The Holosky Guys | The Cult of the Black Cube, CERN Portals, & Other High Strangeness

All right, people, I am going to make this quick, but I just had to announce that for the next six weeks or so getting into the holiday season, I'm putting a lot of my show outlines up for auction again. I've mentioned before that I stick to a strict routine when preparing for and recording THC episodes, and part of that process, 95% of the time, going back many years, has been compiling my mess of notes into a roughly four to six page outline that I print out and then conduct the interview from as a template. I write in the margins, I cross questions off as we go along, I jot things down a guest says that I don't want to forget, and I usually have a good deal of material in these outlines that never even makes it to air. When an interview is done, I put a little staple in the corner and throw them in a drawer until the time comes to dust them off and show them to the people for the holidays. Some folks seek out, sign scripts of their favorite movies or try to nab a concert set list before filing out into the parking lot. Well, this is like that, but for a weird, obscure podcast. So I am signing, listing, and auctioning off another round of these outlines I have to any listeners who might be interested in that kind of thing. Each one is totally unique, full of my own dumb notes and typos, never really designed for public consumption, but it's fine. If you're into it, they'll be listed on eBay, the link is at the top of the show notes, and I'll post links across the social media dystopias that I happen to have an unfortunate presence on. All the listings are set to go for ten days each, so have at it, and I'll be ready to stuff those envelopes on the other side. Merry Christmas to me. Enjoy. The planet's private masters almost surely have a plan. There's clearly maybe something there beyond the realm of man. And until we've fully tested, I find the more we think we know, the less we really do. Because we know they're lying to us, just don't know to what degree we're with. THC. Well, my world's on fire. How about yours? From the Sunshine State, I'm Greg Carlwood, and while many of us stuck in a mundane, rinse-and-repeat reality of clock-in, clock-out, traffic, time-wasting, and screen-scrolling, might have a hard time wrapping our heads around such strange stories as routine entity visitations, telepathic connections to some federation of cosmic teachers, UFO headlight-induced missing time, Kentucky meat showers, cave goblins, inner-earth reptilians, Bigfoot gift exchanges, and a wide range of odd happenings and otherworldly encounters we sometimes hear about, The list of such qualifying anomalous outlier events nearly knows no end if you're inclined to seek them out. And wouldn't you know it, seeking them out is what today's guests Steve and Kyle of the Hollow Sky podcast do best. You can find them covering the full spectrum of high strangeness and fording events, digging out very bizarre and unique stories in each episode, as well as doing a classic live show taking calls from the people every Wednesday night at 8 p.m. Central on The Night Shift. Let it be known that I have combed through their archive and I can confidently say we got some good stuff lined up for this one, so let's do the damn thing. From the heartland of America, the strange story collectors, paranormal dot connectors, and self-proclaimed bastard sons of the paranormal, the hollow sky guys, Steve and Kyle, Kyle and Steve, welcome to The Higher Side. How the hell are ya? Doing good. Doing good. We're doing great, man. It's good to be here. Yeah, this is going to be a ton of fun. I'm a big fan of these opportunities to just hit people with several super strange stories, and it's really been a while since I had this kind of episode, so I'm looking forward to it. People might know you guys from going a bit viral a year or so ago over this little saga with Egress Industries. I think I even talked to Tony Merkel about your story when he was on, and we will save some time for that. But I wanted to start with something a little more random, and that's this episode you did about the lead mask mystery, actually. I forgot this was the one I wanted to start with, but I can't believe I never heard this. But to read your description from this episode, you write, Today we dive into a truly bizarre mystery. You have two men who are found on a hillside with a lead mask over their eyes. If that wasn't weird enough, the more people start looking into the case and building a timeline for the men, it gets even stranger. The men take out some money and tell their families they're going to travel to buy a car, but then take a bus in a completely different direction. It's also uncovered they made a few random stops along the way. But the weird part starts when people figure out they were a part of a spiritualism group that was trying to contact spirits from Mars. Now, this happened in Brazil in the 1960s. Totally new to me. Talk to us about this craziness. So, this particular case kind of makes its rounds on the true crime forums every year. And that's kind of my first love before paranormal is true crime. So, it's kind of unanswered as to what happened to these two fellas, so I decided to dive into it. Long story short, these two men in 1966 are found on a hillside in Brazil, deceased. It's kind of a weird scenario. They're both wearing matching suits. They have these crude, homemade lead masks over their faces, both of them. There's also some weird evidence kind of laying around. There's a water bottle and there is a notebook also on scene. The police investigators come about, they're looking around, do an autopsy on these fellows, and there's no signs of what caused their death. There's no outward signs of violence. There's no drugs in their system. No cause at all, except that they both suffered a severe cardiac incident. So, this is strange to everyone. As they're investigating, they have people from a local town start to mention that they saw strange lights on this hill where these bodies were found. So, it kind of goes down this UFO route. As I'm digging, looking at old interviews and stuff, I find out that there is a second man discovered four years earlier. On a hill, in Rio de Janeiro, in a suit, with a lead mask over his eyes. So, I'm like, two of them. One is, could be a coincidence. Two, there's something going on. So, as they're kind of doing this investigation, they find this notebook, right, for the first two men. And the notebook's kind of strange. The first, there's just some notes on electrical information because both these men were electrical engineers. The second page is a little bit weirder. Second page states, Sunday, take one tablet after the meal. Monday, one tablet in the morning on an empty stomach. Tuesday, one tablet after meal. Wednesday, one tablet before going to bed. It almost seems like some kind of medical regiment that these men are taking in preparation for whatever went on on this hill. They start investigating and asking people around these two men if they were in any kind of, like, weird dealings, drug dealings, anything that could end up in them to essentially being dead. One of their friends come up and tell them that these men were involved in this strange, esoteric sort of religion called spiritism. Essentially, to break down spiritism, the main crux is that the physical body and the spiritual body are two separate entities that kind of come together in life, right? So as the physical body kind of deteriorates and passes on, the spiritual body continues, which is kind of the main theme of a lot of religions. But in spiritism, they believe that the spiritual aspect of our body, of our life, essentially, continues on and can affect our world. So it's a lot of, like, Ouija board practices and seance tables to kind of prove that existence goes beyond our physical bodies. Anyway, they were really into this, right? So these two guys get the idea that if we can contact spirits here on Earth, if there's life on other planets, why can't we contact spirits of the dead on other planets? I see the logic in that. Yeah. Why haven't we thought about contacting alien ghosts before this point? Well, you know, I actually had this thought. Who's to say? I mean, a lot of people have these contact experiences, these telepathic experiences with higher level entities. But I guess there's no guarantee that those entities are alive the way we're alive. You know, they could be spirits. They never really mentioned that they're spirits, but who knows? It's just a weird thing that, yeah, you're right. You would think there'd be a lot more dead aliens to contact than live ones, just by the nature of how life cycles work. That was kind of my thought. Whenever I got to that point in my research, I'm like, how did we not think of this before? You know, everybody's trying to contact, like, grandma and grandpa that's passed away. Nobody's looking at Atlanteans or some shit. But they built this device, these two. Being electricians and stuff, they