SPECIAL PRESENTATION: Richard Hatem's Paranormal Bookshelf - The Ghost of 29 Megacycles

Astonishing Legends is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible, financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things that people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Because Progressive offers discounts for paying in full, owning a home, and more. Plus, you can count on their great customer service to help you when you need it, so your dollar goes a long way. Visit Progressive.com to see if you could save on car insurance. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations. Tax season has arrived. And doing taxes without the right help can feel overwhelming. Intuit TurboTax is here now to guide you through it with confidence. Match with a TurboTax full-service expert who handles everything for you, from start to finish. Your dedicated expert checks every single deduction and credit to help you get the best possible outcome, so you can feel confident you're getting every dollar you deserve. And the best part? You'll see real-time updates on your expert's progress right on your phone while you live your life. Plus, you get unlimited expert help at no extra cost, even on nights and weekends during tax season. Visit TurboTax.com. Only available with TurboTax full-service experts. Real-time updates only on iOS mobile app. Hey folks, Scott here. Forgive the audio quality of this recording. I'm traveling with my family for the Thanksgiving holiday, and I don't have my studio gear with me, but this will be brief. As you may know by now, Forrest and I have stepped away from the main show for a bit, dealing with some family losses. We truly appreciate your understanding and patience during this time. While we're on hiatus for the rest of the year, we didn't want to leave you completely without new content, so we're taking this opportunity to share some fantastic episodes from other shows on the Astonishing Legends network. Don't worry, Forrest and I will be back with all new episodes of Astonishing Legends and the Astonishing Dead Letter office in January of 2026. But for now, we're really excited to bring you an episode of Richard Haddam's Paranormal Bookshelf. Long-time listeners of our show, of course, know who Rich is, but for those that don't, he's an absolutely brilliant television writer, film writer, and storyteller, and most importantly in this case, an avid collector of paranormal books, most of them first editions, many of them signed. His show is not only about these books and their place in the paranormal zeitgeist at large, but how his discovery of them at various times in his past intertwined with his own personal life and shaped his philosophy on all things unexplained. This particular episode of Rich's show is episode 5 from season 1. It was originally posted to his feed in May of 2024. It's called The Ghost of 29 Megacycles, and it's a perfect example of why we love his show so much. The book at the heart of this episode is about the fascinating and also heartbreaking tale of George Meek, Bill O'Neill, and their quest to build the Spirit Comm, a machine designed to talk to the dead. Rich's storytelling style here is a masterclass in conveying how the book personally affected him, while he addresses some skepticism about what Meek and O'Neill were trying to do. He also explores the enduring human desire we all have to connect with what lies beyond. It's a pretty great listen, and we think you're going to love it. When it's done, if you enjoyed this episode, please do yourself a favor and search for Richard Haddam's Paranormal Bookshelf wherever you listen to podcasts and hit that subscribe button. He just passed 300,000 listens. And while you're at it, explore all the other amazing shows on our network at AstonishingLegendsNetwork.com, like the Midnight Library and Scared All the Time. All right, here's Rich's episode. Astonishing Legend. Hey, everybody. Welcome back. I want to start out tonight by once again sending out a huge thank you to Liz Barkley, Claire Davey, CJ Romer, and everyone at the Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomenon UK, who have made me feel so welcome in their family. Let me tell you why I'm calling them out. And I did on the first episode too, but now I want to explain why. And it has to do with tonight's episode. So over a year ago, Liz Barkley reached out to me and invited me to come address the group. And I did. And we talked about the Mothman prophecies and the movie and stuff like that. But then a few months later, just about a year ago, she circled back and said, would you come on back and talk to us again about whatever you want? You know, any supernatural topics. So I chose a book and it's the book we're talking about tonight, The Ghost of 29 Megacycles. And that's a book that has special meaning for me. So it made sense. And it turned out to be kind of a, like a one hour, not really a lecture, an address. Anyway, it went really well and I really enjoyed doing it. And then suddenly it was over. And then I was like, oh, well, I'm sad because that was really fun. And then it was a little later that Susan mentioned Richard Adams' Paranormal Bookshelf in terms of a podcast. And that's when I suddenly realized, oh, wait a second. I've done it. I've actually done an episode. I just did it. I did it for them at ASAP UK. So everything sort of came together in that moment. So what you're going to hear tonight is a version of that very first podcast, as it were. So once again, thank you to Liz, Claire, and CJ. Without you guys, we wouldn't be here tonight. All right. Here we go. The Ghost of 29 Megacycles by John G. Fuller. Today, I want to talk about one of my favorite bits of paranormal history, George Meek, Bill O'Neill, and the development of the Spiricom, a device that was supposed to revolutionize the field of electronic communication with the dead. These events are chronicled in a book called The Ghost of 29 Megacycles by John G. Fuller. But I had a very personal connection to the material before the book even existed. So let's just start at the very beginning of the story, the day I first heard about the Spiricom. Let me take you back to a more innocent time. January 1984. A young America was rocking to the beat of Culture Club's Karma Chameleon. King of Pop, Michael Jackson, was rushed to the hospital after catching his hair on fire during the filming of a Pepsi commercial. Ronald Reagan announced his candidacy for a second presidential term with the slogan, Let me finish destroying America, which was quickly changed to, No, I still won't talk about AIDS. And a young Richie Haddam was just returning home late one Saturday night, only to be intercepted in the hallway by his