0:15
Welcome to Haunted History Chronicles, the podcast where we unravel the mysteries of the past, one ghostly tale at a time.
I'm your host, Michelle, and I'm thrilled to be your guide on this eerie journey through the pages of history.
0:31
Picture this a realm where the supernatural intertwines with the annals of time, where the echoes of the past reverberate through haunted corridors and forgotten landscapes.
That's the realm we invite you to explore with us.
Each episode will unearth stories, long buried secrets, dark folklore, tales of the macabre, and discuss parapsychology topics from ancient legends to more recent enigmas.
1:01
We're delving deep into locations and accounts all around the globe, with guests joining me along the way.
But this podcast is also about building a community of curious minds like you.
Join the podcast on social media, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to share your own ghostly encounters, theories, and historical curiosities.
1:24
Feel free to share with friends and family.
The links are conveniently placed in the description for easy access.
So whether you're a history buff with a taste for the supernatural or a paranormal enthusiast with a thirst for knowledge, Haunted History Chronicles is your passport to the other side.
1:45
Get ready for a ride through the corridors of time where history and the supernatural converge, because every ghost has a story and every story has a history.
And now let's introduce today's podcast or guest.
2:03
Today we have a guest who brings an unparalleled prowess and expertise in the paranormal.
Prepare yourselves as we're joined by none other than Evelyn Hollow, A double Academy award-winning Scottish writer and paranormal psychologist.
2:19
Evelyn has left her mark in the haunted realm, contributing numerous articles to Haunted Magazine.
As a former psychology lecturer with a Master of Research degree in Paranormal Psychology, she has become a sought after consultant for various TV shows and podcasts you might have witnessed.
2:37
Her insights on the smash hit BBC show like The Battersea Poltergeist, The Witch Farm and Uncanny.
Evelyn's paranormal expertise also graces the screen, with Warner Brothers TV shows Spooked Scotland and Spooked Ireland both streaming on Discovery Channel.
2:56
Plus, join us as Evelyn takes us on a journey through the shadows, sharing her wealth of knowledge on paranormal history and the quantum physics of anomalous phenomena.
Brace yourselves for an episode that transcends the boundaries between the known and the mysterious, and let's say hello to our guest, Evelyn Hollow.
3:20
Hi, Evelyn.
Thank you so much for joining me this evening.
Hello Michelle.
No, no worries at all.
Thank you for having me.
Do you want to start by just kind of maybe giving some of your background and and the reasons why you got into the field of paranormal psychology?
3:39
Yeah, so I am a paranormal psychologist and writer.
I originally started off doing a bachelor's degree in psychology and I mostly specialized in forensic psychology, and I also had a keen interest in the interactions between human consciousness and quantum physics.
3:58
I then in my 4th year of my bachelor's found out that parapsychology was a thing and decided to swap speciality, and I was lucky to be able to do that.
I had a professor at the university who had a had a PhD in parapsychology, so he was able to supervise me.
4:16
And then I went on to do my master's of research, also specialising in parapsychology.
And then after that I I was a lecturer for for two, maybe three years.
I also did guest lectures elsewhere.
I'm still writing the entire time, not just in parapsychology but also other areas of nonfiction.
4:36
I was trained as a travel writer by the only planet originally.
I also write fiction, nonfiction, things like that.
And I mostly sort of specialized in kind of history of the paranormal.
So things like folklore, paranormal history, Kirsten, enchanted objects, haunted houses and sort of looking at the SAT.
4:56
Not just the sort of anthropology, sociology and history, but also the psychology and also hard science of those things.
Also worked in a lot of poltergeist cases.
And then later on, I was contacted by Danny Robbins and to do a show he was creating called the Battersea Poltergeist.
5:12
So I did that a good couple of years ago.
Now that went unexpectedly viral.
And after that we did the Witch Farm and Uncanny.
I think all three shows have got a combined total of like more than 50 million worldwide lessons or something, which is insanity and yeah, and things like that.
5:31
So I'm just working constantly as a, as a parapsychologist.
I mostly do.
I've done a bunch of television shows and stuff as well.
So it's sort of TV and radio, I still guess, lecture occasionally, still writing.
And my first debut full book comes out this year, actually in September, which is an Atlas of paranormal places.
5:50
So yeah, that's about where I am at the moment.
I'm honestly surprised you have time to breathe because your schedule must just be insane.
I mean, you mentioned just how busy you are and I can't believe it.
I mean the amount of things that you are involved in and you know, following you on social media, you are forever going from one place to another to attend something.
6:13
And it, I mean, like I said, you just, you must be incredibly busy.
It must keep you very much on your toes.
It does.
I mean, it's kind of hilarious.
I've told this a couple of times, but I had a a professor who was who was also, I think, I think he was headed the Ethics Committee as well.
6:31
And when I was swapping from forensic psychology to parapsychology, he said that it was career suicide, which is hilarious because I've just never been busier.
I mean, it's hard to, it's hard to even fathom.
I mean, I think people always think that, you know, working in things like sort of paranormal and occult and folklore and things like that would be not that busy a job.
6:53
But it is alarmingly busy.
I think.
I think I would need to check.
I think I've done five TV shows, three big video shows.
I also just presented A5 Hour Special on The Wicker Man for BBC Radio 4 Extra which aired in December and we just did a two-month long tour of Uncanny Live.
7:16
So we did 42 dates, two months straight of touring and then we are actually going back on tour in a couple of months.
Mostly this month I've spent doing the copy edit on my book and pitching new books to different publisher and recording the Christmas specials and stuff.
