspiracy angle of The Pretender, and even David Hasselhoff got in on the action with his “paranormal investigation in paradise” show, Baywatch Nights (and Lou Rawls sang the theme song, c’mon!)

But the show that skewed the closest to The X-Files was a program called Dark Skies, set at the dawn of the UFO age and doubling down upon The X-Files’ pattern of taking real-life paranormal inspiration and turning it into fodder for fiction. The slogan for the show was: “History as we know it is a lie.”

By combining the government conspiracy paranoia of The X-Files with 1960s nostalgia, the Roswell alien craze, and the infamous Majestic 12. It mixed real historical figures with a science fiction story of extraterrestrial invasion and it ended way too soon. With a series pilot directed by Poltergeist and Texas Chainsaw Massacre‘s Tobe Hooper and the imprimatur of an appearance by Art Bell himself, it seemed like a sure bet, but it was cancelled after one season.

We talk with Matt Kresal about his new book on the series, finally learning what could have been, and also the real-life paranormal inspirations behind the series.

Some of the topics we cover in this discussion are:

  • How creators Brent V. Friedman and Bryce Zabel created the Dark Skies mythology
  • What did Ronald Reagan’s driver know about UFO disclosure
  • The plan for future seasons of the show to cover more real UFO cases in the 70s, 80s, and 90s
  • The government agents that approached the creators to try and “help them get the facts right”
  • How the CIA and Department of Defense was trying to infiltrate Hollywood to shape the alien narrative

We originally recorded this discussion for a special See You On The Other Side livestream and if you’d like to watch us talk (unedited, so umms and ahhhs intact!) then check out this video:

Matthew Kresal is an absolute wealth of knowledge of classic science fiction television and he was a pleasure to talk to, so you know why the produers and creators of Dark Skies were willing to share so much with him. You can pick up a copy of his book right here and we highly recommend it!

282 – Coronavirus Conspiracy: A Pandemic of Misinformation

Here we go again, it’s a new year and there’s a new type of flu going around that’s going to kill us. The 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) first originated in Wuhan, a city of eleven million people in China, and since it began, internet rumors have been flying fast and furious, in many places spread through memes.

Some are fun…

Some aren’t:

How does bogus information spread so quickly? Trust.

Trust in the media is at an all time low. Only 41% of Americans have a lot or a good amount of faith in the veracity of mass media. Trust in the government is even lower. In 1958, 73% of Americans had faith in their government, in 2019, it was at 17%. People just don’t believe what they’re told. And it’s not like the government hasn’t lied to them before or that the media has completely gotten a story wrong. When you don’t trust the institutions that are supposed to tell you the truth, conspiracy theories start looking a lot better.

How are people just supposed to trust the party line when official stories look ridiculous (looking at you Jeffrey Epstein)?! And we know that China censors the Internet, how can we trust anything coming out of there? That’s what we tackle this week as we discuss conspiracy theories, the Coronavirus, and why people are attracted to misinformation.

So what are some of our favorite Coronavirus conspiraces?

  • That the Virology Institute of Wuhan is a “real life” Umbrella Corporation like in the video game and movie, Resident Evil
  • Bill Gates patented the Coronavirus in 2015 and now he’s going to use it to depopulate the planet
  • It’s a Chinese bioweapon that escaped from the lab
  • That using a special soution called MMS (miracle mineral solution) can cure you of the Coronavirus, even though it’s actually just bleach
  • That China is doing a media blackout as crematorium employees report hundreds of bodies being burned so the disease won’t spread
  • That the virus contains 4 “protein inserts” from HIV that show the virus was designed and didn’t just occur naturally

For conspiracies to work like crackpots think they do, it would require geniuses at the top. Benjamin Franklin famously said, “Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.” Whether it’s UFOs, cars that are powered by water, or bioengineered virii, the truth would get out. We keep believing that humans are actually smarter than they are, when the truth is that the inmates are running the asylum.

And in the jungle we’d be compost,
in the Savannah we’d be meat.
We’re so petty and we’re so mean,
We are everything we hoped we wouldn’t be.

Just so you know, the inmates are running the asylum.
Just so you know, they’re just as dumb as they seem.

And in the water we’d be sharkbait,
In the Taiga, freezer burn.
How old were you, when you finally knew,
that no one really has a clue?

Just so you know, the inmates are running the asylum.
Just so you know, they’re just as dumb as they seem.

256 – Conspiracy Theories: From Sword Of Trust to The Moon Landing

The new film Sword of Trust features a deep-dive into a fictional conspiracy theory that the South actually won the Civil War. Directed by mumblecore veteran Lynn Shelton and starring everyone’s favorite curmudgeon Marc Maron, Sword of Trust is a comedy about a couple who inherit a Confederate sword that actually proves the South won the war and their journey into tinfoil hat-land to sell the sword to the highest bidder.