older brother, John, who was holding a cassette tape in his hand. You gotta hear this, he said. It's the scariest thing that's ever happened. Earlier that evening, John had taped a local Los Angeles radio talk show called Open Mind, hosted by an Art Bell precursor named Bill Jenkins. Open Mind was on KABC, Saturday nights from 10 to 12. John handed me the tape and said, Don't listen to it now. Wait until morning. It's too scary. I wish I hadn't heard it. Promise me you won't listen to it. He said all this with an excited grin on his face. So, of course, I told him to fuck off, grab the tape, slammed my bedroom door, and proceeded to listen. It was the scariest thing I ever heard. It was also the most mind-bending. Some guy named George Meek, what an amazing name, was working with another guy named Bill O'Neill, who was talking to a dead guy named Dr. George Jeffries Mueller. They were communicating using a machine called Aspiricom. By manipulating tonal frequencies or something, they were able to facilitate a two-way conversation between a living person and a dead person. I'm assuming you've all heard at least a little of the tapes, so you know what I'm talking about. Maybe you haven't. You can find them online. Look, I won't be playing the tapes for you tonight, but I will be imitating them a little later, so get excited about that. Now, in 1984, I was 17. And sure, I'd heard about electronic voice phenomenon, but not from my parents. No, I had to learn about it on the streets from the big boys down on Garfield, who smoked cigarettes and passed around a paperback copy of Konstantin Radova's Breakthrough, with the good parts dog-eared and sticky with use. And for the sake of this podcast, I'm going to assume that we all believe EVP exists, even though we may not know exactly what it is, or why it's happening, or how it's happening, or what it means. But the Spiracom tapes were very different from normal EVP, which is basically just setting out a tape recorder like a fishing line and hoping to catch a few random words or phrases every month or two. This was real-time communication. It seemed both impossible and inevitable. My world got bigger that night. I listened to that tape until 2 a.m. and then crawled into bed forever changed. And that cassette tape became a haunted artifact that I carried with me for years. But in the 1980s, a simple cassette tape was magic. Mine had the Spiracom stuff on it. But if you were brave enough to try EVP, a tape recorder could put you in touch with a ghost. Even a landline telephone could connect you with the dead. The telephone was emotionally charged anyway because it was all we had outside of face-to-face contact and written letters. My girlfriend at the time was a freshman at Yale. Humble brag. Actually, just brag. We would talk by phone once a week on Sunday nights when the rates were cheapest, and those calls from Monterey Park, California to New Haven, Connecticut cost almost $100 a month. An enormous sum of money to me. And to this day, I still have no idea how my father paid it. There was no texting, no email. That phone line was the only thing that connected us. Two weeks earlier, on one of those phone calls, she sounded strange and finally admitted that she'd made out with another guy. And by made out, I assumed she meant slept with, but was too afraid to say it. And I was definitely too afraid to hear it. So I guess the Spiracom tape was actually the second scariest thing I heard that month. After I hung up, I wandered out into the kitchen. I'm pretty sure I was crying, and I was surprised to find my mother there, drinking wine, alone in the dark. I sat down and joined her, and told her what had happened. By way of comforting me, she poured me a glass of white wine out of a large green glass jug, and then admitted to me for the first time that she'd been married before my father to a man I'd never heard of. Sometimes, she said, things just don't work out. I didn't like the wine, and I really didn't like the conversation. And it made my mother, who was always frightening and unknowable to me, even more so. So, in truth, the Spiracom tape was the third scariest thing I heard that month. I felt off balance, lonely and betrayed. For the first time in my life, I truly felt like there was no one I could trust, and nothing I could believe in. Well, at least I had Spiracom. I was desperate to know more about Bill O'Neill and George Meek and the Spiracom. So I snapped into action and did absolutely nothing. What was I going to do? It was 1984. I couldn't do an internet search. There was no contact information provided on the radio show. Nothing in the public library. So for the moment, it was just some weird thing out there. Maybe one day I'd hear more about it. Or not. And for the next 13 years, I didn't. Here's what I didn't know, but learned much later in the book. At that time, January 1984, George Meek was a 73-year-old man who had spent his last 13 years devoting himself to one specific goal, proving to the world the reality of life after death. George Meek was a successful inventor, mostly of air conditioning systems. And for that alone, well done, George. He had made a fortune on his many patents, and at the age of 55, roughly my age now, he decided that what he really wanted to do was spend the rest of his life investigating the paranormal. He gave himself five years to finish out his professional career and earn a nest egg from which he would finance his explorations into the strange and unknown, but always with the goal of eventually inventing a device that would allow anyone to speak to the dead, without needing a medium as a, well, as a medium. You've heard about the ghost in the machine? He was going to build that machine. He pictured it as a sort of ham radio, and because he was well-schooled in EVP, he knew it would have to involve tones and frequencies that spirits could latch onto and manipulate in order to make their voices heard. Now, in all the talk of the Spiricom hoax, and there's been plenty, but we'll get to that later, there has never really been any doubt about George Meek's basic honesty and sincerity. Looking back now on the Spiricom story, Meek comes off as a kind of dorky Don Quixote, a wacky white-haired scientist who thought he could advance the entire world into a new philosophical age, with nothing more than his trusty compass and protractor and a few transistors and capacitors, and why do I suddenly feel like I'm describing Doc Brown from Back to the Future? I guess my point is, George Meek was a legit guy with a totally admirable, if bonkers, goal, and his heart was in the right place. Now, let's talk about Bill O'Neill. Actually, let's not. Let's talk about John G. Fuller for a second, and