Podcast

37 – The Roswell Slides: Donald Schmitt and America’s Most Infamous UFO Crash

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The Roswell Slides are on all paranormal lovers’ tongues this week as they get ready for a huge unveiling in Mexico City on May 5th. Well, to get ready for it, we’re going in on the grandaddy of all US UFO cases, the famous crash in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. It’s the story that’s been made famous by countless television recreations on shows like Unsolved Mysteries or Sightings as well as several books about the event.

Mike and Wendy Lynn go deep into the history of the case for those of you who might not know all the theories and the stories, starting with the “flying saucer mania” of 1947 that started it all, to the debris found by Mac Brazel, to the press release sent by the Roswell Air Field saying they found a flying saucer and later denial, saying it was just a weather balloon.

The history of the mythos surrounding Roswell as we know it really starts in 1980 with the publication of a book, The Roswell Incident, and that’s where it starts to get interesting, rumors of alien bodies taken back and dissected, pop culture mentions in Independence Day, Alien Autopsy specials on FOX in the 1990s, controversy with the investigators (including today’s interviewee, Donald Schmitt), stories about mutant children, hey look, it’s even former President Bill Clinton chiming in!

Once we get through the history, we do an in-depth exclusive interview with Donald Schmitt who has investigated and will be part of the team presenting the Roswell Slides on May 5th at an event in Mexico City hosted by Jaime Maussan, sometimes known as the “Mexican Art Bell”.

Schmitt’s first book, UFO Crash at Roswell, was the basis for the Golden Globe-nominated Showtime film, Roswell, (starring Kyle MacLachlan and Martin Sheen) and we talk about how he went from UFO investigator to UFO author to a consultant on a major film.

Then we get into what everyone’s been waiting for, the Roswell Slides, which are Kodachromes that might show non-human bodies being worked on in the 1940s and the pictures were originally taken by someone with a connection to President Eisenhower. We go in deep on the slides, how they were found, how they were investigated, and a preview of what the big presentation is going to be on May 5th.

Roswell Slides Links:

Roswell Investigator, Thomas Carey and Donald Schmitt’s website

BeWitness May 5th Live Streaming from Mexico City Pay-Per-View

This Week’s Song: “Don’t Shoot First” by Sunspot

don’t believe everything you read
don’t believe everything you see
you don’t have to understand
you don’t have to be my friend
you might not like what I have to say to you
but that don’t mean it’s not the truth

don’t shoot first
this messenger has traveled
so far from home
don’t shoot first
I only came to tell you
you’re not alone.

when you just can’t see past your nose
you think that all your doors are closed

you don’t have to understand
but one day you’ll have to comprehend
You might not like what I have to say to you
But that don’t mean it’s not the truth

don’t shoot first
this messenger has traveled
so far from home
don’t shoot first
I only came to tell you
you’re not alone.

Podcast

36 – Paranormal Lit 101: Victorian Horror with Brian J. Showers

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Joining Mike and Wendy today is Swan River Press publisher and author, Brian J. Showers. Brian is a college friend of both of them and left to live Dublin, Ireland in 2001.  Since leaving, Brian has written several books and become a publisher of all kinds of Gothic ghost stories as well as an expert in Victorian Horror.

They begin the conversation by discussing Brian’s interest in weird stuff, which began with Haunted Wisconsin, which showed him that you could have legends and haunted history right in your backyard and it didn’t have to be in a Transylvanian castle. The conversation turns to other great Wisconsin connections to the weird like Arkham House in Sauk City, Wisconsin which published Lovecraft, to The Ridgeway Phantom.

When Brian moved to Ireland and found out that influential Victorian Horror writer, J. Sheridan Le Fanu was buried right up the street, he was influenced to learn more about his neighborhood, the Rathmines, in Dublin. In addition to writing a book on a walking tour of his new city,  he edited a book of short stories inspired by Le Fanu, and then wrote a collection of ghost stories inspired by the Rathmines – becoming more connected to Dublin by creating more weird and the wonderful tales of the Irish capital.

Dreams of Shadow and Smoke: Stories for J.S. Le Fanu

 

The conversation then turns into more of how the Victorian Horror story has influenced so much of modern culture and how in that era, Spiritualism (with mediums, séances, and the like) became a gigantic cultural phenomena, and its fiercest proponent was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. We talk about the friendship between Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini (another Wisconsin connection, he was raised in Appleton and lived in Milwaukee for three years), who was a great Spiritualist debunker.

