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S1 Ep31: The Tipping Point

FS 5
Astonishing LegendsMay 27, 2025
Mysticism & SpiritualityOccult & EsotericaParanormal & Hauntings

Summary

Listener Barry explores the intriguing phenomenon of table tipping, a practice often associated with spiritualism and paranormal activity. This episode delves into the history and cultural significance of the practice, examining firsthand accounts and its connections to mediums. The discussion aims to uncover whether table tipping is merely a trick of the mind or something more mysterious.

Key takeaways

  • 1Table tipping is linked to spiritualist practices that aim to communicate with the dead.
  • 2The phenomenon has historical roots in the 19th-century spiritualism movement.
  • 3Barry shares personal experiences and anecdotes related to table tipping.
  • 4The episode touches on the broader implications of belief in paranormal phenomena.

Glossary terms

MediumTable Tipping

Source

Astonishing Legends
▸Transcript
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It matters that CVS is here to fill your prescriptions and here to fill your craving for a tasty and, yeah, healthy snack. At CVS, we're proud to serve your community because we believe where you get your medicine matters. So visit us at CVS.com or just come by our store. We can't wait to meet you. Store hours vary by location. The views and opinions expressed by hosts and listeners on the Astonishing Dead Letter office are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Astonishing Legends Productions, the Astonishing Legends Network, or any affiliated entities or guests. When something unexplainable happens to you, it can make you feel isolated or alone. But trust us, you're not. For over a decade, you've been sending your strange stories to Astonishing Legends. And now it's time for our fellow legenders to hear them, too. Join us weekly in Blanket Fortiana as we dig through your intriguing messages to the Astonishing Dead Letter office. Tonight's episode, The Tipping Point. Well, we have a fun one for you tonight. It's one of our favorite topics as well. Yes, and Richard Haddams. Table tipping! That's not 18 or 20%. No, we're talking about the fact that we've had a lot of fun on the main show talking about table tipping over the years. And it really kind of came up in a major way. And we dove more into it about the mechanics of it during our series on Conjuring Philip, which is a great one from the archives, folks, if you haven't heard it. We certainly had not. We'd heard the title, but we never had really dove into what the story entailed. And when you do, it is fascinating because it's what most people want. Like, let's get a little more formal research into this of sorts. What may have happened is that the folks may have actually interacted with a fully fictional spirit. Or did something step into that role that was spiritual? Or were they controlling it? So many good questions about it. But what we believe, I think, Scott, if you're with me, is that there was a real effect to it. That's right. Something very strange happened. Right. And again, like The Siren Call, The Hungry Ghost, which is another series we did, makes me trust what you're communicating with even less nine out of ten times when you do have some kind of communication. I don't always think it's what you think it is. And also, we did talk on episode, Junk Drawer number 21 with Rich Haddam, too, about table tipping, which is what prompted this one to be emailed to us, by the way. Well, I may have an anecdote for us all when you're finished. Okay, great. All right, so this one comes in to us from listener Barry. I'm a longtime listener of your show. I never miss a podcast. On a recent Junk Drawer episode, Rich asked for personal experiences with table tipping. You only have my word for it, but it worked for me. I used to run the team at Boston Paranormal Investigators and have seen my share of high strangeness. But this happened 25 years ago, long before I joined the group. I had read some articles about table tipping in the 1890s, and I wondered if it was some form of telekinesis. I talked my friend, Mike, into doing an experiment. I knew that mediums used it to communicate with spirits, but at that point, I didn't believe in ghosts. One afternoon, we sat across from each other and lightly placed our fingers on the top of my coffee table. This was not a small, light end table. It was fairly heavy with a thick sheet of glass in the middle. It would not have been easy to fake, and I trusted Mike not to mess with me. We meditated for about 30 minutes, concentrating on getting the table to rise. I kept chanting, table, rise up. After 40 minutes with no results, I thought we may have been resisting each other. So I suggested that we focus specifically on my end of the table. Ten more minutes passed. Then my end of the table started to rise. It moved slowly but steadily, rising to about a 30-degree angle. It was impossible for Mike to accomplish that. I could still see his fingers resting atop the table. I asked the table to return to the floor and then to raise up Mike's end. To our astonishment, it followed my instructions perfectly. His end rose up so far that it was almost at a 90-degree angle. I could see his legs through the glass. They had not moved, and his fingers remained on the top edge. At this point, we got a little scared. I told it to move back down, and we let go of the table. So that was the end of it. I had a feeling that it had not