32.24 - MU Podcast - Soul Snapping
01:06:56 Share

This episode is brought to you by Hay Day. Looking to escape all the festive chaos? Turn holiday hecticness into harmony with Hay Day, the mobile game that helps you harvest calm one crop at a time. Reclaim your me time. Relax, decorate, and enjoy farming bliss as you tend to your animals and harvest crops as part of a welcoming, stress-free community. Join over 20 million players. Just tap or click on the banner now to download Hay Day for free today. ♪

Welcome to Mysterious Universe, Season 32, Episode 24. Coming up on the show, we've got the photographic life force thieves, the mirrored gateways of the intruders, and when the psychic surgery from the DMT mantoid turns you bisexual. I'm your host, Benjamin Grundy. Joining me is Aaron Wright. It's a lot.

Last episode of 2024. I thought we could just have, you know, just a general perusal of the year, just kind of have a bit of a review, see how we're going. No, no, you have to get some Mantoid turning people bisexual. This is after the Mantoid gives you open heart surgery. What? In another dimension. Where did you get this from? This is from a new book from Wade Richardson, The Psychedelic Mind Meld, Telepathically Exploring Shared Consciousness.

I still don't know what it is. I still don't know what mind melding is. It's a thing that you do on drugs. Is it a Star Trek kind of thing? Well, what's weird about it is there's a consent form. What do you mean there's a consent form? There's a consent form at the end of the book. You've got to print it out and sign it. Before you read it? Before you start doing mind melding with your partner. And I was like, what is this about? Why is there a consent form? So I started reading it.

It says,

This is the second page. Can you read some of that for us? I acknowledge physical movement and engagement during the mind meld may result in incidental touching of genitals. That is not sexual. And I am okay with this.

So I've printed out a couple of forms for you and I to sign with each other. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You're a great friend. I love you like a brother, but I'm not going to have incidental touching of genitals that is not sexual. But it says explicitly there, it's not sexual. It's like bro. It's bro touching.

It's not sexual. It's part of the melding. It's part of the melding process. And it's not guaranteed either. There just may be some brushing of genitals. Is this just for some closet case to justify getting his rocks off? Is that what this is? Well, there's a certain point. This is after the alien mantis does its thing with him, where he's on drugs and he's like, you'd be surprised at how me being a cis straight male with a wife...

Started to have fluid feelings towards the men I was working with. So it's like, okay, maybe you do need the consent form. But then there's other sections of the book, which I'll get into later in the plus extension, where he's like, you can't

The only word you have to stop the mind meld session is... Like a safety word. Yeah, you have a safe word like stop. And then he says, if your melding partner in this experience...

saying things like, get off me, get away from me, don't touch me, get the fuck off me. That's not code. That is just their internal LSD journey coming out. No, that's violating consent. You just have to ignore it. And remember, they have already signed a consent form allowing spontaneous non-sexual genital brushings.

Oh, my God. Yeah. That's what you've got coming up for Plus. Look, it's all I could do at the end of the year. It's all I could do.

You're so worn out. You're so over-droned that you're like, that's it. I'm just going to do some weird mantis sex. If I hear another word about drones, I'm going to blow my brains out. Oh, I know. Isn't it funny how it's kind of ended up though? I did predict it. I called it. What was going to happen is that it would generate a huge amount of attention. It would kind of get into the news cycle. It would go around for a couple of cycles and then it would just essentially disappear. And that's really what's happening at the moment. Like it's kind of just...

fading away into nothingness. The latest thing I saw was that they were saying, oh no, this is actually an agreement that the government put in that these aerospace companies would be allowed to fly their test drones in a corridor over New Jersey. Right. So it's like,

Okay. So someone does know something, someone in the government, somewhere higher up knows what's going on. I feel like the greater populace is experiencing the overall frustration with the UFO phenomenon that we've gone through our entire research lives. Like they're experiencing it. There's never any answers or conclusions. They're experiencing it in a microcosm. Yes. It's like, oh, you don't know what's happening over three weeks. Oh, that must be so difficult. Oh.

Oh, no, the mystery. Yeah, you're not cynical at all. Yeah. Try 20 years or more of researching this. I incidentally came across it today because I was actually looking into some of the work of John Keel because I wanted to talk about the Phantom Photographers, which we'll get into in a moment. We're going to be talking about soul-stealing photographers on this episode. We're going to go into...

portals, dimensional gateways, also mirrors that are kind of connected with that. We'll get back to that in a moment. But when I was looking through the John Keel stuff, of course, you know, like John Keel, the famed ufological researcher, who ultimately became also very cynical, I believe, with the phenomenon and frustrated with it. Yeah. Not just because of lights in the sky. I mean, he experienced extreme high strangeness.

But he never got to any real conclusions, any real understanding as to what it was. Just more observations and more questions. But that's also part of the frustration is the discussion is still about lights in the sky. Exactly. Yes, you're right. And we cannot move past that. It's still this question of the validity of the lights in the sky. It's like, look at all the other things that are happening to people. Well, and...

especially with the drones, it's actually funny how you highlight this idea that it's like this frustration that ufological researchers have for decades being condensed into this very short period. But it actually had all...

all the elements of what the ufological phenomenon is. For example, that you had the waters being muddied by a bunch of people looking up at the night sky and seeing what is obviously an aircraft, what is obviously a commercial standard aircraft or helicopter. How dare you suggest that people are seeing planes. And photographing it and then contacting you and me and going, hey guys!

It wasn't just us, but it was the mainstream news. And so the problem was then when that started getting out, more people became cynical quite rapidly with it going, oh no, people are just seeing planes. And that's why the authorities could really get away with saying, oh no, these are manned aircraft or these are legally flying. It's because a lot of the images that were coming out were of actual planes.

So if you weren't looking at any depth of this, and we're in the TikTok generation now where everything's 30 seconds or less, it's like, no, let's wipe that off. That's done. There was definitely some high strangeness connected with the drones. That's one thing I'll say. And going back to John Keel, I just wanted to bring this up because it's in reference to what I was describing a couple of weeks ago when we were talking about the strange morphing that is seen with UFOs. And

John Keel says that many, many years ago, back in the Mothman times, like 1960s, he was standing upon a hilltop just outside Point Pleasant one night. He was there with other experiences that were caught up in the entire saga that he was going through.

And he says he was there with a Mrs. Hire who called our attention to a bright red light that was slowly moving towards us. He describes it as having a shimmering prismatic appearance of the classic UFO light style for the time. And there was another eyewitness there by the name of Dan. Now, Dan apparently was a student pilot. And even though he's a student, he's like...

I know what a conventional aircraft is. And he says to the other people around him, that's not a plane. It's absolutely not a plane. And they all agreed. There was no normal wing lights. There was no tail lights. It just didn't fit with what should be a standard aircraft. Kiel writes that the sky was crystal clear and there was only one small cloud hovering overhead.