were constantly kind of ingrained in this spiritualism. So they built this device. And one of their wives confirmed that this happened. So they were in their back garden, built this device to contact alien spirits. They decide to fire this thing up. What's it do? It explodes. So did they contact alien spirits? No. They almost pulled themselves up. Yes. But afterwards, like, there was this weird gray dust material all over the garden, right? So in their minds, this was proof that they'd made contact with some other spiritual realm. Because they took collection samples of this dust, and it wasn't anything that they'd initially put into this machine. So it's got to come from somewhere. After that experiment, they decide to ramp it up a bit. And these three men went to a beach about, I don't know, 40 or 50 miles away to essentially sort of increase their experiment. And as they pulled up to this beach, they immediately witness a UFO over the ocean. And as this UFO pulls up, clearly they're trying to contact alien ghosts. The object kind of rises up into the sky and emits a blinding flash and then disappears with an explosion. And this particular explosion was reported up to 10 miles away. After the explosion, the two men reported that the beach was covered in the same type of dust that covered the garden in their first experiment. In their brain, they're like, okay, we're making some connections here. And there are multiple corroborated witnesses that this explosion happened. It was so prominent that, like, local police investigators came to the beach and they're like, what's even going on out here? So, that kind of got my wheels turning to, like, what if, what if in my brain, these two men were trying to contact these extraterrestrial ghosts, right? So they set up this whole beach encounter, and what they didn't realize was that, this UFO was already here, and their little experiment went awry, essentially blows this UFO up. Then in retaliation, you might have some sort of weird, I don't know, assassination attempt on these guys from said UFOs. Nick Redfern has a whole book on fatal encounters. You know, he's great at going through the UFO archives and then, like, creating categories and writing a book based on that category. He's got a whole category of fatal ones, and one was in Brazil. I think it was just a guy got shot by a beam, as tends to happen. But, you know, maybe these guys should be added to the list. But, yes, spiritualism is huge in Brazil, which I didn't even know. It's the third largest religion in Brazil. There's, like, four million members that practice this. I saw a study in 2010, which is, like, massive. So, essentially, the case is unsolved. They don't know how these men died. They don't know if it was some sort of homicide. They don't know if it was group suicide. What it is exactly was, like, were they part of some weird doomsday cult or elaborate murder staged? And they don't know what the lead masks are for. Like, you hear the lead mask, you immediately think it's something to keep you away from x-rays or some nuclear reaction or something like that. Exactly. If these guys are scientists, they probably know about the lore of how dangerous it can be to encounter one of these entities. And I had read on a different website talking about this case that the speculation was that they were thinking that they would see these beings in blinding light. So they were trying to protect their eyes from, like, this crazy light being that they would expect to show up. But isn't it funny that so often people deep in the sciences, these engineers, are also interested in this other stuff? I think it's because there's a relationship between plasmas and these entities. So if you are an electrical engineer, you might start doing some experiments and dabbling and stuff, and weird things might start to occur. I've talked to people who say that, and then that fuels the interest. But it's kind of Jack Parsons adjacent too, just weird, weird case. Maybe their souls got taken. That would explain why there's no physical damage or anything like that. It's just like cardiac arrest. Well, you know, what is that? It's just like being ripped out of your body, perhaps. But it's a weird story. The lead masks definitely is what separates it from the rest of the UFO lore out there. It's also strange that, like, so many of the practitioners, especially in this particular geographical area, are electrical engineers. Like, it was this whole community of electrical engineers that were also practicing spiritism, trying to contact beings, spirits, not only from here, but also off-world. The fact that there was this whole little underground network of these scientists working to try to achieve contact with beings of another planet is wild. Well, the fact that in both cases you found, Steve, the guys were in suits. I know it's like a minuscule detail, but it's still really bizarre that one would travel to the top of a hill in a suit. It doesn't really compute that well. It sounds like some kind of high society, heaven's gate. You know, you dress a lot better than the Nike sneakers, but you basically went to have an experience where you might not be around anymore. And that is a good one to whet the appetite. And just to back it up a little bit, for the audience, we grew up pretty close to each other in the Midwest. You on the Illinois side, me in Missouri. I just heard something recently I was going to see if you guys were familiar. This is just totally conspiratorial, no paranormal elements at all. But do you know about James Scott? Do you remember the flood of 93? You seem about my age. Oh, yeah. Okay. So this is new to me, but I just realized somebody wrote a book, a journalist who went to Mizzou and basically researched this story. But the flood of 93 was this massive, crazy flood all through, like from Festus, Missouri, to where you guys are. Levees were breaking. Rivers were crushing whole towns. I had a t-shirt. I survived the flood of 93. You know, this flood was so big. You got the guys on the street corner selling the t-shirts. Well, this is just a natural event. You know, it's really not anything. I mean, it's crazy. It's abnormal, a 500-year flood. But there's a guy named James Scott who is actually still in jail today for sabotaging one of the main levees in Quincy, Illinois. So this is totally new to me. One of my best friends grew up in Quincy, so I was like listening to this. The story goes, and according to the Army Corps of Engineers, they all have looked at all the maps of these levees and the attempts to sandbag it up better, and they said, no, this was always going to fail. We know the math. We know the physics. This was fucked. Well, James Scott, this kind of guy who is like a troublemaker around town, the cops pegged him for sabotaging the levee. He says, I would never do that. This is my town, too. Yeah, I might have done some petty crime, but I don't want my whole town and family and friends to die. But the conspiracy comes in because the people in these areas, they didn't have flood insurance because there's not supposed to be floods like this. So they put James Scott through some sham trials. They charge him with sabotaging the levee, and now it's in a different category of damage, and everybody in Quincy can claim this on their homeowner's insurance. Whereas if it was just an act of God, they couldn't do that. So he went through two trials, two jury trials. And this journalist said, you know, I started off thinking, how could this possibly be a conspiracy? Well, you think that prosecutor didn't subtly nudge the good folks of Quincy, Illinois, to say, you know, if you don't prosecute this guy for sabotaging the levee, you're all underwater. You're, no pun intended, financially in your homes. And so James Scott, to this day, right in our kind of our old stomping grounds, is sitting in prison for doing something he didn't do so a bunch of people could make a homeowner's claim on the flood of 93 damage. I believe it. I mean, I absolutely believe it. It wouldn't take much. The fact that he is a troublemaker right out of the gate right there. And then if you have local law enforcement, anything of the local area that has the power, but also has either loved ones or themselves damage from these floods. And they also know, well, we're up shit creek unless we do something drastic like this. I don't think it takes very much convincing because a lot of people in today's world, even back then, are more so about themselves than they are about the single unit. I could see him putting him on the stake and just saying, hey, he was a dirtbag. You know, he's going to end up in prison anyways. So let's everybody just do ourselves a favor and make this work. Exactly. I mean, the world is run on incentives and all you have to do is point out to the good people of Quincy. That there is a very strong incentive to say guilty. And that seems to be what happened. I just think it's so crazy that there's people now still who go and interview James Scott in prison in the Jefferson City, Missouri