then we'll get to Bill O'Neill. John G. Fuller wrote The Ghost of 29 Megacycles, which to date is the sickest title for a book ever. It was published in hardback by Souvenir Press in the UK in 1985. And a Grafton paperback edition followed the same year. In the U.S., Signet Paperbacks, an imprint of New American Library, published a revised and drastically shortened version in 1986. And it was a used copy of this edition that I found at Powell's Books in Portland, Oregon, on Tuesday, October 21, 1997. And up until that moment, I had no idea the book even existed. This was 13 years after the night I heard the tape. So from the age of 17 to the age of 30, I had heard nothing about Spiricom. In fact, the whole thing had come to feel like just some weird private joke between my brother and me. And then later me and my best friend at college, Matt Reeves. I played the tape for him one night, and he got completely freaked out. Matt was genuinely terrified by it, and that's why we're best friends. We'd call each other up and just go right into imitating Dr. Mueller. Okay, so here's what it sounded like if you've never heard the tapes. Here comes my imitation. Get ready. Then the other would immediately say, Oh, doctor. That's my imitation of Bill O'Neill. In fact, to this day, Matt will text me out of nowhere. William, are you there, William? And I'll text back, You know we have no concept of time here, William. And then he'll say he likes carrots and cabbage. All these quotes are like catchphrases for the true Spiricom stan, and Matt and I are true Spiricom stans. Look, something about that tape fascinated us. And it terrified us, but in a fun way. Matt and I became friends at USC Film School, and we spent every minute of our lives trying to figure out how to make the impossible come true. In our case, the impossible was having a career in film. Being successful. All caps. And it really did seem impossible. We were neurotic and depressed, but we were made for each other. In fact, my wife, Susan Lambert, who was also there in film school with us, used to see me and Matt dressed in our preppy little sweaters and ties. That's how we dressed. And she called her sister and told her she'd met her first gay couple. Matt and I weren't gay, but we felt so scared and out of place at USC we might as well have been. All we wanted was not to fail at the only thing we'd ever cared about. And the very idea of failure was so devastating, so obliterating, that we couldn't ever really talk about it. We joked about it, but we never ever seriously discussed the possibility of it because I know we both felt that if we didn't succeed in Hollywood, we might as well be dead. After we graduated USC in 1988, we were broke and jobless and without hope or prospects. So we started writing an action movie together, mostly so we could hang out and not be lonely and not think about how we weren't successful and hadn't sold anything yet. And I can't count the number of times we'd be laboring over a scene, usually at one in the morning, and Matt would drop his head to the keyboard and mutter, Oh, doctor. And then I'd respond in the comforting tones of Dr. Mueller. I'm telling you, the Spiricom tapes got us through. Now, we didn't know it at the time, but that script we were writing would turn into our first success. It took five years, but we wrote and sold Dark Territory, which became the 1995 cinematic triumph, Under Siege 2, Dark Territory. And we've both had other successes since then, thank God. But just two years after that movie came out, I was back at the bottom of the ladder trying to make my name as a solo writer. It was like starting my career all over again and hoping that lightning would strike twice. On the day in 1997, when I found The Ghost of 29 Megacycles at Powell's Bookstore, I was now married to the girl I'd spent all that money on calling her every Sunday night at Yale. And we had just had our first child, and things were not perfect between us. I was also working on a new screenplay at the time called The Mothman Prophecies. And if it was good enough, and if I was lucky enough, it might sell. And then I'd be truly successful. And then maybe I could make her happy. And then maybe all the problems between us would magically disappear, and my life would be perfect. That also felt impossible, but I was hopeful. Somehow, discovering John Fuller's book felt weirdly prophetic. Like the universe was bringing Spiricom back into my life to tell me that my interest in all this weird stuff would eventually pay off, and that believing in the impossible was the way to go. George Meek never stopped believing in the impossible either. When he approached John G. Fuller to write a book about all the work he was doing with the development of the Spiricom and his Metascience Foundation, his dream was already dying, but he didn't know that. The book that Fuller eventually wrote was written at Meek's request and was based almost entirely on Meek's version of events as described in hundreds of pages of material written by Meek about his research and also hundreds of pages of correspondence between Meek and O'Neill. And all of this material, boxes of it, was dumped at John G. Fuller's house by, you guessed it, George Meek. Most of the book is Fuller recounting reading this material and then discussing it with his hot psychic flight attendant wife, Elizabeth, who he met while writing the also pretty dope titled Ghost of Flight 401. Almost everything I know about Bill O'Neill I learned from John Fuller's book, which means I learned it from George Meek. And George Meek was a big fan and supporter of Bill O'Neill. Bill was exactly the person George was looking for. A guy who embodied the mixture of spirituality and technical know-how that Meek felt was essential to getting Spiricom off the ground. O'Neill had what Meek didn't. Actual mediumistic abilities. He could heal people. Even better, he could see and speak to the dead. George Meek never showed any interest in developing his own psychic abilities. He was satisfied to be O'Neill's patron, and he sent him a continuous stream of moral support. And just before O'Neill's first big breakthrough in October of 1977, he started sending him money. Bill O'Neill was a misfit. He dropped out of school at an early age, but found that he had a genius for electronics while working with the U.S. Navy Radar Radio Lab at Pearl Harbor in 1939. He pursued his interest in electronics throughout his adulthood, but was consistently vexed by drastic mood swings and bouts of depression, followed by bursts of wild creativity that found outlets in music, art, and poetry. He was what we used to call manic-depressive. Nowadays, we'd call him bipolar. His interests weren't confined to