But that small cloud seemingly was quite pivotal to this entire scene because they watched as this light very boldly and very almost arrogantly

moved very slowly, dropped to a lower altitude, and there was no sound at all. It then approached the little cloud and disappeared into it. Like it went into the cloud. Now, John Keel said we all waited for it to reappear. Seconds ticked into minutes, right? It's a small cloud. That aircraft didn't stop, but seemingly did. I mean, if it was a standard aircraft, it shouldn't be able to stop unless it was a helicopter, and it definitely wasn't a helicopter. He said the light did not come out from behind the cloud.

But something kind of did. Something moved up. And he said suddenly there was a distinctive drone of an airplane engine and the obvious silhouette of a small plane emerging from the cloud with wings and taillights flashing. So it had the lights and everything. That's amazing. It's almost like, and you hear this with people that UFO experiences, but normally it's people that are deeper into the phenomenon. They say that they know something.

They had this feeling that whatever is inside that craft knows they're looking at it. And it kind of develops this reciprocal relationship. So I'm wondering with here, it's like they're all talking. Oh, is it a plane? Oh, no, it can't be a plane because it doesn't have wing lights. It doesn't have tail lights. Oh, it's making no noise. It started making a noise and it put the little lights on it and then the silhouette of it. So you're saying it's responding to their thoughts? Yep.

Yeah, which is what I think perhaps some of this stuff that was going on with the drones, maybe it's all just very advanced aircraft. But I do wonder if some of it is the phenomenon itself kind of mimicking what they're seeing going on. And as I said, because the waters are so muddied now, it's going to be all dismissed as just being advanced or not even advanced, but just modern aircraft testing.

in this apparent corridor, which is over New Jersey. But look, it's a fluid situation. So perhaps things will change as things move along. But I just thought I'd throw that in there because this is nothing new. This whole morphing and seeing things in the sky, it's nothing new. And you rightly point out it can become frustrating because this was happening decades ago and it's still happening now. And it will happen decades from now as well. But regardless, let's move on

On this episode, I want to talk about this great little concept that was raised by The Observer. You can find him at theobservermagazine.substack.com. Of course, I'll link to it in the show notes. But it's Killer Kodaks and Soul Snatching Shutterbugs. And this is a three-part series. And it raises a really interesting concept.

So they write that in 1965, the future Murphy Brown co-star Candice Burgum was afraid for her soul. And it comes about that apparently she had just kind of cut her teeth in the industry, in the film The Group.

But apparently she was hesitant to pursue a Hollywood career and all of these movie offers were flowing in for her and she was quite successful, but she struggled with the prospect of living a life in front of the viewfinder. And in fact, she's quoted as saying, I didn't worry about my salvation, strongly suspecting that there was no small truth in the ancient, sorry, I did worry in the ancient belief that the camera steals the soul.

And in fact, I heard Carrie Fisher quote something like this about Michael Jackson many years ago, where she said, look, you know, if those folkloric beliefs of the camera stealing your soul are true, someone like Michael Jackson, well, his soul has been destroyed a long, long time ago. I thought that's interesting. I mean, his life ended quite early and it was sad. Was that just the effects of fame or is there more to it with these little legends and stories? And when I get into this, you'll see that maybe there is something to it, especially with these, uh,

you know, early photographers that kind of push this as a form of magic, but maybe there's an alchemy to it, but we'll get into it. So with Candice Bergen, you know, she was no stranger to having her photograph taken when she was six years old. She appeared in the Saturday Evening Post. And, you know, she ended up going into this big screen career, as we know, but, you know, she said it was a lure. There was a siren song to it and the forces pulling me closer and closer into the proximity of cameras, you

It's said that there were no other, well, she writes that there were no other opposing forces. It's like she was swept up in it, but she was convinced that they weren't going to steal her soul. And, you know, it's written here in The Observer that her instincts to protect her likeness is rooted in ancient taboos that condemn the creation of graven souls.

images. And traces of this phobia still exist today, but they manifest in cultural superstitions and urban legends about cursed cameras bringing misfortune to all who encounter them. And I'll get to some of those in a minute. But with photography, I mean, we know with photography, it started roughly 200 years ago with the invention of early processes that used silver coated plates to create images.

But almost immediately when this happened, the public was suspicious. They're extremely suspicious because this is something that was like, it was a magician's work to be able to recreate something just so rapidly and so easy. And the ability to capture a scene and reproduce it

it to the uninformed layman really was the work of black magic. And I get that. I understand why people would be suspicious about these sorts of things. And other people believed that, well, there's got to be something more than just the simple process of chemicals, that there's something more to this. How are you, is it a supernatural etching or a magical emanation that's being generated by this? And I see this. I understand why people would feel that way. But

When photography first hit the German scene, they write, one newspaper denounced it as a textbook example of blasphemy. It's quoted as saying, man is created in the image of God and God's image cannot be captured by any human machine. And again, this is what we're kind of doing now as well with artificial intelligence. It's like every time there's a new technology that comes along, there's this feeling that we're playing God.

We're pushing back against the boundaries of what's possible. But if you look at photography today, most people don't believe that your camera is stealing your soul. Like I should say, almost everyone, unless you're a uncontacted tribe, are not going to believe that that's what's happening. But at the time, there was this superstitious element about it. How is that? I mean, how do they make that argument when you can have lifelike paintings? How does that...

I don't know. Maybe the painting, there's something about it being created by a human, like it's coming from the human. Whereas this, I mean, this is, it said that this, this photography was an act of hubris on par with the construction of the Tower of Babel. I don't know what people were thinking back then, but I mean, extremely superstitious and religious reasons that just felt like it was wrong. And in fact, there was an 1853 editorial talking about the nervous uncertainty that the operation inspired and

In fact, someone wrote that there is something about the camera that bespeaks a hand not of this world to punish us. He's included an image here of the way the camera works. You've got your large viewfinder for capturing multiple souls in one shot and then a refractable soul catcher and a lens forged in hellfire. Look, I'm sure there was plenty of people that had no issue with this whatsoever, but they were more religious and superstitious times. So I can understand this. And to finish the quote, it said, to punish us for penetrating her mysteries is...

nature touches us with the very shadowy hand of death. And like alchemists turning base metals into gold, photographers breathed life into a blank piece of paper. And the transformation was unnerving to some people. But moving aside from dogma, is there any parapsychological or metaphysical argument for why a photograph of you is more than just a copy? Oh, yes. Oh, yes, there is. And it might tie in with more...

I'm not going to say modern because it's not now, but more recent new age understandings of things like Kirlian photography is one example of the aura of the energy fields that surround your body. Is there something to that? Like what happens when you're photographing this stuff? Are you affecting that in some way?

