The Hatem Files 2

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We know the importance of seeing the person behind the patient. Because we see all of you. Learn more at trinityhealthofne.org slash heart. Astonishing Legends Network. Thanks to our sponsors and Patreon supporters. Astonishing Legends is free to listen to. We appreciate your support of them, and us. A year and a half ago, our good friend Richard Haddam launched a long-overdue podcast of his own on the Astonishing Legends Network. Since then, Richard Haddam's paranormal bookshelf has just under a quarter million listens and is growing rapidly. We've had the great pleasure of watching the show come into its own as Rich hones it into one of the most unique paranormal-oriented podcasts out there. There's truly nothing quite like it. Rich has been the impetus for many of our favorite series over the years, introducing us to books we were not previously familiar with, like The Vertical Plane or The Siren Call of Hungry Ghosts. Helping us to bring you some tales from the darker side of the paranormal veil. His personal collection of first editions in this realm is staggering, and it's hard to imagine who wouldn't want to sit down and hear about every single book on his shelf, and that includes us. So tonight, while we're in the throes of research for our next main show in a few weeks, we wanted to invite Rich back to Blanket Fortiana to talk about the first two and a half seasons of his show, some of our favorite episodes of his, and ask him some questions about not only what he has covered, but what he is about to cover between now and the end of the year. Welcome back to Astonishing Legends. I'm Scott Philbrook, and this is Richard Haddam talking about Whitley Streeper's abduction experience in his infamous book, Communion. When he looks around the room he is in, he makes an extremely uncommon observation that I've never heard in any other UFO story. He describes the room he is in as messy. Join us tonight with our OG guest, Richard Haddam, a philosophical anchor in the Astonishing Legends universe. We'll dive into the third season of his podcast, Richard Haddam's Paranormal Bookshelf, exploring the incredible books he's already covered and what he has in store. All autographed first editions, of course. Of course. And I guess we're back. I guess we are, folks. It's good to be back. Thank you so much for joining us again. We're doing a small roundtable tonight with our friend Rich, but we're working out the research for our next summer topic, which will usher us out of the summer and back into our regular production schedule with the onset of the spooky season. But before we jump in with Rich, we need to very much give a shout-out to our bizarre friend Miranda Merrick at the Midnight Library, who has just passed over 6 million downloads. Now that is truly astonishing. We're so proud to have her as part of the Astonishing Legends network. It has matured into something truly amazing, and if you haven't heard the Midnight Library yet, we'd encourage you to check it out. Oh, absolutely. It's so well done and so evocative of the spooky mood we all love. And the other thing, remember when we were starting out, as every podcaster does, you were just praying and hoping you'll reach a million downloads. Yes, I know. Well, she's got six of them. You know, there are over 120 episodes posted now, so if you're looking for something to binge, it's the perfect time to find, subscribe, and then listen. And you can find out about all of our shows at AstonishingLegendsNetwork.com, so head on over there for more information. Yes, and the boys that scared all the time are churning and burning, too, with almost 800,000 all-time listens, too, already, which is amazing. Yeah, that's also amazing there in such a short amount of time. Well, you know, these shows are all excellent, and we're thrilled and privileged to have them under the Astonishing Banner. All right, let's get Rich in here and figure out what he's been up to. Rich, are you there, sir? I am here. I've been here the whole time. Ah. You're always here. We used to joke that you're always sitting in Blanket Fortiana. I've been, yeah. Every single show you guys have done, I am here. He never left. He's waiting for more pizza and martinis to arrive. That was such a special time. And you know what? I just want to say before we get started here, when we finally started to get to know Rich well, and boy, was that a chore, that was a huge milestone for us because we knew this guy was someone to know. Right, because I withhold so much. It takes a while to get to know. Yeah. Oh, you're an enigma wrapped inside a fortune cookie, my friend. And so we thought, like, this is the guy to hang out with and pick his brain. We want to have him on. And in talking with him, it's just so weird that I should have known you better decades before. That was, it's hard to explain, but that was odd to me. And so for our mutual love of the Rockford Files, when we talk with you, I wanted to name that episode, The Hadam Files. And I thought it would be a recurring series every once in a while, every, you know, it was six to 12 months we'd have him back on. And that first one was September 8th, 2017, back in our salad days, episode 82. We haven't even cracked 100 episodes yet. So we had Rich over to the original, the OG Blanket Forteada studio. But the fact that we met somebody that we was so enthused, so knowledgeable and passionate about this, which makes having you on a breeze. Meeting you guys was the greatest thing that ever happened to me. I mean, it was so fun. I remember the first night. I remember it was March 8th, 2017. Right, right. I remember the restaurant. I remember the sidecars we consumed. Right. I mean, it was really fun. I consider myself very, very lucky. The things we wanted to talk to you about, what was going on in current news was a, basically a flap, apropos here, of moth, owl, and Batman sightings in the Chicago area. Yeah. You, because of the Mothman connection, of course, we were wondering, like, what did you think about this? Because it, like, like you were saying, he also has never left, it seems. Well, the Chicago sightings were really interesting to me. And I know they're very controversial because there's people on both sides. Right. Some of the witness reports are very compelling. And there's so many of them, which, of course, either makes you believe them more or makes you believe them less. Because, A, I haven't heard much recently. And, B, I haven't heard anything from anywhere else, at least in America, where I would easily get that information. I don't think, I don't think you guys have heard anything either. Like, a new area where suddenly everyone's seeing him in Portland, Oregon, or something. Like, I haven't heard that. No. I think about this quite a bit when we cover any story. You know, the lizard man of scape or swamp. And you, you know, my thinking is like, wow, if I had a time machine, I would go back to that right exact same spot in the road at that time with recording gear, with witnesses, and be there for that extraordinary experience. And capture it because, you know, usually they're so chaotic that, you know, good photographs weren't taken. Or we came back, two days later, there'd been a rain, and it washed away the footprints that were there. Whatever it is, wanted to be there at that time. And then I have to realize, like, it's happening all the time in various places. And it's not reported widely or immediately, or people don't. It's like, I don't know what that was. I'm not going to tell anybody because they're going to think I'm crazy. So it's not reported at all, but it's happening. But other things in this media landscape, especially currently, paper over that, sugar over the crazy details, like the New Jersey flap of UAPs and drones. And it's like, well, they weren't really drones. Oh, what were they? It's like, well, never mind. I just read some headlines. It's still going on. There are still incursions of quite a bit of them in the New Jersey area and other places. You know, there was a recent, I think, a Dogman sighting of some kind. Well, and you know, Dogman is something I really did not know anything about until I read Linda Godfrey's book. Right, right. Monsters Among Us. And then, you know, you get the feeling when there are a lot of witnesses in a particular region over a number of years. I don't know, for me, that I tend to listen a little more. Yeah. And like, there's been an intense search for Bigfoot in America and British Columbia for the last 75 years, at least. People searching, trying to find a physical body, trying to find anything other than footprints, which seems to be the only thing he's leaving behind. Actually, you know what? I should say she, because I think most people, if they identify as sex of Bigfoot at all, it tends to be female. I've literally never heard anyone say, the one I saw, I don't want to go into detail, but let me tell you, it was a dude. If you saw him, you wouldn't be calling him Bigfoot. Oh, dear. Okay, thanks, Rich. We're 10 minutes in here. No bleeps yet, so the tally board is still, the big thermometer, the big red thermometer is at the bottom at zero still. Yeah, folks, just so you know, before we started, Scott reminded me, unlike your show, Richard, ours is clean, not explicit, so try to put a lid on it. And he said it, yeah, with such exhaustion on his face. But with Patty, that was the first thing we realized. Again, we'd seen it all these years, and we talk about this in our series for the Patterson-Gimlin film, is that like, oh my goodness, she's a lady. She's a lady. And it's like, how unusual is that? And like with your quote that opened the show, it's like, now that we've gotten more familiar with most of these famous cases, and as they pop up, you start to look for odd details, like Whitley Streber describing the room as messy. Or it's like, okay, that's out of place, and the rest of it fits, though, the framework. And Patterson-Gimlin, like, yeah, it's got the lumbering walk, the sagittal crest on the head, blah, blah, blah. You see the, you know, this one that was different, you see muscles flexing under skin and fur or hair. And then, and then there's breasts. And it's like, okay, that's an unusual twist. And to your point, though, since the years when we started paying more attention, there have been more descriptions of some being female, some getting the sense of being male, some juveniles, some miniature homunculi type furry little Bigfoots. Yeah. And you realize, like, that's the kitchen sink of all this, is that there's so many other descriptions of what's going on. And Scott will talk about gnomes, different kinds of gnomes, monochrome gnomes, which was a great band in the 70s, by the way. You know, wearing little felt tunics, but being completely gray. Some actually being in colored outfits, traditionally, like you'd see in the cartoons. And what's interesting about the Strieber case, those were the first two episodes of the new season of Richard Haddam's Paranormal Bookshelf. But there were a number of details that were weird. And that didn't, I mean, there were actually a lot of details. Yeah, the messy room thing. I just want to, by the way, I want to say something here at the top of this. I had listened to your first two seasons of your show, but I hadn't heard any of season three, what you're calling season three. And so I listened to the whole thing back to back. I was driving around. I had to go to Home Depot and do all this stuff. And it