engineering and electronics. He also had a lifelong interest in the paranormal. He felt deeply that he could and should devote his life to the betterment of mankind. He just didn't know how. And just like George Meek, this conviction reached its zenith when he turned 55. At which time, he decided to join the Peace Corps. That never happened. But in the process, he did meet his future wife, Mary Alice. They discovered that they had a mutual interest in strange phenomena. And from this, they began experimenting with hypnosis, psychic healing, and eventually sex. Tale as old as time. I'm jumping through Bill's history quickly, but the important thing to know here is that Bill was a deeply weird guy, who I believe was also an extremely gifted medium. And like a lot of mediums, he could never find a steady path through life. Even George Meek described him as, quote, And Meek liked him. So just exactly how did these two crazy kids ever find each other in this mixed-up world of ours? Well, like most Hollywood rom-com meet-cutes, this one involved a late-night, a fish tank, and two radio frequency oscillators. Bill was experimenting with ultra-high and sub-harmonic frequencies. Now, this is the portion of the story where I admit to understanding nothing of electronics. So if you do, forgive me. From here on out, I'm either cribbing directly from the book or simply dumbing things down, for my sake, and hopefully yours. Okay, so. Bill wanted to invent a device that would help the deaf communicate. And that's why he was using these oscillator thingies. But on this particular winter night in 1973, something really fucking weird happened. He had these two oscillators going, and he was adjusting the frequencies. And they were set up on either side of this fish tank that he had in his lab. And as he did this, he began to notice a shape forming in the water of the tank. It was a hand. Then an arm. Then a portion of a head. Bill got scared. He started to think he was hallucinating, or maybe the oscillators were fucking with his brain. So, he shut down the oscillators, he shut them off, and the shapes went away, and Bill went to bed. But two nights later, he was at it again. And the same thing happened. Again. Now he was intrigued. As he beat these different frequencies together, something was either happening to the water or to him. He wasn't sure which. So, he took another break, this time for two weeks. And then he tried it again. This time, Bill started having convulsions. He was barely able to shut the machinery down. Terrified, he disabled all the equipment in his lab and threw the fish tank away. He didn't tell Mary Alice what happened. He didn't tell anyone. But soon, he felt the need to reach out to someone. After all, this was something he'd never heard of before. Sound frequencies causing convulsions? And materializations? In aquariums? He went to the library and searched every paranormal periodical he could find. Eventually, he found something called the Psychic Observer. And he wrote a letter describing his experiences to the editor, a man named Henry Nagorka. Weeks went by as O'Neill anxiously awaited a reply. He was hoping to open his mailbox one day and find encouraging words from someone who didn't think he was crazy. And a few weeks later, he did. But the letter wasn't from Nagorka. It was from a guy Bill had never heard of before. A guy named George Meek. You see, Meek knew Henry Nagorka. But more importantly, Nagorka knew Meek. And knew about his quest to find a medium who also had some knowledge of electronics. Maybe this guy would be Meek's holy grail, the missing puzzle piece. Nagorka passed O'Neill's letter to Meek. And it was Meek who ultimately responded to O'Neill. Okay. So this is where the legend begins. And this is also where many people believe the hoax begins. The boilerplate debunking narrative goes like this. A clever but emotionally needy fraud, Bill O'Neill, comes into contact with a wealthy, gullible, spiritual fanatic, George Meek. He smells an opportunity for fame and financial gain. And the con is on. Now, the only flaw in this theory is that Bill O'Neill never wanted to become rich or famous and never did. Not even close. A stronger theory is that Bill O'Neill and George Meek were drawn together based on a set of interlocking emotional needs. A true codependent relationship. Meek was quite aware of what he was looking for. A savant. Someone to sponsor. A genius to nourish. O'Neill fit the bill. But what did O'Neill need? Two things. He needed to feel valued and appreciated. And he needed the means to achieve his dream of changing mankind for the better. I don't think he was consciously aware of how deeply he wanted these things until he met Meek. But here was a highly educated man with plenty of money who actually looked up to him and valued him for the things he felt most frightened and ambivalent about. That's powerful stuff. Now, you may wonder how I know all this stuff because it sure as hell isn't in Fuller's book, not explicitly anyway, but I'm a writer and I'm a human being and I'm allowed to infer things. George and Bill had a kind of relationship that you see in the field of the paranormal all the time. The eccentric psychic savant and the more socially acceptable academic who vouches for them, acting as a sort of cognitive buffer between the public and the person whose abilities and personalities are just a bit too hard to swallow. Think Jewel Eisenbud and Ted Sirios, or even Jeffrey Kripal and Whitley Strieber. No matter how you describe it, George and Bill were made for each other. And as soon as they got together, things started to heat up. And not like that, you pervs. Not long after they met, Bill O'Neill took a big leap forward in his career as a medium. It was a cold, lonely night in January 1975. Up until this time, Bill had seen some ghosts and heard some voices. And of course, there was the whole fish tank thing. But on this night, Bill met a fully formed materialization who identified himself only as Doc Nick. Bill could see Doc Nick, or most of him anyway, and he could hear him talking. Doc Nick didn't give Bill anything in the way of positive ID, but he explained that he was there to guide Bill on his journey as a healer. And for the next two and a half years, he did just that. Bill O'Neill had already been doing some healing work around where he lived in Cataining, Pennsylvania. And a fun fact, Cataining, Pennsylvania doubled for Point Pleasant, West Virginia in the movie The Mothman Prophecies. Bill's healing work appeared to be legit. He had enough of a reputation that people sought him out. And he was successful enough that there are signed affidavits attesting to his results. So I'm going to put healer solidly in the