Our colleague Scott Markus from What’s Your Ghost Story.com got to work the Sword of Trust red carpet at the film’s premiere at SXSW this year for the International Screenwriters’ Association and he asked the cast and crew (including director Lynn Shelton and lead Marc Maron) about what their favorite conspiracy theory was for this episode.

In addition to that fun segment, Scott joins Wendy and I for a discussion of our favorite conspiracy theories. Because of course, July 20th 2019 was the 50th anniversary of the landing on the moon and the idea that we faked it because we needed a big propaganda win at the end of the 60s continues to this day. Who doesn’t love this video of Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin punching A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon filmmaker Bart Sibrel…

In addition to discussing the movie and the moon landing conspiracy theories, here are some of the other topics we talk about:

Because Sword of Trust features a Civil War conspiracy theory, we wanted to record a song that was popular during the era. Released in 1861, you could hear “Aura Lee” on any night around army campfires on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line. You might recognize the melody because it was repurposed for Elvis’ classic, “Love Me Tender”.

As the blackbird in the spring, ‘neath the willow tree,
Sat and piped, I heard him sing; sing of Aura Lee.
Aura Lee, Aura Lee, maid with golden hair
Sunshine came along with thee, and swallows in the air.

In thy blush the rose was born, music when you spake.
Through thine azure eye, the morn, sparkling seemed to break.
Aura Lee, Aura Lee, birds of crimson wing
Never song have sung to me as in that night, sweet spring.

Aura Lee, the bird may flee the willow’s golden hair
Swing through winter fitfully, on the stormy air.
Yet if thy blue eyes I see, gloom will soon depart.
For to me, sweet Aura Lee is sunshine through the heart.

When the mistletoe was green, midst the winter’s snows
Sunshine in thy face was seen kissing lips of rose.

Aura Lee, Aura Lee, take my golden ring.
Love and light return with thee,
and swallows with the spring.
Aura Lee, Aura Lee, take my golden ring.
Love and light return with thee,
and swallows with the spring.

This Week’s Best Paranormal News – April 12th, 2019

Hey guys,
If you missed our last podcast it’s a great discussion with paranormal reality star Brian Cano (from Haunted Collector and Paranormal Caught on Camera). Click here to listen to it.

In the meantime, we’re back with the best paranormal news we saw this week!

‘Haunted’ doll ‘blinks’ in selfie at abandoned ‘Village of the Damned’
mirror

This one went viral on social media this week and it’s a pretty great pic. The creepy doll appeared to close her eyes in an abandoned building known as ‘The Village of the Damned’

Chinese scientists made super-monkeys with human brain genes
Futurism

And so it begins… “It is a classic slippery slope issue and one that we can expect to recur as this type of research is pursued.”

We Spoke to an MIT Computer Scientists About the Simulation Hypothesis
Digital Trends

The simulation hypothesis, which was famously probed in the 1999 film The Matrix, is the subject of a new book by Rizwan Virk, a computer scientist and video game developer who leads Play Labs at MIT. In his book, Virk endeavors to unpack the heady arguments that call our physical world into question.

Iran Says ‘Tall, White’ Space Aliens Control America
Forbes

Documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden conclusively prove that the United States has been ruled by a race of tall, white space aliens who also assisted the rise of Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Okay…

Incident Detail Report Shows Man Called 911 to Report Sighting of ‘7-8 ft Tall’ Creature in Woodstock, Illinois
The Singular Fortean Society

Now here’s a great example of how you do a paranormal investigation lead by our friends in The Singular Fortean Society. Someone called 911 to report seeing a strange winged creature in the northern Chicago burbs. The investigators followed up with the caller as well as did a Freedom of Information Act request to get a transcript of the call. Now, the rest of it is sketchy because the caller was hoping to “name the creature” and then they weren’t responsive to the investigator’s follow-ups. But The Singular Fortean handled this exactly right.

Stevie Wonder isn’t blind, claim wild theorists – and here’s the ‘evidence’
mirror

The so-called ‘Stevie Wonder Truthers’ bizarrely claim there’s a whole heap of evidence to suggest Stevie can see. Ummm… what?!

Sneaker Pimps – Superstition (Stevie Wonder Cover) YouTube

Trip Hop pioneers Sneaker Pimps covering Stevie?! Oh yeah. If Stevie can really see, we hope he watches the video!

Next week, we’re tackling the cursed movie Antrum. Please make sure you’re subscribed to the podcast to get it as soon as it comes out!