prison. And he's just like, yeah, I didn't do it. But, you know, here I am. And I'm sure that story happens all over the place. But I did not know that something that was formative when I was in the third grade would have obviously a conspiracy at its heart. So many things do. And that flood insurance scam is a real deal. My grandparents live just north of Grafton and they were out of the floodplain. And when the levees broke, it wiped their whole farm out. And they being out of the floodplain, you don't get flood insurance. So they were just at a loss. They had to make up for it themselves. Yeah. So not really a paranormal thing, but I just figured I'd throw it in there because we're all from the same area. I don't know how many people listening care, but look up the flood of 93 and you'll see. Wow. I didn't know that could even happen. We have hurricane floods, but this is something totally random in the middle of the country. So unusual. So let me ask you guys, backing up, Hollow Sky, where'd the name come from? Because when Tony Merkel was here, I believe I'd have to go back, but I believe I said Hollow Sky. And he goes, no, it's Hollow Sky. And I said, oh, I feel like an idiot now, but it's Hollow Sky. But that doesn't really speak to paranormal. I mean, Higher Side Chats is a weird name, too. But Hollow Sky, where'd that come from? It is kind of my brainchild. I tend to have a creative mind and I'll see images and I have zero artistic ability. The best I have is words. And I liked the image of two people, kind of like a Mulder and Scully underneath a holographic sky. And I also, I'm a huge fan. This is no dig at anybody. This is just me and my preferences. I like names that mean nothing because I hate labels, right? I hate boxing myself into a corner and being stuck there per name, per image. And so Hollow Sky, I don't think many people even know what to think when they hear that name. It's just, it's there. And so me and Steve were able to craft the image around that name versus the other way around. Yeah, that's good. Not unsimilar to myself. The general theme is these are the threads of thought that are interesting when you're getting high. Obviously, I started this 10 years ago. I was in my early 20s. I don't know if I'd name it the same today, but I'm lucky that I didn't name it the Conspiracy Hour or the Paranormal Hour because it's hard to pivot. It's hard to include all these other things that you get interested in along the way, like what was the ancient world really like? And is there truth to the occult? And this sort of stuff that would seem weird if the name was too on the nose with one pillar of these things that I think are staples of the show, staple topics. So, yeah, I'm of that same mindset. I like it. So, let's go to the next one. I want to make sure we can fit in as much of this as we can and we get to talking and I know how it goes. So, let's jump to this episode you did, The Cult of the Black Cube. And we tend to love provocative stories involving Saturn around here. You say in that episode that you were just going to go over the history of the Black Cube and Saturn and the associations. But then it sort of became centered around this particular book. Now, Steve, you told me in the DMs that you guys actually bought an $800 Saturnian grimoire when doing the Black Cube research. Is this the book in question, The Cult of the Black Cube, a Saturnian grimoire by Dr. Arthur Moros? Yeah, that's the book. Okay. I hear a lot about it on other shows about Saturn. I don't have the most extensive knowledge into Saturn, but you hear about the Black Cube a lot. And so, I'm like, you know what, there's so many depictions of the Black Cube across history, even in modern times. You see so many people using this imagery. So, I was like, that's what I want to look into. So, as I'm digging around, I've got a million tabs open on the computer. I stumble onto this book and I'm like, man, this book looks cool. Talk to Steve about it. And he's like, well, let's just get it. And I'm like, all right, cool, bet. Let's do this. And so, we grab it. I start digging through it. And I'm just kind of blown away by the information that's in there. And, of course, Arthur is not the author's real name. But he has a rather compelling story. And even if there is questions behind his personal story, I feel like a lot of what he has to say lines up with the occult. Not that I'm a professional in the occult, because I'm not at all. But there's so many things in here that make sense, you know. The original intro to The Black Cube, and this book in particular, is that Arthur gets in a car accident. He's all boogered up. And his life is pretty much miserable. And as he gets older and goes into college, he starts to dabble into psychology and philosophy. And then he ends up picking up a course with Latin and religious studies that kind of venture off into this magic and occult area. And as he's researching the magic and the occult, he gets into Roman necromancy. And I do understand his position in the world, because he has a far bleaker outlook than most people would because of his conditions. But he's like, you know what? I don't know that I believe in this stuff, but what's it going to hurt? Yeah, desperate times. Right. And so he's like, I'm going to partake in this ceremony to the Chthonic gods. And he basically looks at one, I'm not a Latin expert, but do ut des, which apparently means I give so that you will give. He makes his own ceremony, his own ritual. He starts combining things with other parts. And he decides he's going to contact the Diamenes, which apparently are ghost gods of the Roman netherworld. So he's in his room. He's combining things on his altar. And he's got a glass bowl that's sitting there with all the offerings in it. As he's performing the ritual, he cuts himself, drops the blood into the glass bowl. And he says, per his words, that that was probably the most significant moment in his life. Because as he does this, the room changes. The temperature instantly drops. The candles dim. The glass bowl explodes. And he feels the entities in the room. And he says, you know, one of them in particular seems extremely malevolent. And so he kind of panics like a lot of people would. Especially if you're in the mindset that this is not real. But I'm going to just try it. And then you get a result like that. That's kind of a shell shock. You know, I mean, I don't even know how, even to this day, any three of us would take that moment. So he apologizes. It goes back. And then the malevolent spirit leaves. A couple of days later, he begins to have vivid dreams. Of being in this far out landscape. And there's a vibrating black mass that begins to communicate with him telepathically. And essentially tells him, like, hey, your ritual caught my attention. So now I'm here. Which, it's such a scary way to view things and accept things that you don't even have to necessarily reach out to one in particular. You can just catch the attention of. Which I feel like is extremely relevant in that world. But it's like, you can go back to which you came. We can leave each other alone. Or, on the opposite side of that, I can fix you. And if I fix you, then essentially, in a roundabout way, you're indebted to me. The bargain is that your ambitions come second to whatever I need. And I guess Arthur, at that point, because his life, you know, he was given so many painkillers that he was essentially in a coma every day. Because that's the only way he could treat his pain. So he's like, all right, let's do this. Because the entity attaches itself to him. And by Arthur's words, it keeps its end of the bargain. He lives a pretty awesome life. He goes on to research the occult, going to Ivy League schools and stuff like that. And one thing that I found interesting, because I think, unknowingly, a lot of people in our fields experience this, whether they admit it or not. Arthur says that Saturn communicated to him, not so much directly, but with what he would call nudges or very unusual synchronicities. And you hear those very, very often in the worlds that we walk. So that one struck home. Yeah, I like his description that as soon as he agreed to the bargain, that it like came into him and he felt like ice in his veins. And it wasn't really revealed who he was dealing with until he agreed. And then the nudges, yeah, it put him through graduate school. He got a doctorate in mythology. And after 25 years of this relationship, he says the entity always kept its promise. I mean, he was healed and he remained healed. What more did he want? You know, that was the deal. So he had to become like an advocate or a messenger for Saturn. And he ends up putting his life's work, all this knowledge into this book, The Cult of the Black Cube. I guess if I remember correctly, he finds out along the way that there are other people that maybe have made individual deals with them or at least worship Saturn. I mean, we know that there's a cult out there. You mentioned the symbols. Yeah, obviously the Mecca Cube, we know. And then there's