And, you know, historian Robert Taft actually said that they impose themselves, these early photographers, as if they are magicians. And this is to elevate their stature in the minds of potential customers. But by mystifying an already enigmatic process, early photographers help feed many of the public's apprehensions, which I'm sure they would. So it comes to this section called soul snatchers. And

They write that the First Nations people of the Canadian plains call cameras the face pullers. And there's reports, you know, old reports of saying that there was an understanding that this contraption would weaken people. It's like if you took a photograph of them, it would snatch a part of their spirit when the photograph was produced. Well, let's examine that for a moment because my understanding would be a psychic or a psychometrist

if you believe that those abilities are true and real, that they seem to be able to gather some information from the photo. You know, we've had various stories over the year of sometimes psychics being used in missing persons case. Often they'll just need a photo or an item of clothing from the individual. Because they pick up on the energy. Yeah. So there's an energy that's left behind in the photograph, but it would be the same with that seat you're sitting on. You know, if someone had a...

amplified psychometric ability that would be able to tell something about you from the energy you leave behind on that seat. The same with our clothing, the same with a wristwatch or whatever. But then the question is, are you weakened by that? Just because you've left some kind of imprint behind, is that, do you have a finite amount? Well, I think perhaps you do, but it may regenerate. But I don't, I think there's something different when you introduce a device that remotely potentially can capture it.

I think that changes things and you'll see where I'm going, or at least where the observer goes with this in my interpretation of it. Because, um, so let's, let's talk about like the, the Asian Pacific region where there's a bunch of, you know, um, you know, cultures in the 1800s that had these similar beliefs. Like this is almost became like a global, um, cultural belief.

of different cultures, but this same thing, that this thing was taking a part of you. But there was a Scottish photojournalist by the name of John Thompson. He revealed that the Chinese regarded him as a dangerous geomancer because he carried with him a dark, mysterious instrument that granted him the power to pierce their very souls. And anyone unfortunate enough to get caught on film was marked for certain death. Now that's perhaps- That's great.

That's pretty extreme, right? To believe that if your photograph is to, I understand perhaps having a part of your soul or your energy body being taken by a photograph, uh, but marking you for death is probably a little extreme. But of course the Ainu of Northern Japan shared this aperture aversion, according to an 1894 report in the journal of American folklore, the Ainu were put off by recreations of the images and warned about the practices adverse effects. And they said, listen to this. This is where their belief system comes from. Uh,

to put a person's form on paper was much like drawing the soul out of him and placing it in an unnatural position. So that's the difference. It's like, you're not,

leaving your imprint of your energy somewhere. It's actually being forcibly taken. It's being stolen. Is that why they look so grim in the old photos? No, well... They're worried about part of their soul being stolen. Maybe. But henceforth, there was this belief that if you had your photograph taken, it would take some type of your material substance. Like it's immaterial. You can't say it's an energy.

But it's also, it's a material substance in another reality. So the Ainu were very careful about photographers taking photographs of them because they said that a person being photographed would be transformed into a ghost before his time. So reservations about this photo technology was also common in the United States. It wasn't just across Asia Pacific. People feared that, and because it was a high infant mortality rate as well around that time,

you know, comparatively, superstitious parents feared that creating a representation of their child may hasten their demise and destroy their existence. And as a result, many families were reluctant to photograph their children. Have you seen that photo? It's like one of those old black and white photos, like the ones I've been showing. Of the Ainu? Not of the Ainu. It's of a Chinese guy, but it's from this era. It's from the very- The late 1800s? Yeah, very early black and white photography. But he's smiling like a modern Instagram shot.

And apparently the story behind it is that he didn't know how photography worked or what a camera was and he was just smiling. It looks so strange.

It's utterly bizarre. And what's funny about that is back there, it's not like when you take a photograph today, the shutter speeds that we have. Back when early photography was around, you had to sit there or stand there for a while. Like your face would be hurting if you were smiling that much. But look, traces of this photophobia were, you know, continued into the 20th century. And you've got the 1930s where obviously photography has advanced, but you've got German philosopher Walter Benjamin saying,

He suggested, and this is what really resonated with me, is that an object's aura, you know, this energy, which is surrounding it, and it's not just people, it's also objects as well, is diminished anytime it's subjected to mechanical reproduction.

So it's not you leaving an imprint of yourself in a piece of antique furniture or something. It's the mechanical reproduction of it. And it duplicates an object, or in doing so, in duplicating an object, it removes a layer of uniqueness and detaches it from its original context.

So I'm like, okay, let's dig a little bit deeper into this. Before you go on, it's this guy. Oh, that's surreal. It's this guy. He's very happy to be eating that rice. So when this, this is, yeah, late 18th century, when this photo first emerged, people thought it was fake.

Apparently, this is the story because they had never seen anyone do this in a photo. So this is the first guy ever to smile in a photo, apparently. Wow. Because it was just so unheard of. They're like, how on earth did you get this photo? It must be some kind of weird painting or something. Yeah, it looks like that.

Yeah, that's incredible. So then you've got other people like French novelist Balzac or de Balzac. He was warned that photography could strip spectral material from a subject's body. So this is where you start moving into this idea of auras. And he theorized that each time a photograph was taken, an actual layer was destroyed. And he says, because man couldn't create something out of nothing, the likeness captured by a photograph had to derive from pre-existing matter.

which could be this auric field you have around it, a substance extracted from the object and impressed upon the film. So that makes sense when you think about it, right? It's absurd from a modern materialist perspective. But when your photograph is taken, to produce that photograph, we have to use energy. That energy has to be drawn from the subject.

So this is where they're getting into is that this is actually- But the energy comes from the batteries in the camera and the chemical reaction. Well, that's from a modern perspective, right? That's a modern perspective and a modern understanding of what's going on. But in another dimension, is some of your etheric energy being pulled into the camera or being not even by the camera, but just by the act itself of reproduction, is it somehow draining you? Is it taking something from you? The analogy I would use would be a fingerprint. It's like if you push your thumb into ink and then put it on a piece of paper-

Are you leaving part of your thumb behind when you do that? No, it's a print. Well, forget the ink though. You leave fingerprints everywhere and you leave aldeosaccharides, you leave fats, you leave oils, you leave something of you every time you touch something. Gross. What about mind-melding brushing of the genitals? Well, that's going to be...

That's going to probably be gross as well, I'm assuming. But you see what I'm saying? I get your ink thing, but every time you touch something, you physically leave a trace. You leave something behind. So I can see, I'm not saying I necessarily believe this, but I can see where they're going.

And I like exploring this energy kind of idea, right? Because then it plays into where we're going to go next. So is the solution that we just enter into some kind of plastic bubble and don't touch anything because we'll be giving off our energy? No, I mean, it's not that. But, you know, Balzac worried that repeated exposure to a camera's lens would deplete these ghostly layers or specters making up our corporeal bodies. So I'm like, yeah, okay, that's an interesting concept.

