===TRANSCRIPT START===

Disclaimer. This episode features one of the scariest, most spine-chilling things the show has ever presented. Technical difficulties. Some with known causes, some potentially otherworldly. All unacceptable. Listener forgiveness advised.

Welcome back to Scared All The Time. I'm Chris Cullari.

And I'm Ed Voccola.

We're still here, you guys are still listening. The circle of podcast life is eternal. All hail the RSS feed. Today we're taking you on a trip to the very origins of Scared All The Time. Because part of the way this podcast started is that I pitched to Ed that we should do a spooky late night interview show where we use a Ouija board to talk to famous dead people. I thought it would be awesome. We could be the first podcast to interview Beethoven or Edgar Allan Poe or Charlie Chaplin or Richard Nixon or Jesus or whoever. Ed did not agree that this would be awesome. In fact, he really hated the idea.

He said, Absolutely not. Absolutely not. And I'll say why absolutely not because I feel like most people who know me knows this, but someone asked to do a music video at my house. They were like, Hey, can we use your, we needed an apartment, a shitty apartment. Can we use your apartment for like a location for this music video? And I was like, absolutely whatever you need. And then I got to talking about what the music video was going to be about. And they were like, Oh yeah, you know, someone's going to be at a Ouija board and they're going to be, I'm like, you know what? You can't use it. Everything I just said, it's absolutely not. So yeah, no, I'm never going to have a Ouija board on air or not on air. And that's the thing is it's like, Oh, do you believe in ghosts? And I'm like, yeah, sort of. If I believed in ghosts in the sense that I thought they were that like dead people were looking at us all the time, then I would just never jerk off. But I definitely do. So I don't believe it in that sense, but I do believe it in the weird sense enough where it's like, if I play this game, I'm inviting something in that I can't, I can't vet beforehand. Because if there's anything I've learned about Ouija boards, or at least from watching movies and television, is it's never who you're talking to. It's never like, hey, I want to talk to Susie. Hey Susie, you there? And then it's like, yeah, I'm here. And it's like, you don't sound like Susie.

But let's pause right there.

Yeah.

Because before we go any further, I think we should dim the lights, burn a candle, open our minds, and invite our listeners to join us as we talk about Talking to the Dead.

Oh, really? Fuck.

What are we?

Scared.

When are we? Now it is time for. Scared All The Time. Hey everybody, welcome back. Thanks so much for listening. We really hope that you are still liking the show after these first three episodes. Something really important for housekeeping right off the top. This is gonna be our first episode not being automatically pushed into the Astonishing Legends feed.

Which makes it probably the worst possible episode to have a ton of technical issues on, but that's what happened. I think we have four different mics, two different locations over three different sittings to get this episode done, but I did my best that it shouldn't be too annoying. Don't turn it off. I think it's pretty fun. I just want it to be transparent. So that said, Chris, what were you saying about this being a new feed?

So that means the only people who are gonna hear this third episode are people who are already subscribed specifically to the Scared All The Time feed. So please make sure that you are subscribed to that feed. And if you like the show, if you like what we're doing, please make sure that you're telling your friends, that you're telling other Astonishing Legends listeners because we really want to be able to build our own community over here with Scared All The Time. So please post, tweet, like, subscribe, rate, review. You guys have been really great on Apple podcasts already, rating and reviewing, but if you haven't, just even a simple rating of a couple of stars, however much you like us and a nice two, three sentences would be awesome.

You want to pop some stars on Spotify. You want to pop some stars on Pocket Cast or whatever you listen to. They got a star option. Throw us a few. That'd be great. But most importantly is let people know we exist. That would be cool too.

Yeah, absolutely. So while we're in housekeeping, Ed, what did you do for Halloween?

Hung out with my buddy Josh, his wife Brandy and their kids, do it most years. Help him hand out Halloween candy, stuff like that to the people in the neighborhood. They do really big, really elaborate decorations at his house. He was already months in advance building giant crypts and cemetery for his front yard. And they do the musical pumpkins and everything for the people in the neighborhood. And so he goes pretty big, so I go over there and help out. What about you? What did you get into?