7:35
As soon as I came back from tourists, we were on various shows and and whatnot and interviews and things like that.
But yeah, it's incredible how much it never it never stops.
I really need to get some sort of, like, actual.
I don't have an, like Danny has an assistant, I don't have an assistant.
7:51
And I'm kind of getting to the point where I'm considering maybe I should get one or several.
Yeah, Several, yeah.
Several Diaries and several people to help you manage all of that.
Because that's just, yeah, it sounds impossible to me.
I don't know how you do it.
I really don't.
Yeah, there's that.
8:07
I I was gonna say coffee, but I don't even drink that much coffee anymore.
I'm I'm.
I'm diagnosed with chronic chronic astritis a couple of years ago, and now I'm doomed to only be able to have like 1 cup of coffee a day maximum so.
And I have chronic insomnia as well, so I only sleep an average of about 5 hours a night, which is how I get so much done in a day.
8:25
But it's also I'm perpetually shattered.
And you mentioned kind of in that very extensive kind of list of all the things that have been keeping you busy.
Obviously a number of different shows that you've been involved in and obviously some of the things that you were interested in as part of your research.
8:42
And I imagine being from Scotland growing up in that area, just the incredible mythology and mysticism and history that the location has must have had an impact on you.
And I mean, I mean it's so magical.
8:59
I think it's, it's unlike so many places around the world.
It just seems to have something very unique and it draws people in, in terms of the stories that it has to yield.
And I think that came through in one of your shows which was Speak to Scotland and obviously then you've been on Speak to Ireland, which I think has a similar type of feel and and kind of history and draw to it that Scotland seems to have.
9:23
Absolutely.
You know, the Scotland is an incredibly ancient place, very dense and rich history of mythology and folklore.
You know, lots of violent history as well which can give rise to sort of, you know, supernaturality and the paranormal, incredibly complex and diverse place.
9:47
The history is, is just remarkable.
And you're right it's very similar to Ireland both of us being you know to the to the two Celtic nations or to all the Celtic nations and I believe in our language sort of overlap.
10:03
So Scottish Gaelic and Irish as we would call it Irish Irish Gaelic, it's just Irish when you're over there is is very, very similar And yeah our our mythology and kind of belief systems tend to overlap.
I'm Scottish Celtic Pagan that if you speak to an Irish Celtic Pagan that's, you know, our belief systems are very similar.
10:24
There's just a couple of, you know, sort of key names and traditions and things that are, you know, kind of radiations on a theme.
Yeah, that's certainly had a big influence on me growing up.
My mother's a key North Korean scholar and very interested in the history of King Arthur and things like that.
10:39
And I grew up partly between Mid Calder and Livingston where I'm originally from.
I'd also a caravan park in the Borders and both you know the sort of mid belt if you like, and the Borders of Scotland have incredibly dense history, the Highlands and Islands especially so and I'm living soon, is just outside of Edinburgh and I lived in Edinburgh actually in the city pretty much my entire adult life.
11:02
And that alone.
I mean, we literally call Edinburgh the city and ghosts because per capita she has the most number of ghost stories of any city in the world.
And people travel from all over to come to Edinburgh to come to the cemeteries and haunted pubs.
11:18
And there was a point in my life where I've worked lots of different jobs over the years and you could go to any job interview of any place in Edinburgh and literally ask what is your ghost?
Because there was that many ghost stories.
She is literally a city of the dead isn't quite literally as she is a city built upon hundreds I'd say hundreds of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dead bodies, plague pits and the vaults to the Covenanters basically concentration camp and all these sorts of places.
11:54
She's at the point now where people literally hit potholes and Eddie got and the potholes here are shocking and that people hit potholes and like bits of skeleton come out.
There was a lot of day.
So speaking to a couple of months ago, there was a lady who was on a walking around some cemeteries here.
12:10
She had a young lad with her and he was sort of wandering off and you know she was telling him not to touch stuff and he came back and of course was like, oh look, I found a bone and of course she's like, Oh yeah, did you like, that's nice thinking.
It's like a bit stick.
No, no.
It was an actual bone and it had rained really, really badly for about two weeks.
12:27
And Gray Flyers in particular, It's got terrible sort of land slippage where when it's wet, the the ground is sort of coming away, the tombstones are all crooked.
They're kind of temporarily looking like because the ground was swallowing graves and something had obviously shifted and something had come to the surface and part of a skeleton and the little boy had found.
12:46
So, I mean it's it's that bad.
But yeah, there's a great place to live if you're a paranormal psychologist because you'll never be short of work.
Yeah, I imagine it keep, it helps keep you busy as well and being able to talk about it.
But honestly, those shows were fantastic because I think not only did they help to really highlight the field that you're in, which is this scientific methodology approaching something in a very investigative role, which is I think different to what people expect based on other shows, maybe that they've seen, you know, kind of an event, if you like, where they've maybe been ghost hunting.
13:23
So you kind of get really immersed in what I think parapsychology is and I think that's very refreshing for an audience to see that.
But I also think the shows, shows really did help to capture that beauty, that mystique, that, that kind of sense of connection with something much older.
13:42
I mean you mentioned how old these these lands are and and I think that also came through the shows really beautifully which I think was so important.
Yeah.
I think it's hard for some people to picture how old Scotland is, especially the Americans when they are, when when they come here.
14:00
Do you know for America an old building is anything in the last sort of hundred hundred years or so and very old as anything.
You know the sort of Victorian, you know, sorry 1800s.