the UN Meditation Cube. Look at those things side by side. And then the One World Trade Center has a damn cube there after that ritual. It's like, what the hell's going on? And then if you go back to the Jordan Maxwell material, you talk about the graduation cap is basically a flattened black cube. And it gets into all our traditions around the court system. And that a cube is basically an unfolded, well, a cross is an unfolded three-dimensional cube. So then if you think about the cross symbol as being just another version of the Saturnian cube, well, it's all cube. Everything's a damn cube. Some of the biggest franchises in Hollywood, you mentioned the Avengers and Transformers both center around some stupid little cube, magic cube. And it's like, God, there is not any symbol that's more seeded than that. And so you do think, like, who's doing this? And maybe these people formed deals with Saturn. And he's like, hey, you know, if you want your movie franchise to really pop off, if you really want to make eight Transformers movies from this very thin IP and you want them to make a lot of money, put a cube in there for me, would you? Yeah, it is weird, man. And once I began looking into Saturn, it is very interesting. It's really cool because I was a huge fan of Greek mythology growing up. So that always caught my attention. And Saturn has that to him. He has so many nicknames throughout time. I mean, he's even related to Kronos, the god of time. One of his nicknames is the harvester of all things. And the way they talk about his power is just, it's like a glacier. It is slow and relentless. Like, you cannot stop Saturn no matter how hard you try. All the other gods in the cosmos were terrified of Saturn. And a lot of, well, at least in this research that I was able to do here, it said that the cube is a representation of where Saturn is imprisoned. That's the thought behind it. And if you decide to take the path of Saturn, which just sounds, I don't know, not that I would do this, but it sounds fucking cool. You declare war against all the other oppressive powers that have held Saturn down and imprisoned him. So by taking his path, you now join his fight against the oppressive powers. And it has that movie script to it. It has that underlying purpose for some people, right? Right. I mean, who doesn't like an underdog? But it's got some really Luciferian kind of parallels. And a lot of people think our elite, that's their main thing, is worshipping Lucifer as a liberator, as the light bringer. You know, he brings us the technology and, you know, God smites him for that. And it's like, well, fuck God, I want the technology. You know, I want the power. And that's apparently why our elite are very much on the Luciferian side. So I wanted to throw this out. So the guy who wrote this book, Dr. Arthur Moros, he died in 2017. His publisher says it was a mysterious death. There's not a lot of other information about that. On the third edition of the book, on the cover is a man in a loincloth eating a baby, biting the baby's stomach, and the baby's, like, screaming out. Is that the one you guys have? Yeah, it's the silver book with the black inlay. It's rather disturbing when you look at it. So did you get into the content? Have you looked at what the rituals? I mean, does he tell you how to make your own deals and contact with Saturn in the book? Yeah, it does. It goes into detail about it. There's one in particular that caught my attention. It sounds cool. It's called The Rite of Chains, which just sounds like a metal song, which, you know, Steve and I are into heavy metal. So, but supposedly it is a ritual that will bind your soul to Saturn for eternity. Forever. It's a long time. It is a very long time. Is there anything really super dark in there? Does it say you need to sacrifice kids or use your own blood? I mean, your own blood, that's your own blood. You can use your own blood. I think it does say things in there about using your own blood and animals and stuff like that, because the way Arthur describes a lot of it is that what's very curious is Steve and I have stumbled across occultists before. We don't talk about them all the time, but the ones that really interest me are the ones that tell you to choose your own path. They don't influence you to come to their side. They say, do what's best for you. And I find that very interesting in that world because you would think someone, let's pretend for 100% certainty, Arthur worked with Saturn, acquired wealth, and everything his heart could desire essentially. But he's still telling you as the individual, you figure out who you need to work with. I just find that very interesting. Right. And there's a little bit in the story about fate. Saturn basically says, you'll be changing your fate and going down this other path with me rather than the path fate had laid out for you. And I always find that shaky. I do think we come here to do something that we wanted to do, and we have to rediscover it through the process of our lives and then do that thing. But fate is just always so weird. This is a shaky example, but I got a vasectomy not long ago. I got two kids. Don't want to do it again. So I did the snip. And my buddy's like, well, why don't you just let fate decide? You know, if God wanted you to have more kids, maybe you'd have more kids. And I was just like, well, if God wanted me to have more kids, he would have screwed up my vasectomy appointment. I would have gotten a car accident or gotten a flat tire and then would have had a hard time getting to the appointment. It would have just gone to the back of my mind and not happened. Like fate should encompass all actions and activities. It doesn't mean that just because I made a conscious, intentional choice that I'm violating the fate God left out for me. So it's a little silly. Maybe that guy's fate was always to write this book because you would think that fate would be the highest view of a person's life trajectory. Can we get off the path? I'm sure we can. Some of us never get on the path because we never really do that process of self-discovery because we're so distracted by the razzle-dazzle of American culture. The way you could counter that, because it should, fate should encompass every move that you're capable of making because it's fate. It's inevitable to varying degrees. But who's to say that these more powerful, smarter entities are not just simply manipulating you? Just saying, hey, Greg, listen, man, fate's got you going this direction. That sucks. How about, I mean, me, I can counteract fate. That's what I do. That's my thing. And from this guy's perspective, he's having this communion with Saturn who's saying, look, God, fate, it puts you in constant pain. What kind of life is that? Is God this thing you want to obey the rules of? Or maybe we should do our own little dance. And from his perspective, I can't fault the guy. No, that's the apple, right? That's the apple. You know, here's your apple. Eat it. And everything is good, man. The other thing that I found interesting in the book is the idea that even the celestial gods, they all have to contend with the spiritual realm. There are things in the spiritual realm that will contest them. And that they also have to deal with new religions and new ways of thinking in societies, which kind of goes to what me and Steve have always thought and said that everybody who believes in God, that gives God power. Because Saturn wants his story now to be told almost in comparison to the Bible, right? I need my story to get out there. I need more people to believe in me. I need more people to partake in me. Does us putting our intent, our beliefs, everything into one entity, does that make them more powerful in the end? I definitely think so. And, you know, being good Midwestern boys, we know that when we say God, we generally mean the Christian God. And that is a thing I've always struggled with. Like, well, what is the Christian God? I mean, God isn't a name. It's a title. It's a type of being. And history is full of gods. Do I want to be involved with a church that is siphoning energy for a God that basically has the head of the church living in a gold palace wearing Prada slippers in a separate zip code away from, like, all laws and also harboring all these pedos and shit? Like, you know, I start to look at the crimes of the church and the history of the church and all the knowledge they keep hidden away from humanity in the Vatican archives. I'm like, this doesn't sound like a good God. If this is what the fruits of all that energy gets you, this isn't like vow of poverty, salt of the earth, giving back. I mean, they've got enough money to at least cure homelessness and poverty in an entire nation, if not the world. I don't know. But even just the knowledge harboring, like, that is humanity's birthright, all that knowledge. And, you know, you can go back to the fundamental religious story about the fruit of knowledge and, like, knowledge is the big thing. And so I'm not a fan of that. But you're just taking the word of a guy