I am in Hershey, Pennsylvania, as I always am for Halloween. It's where I grew up. And we have this street called Elm Ave, not Elm Street, but Elm Ave. And it's basically like the best Halloween street I've ever seen. It's like very quaint Americana and everyone has all their decorations out. And there's a house a few doors down that does Nightmare on Elm Ave is their own little home haunt where all the kids dress up and they build like a little mad scientist lab in a graveyard and the kids jump out and it's great every year. It was extra great this year. I handed out a little bit of candy. My mom actually lives kind of around the corner from Elm Ave, so they kind of get the Elm Ave cast off. So we don't get a ton of trick or treaters, but we got a few and it was fun to give the kids perfectly safe candy with nothing bad in it. Great Halloween. Do we have any shout outs you want to do?

I think we have a correction. Last week we mispronounced one of our shout outs. We said Tona, but turns out it's Tana. She says like Donna with a T. So thanks Tana and sorry about that.

We should shout out Tina Fox on the Facebook page who guessed that episode two was going to be about booby-trapped candy. And I think we should also shout out Sherry Lynn on the Facebook group who told us that in Massachusetts they've made it illegal to hand out those like boozy Christmas candies to kids that have like a drop of scotch or whatever in them, which is probably fine. Cause I feel like in Boston, kids are skipping straight to beer anyway.

So you're bringing your pillowcase up to package stores.

Yeah, you're going to the packy and you're getting whatever they've got left. I also wanted to shout out, we got a bunch of people actually writing in to tell us about UK Halloween and how much it sucks and how apparently it really was nothing until recently. And my theory about that is I think there's a reason, cause like it seems like UK Halloween should be awesome. It's so old and they have like the moors and the fog and the rain and the, they have very ancient Celtic and Gaelic traditions. So my theory is it's almost like Freddy vs. Jason, where in that movie, the parents on Elm Street tried to bury what happened so that they can strip Freddy of all his power. And I think that's what the UK is doing for Halloween. They're trying to just forget it because if they remember how powerful they are on Halloween, Stonehenge might turn on again and start working or whatever the hell it does.

It just assembles itself like a transformer and it's just like a huge rock Gundam.

Yeah, exactly, yeah. That would be bad for everyone because I don't think America could fight that.

America could fight that.

We don't know how strong they are.

It's fucking rocks, dude.

Yeah.

I have a little bit of quick housekeeping. My brother called me after listening to the last episode and he was like, you're too young to remember, but mom did check our candy and she actually taught us all how to look for pinholes and stuff in the packaging. My brothers are older than me, so I don't remember that, but he was like, I wanna set the record straight, I guess. But then he also told me a really good, quick trick or treat story about his neighborhood. I guess this is like a couple years ago, he took the kids trick or treating and someone in their neighborhood just gave out snow globes, like full size.

As a trick or treat thing?

Yes, like they came to the door, trick or treat. Now, Tom, my brother, he was like, the kids were with other families and stuff, but all the families came back. So there's like a bunch of kids and they all in their bag had like snow globes, but more importantly, like other holiday themed, some of them were like, happy Christmas. Some were like fucking ocheriton. And he said they were dirty. He said they were like dirty and used. He was like, what the fuck?

Yeah, that means they were handing out cursed snow globes, like a witch died and they were like, we gotta get rid of these.

I think realistically, a grandparent died who collected snow globes and they were like, what the fuck? We're gonna do all this shit. And then they decided to just, anything they don't want in their home, give away at Halloween, maybe? I kinda wanna do that. Like I have so much crap here. I kinda wanna be like, you know what? Here you go. You have 13 notepads from Sony. Like a couple DVDs of the movie Burlesque. Here you go, you get out of here. Here's an old carpal tunnel wristband. So anyway, it's just funny that he called me with A, to be like, no, mom did look for stuff, and B, there's somebody in our neighborhood who's a fucking lunatic.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I did remember after we recorded that one time my sister ate a prune, like out of a container of prunes from the grocery store, and there was a screw in it, but that wasn't Halloween related.

That's the second time prunes have laid out some sort of trickery on this show. I drank prune juice and your sister almost ate a screw.

Well, I don't trust them.

All right, so that was housekeeping. We can probably get on with the show. What do we got?

So while Ed is more afraid of Ouija boards than I am, I will admit the history of the Ouija board is pretty fucking strange. And all this info comes courtesy of a guy named Robert Merch, who has spent years researching the history of the Ouija board.

Oh, I bet he's cool at parties.

Oh yeah, you want to let Robert Merch corner you and he will talk your ear off letter by letter. He's basically the Doris Kearns Goodwin of Talking Spirit boards, which really makes me feel like you can be anything you want to be when you grow up. But anyway, two different people claim to have invented the Talking Spirit board that would become known as the Ouija board. The first is this guy, Charles Kennard from Chestertown, Maryland. There's not much information about him out there, but there's another guy who, based on his unfortunate name and occupation alone, I choose to believe invented the Ouija board, and that is one EC. Reich, a coffin maker also from Maryland.