That brings us to Wendy’s story of getting a private tour of Swiss home as a foreign exchange student and Mike brings up his favorite episode of the show, Voyagers!

Victorian Horror and Paranormal Literature Links

Swan River Press

The Bleeding Horse and Other Ghost Stories

More details on the friendship between Conan Doyle and Houdini

Announcement for new Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini TV Show 

 Featured Song: Carmilla by Sunspot

Proper little misses sharing,
little bloody kisses,
and every fire starts from just a spark.
Our secret experiments,
on your angel innocence,
don’t matter what you look like in the dark.Just you wait until the sun goes down, down, down.
when she whispers you’re hers forever now.Carmilla,
desire comes at you sideways,
Carmilla,
Would you dare to speak her name?

Pretty porcelain cheeks,
tender sweet little tweaks,
I’m getting sick of always pretending.
Just a few more sleepless nights,
I know you’ll hold our secrets tight,
I’ll miss our visits more than anything.

Just you wait until the sun goes down, down, down.
when she whispers you’re hers forever now.

Carmilla,
desire comes at you sideways,
Carmilla,
Would you dare to speak her name?

Podcast

35 – Sympathy For The Devil: What Lovecraft and ISIS Get Wrong About The Yazidi

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Joining Mike and Wendy today is Milwaukee Ghosts’ founder, Allison Jornlin, for a discussion about a Kurdish ethnic and religious group currently in the news for being attacked by ISIS, the Yazidi. You guys remember The Kurds, right? They’re the ethnic group who believes in women’s rights and is cool with democracy, basically they’re the good guys in the Middle East whom the rest of the people in the area are constantly persecuting. Saddam Hussein loved to “re-educate them” and the Islamic State isn’t much nicer to them. Well, one of the reasons that the Yazidi is so unpopular in the halls of Middle East High is because Sunni Muslims believe that the group worships the Devil. Yeah, that sounds bad, and that’s why we get at the heart of the truth in this episode.

To get the conversation started right, they discuss current beliefs about The Devil, as the Vatican hosts a special exorcism course this week in Italy (they’re calling it a pastoral emergency.)

In the Yazidi religion, which borrows heavily from Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Zoroastrianism, when their lead angel Taus Melek (they call him the Peacock Angel, and use Avian imagery to describe him), originally refused to bow to Adam (of Adam & Eve, Garden of Eden fame) , it’s similar to the pride that leads to the Fall of Lucifer in Christian mythology. But instead of pride, Taus Melek refuses to bow to Adam because the human is an earthly creation and not a heavenly one. He has a disagreement with God, but in the end, they make up and the Peacock Angel ends up feeling bad for what he has done and reconciles with the Almighty. So, one of the major figures in their religion is basically a redeemed version of Satan. And that’s where the misconceptions come in.

H.P. Lovecraft famously makes them the bad guys in his short story, “The Horror at Red Hook”:

“Most of the people, he conjectured, were of Mongoloid stock, originating somewhere in or near Kurdistan—and Malone could not help recalling that Kurdistan is the land of the Yezidis, last survivors of the Persian devil-worshippers.”

We made Wendy read one of the author’s most notoriously racist and lazy stories for this episode and we find out what happens when we sacrifice a virgin at the altar of Cthulhu.

But Lovecraft isn’t the only one, The Exorcist, uses Yazidi imagery as well in their portrayal of Pazuzu, the demon who takes over the body of Linda Blair’s character in the film. The avian imagery of the idol that Father Merrin (Max Von Sydow, the “old” exorcist) encounters in his travels through Iraq is one of Hollywood’s most famous visual depictions of The Devil. Basically, they took a Yazidi image, Taus Melek, and told everyone that it was going to possess the souls of their daughters – can you see why these poor people get such an unjust reputation?

We get into a little more of the Yazidi creation myth, appropriate because Wednesday April 15th was the Yazidi New Year, so Happy New Year, Yazidis! And then we finish up the episode with this week’s song.

 

Yazidi Links

The Vatican, “Course of Exorcism, Prayer, and Liberation”

CNN, “A Yazidi captive’s tale: Sold by ISIS as a sex slave”

H.P. Lovecraft, “The Horror At Red Hook”

The Exorcist Connection, The Telegraph, “The Devil Worshippers of Iraq”

Featured Song: Barbwire Heart by Sunspot

Hold my outrage tight to me,
Righteousness like a shield.
My indignation,
is a wound I’ll never heal,Slights and jabs and every little pain,
Long memory plays every scar again.

