Last Update on the Left - Episode 18 - Haunted Objects: An Interview with Greg and Dana Newkirk

That's one of the cannibalism started, last update on the left. Welcome to the last update on the left, you see, that was pretty good. You see Marcus so good, so far so good, the first six words have gone quite well, it's almost a second. He's guys, they tried to, last time I did this. They put pressure on me, I didn't put pressure on you, I'm welcome to last update on the left. I made a very simple request for you to take the lead and you then, you mocked me for my quick jumping, you did a bad job, yeah, because I'm still learning, you haven't even gotten through introducing this show, I made it this far, I'm sitting here with Marcus Parks. Ed Larson, I was kind of hoping you'd say my name, he did it, he did it and you did it, no, you got to say, I leave it open so you can do a little bit, yeah, I'm leaving a little open so you could do a fun little tag, I'm sitting here with Marcus Parks and Ed Larson, I like am, I can't believe it, the first time you're talking to these guys, I am very pleased to have one of my favorite couples because largely, I hate couples, but it's so nice to me, good, friendly, you're very, you look visibly in love, which is nice to see. This is Greg and Dana New Kirk, now to try to kind of put it in there, I don't know how to sum up, you guys are a part of a weird HQ, planet weird, right, all of your various, like that's your production company would you say like planet weird, planet weird is the top of the umbrella. Yes, and then you guys now, you're new, not new, but new to us podcast haunted objects is going to be on spec division, their new podcast now. You got it. It's available now. Yeah, I nailed it. Nice work. Good job. And speaking of nails. Christ. The rice on the cross. No, they're fucking their documentary, the unbinded. I love the unbinded. Amazing. No, I would love to ask a bunch of questions. So we got Eddie here, Eddie's a new boy to the paranormal world. And so a lot of this stuff is getting, he's being introduced for the first time. And so when we did earlier this year, we did a series on haunted objects. The first people I thought to call to try to help me understand and make a good kind of perfunctory explanation of the mechanism of the haunting of an object was you guys. And you guys thankfully picked up the call, we're flattered. Yes. Now I want to know. Thank you. Anytime. Unhunted objects. So now it's like, do you feel like your whole life has become haunted objects? You know, it's funny because we take a very liberal approach to what the idea of a haunted object is on the field. It is. Anything that's that's haunted by a story is a haunted object. Great. That's interesting. Like, like, when you say a haunted by a story, I guess like is something that's haunted by a story like, do you think that that has some sort of like psychic effect on the people that are around it? Is that what the haunting is? Is the story itself? Is just how we react to the story? Yes. But in the case of the show, we just wanted the ability to talk about a few of those and big things. How do I open this up? Would you do it if you were a real general? Yeah. Eventually you're going to become like HOP. That's the goal. You've got to get yourself to. There's no name. It's just the letters so that you can be about whatever it was working on it. Yeah. But you are correct. I do think we have a slightly different opinion about how objects become haunted than I think most people who would consider themselves paranormal researchers. We really do believe that it is the intention that we place on things and the feelings and emotions that we attach to things that end up lingering and potentially affecting other people down the line. I think that's how haunted objects happen. Yeah. One of the things that we experience. Most of the objects, if not almost all of them, in the museum, have been donated. So they've been donated to us from other people. And one of the things that we've come to realize more often than not is when someone donates something to the museum, even if they've had their own personal experience with that object, it doesn't always necessarily mean that we will. So for the most part, one of the ways that we think about what we do is really kind of curating stories, curating people's experiences. And you also do a live show in sort of like a road show with these objects. Now, as you take them out, how does it change people's like either reaction to the objects or the objects reactions to people? Well, we have a few artifacts that when people spend a lot of time around them, they do seem when we bring them back home from tour. Yeah. Like they are, they feel like they're charged up, I guess, lack of a better term. Every joke we have an object in the museum, it's called the black mirror and it's a scrying here. It's one of the objects that people can kind of handle and look in. And we kind of refer to it as like the kid that you don't let your kid hang out with. It's like a bad influence on the other. Well, I think too when you've got people who are using battery, we want people to have an experience. Like that's the point of the road show. We want to give people an experience. So, you know, sometimes when people are using that mirror and you've got hundreds of people gazing into it and thinking about the things that they're afraid of, that's enough sticks around in it lingers. And the big point of the road show really is to show people how powerful their own minds are. You know, the big thing we do at the end of the tour, at the end of the show is we have the audience help us haunt an object. Yes. Like the goal is to dethrone Annabelle. We want the most hearted object in the world. That's the point. And it's all through what we believe and what we play son to thing. Yeah. And that's what I find fascinating about that is that you truly are the anti-warons. That's, yes. Thank you. Yes. Somebody gets it. Yeah. Like the warons took all these haunted objects and they locked them in a basement and they talk about how dangerous all of them are and you can't touch anything and somebody once made fun of a doll so they died in a motorcycle accident 20 minutes later, you know, but you are taking these objects on your do you're taking these objects in the road so people can have an experience with them. Like what experience are you hoping people, what experience like are you hoping people have a certain experience