See you on the other side of the weekend!
Mike, Wendy, and the SYOTOS family

231 – The Man Who Knew Too Much: UFOs, Conspiracies, and Murder

This week, there was a plethora of exciting UFO news (well, probably as exciting as we’re going to get until they finally land in our backyard) so we wanted to bring back one of our favorite guests, [Robbie Graham]. Robbie authored the fascinating and insightful book, Silver Screen Saucers as well as editing UFOs: Reframing The Debate, which is one of the most comprehensive looks at the subject of the last decade. Wendy and I talked with Robbie and Scott Markus from WhatsYourGhostStory.com joins us again for the discussion.

Starting out, we had to talk to Robbie about what it was like being on the History Channel juggernaut, Ancient Aliens! He was on the latest episode and he told us what it was like being brought into the study of a millionaire’s home (to make it look a little more intellectual) as well as being remotely directed in London over the Internet from Los Angeles.

Robbie on Ancient Aliens

But just in the news this week, we had to discuss the new article about former Nevada senator Harry Reid coming out of retirement to lobby for more investigation into military reports of UFOs. Roll Call is not your normal UFO publication, it’s a political blog, so it’s always nice to see something weird in there. But why does Harry Reid care so much and why now? The best quote of the entire article is when he talks about Area 51.

“Oh sure, I’ve been to Area 51. I know Area 51. I don’t know if I should say many times, but lots and lots of times. I know Area 51 quite well, I know what they’ve done there,” said Reid. “I don’t know in recent years, of course, but I know what went on there.”

What went on there, Harry, for God’s sakes, what went on there?

But that brings up a bigger point, the existence of extraterrestrials is in the news more than ever. Since the New York Times article in 2017, aliens have snuck more and more in the news, from the latest fast radio bursts from space to the strange Rama-like space objet Oumuamua. And the go-to guy for astronomer credibility seems to be Harvard Professor, Avi Loeb. Now this guy is no slouch when it comes to academic credentials, but he sure is talking about aliens a lot. Is that because they’re getting us ready for disclosure?!

Party On Wayne

More likely, they’re just in it for the clicks. Those stories get shared more than any other and in a quickly shrinking media landscape, views mean money.

But another story that came out this week that I was particularly interested in was the official pronouncement this last week that conspiracy theorist Max Spiers who passed away in Poland mysteriously in 2016, actually died of a drug overdose.

Max Spiers
Max Spiers

It was a tragic end for a young guy (well, kinda young, I would be less than a month older than him, so it hits home for me) and the salacious news stories were filled with tales of cryptic messages sent to his mother and girlfriend in the UK as well as descriptions of him vomiting black bile before expiring. It didn’t help that his friends were telling people that extraterrestrials were mind controlling his behavior. I’m all for a good conspiracy theory and I fully understand that our government isn’t afraid to assassinate people but was a guy who talked about Nazi bases on the moon really getting too close to the truth?

Fascinatingly, that leads to a story from Robbie about how he once was paranoid about his phones being bugged and that he might have been being watched by the CIA while he was investigating another mysterious death, that of Hollywood screenwriter, Gary Devore. First of all, Devore wrote Timecop, the greatest of all Jean-Claude Van Damme films, so we all owe him at least a tiny bit of gratitude for that.

But in the mid-90s, Devore was working on a screenplay about the 1989 U.S. Invasion of Panama. That’s the one that was ordered by former CIA director, George H.W. Bush to capture former CIA operative Manuel Noriega.  My favorite part of the whole invasion (if one can have a favorite part of something that killed 23 US soldiers, 150 Panamanian soldiers, and over 500 Panamanian civilians) is that the U.S. military famously played “We’re Not Gonna Take It” by Twisted Sister at an earsplitting volume outside the Vatican Embassy, where Noriega had holed up after being driven from the Capitol.

Could Dee Snider have been in the CIA as well?

While Devore disappeared in 1997, he was on his way to deliver a copy of his latest script, the one about the “real reason” for the  Panama invasion. He never made it and a year later they found his Ford Explorer at the bottom of a California aqueduct. His body was there, but strangely his hands and the script were both missing.

Robbie became obsessed with the case and along with his colleague, Dr. Matthew Alford, they authored an article in The Guardian newspaper talking about Hollywood and the CIA and specifically talking about Gary Devore. Was Robbie getting too close to the truth? Well, in 2012, CIA operative Chase Brandon, who knew Devore well  because he was the CIA liaison to Hollywood, wrote a book called The Cryptos Conundrum. It’s supposedly fiction, but he makes a lot of claims (particularly about Roswell) and in one of the  “fictional scenarios” makes up an investigative journalist who starts exposing too many of the CIA’s plans and then mysteriously suffers a fatal heart attack. The name of this fictional journalist? Robert Graham.

THAT’S $%^ING NUTS. You can read the passages right here in the Google Book version of The Cryptos Conundrum. It’s not really very subtle.

Alford went on to make a documentary about the case in 2014 called The Writer With No Hands.