In this barbwire heart,
beats my rosary,
without its angry rhythm,
I don’t know who I’d be.

Picking my scabs bloody,
Reinfected every sore,
Every step I take is,
Towards evening the score.

Slights and jabs and every little pain,
Long memory plays every scar again.

In this barbwire heart,
beats my rosary,
without its angry rhythm,
I don’t know who I’d be.

Podcast

34 – Ascension: Carol Mills’ Evolution from Atheist to Psychic Medium

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Mike and Wendy start out the show with a quick discussion on how Mike is happy that they didn’t mention the Twin Peaks revival in last episode’s song about The X-Files, “Don’t Mess This Up” because now it looks like that revival is in jeopardy of not happening. After going through the definition of medium last week, they talk a little bit about the interview. Mike once again described why he doesn’t believe in orbs when it comes to ghost pictures and the importance of keeping an open mind when talking to people with extraordinary claims.

Then we talk with Carol Mills on how she grew up in a family of atheists and had never even been interested in the paranormal until the loss of her dog, Jake, who she calls her spirit animal soul mate. It was Jake communicating with her from the other side that led her to believe that she was sensitive to spirits that wanted to communicate with the living.

From there, we talk about how she senses spirits and other entities and doesn’t ever sugarcoat the messages that she receives. She does mention how she has been getting many dark readings as of late and we discuss a little the war between the light and the dark for human souls. We talk about “in-betweeners”, entities that aren’t human but fairies and goblins that like to mess around with humans. She talks about her “ascension”, a word she uses for her evolution to someone who doesn’t believe to someone who can pierce the veil, and how her life changed when she started her business as a psychic medium.

Then we finish with a message for all the podcast listeners to “Stay in the light!” and we play a song inspired by the interview, “Ascension”.

Carol Mills and Psychic Medium Links

Carol Mills Psychic Medium Website

“Orbs Debunked!”, Troy Taylor 

“In-Betweeners and Others”, Photoblog on Carol Mill’s website

Song:Ascension by Sunspot

The dark and the light they want you.
everyone competing for your mind.
Your mind.
You can see things like no one else.
you’ve got to leave your friends behind.
Behind.Your life’s no longer a bore,
Secret wars and hidden doors,
you’ve found.Opened your third eye to see,
thrown back the veil of secrecy,
unbound.Ascension,
Ascension.
You’re an X-man now.
More than a human now.

Ascension,
Ascension,
Ascension,
Ascension.
You’re an X-man now.
More than a human now.

Podcast

33 – The Truth Is Back: The Real X-Files Behind Four Classic Episodes

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The X-Files was the breakout science fiction phenomenon of the 1990s. No other program captured the zeitgest of conspiracy theories, big government paranoia, alien abduction mythology, Gen X individualism, and post-80s seriousness as well as creator Chris Carter’s show, that on paper, probably looked like a ridiculous blend of The Silence of the Lambs and Kolchak: The Night Stalker.

So when FOX announced at the end of March that The X-Files was returning to television 22 years after it debuted, it was big news.

As two people who experienced The X-Files the first time around, Mike and Wendy talk about their experiences with the show (Mike was a true believer, hosted X-Files parties, and even read the comics.) We go into detail about Mike’s love of the show. Here’s a picture of Mike and his wife at a costume wedding in 2013 – note, Mike’s X-Files Division badge is something that he bought at Gen Con in 1996 (when he played The X-Files Collectible Card Game with Langly and Frohike of The Lone Gunmen!)

World’s worst Mulder and Scully? #halloween #wedding #x-files

A photo posted by sunspotmike (@sunspotmike) on


And to celebrate the return of the show, Mike and Wendy picked 4 real X-Files that inspired the paranormal stories.

They first talk about the episode, “Field Trip”, which is based on the idea of hallucinogenic fungus and shared hallucinations and Mulder and Scully get trapped in a giant cave with a fungus that’s slowly killing them while indulging them in fantasy . Mike and Wendy discuss the episode and a little bit about how madness can be passed from one person to the next.