was great. I was so into it. And the thing that we talked about when we started the show was how Communion was a book that freaked me out pretty good. And I think we've talked about that when you've been on before, too. I'm not generally afraid of books. I don't find books scary, really. Even the scary books that are supposed to be scary, Stephen King and stuff, I'm not super freaked out. But when I got to the part in Communion, when he saw that being like peeking around the door, the wardrobe or whatever, I put the book down. And I was like, I can't do this. And so then when I heard you talking about some of the other details in the book, and this is what's really fascinating about your show. For people that have not heard Rich's show, you should definitely check it out. Rich, you don't even know this. We mentioned it in the cold open, but you weren't on with us when we recorded that. But you're closing in on a quarter million downloads, by the way. Congratulations. Oh, thank you. Yeah, yeah. That's awesome. And so for folks who haven't found it, it's a good time to find the show. It's just so unusual and interesting. But one of the things that's fascinating about it is like, you know, you pluck these really interesting details out of these stories and these books. And then, of course, you talk about how it connected to your life at the time. And I have some questions about that in the bigger picture. But when you said that he talked about this UFO being messy or wherever he was, you know, that is truly – I have not heard it in any other abduction case of it being a messy room like some college dorm room or something. Right. I know. You say that. I wish he could have even said, you know, there was an empty thirsty two-ouncer thrown in a corner. It's like, what is happening? What is that – but it changes your whole – like this idea of the aliens like coming – it changes the whole structure of that. Like, wait, so they're just bumbling in here with their – in their messy rooms like grabbing us and not – you know, it's just – it changes the whole thing. Well, he said that and he also said that he heard them speak audibly. In every case I've ever heard of, it is telepathic. Yeah. And it eventually got there, but for some reason right at the beginning they were actually speaking in voices. Right. That he could hear with his ears, if you will, which I thought was strange. The way they were dressed, sometimes the way – almost like an injured cold sort of thing. Like the one that appeared by his bed that was wearing like a cardboard suit. Right. So it looks like a three-piece suit, but it's made of cardboard. Which, by the way, you also said that he said in the initial encounter when he was like, I want to smell you or whatever. And he said it smelled like cardboard. Yeah, he said they smelled like cardboard. You described it as organic, like a living thing, but also an odor of cardboard to it. So then it's like, well, is it because he thought about cardboard it shows back up in a suit made of cardboard? Or like, it's so strange. It is all so strange. It's like a David Byrne hard drive. Well, what's so great about Strieber is that he's such a great writer. And again, it's one of these frustrating things where every advantage is a disadvantage. His advantage is that by being an artist and being a writer, he's already spent a lifetime reflecting and thinking deeply and then expressing that back to his audience. And finding ways to articulate things that are hard to articulate. And so he's so great at conveying the emotion of it, both the emotion of terror and really, most movingly, the emotion of despair. Because it's something I don't think a lot of people think about, but the idea that if this is happening to me, I don't know if I can go on living. He literally thought, I've either got a brain tumor or I'm losing my mind. And either way, my functional life is over. He was in his early 40s when this started. He just turned to 80, coincidentally, the day the first episode dropped. I did not know a listener had to tell me. Oh, right. I think I remember you mentioning that. I mean, things get excessively strange. With Whitley Strieber, again, one of the few people, again, maybe the only, who said, if this is happening, then I want to know what it is. Right. And so rather than being terrified and praying it never happens again, I'm going to go up to the cabin, sit in the woods, and basically invite them to come back. For that communion. And there you go. It's a communion with your superiors. There was a period of time when his wife didn't know. He was the only one, and he wasn't talking about it because he wanted to figure out what it was for himself first. And that's what allowed him, because after consciously recalling the incident that occurred right after Christmas in 85, and then speaking with Bud Hopkins, and Bud Hopkins said, well, has anything, any other like strange memories or weird things come to mind? And he suddenly remembered, oh, wait a second. In October, there was the night the house burned down, but it didn't burn down. And then Bud Hopkins said, okay, here's what I want to do. Why don't we get a hypnotherapist that I use? And let's talk about that date and see if it gives us any insight. If the October event, if there was an event, gives us any insight into what happened in December. And Whitley said, I need a new person. Give me a new hypnotherapist, someone who knows nothing about the phenomenon. I don't want anyone who's like, okay, let's find out about your UFO experience. I don't want this polluted in any way. Just get me a brand new guy. So Bud Hopkins is like, great idea. So that's what they do. And then he has a hypnosis that unlocks conscious memories of something that happened in October. But he's excited because he's like, the night that it happened, we had house guests. I was there, my wife was there, my son was there, and this other couple was there. So I'm going to call them, I'm going to speak to each one of them. I'll talk to the house guests, I'll talk to my wife, I'll talk to my son. And I will simply ask, what do you remember about that weekend? And do you remember anything interesting, special, different, whatever? Totally hoping that they would all be like, that was a great weekend. I have no strange memories whatsoever. Every single one of those other people had the exact same or an angle on the experience he had, which was the house filling with light, the sensation that many, many people were in the house somehow. Yeah. And also a very, very loud banging sound that literally woke his wife up. Okay. So there's a handful of things. And once he heard that, he was devastated because he realized, okay, there's a physical reality to this. It's not just inside my head. Right. Now I have to start thinking about this as something where there is an outside agent of some sort. And that's when he said, okay, if you're out there, now you got to prove that you were there that night. So come on back. And then they did. 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. Exploring the unknown is what makes Astonishing Legends so much fun. But when it comes to dinner, nobody wants surprises. Marley's Spoon helps you eat well without overthinking it. Each meal is chef-designed, made with quality ingredients, and balanced so you feel good about what you're eating. 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Trinity Health of NE dot org slash spine. Trinity Health. We see all of you. Forrest and Scott, thank you for supporting their sponsors. I'm Charlotte. Now back to the show. What's grown in my mind or that I think about more is the cardboard smell, the ridiculousness of these things. And the nonsensical and the weirdness of it. And so much of that experience, as well as other paranormal experiences, as well as the analyzing of the experiences, has to do with the subconscious. And it's a main conduit to our conscious reality. But also this other reality that intrudes upon that conscious reality that we call reality. I just sent a Scott in an article. But they basically asked it to describe what is reality. And it also came up with the essential concept that reality does not exist until you observe it. It is in that flux state, as we know, on the subatomic level until you observe it. It's a realm of possibility. So in that realm of the experiencer to these kind of strange things, it's so subconscious like a dream of like things don't make sense. It's like Mitch Hedberg says, your dreams are weird. It's like next thing I know, I'm building a go-kart with my ex-landlord. It just doesn't, like what is this? It doesn't make conscious sense. And so these odd things happen. And I think it's tapped into your subconscious, which is the conduit of communication and experience. And then what you were talking about here with hypnosis, you know, so many people, of course, like the poo on the idea of regressive hypnosis and hypnosis in general for getting knowledge. And it's like, well, it's one of the few ways we have of extracting that kind of experience and details about it. And they say, well, it's totally faulty. And then I had heard a concept by John Mack, the former head of psychology or psychiatry at Harvard, who was a huge skeptic about all this. And same thing. He wanted to know what was going on. He's like, I don't believe in any of this, but is this some kind of psychological phenomenon that we should know about and study and not just sweep under the rug and dismiss? So many people seem to be experiencing this. So he dove into it. And the more he interviewed and researched, the more he thought there was something to it. And people said, well, you know, hypnosis is, you know, it's screwy. It's pseudoscience. It doesn't work. And his thinking was that, well, I think it perhaps in many ways is more trustworthy than our conscious memories that we can recall. Because, Scott will know this, is that your subconscious is in a way pure, innocent, raw, unfiltered, just that stream of thoughts and ideas and imagery. Whereas your conscious mind, you're always editing because, like, that didn't happen. That's silly. I didn't experience that. Again, it's that frustrating thing. Well, I was saying about Whitley Strieber, you know, there's the good side and the bad side. The good side is he's a writer so he can express things. The bad side is people go, well, he writes horror for a living and then he wrote a horror novel and called it true and there you go. Well, the tricky thing about hypnosis is that to go into a state of hypnosis is to be in a state of suggestibility. You have to sort of give yourself over to the hypnotic trance, as it were, and then that makes you vulnerable. It makes you able to remember, but it makes you vulnerable to suggestion. The unfiltered, raw, putty, the clay that can be molded in, it takes a skilled guide to get the right affirmation out. Right. Now, to be clear, what happened with Whitley Strieber and what happens with a lot of experiencers is, I would say in the vast majority of cases, there is conscious recall first. That's what leads to the hypnosis. People aren't going to a hypnotist to stop smoking and come out thinking they were abducted by aliens. They go because they're saying, I'm having a memory of this night and my memory is that this happened and this happened and this happened. They're already talking about the quote unquote crazy stuff. Then when they're placed into a state of hypnosis, maybe they remember a little more. When you read the transcripts, and again, I'm no expert, but like anyone else, I'm