When we say new in Edinburgh, like we literally mean from the 1800s onwards that that is new and anything old.
14:21
I mean we can be talking about stuff 1600s even 15 hundreds she's.
I mean I think if I remember rightly you know Edinburgh University alone is incredibly old and some and some of these universities in the UK as a whole are so old that the first classes were taught when the Aztec Empire was still there.
14:42
And it's it's hard for people's picture like the plumbing in my first flat is older than the Declaration of Independence and things like that.
So it's no surprise that you have such a high rise of, you know, paranormality, and that can go from either, where you can look at it from the perspective of, well, there's so many people, so many dead here, so many lives, so much consciousness, all of that, and a lot of violence and trauma as well.
15:09
Scotland has had a really horrendous past, both of infighting between sort of clans and wars and things, but also, you know, horrendous, you know, kind of colonization and genocide, cultural erasure, that's that's still an ongoing problem and it's a very complex city.
15:30
But also you can look at it from the sort of oral storytelling perspective.
Oral storytelling is a huge bit of of all Celtic cultures, but in particular Scotland and Ireland, and so where stories are passed down that way.
So if you look at the kind of rise of, you know, ghost stories, folklore, even creatures, cryptids, you know, witchcraft, things like that, it's incredibly dense here because it's a huge part of our culture and both from Pagan times and sort of reformation, you know, and even enduring through, you know, sort of variations of Christian faith and Catholicism and things like that.
16:09
And Scotland at its heart is still very much rooted to the land and the seasons, even for people who are not picking.
And therefore the aspect of making sense of the land is a huge aspect which can rise to the sort of dense folklore and traditions and things that we have here.
16:28
Not just our chords and songs and stories, but also our entire culture, our language, everything right down to, you know, from the way we dress to the way we talk to the way we make sense of things, The way we teach things to other people is all completely informed by that.
16:45
It's a very it's a very in its heart it's it's still a very traditionalist folk country.
And that rings true, obviously in the more rural places, but even still in the huge cities like Edinburgh, even past the kind of, you know, gentrification and Disneyfication, there's ongoing problem that we have with the city centre.
17:06
You can't still, if you look in the right places, still find that very traditional start.
I just think there's so many layers to it and and one of the things that I just really appreciated was the fact that Scotland I think just had this, the spotlight put on it and and Ireland 2 with the second, the second series.
17:25
And I don't think there's been many shows that have really focused on those in terms of the the paranormal.
So it was so interesting to be able to really kind of be immersed in in some of what they have to offer via both of those seasons.
17:41
It was, it was really incredible, as I say, for all of those different aspects that we've talked about, the history, the paranormal, the folklore, the all of it.
It just came through so, so very well and so richly.
And for me personally, as a viewer, I I hope there's more of that coming down the future because they were really incredible paranormal shows, I think really, really very well informed and very well done.
18:07
I think the thing with a lot of these I I really watch paranormal shows.
I kind of know of them.
They're not something I tend to certainly watch.
And I think the reason I never did that was because the few glimpses of them that I always have seen have been these sort of very American shows, whereas, you know, people running around and shouting demon every sort of little bumping noise and things like that.
18:34
So when I accepted to do the two sculptures or haunted shows as they're known in America, you know, I wasn't really sure what to expect.
I just, you know, I was glad that they were bringing on a parapsychologist at least because a lot of these shows are kind of just presenters or sort of people interested in it or people that have been brought on to kind of helmet visually.
18:56
And and then you don't go for some tours or things like that, which is fine.
But I was glad that they were just trying ready to bring on a parapsychologist.
So I'm not sure how much of you know.
I don't I spend a lot of time trying to rule things out scientifically and then once we rule out because you in science, you work you work bottoms top, so in an invest sort of triangle way.
19:20
So the goal of science is not to prove things it's to disprove things.
So I would, you know, kind of try to go through, rule things out, disprove things and then so we could whistle it down to like what it is just so that we're trying to get a more a most accurate picture of what we're experiencing.
19:35
And, you know, just sort of working with Ryan, who's a tech guy and, you know, sort of asking questions and making if we were trying to get, you know, proper data or feedback and things like that.
And I'm not actually sure how much of that ever transpired to screen because I've not really seen the shows I've watched.
19:55
I think I watched the first two episodes of Split Scotland and I haven't seen any of the rest just because I have that time and unfortunately not in the not always in the habit of being able to watch stuff back.
I was able to watch the uncanny TV shows back because we were on tour at the same time.
20:12
So it was important that I watched them back because people were going to be coming to show shortly after and like, you know, asking questions.
About things like that.
But it is unfortunately kind of a hazard of the occupation.
That is, if you do lots of projects, especially television and things like that back-to-back, you don't always get time to actually sit down.
20:30
Now you you record dozens and dozens of hours of content and then an episode is sometimes 40 minutes, sometimes an hour.
So trying to squeeze, you know sometimes 6, sometimes like 20 hours of recording, I mean when we did the pilot Facebook Scotland, I think that was like an 18 hour shoot or something and join only a small percentage of it can make it in the show.
20:52
So you know, hopefully that kind of transpires and any time where I was, you know, trying to trying to include sort of scientific verification into maybe an investigation, just trying to make things a bit more and you know, rigorous and concise and things, you know, hopefully that was in it, but I'm actually not sure because I'm not able to watch this show.
21:14
No, I think it did.
And I think it comes through in all of the projects that you do to be honest, that that rigour I think is the perfect word to explain it.