Next up is stigmata, which is where someone exhibits the wounds of Jesus (perfect for an episode on Easter Weekend!), the real X-File behind the episode “Revelations” is based on reports from all the way back to the 13th Century with the famous St. Francis of Assisi being the first recorded stigmatic.

The alien/human hybrid is a theme that runs through the real X-File of the alien abduction narrative. Female abductees have claimed that they’ve been impregnated by aliens, run through an accelerated gestation process, and then the baby is taken from them. They remember this trauma through hypnosis and The X-Files used the idea of an alien/human hybrid in the form of a child chess prodigy, Gibson Praise, who was wanted by the US Government as well as the alien invasion force.

Finally, Mike and Wendy talk about the strange history of sin eaters, a tradition from the end of the Enlightenment, where families would pay someone to “eat the sins” of a loved one who had passed, so that the sins would transfer to the eater and the loved one would be free of sin to enter Heaven. The X-Files episode, “The Gift”, deals with a sin eater who can eat the diseases from sick people and take them unto himself.

Then they finish up with a song inspired by the news of the return of The X-Files, a comical warning to Chris Carter and FOX – “Don’t Mess This Up”.

Real X-Files Links

Official FOX announcement about the return  of The X-Files

“Reopening The X-Files:  ‘Field Trip””, Tor.com
“Shared Hallucination?”, shroomery.org Forum Discussion
Wikipedia entry on Folie deux (shared dementia)
“11 Odd Facts about Magic Mushrooms”, Livescience

The X-Files, “Revelations” (Watch on Daily Motion)
Stigmata, Catholic Encyclopedia 

The X-Files wiki, Gibson Praise (alien/human hybrid)
Alien/Human Hybrid, Arturi Extraterrestrial Community

The X-Files, “The Gift” (Watch on Daily Motion)
“The Weird But True History of Sin-Eaters”, io9

 

Song: Don’t Mess This Up by Sunspot

They’re using my nostalgia and they’re trying to make money on my youth,
They’re bringing back The X-Files and they think that I still care about the truth.
They’re making me feel old when they dig up all the actors,
at least I’m in a demographic that still matters,
I still curse the Lone Gunmen and their luck,
and I think I can speak for all of us,
Don’t mess this up, yeah.
Don’t mess this up.
I’m looking at you, Chris Carter.
We’ve been burned before from Jar Jar Binks to Indy 4, don’t you see,
It’s been reboots up the tail and they all just add up to fail, you just want more money.
So let’s put on some Spice Girls like it’s 1997
Pop open a Surge and watch a little Seventh Heaven,
But don’t you dare talk about conspiracies after 9/11,
But I think that I can speak for all of us when I say,
Don’t mess this up, yeah.
Don’t mess this up, here we go.
They’ll never bring back Firefly,
No matter how you scream and cry.
They’ll never bring back Firefly,
No matter how you scream and cry.
They’ll never bring back Firefly,

No matter how you scream and cry.

They’ll never bring back Firefly,
No matter how you scream and cry.
They’re using my nostalgia and they’re trying to make money on my youth,
They’re bringing back the X-Files and they think that I still care about the truth.
I Want To Believe was definitely not it.
It was cool you made a second one    but next time get a script,
Can you even show the Smoking Man with a cigarette that’s lit?
I speak for every thirtysomething when I say
Don’t mess this up, yeah.
Don’t mess this up, yeah.
Don’t mess this up.
Podcast

32 – Adventures with Albert: Channeling Garnet Schulhauser

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Channeling a spirit to write is an idea that’s probably as old as writing itself. Revealed text (revelations) have been part of our religious life for millenia, whether it’s Moses and the Burning Bush or Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon.

Mike and Wendy open the episode by talking about famous channeling in history from Aleister Crowley’s Aiwass in the Book of the Law (where the inspiration for this week’s song comes from) to A Course in Miracles and the famous Oprah-endorsed movie, The Secret. They talk about how channeling was big business in the 80s and Mike fondly remembers a Mr. Belvedere episode that featured a channeler.

Mike then interviews Garnet Schulhauser, who claims to have been contacted by a spirit, Albert, posing as a homeless man in downtown Calgary. Albert then showed him the mysteries of the universe from the astral plane to the Akashic Records to the enigmatic Council of Wise Ones. Garnet discusses how we all are eternal spirits who have lived many lives and  have chosen to come to Earth to learn something. He gives us details on what it’s like to travel outside the body and also the lessons that the spirit world would like to teach us still on Earth.