And speaking of Hollywood, Scott’s favorite story this week is the upcoming 61st anniversary of the Black Dahlia murder, where poor Elizabeth Short was found naked, mutilated and cut in half. It became one of Tinseltown’s most famous and shocking unsolved cases. Los Angeles homicide detective Steve Hodel believes that the killer was his own father(!), Dr. George Hodel, and the new TNT series I Am The Night, will be based on Hodel’s theories. Steve Hodel has also implied that his father was the Zodiac Killer. Happy Father’s Day, yikes!

For this week’s song, we were thinking about the tragedy of Max Spiers’ death and also Robbie’s own story of possibly being surveilled by an intelligence agency while investigating a cover-up. Whether or not you believe in conspiracy theories, from Q Anon to secret supersoldiers, our intelligence agencies wield a scary amount of unchecked power. While a majority of their actions might be in the service of protecting us, is the truth worth getting in their crosshairs?

You wear the truth like a tattoo
You look over your shoulder is there someone right behind you?

Walking too close to the Left Hand Path
Living with a target on your back.

Whispers in the night are beckoning,
to a black magic reckoning,
hidden hands are pulling strings,
and watching everything.
Steer clear of the dangerous kind
a death warrant has been signed.
Don’t fall in love with
The Man Who Knew Too Much.

Just like in Catch-22
Just cuz you’re paranoid don’t mean they’re not out for you.

Just what will you give up for the truth?
Even if it ends up killing you.

Whispers in the night are beckoning,
to a black magic reckoning,
hidden hands are pulling strings,
and watching everything.
Steer clear of the dangerous kind
a death warrant has been signed.
Don’t fall in love with
The Man Who Knew Too Much.

215 – Avril Is Dead: The Strange Cases of Pop Culture Doppelgängers

Avril Lavigne’s latest single, “Head Above Water” is off her first album in five years. After battling Lyme Disease, Lavigne said that it was thinking of her own mortality and going through the living Hell of a night where she believed that she was going to die that inspired the music off of her new album. But some people on the Internet believe that the real Avril Lavigne died over fifteen years ago and it’s her lookalike that has been living her life instead.  Is the Avril Lavigne who is singing “Head Above Water” really a doppelgänger originally named Melissa Vandella? Is it really Melissa who married the guy from Nickelback AND the guy from Sum 41 (well, at least she keeps it Canadian!)? Why’d you have to go and make things so complicated, huh?

Well, not really. A Brazilian fan site revealed the fact that they made the whole thing up as a hoax in 2012 as a social media experiment. Could they start a rumor that other eoieoke would report on? Well, here we are, good Jon guys. Avril of course is not the first musician that people said died was replaced surreptitiously, she’s just the latest. Paul McCartney obviously is the most famous with the “Paul Is Dead” business from the late 1960s.

If you haven’t heard the story, it goes that Paul McCartney got into a car accident and died in 1966 and the British government asked the Beatles to stay together so there wouldn’t be a rash of teenage suicides in the wake of the band breaking up. And I almost believe that. No band was bigger than the Beatles, ever.  We had  a Beatles week in my Sixth Grade class because my Baby Boomer teacher was so excited to talk about them. Books after books have been written about them, they’re the biggest, richest, and most famous musicians ever. They have a song royalty and merchandise machine that will last long after I’m dead. 

People heard “I buried Paul” at the end of “Strawberry Fields Forever” or “Turn me on, Deadman” when they played “Revolution #9” backwards and they said that John was leaving them clues about what really happened. They said that there were hints in Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band to the name of the impostor and that the fact that they stopped performing live at the end of 1966 meant that they didn’t want the new Paul to get exposed. People even say that the cover of Abbey Road is supposed to represent a “funeral” for Paul, with John as the clergyman, Ringo as the mourner, and George as the gravedigger. Sorry, I think that’s reaching. If the real Paul McCartney actually died, this new guy will have been Paul for almost three times as long as the original Paul was alive. Plus if this guy wrote “Let It Be”, then I like the doppelgänger better!

The King Lives?

Paul might be the most famous, but the idea that Elvis Presley traded places with his doppelgänger is the plot to Joe Lansdale’s wonderful short story (and modern horror cinema classic) Bubba Ho-Tep. And fascinatingly enough, an Elvis impersonator named Jimmy Ellis used the idea of the King faking his own death and returning to sing under another name to catapult himself to some minor hits and touring success in the late 1970s. Never underestimate the ability of American marketing ingenuity to turn a tragedy into a way to make money.

Live in Madison in 2005

Perhaps the weirdest case of synchronicity is something that just happened with one of our favorite musicians, Andrew W.K. If you haven’t heard him, it’s kind of like a Norman Vincent Peale book set to industrial heavy metal. There’s lots of screaming, lots of talk about partying, lots of dancing stupidly. Basically his music is amazing and as a band, we’ve been huge fans of him since right around 2002 where we would blast I Get Wet to keep us awake as we drove three abreast in a little truck going from gig to gig. We’ve gone to see him a dozen times, we opened for him when he played in Madison in 2015, and we just saw him again in Austin this year. 