been telekinesis, but a passing spirit trying to communicate, and we didn't want any part of that. Neither of us had expected anything at all to happen, and we were almost in shock. So there you go. It happened on our first attempt in the middle of the day. One of these days, I will have to give it another try. Well, I like this story because I may have had an experience myself, not this dramatic, but possibly evidence that this, quote-unquote, works. But before we get to that, what do you think? Well, I mean, here's the thing. Folks that are just listening to the Dead Letter Office episodes and not listening to our main show, which is much longer, more researched, in-depth, multi-parts, a lot of times, or whatever, they're not going to know we're coming into this with a predisposition because of the episode we mentioned before this letter, or the series we did on Conjuring Philip, which took us down the rabbit hole on the table tilting, which then again, we also talked with our good friend Richard Haddam, screenwriter, who has his own podcast on our network, Richard Haddam's Paranormal Bookshelf. Check that out if you haven't heard it. It's a great show, very different from ours. But Richard is a screenwriter and also a paranormal enthusiast of the highest order. He knows all kinds of stuff about this, and he's very fascinated with table tipping. My first thing when we got into Conjuring Philip was like, I think it's a lot of hogwash. I think it's a lot of hooey. I don't believe in this. I think it's just parlor tricks left over from the spiritualism and spiritism movements. I didn't think much about it, but then the more we read about Conjuring Philip and actually saw video footage of that group doing the experiments, I was pretty blown away by it. And the more I read about it, the more it seemed like it was something real. But also, to Barry's point, and I will say, I thought it was wise when this started happening, especially when it went up to 90 degrees. And he was like, all right, we're good. Because when you get to something that is influencing our reality that much, if you believe any of this at all, for me, that's a hard pass. I'm like, I'm good. Someone else can come continue this experiment. I'm going outside, because I've been down that road before. I don't enjoy it when you've got something that strong and that pronounced that you don't know what it is. That part is, I don't need to prove that anymore. Prove what, exactly? I don't need to prove that exists. I don't need to like, I admit, I want to try table tilting. I would love to go give it a shot, be neat. But I'm a little gun shy about the opening the door that you can't close thing ever since the Sally house. Well, I mean, this is what I like about the story. Yeah. This happened 25 years ago, and I think over the course of Barry's experiences here, he ends up running a paranormal investigation team in Boston, Paranormal Investigators. Yes, yeah, yeah, exactly. I know, I love that aspect of it, where you start off not believing in ghosts, and then you experience stuff that makes you a believer, or more curious and wanting to find out more about it. So that aspect of it, not that you just blindly start to believe everything because you had a few weird experiences, but I love the sense of wonder and investigation and wanting to gain more knowledge about something that you find fascinating. So I love that aspect of it, the arc of it, you could say. And this was quite a dramatic result. So I would not have expected the table to rise up that much. But again, that's with Conjuring Philip, that's what you wonder about. And then I think even Michael Faraday and some very notable scientists of the era at the end of the 19th century were starting to look into what was going on here again because of the rise of seances and what's really happening there and the popularity of spiritualism and spiritism. And those are two different things, which I think a lot of people don't know. Spiritualism and spiritism are two different things. Yes. But this is one of the more dramatic things. Now, again, I think, yeah, obviously there were a lot of charlatans and fakers trying to get notoriety and bookings. Yes. As Paul Michael Glazer, who played Houdini. But we would do stuff like you grab a horn. You know, it was always a levitating of a tin horn or a cone. And he demonstrated like, you know, with a bare foot under the table, he could ring a bell, you know, with his toes or how a magician could get stuff to rise. And those are under darkened conditions. Here, it's in the middle of the day, or at least with daylight here and two people that trust each other. You know, we have to trust that the story is being related accurately here. But we'll just go with it because I don't see any gain here to, I guess, just reading the story. I don't know what kind of a gain that is, but... Well, this was sent in before we started the Dead Letter Office. Exactly. That's what I'm saying is just, I just need to tell the story or I'd like to without knowing that we would eventually do something with it. But here, this is pretty dramatic and it tracks a little with the process that I experienced eventually. But before we get to that, what are your thoughts here? What are your talking points? I think it's very sincere to start something, a story like this that comes to us with be like, I don't have any proof of this, just my word, but here's what happened. Just an immediately, you're getting into the story. It's not, I'm not trying to give you a bunch