But then... Does that explain the wall that hits the Instagram models so hard? Well, maybe. They hit 40 and the... It's not actually... There is no wall. It's just all the photos being taken. It's draining their life force. Well, I wonder if that's in some sense...

pardon me, what possibly could be happening to people. Like some people that really burn out, whether it's Instagram models or film stars or anything like that, people that maybe it's just like we think it's because of the fame factor and because they're being chased by the paparazzi and all of that has a psychological pressure to it. But if you add this esoteric element to it, well, those people are obviously going to be energetically drained significantly faster than other people. And that's why they might crash out. That's why there might be such a high incidence of substance abuse.

Like, look at these ironing chicks. They don't hit the wall. Well, they probably haven't had many photographs taken of them. So there was a French researcher by the name of Baradouk. And Baradouk,

ran experiments suggesting that a camera could capture a person's vital force on film. And he has a large collection of photographs of white hazy blobs, which he called the vapor of life, emanating from both living and deceased subjects. What? Yeah. Is this in the article? Yeah, this is in the article. Part two? This is in part two.

So, I mean, yeah, rightly so. They point out that his research had its fair share of detractors, obviously. But Baraduk's contributions illustrated how closely aligned photography was with the concept of life, death and the unknown. Oh, so he doesn't have photos of the blob. Not here. No. But that reminds me, it's kind of like the ectoplasmic photographs that were being taken, you know, in the 1920s, 1930s.

And people, especially critics, they disagree with this notion of an object having an aura. But how many times have we covered stories of people that are psychometrists wandering into antique stores and seeing objects actually glowing, picking up some type of energy from it? Here's the photos. This is one from 1896 from Baradook. Interesting. It shows a vital force around a child. Nice.

Right. There you go. What's that one? This photo of his wife 20 minutes after her death. Gee, that's grim. Yeah, that is grim. What's the other one? There is this weird ectoplasmic mist coming out of her. What the hell? But look, I mean, obviously, again, we go back to the modern materialist explanation is that photography was in its infancy and, you know, film was susceptible to a whole wide range of contaminants and the lighting may not have been correct. But it is odd that you've got

And even that weird wavy line, I mean, that could just simply be... But there's no torch there. There doesn't seem to be a light source. So why is that occurring? But I mean, this all could just be simple artifacts which are being... Explainable artifacts which are being kind of...

to fit into what his theory was. But then, of course, you've got people like Marian Wagner, sorry, Warner, who argued that photographing something has actually the opposite effect. A picture can preserve the vital energy of a long-vanished subject.

subject. So it's like, and maybe that fits in with psychometry. When people get a photograph of someone that they're trying to seek out or get information about is that that energy is stored in there and the psychometrist can pick up on that information because it's actually contained within the image. So

Then you've got people like in Kisnek, he said that there was no very good reason why even reproductions cannot appropriate for themselves the features composing of the work's authenticity. So again, the idea of storing that energy. But there was an essay that spoke about the transferability of the human aura, and this is by Victoria Biglardi. And she proposed that the aura does not disappear upon the loss of the original, but is reincarnated in the authentic reproduction.

This episode is brought to you by Google Gemini. With the Gemini app, you can talk live and have a real-time conversation with an AI assistant. It's great for all kinds of things, like if you want to practice for an upcoming interview, ask for advice on things to do in a new city, or brainstorm creative ideas. And by the way, this script was actually read by Gemini. Download the Gemini app for iOS and Android today. Must be 18 plus to use Gemini Live.

Adelassian.com.

So in other words, a photograph can assume the original qualities and become the very object to which it refers, at least energetically. She's talking about sculptures though. Yeah, well, sculptures, photographs, it fits in with this psychometric energetic idea. So if a photographic process doesn't ensnare our spectral layers and just simply peels them away, they can each image contribute to the degradation of our bodily energy.

And if it's, yeah, so. The abstract says through an object biography of a 15th century sculpture by Francesco Lorana. So that's who, that's the sculpture she was working on. The author proposes that the aura does not disappear upon the loss of the original, but yeah, like you said, reincarnated in the authentic reproduction. So it's transferring the energy of someone's aura. Do you remember we covered the stories that,

from Chinese legends of the statues taking on life? Yes. It's the same idea. It's the same idea. Yeah, you've just got a different interpretation. You could have a different cultural interpretation of what appears to be possibly a universal energy that people are picking up on. Now, this is what grabbed me because I started thinking about this. I'm like, yeah, okay. So early photographers, pioneering photographers of the 19th century, strangely boasted above average lifespans.

in an era when most people failed to reach their 60th birthday, these photographers regularly lived to over 90 years old. Really? They write, did early picture takers discover a way to siphon the essence of life from their unwitting subjects? I'm like, that's an intriguing concept. True. Back-checked. True. It'd be funny to look today at, like, you know, is it Ann Geddes or whatever? Because she's taking photographs of kids all the time. Like,

How long does she live for? Is that what's going on? That's the key. You want to be photographing young people to get the most pungent energy, absorb the most energy. It's like, ideally you want a blood boy, but you also want to photograph the blood boy to get the maximum energy.

Yeah, there's like the energy. Silicon Valley energy. It's actually really creepy. Like there's this really creepy kind of feel to it. And that's what the article kind of goes into. And, you know, it points out that today, you know, we're increasingly having our experiences moderated through electronic devices and mechanical equipment, more so than any other time in history. It's like nothing is unfiltered by a screen or image and it has this dehumanizing effect. And if it's doing that, if it's stripping us of our...

energy forces, what is that doing to our society? Like we're not going back. Like we can't go back now. Like photography and filming and everything, it's all going to just become more prominent. So a photo is sapping your internal chi. What is a video doing? Well, the same kind of thing.

But tenfold? I don't know. That's a very good question. Is that sucking my life force right now? Probably. Well, we'll just turn off the camera. So we'll just keep on talking. But then there's this idea as well. We focus on cultures describing photographs. You're gone black. Fixed it. It's the rest of the show. That's great.

I look so much better in the dark. That's fantastic. So it's funny though, because even first recorders though, like we're talking about photographs and people go, oh, it's a soul stealer. But even recording people's voices, like on phonographs or the equivalent, you know, very early on, there was this suspicion that it was stealing people's souls.

because your voice is going in. It's like that energy going into it. Now, there may be completely nothing to this at all. If we really sit in the materialistic idea and be very rational and very modernly scientific about this, it's absurd. It's absolutely absurd. It's ridiculous. There's no such thing.

But just perhaps, you know, if we look at it from an energetic perspective, and if this is real, whether it's an orgone energy or whether it's, you know, some type of auric energy, is our energy being stolen from us through the camera?

And it's like, it's disrupting our society. It's funny because what you're describing, yeah, it sounds outlandish and a bit crazy, but I've been making the same argument on the show for a long time now that these creative works contain a certain essence of the artist, of the creator. Of course they do, yes. There is an energetic message that's embedded into a written work, into music, into a painting, right?