Wendy and I just decided to talk about rock star doppelgängers on Friday, so when Stereogum released an article this weekend about an obscure controversy that erupted around Andrew W.K. years ago and that he might not be the person who recorded the first album and that he was replaced, well, we knew it was kismet!

First things first, Andrew W.K. is ridiculous. He wears a dirty white t-shirt and filthy acid-washed jeans, that’s his uniform.  His twitter is constant positivity about the power of partying. He had a column in the Village Voice completely dedicated to making people feel better about themselves through partying, pizza, and music. His show on VH1 was called Your Friend, Andrew W.K. It’s a non-stop performance art piece that has been going on since his first album, and that dedication has made his music mean even that much more to his fans. Sometimes at his shows you’ll see people dressed in the AWK uniform (unlike Wendy who makes her own Andrew W.K. wear!)

When he first visited England, even the BBC joked that it was rumored that Andrew W.K. wasn’t a real person but just a hoax conceived by Dave Grohl (from Nirvana and Foo Fighters) of all people. But in the liner notes for Andrew W.K.’s first album, it mentions that it’s executive produced by someone named Steev Mike (obviously a pseudonym). There is an article about Steev Mike in the early press for Andrew W.K. (before he’s signed to a major label) that uses Andrew’s picture for Steev. So what’s that about?

In 2004, a concert in New Jersey is abruptly canceled mid-show and people say that the Andrew W.K. that was onstage that night wasn’t the real one, it was just a guy dressed up as the original. Then, his official website is hacked  by Steev Mike himself, telling Andrew not to “squeeze him out”. Andrew makes a few cryptic statements, but on the Internet people start theorizing that Andrew W.K. is a fictional creation and this is just an actor playing him. Kind of like Pierce Brosnan in Remington Steele. People even say that the face of the Andrews looks different from the first album to the second album, that it’s a new long-haired white shirted wild man playing the character.

What’s the truth? Well, that’s what the Stereogum writer tries to get at in the article, but even Andrew W.K. officially says something on Facebook in a personal message to everyone that likes his page:

We urge you to dismiss the claim that Andrew isn’t real, or any similar assertions that paint him as something he is not. Andrew has never worked behind the scenes with any individual or group in order to make it appear as though he doesn’t exist.

So, the debate returns. What do I think? It’s just a performance art piece that was meant to dial up the mystery when Alternate Reality Games were hot in the early 2000s and they got a lot more traction out of the power of positive thinking then by creating some anti-Andrew W.K. The plan changed when they lost their label deal for their next album. But is it a different person playing the character? His face really thickened between I Get Wet and The Wolf

Younger Andrew
Older Andrew

I have to admit, that I kinda thought the same thing. It might just be getting older because he was so young in the first pic.

Was Andrew W.K. created by committee? Maybe. Do I care? Not really. The music and live show are my favorite parts and that seems to be the same guy since we first saw him in concert in 2004 in Milwaukee.

Bu people in general, demand honesty and authenticity in particular from musicians more than other artists it seems. The fake Paul wrote “Live and Let Die”, the new AWK wrote “Music Is Worth Living For”, the fake Elvis gave us Bubba Ho-Tep, the fake Avril gave us, well… I don’t know what she gave us, but I’m okay with all of these things.

There’s something particular about musicians, we like them dangerous, we like them real. It’s Robert Johnson selling his soul to the Devil, it’s Ozzy Osbourne as the Prince of Darkness (and not a doddering old addict). it’s Alice Cooper as a horror movie character and not a golfing Christian. We take that artifice seriously, maybe too seriously. When we think that they need to use a lookalike in order to deal with fame, maybe it’s fame we should be rethinking.

The Sunspot song this week plays around with the idea of the evil twin. Someone that looks like you that’s doing all the things that you don’t dare to. Are they acting out your worse impulses are they living your life better than you are? Is your doppelgänger the one who deserves your life because he won’t waste it? That’s part of the inspiration behind this week’s paranormal Sunspot track, “Doppelgänger”.

There’s a fetch who’s got my face
Doing things I’d never do
Saying the things I cannot say
Vandalizing the truth

Who’s the real
and who’s the fake
I gotta know before this psyche breaks

Doppelgänger

There’s an impostor
playing tricks on me
A psychopath
with my identity
There’s a counterfeit
walking round in my skin
My personality splits
Who is the Evil Twin?

Who’s My double, my alter ego
just a carbon copy
But in the end there’s only one
it’s either him or me

Who’s the real
and who’s the fake
I gotta know before this psyche breaks

Doppelgänger

There’s an impostor
playing tricks on me
A psychopath
with my identity
There’s a counterfeit
walking round in my skin
My personality splits
Who is the Evil Twin?