Bill O'Neill column. And I'm also going to put spirit medium in his column too, because a couple of years later, in July of 1977, Bill met another fully formed materialization who would change his life forever. His name was Dr. George Jeffries Mueller, and he'd been dead for 13 years. Unlike Doc Nick, when Dr. Mueller revealed himself to Bill O'Neill, he brought receipts. George Mueller was a real guy who really lived and really died. This was an important distinction. He was able to provide Bill O'Neill with a long list of verifiable details about his life, obscure stuff that there is no way Bill O'Neill could have known or easily found out. This is the part of the story that tends to get lost in the bright glare of the Spiricom tapes. You see, when Dr. Mueller showed up in O'Neill's lab that night, he showed up ready to work, on Spiricom. All the evidential information was just to get Bill on board as quickly as possible, and once the formalities were out of the way, it was time for two nerds to start geeking out on each other from opposite sides of the grave. Mueller was an electrical engineer with a Ph.D. in experimental physics. And the physics don't get much more experimental than Spiricom. This had always been George Meek's plan, by the way. Find a medium with knowledge of electronics to work with an equally qualified ghost. Between the two, they should be able to figure out how to make technical spirit communication possible. The idea had a kind of batshit logic. Mueller was totally on board with this plan, and what it led to, on October 27th, 1977, was somehow, simultaneously, the most remarkable and boring conversation in the history of human speech. It was the first time the Spiricom ever worked. But the weird thing is, it wasn't Dr. Mueller who came through. It was Doc Nick. Okay, here's a partial transcript of that historic conversation. Doc Nick. Bill. Yeah, but you make it sound just like a, oh boy, a robot on television. Doc Nick. It goes on like that for a while. Bill sounds genuinely freaked out by the whole thing. And he admits that he's scared. Doc Nick isn't sympathetic. And when O'Neill mentions Dr. Mueller, Doc Nick gets all huffy and refers to him as, that man. This is far and away the most compelling two words of the whole exchange. Gosh, that man. It's the one thing that makes the scary robotic voice sound human. But that one conversation was it. Doc Nick never again came through electronically. And after a few months, he stopped coming through at all. No clairaudience, no clairvoyance, nothing. And it would be almost three years before the Spiricom equipment hummed to life again. Bill became depressed and demoralized during those years. In fact, in November of 1979, a fire almost totally destroyed the old farmhouse where he and Mary Alice lived. Arson was suspected, but not by Bill. The fire, and several others in the area, was finally blamed on a local firefighter. What else happened during those three years? Well, Bill began tape recording his conversations with Dr. Mueller, who still came through psychically loud and clear. Bill could see Mueller in his workshop, could see his lips move, and hear the words that came out of his ghostly mouth. Mueller's voice can't be heard on these tapes, of course. But there's something about the feeling of them that anticipates the later Spiricom recordings. I'll give you an example. Here's a transcript. Bill. Yes, Dr. Mueller? Yes, sir? Yes, sir. I see. No, what I'm talking about is this... this oscillator you had me build. The beat frequency oscillator. Yes, sir, the BFO. Then there's a long pause. Then... Hello? Hello? Are you there, Dr. Mueller? Are you there? Oh, hell, I lost him again. There's over 200 pages of these transcripts, single-spaced, all transcribed by O'Neill. The material is by turns technical, political, and philosophical. And again, you might ask, who would devote all this time to a hoax? I would ask that, too. On the other hand, never doubt the effort and industry of the deeply and genuinely insane. It was on the night of September 22nd, 1980, that Dr. Mueller's voice finally came through on the Spiricom. And it is this conversation, plus many that followed, that make up what most of us think of as the Spiricom tapes. More than 30 hours of conversations were recorded over the next year. Meek was obviously excited and encouraged by all this. But in all this time, he never personally witnessed any of the conversations between Mueller and O'Neill. The communications happened at random intervals, and Meek apparently had no desire to stay with O'Neill for days or weeks on end, living in a half-burned-out farmhouse, hoping for a lucky break. So instead of stringently investigating this impossible phenomenon and making absolutely sure it was happening, like for sure, Meek did two things. One made sense, sort of. One didn't make sense at all. The thing that sort of made sense was he began designing a complete technical manual of the Spiricom system that O'Neill was using so that anyone, or at least anyone with a knowledge of electronics, could build their own and try it out. Great idea. Find out if anyone else can obtain the same results as O'Neill. You know, like science. Even better, what if the Spiricom worked for people with no mediumistic abilities at all? I mean, isn't that what Meek was trying to invent anyway? A machine that would allow anyone to communicate directly with the dead? But instead of handing out the manual to a selected group of researchers and waiting to see what their results were, Meek got excited. Why not announce to the world the success of the Spiricom device at a huge press conference in Washington, D.C.? Wouldn't a big, splashy move like this spur even more research more quickly? This was the idea that made no sense at all. Let's be clear. Bill O'Neill was the only person to report success with a Spiricom. And no one had ever personally seen him do it. In retrospect, what happened next should not be a surprise to anyone. As Meek ramped up plans for his National Press Club announcement, Dr. Mueller dropped an announcement of his own. He was leaving. He told Bill via the Spiricom, You must understand one thing, William. I cannot be here forever. I cannot guarantee how long I'll be visiting here. However, I will do my best. There is a dime and a place for everything. This is something you should be aware of. This communication came in late 1981, about four months before the scheduled April 6th, 1982 press conference. This was also around the time Meek first reached out to John Fuller to propose writing a book about the whole thing. The press conference went off as scheduled and was well attended by news outlets like AP, UPI, Reuters, Businessweek, Harper's, National