Maryland, Germany?

Oh, Maryland has a fair share of Germans, but that is an extremely German name. It also makes me think of EC. Comics, who published Tales from the Crypt.

Yeah, a lot of great pre-code horror was done there. I know you said there's not much information on Charles Kennard, but we don't know anything about what his profession was or anything, because we know this other guy's a coffin maker, and it's, I don't know, is he going home and inventing the Ouija board? Is he using coffin tops?

Well, I don't know if EC.

Because a coffin is different than a casket. I'm very sure a coffin is like a wooden box.

Well, I knew a coffin was a wooden box. I just didn't know it was different than a casket.

I believe a casket is pallbearer handles and the ornate shit. And then a coffin is like a pinewood box that is just that famous coffin shape.

I see, I see, I see.

I'm not 100% sure that's true, but I'm pretty sure it is.

Well, I do know that EC. Reich was a proud spiritualist.

Oh my God, I thought you were gonna say something else.

He was a proud spiritualist, and he developed this talking board out of his interest in spiritualism.

I imagine if you're a coffin maker with an accent, you have maybe a better chance of making friends through a board than like at parties.

Or if you're talking to Robert Merck.

Yeah, but I'm saying if you're EC. Reich, and it's like, wait, what do you do? I'm a coffin maker. All right, well, I'm moving on. He's like, well, I'm gonna make a board, which forces people into conversation with me. Even if they're dead, they have no other options.

Charles Kennard was from Maryland. All I really know about him is that he found the early stabs at a Ouija board or a talking board compelling, and he pulled together a group of investors and started the Kennard Novelty Company to make and market the talking board, but they weren't calling it a Ouija board at that point. But you know, all of this was in like the 1880s, 1890s, and though we're not entirely sure who we can say actually invented it, Robert Murch theorizes that they became so popular because during the Civil War, almost every American was touched by death in some way or another. They knew a family member or a friend who had died in the war.

Realistically, they knew a family member or a friend they killed in the war. It was a real brother versus brother scenario.

They had blood on their hands. Yeah. Yeah, famously, I think.

That's why EC. Reich lived in the biggest fucking house on the hill because he was making coffins 24-7. No time to make friends, so he had to make that fucking board to talk to people because he's building coffins all day.

Well, it was the only way he could really talk to a lot of his clients, probably.

Oh my God, do you think he's using it for that? Where he's like, what did you think of the box?

He might be.

Hey, EC here, sure heaven gets old fast, so if you have opportunity, hit me up. What'd you think of my work? Did you like lying in it?

Yeah, an early version of Yelp. Also, the last sound many of his clients probably made.

At that time period, the last sound a lot of people made was like scratching at the fucking roof of their coffins.

Where they'd been buried alive.

Yeah, I think the casket business moved faster than the medical business at that time. Yeah, a lot more technical advancements in coffins than there were in medicine.

That's a good one for future episodes. Being buried alive is truly a really scary proposition.

I have a person who we can bring on for that probably.

Are they dead?

No, they're just a fan.

Oh, okay, all right. Well, so Merch theorizes that during the Civil War, every American was touched by death in one way or another. And as spiritualism gained popularity with its table knocking and automatic writing and spirit boards, spiritualism became the way that Americans looked for answers and reassurance that there was a life beyond this one. Now, the trademark named Ouija, which has come to be sort of like Band-Aid or Kleenex and that we call every spirit board Ouija board, was coined by a woman named Helen Peters, who was a medium using the board with her brother-in-law, Elijah Bond, one night in 1890 in Baltimore. And she asked the board what they should call it. And the planchette.

What is the planchette?

Is it the planchette?

I don't...

Planchette?

I'm not... I think it's a planchette. I'm not critiquing your pronunciation. I was just, I didn't know that it had a name.

The name for the little, the piece of plastic with the glass hole or the plastic hole in it. I think it's a planchette.

Oh, look how quickly you went from like, I'm sure at one point it was a glass hole and it was really well made. And then over the years, it's just like cheaper and shit. I want like the Made in America Ouija board, please.

Yeah, the Made in America Ouija board is a cardboard planchette with plastic wrap in the center of it.

I don't like that you went to Made in America was the shittier one.

Well, I mean, look.