looking for the part where the hypnotist says, and did the alien have nine fingers on each hand? Yeah. And then the person says, why, yes, they did. And then you're like, okay, I tend not to see that. Now, again, I'm not an expert at how to do hypnosis or how to interpret the transcripts. But again, the thing is, most people go in with some conscious recall and then more information comes through. But it is tough. I mean, all of this stuff, because what we think is that it is not 100% physical and that maybe it exists partially at some other level that our everyday consciousness cannot immediately grasp. Sometimes we can only grasp it when we're in an altered state of consciousness, which then brings everything into question. Because if you go in the hard science direction of materialism and we need to study it in a lab, it becomes harder and harder to prove or verify anything according to those standards. But if experiencing alien abduction phenomenon is a psychological syndrome, it has never been described in that way. No one has ever said, okay, we have figured it out psychologically in the way that we figured out a lot of things psychologically that we accept and go, oh, I know what that is. I know what phobias are. I know what ADHD and OCD and all the things we talk about all the time. And we've had more than 50 years and no one has said, here's what it is. Right. This happens, then this happens, then this happens. You're taking this prescription. You're living at this altitude. You had this experience in childhood. And then that equals those are all the people that experienced this. Yeah. It hasn't happened. Yeah. The suggestion is that, well, it's self-explanatory. If you've had the experience, you're crazy and you're crazy in that way. But I don't think there's another experience that we have that is undescribed, undiagnosed, and unnailed down. Obviously, we've covered abduction stories numerous times on our show. The point of the most chilling ones for us personally is probably Terry Lovelace's situation at Dove's Den. And then, of course, he starts getting all these letters from people who are like, well, this happened to me and that happened to me. And so it's like there's all these people out there dealing with it. And you do wonder, well, is this just some sort of evolutionary shared memory or reaction to something that happened in the past upstream of us and to our ancestors? And it's left over these fears, which is a thought. But if our perception of time and space and reality in general is off and these things are residing in a different section of that, it's always going to be an unprovable, dreamlike thing. Well, the most interesting thing is to read the newer edition of the book or any of his most recent writings as he reflects on something that happened 40 years ago. And in 40 years of being one of these guys who's literally using himself as the test subject to try to study and figure out what this is, if you read the introduction to the more recent edition of Communion, he uses the phrase Stockholm Syndrome. Yeah, yeah. We're going to get answers from a level of intelligence that can blink in and out of our reality at their will. How are we going to ever actually know them unless they want us to? And when he says Stockholm Syndrome, I thought that was incredibly brave because what he's basically saying is, I've had to come to terms with this. I've had to come to terms with the fact that I am being interfered with and my life has been affected by and interfered with by a force I cannot control and that I am helpless to. And maybe in my poetic descriptions of them and my trying to understand them in terms of myth and history, maybe all I'm doing is trying to make myself less scared and trying to apply whatever I can to make this more dealable on a daily basis. And who can blame him? Yeah, I mean, that makes sense. He's like trying to put a wrapper on it, which is like what you do anytime you encounter something you don't understand. I've not read any of his recent work. Is he still having encounters? I get the impression that they've tapered off a little bit, but you can tell when you read his stuff now, I think it's a little bit harder in a way to get through because he's gone down a road. But it's like the Buddha, he has spent so much time thinking about this stuff and trying to figure it out from the consciousness angle and from the materialist angle that to jump into one of his books now, you're just like, okay, I don't know what this guy's talking about. There's just no door for me to walk through. Right, right. Communion is such a great book because it's the first one. It's basically him saying, it's when he was still one of us, basically. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's at the sushi restaurant in Defending Your Life where you can go in and for most of his little brains, there's the generally appealing California roll. And then remember, Albrook's like, hey, what's that stuff? And it looks like rainbow colored gummy worms. And the chef says, oh, you're going to throw up. It's so far advanced. No, this is not taste. This is not going to be appealing to you because that's another level. Let me ask you guys, it's always like, well, people misidentify. You know, you think the coat over the chair in your bedroom is a person, but it's not. It's just a coat. So here's my question to you guys. For how long have you ever looked at something, not known what it was, and continued to not know what it was, even after you, like, walked around or looked around or called somebody over and still were like, this seems to be something that is not real? Is it 10 seconds, five seconds, two minutes? What would you estimate that amount of time is before figuring it out, before going, oh, okay, that's just that thing? Yeah, yeah. I mean, for me, there have been times when it's long enough for me to go, and it usually has to do with waking up in the night and seeing something and not being able to register what it is, the coat on the chair or whatever. And it's not very often in life, but it's happened a few times. And I know there's times when I've been, like, I'm looking at the thing, and I'm like, I know this is not what it looks like to me right now, and I'm going to wait for it to resolve into something that makes sense, you know? But I would say for me, the longest that's ever been, and it felt a ridiculously long amount of time, but it's probably 20 to 30 seconds of me going, this can't be. Yeah. That is not a person sitting in that chair. It's like it just looks weird because of the way there's a blanket on the top that looks like a head, and then there's a whatever, and there's something. And it is as though my brain wanted it to be a humanoid shape or some kind of identifiable thing, and it took it a long time to give up on that. And that has happened to me where it's taken, like, you know, probably 30 seconds, 20 or 30 seconds. Do you think that's part of that as a function of, quote, unquote, waking up? I think it might relate to that and, you know, of course, you know, fight or flight and, you know, staying alive and you're, you know, all of that stuff piled in together because that's when you're vulnerable. You're vulnerable when you're sleeping. That's why your pets like to sleep with you, some of them, because they want to sleep with the pack or in the den where it's like somebody's on watch, right? You know, I got to chill. I'm not going to – I can't sleep out here where something could get me. So there's a little bit of that. But like I said, it hasn't happened a lot to me. Usually I wake up and I'll be like, oh, that's – oh, that looks weird. And then in about five seconds, I'm like, oh, yeah, I'm mistaken right now. But there are some times, and I can't put a date or say when or whatever, but there's been times where I know I've been, like, staring at something and, like, why won't that turn into something I recognize? Right. That's a great way of describing it. Yeah. Why is that not fixing itself? Yes, yeah. With me, it doesn't tend to happen going to sleep, waking up. For whatever reason, I don't tend to have that sort of thing. Yeah. But during the day, and even if it's like a simple thing, even if it's like a garbage in the road or like a piece of tire, and I'm like, wait, is that a bird or a dog? Oh, no, no, that's just part of a tire. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. But when it's happening, I think about it. It's pretty much never been more than five seconds, and it always resolves. Yeah, yeah. It's not something that I talk about 40 years later. Yeah, right, right, right, right. And go, well, okay, I'll tell you the story about the day we saw the dog man. Right, right, right, right. Which, again, always calls into question the, oh, well, that wasn't a dog man you saw. That was a homeless guy. And it's like, well, we've all seen that. Yeah. And our brain does go to that and tries to fit it into that. Forrest, what about you? Let me ask you this. Is part of your question the aspect of living with that question, living with another question, living with, I don't know what that is, and you just move on because you have other business, doggy business in the yard to deal with. Is part of your question, it's not answering the phone call at the end of, you know, Mothman. Part of it's like, how long do you want to keep looking at this before you attend to other stuff? And can you live with that question? Or is it important to you? Because when you ask that, when you first asked that, it's like, what do you mean stop wondering what that is? Is that, do you mean, will you, you kind of figure it out? But yeah, you go, oh, okay, got it, got it, got it. It's that thing that Scott said. It sort of resolves into, oh, okay, got it. It was that thing. It looked weird. Yeah. Got it. Well, there's different levels for me. I mean, I'm the kind of person, it's like, no, I'm not going to bed until I figure what that is in my room. You know, I, I'm not, it's like, I'm just going to turn over. I'm going to put the covers over my head. For some folks, a lot of them, that works. You pull the covers over and it goes away. Now, not every time. We've heard some stories where people have done that. They pull the covers back and now it's standing over the bed. Yeah. Or it's underneath the bed. Or one of our famous Halloween stories, the woman turned on her side like, oh, there's the gorn in my room. She turns on her side, waits like 10 minutes, like, let me just kind of quietly roll over. Like, I'm not really, I don't know really what's going on. And there it is, grinning a, a fang tooth smile at her from the side of the bed. Right next to her. Right next to her. And so that doesn't always work. But for me, it's like, no, I'm going to figure this out. So there's really two aspects of it. And then there's really that time where you're, again, getting back to like Richard Gere. And he's like, I don't need to know what's on the phone. Because his lesson, as we've discussed before, of course, is that you're never going to get that answer. So don't pick up the phone. Don't play the game. The phone's ringing again. Oh, this time it's going to be your, your long lost wife. You can talk to her from the other side. And he's like, no, it's not. And the healthier decision is to let it go. And maybe that's what you're getting at here with, with Streber and other people who are experiencing this. Do you just kind of like, let it go? Because you've got other things to do, which is your main goal in life is to, to live an