in a robe saying, no, this is the one true God. Not only that, but he's the good guy. He's the supreme good guy. Sorry about the pedo stuff and the harboring and the greed and all that stuff. Like, he's still the good guy. And it's just like that's taken for granted. We're born in the system. You know, people just make it part of their normal lives and just have this lifelong assumption that they're giving their energy to a good, noble entity, the one true entity. And you have no fucking idea that that's true. Massive assumption. Absolutely. I'm kind of glad you mentioned that about, like, say, the Vatican and stuff, because in this book, now, mind you, it could be timing. But I did find it interesting that Arthur describes what the revolt of Saturn will look like. He makes it sound like it's an inevitable. This will happen. Right. So he says, a kingdom of Saturn will look like a powerful state where cameras are in every room, watchers on every street. People will gladly surrender their civil liberties and dignity in exchange for safety and security. And I'm like, well, if that isn't relevant, I don't know what is. Yeah, exactly. We're living in it. And also, you know, going back to the cross symbol being just an unfolded cube, it's like there's a hint that maybe before people judge Dr. Moros for his connection to Saturn, think about what you're doing on Sunday. If you dig in, you really start digging into, like, Saturnian history and Christmas is just an evolution of Saturnalia, which was a pagan ritual at the end of the year where they give gifts. And even so far as, like, writing each other little, like, verses and passing them to your family members and your friends, like Christmas cards and shit, like, it's just evolution of the same thing. So, like, how far does the cult really go? Right. And the greatest trick the devil ever pulled is convincing the world he doesn't exist. The bad guys don't write it on their T-shirt and say they're the bad guys, you know. It's all masked. So, if you aren't being very critical of a lot of the stuff you're looking at and the fruits of what an organization really is about, then, you know, I wouldn't go there just because grandma would write you off. I'm glad you say that because Steve and I are highly suspect of a lot of these encounters across, I mean, across all different things with aliens making contact with people. And they're like, oh, we're good. You know, we're out here working for the light. And you're kind of like, what are you, though? The way we kind of do things is interesting in our show. So, one week Kyle will bring a subject in, the next week I'll bring a subject in. Well, particularly with this, like when Kyle started diving into the cube, the thing that stood out to me was the fact that Arthur didn't reach out to Saturn. He had no intent. He was sending no intent, particularly to Saturn. Saturn just heard him and showed up. That kind of resonated in my brain. Like, us as humans, we're constantly searching for something higher. We're constantly searching for something to look out for us. We're constantly praying. We're constantly sending up all of our qualms and all of our victories, just thanking and looking for answers. And we just take it for granted that our intent is making it to who we want it to make it to, right? When, in theory, there might be millions of gods up there listening to just pick out, like, hey, there's a whole race of people, whole planet out there that's looking for somebody to watch out for them. This is a very particular set of circumstances where I can manipulate an entire race, you know? Yeah, yeah. It's a terrifying thought. And that really got my wheels turning, like, holy shit. Yeah, indeed. And I actually have talked to some people who are well familiar with the occult. They make it a part of their lives. And also, at least one psychologist that comes to mind who does basically healing sessions based on entity attachments. Like, he's like, hey, I've discovered that a lot of our ailments are related to entity attachments and related to deals we make, even stupid little stuff. Like, maybe you guys did this. When I was a kid, I'd be shooting basketball in the driveway. I'd be like, okay, if I make this shot, Christina's going to like me. She's going to like me. So I need to know if this girl likes me. And so I'm going to see if I can make this shot. But these people would say that there are entities in the ether that say, I got you. And the entity will help put the ball in the basket. And then there will be something attached that's like, well, I'm going to help make this girl like him. And it's because of the basketball shot. And from the kid's perspective, it's just a stupid thing. You're just trying to fortune tell and have a little bit more fun. But from the spiritual side, that's a real deal. Soul binding contracts with a basketball shot. Yes. That's a small, stupid example. But we do these things when we're young. And there are people out there who say, no, that's real. And the fact that you didn't acknowledge that entity might be why you got pneumonia that winter. That's fucked. It is. It is. So don't make those deals, guys. Yep. That's even a thing with Saturn. If you don't come prepared to give him acknowledge, and that's one thing Arthur stressed. There's tons of warnings in that book. But Arthur stresses, you must give these entities their respect. They want their respect, plain and simple. If you don't, especially with ones as powerful as Saturn, they'll fuck you up. They'll make your life suck. I wish somebody would have told me that 30 years ago when I was out shooting baskets. No doubt. If you want to know if she likes you, just ask, guys. Just ask. Cut out the middle entities. Right. Sticking with the Saturn theme, you also did an episode on CERN portals and some of the lore and details that make you scratch your head. I think most listeners here know about the weird Shiva statue and the ritualistic dance number video they released. Most of us have seen the Goddard Tunnel Ceremony, which is also in that same region. But some of my favorite stuff about NASA is just tracking all the names and the anagrams to deities and unexpected mythological figures that suggest something more than just science is going on there. And CERN has this kind of stuff all over it. And I know less about that. Even the name CERN. This is interesting. So I got from this episode, Werner Karl Heisenberg. Considered the founder of Quantum Mechanics. He helped the Nazis in their race for the nuclear weapon. Maybe he held it up. Maybe he was a double agent. That's some of the speculation to write him in as a good guy. Like, oh, he didn't really help the Nazis. He was pretending to help the Nazis. And, you know, Nazis in science, they go together quite well. But CERN got this name, this anagram from the name of the facility. And then they changed the name. But this Werner Karl Heisenberg was like, do not change the anagram. So that's really weird. You know, if NASA changed its name and it was no longer NASA and they kept NASA, it would be strange. So he basically is like forcing this to be the name, even though there's a long form name change. And CERN has a connection to an entity, doesn't it, fellas? It does. There are so many things around CERN that should at least warrant concern. Because like you were saying, all these anagrams, you know, they literally call some of the stuff Satan. And the solar axion telescopic antenna, which gets changed to Delphi. Another loaded term. It is the sanctuary of the god Apollo. Hades, high acceptance dielectron spectrometer. Yeah. Really trying to make that work. Yeah, exactly. Why are scientists naming them all these old gods and it have reference to some of the most powerful gods of time? Why is that a thing? Right. And along these lines, the Vatican Astronomer Center used to have a telescope that the anagram was Lucifer. Think how far you have to go to squeeze that in. You couldn't just call it a pretty big telescope. You really went out of your way. But the entity CERN, or basically CERNUNOS, is what it's connected to. In ancient Celtic and Galio-Roman, CERNUNOS is the horned one, a god depicted with antlers, seated cross-legged, associated with stags, horned serpents, dogs, and bulls. He's pretty close to the Baphomet archetype, you could say. And you go on to note that he is a god of the underworld, a destroyer god that matches the Shiva archetype. So it really is just like these scientists seem to be going in there and being like, what entities are the destroyers of worlds that bring in new worlds? Shiva, CERNUNOS, let's just stack it up. You know, as many as we can find. Hades, yeah, give me Hades, bring them in. And that's crazy. It's like really weird to have that kind of obsession. And the reason I bring up Saturn is because you note some work by a friend of the show, Nick Hinton, who wrote a piece on the idea that what they're really trying to do at CERN is connect to Saturn through a wormhole from a time, I guess a time, maybe wormholes can go beyond time itself. But