because it's also fairly short. There's not a bunch of extraneous details. There's not a lot of those things that you look for as signs of lying or fabrication. Not that that's what we're doing with the stories that come to us. But, you know, every now and then there's other shows that I listen to pretty regularly and enjoy, including some hosted by friends where people are sending in stuff. And every now and then one is just so obviously fake. Yeah. That gets read on the air. And you're just like, ah, there's no way this happened. This is too perfect. It's Shakespearean and it's structure or it's just not the way the real world works. But this one is a lot simpler and it just felt very sincere to me. And also Barry saying, look, I didn't believe in ghosts when this happened. But here's the other thing that was interesting to me because in the Conjuring Phillips series, which again, the anchor of that story is that the ghost was invented and then they tried to contact it, it was created by the people who were part of the experiment, but still they had great success with whatever it was, with these levitations and things. However, the groups that were trying to conjure Phillip worked for months, months of regular meeting, hours and hours meeting over and over and over again. And we're so frustrated, nothing was happening and they almost quit, but they were just like, this isn't going to work. But then towards the end, when they started realizing it's like something out of Monsters, Inc., I'm pretty sure they started relaxing emotionally. They started to have more success, which I thought was one of the more interesting things about the Phillip experiment. But these folks here, Barry and Barry's friend, they had success on their very first try in the daytime, which there's two things about that that are interesting to me. It's like, one is like, wow, like how did that happen? And going back to the Phillip experiment, maybe it had to do with them being friends and relaxed with each other and also not setting up some super crazy melodramatic nighttime thing with a thousand candles around the room and whatever else. They're just like, let's sit down and give this a shot. We're a couple of friends here. We're not even going to use a card table, which is pretty easy to fake stuff with because it's so lightweight. We're going to use this big, heavy coffee table and see if anything happens. But then conversely, whatever happened was extreme. Like to have it go to almost 90 degrees, almost up on one end, yeah, that's a point at which if you are dealing with some kind of entity, it is of a significant nature when you're dealing with this heavy coffee table. I think they were wise to be like, okay, we're good. I'm good here. Well, yeah, this is one of those actions that is fairly visible. I think, you know, look, there's all kinds of, especially nowadays, we can get all kinds of quote unquote evidence of spirit activity or unseen activity or telekinetic activity, psychokinesis, PK. You know, you have instruments that are just very hands-on mechanical. Literally, you can have the dowsing rods. And now, of course, they light up because those are fun. But you can have them with little LEDs in them and light up. And that's, and people would say, well, as I was getting to earlier with people trying to figure out who they are and somebody who I think borders on genius level, Michael Faraday and others were looking into what was eventually termed the ideomotor phenomenon. Yeah. Table turning became very popular, of course, in the 1800s, as we said, with the rise of mediums and spiritualism and use of planchettes and Ouija boards. And so he created an apparatus for demonstrating the ideomotor effect as it does in table turning. And if you don't know what that is, I certainly didn't and had to look this up again, but it's a psychological phenomenon where due to your imagination or basically your subconscious, you're getting your body to make almost microscopic movements that you're expecting or you're kind of willing or I guess it's expecting them, especially like in a seance and you are causing the movement, but unconsciously. And so these are basically unconscious movements. And if you get enough people doing this, basically you can get something to move. However, in this case, I can't imagine that happening. You know what I'm saying? Like this is not your micro muscle movements sparked by your expectations of something happening to tilt something up 30 degrees, almost to 90 degrees and after a request. So although, you know, this is, it goes in with the same thing with dowsing, automatic writing, same thing with the Ouija board, the planchette, you're unconsciously trying to get an answer here. And so you're actually causing the movement, although it's so faint, it's unnoticeable. And people think like, well, I wasn't moving it and I didn't see my friend move it. And here you just have two people. So one, there's two levels, you have to believe the person telling the story here. And then you have to believe that their friend or partner, the other person wasn't putting them on. I don't get the sense it's your, your friend. I mean, think about your own friend of, you know, certainly we have prankster friends, but like, if you get to that point where something that extraordinary is happening, it's like, are you doing that? Like, no, I'm not tipping a table 90 degrees with my knees or I have sticky, uh, I have glue on my fingertips and I'm raising it. So we're kind of past that. And then, then