with it or is it just sort of whatever happens happens? I mean, to be great for content of a guy just spontaneously shits his pants. Like you're like, thank you. It's happened. It has literally happened. It's literally happened. Please, please, please. Continue to tell the story if you would. What we want from people is we want people to choose curiosity instead of fear. Cool. And one of the things that people are constantly doing in the paranormal realm is they are constantly trying to make you afraid either because they think that that's a way that they can make money from you or they can sell you their religion or whatever it is. And we're constantly like we don't do home investigations for people. We don't do any of that type of stuff. People get frustrated because we're like, you know, if you're if you're experiencing a ghost, you should talk to it. They're like, what? Yeah. Talk to it. See what? See what this this experience is trying to tell you about yourself. So all we're ever trying to do is give people a sense of control that they often lack in situations that are scary. And if you can teach someone to be curious about the monster under their bed, then, you know, their neighbor who has a different belief system is a little less scary to them. Uh, that's the whole point of everything we're always trying to do. And, you know, I'd rather the have fun in the paranormal, you know, it's just be scared all the time. Like, come on. Are there caspers? Are there friendly ghosts? Yeah. Absolutely. Uh, we're doing it. We're doing an experiment in the museum right now where we are. Taking the Philip experiment, which was a very famous experiment done in the 70s and the 80s by the Toronto Society for Psychical Research where they created a ghost with their mind. Yeah. This is the famous pulp. Yes. Experiments. What ever you want to call it. Uh, we decided to do that with several hundred people haunting bags of ramen noodles. And now people are sending us videos of their bags crinkling on their own. People get to the evidence. Yeah. They literally are sending us like audio recordings, videos of their bags of ramen behaving in very strange ways. Haunted on a budget. There you go. Like, toaster loves Jackie Wilson. Yeah. Like, it's like, it sounds like the only man eating toaster trip. Yeah. Yeah. My question is, is that so is there no such thing as an objective haunting? Hmm. No such thing like if a route, I guess what does even matter, right, if an object is a room alone, you know, it's the same thing as a tree alone in the forest. Well, it's, it's the old, it's the old classifications of, you know, the, your intelligent haunting, your, um, you know, that seems like that's ancient news now. Yeah. I think, I mean, we've experienced that type of thing and, and I mean, I, I wouldn't be able to give you an honest answer. I can't say definitively, no, there's no such thing as a classical ghost. I think I've experienced them. I've seen full body apparitions that I, I know I didn't make an impression of that thing. I don't know who did. So I, I think I do think that there are certain types of, of psychic events that can create an imprint that can last and whether that's intelligent or whether that's just like something that replays like a tape. I don't know. I've had interactive experiences with things people would call ghosts. But these days, I have a very difficult time believing that people just kind of hang out when they die. That seems really cynical. I think it could be shades of us, bits of us. I think the longer we do this, the more we realize how much the mind really does play a huge part in paranormal experiences and in paranormal phenomena just in general. So I think that those classical identifiers, like an intelligent haunting, whatever they are, they're kind of really, they're useful. I think still, but I think we have to sort of change the way we think about them because if our mind is involved in the process, maybe those are really good classifications for maybe reasons why we might see those types of things. Do you know what I mean? So like maybe we're bringing that to the experience without us. There are no ghosts. There are no cryptic. There is no without us looking and seeing them. Exactly. You know what? That's the perfect segway to what we're always trying to instill in people is the old story is that ghosts are around because they have unfinished business. I think that ghosts are around because we have unfinished business. I think we're the people who like, you know, when you hear stories about people who've seen their loved ones after they've passed away, usually they weren't able to be there with them when they passed away or they're on the other side of the country. Or there's still, it's part of the grieving process too, that they're still in the state of grief and so having those types of experiences can be really cathartic for people. And that's not to say if they're not real. I want to make that clear. I they're just weirder than we've sort of given them, you know, we've classified them as in the past, I think. But one of the things like we, you know, one of the things Greg and I will say all the time is we'll never speak in absolutes pretty much about anything that comes to this kind of stuff. But I think that's great because it gives us so much room for experimenting and theories and I want to play both sides. Yeah. You find I love playing both sides. And I specifically believe in a Ron Ton robot, a Robert Anton Wilson style panagnostic existence. But don't you but don't you find that that makes people like angry us super does of course, because you are challenging something that people have built up almost like a religious belief, you know, the idea that you're soul lingers after you've died. If you have unfinished business, people don't like to think about that differently. But I think it's a beautiful idea to think that maybe there's something about ghosts that's evolutionary and happens because we have had an interrupted grieving process. And you get to maybe experience a last chance to say goodbye to somebody or maybe there's something that you actually can help with and it has more to do with you than it does with the ghost. I think a lot of the times when we are called and people ask us questions about what to do about a ghost, you know, like I said, we say, we'll go talk to it and they're like, well, no, why would I do that? And like, well, don't you want to figure out why this ghost is