enjoyable, healthy life. Take care of the people you love and your friends and, and, and your responsibilities. Or is it spending all your time chasing down something you're not going to get many answers to? Now, my thing is, yeah, I try to balance it too, but I also, I need to know. And there hasn't been a time where I sat there, like I said, if it's something, I'm going to figure out what that is to the degree I can, because that allows me to move on. And, and I would say from the way he presents, Whitley Streber seems to have had a good life and is still enjoying his life and has friends and visiting people and doing his thing. He, he does not seem psychologically or emotionally destroyed by what's going on in his life. If anyone thinks he's living in lavish luxury because of the millions and millions of dollars he's making, you would be mistaken. Right. This has not turned into the scam of all time. He had a much greater likelihood of being a very wealthy horror novelist. Right. But after communion, that kind of went away. He wrote other novels, but his ability, I think at that point in the public's eye to be relied upon as a Stephen King kind of went away. And at the time, I think he was second only to Stephen King in terms of sales when all this started. So he was doing great. Okay. He was not a guy who needed a gimmick. All right. Or even wanted one. He was enjoying being a novelist. Again, that's general public perception, everybody thinks. And, and I, I can understand this too, because you don't know how media, well, you don't know how media works. So it's like, you're selling books on this. It's like, yeah, but how much do you think an author makes off a book? And I, I remember famously, I've told this, I think in a dead letter office, you know, I, I got to meet, uh, uh, one of my favorite writers, William Volman. Because book, the Atlas just came out and it was, uh, it is, we chatted with him afterwards. He's very generous with his time and made a doodle in my, uh, in my book. And then, uh, you know, and they said, I know this is maybe uncouth, but like, how much does an author make? You know, I thought, I thought about getting into writing. He's like, I'll tell you for us. Like I spent like two and a half years writing this thing and I ate $30,000. And he said, uh, that's your advance on it. And he said, you know, it's not James Patterson. So, and that's what everybody thinks. Yeah. Getting back to, uh, Strieber is that he made a choice not to be that because this was more important to him. Finding this out because that's about the nature of, uh, his existence and reality. And, and, uh, you know, at some point like he could have been more effort into becoming the next Stephen King or just even a successful Hollywood screenwriter. His books were being made into movies, The Wolfen, The Hunger. Yeah, right. You know, those movies were hits. So, yeah. The story of Whitley Strieber, he has been studied. Jeffrey Kripal has worked with him and talked with him. They wrote a book together called The Supernatural. There's a lot of material there that feeds our knowledge of the experiencer and their experiences, which I'm telling you, Alien Armada and Avi Loeb, God bless you all. All we have are the experiencers. Yeah. That's all we got. Yeah. And so let's listen to what they have to say. And a lot of researchers do. A lot of researchers focus on that. Kenneth Ring focused on that. A lot of them do. But I think that's where the gold is because that's, look, we're human beings. They're human beings. We're only concerned about this or even interested in it because of what it might mean to us. That's why we listen to your podcast. That's why we listen to my podcast and all the other podcasts we listen to. Because the back of our mind, we're thinking, well, what would I do if that happened to me? Yeah. And that's our interest. And that's far more likely than what would I do if aliens landed and came out with ray guns and started firing at us? Because that's never happened. So let's look at what is happening, which is people having weird experiences. And then find out about them and see how those sound to us and see if we can just listen to that without having to feel the need to immediately make a judgment, which we can't do. So the experience is the thing. That is the play. And so there's several layers to that experience with a ghost hunt. You have this, your arm, several Pelican cases full of gear, little cat toys that light up that aren't moving, but something electronically is triggering them. You've got REM pods, which are proximity sensors. I'm getting EVPs, which are pretty clear, which are words. Again, not picking up broadcast signals from the local radio station. And all this other stuff is happening that are getting picked up. That's one level to the UFO experiences, seeing strange lights in the sky, like zigzagging around, falling like a leaf, blinking colors, non-ballistic motion. It's like, wow, that is, I saw something extraordinary outside of normal human experience. That's the first level. The second level, it's when people feel something. So that's another level where you get this experience and that is not picked up on a piece of equipment or device. That's felt and experienced. And then with the UFO experience, like, yeah, that's when you make that CE5, you know, the psychic or physical contact. And everybody who's gone through that, I think without exception, has said it has changed their life. You can't go back to living a regular normal life because that's not, I think, seeing something in person, like I said, that can also change your life. And then with the UFO experience, like, yeah, that's when you make that CE5, you know, the psychic or physical contact. And everybody, you know, who's gone through that, I think without exception, has said it has changed their life. You can't go back to living a regular normal life because that's not real anymore. I've been sitting here thinking that it is interesting that there doesn't seem to be a classification for these other things. Like, maybe you actually did something genius for us for once. I know. I wouldn't count that. But seriously, like a cryptid, like close encounters of the cryptid kind or close encounters of the ghost kind, like sort of a formalized, you know, list ascending, you know, from the most common, if you will, level of the experience all the way to the most florid. And see what we can learn from that. Like, it's funny, like people do get abducted by aliens, okay, and seem to be interfered with physically. And that doesn't tend to happen with cryptids. Really doesn't. No, I mean, that we know of. And so we've heard lots of tales and, of course, no physical evidence. And that's the other thing. It's all elusive. And early on, we learned. People said, well, there's no proof of any of this. It's like, okay, I've figured out that, or my understanding that I've come to is that, obviously, it depends on what you think is proof. And so a footprint is not proof. A tuft of hair that registers as a 98% human does not register. Nobody's found any scat, blah, blah, blah. UFO stuff is like, yeah, there's stuff left behind. There's a delphus ring. There's this and that. There's health problems. There's implants. None of that's proof to people. So there's different levels. And as far as the cryptid thing is that, yeah, we've heard of people being attacked or even killed or just disappeared. And, you know, you don't have any proof of that. So is that some kind of level of interaction that only happens when it is hostile and violent? Or are people who experience that on some level, it's like, that's a very different kind of interaction. You know what I'm saying? Like, that is, if it's real bad, then you don't have any proof of that either. Like, scratches, physical signs, just don't seem to be a part of Bigfoot stories. I'm not saying they don't exist. They're just not common in the legend. So another subset of that is the rogue Bigfoot experience where it was violent or territorial or acted upon people. I mean, we've heard horror stories of people being broken and stuffed into trees. At least one. That was, Scott knows about that one. Yes. I can't remember the details on that. But the idea is that, yes, some people have been physically attacked, at least, or they've seen evidence of deer or seen deer being carried off or them being essentially meat eaters and predators. It's that there's nothing left behind. Could that be the same thing for shapeshifters, for skinwalkers, for dogmen and lycanthropy? What's your rule about ghosts? Like, they're not allowed to hurt you? That's expanded. What I'm saying is that rarely do you hear people, again, as you come across more cases, rarely had we come across, even now, I suppose, where people are experiencing something of a poltergeist nature. And it's like, that knife flew off the cheese and fruit board and it stuck into my shoulder. It came twirling through the air. Usually what happens when you hear these, like, it's stuck right above my head. The knife flew off or this crashed. Exactly. It stops. But here's the thing. There's an indirect way that perhaps it's like with the bell witch, whereas the little bottle of medicine was switched around and it actually was poison that John Bell picked up and drank by accident. And he was killed indirectly by some kind of malevolent spirit or something else is caused to happen or you're, you're, they're allowed to drain you slowly till your health, your mental health or your physical health is so drained that you either end up taking your own life or you were sickly or you had a heart attack. But it wasn't a wreck. So I don't know what's going on there, but there is influence, I believe, that is applied. The amount of elapsed time between, whoa, what is that? To, oh, that's what that is. For me, is easily less than five seconds. Yeah. And that's, by the way, I know I told my whole story, but that's the case for me 99% of the time. Yeah. The ones that stand out are the ones that took a little longer. Right. And they become things that I haven't forgotten, even though I might not be able to say, oh, this was this night and this is where it was. But I've had it happen too, where it's like, I got up the next morning and I was like, oh my God, that's what was bothering me? I'm like looking at it in plain daylight now. And I'm just like, but I'll remember it and that I was freaked out enough by it that when I wake up in the morning, it's not a forgotten memory from the night before. But like in the Mothman prophecies, what I experienced mostly, and Scott and I have experienced a few small odd things, the iPad flipping over on the railing. It's like, okay, that, the physics on that just did not make sense. That shouldn't happen, but yet it did. And we have video of it. But what happens to me more often is the things that leave you questioning. And it is like the Mothman prophecies. Remember, he goes back to the, uh, the street barricades and there's the red flashing warnings. Is that the eyes that I saw coming at me? Is that you question yourself and that's the torturous part of it is that, what did I see? Did I really see that? And that gets back to my point of your, your CEO of your, uh, your left brain saying like, you did not see anything crazy. That was just the, that's the street barricade. It's the sandhill crane sitting on that on top of the middle of the night with the, the LED warning lights. That's all you saw, right? Because that's reality. You have to leave it there because you get no more answers. And that's more so that's what's happened to me is like, I don't know what that is. I'm going to have to leave that there for now, but I never stopped looking. I never stopped wondering what that next thing is. 