Now, the problem I have is that it's being stolen and that you have some kind of loss from that production.

My understanding is that when you create a written work, for example, and you're putting in your energy and soul into it, that is carried in the work. But it's almost like the idea of a cell replicating. It carries your message, but you're not depleted in any way from the creation. Yeah, it's not a bad, but this is the difference. Although in saying that, just as I was saying that, there is a taxing cost to great creations. You look at all the masters through history.

you could tell that they foregoed, they didn't eat, they didn't sleep, they poured their entire soul and energy into their works. And obviously there's a cost there. So the question is, is the cost from the actual art?

Or is that just what's required to create something amazing, to create something beautiful? You kind of hit the nail on the head there because you're right. Like not so much modern music, but I'm sure it's, I'm sure there is an effect to it. But when you think about the great composers, you know, like, you know, Bach, for example, or Beethoven, or like when you listen to a piece of that music, you know, you in some ways feel it. Like there's something that you feel about that. And I wonder if that's because the energy of what they did to put that into it.

now continues. It continues to go along. But the difference I think is, is that they have deliberately done that. It's like they have volunteered that energy. They've sacrificed. They have consented to

to put that in consent form. I don't think anyone was touching Bach's balls, but, you know, it's like, what does it say there? I'm sorry. Incidentally touching Bach's genitals. I am comfortable with, and you insert examples of hugging or snuggling in an embrace, and I commit to supporting my co-melder throughout the whole of their experience. What is this, a BuzzFeed article talking about straight men that go and hug each other?

Fuck's sake. Anyway, so yeah, I think that the difference is though with photography is like how often is it that you're just –

A photograph, particularly now, like when even here on the Sunshine Coast, there's CCTV cameras that are going up everywhere. Now they've got facial recognition going on in stores when you walk into them. This is big kind of privacy concern at the moment, which is being investigated by the Australian government because one of our major hardware stores is using facial recognition technology. Let's strip away the technology from it. Strip away the idea of the camera taking this energy that we're speaking about. What about me just looking at you? Maybe. Maybe.

I'm receiving your image right now. Am I taking some energy from you just by observing you? Not necessarily, but how many times have we discussed stories about things like energy vampires? Could some people be more inclined, like people that have narcissistic personality traits, for example, be more likely to actually draw energy from people as opposed to people that are more inclined to be kind? Well, it's kind of a different argument. I'm just talking about

the actual observing. I'm not actively trying to leech your energy. But you might be though. This is what I'm saying, right? How is it that some people, like, I think we've all experienced this, right? You've had a friend or an acquaintance that you hang around and after you hang around with them, you're just like, just...

Can't see them today. You know what I mean? How many times has that happened to people? It happens to me twice a week. It happens to me twice a week as well. Don't you worry. Don't you worry about that bit. Why do you think we only come into work twice a week now? It's definitely not the mold. But maybe though, it's more to do about the use of an instrument. I don't know if an instrument such as a camera or a phone or whatever you will, that changes it.

Like the way that the medium is used to draw things, does that somehow change it? No, well, that's why I said take it out of the equation because you're getting into a real philosophical discussion of the exchange of energy. Every conversation you have with someone, there is absolutely an exchange of energy. And whether or not that's an actual etheric thing that's taking place, there is an exchange of energy. It was a good thing to bring up the security camera, for example.

There's no human that's necessarily operating that. So is that the same principle? Can you have just a camera in an empty room pointing at someone? Is it still capturing their energy?

It's an innate object. Yes. Yeah. Because it's storing, if we go back to some of the previous quotes, it's storing that energy. And eventually if you have a psychometrist or a psychic, for example, that goes and reads that, are they picking up on that energy? And we might have huge amounts, we must have abundant amounts of energy, but the more and more and more and more you photograph, the more it's drained. And I go back to the Michael Jackson quote. He was at one point, was one of the most photographed people, as was Princess Di.

I literally took his melanin out. Well, I'm not saying his melanin, but maybe it does have physical effects. Because people look drained. People that are energetically drained, they end up looking physically drained because that's really what's going on. So it's food for thought. I don't know where I sit with it, but I really like the concept. I find it to be an intriguing kind of idea. And this is why I came across the... And there's a third piece in here as well. It's interesting in the context of modern technology, especially with the

AI becoming more advanced? If you're having a conversation with AI, does the same exchange occur? Or is it capturing something? I don't know. I mean, maybe. Yeah. Does it? Because if every conversation between human beings is some kind of exchange of energy in some form in another dimension that we can't quite perceive, what about with a machine? Yeah, maybe. Or is it just a dead, lifeless husk?

Is anything in the universe a dead, lifeless husk? Does everything have intelligence? Well, then if you look at it from an animism point of view, everything does have intelligence. So everything would draw something from something else. So there is no mindless machine. There's no such thing. No, it's performing some type of energetic exchange. But obviously, you know, it's like because we don't recognize it, we don't understand it.

we can't see what the underlying energetic problem is. We just see it as being, oh, it's the reduction in morals or it's... And the observer rightly points out that, look,

Pictures are posted online. They can be viewed by countless people. So does it change if you've got just a photograph of one person that was being read? Let's say back in the 80s, we look at a Sad Rag or a tabloid magazine. Yeah, it might have a certain distribution of, let's say, 220,000 people. But now, like an Instagram model, millions of people

Is it if it's being viewed by countless people? Does digital duplication result in a loss of the subject's aura? Does every reposted pic actually destroy the spirit of the object being represented, making it less authentic and more avatar? Can the proliferation of selfies and the fascination with live streaming...

cause trouble within our society? Can we be committing a form of spectral suicide by shedding auric layers at an unprecedented rate? And I'm like, yes, I think so. What if you do something really cringe and the internet turns you into one of those soy jack memes? Does that mean every time the meme is used, some of your energy is taken away? Well, I wonder though, again, where it comes back to, right? It's not just simply the energy itself. It's also the intent. I think the intent can move or change what happens with that energy. So if you have...

the intent to you genuinely make a mistake or you genuinely do something that was an accident or embarrassing, it might not have the same energetic effects as these live streamers that go to Japan and Korea, for example, and then just do incredibly stupid and embarrassing things because the intent was actually to cause trouble. Does that affect the way that the energy is absorbed? It gets even more complicated because it's like, who was watching it? What are they thinking?

Do you see how though, that if we don't recognize that, like if this really is happening, but we refuse to acknowledge it, can it have significant consequences for us as a culture moving forward?