Public Radio, Scripps, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Baltimore Sun, and the local ABC television news affiliate. O'Neill was on the dais, but never spoke during the official conference, although he did apparently answer questions from the press afterwards. Along with Meek, the official group representing the MetaScience Foundation, that was Meek's foundation, included William Tiller, Walter Uphoff, Hans Heckman, Ernst Senkowski, Bruce Dabke, and William Cerny. Some of these names will be familiar to you. All of them can be Googled easily. All of them had impressive academic backgrounds, and all of them laid their reputations on the line that day. The reaction from the press was actually quite respectful and intelligent, and maybe that's because it was April and not October, closer to Easter than Halloween. And despite the creepiness of the tapes, which were played for the crowd, Meek's demeanor was so earnest and academic that even when he got a little carried away, it came off as charming, like my goofy high school biology teacher making a joke. Two blood cells met and fell in love. Alas, it was all in vain. The press dutifully carried the good news about Spiricom to the public, and George Meek was happy with how things turned out. Over the next few years, he continued his research, and he kept beating the drum for the Mueller-O'Neill tapes whenever and wherever he could. Two years after his press conference in January 1984, his journey brought him to Los Angeles, where he was Bill Jenkins' in-studio guest on KBC's late-night Open Mind Radio talk show, and that is the appearance my brother taped, and that brings the story full circle. Now, to the Spiricom hoax. If you listened to my episode about the world of Ted Sirios, then you've heard my gripe with debunkers. If we're playing these episodes out of order, you'll hear my gripe with debunkers a little later. And Spiricom has had more than its share of debunkers. But I was largely unaware of the feeding frenzy that is built up around Meek and O'Neill and their strange tapes until fairly recently. The first and best debunker in this frenzy was a Methodist minister from Nahuata, Oklahoma, named Terence Peterson. He launched his attack in the pages of Fate magazine way back in January of 1987. Now, I was a subscriber and reader of Fate magazine throughout the late 70s and into the early 80s, but I let my subscription lapse in 1985, and in so doing, I missed his article, entitled, Spiricom or Spiricon. It is the earliest published version that I could find of the complaints that would later become inextricably linked with the Spiricom tapes. Complaint number one. Dr. Mueller sounds like a guy using an artificial larynx. This is true. For those of you who don't know what this is, it's basically a small device that allows people who have had their larynx removed to simulate speech, and it sounds like the imitation I did earlier. If you've seen these things at all, you've probably seen them on TV commercials about the dangers of smoking. In fact, I was going to demonstrate what a real artificial larynx sounded like right now, but when I went on Amazon, even the cheapest ones were selling for around $300, and I just couldn't justify the cost. Plus, what the fuck am I going to do with it after this? I could call Matt. Now, that might be fun. Anyway, on to complaint number two. Bill O'Neill's ghosts all talk just like Bill O'Neill, and they say his name a lot. Doc Nick says Bill when he's talking to Bill a lot. Dr. Mueller says William a lot. Now, this might not be the slam dunk Peterson thinks it is, but it is worth noting. And it's also worth noting that Bill O'Neill says, oh, doctor, and Dr. Mueller a lot. Now, some of this could be put down to the nature of the communication, the constant need to reestablish who it is you're talking to and make sure they're still there when the connection is so tenuous. It was their version of, can you hear me? Can you hear me now? Are you still there? Now I'm losing you. I will concede. It's one thing for Bill to say, oh boy, all the time. But when the ghosts start saying it too? Complaint number three. This one is interesting. Peterson zeros in on a section from Fuller's book in which George Meek sends one of the Spiricom tapes to a Dr. Hiroshi Motoyama at the Institute of Religious Psychology, who then forwards the tape to a voice synthesis expert at the University of Tokyo. A voice analysis was carried out and the expert claimed that the two voices were distinctly different. Peterson tests this claim by sending a sample of the tapes to a friend of his, Dr. David Rivers, a speech and language expert at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. Now rather than test the tape itself, Peterson asked Rivers to duplicate the dialogue using an artificial larynx. For Dr. Mueller's lines, on the gut feeling that a voice print analysis would not be able to realize that the two voices were coming from the same guy, thus defanging the results of the Japanese study. And that's exactly what happened. Not only that, but Rivers sent Peterson a tape of himself using the artificial larynx, and yes, it sounds just like Dr. Mueller. Peterson has a few other complaints I find less compelling, but so what? These first three are enough. And when he reaches out to George Meek, Meek disappointingly gets huffy and basically responds with, why would you accuse me or Bill of carrying out a hoax that costs me hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of a decade and has netted us not a single cent? And let's be clear, Peterson is absolutely accusing George Meek of participating in the hoax, if there is one. Some years later, videotapes appeared of Bill O'Neill's sessions with Dr. Mueller. He filmed himself. You can see it on YouTube. They're all filmed from behind, so we can never see O'Neill's mouth. And quite often, we can't see his right hand, which is where he'd be holding the artificial larynx. It was when these videos surfaced that more complaints came up. One of the most damning complaints is also the simplest and most obvious. And it could have been made when that very first recording was produced on October 27th, 1977. At no time in any of the tapes that were ever made available, can Bill O'Neill and Dr. Mueller be heard talking at the same time. It's something you don't notice until it's brought to your attention, because the weird buzzing of the frequency tones can always be heard. it's not immediately apparent that they never interrupt each other. Never. And I haven't listened to every single sample in existence, but I've listened to a lot. And I personally have not been able to find any instances where both voices are speaking on top of each other. George