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. 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Go to MarleySpoon.com slash offer slash pod45 for 45% off your first order and free delivery. That's right, 45% off your first order and free delivery. That's MarleySpoon.com slash offer slash P-O-D-4-5. Do you suffer from back or neck pain? Trinity Health of New England has the latest methods and technology to help. Our team looks at many treatment options to create a plan that's right for you. From physical therapy and pain management to advanced spine surgery. Say goodbye to living with pain. Reach out to Trinity Health of New England today and get back to enjoying your daily activities. Trinity Health of ne.org slash spine. Trinity Health. We see all of you. Hi, this is Kalen Capson from the Peg and Plays podcast. And I'm not busy interviewing guests and editing musicians. I'm listening to Astonishing Legends. Now let's get back to the show. So Rich, communion aside, which was the first two episodes of season three here. I did have a question for you when I was mainlining your show at 200% the other day. And that was... I'm glad you really spent some time with this. Yeah, no. So my question for you was, do you reread the books before you do the episodes on them? Oh, yeah. Okay. Because I was going to say, it's impressive how much it's in your memory. So when you go to produce a new episode of your show, even though it's a book that's a seminal book for you, you go back and read it again so that you're fresh to write your script for it. The process is almost choose the book, buy an inexpensive paperback copy of the book, go through it this time with a highlighter pen, pen, and really sort of tear it apart and figure out what the story is within the story. Or what the story is that is of interest to me, that I think will be of interest to the audience. And it's like, well, we can talk about this, especially with a book like Amityville Horror or Communion. These have been covered to death. Right. So it's like, well, what is there, you know, a different angle or a new way to approach it? But also, what is it, when I reread it, what does it mean to me? And sometimes I reread it and I'm like, oh, this isn't what I thought it was at all. Right. In fact, that was more the case with Monsters, Giants, and Little Men from Mars. And it's funny because there's an episode dropping, I think it's dropping the weekend, this is dropping, a bonus episode on my show where I talk to Blake Smith, who is the skeptic with the heart of gold, who I met through you guys under very embarrassing circumstances. There was an awkward exchange. You'll hear all about it. Oh, you talk about that. You remember that? Oh, yeah. Oh, I went back and looked at the emails. But anyway, so when I went back and read it this time, I was like, oh, my God, I thought this guy, Daniel Cohen, I thought he was like my gateway. And a lot of people did, it turns out, who listened to the episode. I got a lot of response. And people were like, yeah, I felt the same way. I thought this was the first grown-up who was talking to me about monsters and basically saying, I'm into them too, and they're out there, and go find them, buddy. Yeah. And then I read the book later, not even just now as an adult, but even as an adult 40 years ago, not as a child, and realized, oh, this guy's a skeptic. Right. This guy is the editor of Science Magazine. He's one of the founders of PSYCOP. And I'm like, oh, I get it. He's basically saying, yes, it's fun to think about these things, but it's all a part of folklore. Right, right. And it's fine. I'm like, I enjoyed the books. I still have first editions of the young adult books that he wrote about ghosts and things, and I totally get it. There's not really going to be a ton of books in 1975 in a grammar or middle school library that 100% says, yes, kids, it's all real. This is something that scholastic books can get excited about. This is something that PTA can get excited about. The librarian can get excited about, and everyone can feel good about it because it's like, well, yeah, it's talking about something the kids are interested in, but it's not going to freak anyone out. It's the Scooby-Doo factor. We have to lift the mask to tell you that, no, it's the mean guy who wants to buy the amusement park at a discount, and that's who the monster is. There's no monsters. But I'm still afraid of the creepy guy that thought it was cool to chase underage kids around wearing a costume. But that's what the irony is to me, is that, okay, that didn't make it any less weird. There's still a bad, creepy dude running around. But the monster part was fascinating. It's scary for a whole other reason. For a whole other reason. But I will give them credit, folks, that even if they say, like, it's just folklore, like, at least you looked at it. At least you considered the question. And here's the thing. I won't put as much weight to your opinions on this, but I will look at your data. And I'll form my own conclusions, my own extrapolations from what you've reported, because I don't need to know how the moving coffins of Barbados, what you thought, you know, if it's tremors or this and that. But tell me what really happened. Right. And give me the facts. And to be fair, well, it's funny because having this conversation with Blake, you know, it's in the episode, the book had the same effect on him. When he read it as a little boy, when he was not a skeptic yet, he was like, oh, my gosh, this is so cool. I love monsters. And this guy's talking about monsters. So in a way, what's interesting about some skeptical arguments is the stuff they don't talk about. Right. And so often it's low hanging fruit and rarely, like in a way, you'll hear skeptics talk about Amityville more than you will people like us, because people like us don't believe it either. So it's like, yeah, that one has a reasonable doubt been debunked and that's fine. I disagree. Well, you know, but what I mean is as much as you're going to debunk something in terms of tangible proof of a hoax, there's material enough there and that's fine. And I'm not here to rehash Amityville, but it's funny in 1975, one of the things Daniel Cohen does not talk about is the Patterson Gimlin film. That was only a few years afterwards. And even today, and look, here's, in a way, my final word is it's much easier to prove a hoax than I guess the real thing, if you will, because to prove the hoax, you just need the costume and no one's ever come up with a costume. And here's the thing, and I'll put this out to all my rich skeptics. I challenge you to make the film today. You can't do it today, much less in the 1960s. I'm sure there's better ways to make costumes and better ways to fake films. Yeah, you can maybe do it with AI or whatever, but I mean, really, I hear so many stories about, oh, I know the guy who knows the guy. John Landis knows the guy who had the thing and did the thing. And everyone's been asking us for a Bigfoot body for 75 years. All I'm asking for is the actual costume. Apparently, there was one. It got made. Make another, or just make another one. Just make another one. Get a Super 8 camera. Get on horseback. Recreate the film in a way that then primatologists will argue about for 75 years. Right. Right. And to that point, I mean, here's what I think is an aspect of human nature is that it's even easier than that, Rich, because you don't have to produce a costume or any evidence. All you have to say is that it was a hoax. And when people hear that, because here's, I've heard so many times, and in fact, just recently, I think it's on Reddit thread, is that, oh, I think that was thoroughly debunked, wasn't it? And then it's like, okay, that's enough. That's good. Right. Because you're able to set that aside and move on. Now, here's the thing. There are layers to, like I said, the bad guy, landowner, speculator, who wants to buy the amusement park is the one who dressed up in the ghillie suit, and he's terrorizing the kids. That doesn't mean the park wasn't haunted. You know what I'm saying? There's layers to that. And so when people say like, oh, well, there you go. Well, the alien autopsy film was faked. It's like, okay, we've seen compelling evidence from people we've interviewed on that, and we're going to go with that. That was a hoax. It doesn't mean the whole UFO experience is a hoax or any documentation is a hoax, but for a lot of people, that's enough. And so something I just saw recently, it was a thread. And I've been following Joe Mergia on X, and I don't know if it's Mergia, Merhia. My apologies, I did not look it up. But he's a filmmaker that does documentaries on UFOs. He, as his line here says, I post about UFOs, UAP, consciousness, sigh, life after death, Bengston healing, remote viewing, occasional politics. I know nothing. I appreciate that. But that's in his bio there on X, and his last name is Joe, and then M-U-R-G-I-A. But something he said, of course, people pull out these chestnuts. And the same thing about saying it's a hoax. It's an easy-to-go-to little button you can press to just dismiss it, get it away, or an old chestnut. And it's like the same thing with all these sayings. And so you could say, well, that was debunked, or that was a proven hoax, and that's enough for people. And someone threw out at him the old chestnut, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. And, you know, that saying is largely attributed to Carl Sagan. But what we found is that it's more likely first uttered in the public by Marcello Truzzi of Psycop, who is one of our favorite skeptics. He's talking about that because he battled against lazy skepticism, which is kind of what we're talking about. I'm just like, nah, not real. Move on. And so he said, well, let's get to the real thing. Let's find out the nitty-gritty. But what I liked about Joe's saying is that he said, no, it doesn't require any more extraordinary proof. It requires the same level of proof as any scientific claim. They should all be met with the same level of rigor in finding out what's going on. It doesn't need to be extraordinary. It's just like that's an extraordinary claim, but, like, use the same process. Use the same level of dedication and don't be lazy about it. So I agree with that in that let's apply the same amount of thoroughness to all these claims. You know, of course, some are kind of silly, but the ones that seem to hold some merit, it doesn't need to be extraordinary proof. It's just like let's have some definitive proof, but let's keep looking rather than just kind of moving on. And I think that's what you're talking about when it's lazy or when you're talking about the things that we know from childhood. It's like, yeah, it's folklore, but is there a kernel of truth, which we most often find there is? And what is that kernel of truth? Forrest, I think the people who dismiss things upon the first note of hoax, I understand that psychologically. Because to a certain extent, A, people want to be smart, and people want to feel smart, and people want to feel like, well, those people are crazy, but I'm smarter than that. And that, of course, is based on whatever their notion of smart is and where they draw the line between what's insane and what isn't. Right, because they're not believing anything ridiculous. And I think