I'm going to say no. I think it can. I think from an energetic perspective, I think it can. Because we've covered so many stories on psychometry that I think there is an energy out there that it impregnates everything. It moves through everything. And maybe each of us has a certain predetermined amount of it. And for whatever reason, whether it's who you interact with or modern technology, is it pulling on that and draining it? I think there could be something potentially to that. And the reason why I said that

Maybe it's time for you to start wearing the mask, Aaron, so no one can steal your energy. Well, you already know who I am, so it's completely pointless. I reckon you should start wearing like a metal mask, some kind of metal mask to hide your face. I don't know, but I'm still behind it. Like a little breathing hole, so you're just going around going... Doesn't matter. I'm still behind it. So it's like... Yeah, but no one's capturing your face. They're just capturing the mask. So it's stopping...

I don't know. Look, I haven't. Is that why when you wear sunglasses, they can't steal your soul?

Where have we ever heard that? Where has anyone said what you wear? The Yakuza. That's got nothing to do with stealing your soul, at least I don't believe so. Think about it. What's the portal to the soul? It's the eyes. The eyes, that's a good point. You wear the sunglasses, you block their access to the soul. Maybe, that's a good point. So then what we have to do is we have to, because I was reading this, I'm like, no, this is just, it has a feeling that there's something to this. And it reminded me of the phenomenon of,

of the phantom photographers. And this is something that John Keel got really indepthly involved with back in the 1960s. The guys that would just show up after a UFO encounter, like men in black style, but there would be no discussion. They'll just be like, snap, and then vanish. Yeah, I mean, that's a very nutshell way of putting it. But let me describe some of these stories to you, right? Because you go, yeah, that's weird. It goes beyond. Because I always thought the phantom photographers were just simply about intimidation.

But I don't think so. Now, especially reading this from The Observer, I go, is there more to it? Is it removing someone's, is it depleting their energy so that they can't talk about the phenomenon? Or is it...

tagging them with something. Is that what they're doing? So in the Mothman Prophecies, John Keel writes that on one Sunday afternoon in the spring of 1967, he was walking along 42nd Street and 3rd Avenue with a lady friend. And there were very few people on the street at the time. And suddenly, he writes that a small, sorry, a tall, thin man came around the corner. His face was gaunt and pointed and he was carrying a camera. He raised the camera and deliberately took our picture. Then he turned and ran up the street.

My friend knew nothing of the men in black, and so it's not unusual to see tourists snapping pictures in New York City, so I deliberately refrained from making any comment. But his friend said, that was strange, and he was such an evil-looking man. Why did he take our picture? Now, John Keel says I could only shrug. The man, incidentally, was not dressed in black. He was wearing a sports jacket and slacks, but...

The clothing seemed to fit him very poorly, which is consistent with stories of the men in black, right? Now he says, a few days later, Dan Drazen phoned me. He was preparing to go back to West Virginia with a camera crew. He said, you know, this probably doesn't mean anything, he said slowly.

But the other day I was walking through midtown Manhattan and this Indian guy took my picture. He was even wearing a black suit. Now, when he says Indian, I believe he means Native American. Yeah, yeah. He does not mean non-Indian. Because many of these people that had these experiences with men in black or the phantom photographers encountered what they said were Native Americans.

Wearing these ill-fitting black suits. But that, I mean, that follows on from Kiel's claims that he was running into these ruddy complexioned individuals. That's right. Tall, thin, long fingers. That's right.

that were connected with the UFO phenomenon. So it's, yeah, it's when you say Native American, you don't mean. No, I don't mean, I don't mean actual Native American people. Just others. Others. They're the men in black. They're the Keeling men in black. They just, that's the closest thing that someone could describe them as. But there's this weird photography element. Now what's odd about this? You can go, okay,

That's a weird coincidence. We have two incidents of photographs, these phantom photographers. And I'm thinking, is this just like, what's his name? Is it Haruto or Haruto Satoshi or something? Haruto...

Hiroshi? I can't remember his name. Oh, look, I'll put it in the show notes. Wow. In the 70s or 80s, right? I don't know why. So Mr. Miyagi? No, no, no. Mr. Miyagi-san? I can't remember his name. Mr. Toyota? No, he was a Japanese photographer, a Japanese film photographer. And what he would do is he'd go into the red light districts with this massive flash. Oh, my God.

And he would photograph whores. Like, and not what I mean, he would just run up to them. Yeah, yeah. And then he'd go, boom, take a photograph of them and run away. And he published a coffee table book of it. And he'd get pimps like there was some Japanese guy coming down the stairs in this big fluffy coat in the middle of summer. And so the reaction of the prostitutes was always like this recoil. Yeah, I know who you're talking about. Oh!

Is it Haruto? I'll look it up. Horror photographers. It was something like Sashin. I can't remember. But I just find that concept. There was also a guy that, I don't know if he did it around the same time. There's a guy that did that in New York as well. It's like he would just, but strangely enough, this is what the men in black were doing. So we go back to Mrs. Hire, right? West Virginia. This is the same woman who saw the UFO transform into a plane.

She said a luminous object appeared over our house, and she said it was projecting a powerful beam of light into my backyard. Now, she wasn't home at the time, but her husband saw it, and so did several neighbors. So it wasn't that she was just imagining things. But she said then one evening, this little man who was...

I take to be a man in black, uh, appeared on their street. Now she was certain this was a man in black that she had a run in with previously, but this time he was wearing a khaki colored uniform, but had on these strange thick sold shoes. Like it's just didn't make any sense. It's like, he didn't kind of understand. Um, when he saw, uh, Mrs. Hire, whose name was Mary approaching, he actually looked alarmed. Uh, he took off in a dead run, leaped into the back of a black car that was driven by a very large man. Uh,

and took off, right? Now, she didn't get down the license plate number, but she said it looked, you know, an orange color. But three days later, Mrs. Hire arrived home from a meeting around 11.30 PM. And just as she was opening her front door, a large black car squealed to a stop directly outside her house. She stood on her porch and watched as a man got out of the vehicle, raised a camera to his face and snapped her picture. She said his flash gun was extremely bright. It

blinded me momentarily. And while I was standing there rubbing my eyes, he got back into the car and drove off. I couldn't see if there was anyone else in the vehicle. Now, why do you suppose anyone would want to take my picture like that? Now, I'm not sure if she's aware that Gil had two previous incidents with the Phantom photographers by this point. It's like building this weird kind of theme that's contributing to the high strangeness. And then there's more. Is this the Japanese horror book, by the way?

No, that's not the one. Was it Abe Katsumi, Gangs of Kabuki? No, that's not the one. Any of these ones? No, I mean, they're not surprised whores. Like the photo, like when you see the photograph. She looks pretty surprised. She's running away. I think that one might be dead. No, no. When you see the photograph. Now I have to look it up. She's got a crocodile on her shoulder. I'll find it. She's tied up though. So that implies that. Okay.