No, I will not look. Tell me more about this planchette, planchette.

The planchette spelled out O-U-I-J-A, Ouija, which the board told her meant good luck.

There's no fucking world in which she was like, I think it said Ouija, because even I say Ouija when I see it.

True.

There was an extended conversation with the spirit being like, and it's pronounced Ouija.

How did EC. Reich pronounce it?

I don't even want to make jokes about EC. Let's leave this poor man alone.

Hilariously, the building where Helen Peters named the board, and I would love, if any of our listeners are in Maryland and can confirm this, or Ed, maybe you and I can go someday.

Tess, invite us to your part of the world.

Tess, let us come over. We wanna go see the building where they named the board, which is now, get this, a 7-Eleven. And it has a plaque commemorating the event of the naming of the board.

Do you think it says like, here at this 7-Eleven, the Ouija board was named type of thing?

Yeah, well, I mean, it probably doesn't say at this 7-Eleven. It probably says like, at this location in 1890, the Ouija board was named. But that's just, it's very funny to me. What place where something famous happened isn't a 7-Eleven now.

I think New England did a good job with its like, historical places will remain protected for a long time. Like fucking Paul Revere's house isn't a 7-Eleven. But I guess if like the thing you're most known for is naming the Ouija board, there's a very good chance that like the townspeople burned your home down. And now like 7-Eleven developers can come.

Well, I mean, it's crazy. This is a tangent, but I found it fascinating that there's actually a fight right now over what to do with the room at, I forget if it's UCLA or Caltech, but the first room where the first two computers were networked to become the first node of the internet. So there's literally a room on a college campus where the internet was born and it's become just like a storage closet.

As it should. Because all server rooms are kind of storage closets in a weird and weird way.

But it seems like in many ways, preserving that room or putting the original computers back in there feels like, I mean, you can argue how good the internet has been for humanity. But in terms of a place where the world changed, it seems like it should be a no-brainer that would be cordoned off and like a special place. And they're just like, yeah, we don't know what to do with it.

I think it's Stanford. The first server, the two dudes who created Google, they built the first server and they, I guess they couldn't afford or they didn't want to build a housing for it. And they just use Legos. And that original like 40 gigabyte server in its Lego enclosure is at Stanford University. It's like, it's on display there.

Yeah, it seems like what they were trying to do with this room years ago. So they may have solved it by now, but it's crazy to me that there was ever even a question.

To bring this back full circle to what we're talking about is, you know, dead Facebook accounts?

Yeah.

People die. And they just fucking exist still. You have a better chance of interacting with the dead on MySpace or Facebook than you do with a Ouija board.

Yeah.

And you just think about the internet being like, hey, I know you died, but the internet's gonna outlive the planet. Like, there's gonna be, this stupid podcast is gonna live on a server somewhere well after we're dead, even if no one's clicking on it.

I hope so.

And so you could, I don't know, and this is another tangent, but it might all come back around at some point, but the woman who was using AI to bring her dead sister or dead relative or dead husband or dead, some fucking dead person. Like, oh, I have all these recordings of them. I have all this audio visual. I can build them again, essentially.

Yeah.

And talk to them again.

Yeah.

That, if you think about it, is modern Ouija. I mean, it really is like, I'm not gonna do this one character at a time on a Ouija board, but I don't know, you can resurrect the dead.

It's modern Ouija down to the idea that whatever the thing you're talking to is might not be who it says it is.

Just like AI in general.

Yeah. Oh, it's fucking lies. Yeah, like when you recreate your dead loved one through their text messages or whatever, it's not really them.

But no, I think there's a really interesting point there and a really interesting topic of modern resurrection. I'd be interested to see which AI company promotes itself as a Lazarus bit.

I mean, we're not too far off. I'm sure it's gonna happen. I mean, people will start doing it in the next couple of years, but it'll really take off with people, our generation and younger, when we hit our like 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, because we'll be the first generation with a fairly significant digital data profile that you can feed into that. Like you can do it for like my grandfather, but I'd have to go type up all of his letters and I'd have to go digitize videos. Whereas for people our age, if our grandkids want to put us into a digital Lazarus pit, it's a lot easier because we're gonna have everything they need.

You're just a couple keystrokes away from bringing back people. I'm honestly now glad our dad, so. That's a bummer.

In your family that you're glad they're dead or just in general?

There's a couple I'm waiting. It's a couple I'm waiting with bated breath.

Yeah?

Yeah.