And and like I said at the start, I think it's refreshing for people to see that because I don't think they often have the chance to see somebody applying these scientific methodologies on the screen and kind of examine and be talked through what is happening and the thought behind something and other explanations.
21:44
And I think it's important to show that aspect because part of the problem I think with the paranormal is that, you know, people have this perception that it is one thing and because of that it's not regarded as a science.
And and I think that's such a shame because it does mean then that it's it's kind of harder for people who have that role, who really are working at this as a science, testing things out, researching, adding to this collection, this body of work in terms of understanding it makes it harder.
22:21
And that doesn't happen, I think, in any other science.
But the paranormal kind of has that problem.
And I think part of it is the external influences that mean that there are a lot of misconceptions about it, shall we say.
Yeah, there's a huge amount of of misconception and it's it's one of these things that even happens to me as a parapsychologist because people you see the paranormal is sort of like folk tales, old wife's tales and you know, things to skate with children.
22:51
And then you've also got this incredible popularity of kind of ghost hunters stuff on YouTube, TikTok, the American shows on that stream on Discovery plus in the States and things like this.
And there's these huge misconceptions.
And then I come in and I'm an actually qualified scientist and, you know, people, I don't think it's a thing.
23:12
And of course even within the sciences themselves and I don't think they realize they drive 2° in it.
And I went to Queen Margaret University, but Edinburgh Uni itself one of the oldest and most respected universities in the world, has an entire building for it, the KPU, the cost of parapsychology unit, and which I believe is still held by Caroline Watt.
23:35
And it's a, you know, it has this entire building dedicated for and kind of study of anomalous phenomena.
And not everything in the paranormal is even like, you know, sort of creatures and cryptids and portadice and ghosts and stuff.
It can even be things like, you know, precognition.
23:52
It could be outer body experiences and coma patients and things like that.
There's this incredibly diabetic sort of neuropsychological aspect of it.
There's also sociological and anthropological aspects of it as well.
If you look at things like what is the psychology of cult members, like, how do people get sucked into joining a cult?
24:12
And what happens to, you know, a mother that may be struggling with severe postpartum depression and who believes her, her child, is a demon and things like that.
You know, how how can we work with psychiatrists to have informed and up to date, you know, diagnostic statistical manuals and psychometrics and things like that to help these people?
24:33
You know, what is the actual psychology of paranormal belief?
And The thing is, it's an incredible thing that gets written off so often, which I always I'm stunned by because in my opinion, it's the central tenet is the human existence.
Every single culture, everywhere in the entire world throughout all of history, right back to the dawn of the first approximate, Sapiens has had some sort of belief.
24:57
Whether there was, you know, belief in gods and deities or belief in unseen forces or belief in life after death, or even just like superstition and ritual and practice and things like that.
It exists throughout every single aspect.
25:15
And I think it is the single thing that informs most of all things.
I have a how a person behaves and so how their community behaves.
I have their it shapes their language, it seeks their culture, it shapes their their fashion, their architecture, all of it.
And and yet it's the absolute first thing to get written off, You know, It's just, it's just stunning the level of ignorance that we're still facing in this department.
25:45
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26:50
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27:15
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28:30
Now back to the supernatural stories you won't want to miss.
What's coming up next?
It's the thing that's endured, I think.
I think it's the thing that connects us to our past but also to all these other cultures like you mentioned all around the world.
28:51
It's something very unifying and like you said often times written off as something that's nonsensical which is staggering when you consider some of the the scientific things that are coming out.
You know the advancements that are are being made in terms of possibilities and and theories and and how I think it connects with some of some of the paranormal and I think this is you know some of your interest as well.
29:17
This kind of intersection between things like paranormal phenomena consciousness and then quantum physics.
It's it's fascinating.
And I and I don't know if you want to kind of elaborate on on some of that connection and the importance that that has because like I said, there are such advancements that I think people aren't aware of and should be made aware of and there should be more of things like that going on.
29:40
So when I was doing my my undergrad degree, I was always interested in the hard problem of consciousness.
So what we're still essential, what most of us are still calling charmers as hard problem of consciousness.
And it's that we understand the sort of smaller facets of consciousness, what it is and things that can be composed over or can be emergent properties of it.
30:06
But we don't understand where consciousness comes from.
You can't just, you know, Mary Shelley, someone to life.
You can't stitch body parts together and put electricity through it and they won't ride.
It doesn't make it a person.
And you can put voltage through a beating heart, but that won't make it alive.
30:25
It will pump blind, yes, but it's not alive.
And very much the same with the brain.
So we, you know, all these consciousness is singular to a person, only it is the fundamental aspects of who they are.
You know, if you move this sort of ship a thesis experiment or ship a thesis or anything, if I was to take bits off of the body right the way up into the brain or the head, essentially you're still new.
30:47
And then even the head we could take off the face, bits of the skull, the jaw, things like that, that fundamentally the brain is what you want.
You're a brain piloting a big Mitsu.
So we think, OK, well, this consciousness, you know, look, it must be located in the brain.
But we don't know that for sure.
31:03
And there's lots and lots of different theories as to what consciousness is.
And there's also a lot of fear because if we solve Chalmers's hard problem of consciousness and it means that it could pretend once we understand it, the nature of it, we could potentially try to replicate it and things like that.
And that's when we start getting all sorts of problems because people start mixing that with AI and you end up with, you know the kind of the singularity and be pro Asimovian nightmares.
31:28
So we're still sort of fighting that.
And to me, I felt that consciousness may not, it may be something that's very, very small or made of component particles are very small.