199 – The Rock & Roll Twilight Zone: Musical Mysteries with Richard Syrett

Richard Syrett didn’t start off being a weirdo, he was a radio host who stumbled onto a Sunday night talk show in Toronto whose audience shot through the roof when they broached paranormal topics (much like Art Bell and the original Coast to Coast AM did, and now Richard is a frequent guest host of Coast to Coast as well!)

But that shift proved auspicious, because Richard Syrett has been tackling the strange and unusual each week on Canadian radio with The Conspiracy Show and that even lead to four seasons of a television program as well on Vision TV.

Richard SyrettBut just because Richard Syrett waited some time in his profession career to start exploring the paranormal, doesn’t mean that he hasn’t felt that cold strange grip of the strange. He was close with with rock n’ roll author R. Gary Patterson who had spent decades exploring musical mysteries and the dark side of rock n’ roll pop culture. Gary was a frequent guest on The Conspiracy Show and Richard and Gary were planning to work together on their program when Gary passed away in 2017. Richard goes into detail on his own strange encounter with what might have been R. Gary Patterson’s ghost in our conversation!

Syrett’s new show is called The Rock & Roll Twilight Zone and you can hear it on Chris Jericho’s Podcast One network. It is a deep dive into some of Rock’s greatest mysteries and you’re bound to hear some conspiracies and strange stories that you’ve never heard before. I’ve been listening to it all week an it’s a lot of fun.

In this interview, Allison from Milwaukee Ghosts joins Richard and I in discussing some of the great topics that he’s been covering on The Rock & Roll Twilight Zone:

  • Was Elvis murdered?
  • How Jim Morrison could have faked his own death
  • Robert Johnson’s deal with the Devil and the curse of the Crossroads

The song this week is called “Rock & Roll Heaven” but it’s not quite as hagiographic as the Righteous Brothers’ 70s’ song of the same name. While the “live fast, die young” aesthetic of the 60s and 70s rock stars certainly contributed to their mythological stature, it’s more sad than anything else. Would you sacrifice decades of your life (even if it’s the old crappy part) to amplify your legacy? Are you good enough to get into “Rock & Roll Heaven”?

When I die will I go to Rock & Roll Heaven?
Am I good, am I good enough to get into Rock & Roll Heaven?
Where the high lasts forever, all the amps go to eleven
When I die I wanna go to Rock & Roll Heaven.

Is there a chart in the skies for all your
albums that went gold?
Is that your consolation prize
because you’ll never grow old?

When I die (when I die) will I go (will I go) to Rock & Roll Heaven?
(to Rock & Roll Heaven)
Am I good (am I good), am I good enough (good enough) to get into Rock & Roll Heaven?
(to get into Rock & Roll Heaven)
Where the high lasts forever, the amps go to eleven
(all the amps go to eleven)
When I die (when I die) I wanna go (wanna go) to Rock & Roll Heaven.

Is there a chart in the skies for all your
albums that went gold?
Is that your consolation prize
because you’ll never grow old?

When I die (when I die) will I go (will I go) to Rock & Roll Heaven?
(to Rock n’ Roll Heaven)
When I die (when I die) I wanna go (wanna go) to Rock & Roll Heaven.

184 – Something In The Way: The Death and Afterlife of Kurt Cobain

February 20th, 2018 would have been Kurt Cobain’s 51st birthday and it’s  hard to believe that he’s been gone for over two decades. Nirvana sold 75 million albums which puts them in the upper echelon of recording artists, but more than that, Kurt Cobain was one of the, if not the, last rock star.

He was aloof and artistic. He hated his fame while being drawn to it. He was the antithesis of the 80s Sunset Strip rocker, eschewing their glammed up hypermasculinity and virtuoso guitarists for dirty sweaters and simple melodies.  He seemed to spite the media, but they worshipped him.

kurt cobain ghost
Live fast. Die young. That’s how a musician becomes an icon.

Long before we watched every move artists made on Twitter and were a party to their private lives on YouTube and reality television, there was a sense of otherness to our celebrities. Kurt Cobain played guitar simply and sang his heart out with a tuning of his own, but he was not just like us. There was a quality to him that matched the era and he inspired an entire generation that was ready for a change. He was the last of the mainstream rock n’ roll heroes, and just like Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison, he died at twenty-seven years old, apparently of a heroin overdose and suicide by shotgun.

And when he died, it ripped people in my generation apart. We were the ones who listened to “Smells Like Teen Spirit” as Freshmen in high school and we made the Alternative Nation the soundtrack of our lives. Kurt Cobain was the John Lennon, he was the epicenter of the movement, and his passing also symbolized a feeling that it was over. The bands that came up in Nirvana’s wake (Bush, Silverchair, etc..) felt like warmed over seconds. The moment had passed. It was the last time that Rock ruled and it was nearly the end of American mainstream culture. By the end of the decade, Hip Hop was the number one genre, MTV only showed videos sometimes, and the alternative movement turned into Nü-Metal. Kurt’s death was the beginning of the end.