just quickly on the flip side of that is now you're seeing, and this is, again, a human nature, and you're seeing a lot of it, especially these days. It's like something big is coming, and I know what it is, but I can't tell you yet. And I think there is a- Yeah, it's like twits every day. Yeah, it makes a lot of people infuriated, but there may be something like that. Then you wonder, like, okay, then should you not say anything at all? Or do we, should you give the hint not being able to divulge? Well, look, and people want to live their lives. People don't necessarily need one more thing to worry about. Right, right. You know, now I got to worry about alien abduction. Now I got to worry about Bigfoot. Now I got to worry about- People are constantly trying to reassure themselves that they have a healthy framework for reality. Well, we all know how challenging that is today. So for the people who dismiss things, that's fine. And there's the people like us, and then on the other side, people like Blake, who take sort of an armchair sportsman's interest in examining these things and trying to figure them out as much as we can. Now, am I doing all that I can to figure out whether this stuff is true or not? Absolutely not. Forrest, you're doing more of that. You go on the overnight- Yeah, I don't think so. Ghost hunts and stuff. I ain't going on the overnight ghost hunt. I ain't going on the camping trip to go the Bigfoot hotspot. I'm not doing any of that. I don't want to. I want to sit in my office with my books and my drink and write my little stories and be done with it. And just try to slide out of this existence with as little trouble as possible. Go down the brightly lit tunnel, meet all me dead relatives, and call it a day. Well, yeah, I think that's what most of us want. I mean, if you've run into any- Daily life is fraught with hurdles and just feeling overwhelmed and just the obligations we have every day just to keep things running and going and fed and healthy. And that's plenty. And so it's a very personal and individual decision about what you want to do. And it's like, I don't know, I can't fault the guy. Like, he left his whole family and he quit his job to go on this, you know, either to go on searching for Bigfoot or UFOs or study improv. You know, it's like, that's fine. That's got to be your thing. But, you know, look, if it's connected to me, it's like, it's probably best to have a balance of all that. But it's hard to, what we were talking about earlier, to throttle this thing so that you don't get overwhelmed because the rest of it is overwhelming. And, you know, when you do your show here, and I know you have a lot of other things that you want to write and are writing and your responsibilities, doing the podcast, I think, was a necessary outlet that you needed. Because it's not only creative, but it's to say what you needed to say in the way that you say it, which is how we like to hear it, which is a Richard Haddam narrative that's well written, but heartfelt and naked and bare and truthful and all those great things. Well, this is the greatest thing I've ever done. And when I say the greatest thing I've ever done, I mean the greatest thing for me. In terms of engaging with an audience, talking about the stuff that is interesting to me, sharing some of my thoughts and my feelings in my life, this is my crowning achievement. It's kind of funny, it works in inverse proportion to income, but you know what? It often does, yes. I want to say, I always think about, you know, it's less so the case today for Amy Poehler, but back in the day when my wife and Amy were on Saturday Night Live in the early days or whatever, and people would always come up to her and go, God, you must be so rich. And she would always say, you'd be surprised how much money we're not making. Right, exactly. And that's where podcasting, you know, and my hat's off to you for putting your hat in the ring, at this late stage, after like everyone and their brother had a podcast, and a lot of those shows have gone away, and now it's kind of, there's not a lot left. It's like, it's the indies like us, and then these giant networks are people that have these many millions of dollar deals. Well, I don't know if you saw, Wondery, the day before yesterday, laid off 110 people and basically got folded into Audible. Oh, really? There's a lot of change afoot with like all of that stuff. But yeah, it's not super lucrative, at least at this point. I do think it's going to improve, though, so I just want to give you a bright future. That's good to know. Well, and look, here's the thing, and it is a trade-off. There's the old, you know, musician saying. Yes. It's like, they pay me to get on a plane and fly around to 50 different cities. I play the music for free. Right, right, right, right. In a weird way, you know, it's like, yeah, I'm getting more satisfaction out of this, but I'm getting less money. I was never making a ton of money, but, you know, when you're working for, you know, a studio, you're doing what they want you to do. Yeah. And the joy of this is, I'm doing what I want to do, and, you know, as they say, there are no notes, so I'm doing it, I'm doing it the best I can, I write it, I record it, Nima puts on the music, you know, Kevin does the audio work, and that's the bulk of the work that goes into it. Yeah. And then it goes out to the listeners who are amazing. I mean, the one thing I didn't expect was such an immediate response and such a wonderful response from such great, good people. Right. And it is such a joy to put things out and go, I wonder what they're going to think of this. And believe me, I'm always surprised. The last episode we just put out, A Christmas Carol, which is my first non-nonfiction book, I've never had a more engaged audience response. You know, I love that episode. It was a great, it was a really fascinating episode. Yeah. And I really thought, by the way, it was a super interesting observation that you made about it being about an NDE, about a near-death experience, and the perspective on it that people, I think, maybe don't always think about when they think about it. Because, well, it's like when it's just a beloved thing that you're taking in every year, and you're like, wow, have you ever really thought about the root of this beyond it just being like a simple ghost story? It is. It's a near-death experience. And if you read about near-death experiences, if you read those books and you have an emotional reaction to them, it's exactly the same. It follows this pattern. You're watching somebody have a transcendent experience that changes your life, and there is a part of you that is like, well, I haven't had that experience, but can I take the lessons from it and apply it to my life? Right. So that one was really fun. But again, when I was done with it and it was going out there, I really wasn't sure. Right. It wasn't one that I put out thinking, oh, boy, this one's going to really – and also, like you say, it's summer. People are doing other things. Yeah, summer's a little slow for downloads and all that stuff. And yet people reached out, which I love. And if you listen to my podcast and you want to reach out, please do. Yeah. I actually am able to respond to pretty much every single person. Right. So even if it's just, hey, thank you so much. I'm glad you enjoyed it, you know. But let me know because that is the ultimate joy of this. I feel like, oh, this actually does mean something to people. By discussing these things in a personal way, which is how we consume them and why we care about them because it engages our hearts and our souls in a particular way, we're not just talking about, you know, something that is devoid of emotional content. Right. So instinctually, the format does kind of make a weird kind of sense. Yeah, you're in people's brains, you know. 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 can save on car insurance. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations. Exploring the unknown is what makes Astonishing Legends so much fun. But when it comes to dinner, nobody wants surprises. Marley's Spoon helps you eat well without overthinking it. 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Our cardiovascular team offers the latest imaging and device technology, testing, and surgical procedures you'd expect from a national health system. With the personal touch you want from local experts. We know the importance of seeing the person behind the patient. Because we see all of you. Learn more at TrinityHealthOfNE.org slash heart. Hi, my name's Neil from the band Epic Season. And when I'm not out at the high seas searching for the Portland main ghost ship, I'm listening to Astonishing Legends. Go back to the show. My other question for you about your show, too, is like the really personal stuff. I just want to say to folks who haven't heard it yet, one of the things that I like about it as a former editor is its nonlinear structure. It's very interesting how you write it. You write it in a very interesting way. You know, it has a pulp fiction thing to it almost where, you know, it's like we're already dead at the beginning and then we find out how we died, like sort of thing. You're jumping around. But you jump around not only with you dive back and forth in and out of whatever book you've chosen, but then you're additionally diving in and out of your own personal life and how it relates to you. And my question, too, is like when you reread these books and you prepare them into your episodes and you get super, super personal about a lot of stuff, which is really fascinating. It's like a train wreck. You can't you got to you got to look at it when you drive by. So the question is, for me, is like, do the books, do they always elicit very specific times in your life necessarily? Or sometimes do you just decide, well, you know what? I'm going to weave this thing together with this book because now, in hindsight, they're kind of connected. Or are you literally saying, no, when I read Communion, me and Matt were working on Project X, Y, or Z, and that's what I'm going to talk about at this point. Because for me, it's a sense memory. It all ties together. Is that the case with every episode? Right. No. Some of them, I would say at least half of them, that is the case. It's like the book and the time are connected. Yeah, like when you were a school boy, when you were a kid and that stuff you remember for sure. But it's not always intersecting with your career in this perfect way necessarily. No. Sometimes it will evoke another memory or another feeling, another story. Sure. I would say that the vast majority of the time, I start with the book. Uh-huh. And I'm writing about the book. And then it sort of helps me unearth my feelings about the book, about my life, about the connection. It will sort of unearth it. And then in a very rare circumstance, I'll just start writing about my life, about an incident that occurred, something that happened in my life. And there have been times when it's like, I've got the story, I've got a book over here. And then I'm like, wait, I think there's a connection. And then I look at the book and I'm like, yes, there's a theme in this book that resonates. And it's not always – that's the nice thing. It's not like exactly the same. It's not like, well, if it's a haunted house story about a guy who was disappointed by something, I'm going to write a story about me being disappointed about something. Sometimes it's just a little connection, you know, something along the way