they're trying to reorganize our cosmic system to back when Saturn was the sun in the polar configuration and the ancient past talked about by the Electric Universe people. So he thinks that's what it's all about. And that might be what the Saturn worship was all about. If that really was a golden age where we're in the plasma envelope of Saturn, like these Electric Universe people say, and we've been in a fallen state ever since, I mean, the elite, anyone who's human would have an incentive to be like, if we can get back to that, let's get back to it, I suppose. And I don't know, maybe that's where it all comes from. But I also thought it was interesting, you note that the internet essentially comes from CERN and every website starts with www. and W has the numerological value of six in Chaldean numerology. So every website starts with 666. Just weird. It's like, why are you trying to LARP as the darkest darkness possible? Aren't you scientists? Yeah, like around Shiva, which everybody's heard about, the sacrifice and all that stuff. But why, no offense, but scientists aren't generally known as comedians because they're just like, oh, this is just a mock thing, this is for comedic value, or this is just, we're just out here having fun. I literally don't know anyone that partakes in mock human sacrifices for fun. No. Never met one in my life. You either believe it has value, or you just don't do it. It's a lot of effort. It's more effort than people realize to get the astrological timing right, and to get all your boys together, to get the robes on. Like, it's actually a serious effort. So to say that you just did all that for show, for something you don't believe in, you just wouldn't dedicate the time and energy to it. Right. I absolutely agree. And like you were saying, which I don't know if I put it together at the time or not, but you talk about Saronos and Shiva and their destroyers, and they have a hand in rebirth as well. I mean, one of the theories that's out there is that CERN in 2012 jumped us into a new timeline. Oh, yeah. That perfectly fits the mold with Saronos and Shiva of the destruction slash rebirth process. Because even sliding us into a new timeline could be considered rebirth to a degree. Yeah, I just always thought it would be a little more obvious if that happened. Right. Slide us back, because this one sucks. I don't know, does it? I feel, I'm feeling okay. Well, that's good. It could be better. Let's slide into a more positive one, maybe. But it's just funny, because when you think about it, all the super negative stuff you know about really just comes from screens. Like, you have to have a news guy at a desk telling you about it, but morning to night, my daily lived experience is pretty okay. In regards to all the, whether it's Saturn or Satan or whatever, it just cannot. I've always believed in just about everything. But there are certain subjects that make it hard for my brain to wrap around. One of them being that the entirety of the world is encompassed by Satanists. That one, for a long time, I'm kind of like, hmm, seems a little extreme. But then you start digging around, and you start seeing these connections, like WWW, that having a translation to 666. Those little subtleties across the board, one thing could be a coincidence. But as they start to stack across the board, you really have to start asking yourself, are we living in a world where there are a lot of people worshiping bad things, whether they're trying to manifest or whatever they're doing? Is there truth behind some of this? Oh, yeah. I totally think so. Even looking at the Monster Energy logo, it looks like a beast's claw mark, but it's the 6 in Hebrew. 666. Yeah, I definitely think that there is a darkness. I don't know if you've seen American Gods. It provides a pretty good analogy for just the idea that the gods are real, and they're timeless, and they have influence in our reality. And that influence is through the minds of men. Like, where do our ideas come from? Someone made a concoction that's an energy drink that is full of aspartame, full of caffeine, full of poisons, essentially. And then they thought, what will we name this thing? And somebody had the idea to name it Monster, a.k.a. Beast. And then someone else had the idea to draw the logo as 666. Was this conscious? I don't know. But was there an entity just outside of the visible spectrum rubbing its hands together, getting hard as hell, being like, oh, buddy, this is going to be a good one? Eat me, drink me. Yeah, you've got liquid death. I mean, why is everything that's successful in a commercial sense, for the most part, so dark? I think that has to do with that relationship. It has to do, conscious or unconscious, with this, you know, even water. It's like when you get deep down the water rabbit hole and how structured water works and how life-giving it can be, you're giving dead water in an aluminum can shielded from all light to people and calling it a health drink or calling it an alternative to other things. And it's like, well, that's like the worst type of water to give. So calling it liquid death makes sense. It is weird. It's all very dark. The most successful stuff has a little bit of a dark edge to it. And I think it's, like I said, this relationship that gets made. It's very intentional, if nothing else. Like all the satellites and all these space programs and everything that they name, like Kyle said, they could have named them anything. But there is a consistent theme that is very dark. Well, look at the Walt Disney signature. If you've ever seen people highlight the 666 there, it's like, why isn't that an 888? Why isn't it a 222? You know, it happens to just be on the nose. And then there's this image of this old cup, this Mickey Mouse cup, where Mickey is written in the same font. And when you look at the reflection of Mickey, if you had a beverage in that cup, it says wicked. And then there's all kinds of, you know, every Disney movie has, like, some dark magic involved in it. But it's all kind of under the guise of, like, this big, happy imagination station, fucking big princesses and castles thing. But, you know, is there a darkness to Disney? I don't know. Certainly successful. So when you look at the most successful media company ever and you see that association, it's just like, there it is again. Steve, was that a Disney movie where you found crazy legs? Yeah. That's what I thought. It wasn't even hidden. There's a whole story behind a certain goetic entity that keeps popping up in our lives. And there is a Disney series where he is specifically drawn in the background on a poster board, just in the series. Like, it's nothing hidden. You don't have to, like, look at a reflection. It is a goetic demon drawn and popped in the back of this Disney series. Wow. What series? The Owl House. Hmm. I haven't even heard of that one. What was his name again? We call him Crazy Legs. Yeah. It's the demon Booer. B-U-E-R. I just looked up Booer to see what it looks like. Oh, OK. People might have seen something like this before with the legs all around a central. It looks like a lion's mane, a bean with a lion's mane, and then a circle of thighs, you know, legs and thighs of animals around it. It's just in the background of this kid's series. Huh. And this is popping up in your lives. More so his than mine, but I think it's because we went two different routes whenever weird stuff started happening. So we just chose different paths. He pops up more in Steve's life than mine. Hmm. Tell us about a prominent pop-up that has happened, Steve. It happened just today, actually. Uh-oh. Interestingly enough that we talk about it. And he just kind of shows up in media like it's weird, right? Because he's not like a prominent demon whenever you think of goetic entities. You think of like Lucifer or Belial or any of those like big boys, I guess. But this one just shows up everywhere. I was someone had posted a YouTube video in our Discord that someone had made. So I was just watching it before we got on, just passing the time. And the person that made this video was talking about going to a Phish concert. And as they're editing it, they just happened to pop. Crazy legs, a little photo popped up. And this happens fairly consistently in my life since all this crazy shit started happening. I don't know. It's wild. We can talk about it if you want to. It wasn't on the docket, but we can dive into that if everybody wants to talk about demons and shit. Well, I'm sure Boer appreciates you using the airtime to promote his message. Wild. And who knows? I mean, these things, I do think there is that phenomenon of what you would pay attention to. You start seeing more often. But I think these entities are real and they have some control over or influence of the material world. They can manifest things. You know, look at all the corporate logos. Like, why are these companies so popular? I mean, CERN, even their logo is a 666. You look at the stuff, you can see all the Google logos broken down. And you can see the, like, even the