there? Usually if you talk to it and you find out what it's trying to get you to do and you do it, it goes away. Yeah. You don't need a priest. You just need to pay attention to what this thing is trying to tell you. Well, earlier, you know, you mentioned a psychical research organization. You know, you mentioned they, you know, that they were trying to create that were that they created a Tulpa way back when. And that's one of the things that like, I really wanted to ask you about is that I watch things like, you know, that new infield poltergeist documentary. They came out. That's so fucking good. The one on Apple. Yeah. It's so great, right? It was great. Incredible. So where are those guys back? The guys like Maurice Gross and guy play fair. And, you know, and all back in the 70s, when these psychical research foundations were around, when universities had these, you know, actual departments for all of this, were those were was anybody on to something in your opinion? I think so for sure. Yes. And there's there's still you can find the traces of that stuff that still exists. I mean, you look at people like Dr. Dean Raiden, who works for the Neuetic Sciences Institute. He's done all kinds of research on the idea of intention and on on psychic ability. And they can pretty reliably prove to a higher degree than aspirin works that there is some kind of six cents. And I think that all paranormal phenomena that we experience personally comes from that six cents. I think that the mind is the mechanism by which the paranormal displays itself. And, you know, you can get, you know, weird and Jungian with it. If you want in the idea that, you know, issues that we're experiencing as a culture appears UFOs, but I think that it's, I think psychical research, they absolutely were and still are on to something. We just can't seem to figure out the mechanism because consciousness is so hard to crack. We don't know how to figure it out because it's so hard to look into consciousness with our consciousness. Exactly. I mean, for me, the like the way I kind of look at it is that it's that we don't have the language yet to measure anything because we don't know what we're measuring. Yeah. Like, so you can't say, like you can't say that we've just experienced 15 crononons of energy. Like this, I just did. There's just, there's just no, there's no measurement for it. Like, I think like once they figure out someone figures out a measurement, then maybe we can start making some headway. Do you have a measurement? I love that question. And one of the things that I think about, and we talk about a lot is this idea that as paranormal investigators, one of the best things that we can do collectively is to study the occult and to kind of go into some of those worlds that might seem a little bit frightening. They might not understand things about them necessarily. But what we're doing is we're kind of allowing and also to kind of experiment and explore through the world of archetypes. And I think that really what we're doing is giving our brain, giving our consciousness a larger lexicon with which to pull from when it comes to these types of experiences. So the more we can kind of tread outside of the current lane, the current road of where paranormal investigation goes, I think the bigger the lexicon, we can build within our own consciousness and the better chance that we have of having stranger, more complex, interesting paranormal experiences, I think present themselves in that in that case. But do you find that with the more complex and strange, especially documenting it? Yeah. Like the unbinding is a classic example of, you start at one point, you guys have been doing these great things with all of your documentaries, you started a point and it zig-zagged back and forth and then it comes back to the point again, that it comes, which I think is great. But I also think it shows how securitous and interesting a paranormal investigation, a full-throated paranormal investigation can be. But how do you tell people like it's unfortunately I do wish it was the Avengers. I wish there wasn't evil thing that we could defeat and put it in a box and then it's done. It just doesn't really work like that. Well, for those of us, those are our listeners who haven't seen the unbinding. Tell everyone what the what the documentaries all about. This was a documentary that kind of came out of nowhere. We we received stuff constantly all the time and one of the things that we received, I mean 99% of the stuff that people send to us, it doesn't do anything for us. I believe people when they say that they've experienced weird things with it because I think they're the ones who've typically put whatever impression on it. But most that stuff doesn't do much for us. So a lot of it of what we do is just putting stuff on a shelf and keeping it out of sight and out of mind. Yeah. We're all charged keep people. Yeah. I was so much evil. Charge keys in my house. Someone one sent us a someone one sent us a teddy bear that they swore was the most evil thing in all existence. And it just sat in a fucking box and like it was on a shelf for a while. Then it sat in a box and now it's in a fucking landfill. Yeah. I have that. I have that holiday. Yeah. That haunted Ouija board just sit in my home. It's not on a landfill. It's an historic space somewhere. Yeah. I mean, and that's common. I don't I think that you're the one who has to attach the feeling to it unless it's something something that has a much bigger feeling attached to it. Maybe you get to feel that. And occasionally we do. And we were sent a carved wooden figure that maybe about a foot tall and it had a noose around its neck and six nails driven into the eyes. And immediately we knew something was different about this thing because Jesus got ripped off of a cross that was on a wall, which was really strange. We couldn't figure out how that happened. We have footage of this thing like moving. It's not you know. It's good. It is good footage. It's great. It's real. Yes. Weird footprints appearing in the house that really freaked everybody out. Our friend Jason, you might remember from Hellier. He got hypnotized in Hellier to believe he was abducted by aliens. Well, we torture him again and he ends up having this thing come into his house and like lean over his baby's crib. There was a lot of really strange stuff that made us take this little more seriously. And frankly, that investigation changed the way that I feel