So like rather than it being a single thing or a single, you know, biological area or mass and it may actually be made of individual particles or molecules, things like that they mean when composed together or in a certain order give rise to consciousness.
31:58
And if that's the case and then it would be governed by quantum physics and not classical physics because classical physics govern large things and the quantum governs the very small.
And once I considered that, I realized that if that was possible, if that is true, and then it would explain a huge amount of things that we attribute to paranormality.
32:19
And, you know, things that seem like magic or seem impossible.
And you know, we talk about things moving through walls or things passing through solid objects, and we know that that happens in the quantum.
And the ghost particle, the quark, does that, you know, and it doesn't just pass through walls, it passes through planets.
32:38
And things that appear in the paranormal stories of things are quoting and disappointing, like in poltergeist cases.
So an object appears and then suddenly disappears.
We know that that happens in the quantum, but we know that there are particles that do that and there's lots of other things and you know, in the kind of similarities.
32:55
So I considered that if consciousness is governed by quantum physics, that that may give a rise to an explanation.
And for many paranormal aspects.
It's a case of proving that there have been multiple experiments that have very promisingly shown over the years that we think that the consciousness may be molecular or individual corticals.
33:19
And we also, you know, are increasingly proving larger theorems and things like quadrant entanglement, string theory, things like that.
We've now proved and not only proven, but we're doing it on an increasingly larger scale.
And so that also accounts for some of that as well.
But I don't know if it's anything we'll ever solve in my lifetime, but it's.
33:39
Yeah, it's certainly a collection of theories I started working on during my bachelor's degree and it was nicknamed Hollow's theorem.
And it's one of those things that, you know, I'm it's got three sort of core components and I think one is definitely proven, another one is mostly proven that, you know, it just needs more work.
33:58
The the third one, I just don't know if I'll see it in my lifetime.
But yeah, that's the sort of work.
That's my working understanding of the paranormal.
Is that?
But it is.
It's so.
I mean, it's so interesting when you think about things like phenomena like time slips for example.
It just it helps to make things like that seem much more possible if that makes sense.
34:17
And we see really strange things in nature don't we, that that kind of help to show this.
And and again it just it blows my mind that there are still people who who aren't willing to kind of look at this as as something to study and to really take seriously incredibly simply because of the reputation that it has.
34:41
Because there are so many things that I think are still there to be debated and to be researched and to be explored really thoroughly.
And I think this is kind for me.
I think this is the kind of the real kind of next step and the the kind of the things that we would like to see going forward to really try and I don't know enhance to move thinking forward.
35:01
I don't know, but it's certainly a really, really fascinating aspect of of some of the research that's that's being done and things that are coming out at the moment, which is intriguing.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I think, I think, you know, that is always the question, you know, why don't people want to look at the stuff?
35:19
And there's a variety of explanations.
And I think what's obvious fun is that people are uncomfortable talking about it.
You know, they've definitely been brought up that you don't talk about this sort of stuff.
You don't talk about these experiences because people will think you're you're you're crazy or you're unhinged or unwell.
35:37
And if that is the case, then you would be at risk of losing your job or losing your standing in the community.
And you're going to have a huge impact on your life and the quality of life and the quality of life of your family and people around you.
So people just shut up about it and they just they never talked about it.
35:54
But it's remarkable how many people approach us, especially older people, boomer generation and even further approach us and with with a story and say, you know, I've never told anyone and then tell us this incredible experience because they've had to kind of hold on to it their entire life.
36:12
And and I think that definitely trickle, you know, it trickles down.
People don't want to be involved in it and it's why I was kind of stunned when we made the uncanny TV show and that it was made so BBC Two.
It was made by the documentary unit BBC Four, BBC Two and documentary Unit, which is incredibly, you know, very well respected and very, quite strict, you know, red tape and checking boxes and fact checking and thorough, very thorough and aspects of the BBC productions.
36:45
And so that was incredible because that had never been done before.
There was no way on the active BBC document where specialist documentary you were ever going to touch something to do with the pyrama and yet they made the uncanny show with us.
So that's been really important I think in trying to work collectively, trying to bring credibility and science and questioning and reasoning and awareness to the pyramid.
37:07
These experiences are so much more widespread then anybody has any idea.
And I mean, you know, the amount of emails that like Danny and I and stuff all take all the time from people wanting to share stories.
And that is barely the tip of the iceberg.
37:23
There are so many people out there who who will have had experiences, who aren't familiar with the shows of the work.
And then you've got people beyond that who have had experiences but have never told anybody.
And it's just, it's overwhelming.
It's an absolute avalanche.
And I just think all of these people can't be live.
There'll be a percentage, absolutely there'll be a percentage of people that are lying, especially, you know, as things begin to grow.
37:43
And you know, Danny and Simon have implemented really thorough checks and balances, you know, to make sure to before anyone comes on the show and things like that.
You know, they've had to do it over the years.
It's a safety measure and they're very, very thorough.
But the role of homes always be a percentage of people who are who are asset or trying to get attention or things like that on social media.
38:03
Absolutely.
There'll also be people who are just who just had an experience, but it's not paranormal and they're confused in the brain or and their minds playing tricks on them.
And there'll probably be a percentage of people who've had some sort of unexplained experience.
But it's not paranormal.
It's something else in nature that might have been strange or unusual or rare.
38:19
And but there has to be a percentage of that that is true.
Like, to me, there's just no way that all of these people are lying or all of these people are confused.
You know, it's not 100,000 cases of sleep paralysis.
It's not 100,000 cases of hypnagogia, and it's certainly not 100,000 cases of infrasound, considering the fact that infrasound has the sort of no empirical validity whatsoever.