Gmail is basically a Masonic apron. It's like, why? Why? You know? Isn't the Google Play button the sigil of Lucifer? That one I'm not sure about. I think the Google Play logo is the sigil of Lucifer, if I remember correctly. Because me and Steve looked into them a little bit at one point. It's weird. There's no better word for it. It's just absolutely bizarre that most of the modern symbols, even the Bluetooth symbol, all have some type of meaning behind them. The more that you look into them, the more they look back at you, is the crazy thing. It's almost like the intent to any god, essentially. Like, the more power you put into them, the more that they just start showing up. And you are right about the Google Play button, because I'm looking at the comparison right now. I mean, it is. It's right there. And then you got, there's a, one company makes Adreno, and then Google makes Chrome, the browser. And it's like, again, what the hell's going on? And you get into the merging of the occult with science. It's like these people at the forefront of their fields are often occultists in some weird way. We usually talk about it in rocketry and that stuff, but we started with the lead mask thing, electrical engineers. And then you get into the Silicon Valley, folks, and it's definitely there. If you look at comparisons of grimoire sigils and circuit boards, it's like, wow, is that really the only way, the best way to make a computer? It's very close to some ancient dark shit. Like I said, I don't know if we're going to solve any of these problems today. But man, we really covered the gamut. We talked about everything, but egress industries. I always do a little wrap up. I'll give people some of the bullet points about it. I don't want to keep you guys too long. I know everybody's got kids, but it is kind of one of the stories you guys are known for. And you've talked about it on tinfoil hat and on Tony Merkel's confessionals. Those are hour long interviews where you can go real deep into it, but it's a strange experience. You called some phone number on a dream flyer, and it turns out to be something that seems to know too much about you. And it was a random burner phone, so it shouldn't have happened. And what the hell is egress industries? You can find Reddit threads where people are trying to go down the rabbit hole and find more information. I guess, man, obviously that's just such a rabbit hole. I don't want to really open this can of worms when I'm trying to let you guys go. But the number one thing I see from people is like, is there an update? Is there an update? Did you ever solve the mystery? Is there any added layers to the mystery for someone who might have heard those earlier interviews? Essentially, no. It kind of disappeared the same way that it came in. It kind of paramounted. I guess we didn't really talk about this that much. There was another show that was also kind of interacting with whatever was behind egress industries. Right. That was Bob Hicks's show. Can't remember the name of it, but Bob Hicks was the fella. That being said, Bob has asked not to be connected to egress anymore. We kind of dance around. I know we did an interview with him, which is on the Internet, and it'll stay on the Internet. But that being said, it got to a point to where whatever was behind this kind of wanted us. I don't even know if Bob knows this, but kind of wanted us to go at odds with Bob. So they were pushing this narrative that Bob was this. Charlatan. Yeah. Making up his own stuff and pushing this whole thing. And it got to a point to where it was essentially a loyalty test to them. We want you to put out like a hit piece on Bob. And we're like, there ain't no way like this is fucking stupid. So after I told them, no, that's not going to happen. They immediately pulled back. Just done. Anytime I would try to interact with them, they would just verbatim put the same responses every time. Just shut down after that. Like it was almost like a test, essentially. Like if you go through the egress whole backlog, they constantly talk about a selection process. They're going to select certain people to progress. And essentially join whatever the fuck egress was. But after we said, that's not who we are. That's not what we're trying to do. They didn't want any part of us. And eventually it just kind of faded away. The number disappeared. You call it. And it's just a regular like Google voice number. For now, there's nothing left. And it bothered me for a long time because I like things to be wrapped up. I know I'm like constantly delving into mysteries that have no real solution. But when I was involved in that, I really wanted an answer somewhere. And it just never came forth. But it ran a weird gamut there for quite a while. And it was fucking nuts. Very interesting. Well, I had to at least ask if there was an update. I'll spend my wrap up time giving people the backstory and the bullet points. And of course, they can check out those other interviews and just Googling egress industries and hollow sky. They will find plenty. But it has been a lot of fun talking to you guys. No shortage of great episodes and strange stories in your catalog. Do remind people where and how to get the podcast or tune into the live show. Yeah. Anywhere you listen to podcasts, just search up hollow sky. That's H-O-L-O-S-K-Y. Look us up. You'll find us there. We also have a YouTube channel. We do a live call-in show every other Wednesday. And if you got weird stories, come hang out. Call in. Check us out. I like it. Yeah. It's always just kind of hard to promote a podcast. It's like, here's the name of it. Get it where you get podcasts. I always try to avoid the cliche with authors like where to get the book. I never try. I try to never say that. I don't know. A fucking bookstore. Amazon, dude. People want the book. They'll get the book. We just talked about it. But anyway, awesome. Good to talk to some people that have the same spirit of the Midwest. And I'm sure this audience is going to love this and they'll tune into your show. And maybe we can do it again sometime. But until then, take care, fellas. Thanks. You too, buddy. Absolutely. It's been a pleasure. Thank you. And boom goes the dynamite. Back to the random, weird, fun 40 and stuff we know and love so much with the Hollow Sky guys. Man, the Cult of the Black Cube book story is quite a lot. I love that one. And they've done some good work looking at CERN symbolism a bit deeper than others. All those highly suspect anagrams. I actually recorded this one with Kyle and Steve before the election, but when it popped off like it did, I wanted to make sure that it was covered and I'm sure we'll have plenty of guests weighing in along the way. But I think Ryan and Gordon did a good job breaking down what matters and I'd rather not obsess over it. So here we are with something totally unexpected and non-political. I can't even remember how this unfolded. I know Tony Merkel brought them up in our interview together and then I think we just started following each other and some random interaction ended up with me saying, hey, I should have you guys run through some random stories. And I'm glad we did because we covered some really good ones in the first hour and in the plus show. We got into stuff like the Dapple Gray Lane Space Brain Case, the Psy-Kung Barrier and Hong Kong's Missing 411, Antarctica and the Ancient Weapon, the Ark of Gabriel, the 20 and Back Program, Cemetery X and their own personal paranormal experiences and several other little anecdotes. Tons of wild stuff. I do love me these random, bizarre encounter and strange mystery filled shows. I should probably bring them back every so often if they'd have me. Tony Merkel too, for that matter. But when you digest a ton of Fordian stuff or a range of abduction stories, you can tell instantly when you have an outlier and those become the most interesting. You guys know how it goes. Become a plus member and get the full two hour show rather than just the free first hour. We always go deeper and get weirder as that is just the nature of conversation. Now we got that custom RSS link for plus members that comes in a welcome email when you sign up so you never even have to use your username and password. You just plug that link right into any app you want to use. Although I do put a lot of weight behind the episode ratings and I've been a bit more active on the forum lately. I kind of let the forum go by the wayside. I almost never mention it, but I am going to start paying more attention to the guest request thread in particular. So let me know who you'd like to see on THC in 2025. I want guest suggestions to come from plus members. They're obviously vested in the show and free listeners don't even have full context as to what's been talked about because they only hear half. I mean, it's not a strict rule. I get suggestions from many different places, but I'm going to start considering that guest request forum more often. Maybe even one show a month should be coming from those suggestions. We'll see how it