that reveals itself. And that's good enough. It's a constant sort of exercise in discovery, which again – now, you know this, Scott. For most film and television writers, that's not how you do it. You sit down. Right. You get it all figured out first. You put it on the board. You lock it all down. Yeah. You outline it to death. And then you write the script. Yeah. And I've never done this kind of writing before. And it's kind of writing other people always talk about where it's just like usually a novelist. I just start writing and the story reveals itself. So I never trusted that. I always thought it was ridiculous. But now I'm beginning to learn a little bit more about that method and it's working. And I'm having the greatest time. And it is connecting with people. And that really – that's really the – I mean, you guys know that. But when the people get in touch on Facebook or however they do and you're like, oh, there is somebody out there who's hearing literally what I have to say. Because, you know, it's different with television and film. Even when people love stuff. Even when people are like, oh, I love Titans, for instance, you know, the show that I worked on most recently. Then the second sentence is the actor they love or the character, you know, Lex Luthor or something about the production that they love. And you're like, well, that is the show. The show isn't me. The show is the cast and all the stories and the production design and the special effects and the stunt work and the music and a million things. And it's like, well, okay, I'm glad I was involved with a project that you have good feelings about. Well, that brings me to a very – a really critically important question. Did you say that you wrote two episodes of The A-Team? Well, not that got produced. So then you're nothing. I wanted to – oh, those were your spec scripts you were talking about. Yeah, these are the spec scripts I wrote in high school. Oh, I thought you said later you actually did write some episodes of The A-Team. Because you mentioned A-Team and Riptide and all that, which I got with spec, and you were like nobody was looking at them. But I didn't know if somewhere in your past you had actually worked on it. On a different version of my life, I was a 16-year-old staff writer on The A-Team, and things worked out very, very differently. Yeah, right? But Richard, he did rip the piece of typewriting paper from the plant and roll of the typewriter at the end of it, like Stephen J. Connell when he was finished. Yes, I was in that office. I walked past the typewriter. Yeah. So, yes. Yeah. And he did it for a reason. Because there was another guy – I mean, there were a lot of other big TV producers at the time. By the way, just for folks who don't know, Stephen J. Connell is a producer. His vanity thing at the end was him, like, finish typing and he pulls the paper out of the typewriter. You may not – a lot of people may have never seen this. So, Stephen J. Connell created The Rockford Files, The A-Team, The Greatest American Hero, Wise Guy, Hardcastle and McCormick, Riptide, and literally dozens of other shows. Those are some of the big ones. Worked on Beretta. Anyway, when I was, you know, a young teenager, I became aware that there was a guy writing television shows and that's one of the things that got me into it. And as Scott said, his vanity credit at the end of an episode, you've probably seen it, a guy with a beard typing and then he pulls the piece of paper out and it turns into the – his logo for his company. The C for his last name. And it went, bing-er-nir-nir-nir-nir-nir-nir. Right. He had a little tune. It's that, you know, sit-u-boo-sit thing that, you know, everyone knows. Oh, yeah, that's that weird thing they put at the end of the show. But anyway, the reason he did it that way is because there were guys like Aaron Spelling who were executive producers for major hit shows who were not writers. They were producers. Right. And they were very good at hiring writers and directors and actors and all that stuff and mounting these productions, almost like a Broadway producer. But Stephen Jay Cannell always felt, you know, I'm doing that. I got to a point in my career where I am now doing that. I am a mogul. I am overseeing a lot of shows and I'm at a certain point was literally had his own studio. But he's like, I need to make it clear to people that I'm actually a writer. That's my job title. I'm not just some guy who's good at figuring out, you know, putting my finger in the air and figuring out the trends. I sit down every day at 5 a.m. And I'm typing pages of scripts for shows I'm creating or shows that I'm writing. And I want that to be clear and I want that to be connected with who I am. So my vanity credit is literally going to show me writing so people get the connection that I'm the guy. And it's true. It really did help. It made me understand, oh, people write television. And it led to my career. Well, that's the difference here, I think, too, is that we, well, we said podcasting is, it's an incredibly intimate and personal medium and, and, you know, and also therefore indulgent because it's just you and whatever you, you want to do. And no one has to listen or a bunch of people can listen depending on how well it's received. And, and so for you, I guess my question is that now that you've done two and a half seasons of this in that what people are listening to is rich. I mean, you are, this is part of it. You're writing artifice, your inner thoughts. And, and I think that's what people are attracted to as well, because it, like I said, it's, it's personal. We, Scott and I have heard this for years ago that some podcasts do better when the people are almost oversharing the host is of like, well, I've had these personal troubles this week, but here's the rest of the show. And they want to know about that because they're making a connection, albeit one way, although unlike TV, it's smaller and you can respond to people. And therefore it is two way, but you get your thoughts out first, but over the two and a half seasons then, because this is you, how have you and the content of the show, the creative aspect of it evolved, if any? Well, it's a matter of looking at the two main aspects of the show. So what are some books that, that are in areas that I haven't really covered? And that's not easy because things do kind of divide up into, well, these are books about life after death. These are books about people who had UFO experiences. Those are two big categories. So I'm constantly kind of looking around now. Luckily I've had 50 plus years of reading these books. So I would say almost every single book I have covered, I had already read in my past and liked and liked talking about, and I've still got, you know, some shelves to go. So there's, there's road in front of me in terms of the books. I do go to sleep kind of regretting that I'm not Rod Stewart, you know? Wow. Okay. Why is that? I've got stories. Yeah. And I do have a way of looking at the events in my life and sharing stories about certain things, but it's not like, oh, and then there was the time I was in Moscow with, you know, a supermodel and fill in the blank. Like, it's like, gosh, I've lived in LA my whole life. Didn't I do anything interesting ever? But luckily what I discover is the same thing I discover when I talk to you guys or my friends or whoever is that last Tuesday is the entirety of the world. If you look at it that way, if you think about your lived experience every day, there's something to share and talk about. And then it's just a matter of how is it a story and does it resonate with the philosophical questions that are being brought up in this particular book? It's always a real challenge until it kind of unlocks itself. And then it's not a challenge. Then it's just a rollercoaster of fun. I know that one of the things you wanted to talk about a little bit was your pending episode on the Premonitions Bureau. Yes, because it's one of the most recent books. The Premonitions Bureau only came out a couple of years ago. Okay. And it's widely available. It's written by Sam Knight. And it's available in paperback from bookshop.org or your favorite local independent bookstore. And it's a fascinating book. And it is written so beautifully. Have either one of you guys read it yet? No, not yet. Kind of the way he approaches his story is to, it's less a one, two, three, here's exactly what happened. I'm just reporting the facts. He's kind of reflecting on the life of Dr. John Barker, who did two extremely unique things. One is he wrote a book called Scared to Death. And this was decades ago. And it's about the phenomenon of people who may or may not have literally been scared to death. Usually the way he's talking about it are, you know, people who maybe because of rumor or misunderstanding believed that they were going to die and believed it so strongly that they did die. It's kind of associated with, you'll hear people talk about, oh, my grandparents died four days apart. Right. And my grandfather died and my grandma died of a broken heart. Right. And you're like, maybe, I don't know, possibly. Obviously, there was an emotional trauma there. It could happen. So he was writing about this stuff. Now, the second thing he did of note was that he was one of two men who started what was then called the Premonitions Bureau. And this was in the late 60s in England. There had been a disaster in the town of Aberfan. Really horrible disaster of sort of a mountain of coal slag. Oh, yes. I'm pretty sure that was portrayed in The Crown. It was something I watched. I feel like it was The Crown. Yes, you're right, Scott. Yeah. And I hadn't heard of it until then. And when I saw that episode, I went crazy. I went on Wikipedia. I went everywhere. I was just like, what is this? I didn't know about this. So that's the only reason I know about it. In England, you know about it. Yeah, right, right, right. In America, you might know about it. Right. But it was really devastating, and particularly devastating because so many of the victims were children. Yeah, it was a school. It hit a school, right? A couple schools. A couple schools, yeah. Then the secondary phenomenon was then stories began to crop up that people had had premonitions about it happening, but nothing where there was enough information that anyone could have reasonably said, this is going to happen, this exact thing on this exact date, in this exact place, you know, get out, get out, get out. But John Barker showed up on the scene because people had died in the aftermath, and it appeared that they had died of shock. So he went to investigate sort of his, you know, what we call interest number one, but then heard about these premonitions and thought, well, that's interesting. I, you know, this is an odd story. So he went to his friend, the science editor at the big, you know, London paper and said, you know, you're the science editor, can you put out a call for anyone who had a premonition about the Aberfan disaster? And maybe there's a bunch of people. Maybe we can sort of learn something about the phenomenon of premonitions. And this guy fairly said, well, let's take it a step further. Forget what already happened. Let's ask for premonitions of the future and see if they happen. So at the newspaper, they opened the premonitions bureau. And they basically said, okay, we've got a few people here and we've got an open phone line. And so for the, you know, upcoming weeks, months, year, whatever, let's see. They call us if you have a dream, a feeling, a gut instinct that something's going to happen and then we'll write it down. You know, we'll, we'll write down everything you say and then there'll be an outside source to back you up if something then does happen. So what happened was you might think, oh, for like a big event, a lot of people would get a feeling. And then really what happened is what always happens in parapsychology. 