38:42
It's just there's just no way.
I think something you touched upon is absolutely valid and right, which is that I think uncanny has made it about it.
The impact of that has not only to bring it to the awareness and the consciousness of people watching and consuming either via the podcast or the TV show, but also the fact that it seems to be trickling down in really tiny, small ways into into shows that you wouldn't necessarily expect it to to come through in.
39:13
And I remember recently I was watching.
A.
A documentary program with Stephen Fry and he was looking at the migration of of a butterfly, the monarch butterfly, from this one particular region in Canada to this far more remote place that was 10 tens of thousands of miles away.
39:36
And during the the course of this, this migration, the the butterfly itself that starts off is not the butterfly that arrives at the the destination that it's travelling to.
It's the next generation and part way through this flight the butterfly reproduces.
39:54
They basically mate mid flight and it knows where it's going.
And he was reflecting and talking in this in this program about how is that possible?
How is it possible that when the previous generation has died off, this next generation seems to have this information and it was just really fascinating to see some of this?
40:19
Kind of conversation, this topic about strange matters coming through in a nature programme, a documentary programme about butterflies, And and I think you see little things like that starting to creep through that makes it OK to talk about things that are a little bit unsure, You know, strange or unsure that people maybe wouldn't have talked about so much five years ago or 10 years ago.
40:44
Yeah, absolutely.
I think it's, yeah, all of the stuff is really fascinating and I think that, but we often don't consider the term of even like the word supernatural because we sort of use paranormal and supernatural interchangeably.
But supernatural in particular or even even the use of the term preternatural, we forget that we're talking about aspects of nature.
41:02
So you were mentioning about the butterflies there.
Nature does the most incredibly bizarre stuff all the time.
And people, they kind of have this separate notion in their head.
They consider themselves, they consider human beings and human consciousness to be an aspect of nature separate from itself, and it's simply not true.
41:22
If all of that strange, preternatural supernaturality and strangeness is true of nature, then it has to be true of us, and it has to be true of our consciousness.
You have this terrible separatist attitude and humans, you're thinking that we're not part of the system.
41:38
And if you look at religions that do I'm paganism, that fundamentally all you are is part of the part of nature where you were all one thing essentially together.
It's all kind of homogeneous.
There's hardly any distinction.
You know, we are the land.
The land is us.
And look at it.
41:55
All of those sort of belief systems have a much closer tie to things like, you know, rituals and paranormality and spiritualism and things like that.
And I think that's probably why, because we have a, you know, perhaps the best understanding of the inherent strangeness of nature.
42:15
And that that inherent strangeness also applies to us.
Absolutely, I think.
There's something about us that somehow we feel we're a bit more superior to it all and like you said, separate from it all and and and I think that's a mistake.
I think it's really important to look at nature, to look at things that happen, you know, that are part of these biorhythms or just like you said this almost shared consciousness, consciousness and memory and and connection with the land and these things being symbiotic.
42:45
I mean again it's it's part of this thing that I think has been the problem for hundreds of years.
It's this constant pull from one side of the debate to the other and and it just diminishes I think sometimes from some of these very important conversations and and aspects of research that really do and will continue I think to need further study.
43:08
And I think that, you know, we're kind.
Of at danger of losing that because people, you know, academics, have to obviously pitch things to universities to research and study and come up with testable hypothesis and design.
All of this and it's, you know, just agonisingly endless and time consuming.
43:25
But The thing is that it all relies on funding and then people want to fund things and that I've got, you know, sort of promised results that, you know, they're obviously funding things like medicine and tech and whatnot, but they're not really interested in funding the unknown because the everything is about capitalism.
43:41
So academia sees it as a bad investment and potentially, you know, someone says listen, there's this really strange thing that happens and we want to test how it happens and if it happens elsewhere because you'd like to understand what it is.
Nobody is about to pony up, you know, 500K for that and the one, you know, strict results and things like that.
44:03
So we kind of are at risk of losing that really interesting and sort of curious nature just of the unknown and of the strangeness and of the kind of inherently more fringe and sort of weirder bits of science, you know, and it is incredibly difficult to to keep going.
44:19
You know, people also, why don't we, why don't we research that, Why don't we test it or examine it?
And money capitalism, that's the answer, that's why.
Just to come back to what you were saying.
I think you're absolutely right.
44:35
I think money plays such a big part of that and what dominates science is where people want to put that funding for other reasons.
And this, this whilst it's so important I think to the kind of the questions that we have as human beings, it it doesn't send a rocket to the moon and it doesn't, you know, it doesn't do all of these other things that I think are where the the funding and the money comes into it.
44:58
Sadly, yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Honestly, it's so.
Fascinating to talk to you about the science.
And like I said, I just think this is, this is part of what I certainly hope are some of the developments to come within the field because it's so intriguing.
45:13
And you know when you when you look and you kind of dive into some of the research material in the papers and and you see some of these things being demonstrated by scientists.
I mean I remember vividly a few years ago that the experiment with the the flowers and water and it just blew my mind how the water remembered the flower.
45:34
I mean it's just there are so.
Many things that I.
Think are being done and shared, which are just fascinating and like I said, I hope that's some of the development to come within the field because it's so interesting and I think it proved will will add so much to what is a ghost.
45:50
What are some of these phenomena like time slips and explaining possibly some of these things hopefully in the future.
Yeah, hopefully it's.
One of those things, you know, where they both kind of be solved in our lifetime.