Garnet Schulhauser and Channeling Links

Garnet Schulhauser’s website

Dancing on a Stamp: Startling Revelations from the Other Side

Dancing Forever with Spirit: Astonishing Insights from Heaven

Mr. Belvedere episode, “Spot”

South Park Mormon Episode

Tuning In, Movie about modern channeling

Song: Stardust by Sunspot

We awoke at the end of an era,
We came to life in the footnotes of time,
We are stardust made conscious and breathing,
orphans of the suns that have died.

We are created but we are the makers,
we are lucid inside the Dreamtime.
We are the Alphas and the Omegas,
we are what we choose to define.

Love is the only law,
and it cannot be killed.
We are the stars,
we are of stars,
so love what you will.
Love is the only law,
and it cannot be killed.
We are the stars,
we are of stars,
so love what you will.

And the Seraphim will sanctify,
the particles that illuminate the sky.
And the Seraphim will sanctify,
the particles that illuminate the sky.
What was once will always be,
the universe is inside me,
the magician that wants to be free.
To be free.

We awoke at the end of an era,
We came to life in the footnotes of time,
We are stardust made conscious and breathing,
orphans of the suns that have died.

Love is the only law,
and it cannot be killed.
We are the stars,
we are of stars,
so love what you will.
Love is the only law,
and it cannot be killed.
We are the stars,
we are of stars,
so love what you will.
We are stardust made conscious and dreaming,
we are what we choose to define.
We are stardust made conscious and dreaming,
we are what we choose to define.
Love under will.

Podcast

31 – Live from Little Rock, AR: An Interview with Linda Howell of Haunted Tours of Little Rock

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This week we bring you a special bonus episode, outside of our regular weekly release, because we had an exciting opportunity while en route to Austin, TX.  After leaving Alton, IL (see Episode 30), our next stop was Little Rock, Arkansas, where we had the pleasure of meeting and talking with local paranormal expert Linda Howell. Linda is the guide for Haunted Tours of Little Rock, which showcases the historical locations and stories of many hauntings in the area.

Linda is also author of the book Haunted Little Rock, which takes the reader on a self-guided tour of historical/haunted sites in Little Rock. It’s a wonderful companion to bring along if you want to see the sites on your own, but if you aren’t able to make it to Little Rock, the book paints wonderful pictures of the locations while telling the very interesting tales of ghosts and spirits who inhabit these places.

Mike is happy to see the Revolution's sandwich board with our show on it!
Mike is happy to see the Revolution’s sandwich board with our show on it!

The location of the interview was at Revolution Room, located in the downtown river market area, and very near the actual “Little Rock” where the city first originated.  Although it was quite gloomy and rainy outside, we found Revolution to be a warm and welcoming place for talking about the haunted side of Little Rock.

We really enjoyed talking with Linda, as she has an incredible wealth of information on the history and hauntings in the area, and is a wonderful storyteller with a very open mind. When you’re in Little Rock, make sure to schedule time for her tour… We definitely hope to someday!

Mike and Wendy with Linda Howell of Haunted Tours of Little Rock
Mike and Wendy with Linda Howell of Haunted Tours of Little Rock, following our live interview

 

Podcast

30 – Live from Alton, IL: An Interview with Luke Naliborski of Alton Hauntings

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This episode is a See You On The Other Side first… a recording of a live event we did on location in Alton, Illinois, “one of the most haunted small towns in America”!

As an added bonus, it was a special day for us because our band Sunspot released our newest EP, El Chupacabra. The three songs in the EP were all inspired by episodes of “See You On The Other Side” and you can listen to them right here.

Our live event took place at Maeva’s Coffee, a delightful venue with some of the nicest baristas we have ever met (thank you Meredith and Tia!), delicious coffee, a warm atmosphere, and beautiful eclectic decor. If we lived in Alton, Maeva’s would surely be a place we’d hang out at regularly because it just had a good and welcoming vibe. Interestingly, the building in which the coffee shop resides is an old school house that was built in 1904. As such, it has its own folklore and tales of interest, which we discuss with our special guest, Luke Naliborski.