goes. And I should slide this in here somewhere as well. Like the higher side chest does not really have holiday parties because I don't really have a staff of sorts, but I am taking the boys out. The guys who did the tokenized RSS and kind of maintain the whole website. Well, I saw Sam Tripoli was coming to town and I offered to take them. So we'll be there. He's going to be doing shows all weekend. So if you want to see me as well, I'm going to be there at the Friday show at 730 at side splitters in Tampa. So you can see some good comedy with Sam smoke a joint with me in the parking lot and give a tip of the hat to the two guys who have really pimped out my infrastructure way better than I could have. And I've definitely saved my ass a few times as well. So call it a little mini meetup. And I know it's short notice, but again, that is December 6th next weekend. Sam Tripoli's Friday night show 730. You want to sit near me? I'm in row 30. How about that? Let's have a good time because I don't get out too much anymore. Also, if you want to see video clips of the highlights from this episode and others, that's basically all my YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram accounts have become. I hired a company to make and post the clips so you can get a sense of what THC and video would be. See my goofy reactions to things. Watch my cat walk across my keyboard multiple times a show. And you can get reminders as to what some of the best parts were and share them with people who might actually like what we do around here. But I don't personally make or post the clips. So just keep that in mind. These clip makers are great at what they do. They take a big thing off my plate. But they don't know the subject matter like we do. So just go easy on them. They're trying. But I said I would tell the egress industry story in the wrap up. And I should. It's definitely a wild one. But they've told the story on several other podcasts. And when they have such a good, robust catalog of weird, I wanted to do something different during the show. But I will say, if you want to hear them talk about it themselves, check out their confessionals interview or their tinfoil hat episode. But see, what had happened was, Steve was doing some research on Reddit for one of their upcoming shows and stumbled across a dream flyer or multiple dream flyers that asked particular questions asking people to call in and report their odd dreams. And these flyers advertised a phone number for egress industries. Steve thought it might be a provocative idea for the show and bought a burner phone to call the number. Now, I might get some small details wrong, but I think a few voicemails came back that were odd and semi-robotic enough to give them the creeps. And then they linked up with this guy, Bob Hicks, who hosts his own show called Tales from the Dark. And when they started talking to him, apparently, egress industries immediately knew about it and began texting their phones and the phones of some of their acquaintances, numbers that they should not have had access to because, of course, this started with a burner phone. I think an example of such a text would be when egress texted Bob, tell hollow sky hello. Egress even started to text Kyle's co-worker and may have possibly made an in-person visit to his wife. So they told this story, talked about it on two different podcast episodes, and the internet sleuths started investigating it. The Brohio podcast did an interview in 2020 with Bob from the Tales from the Dark podcast, where he links the survey to pay phones, which he thinks are phones used for the sex trade in the I-75 sex trade corridor, apparently. And when I look at the comments on posts about this story, the most common wet blanket conclusion is that this was a hoax put on by Bob Hicks. Because when you're first taking a cursory look at this story, you might be able to make an argument that Bob was playing both sides. I'm sure Kyle and Steve would have a response to that theory, because they know how much information he had about them and at what specific times. But there was even a post by Kyle or Steve on the ARG subreddit asking if anyone had heard of this as an ARG, and I'll just read his post. They say, look, he knew his name, where he worked, and gave GPS coordinates as to where he was. They also responded with Alistair Crowley quotes and all sorts of weird shit. So we interviewed said YouTuber, which I'm thinking is Bob Hicks, and while we were doing the interview, Egress started texting him. They knew the name of our podcast, my first name, gave us some random coordinates to Somerset Kentucky, a paranormal Fortean hotspot, and then they called with a voice recording that stated our podcast name, a string of numbers, and another Crowley quote. It screams ARG to me, but I need help with the string of numbers. I'll set up a Discord if anyone is interested and helping out, as again, I'm not sure if this is actually an ARG or someone just fucking with us. And apparently any time they would text the number or call, I guess, they would get a response at midnight on the hour the next day. Certainly weird. And the Reddit post there suggests that the Hollow Sky guys had a genuine interest in figuring it out. I don't think it was their operation, but it seems like there's really only a couple of solutions here. It was either a Bob Hicks hoax, which would mean that a guy who had a fledgling paranormal podcast would put out these flyers as bait and hope that something interesting happens, eventually getting a bite from some guys who actually have an audience of their own, which just in and of itself seems highly unlikely. And then you add to it, it seems like whoever's on the egress side of things was still able to have information that your standard old hoaxer wouldn't really be able to come up with. So when you put that aside, I can really only come up with a couple other thoughts. It could have been an ARG type of thing to draw in players or something like Cicada 3301, a shady corporation putting out feelers for strange dreams looking for people who fit a certain profile. Who knows? But there really is no resolution to that story. It's just kind of what went down. If you hear anything more about egress industries, let me know. Again, with those interviews that they've done in the past, you can hear the actual messages they got and they are quite weird. But that said, let's look at the last episode and do the ratings thing. David Wechsler, Electroculture. I'm glad we could do a more focused episode on that. The one with Matt Roschke kind of went off the rails into all kinds of different areas. It was a great episode, but not exactly electroculture focused. I thought it was worth revisiting and the audience pretty much agrees. 4.8. Love it. The number of ratings is low, which I think happens with topics like this that maybe are less exciting overall. But the number is what it is. And 4.8 is great. And as you know, it's time to look at the meetup calendar, Hiresidemeetups.com. If you hear about an event near you, you might as well go and meet some new local friends that are THC fans as well. Or you can always put your own event on the calendar, plant your flag in the ground, and the people will come. On deck, we have Humboldt, California, November 30th. That is today. All right. Dead Reckoning Tavern. December 9th. Eden Terrace. Auckland, New Zealand. Gale Brath's Ale House. December 21st. Denver, Colorado at Bar None. And January 11th. Ola Brew in Hawaii. Hilo, Hawaii. Okay. The big island, as they say. Never been. And I don't think I'll be able to make it by January 11th. But if you are there, grab a drink and talk THC. But that is what's on deck. The holidays get busy. I don't expect much. But if you want to meet other people, great way to do it. If you're going home for the holidays, you have an extra day, you don't know what to do with it, post a meetup. You might be surprised. But that is pretty much the show. I hope we all navigated the Thanksgiving holiday all right. I would expect us to. We should be well-seasoned at being the odd ones out with strange opinions and knowing how to not ruin the day. Again, check out Hollow Sky if you want to go deeper on a lot of really weird stories in their archive. I'm getting out of here. I've done my part. Your move, lead helmet wearing dead guys, CERN portal openers, and Saturnian dealmakers. Your fucking move. If you see ships landing your yard at night, or find helmets on some dead guys' heads. If you make a strange agreement with Saturn himself, or some nicer demon being instead. If you are some creepy corporation collecting accounts of crazy dreams. If you're seeing boo-er everywhere, and don't know what it means. Island steed actors. Love Sky got weird stuff collectors. If you see a portal open outside of Geneva, or space brains in West LA. Find a Hong Kong forest where folks go missing, or get accosted by a gray. Need a meat shower investigated, or an ancient weapon found. Only one place to go for answers. These guys get around. Island steed of collectors.