98% of it was garbage. Two people were thoroughbreds. They seem to be able to do it more, hit on things with more accuracy than other people. Yeah, yeah. And then things get interesting because at a certain point, these two people independently begin calling John Barker saying, essentially, be very careful. Well, I get a feeling something really bad's going to happen to you. It was then that John Barker's two great interests intersected. So definitely check out the book. Definitely check out the episode. It's a fascinating, beautifully written book. Can't wait. Oh, yeah, no, yeah. It's in the files. You can check it out. I'll send it to you. Yeah. But for everyone else, it comes out on August 22nd. But then you knew that already. That's his premonition. Yeah, that's a premonition. Just having access to Dropbox. Is that one of your favorite episodes, Rich? And what are some of your favorites? Well, it's so weird. I have my favorites, but then the audience has theirs. This one I do like. I mean, I love them all. It's choosing between your children. I love Ted Sirius. That story. I've always loved that story. Oh, Ted Sirius is so good. I love your coverage of it, too. Yeah. That's a good one. And then, of course, coming up, you guys, the final two episodes of season three, it's a two-parter based on Siren Call of the Hungry Ghosts. Yes, yes. So we've got that coming up. Right. Which is, that's the first time you're doing something that we've done together, right? It is. Yeah, it is. So that'll be fun. People have read the book. They've heard about it. They've heard the episode that we all did. Yeah, yeah. But the way I listen to podcasts is, if there's an actor I like, I'll listen to that person on every show they're on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not like, oh, I already heard that person. I've heard their story. It's just like, no, I want to hear it again. Yeah. And it is one of the scary, I mean, that book is scary. Yeah, it is scary. That is a scary one. And we really get into it. So I think, so that's a good one. That'll take us through Halloween. And then we have a few bonus episodes and then straight into season four in 2026. All right. So let me ask you this question then, you know, as we're coming to a close here. Let's talk about your tour. I'm still wanting you to name this tour. You're essentially like, oh, yeah, I'm going here. I'm going there. Well, I haven't locked that date down. But you're like, well, okay, Dallas. And then tell people where you're going. Also, you're going to, I don't know if you've said it on your show. I don't remember hearing it. Of course, it was 200% speed. But I mean, you're going to be at the freaking Mothman Festival this year, right? Yes. Like, that's right around the corner. Let's begin with that because we've got that completely nailed down. Okay. The Mothman Festival in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, this coming September next month, the weekend of the 20th and the 21st. Okay. I'll be there. I will be greeting people. I'll have a little tent by the Mothman statue. Nice. Bring your own can of beans. I'll be doing a dress on Saturday afternoon for anyone who wishes to come. And then that evening, I will be doing a private ticketed event only of the road show, of the one I'm traveling with, which is basically an episode of the podcast that I've written but have not recorded and will not record. So, this is something you can only see live. That is excellent. By the way, give me those details. I was – one of our commercials tonight, which you won't have heard, though, is talking about me building your events page on Squarespace. So, you've got to give me those details for Mothman and your other dates that are nailed down so I can get them up onto your events page. Well, things are falling into place and we're trying to lock them down. I can tell you that in Point Pleasant, that Saturday night, the event will be at the Senior Center. Now, it's not as glamorous as it sounds. Is it on Main Street? Is it like on the main drag there? It's on the main drag. I think everything's on the main drag. I've never been there. This will be the first time I've ever been there. Yeah, I've been twice, but I've never been to the festival. I went off times, which I actually kind of enjoy because I got to do what I wanted. But like, yeah. Well, this will be – I'll be at the festival. I'll do whatever my speaking engagement is at the festival. Then that night, we do the private event for people who wish to come and that'll be right there. Yeah, I think it is on that main drag. It used to be where all of the main speakers would do their thing. Oh, okay. And then that venue has changed, but this one is available. And Jeff Walmsley, who runs the whole thing, was like, you know what? It's a perfect venue. It can hold people. Come on down. Have your thing there. And I'm like, great. Thank you. So, that'll be on the evening of the 20th. I can tell you what I know. I will be in Dallas on Monday the 18th of August. So, that's like in two weeks. Yeah. That is at the On Rotation Brewery. Uh-huh. And you can access tickets on Eventbrite. Just type in Richard Haddam. It'll take you right to Richard Haddam's Paranormal Bookshelf, and you'll find the event. And if you go to Eventbrite, as these events, you know, get scheduled, just type in my name. It'll take you to the one, and it'll list them, and you'll find the one that's near you. So, that's the one that's coming up the soonest. So, that'll be the debut. That'll be the debut of the new, unrecorded episode that will really just be for if you can see me live. So, we're going to do that in Dallas. Then on Thursday, September 18th, I will be in Cleveland. And still, you know, it's tough to lock down the location sometimes. Yeah, yeah. But I will be there. There will be a location. That information is forthcoming. That'll be on Thursday the 18th, just before we arrive in Point Pleasant on the 19th, to spend all day September 20th at the festival. And then on Monday the 22nd, we will have departed West Virginia. And on the night of Monday the 22nd, we'll be in Washington, D.C. at Kramer's Books. All right. I will be there. There'll be a show there. And then we have, again, details must be nailed down. But in that coming week, there will likely be a, not a Philadelphia, but a Pittsburgh event, and then a couple of New York events. And one of them is nailed down, but I don't want to announce it yet because there's a really fun element to it that I've got to wait for. But anyway, keep checking in. I'll talk about it on the podcast. It'll be updated. Thank you, Scott. On the website, Richard Haddam's Paranormal Bookshelf. And as soon as we know times and places, ticket sales go up on Eventbrite. And just go straight there, get your tickets, and I'll see you there. Rich, thank you so much for coming on the show with us. It's great having you back. It's been too long. I regret that we're all scattered to the wind now geographically. I wish we could see each other in person more often. Maybe I'll get to come visit you on your tour if you get near North Carolina. And I know at one point you said something about Charlotte, too. There will be a Charlotte show. Yeah. It will likely be in 2026. Okay. I mean, again, I know I keep throwing out, I'm going to be here, I'm going to be there. And I don't give out the actual details, but there will be more shows coming. Doing the live shows is too fun. Meeting the people, actually doing it, getting a live response. Yeah. The ones I've done so far have gone so well and have been so fun that it's something I'm going to keep doing. So, you know. Scott and I will run your merch table for you. Yeah, we'll run your merch table. You have tour t-shirts, right? Yes. Yes. Make some name your tour. There will be special Mothman merch also. Yeah. So get ready for that. Unsigned headshots 25, signed 50, right? You're doing the same. Yeah. Yeah. And he was in the background of a Star Wars flick. So that ups the price. Terrific, Rich. I think people, you're in your element, both live and on a podcast. I think your strides are, and it's only upward from here. Look, I'm having the time of my life, and it's all thanks to you guys. So thank you. Well, you're welcome. I wish it was more lucrative. Speaking of which, why don't you do a traditional plug for everybody? What's the name of your show? Where can they find it? It is Richard Haddam's Paranormal Bookshelf. It's available anywhere podcasts are available, wherever you like to listen to them. And the nice thing is, once you write in my name, it pretty much just jumps you to the podcast. So if you're like, oh, I don't know if it's bookshelf, bookstore, bookmark, or it's okay. You'll find it. It's like that line from The Fifth Element. That whole thing's your name, huh? That whole thing's the name of your podcast, huh? It's Haddam, H-A-T-E-M, for folks that don't know how to spell it. Check it out. It's a great show. Season three is really good. I'm going to go back and listen to it at normal speed. Thanks again for joining us, Rich, and we'll see you again soon. Sounds great, you guys. See you soon. Take care. We'll see you soon. Love you. That's going to wrap up episode 315 of Astonishing Legends. A very special thanks to Richard Haddam for joining us tonight. If you haven't heard his show, Richard Haddam's Paranormal Bookshelf, now is the time to check it out. And keep an eye on the events page at richardhadamsparanormalbookshelf.com to see him live. Look for new episodes of The Dead Letter Office weekly on Tuesdays in our feed, and keep an eye on our Patreon for more bonus content. Astonishing Legends is edited by Sarah Voorhees-Wendell at VW Sound. Our co-producer is Tess Feifel, who also leads our research efforts and manages our social media. And we're grateful for the hard work of our technical producer, Ed Vakola, behind the scenes. Special thanks to our announcer, John Bolin, for lending his voice to our shows. Spelling of my name, K-A-L-E-N. What do I have to say? My name is N-E-A-L. Here is the spelling of my name, C-H-A-R-L-O-T-T-E. Permission to Astonishing Legends to use my voice. Galaxy-wide in perpetuity. Our theme, which is available as a ringtone, was composed by Judson Crane at FounderMusic.com. All other music and sound design for the show is composed and created by Alan Caressia. Our logo was created by Tommy Beaver Design, and our animated graphics for social media and YouTube are done by Joshua Sloan at DeadStreetProductions.com. Many episodes have transcripts available. For ones that don't, you can request them by emailing transcripts at AstonishingLegends.com. Astonishing Legends would not be possible without you, our listeners. Visit our store at AstonishingLegends.com or interact with us and other listeners on Facebook, Instagram, Blue Sky, Discord, and YouTube. You can also visit us at Patreon.com slash AstonishingLegends, where patrons have access to commercial-free versions of both the main show and the Dead Letter office, as well as additional bonus content, including the Patreon-exclusive show, The Astonishing Junk Door. 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