about ghosts because we eventually realized it's not what everybody thinks it is. And this was actually a sacred image to a particular group of people. And it needed to go back to work. where it was stolen from. And that's pretty much what this is about. And as soon as that thing was back, everything stopped. So it occurs to us later, oh, this is an archetypal journey that we needed to complete in order for whatever this cycle, this thing was stuck in, whatever it needed to go away and to be done. And I think we see that a lot with people who have hauntings in general. There's some cycle that they're stuck in. And I believe now, I think we both do, that a lot of paranormal phenomena is spontaneous, initiatory experience. And you can either ignore it. And then it'll get worse. Like if you're not being listened to, what do you do? You raise your voice. It'll do that until you either get rid of the thing or you are so good at ignoring it, it goes away. Or you can listen to what it's trying to tell you and you can take that archetypal journey and come out of it a different person and that stocks. And then for you, the object, but listening to it meant returning it to where it came from. Absolutely, putting it back to where it's taken from. And one of the things that we found out is that it was a desecrated, alter piece for worshiping an old Ukrainian goddess. Very interesting. And somebody, I mean, the town that it came from, we didn't even realize this till we went to this town, it has like the third highest Ukrainian born population in the United States. And so there's this weird thing that starts to happen when you follow where these things are taking you is you start to get like self-referential evidence after the fact things that you couldn't have known start to happen. And then the reason we made a documentary about the crown, the unbinding is because by the time we had finished it, all of this new stuff comes flooding in. Like literally the last part of the documentary is us, while we're shooting the documentary, learning more things that relate to why this thing was probably upset. Or the people who used it in their worship were upset and we kind of got some of that runoff. Yeah. But why, what makes one of them work and one of them not work? What makes a little God believe what does it? But it's like, I do feel like there are people that do believe across the board. Like I don't think that the belief is separate, there are certain things that's for some reason get charged. And I wonder why something like the chrome piece gets charged and then something else doesn't. Not then, I mean, I think it might go back to what you were talking about earlier with, you know, the occult, you know, suddenly the occult because this seems like there's a lot of folk magic involved in this. I was gonna say, and I think the thing too that's interesting about the crown immediately is, there is a lot of, right out of the gate, there's a lot of kind of religious iconography that is desecrated, which is a very regardless of what your religious beliefs are. You never really want to see anything like that. Like that's kind of an alarming thing. And so I-- It's not a good sign. Not a good sign. Even though I don't like Jesus Christ, but watching one flip around on a crucifix, I know it's not good. Yeah. [LAUGHTER] But it's right out of the gate, right? We have like all of this baggage already showing up. So you have, you know, religious iconography being desecrated, you have folk magic, you have some-- you have an object itself. Like when you look at the crown, it looks-- it looks like an act of violence has been-- has been done to it. There are nails in the eyes. There's a nooster on the neck. So you have a visceral experience, like reaction to it right away as opposed to like, here's a creepy grandma doll or whatever it is. Yeah. It's something that like when you look at it, it's really-- even if you don't know anything about the occult or you don't know anything about folk magic or magic in general, it's pretty hard to deny that there seems to be something very distinct going on with it. And I think sometimes all of that extra-- that we bring to the experience itself sometimes I think can be a bit of a battery, where we're just kind of supercharging something. But the crown, I mean, we always-- we describe it as she just-- she had the juice. Like it was just-- Yeah. It was an object that was just very active. But for whatever reason, I think that after the fact we, I think, can collectively understand why. But at the time, it was sort of like just one thing after the other, and we were looking at each other going, OK, well, this is a legitimately very strange one. We are having experiences that are tough for us, too. Not only go through, but explain to each other. And I think in terms of why are some things so juiced up and others aren't, I think it really depends on how many people are feeding it. And we realize now, well, maybe publicizing this thing as much as we were before we made the documentary, sharing that story, which is how many people as we did. It frightened people, and the more frightened people you have. I mean, here's a great example. Look at the Dibbig Box. The Dibbig Box, the guy who created it, came out and said it wasn't real. And yet, tons of people are experiencing really scary things around it because they're feeding it. And now there's people going to a museum just like feeding that fear constantly. Of course, it's going to keep happening. I mean, it's just, it's incredible how much power can be behind the simple human thought of, I don't like that thing. Oh, yeah. I think it's most of it, because it's not necessarily like a single soul possessing this thing. Sure, sure. I mean, you know, people ask us all the time, like, how does that ghost get it in there? And I don't necessarily think that that's how it works. I think it's a telephone to something that's maybe floating around in the mass unconscious. Like a placeholder sort of. I have a weird question. So we talked about energy and ghosts and us perceiving and like, we might be creating the ghosts in our own minds in a way. Is there any proof to the existence of souls? Like, like, do like, it's a hard hitting question to the new person. I'm serious. I'm gonna find the weight of this soul. Like, yeah, no, it's serious for them. Yeah, yeah. See, if it does, like, isn't, like, do we all, like, is it just our brains or wire different? Or technically lose a