Even recently when we were doing our Carly for television, we had an exit where we talked a little bit about time slips and even off the back of that, you know, one of those sort of most interesting cases or aspects of the case in it.
46:16
And we had a person who's reported experiencing quite an intense time slip and we found someone else who'd been there at the same time through the show, coincidence.
They'd also been there at the exact same time and were able to kind of corroborate the experience and things like that.
46:33
So which is just, you know, mind blowing because it's easy to rule, you know, rule out one person is, you know, not being able to rely on their senses or having misheard something or didn't see what they thought they saw or maybe had some sort of neurological sort of freak incident and things like that.
46:50
And it's much harder to rule out.
But you have several people kind of all at the same time.
And so, you know, even outside of kind of lab work and research and things like that, and I find that doing these shows uncanny.
In particular, it is rewarding because we are just consistently trying to chip away at just how many people have had these experiences and making sure that we're being really thorough with interviewing people and cross checking witnesses.
47:15
And there's a whole, you know, researchers and stuff who look at lots of manpower, who look through dates and and records and National Archives, housing, land, ecology, etymology, all of it.
And you know, just dig through all of this stuff to verify cases and be thorough.
47:34
And I think that's good because it's maybe one of the few times in history where we've had the manpower and the interest and the funding to the to do that essentially, which is incredible and again to be able to show.
Some of that to show some of that level of attention to detail I I think is hugely rewarding for the field and and I think it just really lifts the lid in terms of being able to.
48:02
Make.
People more aware of of that and that side of it and just how rigorous, you know the the kind of the rigor that is involved in what is needed to really try and chip away at what's happening.
And so, yeah, I think it it brings it to the audience in a way that is very easy to to follow along, makes it very much more accessible and easy to understand.
48:24
And you, you have something that is very balanced and presented in a manner that means that people can really just observe and really come away thinking about what they perceive might be happening or not happening based on what they're being presented with.
And and I think that's, I think it's fantastic and refreshing that that's being done to be honest as we've been talking about.
48:46
Yeah, absolutely.
I think it's.
It's important not only for the field, but it's also important I think for other people because there's lots of like they have had experiences and don't want to come forward because they think they're going to get laughed at or it's going to be very sensationalist and they're going to have their life ruined.
49:02
And obviously when you sit down with these people and but it's on television show, podcast, radio and things like that and speak to them and you won't believe how frightened some of these people are.
Not only that they might have the experience again, but also that they're worried that, you know, this is going to ruin their life and or should they even be talking about it, or they're just worried about how insane they're going to be perceived as and things like that.
49:25
And you can also see how much the experience has altered them.
And lots of people, like, you know, like Daniel says he's never had a paranormal experience.
He sort of lives vicariously through other people and he's always wanted to have one.
And I always think, you know, be careful what you wish for because a lot of these people are irrevocably altered by the experience.
49:46
They are literally never the same again.
Kieran told me a story when we were on tour at the time that Oh yeah, God, where were we?
Oxford or Cambridge?
I'm going to say Oxford.
And he was.
I think there's this big sort of prison stroke castle in Oxford and Kaden was was on a ghost something there and there was this couple in the back and the husband in particular did not want to be here, just did not believe in any of it.
50:16
Thought it was all rubbish being dragged along by his misses.
And basically they they they were also going down and sort of walking through the cells, the sort of jail area.
And when they, you know, they'd walked past and seeing someone in one of the cells and thought, you know, it's a sort of mannequin, just sort of an Edinburgh dungeon stuff sort of thing, you know, Yeah, like crawl.
50:35
And then they realized that it was an actual person and there was just a person, like a man sitting in the cell.
What was he doing?
Roderick Kieran said he was just facing the wall, like scratching into the wall or something.
It was something awful.
And then he wasn't there, you know, recently vanished.
50:53
And the guy had to be fit.
The husband had to be physically carried out of the place because he was absolutely catatonic with fear.
Do you know, he, he thought all of this was rather he didn't believe in at all.
And then he walked down and he saw a full person who's really you and you or I in a cell locked up.
51:12
You're scratching into the wall screaming or whatever he was doing.
And then just simply he wasn't there and, you know, and there was nobody down there, you know, security cameras or whatever.
It just wasn't there.
And both him and his wife saw it the exact same time and it was as real as a physical person.
51:27
Yeah, he was absolutely catatonic, Kieran said.
He was completely like white.
Kieran said it was the first thing we'd ever actually seen a human being go literally as white as a ghost.
And and he was completely speaking generously.
Couldn't that word a shot, Black Ornam and stuff.
51:44
So I always think, you know, be careful what you wish for.
Absolutely.
And and I.
Think that proves something that you were kind of referencing earlier, which is this challenge to the status quo.
And for for people who find this difficult to kind of grapple with it, I think it is because they don't like to deviate from the path that they think to have that challenged or or kind of subverted in any way.
52:10
And I think when you have something, the challenge challenges that when you experience something that you can't explain, it really can be truly, you know, life altering because it has completely shifted your world, your thinking and how you view things.
52:26
And I think that's why it can have that very strong, lasting impact.
If if you've had a moment like that, yeah, it's something that you don't forget.
If it's if it's truly something that you can't explain, yeah, absolutely, Joe.
Yeah, I think it's like it's something that ever leaves you.
52:43
But I think also worse than that, the reason people are so much stuck by it is that it completely challenges the entire world view.
So they have to challenge everything we think we know about life after death and about the religious beliefs or or personal sort of belief systems and about previous stories that they've heard, just all of that.