that leaves you to have to believe the storyteller here. So yeah, it's quite a dramatic effect. And as far as the time goes, it's like, I know what you're saying about the Philip experiment about like, well, does that add to the credibility that they spent over a year trying to do this? And I think for what I remember, they thought it was too formal. They were trying too hard and that they should have a more lighthearted sessions and turn the lights up and have fun and joke around and sing songs and make jokes. And that's when they started to get more effect or any effect at all. Again, this kind of tracks for me, I guess is what I'm saying is that you try the different techniques and if you're ready for my anecdote, I'll tell you about the time it happened to me. Yes. Let's hear your anecdote. And I wasn't the only one there. There, hopefully there'll be some friends of the show, our friends here who were with us at Monster Fest 2 in Canton, Ohio. Yes. So I think this was Saturday, June 29th, 2024. And some of us are a group of listeners, all terrific folks. And then some folks we were fairly close with had decided to go to the ghost tour, the ghost hunt, the lockdown at the Canton Palace Theater. That's adjacent to where the Doubletree was. And that's a very active theater. It's a beautiful place, really. And it's like the Kent stage or maybe all of Ohio. I don't know. But it's a very active theater with a lot of rich history and just gorgeous to look at. And I've been on a few of these things now over the last few years, you know, ghost hunting investigations. And this one was one of the more active ones where there was a group of people. So the audio clip you're about to hear. Again, it's one of the better, I think, EVPs. But this was gathered here, what we're about to hear, with one of our two good friends here, Roger Pingleton and Jill Weaver. She was there as well, along with some other friends and listeners. There's a few of them that had stayed to do the paranormal lockdown investigation at the theater that night. At this point, though, it was earlier in the evening and we were all up in the balcony. The theater has different hotspots and people were kind of wandering around to different small groups and trying different things. So we were in the balcony and people had set up a few REM pods, I think. And then you see those cat toys that when you move them or a cat bats them around, they light up, they have LEDs and they make noises and they beep. And so they had a few of those sitting stationary. And so being in the balcony, I decided to try Roger Pingleton's Streamside app called the ER-70, which he has digitally kind of patterned after how he believes the DR-60 Panasonic recorder captures so well. But this is a digital version. You can get it at the Apple store. I just want to quickly say for folks that don't know what that's referencing, the Panasonic DR-60 is a digital recorder from, I think it was the 90s. I can't remember. But it's famous for getting really good EVPs because of its actually very low sample rate and inferior electronics, basically. We've talked about it extensively in our series on the Sally House. And a lot of paranormal investigators have this thing. There's all these theories about why it works so well and why it doesn't, whatever. That's for, we've talked about it a bunch. There's all kinds of shows you can find about that. But just for people who are listening to this episode right now and are just like, don't know when, when Forrest says there's this app, it's called the ER-70 and that is from Streamside Software. That is our friend Roger writing software that emulates how the Panasonic DR-60 works in his own way. But he is a genius programmer. And if there's ever an app that's going to work like this old recorder did, it's going to be the one that Roger did. So that's a note. He engineered it in such a way where he believes that it embodies why the, as I said, the DR-60 works so well. And then on the flip side, if you're very skeptical, you could say like, that's the malfunction of it. All the things we said. He's emulating the malfunction. Why it does so well is its fault, actually. And why you're getting a bunch of garbage. Except I have to interject here. This thing gets all kinds of recordings. And the one that it's most famous for within our zeitgeist of the Astonishing Legends world, forgetting, is from our Sally House series, is one that other people have gotten similar versions of. And it's called The Screaming Man. And it's not really, you can tell its language, but you can't really necessarily make out the words. There's that. But the other thing this thing does is get crystal clear, class A EVPs, electronic voice phenomenon, where you will hear voices on it and you can clearly understand what they're saying. It does that too, and those are the kinds of recordings that Forrest is talking about tonight, not The Screaming Man. This wasn't under the best ghost hunting conditions, and because when you do an EVP session, everybody should be absolutely quiet to rule out any kind of extraneous noises or words that people might speak. We didn't do that. We're all having a good time. We're up in the balcony, and people are trying different things. And I didn't want to stop everybody down so I could just do my silly thing. But I thought I'd run it, and we were mostly quiet. Now, the thing is, I think I had it continuously running, or it was on voice activated, which means it truncates the silence. And the DR-60 itself, the physical recorder, has