little, like, clear monster inside of us? We lose, like, a microgram of the 20 grams. Yeah, there's like, we lose this little weight. Is that real? Yeah. Who's weighed while they die? (laughing) Actually, I believe in Richard Simmons requested it. (laughing) Is it like, do you ask that question, the first thing that comes to mind when you say, are we wired different? I'm like, I don't know if we're wired. If dogs can see ghosts, cats can see ghosts. Like, you know, is it our brains or is it? Before we get into whether dogs have souls, I need to find out if I do. (laughing) Yeah, I heard you hear about my dog more than I saw. (laughing) (laughing) We nearly skipping you. That's true. Let's take a look at that thought and reinterpret what a soul is. A soul, you know, when you think about it, everybody thinks about a soul as like something that resides in your chest, you know? If the thing that's in there that gives us, you know, life and life after death. And religion and culture have defined it in many different ways throughout time, all across the board. I think that what we would refer to as a soul actually exists in our mind. And I think that in this might sound wild until you look at the research, I think that we are all connected to the Earth's magnetic field. - Okay. - And there's a guy by the name of a Dr. Michael Persinger. He passed away several years ago. If you're familiar with the God helmet, have you ever seen the God helmet? - Yeah. - The idea being that if you run a certain set of magnets and a certain set of chirps signal on somebody's brain, you know, they will have religious experiences, ghostly experiences, things like that. One of the things that Persinger used to talk about, and there's a fantastic lecture that you can see from Laurentian University, it's on YouTube. It's called No More Secrets. And what he does, he actually does the math to show that the Earth's magnetic field actually has resonance with our skulls. Our brains actually have magnetite in them. Our brains actually produce electricity. So because there's a resonance there, he did the math to show that the Earth's magnetic field would be enough to hold all of the experiences of every person who has ever lived and probably ever will. And you can upload and download to that magnetic field in about seven minutes. And it usually happens when your mind is in a state of dreaming. Sometimes when you're on particular drugs, you're in states of stress. And those high stress environments actually create what he believes is an upload and a download. And when you think about places that are typically haunted, their place is where you walk into them and you automatically get a feeling. - Yes. - The example that we always give is Gettysburg. Regardless, if you go to Gettysburg, you feel whether you're someone who believes that they're psychic or anything like that. When you go there, you immediately feel like something really bad happened. You just sort of innately feel it. I think most people can when you go and visit. - Oh no, I went to Auschwitz. You feel it. - Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. - Gettysburg and Auschwitz are in haunted. The nothing is. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - But think about this. You can feel the same thing when you go into, I mean, I'm not a religious guy, but when I go into a beautiful church, I can feel the reverence there. - Yeah. - The sense of all. - Me too. - Absolutely. - I love churches. - People brought so much into that space. - Yeah. - And there are places. - Talk about charge symbols. - Exactly, also that. - You want to talk about a haunted object. - Yeah. the crowd. Yeah, there's a guy right up there. Absolutely. It's almost like there's places where certain things happen to enough people that it leaves an impression that says, Hey, maybe this place where a bunch of you died is a place you should be worried and scared of going. Yeah. So sort of an essence, there might be like an evolutionary component to it where it's like all many of us trying to protect us. Exactly. Think about it. Here's another really good example. A lot of people are afraid of spiders or a lot of people are really afraid of snakes. And they're obviously, you know, kind of creepy. And some people don't like them. But maybe there's an aspect of that that's left over evolutionarily for us to recognize like these things would have been very dangerous for us, potentially if we were living outside, if we were not protected, if we do not have shelter. So maybe there's an aspect of that that sort of exists within us within our consciousness that's just sort of plugged in there that we know innately because it's happened to so many other people that it's just sort of baked into our consciousness at this point. Yeah, I think it's up there. Yeah, I think so too. I think it's in the cloud. It's a Wi-Fi. I mean, that's been my belief, like as far as like exorcisms go for a long time, you know, when they say that people have, you know, they speak languages that they've never heard before or they know personal information about people in the room. Like, I think there is something about someone who's, you know, supposedly, again, quote unquote possessed. Someone in an extremely high stress situation, as you said, something cracks open and a bunch of weird, tuned. Yeah, a bunch of weird, something cracks up in the brain and a bunch of weird shit gets bored in. Yeah, that's why my best would be pulled back. My best improv is when I'm under financial duress. My back is really good. Financially medically spiritual. I wanted to do before we lose you. I wanted to do a quick, a couple of round robins. We got like this. We're lightning round for you guys. Oh, man. Opinions deserve to add certain topics. We were aware of the current comments by former CIA operative Jim Semivan about the current, because I know you guys are also new with those about this idea that part of what they are holding back with Luella Zondo and David Grusher holding back is the concept that we will be so challenged about the nature of the origins of humankind that it will be what he said. The news was be like if someone told you your father was not your father, but times a million. What is your reaction? What do you think that means? Oh, and before you answered, no, that Henry's having you tell me this because he knows I won't believe anything he says. Trying to think of how I want to answer this. I think that, personally, there is a seed of truth in