Luke is a tour guide for Alton Hauntings ghost tours and an author. He tells us about how he got into the whole paranormal investigation scene, and shares some fun stories about his encounters with the unknown during his tours and investigations in historically rich Alton:

  • Strange things he saw during his childhood at a neighborhood house
  • An apparition of a woman he and his friends saw at Mausalium Row at Greenwood Cemetery
  • Stories of apparitions seen in a local parking lot in town, located where the courtyard of a confederate prison had been
  • A haunted island in the river where duels were once faught, known as Bloody Island / Sunflower Island / Small Pox Island, and the story of James Shields challenging Abraham Lincoln to a duel there
  • On the same island, a reporter found two skulls and took one home for a souvenir
    Legends of the Milton School House, the very building hosting in which our interview takes place
  • One of Luke’s favorite tour stops, the First Unitarian Church in Alton, where he has seen many curious things
  • How Luke began his career as an author
  • His experience on the television reality show “Mysterious Worlds: America’s Ghost Hunters” and the investigation of a secret passageway and storeroom beneath the First Unitarian Church
  • An experience he had with an apparition at a farmhouse where several deaths were known to have occurred

Mike and Wendy with Luke after the interview

We truly enjoyed meeting and talking with Luke, and hope to return to Alton soon so we can actually take his Alton Hauntings tour!

Links

Music

The live performance we did featured the following Sunspot songs. Here are links to the recordings online for each of the songs:

Podcast

29 – The Illuminati: An Introduction to The New World Order

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For a secret organization hellbent on guiding the future of the human race, The Illuminati doesn’t really do a great job with the whole secret part. Everybody knows about it, but a lot of people don’t realize that it started with an actual secret society in the 18th Century. Mike and Wendy Lynn are here to give you the skinny on the most famous of conspiracy theories.

The conversation starts with the origin of the organization in 18th century Bavaria as a way to lessen the influence of the Catholic Church on German government “Illuminati” was an organization of The Enlightenment, meant to banish fear and superstition (or so they would have us believe!) Either way, the organization was supposedly disbanded only a few years later, but that’s what they want us to think.

The modern conspiracy theory really begins with the most famous of the anti-Communist organizations and the Granddaddy of a good deal of today’s conspiracy lore, the John Birch Society. During the Red Scare of the 1950s who first used the term New World Order (NWO) to talk about an atheistic one-world government that those damn commies dreamed about. Ronald Reagan then gave an unusual speech before the United Nations that basically spoils the ending of Watchmen and George H.W. Bush actually used the term, “New World Order” in a speech in 1990. That settled it, the Illuminati was real. And they’re using our Pop stars to control our minds.

We go over the symbolism in Lady Gaga’s videos and Madonna even titled a song on her latest album, “The IlluminatI” and she mentions how she is “proud to be one of them” (but she might be a little off on her definition of who actually was in the original Illuminati group.)

As all conversations between Mike and Wendy go, the discussion eventually wraps up with Katy Perry, who is bought and sold by the global elite. Don’t believe us? Just check out her video for “Dark Horse”. Her Super Bowl performance was the Illuminati’s biggest coup because it was seen by over a billion people around the world and there are those on the Internet who are happy to analyze it for every little bit of occult imagery. (To be honest, The All-Seeing Eye is a pretty weird thing to have on our money!)

Illuminati Links

Is Lady Gaga a Satanist Illuminati Slave?: Pop-music’s strangest conspiracy theories, Slate Magazine

33 Signs That The Illuminati Is Real, Buzzfeed

‘Rebel Heart’: Madonna Reveals the Story Behind Six Surprise Songs

Decoding Illuminati Symbolism: The All Seeing Eye and 666 Hand Gesture

Song: Byzantium by Sunspot

We’ll never know
just what they know
We’ll never find,
just what they’ve done,
looks like you can do whatever you want,
as long as you’ve got the gun.

In Byzantium.
In Byzantium.

Some are happy
just to follow,
some just want to
pull our strings.
Some are sheep,
some are shepherds,
some people think
they know everything.

In Byzantium,
In Byzantium.

Would it be so bad
worse than what we have
Would it be so bad
worse than what we have

Podcast

28 – Peace and Long Life: A Tribute to Leonard Nimoy

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FIRST, THE GOOD NEWS!