This is the kind of end of year show that I wanted to do. Okay. Looking at Japanese horse. Oh, no, there is. It's Haruto Hoshi is his name. Okay. Keep going. I'll look it up. Yeah. So look at it because there's a book. There's like a coffee table book. And as soon as you see the image, you'll be like, that is a shocked horse. All right. Like, oh, there it is. I got it for you. I'll send it to you, Ben. Here you go. I found the official page.

Can we just stop what we're doing and just get to the bottom of this, please? Get to the bottom of this with these photographers. Okay, so while you're looking for that, Ben, on a rainy night in April, a man from Ohio was driving along Route 2 near Chief Cornstalk Hunting Grounds when a large black form rose from the woods and flew over his car. He said it was at least 10 feet wide. I stepped on the gas and it kept right up with me. We were doing over 70 and it scared the hell out of me. Then I saw it move ahead of me and then turn towards the river. Now, months later, later,

Later in October, he returned home from work and found a prowler inside his apartment. He said, when I opened the door, I saw this man, pardon me, standing in my living room. I think he was dressed all in black. I couldn't see his face, but he was about five feet nine. I started to fumble for the light switch when he took my picture. There was this enormous bright flash. It was so bright that I couldn't see a thing. And while I was rubbing my eyes, the burglar darted past me and went out the open door. I guess I arrived just in time because nothing was missing. It's like,

This is what Kiel was experiencing and other people that were associated with Kiel were experiencing. And, you know, he continues to say there was a young family in Ohio that was having a full range of UFO associated problems. The man in the family who Kiel just referred to as Ben had seen a UFO hovering near a chemical plant over the river. He said that he flashed his car spotlights at it. And apparently whatever light was being shot at this UFO instantaneously turned off, but it burnt out the electrical circuits inside his car.

So it had some type of what seemed to be a

defensive electrical ability. He highlighted this was the beginning of a bunch of strange happenings that happened. So of course, much like other people that reported to Kiel high strangeness, he said that he would get weird telephone calls, there was beeping, there was metallic voices urging him to attend strange meetings, a poltergeist moved into his house, drawers would open by themselves, objects would disappear, all this kind of stuff was going on.

But Ben's wife began to notice unusual people in the neighborhood, and Ben received a mild scare that August when he was walking down the main street in Parkersburg when he saw two black-garbed oriental men, looking men, who grinned at him broadly. They appeared to be confused or drunken, which was typical for the Keelingian men in black because they're necessarily black.

weren't drunk it's just that they weren't seemingly used to being in human form yeah like they couldn't control the body well he said they seemed to have difficulty walking ben knew nothing of the mib law but the men were so alarming to him that he crossed to the other side of the street he had more ufo sightings more phone calls but finally he mentioned his troubles to park mcdaniel uh and this

Park McDaniel was working with other people in this field who were also having strange experiences. And he said, two weeks before our visit, according to Ben's wife, a black car had stopped in front of their house and a man in a suit jumped out of the vehicle and took photographs of their home with a large camera. Two of their neighbors also witnessed this and corroborated their story. The photographer did not pay attention to any of them. It's almost like he just didn't even care if he was seen. He didn't photograph anything else in the street. Just that before he climbed back into the vehicle and took off.

these phantom photographers. And Kiel says that on Long Island, less than 30 miles away from New York City, the phantom photographers were busy that summer. And eventually I gathered reports of the photographers from as far away as Seattle. A aerospace engineer in the Northwest reported the following. He said for some three days, photographs were taken of our house. We thought they might be realtors or someone filming in the area, but then began the telephone interference, mail interference, and weird misdirections.

So it's like, I'm assuming this guy saw a UFO and all these things started to take place. You've got other people in Point Pleasant reporting similar things as well. A man and his wife were carrying, sorry, no, a man and a woman carrying a camera visited Steve and Mary Mallett who were wanting to take a picture of them. Mr. Mallett looked down at the license plate number of their Volkswagen or took it down and had the police check it. They proved to be non-existent. And this was the strange thing about this is that

Like who had the ability to generate these genuine looking license plate numbers that didn't lead anywhere? The Phantom Photographer reports ended up being rather rare, but they did occur in England.

In 1973, two leading British ufologists came across an incident involving the Bogart family who lived in Sussex. The Bogarts' isolated cottage had been plagued by, once again, apparitions, strange sounds, and poltergeist activity. They said that one of their experiences involved this yellow Volkswagen that had smoked windows hanging around their house, like just kind of watching from a distance. But they said once, one of the encounters involved the vehicle following them down a woodland cart

track leading down to the lake, it stopped some distance away from the woman and two medium-sized individuals emerged, hurriedly took photographs of her from a distance, re-entered the car and then drove off in the opposite direction. Why are they doing this? Yeah, why? This is what I was saying with the drone situation in New Jersey and other places. Are you going to see this same kind of phenomena emerge?

Well, yes, that's a good question because it seems that this phenomena occurs in waves. Like you have the initial sighting of things and you have the hysteria that takes place. Yeah, it's probably too early now to have these reports come out, but maybe. It dies down and then all of a sudden you have people connecting the dots later on going, all this high strangeness started occurring. Someone takes a photo of you and you're like, oh, there you go. You found it. There she is. There you go. Shocked.

I also found this Japanese photo artist who has done a photo book about emus. Disgusting, disgusting degeneracy. Ha ha ha!

Why would you lower yourself to such a disgusting portrayal? I think they're beautiful creatures. I'm going to have to pick up that coffee table book. It makes me sick. So, of course, he writes here, this is John Keel, the phenomenon takes yet another form. There was a witness stepping out of his door, getting into his car, when there was a sudden burst of light like a flash gun going off. He turns around, but no photographer or camera is visible. There's nothing. There's no sudden paralysis or ill effects, but he was bewildered.

by this. And Kiel points out that there's actually more reports of this, of people saying that there was just suddenly an enormous flash. It wasn't just the one person. There was others. And of course, you know, the sunlight can catch you from a bad angle or, you know, you're wearing sunglasses and there's a sudden reflection and that can kind of startle you sometimes. But this wasn't that. This was external to people that were involved in the phenomenon. These were people that had seen a UFO, but not always necessarily instantaneously either.

Some circumstances it was, but other people, it was a couple of months before they had this weird interaction. And for them, though strange, they don't see a pattern. But when you've got a researcher like Kiel, for example, he's seeing the pattern. He's seeing what's going on. And even himself, he says, look, in 1967, I was living in this glass building in Manhattan and it was part of this huge apartment complex. So there were other buildings across from him. He said, I was on a high floor facing an identical building across from a small park, but I also had a splendid view of lower Manhattan.