there, but I don't typically trust the CIA. No. What? It's trained us. I think that's a dangerous game because when people in particular military intelligence positions are telling you to believe something or not to believe something. There's a reason for it and I think that it's, I don't know why we have to look at it in such a scary way. Yeah. You know what I mean? All he's saying are things that the occult has been telling people for thousands of years. I agree with you and I would say it's not that I disagree with it because I don't necessarily disagree with it. I think we're on the same page. I don't necessarily trust the source, but I would say allow it to be a potential nugget of curiosity that leads you directly into the esoteric and occult because I think that within the spaces of the esoteric and the occult, you'll begin to start to find answers. I believe that every single one of these adventures begins with a dumb thought that if you chase down a silly thought even if you chase down the actual truth in the very center of it, sometimes you shoot out into a whole other place you did not expect to. Absolutely. And it's a more true place. One of the things that we say all the time and it's sort of the seat of most of our investigations is we come to most of them from a place of play. Like a sort of inner child, a sense of wonder, a sense of curiosity in that playfulness, I think allows us to traverse some spaces that catch people in fear and in, you know, like things that kind of freak people out. I think when you have a playful nature, and like you said, Henry, like when you, when you chase a silly question, when you're being silly and you're, you're kind of earnest in your, your curiosity, you will often find yourself tumbling down interesting rabbit holes of a string high strangeness for sure. Well, that seems to be, you know, a big part of your message from what I can tell is that like, why do we need to be afraid? How do not be afraid? Like how? Like, there's like, with this stuff, like, you know, especially like dealing with the occult or dealing with, you know, ghosts are walking into a, you know, creepy abandoned mental asylum at 2 a.m., you know, like, is it about trying to be sober? And I find a lot of people who get sober get like way more extreme in other places. But no, really, like, how do you, like, how do you approach this stuff from that place of play and not a place of fear? Like, how do you get over that fear? I think fear can be playful. So I think that that you can kind of like, because the thing is, you know, we've been doing this for a billion years, but I still get scared if I go into like a haunted place. So I'm still a free, like, I still get creeped out by my fear responses to laughs laughing. Yes, you know. And I think if you just read, you read a lot, read a lot, like read a lot, talk to people, go, go, I mean, be just be curious. Yeah. And remember that when we're always, what we're always fighting is we're always fighting everyone who's saying like, be afraid of this, be afraid of that, be afraid of that. But if you start to look back at the route, like, why? Why are you afraid of that? What happened? And you start to pick those things apart, you start to find out that like, Oh, there's actually something really special that's going on behind that curtain that everybody's telling me not to go behind. Yeah, I think it's funny too, because it's sort of like when you think of the paranormal and you think of paranormal investigators, when you come into material where people are telling you don't, you know, don't go over here and look for information over here. That's evil or that's too scary. I often find myself just going directly there and wanting to read as much as I possibly can about it, because I think again, it's that that lexicon thing, right? Like the more information you have, the more ideas and theories and opinions that are from different cultures, from different times, from different types of people and different kinds of minds. I think we, we start to get that curiosity becomes, you become more confident in your curiosity and then the fear is more fun than it is, like, terrifying. Yeah. What if the cult is from the aliens? What if it is? What if esoterias from my means? I mean, teaching us how to hack our own brains. I mean, if aliens are actually communicating with us, it means that they probably have a much better sense of the world than we do. Yeah, the universe than we do. So why wouldn't we use the tools that they give us? Oh, we're just our play thing. There could be that or their objective. They're an objective intelligence and have no care for us, and we're just another play thing to them. I think it seems as if there's a playfulness to it, though, so I hope that at the very least, you know, you know, when you look at, but it's a neutral playfulness. Look at it's neutral. Look at the old contactee stories from the 50s and 60s. Things didn't really start getting scary until Betty and Barney Hill. Yeah. Look at that. The CIA was probably involved. Oh, shit. Yeah. Now we're at it. Now we're fucking at it. All right. Big foot. Where are we at? Big foot to ghost, man. Big foot to ghost. I think that's the simplest way to put it. Yeah. I think big foot is a, a faye, a faye folk, a nature spirit. Something like that. Yeah. So no big monkey. I mean, I know some guy who got sent to the woods because he was too big and hairy. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, no, cryptid is real. Or all cryptid is arrogant. I don't think that's true, because I mean, cryptozoology is just, you know, like apes at one point were cryptids when they were just stories about them, you know, I know, but a lot of those cryptozoologists are just fucking losers and in real dream. I know this. I mean, that's the bottom of this. Greg. Greg is too much money. Oh, yes, continue. I was used to say Greg has a great story about when we were at a Bigfoot conference. And he was talking to a Bigfoot investigator about how he believes that Bigfoot is a ghost. And the guy said, that I don't take with that woo, we stuck them and he turned around and he went to do Bigfoot call and he farted directly into Greg's face. You were blessed. I think technically, you were allowed to make one North Pacific Northwest based wish. Yeah. I think that some cryptids could be real. Yeah. But I think that most of them are topos like agriculture. Okay. I like that. One time we were at a Comic Con in Salt Lake City