53:06
And it literally challenges the entire world for you, essentially.
And I think that is what I don't think.
I think that's one of the most incredibly insane things that could possibly happen to the person.
And there's no way to be to go back after that there.
There will, from that point in your life, there will always be a before and an after essentially just to kind of bring things together.
53:23
One of the questions that someone asked me to ask you is, do you have any recommendations for, you know, really good paranormal research books or places to start engaging with the topic?
If they're interested in in kind of doing their own study or their own kind of deep dive into some of these areas or do you have any recommendations, that is a good question.
53:44
I'm actually sitting your mouth.
It's just no, it's actually a good chance.
So if you're interested in sort of understanding quantum physics and consciousness, so I recommend it.
And I understand that can be a sadly daunting and complicated subject to get into.
54:02
So if you're, you know, knowledge of physics is fairly rudimentary and you'd like walk through the concepts and also the concept of consciousness and then also how they meet sort of you know a complete walkthrough for you know.
For relative beginners, I would recommend The Quantum Enigma and Physics Encounters Consciousness.
54:22
It's by Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kutner.
It's published on Duckworth Overlook and that would be my recommendation.
That was it's one of my favorite books and that's a very good jumping off point.
I got seen in terms of parapsychology, actual books all of my very old a couple of years ago now I've sent a copy of this.
54:43
This is a big book.
It's not.
The copy I have is not hardback.
It's about $500 pages.
It is even big book and it's called A Short History of Nearly Everything Paranormal.
It's by Terja G Simonson, and I'm definitely pronouncing that correctly.
It's TERGETERJE is the first name Terja G Simonson, and that's published on Watkins, and it was actually the winner of the Parapsychological Society Book Award in 2019.
55:13
But it is a huge comprehensive book with everything, some sort of like psy and you know, PSI, rather telepathy, you know, just a kind of unknown CSR PSI, you know, precognition, things like that, mysticism and psychic pathfinders, sort of general sort of mythology and things like that.
55:35
You've also got Clairvoyance Project, Stargate, different sort of mysticism, Mystic beliefs of the capabilities of the lines of religion.
And you've also got famous psychologists and scientists and you know, zombie theory, anthropology, spirits, modern myths, just loads of stuff, transpersonal psychology and also classical psychology as well.
56:02
So you've got things like, you know, psychoanalytical perspectives.
But yeah, if you want to comprehensively probably that one, A short history of newly everything Paranormal by Simonson is their surname would be my recommendation.
And I would say if your interest is in looking at a kind of complete, you know, sort of more sort of comprehensive understanding of just sort of supernatural cases in general, like where where would I begin?
56:32
And a book that both Danny and I are fond of is the book Supernatural by called the Wilson, which is also published on Watkins.
And you know, we've discussed that possible times.
It's a good sort of little bit of everything book.
It's very accessible and I think if you're looking at sort of general folklore and sort of legends and cryptids and creatures and things, then I would recommend Breberton's Phantasmagoria, which is by Terry and Breberton that's published on Quirkers.
57:01
But yeah, hopefully those are some jumping off points.
I yeah, I was going to say some.
Of those are some of my favorite books.
So yeah, I think there will be really good recommendations for people listening.
So thank you for kind of sharing some of those and and sharing your enthusiasm and knowledge and passion for for the subject to as part of the discussion today.
57:21
So thank you so much for your time.
No worries.
Thank you Madam Michelle, I was I was happy to chat with you and I will make sure.
To put all of your details on the podcast description, dates, etcetera, so they can find your website.
They can follow you on social media so they will know when your book comes out later on in the year and and all of those other things because you know you do an awful lot you you work so hard.
57:45
As we kind of mentioned at the the start of the podcast, you are doing an awful lot I think for the field and helping to bring some of that to all of us as the general public.
So yeah, thank you so much for what you've you've been doing really.
I'm happy to do it so.
58:02
You know, I'm like, it's never lost on me how how privileged I am to to do the job that I do.
Very there's very, very few of us and it's an incredibly difficult for you to get into.
And you know, it's literally the least boring job in the world.
58:17
It is incredibly hard work, but it is the literally the least boring job in the world.
And that is absolutely never lost on me.
How, how grateful and how lucky I am to be able to do it.
And hopefully, you know my insights on my conversations are at least I guess, interesting, if nothing else, or or are useful to anyone in any way.
58:36
But yeah, obviously people have questions.
I'm on social media and Twitter and Instagram and stuff, and obviously to chat to people, they have very weird queries.
The weird are the better.
By hell, don't you just love it?
When?
Someone puts out there, though.
The weirder the better.
Yeah, I get a lot.
58:53
Of I can imagine you get a lot.
Of the weird questions but honestly it's been it's been such a joy to talk to you and and you you have just such a wealth of of knowledge and information and yeah I think I'm really looking forward to your book.
I I imagine it's going to be a really well you know put together considered book with an awful lot of information and something very valuable to the collection of books that I've got.
59:19
So I'm really looking forward to that one, as I think most people will be, to be honest.
Well, here's hoping.
It's, it's, it's certainly.
I had a meeting with my publishers the other day and I saw some, they sent me some mock ups of the the inside of the layout because we've got my photographer who's done maps for every entry and you know, full colour photographs and stuff And it's it's a it's a good looking book.
59:42
If nothing else it's it's a handsome book.
So hopefully I'll you know, it comes out, I'll be very proud of it and hopefully other people will enjoy it too.
I can't wait, honestly.
Thank you so much for your time and I will say goodbye to everybody listening.
Bye everyone.