that function as well. And you just have to experiment with it. I seem to get better results when it's voice activated, and you can see the red light. I mean, you're not making any sound. You can see the red light flashing. It's like, it's picking something up. Although I'm hearing silence, and you play it back, and you did get something. So here, we're just letting it roll, and people are talking. So you're breaking a rule there. That's not a great way to do a session. But like I said, I want people to do their thing. So what's happening is that they're getting a lot of activity with those little cat balls and with the REM pods, which you've probably seen on a ghost hunting show. Basically, a proximity sensor and motion sensor. The newer ones will have different things added to them, like a temperature sensor. And when you get near them, they put off a noise, a signal. So at first, what you're going to hear is that people are witnessing the cat balls lighting up without being touched, REM pods going off. And I believe this is Jill asking, are you doing that? And somebody is lighting the balls up. And what other mediums have said is that the theater also has some playful children and young people in the balcony. And that's maybe who's playing with the toys. Deceased, by the way. Yes, deceased. Of course, not letting children run wild in the theater. I wanted to be clear that it's not like your group is down here, and there's some kids upstairs playing, which is what it sounded like you said. No, it was the middle of- I just want people to understand you're talking about ghosts. Yes, it's late at night. It's, I don't know, 10, 11 o'clock. I just want to be clear. Okay. Sarah, at the end of tonight's show, between our wrap-up statement and the closing credits, why don't you put this entire file cleaned up as best you can, especially for the responses. But for right now, there's two in particular we were talking about, and one of them was the question, are you doing this, posed by our friend Jill. I believe so, yes. Sarah, why don't you play this once, exactly as it occurs on the recording, maybe just messing with the levels so we can hear the response. And then you can play it a couple other times where you've mixed it up, so it's easier to hear if you want. We've got a random number, January hit, another one, and a cat ball went off. Are you doing this? Are there little kids here? We've got a random number, January hit, another one, and a cat ball went off. Are you doing this? Are there little kids here? We've got a random number, January hit, another one, and a cat ball went off. Are you doing this? Are there little kids here? Okay, so here's my first question for you, Forrest. That's amazing. I love it. How many people are in your group here? I mean, I know it's you and our friends Roger and Jill. How many other people are there? Oh, I don't remember specifically. I would say there were six or seven people in that spot in the balcony. And you guys are the only people in the theater at this time? No, there are other groups. So basically- Oh, okay. Everyone's spread out. This theater's huge, folks, by the way. It is huge. It's huge. So, I mean, don't pull the sweater thread too hard on this one or the logic thread here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the idea is that there's people down on the stage. Jennifer, she was singing later on to get a, what they call an audio cue or an era cue. There's different stations. And as if you've never been on a ghost hunt, they're a lot of fun. So generally the way these are organized is there's a, usually a paranormal research group that is hosting or sponsoring this or kind of running the event. So in this case, this group is called SPECTRE and that's S-P-E-C-T-R-E, standing for Specialists in Paranormal Engagement, Communication, and Team Research Expeditions. So quite clever. And Joe Dutt, I think, was leading the team here. And what'll happen is that in a location like that, which they've usually gone and investigated quite a bit, they'll put up different stations where you can try different things. One station will be dousing and you could try that in a specific spot. One other location might be trying to get EVPs. The other one might have REM pods and different, you know, EMF meters and K2 meters. And so you try different things and you kind of wander around because again, it's like fishing. Different lures work at different times. In this case, you, we have, uh, six or seven, maybe eight people up, uh, you know, sitting in a little spot and people are trying different things. And so when I believe it was Jill who asked, are you doing this? You get a, yeah. Now I will say the voice sounds like our other friend, Roger, who we were just talking about, who developed. Who was there. Who was there. Who wrote the app. Well, here's the thing is that it, it sounds like him and he says, yeah, in kind of that manner. But I will say this after she asked that question, we all stayed silent. And so when I played this back for our friends here, like, yeah, none of us said that. None of us said, yeah. And another very important thing to point out and, uh, James A. Willis, who we mentioned in this episode already, who is an extremely skeptical, but highly practiced paranormal investigator will also tell you that with EVPs and a lot of other people will too, that when you get a voice on the recording, it sounds like somebody who's with you or with your team, not necessarily right there sitting there with you. In one case with