Meek ends his response letter to Terrence Peterson with this remark regarding the authenticity of Spiracom. History, not Mr. Peterson, will be the ultimate judge. That letter was written 37 years ago. And to my knowledge, no one has ever duplicated Bill O'Neill's claimed results. It appears that history, too, has cried foul on Spiracom. So what do we do? Well, for some people, the rule is, if a speck of fraud is found, throw out everything. The person, the work, everything. And I get it. We're never going to convince mainstream science to accept Uri Geller or whatever if there's even one instance of trickery. And in the case of Spiracom, it appears that 100% of the evidence was faked. But I find myself asking, how do we get here? In other words, did Bill O'Neill lie about every paranormal experience he ever had, just hoping that one day it would get him some attention and then one day miraculously it did? Let's start with Bill the Healer. This might be the one aspect of his abilities that is the most established. Among the papers that Meek provided John Fuller were a number of signed affidavits attesting to the success of his healing work. These are signed by doctors. I find this evidence compelling. Okay, so Bill's a healer. Was he clairvoyant or clairaudient? He claims to have consistently witnessed at least partial materializations of Doc Nick and later Dr. Mueller. But since there's no evidence, it's impossible to confirm this claim. Doc Nick's identity as an actual former living human was never confirmed. But what about Mueller? Here's where I think Bill O'Neill struck gold. Mueller provided a lot of details about his life. And these details were later confirmed by George Meek and his metascience team. And yeah, I'm going to say it was stuff there's no way Bill O'Neill could have known or found out. It took Meek and company months to confirm various social security numbers, classified phone numbers, and obscure bits of Mueller's personal history, all of which turned out to be true. The most compelling, of course, is the discovery of a booklet Dr. Mueller claimed to have authored. A kind of army instruction manual called Introduction to Electronics. After a relentless 18-month search, Meek finally tracked down the single existing copy in an army archive collection at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. Mueller had hinted that his reasons for participating in this bizarre interdimensional science project was referenced in the final paragraph of this forgotten little monograph. When Meek finally received a photocopy of it, he anxiously turned to the final page and read these words. New techniques and instruments of electronic wizardry will emerge, but only after seemingly impossible problems have been solved. These solutions will require the careful thought and patient work of many people whose findings will be correlated with other efforts verified by experiments and aided now and then by sparks of genius to reconcile the irrational and so accomplish the impossible. Reconcile the irrational. Accomplish the impossible. For Meek, these words were all the confirmation he needed. but back to O'Neill. Here's what I think happened. I think he did have spiritual contact with someone named Doc Nick and then one day he manufactured a tape that made it seem like Doc Nick's voice was coming through the Spiracom. Why would he do this? Maybe to please the man who expected such great things from him. If that was his reason, it worked. Meek was thrilled. But as we know, Bill didn't claim another contact for three years. Maybe he felt weird about the deception so he didn't do it again. At least not right away. But Meek's enthusiasm never flagged. O'Neill had lit a fire that wasn't going out. So O'Neill began making those one-sided dialogue tapes where he would paraphrase the answers he was hearing from Dr. Mueller. Whether he knew it or not, he was rehearsing a technique that he would soon begin using when Dr. Mueller made his eventual appearance on the Spiracom. Bill got comfortable with the timing. He was edging himself closer to attempting another fake Spiracom tape, a second breakthrough. Mind you, I don't think he was doing this in a calculated or even fully conscious way. I think he was playing, like a child alone in his room, suffering from mood disorders and escaping into a world of make-believe. Don't ask me how I know this. I think on some level Bill O'Neill hoped that one day the voice of George Jeffries Mueller would genuinely emerge from the Spiracom. But until it did, he would speak to him psychically and then voice Mueller's replies himself. In other words, I believe in all of Bill O'Neill's wild talents except for one, building a successfully working Spiracom. And what about Meek? What was his level of complicity? Well, I think he was a little high on his own supply as we say. Once he accepted that very first recording from Doc Nick as real, he was over the falls. For him, Spiracom worked. His lack of rigor regarding the Mueller tapes becomes less mysterious. Plus, I think Meek conflated the evidence regarding Mueller's life as proof that Spiracom was working. It never occurred to him O'Neill might be simply getting the information psychically. Like Amityville, there's something tenacious about the legend of the Spiracom. Something irresistible that just won't die. I mean, it's still all over the internet and people talk about it and novels have been written that refer to it and right now there is someone out there trying to build one that does work. Speaking for myself, it just feels like the Spiracom should work. We've heard about direct voice mediumship. We've heard about phone calls from the dead. We've even heard about people receiving text messages and emails from the dead. And don't even get me started on the vertical plane. But Christ, it's been four decades and still nothing even close to Spiracom? God damn it, Mueller, where are you? And can we please just have a normal conversation? Reading the ghost of 29 megacycles again 25 years later was not nearly as much fun as reading it that first time in the Heathman Hotel in Portland, Oregon while I was working on the Mothman prophecies. Back then, it seemed like magic and it super fueled my excitement about writing my script. I thought, if the world takes to Mothman the way Matt Reeves and I took to the Spiracom tape, I was going to be fine. I never did figure out how to make things work with my ex-wife, so we split up in 2001. But since then, my life has gotten better. I'm remarried to Susan Lambert, the girl who thought Matt and I were gay. I have three great kids and dogs and cats and I work consistently and I'm happy. And I think Spiracom had something to do with that. So I'm not