In the evenings, while hammering away at my typewriter in front of a wall-to-wall window, I began to see sudden flashes of blue light in the space between the two buildings. At first, I assumed that there was a photographer in the other building. Then I saw the same kind of flashes high in the air further down the avenue. I watched them night after night. When friends were in the apartment, though, the flashes stopped. I thought of them as psychic flashes because very often my phone would ring immediately after I saw one. So it's like,

Is there something to that? Or is it that he's just because he's so deep in the phenomena that he's interpreting everything as being some type of high strangeness, but it's not. But I think he's onto something. I think he was onto something, but there's, as you see with this stuff, there's never any conclusions. Like he didn't come to any conclusions about it. Um, strangely enough, another renowned researcher, you've got Jacques Vallee.

Jacques Vallée was reporting similar events that were taking place. He said, coming from an isolated town that does not even have a movie house, there was a concentration of cases that was truly remarkable, but of course it wouldn't be complete without men in black occurrences. Thus, I was almost relieved to learn how in 1976, a stranger who had never been seen in the town happened to stroll into a cafe and people were quietly having dinner. He points out that this was one of the reports of where they just

They had this oriental look, so that Achillean look. So it's like a decade after what Kiel was describing. He said they wore bizarre shirts, but no coats, even though it was the middle of winter. Yeah. So it wasn't fitting. And he said he was, according to the report, they were bemused because-

They were like having a fake grimacy kind of smile. This is the story that we know of where in the diner, they didn't know what to do with the food, but they attempted to drink the jello. That's right. That was in their bowls. It's like they're oriental, but there's something not quite right about them. Yeah.

That's awful. That's terrible, Ben. You're the one that recommended this art book. He's a fantastic photographer. There's nothing wrong. I'm just going to move on. I'm just, I'm not going to allow you to drag me into this. I don't need to be dragged into this. So,

So look, I'll link to this in the show notes at mysteriousuniverse.org, of course, and I'll link to the Mothman prophecies. I mean, I'm sure that if you're already in this field, you've probably read it, but if you haven't, go back and give it a read because it does highlight the high strangeness connected with this. I'm just looking at the time, but I'm just wondering if I should go on. Let me just mention this, right?

Because the other, and I said this on the plus show that I was going to go into this. I just want to throw this your way. This comes from a really old alternate perceptions report that was done by Brent Rains. It was back when it was reality checking on his Mysterious America site. And this is a long time ago. But

One thing, you kind of pointed out, it's like a photograph is a window of the soul. But also some people have suggested that these photographs can be gateways or doorways to other locations. The energy that's stored in that, like psychics and psychometrists can actually look at a photograph of a location. And some of them have outrageous claims that they can actually project themselves into

into that photograph, into that space. And I wonder, it's like, well, in the paranormal field, do things fit in with it? And they actually do. So there's this little anecdotal story

I'll link to the full thing so you can get the full details for yourself, but it basically relates to Brent getting involved in a little group, a little paranormal alternative belief group in Tennessee. It was called Iona, which was the name of, I think, an island off the Inner Hebrides off the West mainland of Scotland, he writes. But these people would show up and

talk about their encounters. And you had people like Mary, for example, who was describing her interactions with craft and entities going back to her early childhood. But one particular day when they were at this group, this new age group, he writes that Mary and I were standing off to ourselves when Mary was explaining to me how around the age of 10 or 11, her encounters just kind of stopped. And she was kind of pondering as to why that happened. When Brent says, I heard this male voice say, right.

That's all. Is it just right? R-I-G-H-T. And so he said, I pulled back the curtain of a nearby room to see if there was anyone there and there wasn't. He said, this is all kind of strange. And this continued, right? And he said that he was actually recording and he played it back on his digital recorder that he'd been carrying. And it was right there. Like it was an audible sound that came through. He said he didn't imagine it, but he thought it was a male's voice. But upon listening to it, he said it was more female. It's like there was this female voice that kind of came through. And

And he says weird things started happening after this. It was EVPs going on. It was studies and experiments at the time that he was involved with. So was it the phenomena kind of responding to him? But that's not really what's important. It was more so about what happened to Mary because he said to Mary, he's like, did you hear it? Do you think it's weird? And she's like, no, I didn't hear it, but I don't think it's weird. I think that there's something interdimensional going on here. And she tells him this little story. She said there was this time back around 1996 when I was at

part of a support group, much like what they're doing in this scene, you know, all getting together and chatting. But this was a support group for UFO abductees. Now she's facing kind of away and there was Mary and three others that were sitting around talking when a man who was in the group suddenly and excitedly starts going, did you see that? Did you guys see that? Now Mary was facing a woman to her opposite or across from her and she doesn't see it, but she sees the woman's jaw drop.

And the woman's like, yes, yes, I saw it. And they start comparing notes. And Mary says, it turned out that there was an opening right beside me, like a double door kind of portal that just opened in the air with a being that was inside. But this being was wearing a brown hood just standing there. And when the door closed, everything just kind of disappeared. But as it did, the witnesses reported that they saw these weird sparkly lights up the area. Pardon me.

and then some smoky stuff, and then the air just thinned, just ended. That was it. And Mary says, I'm no stranger to strange things, but whatever this was is something that they can't describe. And he goes into a second report, which I'll link to, which actually goes into this whole concept of these alien portals, right, of these entities coming through. But there's a little bit of a twist of where this entity seems to be...

influencing or taking energy because people that interact with these things ended up having an illness or a sickness. It was funny in the stuff I've got coming up in the plus extension from Wade Richardson. He was a bit of a skeptic to any kind of altered states of consciousness and the experiences that I had under those, but he still wanted to try ayahuasca. He was still curious. Very dangerous. But because he believed that

what people experience under these types of substances is mostly created by imagination. Sure. He was determined not to do that. So in the experience I'll describe coming up after the break, he sat, he took the ayahuasca and he was in this room with all these other people and the shaman doing their thing. And he kind of sat back and he thought, all right, I'm just going to keep my eyes open and I'm just going to make sure I'm not imagining anything. I'm just going to clear my mind. And he's just staring at the wall.

And does he see a portal? Why is a kite staring at the wall? And yet fair enough. Swirling portal opens.

Giant praying mantis steps out. Right. Look, let's jump into it. I'll link to this in the show notes so you can actually go and check that out for yourself. I'll come back to the mirrors on another episode because it kind of ties in with this. But yeah, let's jump into our PLOS extension and we'll start talking about this because I'm interested to see where this goes. Yeah, that's coming up after the break on PLOS, the psychedelic mind meld. Make sure you get out your consent forms. You will need them.

for this plus extension. If not, that's a wrap for this year. Thank you for listening to MU and watching in 2024. We'll be back on, is it January the 10th? The 10th or 11th. 10th.

10th or 11th. 10th or 11th, yeah. Whatever Friday it is. We'll be back. So Merry Christmas, everyone. Enjoy your holiday break. I know we will enjoy ours. Adios 2024. We'll be back for our final year of MU, of us hosting in 2025. So we hope to have you with us next year. If you're on Plus, stick around for the good stuff after the break. For everyone else, we'll see you in 2025. ♪♪♪

Welcome back to your plus extension.