  • Our band Sunspot will release a brand new EP on 3/17/2015, featuring three of the songs we wrote just for this podcast. We’re in the studio now working on it and pretty excited to finish up and get the final versions out for you to hear!
  • On our way to the South by Southwest (SXSW) music festiveal, we’ll be making two stops for the first ever SEE YOU ON THE OTHER SIDE live broadcasts! We’ll be interviewing fascinating people and then playing a live set of acoustic songs for everyone.
  • Podcast reviews- WE MET OUR FEBRUARY GOAL! Thanks to everyone who went into iTunes, clicked the 5 stars, and made nice comments for us. In a future episode, your reviews will be, as Mike says, “autotuned” into a special song just for you.
  • Welcome to the new listeners!
  • Since we’re heading to Texas in a couple of weeks, Mike and Wendy take a quick detour from announcements to recall the time Sunspot visited the famous haunted tracks there.

AND NOW, THE SAD NEWS…
The world lost a great man, and one of our personal heroes, when Leonard Nimoy passed away on Friday, February 27, 2015.  With such an incredibly legacy and prolific career, Mike and Wendy had quite a bit to talk about as they reflect on the “Mr. Spock” and his legacy:

  • His shared identity with Mr. Spock, as he talked about in his two autobiographies, I Am Not Spock (1975) and I Am Spock (1995).
  • The Vulcan salute was Nimoy’s idea, based on the hand formation Jewish priests use while performing blessings.
  • Many characters from Star Trek, such as William Shatner , continued to use their characters in ridiculous ways following the series, but Leonard Nimoy had a presence that was less joke-like and more serious.  He embraced the character of Spock and brought it into his other projects.
  • Nimoy continued on  as Spock in the Star Trek animated series, and then in six of the movies
  • Of particular interest and inspiration to us, he hosted the show In Search Of, a pioneering program about the paranormal featuring tales of ghosts, ancient aliens, etc. In the show, Nimoy questioned the “unexplained phenomena” of the unknown, which at the time was very unique and uncommon programming for television.
  • The Vulcan nerve pinch was an idea provided by Nimoy
  • The Episode Mirror Mirror featured an evil version of Mr. Spock, who was Nimoy but with a goatee. The practice of using the same actor, but with a goatee, to represent an “evil twin” has become popular in many other shows and movies since then.
  • Many people provided special tributes to Nimoy when the news broke of his passing.
  • Nimoy directed the movie Three Men and a Baby, which also has a legendary ghostly figure in one of the scenes that caused quite a stir when the movie came out on video. However, it was later found that the “ghostly child” was a cardboard cutout of Ted Danson (cue the sad trombone).
  • So many of the people we know were affected by Nimoy/Spock and his multitude of creative projects, and it was clear on the day of his passing through all of the social media comments everywhere.  This was the perfect example of the power that a really good artist can have on the world and human experience.

Let us know if you have any special memories or tributes for Leonard Nimoy!

Featured Song: Sha Ka Ree

Being young ain’t always fun,
and growing up ain’t easy,
when you’re just a little different,
and your best friend is your TV.
You might never be a hero,
or get along with your peers,
but you could learn to be a human from,
a dude with pointy ears, well.

The bad guys were always wrong,
and the good guys always won and,
we learned how to play the game.
But now my favorite shows,
are full of anti-heroes and,
reruns just ain’t the same.

In a world a little sick,
we could use some more logic.

Who taught you,
the needs of the many,
are greater than the needs of the one?
And who taught you,
that just wearing a goatee,
Makes you an evil son of a gun?

The only one who tried to talk,
to the Devil in the Dark.
Cuz you were bred from different stock,
like those of us who missed the mark,
See you in Sha Ka Ree, my Mister.

Mr. Spock stopped the jocks,
taking over in Space Seed,
and he always kept his cool,
when Bones would call him a halfbreed.
And we all tried the nerve pinch,
on other kids on the playground,
Till fourteen at least I still believed,
that move could knock you out, damn.

In Search Of was the show,
that made it cool for UFOs,
it weirded out my little mind.
Embarrassing as it could get,
you sang a song about the Hobbit,
somebody must have been high,

Those of us that can’t quite fit,
could use some more of your logic.

Who taught you,
the needs of the many,
are greater then the needs of the one?
Who taught you,
that just wearing a goatee,
makes you an evil son of a gun?

From Captain Kirk’s superego,
into the dark mind of Van Gogh,
so much of what I know,
came from your heart.
We’ll see you in Sha Ka Ree, my Mister.

A rock band's journey into the afterlife, UFOs, entertainment, and weird science.