Other podcasts and documentary films have covered all the conspiracy theories surrounding his death and those range from his wife Courtney Love hiring a singer to kill her husband (even her wacko father thinks she did it) to the idea that the CIA tried to kill him because he was pro-Clinton (and George H.W. Bush was a former CIA director.)

kurt cobain ghost
Chicks dig that hat, man.

But what interests us the most is that just because Kurt died doesn’t mean that people haven’t still seen him around. He inspired the kind of loyalty and love in his fans that we just don’t see anymore. He wasn’t just a popular musician, he was a rock deity and he entered the pantheon the only way you can… with his untimely death.

Here are just a few of the Kurt Cobain ghost stories out there, it seems like he’s had a very healthy afterlife so far.

kurt cobain ghost
Statue of a crying Kurt Cobain in his hometown of Aberdeen, WA

For this episode, we cover the last song off of Nirvana’s breakthrough album, Nevermind. A dark moody classic, “Something In The Way”.

Underneath the bridge
The tarp has sprung a leak
And the animals I’ve trapped
Have all become my pets
And I’m living off of grass
And the drippings from the ceiling
But it’s okay to eat fish
‘Cause they don’t have any feelings

Something in the way
Ummmmm
Something in the way, yeah
Ummmmm
Something in the way
Ummmmm
Something in the way, yeah
Ummmmm
Something in the way
Ummmmm
Something in the way, yeah
Ummmmm

Underneath the bridge
The tarp has sprung a leak
And the animals I’ve trapped
Have all become my pets
And I’m living off of grass
And the drippings from the ceiling
But it’s okay to eat fish
‘Cause they don’t have any feelings

Something in the way
Ummmmm
Something in the way, yeah
Ummmmm
Something in the way
Ummmmm
Something in the way, yeah
Ummmmm
Something in the way
Ummmmm
Something in the way, yeah
Ummmmm
Something in the way
Ummmmm
Something in the way, yeah
Ummmmm

183 – Controversy: The Prince Murder Conspiracy

Prince is one of the least divisive musicians out there, everyone likes at least one Prince song. His mastery of multiple instruments made it so that he could write songs in almost any genre, moving from a Rock guitar jam to a sexy R&B bump and grind to a Pop piano ballad effortlessly. His death in April of 2016 really hit home not just for people like me who grew up with his music, but multiple generations of fans. After his passing was ruled an overdose,  But for fans of conspiracy theories and the dreaded Illuminati, the idea that The Purple One was just another tragic victim of the opioid epidemic was too much.

First off, his last Instagram post is a picture along with the text  “JUST WHEN U THOUGHT U WERE SAFE…”

prince murder
Was Prince’s last Instagram post a warning?

People took that as some kind of warning and it is kind of an eerie thing to say right before you died. Some people think that was a message that he knew he was going to be murdered.

In the 1990s, Prince took on the record companies and even legally changed to an unpronounceable symbol to try and get out of his contract with Warner Brothers. He even appeared at a press conference with the word “slave” written on his face.

prince murder
Slave written on Prince’s face

Famous black comedian, Civil Rights pioneer, and late-in-career conspiracy theorist Dick Gregory even came out and connected TMZ, Time Warner, and Warner Brothers to Prince’s death.

And Prince wasn’t afraid of a little conspiracy himself. On Tavis Smiley’s PBS show in 2009, Prince mentions that he saw a Dick Gregory speech and was so inspired by Gregory’s discussion of chemtrails and conspiracies, he wrote a song about it.

“Dreamer” off his album LOTUSFLOW3R talks of chemtrails in the sky and how everyone in the neighborhood is fighting soon after. The idea behind chemtrails is that there are chemicals in the jetstream behind aircraft and those chemicals are either 1. controlling the weather or 2. acting as destructive mind control agents to influence behavior.

Why would someone do this? Well, the modern prevailing conspiracy theory is population control. A smaller group of humans that is kept in check by fighting with each other instead of the prevailing power structures is easier to manage by the elite that rule the world.

So, was Prince murdered for his beliefs? Well, you’re going to have to listen to the episode for our opinion on the subject! But at the end, we treat you to an acoustic Sunspot cover of the Prince classic, “Delirious”!