angry at Bill O'Neill and neither am I cynical. And I don't dismiss him or George Meek, the man who never stopped believing. Meek died in 1999, having never proven to the world the reality of life after death. Bill O'Neill spent the final years of his life in an insane asylum. According to legend, among his personal effects found after he died was a small electronic device, an artificial larynx. He didn't need it. For my money, he proved he was communicating with a dead man. And to me, that tape, that first one, the one my brother gave me all those years ago, the one I am holding in my hand right now as I record this, I think it's magic because it made me believe in the impossible when I needed to. So thank you, Mr. Meek and Mr. O'Neill and even you, Dr. Mueller, because being able to believe in you is what finally led me to all the good things in my life, all the things that I love. Thank you for joining me on Richard Haddam's Paranormal Bookshelf. Richard Haddam's Paranormal Bookshelf is presented by Astonishing Legends, 134 West, and Summerland Entertainment. Executive Producers, Scott Philbrook, Forrest Burgess, and Susan Lambert. Our Associate Producer is Tess Feifel, and our Sound Designer, Engineer, and Editor is Kevin Ducey. Artwork is by Tommy Beaver, Website is by Kayla Lord, and our music, as always, is by Nima Kazarouni. Please join us next time as we head back to Brightwood Elementary School where I'm hit with a one-two punch of falling in love for the first time and reading the Amityville Horror. Until then, be safe and be well, find the light in the dark, and we'll see you again soon. Astonishing Legends is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible, financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things that people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Because Progressive offers discounts for paying in full, owning a home, and more. Plus, you can count on their great customer service to help you when you need it, so your dollar goes a long way. Visit Progressive.com to see if you could save on car insurance. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations. This is Danielle Robay from Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club. Okay, you've got a lot going on, and choosing the right probiotic might not be at the top of your to-do list. So, let's make things simple. Garden of Life is the number one women's probiotic brand for a reason. It's specifically designed for women to support the immune system, vaginal health, and overall women's health. You can feel good knowing that this is the brand so many women trust for their gut health. Garden of Life transforms 16 diverse probiotic strains and 50 billion CFU to support digestive health and a flourishing gut flora. And if you're worried whether Garden of Life women's once-daily probiotic is the real deal, don't. They're certified non-GMO and doctor-formulated for women's unique needs. To put it simply, this is an easy way to prioritize your gut health. Garden of Life Formulas for Feeling Alive available on Amazon. Disclaimer, number one based on Circona 52-week multi-outlet unit sales ending 11-30-25. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Ever feel like your bedroom's running out of space? Here's the good news. You don't have to sell your favorite things to make space. With IKEA Bedroom Storage Solutions, dressers, wardrobes, full closet systems, even storage boxes. You can hold onto it all. Your vintage band tees? Keep them. Those limited edition sneakers? They stay. And yes, there's room for your childhood teddy bear too. Need to organize a walk-in closet? The PAX wardrobe lets you customize shelves, rails, and compartments so every item has a home. Too many clothes and not enough drawers? The Storklintest six-door dresser is perfect for denim, sweaters, and everyday essentials. And if the kids are taking over your space, TROFAST storage boxes make sorting toys and art supplies easy and clean up fun. From primary suites to playrooms, IKEA has storage options that adapt to your life and help you keep what matters most. Don't sell anything you love, store it instead. Shop IKEA Bedroom Storage today at IKEA.US slash Bedroom Storage. Ever notice that feeling your worst also seems to happen at the worst time in the worst places? Like sudden nausea at 9 p.m. when you're out of town. Really? Now? Fortunately, with Hartford HealthCare's HHC 24-7 app, you can get answers, diagnosis, prescriptions, even speak live with clinicians anytime, anywhere. So maybe there's never a good time to be sick, but at least the best care is always there. Download the app at your app store or hhc247.org. Success starts with your drive and American Public University is here to fuel it. With affordable tuition and over 200 flexible online programs, APU helps you gain the skills and confidence to move forward. Whether you're changing careers, starting fresh, or pursuing a lifelong passion, our programs are designed for people who never stop. You bring the fire, APU will fuel the journey. Learn more at apu.apus.edu. Success starts with your drive and American Public University is here to fuel it. With affordable tuition and over 200 flexible online programs, APU helps you gain the skills and confidence to move forward. Whether you're changing careers, starting fresh, or pursuing a lifelong passion, our programs are designed for people who never stop. You bring the fire, APU will fuel the journey. Learn more at apu.apus.edu. Hi, this is Danielle Robay, the host of Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club, a podcast by Hello Sunshine and iHeart Podcasts. I'm partnering with Simple Mills and I've just found my new go-to reading snack, Simple Mills Almond Flour Crackers. Think of this as a quick book style review because these crackers deserve it. The premise, a snack that feels light, not heavy. Made with almond flour, sunflower seeds, and flax seeds. Nutrient-dense ingredients your body can use, not empty carbs. And the taste, crunchy classic flavors that leave you feeling energized. For a good plot twist, try Pop'ums, cheesy, airy, poppable crackers packed with veggies. Final verdict, these are a shelf staple. Find Simple Mills at your grocery store. With the Venmo debit card, a taco in one hand and ordering a ride in the other means you're stacking your rewards. Nice. Get up to 5% cash back with Venmo Stash on your favorite brands when you pay with your Venmo debit card. From takeout to ride shares, entertainment and more. Pick a bundle with your go-tos and start earning cash back at those brands. Do more stash, get more cash. Venmo Stash bundle terms and exclusions apply. See terms at venmo.me slash stash terms. Max $100 cash back per month.