and there was a guy selling Bigfoot cast and he talked to Henry for a full 20 minutes about how rare they were. No, he already got me. I'll tell the fucking story. And then I bought one. He was meant, and this one, I'm gonna tell you right here, friend, the last one I got. All right, $65 from the Blue Ridge Mountains. There was a night. There was a beast scene. And I was just like, Oh, yeah, okay. And I bought it. And as I walked away, I turned a look back and I literally watched him like he was you. So many Sam, like look back and forth, open up another fucking ziplock thing and pull out. I've seen exact Bigfoot cast and just put it back in. - Of course. - Another fat Mayan squander, these are asses. (laughing) - Where are you guys at now? So on haunted objects, where would you say you're at right now? So where you are, what are you covering? Is it kind of a monster of the week style show or do you just do it just kind of what comes along or do you do long term like you would do with a planet weird? - Basically, what the show is, what haunted objects podcast is is it's us having the opportunity to look into items that we've collected over the years and tell interesting stories related to them. So like, you know, the first couple episodes in season two, we just did Joe Simonton and the pancakes from outer space. - Yeah. - And found new information that nobody's ever talked about that he was probably hypnotized to advertise a Disney rip off park. That's the type of stuff that we're trying to do in that show. - What? - You're going to focus more and just find more information about some of these things. - Yeah, that sounds great. - Finding them. - So there's, that we do that. The first one that we started with, what was the first? - Tarot. - Tarot, we talked about tarot. And, you know, some of the misconceptions about tarot and, you know, that was an episode that Dana led and, you know, people who've been dealing tarot for years to learn new stuff from that. So it's always to take a different approach to things that maybe people think they know about or dig up the mysteries that nobody else has talked about behind some famous cases and not so famous cases. - Now, like any smart person we talked to, there's a lot of shit in your room. Is there anything haunted in this room with you right now? Do you have any haunted objects? - Oh my God. - I'll show you the new one. Hold on. Give me one second. - Nice. - Is it the old tiny? - Yeah, they've got a tractor. It's literally as he does look like a, that is the same exact big-foot cast. - I have the same exact-fuckin' big-foot cast. 'Cause I got two. - Probably this. - Yes. - This just arrived. We just unboxed this. It came with a note and his name is Jason, apparently. It is. - Oh, man. It's only, so for those of you that are listening, there is a maroon rag doll man with a little penis. - No balls. - And his penis is big compared to his size. - He also has a hard object in the chest. So it's probably a poppet. It's a piece of sympathetic magic. It's like the idea that someone would create something and the idea as a witch or a magic practitioner, they would create an object and the intention is, they would send something to someone via the object. So it's the best way to describe it and the most common form of sympathetic magic would be like a voodoo doll. Like a kind of poppet, a figure for some sort of magic to use. So this is the new one. - Maybe a love spell, you think. - A love spell? Maybe it didn't work. - Definitely. You could see 'cause, do you think it's 'cause they gave, honestly, 'cause it has the winner. - They said they'd be, they said they'd be, the winner looks to bring the luck. - But it brought them nothing but bad luck. - But bad luck, yes. - And it's very clearly, it got something, you know, maybe it's got like hair from somebody inside of it or something. - Wow. - There's a hard object. - You should always be very, you should always do your research before you do magic spells because we have a friend who did a love spell. Big no no, did a love spell. - Never do, never do a love spell, ever. - Well, it's not yet. - And the genie said that in Aladdin. - Well, it's true, there's a reason that's there. It's an archetypal story. Turned out that the person that they put the love spell on was a lesbian. And so all it did was create consistent, unrequited love that could never be fulfilled and made it basically a curse. - Jesus Christ. - My God, love spells on people. - No, not without their order. I did. Get a hobby, you know me, get good at something. If you're gonna be a love spell, this is good. You guys look great also. Your skin's so nice. - Oh, thanks. - You guys look great too. - How do you guys get such nice skin? - We have a life. - It's the blood. (laughing) - It's the fucking soul that we found, the sacrifice. - Let it fuck. - We know all. - With satanic rituals. - It's mine. - No, of course. - There was one last thing I wanted to ask you. - You've got one last thing I wanted to ask. - I got a question and this is like, this is something that I've like, half been playing with for a couple of years known. It might be really stupid, but it goes into your magnetic field theory, is that I have like some, do you used to hear more about ghosts and hauntings in the past, like, and the stories that people would tell about ghosts and hauntings in the past used to be so much more vivid. Like, "Borly Recktery" is a great example. - Sure. - It's like a very vivid haunting of like, seeing these-- - It's Losing Charge. - It's Losing Charge. - Yeah, well, it's Losing Charge. But that's the thing, is that Losing Charge, I do have this idea that electricity is killing ghosts. - Why do you think, why do you think David Lynch puts electricity as a villain in all this shit? - Yeah. - Why, I truly do think that we are fucking our brains. - I think that David Lynch doesn't like emails. I don't think he likes, I think there's a lot of stuff he doesn't like that involves electricity. - We have definitely not like a, you know, but I do like saying 5G kills ghosts, I think that's the best use of 5G. - The Alexis, the Alexis is sucking them up! - Yeah! (laughing) - But no, like, do you think there is anything to this idea that we have introduced so much energy into our environment that it's fundamentally changing who we are? Like, is it making us, you know, if you want to get into the idea of like, you know, the collective unconscious and like, Jungian thought, is it making