James Willis, they got an EVP recording that was clearly the voice of someone who was outside in a van. So this is a common thing that happens with the EVPs, like where it's mimicking somebody's voice that is on site, which then also tricks you when you play back and you're listening for things. So that's something else to point out. Something that we've heard about before and have history with, with other investigators who've told us, no, that, that happened. It's a very curious phenomenon. I don't know if that's purposeful or just to something that happens, but it does sound a little like him, but I can attest to the fact that, and like, you can believe me or not, I don't care, but I can attest to the fact that nobody responded with a, yeah, after she asked that. So yes, once again, I know we're breaking protocol here and not the best practices and we're kind of, uh, chit chattering, uh, over each other and, uh, overlapping, but we were pretty quiet when somebody would ask a question afterwards. So this next clip, what you're going to hear is I ask, uh, and I asked several times, you know, is there anyone here? Can you tell us your name? Uh, so we know who we're speaking with. And it wasn't until I think I got home that I listened back and heard the answer. Can somebody tell us their name? Can we give it a name? Can you get a name? Yeah. Please come down here and tell us your name. So we know who we're talking to, please. Can somebody tell us their name? Can we give it a name? Can you get a name? Please come down here and tell us your name. So we know who we're talking to, please. Can somebody tell us their name? Can we give it a name? Can you get a name? Please come down here and tell us your name. So we know who we're talking to, please. So with that one, it doesn't sound like Roger to me at all. Of course, I don't know who else was there, but if someone else was saying it under their breath, then maybe. But that, that one does not sound like Roger. Okay. Well, what did you hear? I heard Anthony. Anthony. Okay. So the deal is I'm holding my iPhone that's running the ER70 app. Right. Nobody whispered into it. I certainly did. So I asked the question and then there was some silence before other people started talking again. And in between that, yes, I played it back and heard Anthony. And no one in our group was named Anthony. No one had whispered it. I can attest at the moment, it was silent for that moment there. And so that's who we're talking with. Apparently it's Anthony. I love that we're talking about this right now and that we got a chance to play these clips, but how did we get here from table tipping? What made you think of this particular EVP and table tipping? Because it was earlier in the evening leading up to this event. So I just kind of paint a picture and, and rarely do I get a chance to play an EVP that's worth anything other than, other than the Sally house where, you know, there's different classes, of course, of EVPs, uh, class A, B and C. And, uh, this one's because of the clarity. Like I said, there's no mistaking it. It's not like, you know, where it's like, okay, was that Anthony? I don't know. This to me is pretty clear and it's not out of context as I always like to point to where you say, uh, who are we speaking with? Can you give us a name? And then you hear refrigerator. It's like, okay, that's not what we asked. Uh, there might be something to that, but we asked, you asked for a name and you got a name. It could be an era specific name too. I do wonder, you know, you'd have to do a bunch of research to see if, uh, if any spirits there are known as Anthony, but so towards the end of the evening, though, one of the last events or activities was, uh, our little group of friends had made it down to the stage area and there is where they had a, a table set up. It's not a heavy Oak table. It's just a, you know, a folding table that's, uh, usually provided by catering those, you know, plywood, uh, folding table, your basic folding table, nothing special. And they said, well, we're going to try some table tipping. We're going to try some table turning. And it's like, okay, I've never tried this, uh, been on a few ghost stunts. I've never, I've never done this. And, uh, I'm not sure if anybody in our group of friends had tried it before either. So we sat down, place your fingertips lightly on the edge of the table on top and just kind of, uh, be meditatively open, just kind of, uh, you know, just kind of a clear your mind and be receptive. It was Joe who was guiding the session. So he would ask, you know, is there anyone here? Can you affect the table? Can you give us a response? Uh, I think he was throwing out some names of suspected spirits that lived there and basically just trying to get a response. And that went on for 15 minutes, I'd say. We were all just kind of quiet. It, uh, there was no other commotion happening in the theater and, uh, really got nothing. So they decided, and this is what I like about it. There's a long period of inactivity and then they decided to switch it up. So Joe said, uh, there was another member of that team who was there, who I think is one of the intuitives or sensitives. They said, well, why don't you try asking the questions? And this person was sitting at the table. Well, Joe, I think was still standing up, but it's, it's, uh, mostly people that we know. So it's like half our friends of four or five. And then just a couple of the Spectre team members. So this other gentleman, he starts asking the questions. And