I get delirious whenever you’re near
Lose all self-control, baby just can’t steer
Wheels get locked in place
Stupid look on my face
It comes to makin’ a pass, pretty mama
I just can’t win a race
‘Cause I get delirious
Delirious
Delirious
I get delirious when you hold my hand
Body gets so weak I can hardly stand
My temperature’s runnin’ hot
Baby you got to stop
‘Cause if you don’t I’m gonna explode
And girl I got a lot
I get delirious
Delirious
Delirious
I get delirious whenever you’re near
Girl, you gotta take control ’cause I just can’t steer
You’re just to much to take
I can’t stop, I ain’t got no brakes
Girl, you gotta take me for a little ride up and down
In and out and around your lake
I get delirious
Delirious
Delirious

 

173 – Santa Claus Is Real: Toys, Traditions, and Tulpas

Ho ho ho, friends, it’s a Yuletide tradition for us to uncover the weirdest stories we can about the Christmas season and this Holiday is no different. In the past we’ve covered everything from Krampus to Icelandic Christmas monsters to Holiday ghost stories and Alien Jesus, but we’ve hardly talked about the star of the show in most children’s imagination over the holidays, and that is Santa Claus! It’s St. Nick’s Day on December 6th, so we thought this is the perfect week to talk about him.

In this episode we go through the long history of Saint Nicholas, from his beginnings as a young holy man in 4th century Turkey who came from a rich family and was a deeply generous bishop who saved young women from lives of prostitution to eventually being venerated as a saint because he brought three murdered children back from the dead and he telepathically appeared in the dreams of Emperor Constantine. Awesome, right?

And while Saint Nicholas was a hugely popular saint in Europe in the Middle Ages, he wasn’t always a bearded fat man in a red fur suit who cam e down your chimney,  that didn’t happen until he came to the New World and was popularized as a character in Clement Clarke Moore’s “A Visit From St. Nicholas” poem in 1822 and Thomas Nast’s illustrations in the 1870s. And of course, Coke spent a ton of money advertising the jolly old elf too, helping out with that red and white suit he’s famous for.

santa claus is real coca-cola
Santa needs some of that “old school” Coca-Cola so he can stay up all night to bring you gifts!

Because Christmas itself is a little bit of a Pagan holiday (burning the Yule log a the Winter Solstice has been going on way before Baby Jesus), there’s a touch of Pagan in our Santa Claus, influenced by Odin and his eight-legged horse! And of course even Saint Nick can’t please everyone, because some Christians think that Santa is actually an avatar of Satan. And while most of us might think that’s kinda funny, the same Puritans who gave us Thanksgiving (ahem… and the Salem Witch Trials) also banned Christmas and made celebrating it a punishable offense. There was too much drinking, too much revelry, and just too much fun for them. The Puritans thought of it was a wasteful and decadent celebration, so they banned it in the New World and in England for a few decades in the Seventeenth Century.

santa claus is real santa's slay
Maybe Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans knew something about St. Nick that we don’t…

Truly my favorite part of this discussion though is when we start getting down to brass tacks. Santa Claus is real and people have been reporting sightings of him for awhile now. Yes, the same way they report sightings of Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, and UFOs. Kids and adults have seen Santa under the tree, they’ve seen him and his sleigh flying over their houses, they’ve seen him peering into their bedrooms… Yeah, I was taken aback as well.

So, what is it? Is there really an immortal who lives at the North Pole and stops time every year on Christmas Eve to deliver presents to the good boys and girls of the world? Could hundreds of millions of children believe him into existence? A tulpa created with the Christmas wishes of centuries of kids? Could there be something supernatural happening and the kids just interpret it as Santa Claus, kinda like the High Strangeness UFO discussion we had with Robbie Graham and Mike Clelland? That’s gotta be up for you to decide. For me, it’s like my Mom always said, “If you believe in Santa, he’s real.”

A few years back, we participated in a Christmas benefit album for the Salvation Army, we put our own spin on a track called “Hey Santa” by Madison songwriter Joe Snare, who put the compilation together.

 

Hey Santa,
You’ll be coming soon,
I cut my hair and changed my tune,
I’m a brand new man this year.
Hey Santa,
I’ve been counting days,
I cleaned up all my nasty ways,
I got your message loud and clear.

That lump of coal you gave me last year really made your point.
I’ve toned it down a notch or two,
look how I cleaned up this joint.
You’ve got Christmas right there in your hands,
Hey, Santa, won’t you give me one more chance?

Hey Santa,
I’ve been clean and straight,
you got no need to hesitate,
put me on the witness stand.

I couldn’t help but notice how my tree was kinda bare,
last time Santa came to town, you didn’t leave a present there.
You’ve got Christmas right there in your hands,
Hey, Santa, won’t you give me one more chance?

Hey Santa,
When you fill your sack,
don’t forget about me, Jack.
Because I’ll be looking out for you, you know.

Now you and I know I’m not quite an angel or a saint,
I’m doing everything I can,
to be someone that I ain’t.
You’ve got Christmas right there in your hands,
Hey, Santa, won’t you give me one more chance?