us less empathetic? Is it making us less connected to the rest of the humankind? Is that why we are the way we are? Or is it just because we were never meant to know the innermost thoughts of our friends and neighbors? (laughing) - At the risk of sounding like a guy who should be wearing a tinfoil hat, I don't think it's healthy to, you know, live near high tensile power lines and things like that. And when you investigate cases where people are seeing ghosts and seeing things that are strange, typically you find out that they're like sleeping next to and, you know, unshielded electrical outlet. And once they stop doing that, the visions start to go away. So I don't know whether it's having an effect on how many ghosts we're seeing or not seeing, but I do think that electromagnetic fields absolutely affect the brain. I think they absolutely affect the brain. And I think that it happens at such a subtle level that there are places that you can go that are like power centers that have like a strange geomagnetic, like some sort of strange anomalies. And that's why people are experiencing things there. And likewise, I think there's places you can go where there's no interference and maybe have a little bit of mental peace. But I don't know, that sounds real close to like thinking five g's. - Yeah, that's a problem, right? - Yeah, that is a problem. Yeah, it's like, it's this close. I know that, but yeah, that has been an idea that I've like just kind of been futsin' with for a long time. It's like, what is electricity doing to us? 'Cause I am a believer and like I was very excited when I kind of found you guys, because it's like, oh, here's people who think like I do. And that's what I'm saying. - That's what I'm saying. - Are you completely insane? - Yeah, only insane. - Yeah. - It's a little bit. - I will say, so about a week ago, we'll be wrapping up here soon, but I just wanna know. So we spoke with a vampire. - Yeah. - Who is a Lord of vampires here? - Yeah, Father Sebastian. - He's been really there. - You know, where are you at with vampires? - We've hung out with some vampires. - We have. - We've hung out with people that sort of identify as like energetic vampires, but we've also-- - I've got a sanguine vampire. - Yeah, like people who drink blood. - Did they try to make you do that stuff and you were like, guys, please. - I wanna do that stuff. - Come on, man. - Do you have you drank blood? - No. - No comment. - Yeah, I didn't know this, dude. - I don't know anything. Oh, we all want to. I think-- - Look at her. What do you think? - I think that you drank blood, but only because it would probably have to come from like a wrap. - You look like you snort-blossed. - So snort-blossed. (laughing) - You weren't in blood, you never heard an animal. - You never heard an animal, right? - No. - No, no. - No, we're vegetarians. - Are you full? - Yeah. - I mean, it's it's, I try to not create suffering if I can. - Yeah. - You know. - I don't wanna be preachy. - I'll be back to the do dogs. - Yes, yes, yes, yes. - Before we end, before we go, do dogs have souls and if they do. - Of course they do. - They're the only, of course they do. - Of course I'm concerned it's the only thing with the soul. - I thought only you were probably right. - And what about animal ghosts? - Oh, all the time. - Yeah. - Yeah. - For sure. - Yeah. - We get so many stories from people who've seen animal ghosts. It's really, really common. That's what I think the giant birds are. That's what I think thunderbirds are. - Oh, oh yeah. - That's what I think her duck does. - Yeah. - When people see that shit. - Absolutely. - Are the black dogs that are always seen in England for centuries now? - Oh yeah. - I mean, those are the cool black angus I think is. - Yes. - My name's, I mean, they're animals are so tied to folklore. They're so tied to the occult and to magic in general that it makes sense that they would be kind of in the mix when in terms of like seeing them in a paranormal light. All I know is if there is a heaven and dogs ain't there then send me the hell devil. Send me the hell devil. - I agree. We're dogs with three and one. (laughing) Guys, I love you, Bo. Thank you so much for doing the show. - Of course. - The haunted objects podcast. Go check it out. You got, I don't know if you have a new documentary besides the unbinding came out last year. I'm not gonna do that Hollywood thing where they're gonna be, like, so would you work on next? No. And it's like that. I know it's going to be on buying. Yeah. I'll see us on tour. Yeah. It starts on in September and runs till the end of October. New one. Newger cooler dot com. Come see us. Oh, no plus coming out. I wish we were. Yeah. We'll be in the Pacific Northwest. That's as far we're going. Maybe we'll come later. Please. Please. Let me just let me know and help us be thrown Annabelle. I would absolutely love to. New Kirk and EWK IRK shows tour live. New Kirk tour. New Kirk tour. New Kirk. I'll take it. I'm going to do it this way. I'm going to do it right. Capital N is a Nancy EWK IRK tour dot com. Did you take it now while they still are alive? Can I still that and put that in our advertisement? Yes, absolutely. Thank you. Goodbye, you wonderful people. Thank you guys. Yeah, thank you very much. I've been wanting to talk to you guys for so long. So it's been such a pleasure to be able to ask all questions. Thank you so much for coming anytime. Anytime. Thank you. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye from North way. Very good. Very learned people. Very learned. Very well read people. Fascinating. Very fascinating. Absolutely. It's so nice when I talk to these people and they're not complete fucking lunatics. They're just not there just somebody that's going to be at a party. The problem though is that because people like that, but I would also consider us are not necessarily lunatics as that sometimes you find that you are. Well, you know yourself. Yeah, that's my issue. Yeah, you did. I say about just stuff that I think it's like super fun. You're super great. And it's your take that of where you are. Everybody's my part super cool. Yes, and I don't know why. I'm one of the good ones. Yes, it turns out you're the one who's the lunatic. And it's like, but no, I'm one of the good ones. If you scream it loud enough, it's true. Oh, it is. It's my volume. Check us out at patreon.com/lastpodcast on the left to see video episodes. 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