after a few minutes of asking questions, we started to get a response and the table was moving ever so slightly. Like there was a little bit of motion. And of course you get excited, like, whoa, was it, did I bump it? What's happening here? That was my first thought of like, you start looking around, like who's doing this? And it started to happen more in response to certain questions of like, is this a man or a woman with man? You got nothing with woman. You got a little movement and the movement started to intensify. So it wasn't the table rising up. And I don't know if this makes it more believable for folks. It doesn't matter, but it was moving side to side. I would say like back and forth laterally and at most, maybe a centimeter each way up to like a half inch. You know what I'm saying? It's just kind of like, it's, it's palpable. You're noticing it. And I start looking around, like, is it, uh, is anyone kind of forcefully, is I see too much pressure? Are they moving in? It's like, well, I know these people, they're not doing it. That's the thing about Barry and his friend. It's like, I know they're not doing it for any reason to freak us out. I don't believe the people leading the group were doing it for any effect, because again, we've already invested 30 minutes into this, you know, and nothing was happening. Eventually though, we started to get more responses to certain questions. And what they thought the spirit was, was perhaps a woman who was a dancer there because they were asking, it's like, are you part of the performing troupe here? And you'd get some movement. Now, of course, uh, you can kind of debunk that like somebody was moving it, or it could be the ideomotor phenomenon as we were discussing. Yeah. Uh, but, uh, it wasn't that dramatic. It was very subtle and like nothing rose up. It was not like, that's the story here. Like that's wild. That would maybe freak me out a little. So, or I'd be tremendously fascinated probably either way, but there, this wasn't scary. It's a little bit like, well, this is exciting. This is, this is some palpable movement. We all sensed it. You know, it's obvious. Like it's, like I said, it's moving about an inch either way. Yeah. At its height. And then it kind of started to slow down the activity. You know, we're asking more questions and then it kind of dropped off into nothing. It's like, well, that's the end of it. So I guess I can say I experienced some table tipping. Well, I think that's super cool. You and Barry, I haven't yet. I do want to try it out because it seems really cool. Well, Barry, thank you so much for sending this story into the dead letter office, even though back in 2020, we didn't have that yet. And, uh, Forrest, thank you for sharing those EVPs. That's really cool. Everyone, please stay tuned at the end of the show to hear the full EVP that Forrest got. And Sarah, you can clean that pass up as much as you want. And, um, if you have a dead letter or a story that you'd like to send into us, whether it's a ghost story, UFO, cryptid, a time slip, or anything in between, send it to deadletteroffice at astonishinglegends.com. We'll be back next week. Okay. Okay. Okay. You just run. Okay. Okay. All right. Who's here with us? Who's staying with us here in the balcony? Where's the little boy? Are there any kids here? Right after the number one. We got a random number, January, hook, another one, and a cat ball went off. Are you doing this? Are there little kids here? Yeah. That was me about the favorite thing. Okay. We're both going off. Oh my God. As soon as you ask that. Are you making the lights go off? The light balls go off? No. Can somebody tell us their name? Can we give it a name? Can you give it a name? Please come down here and tell us your name so we know who we're talking to, please. The Astonishing Dead Letter Office is hosted by Scott Philbrook and Forrest Burgess and is executive produced by Tess Feithel. The show is edited and mixed by Sarah Voorhees-Wendel at VW Sound. The theme is based on the Astonishing Legends theme by Judson Crane at Founder Music, arranged by Alan Carissia, who composes all the other music in the show. Tommy Beaver Design created the logo. The announcer is John Bolton. That's me. Stories are lightly edited for length, content, and readability, but otherwise presented as they're sent to us. We're always looking for more Dead Letters, so if you have a story of your own you'd like to share, email it to deadletteroffice at astonishinglegends.com. Please include how you would like to be credited. First name only? First name last initial? Anonymous? A pseudonym? Let us know. Due to the number of emails coming in, we often cannot respond, but we do read them all. No part of this show may be reproduced anywhere without permission. Copyright Astonishing Legends Productions. Hello, hello. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. I recently spoke with IBM's new director of research, Jake Embatta. We discussed his vision for the future of quantum computing. At IBM Research, what we always do is answer what is the future of computing, whether it's coming up with new algorithms, coming up with better AI, coming up with quantum, or coming up with just how do different accelerators go together. It's our DNA to answer the question of what is the future. Isn't it a perfect problem for IBM because you kind of need to have a legacy of building stuff? Yes. Building actual physical machines. It's, yeah, it's why I came to IBM. 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