So, all right. There's a bunch of other people involved in the creation or laying claim to the Ouija board. But basically, Helen Peters got the first patent on the name Ouija board. And her business was then taken over by this guy named William Fuld who started marketing the board nationally and got it in like the Sears catalog. And then it really started making money. He figured out kind of how to market it. Is this like harleur trick game? It wasn't marketed as particularly spooky at the turn of the century. It was just sort of like a magic eight ball. You know, like ask it and it'll answer.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know if you're getting this, but there's that famous, if anyone should know this, I should know this. There's that famous Saturday Evening Post cover that Norman Rockwell painted of the two kids on a date playing Ouija.

That's one of my favorite Ouija facts. And so years ago, Ed as a gift bought me this Norman Rockwell painting of these two kids.

A print of it. I didn't like buy the original painting.

If this podcast takes off, he can get me the original. But until then, I'm happy with the print. It's these two kids in like the 20s, and they're leaning over a table. Both their hands are on a Ouija planchette, on a Ouija board, and their fingers are kind of touching. Their legs are almost touching under the table. And it's a really compelling image. And when I looked into it, it's because at the turn of the century, in like the 19 teens and 20s, Ouija boards actually got really popular as a dating activity for teens, because it was an excuse. You could go to a semi-public place with the lights down low, and you could sit across from your loved one or who you had a crush on or whatever. And you could kind of touch fingers and your feet could touch underneath the table. It was like going to a horror movie is now. You had a reason to get close. And it really took off as like a dating activity for teens.

And it's better than a horror movie because you're not sitting side by side looking straight ahead. Like you're looking at each other, you're interacting.

Yeah, and you're living it. So when the demons arise, you can save her or him.

No, I'm running out that fucking door, dude. I'm gonna be like, this was your idea. This is a fucking mistake. I knew like Brad lied about who you were as a person. He said you were sweet. And here we are talking to the devils at this 7-Eleven. No fucking thanks.

So, you know, kids still played at sleepovers and stuff, but I love that idea that it was a dating activity for a while. Anyway, as soon as the board started making real money, everyone wanted credit for inventing it. They wanted a piece of the pie, but you know who didn't want a piece of the pie? Miss Helen Peters. She wanted nothing to do with the Ouija board success because she had had some Civil War family heirlooms go missing from her home. And like any medium would do in this time period, she asked the Ouija board who took them. And the Ouija board told her it was a member of her family, and she wasn't sure that she entirely believed the board, but other people in the family did believe the board, and the event created a giant rift in the family that was never resolved. So until her dying day, Helen Peters, who named the Ouija board, told everyone she could, don't play with the Ouija board. It lies.

I mean, I guess it lies. I mean, half her family thought it told the truth. She should have said, don't play with the Ouija board, it will throw a wrench in your fucking life. It's a wrench thrower. Ouija board's a wrench thrower.

Yeah.

But now the board also told her that Ouija means good luck.

Yeah, it told her it means good luck, and she sort of did have good luck. I'm unclear on how much money she made from it, even as she was distancing herself from it.

Or the good luck is sarcastic. Where it was like, good luck making any money off this, if anything, it's gonna destroy your family. This is a classic monkey spot.

Yeah, that's true. For all we know, the demon that said good luck could have been making the jerking off sign with one hand while it was answering her.

It's the guy on the phone in Taken.

Yeah.

He's just like, good luck.

Good luck.

I have a question.

Yes.

She named the Ouija board.

Well, the Ouija board named itself.

Sure. Should have named it a cooler fucking name. It should have been named Blaze or something. She named the Ouija board. We know it today as the Ouija board.

Yeah.

She wanted nothing to do with the Ouija board or its patent or anything like that.

Yeah.

So somebody just took the idea and just kept the name. It's pretty brazen.

She sold the idea, remember. She sold it to William Fold, who also died mysteriously, I think like falling out a window or something. There's so much Ouija history that's weird. We probably could do a whole hour just on Ouija history. So I left the Fold stuff out.

And if people want that, I'd love to hear more about it. And Chris does most of the research. So if people.

So sweat off Ed's back. If you guys want to hear more Ouija stories, I'll do it. We'll do Ouija part two. But yeah, Fold died mysteriously, or they know how he died, but it was a weird accident that killed him. So yeah, given all that Ed, I guess I understand your hesitations, but still I think something to discuss early in this journey is, why do you think that a mass-produced piece of cardboard and plastic, like a Ouija board made by, I believe Parker Brothers?

I couldn't tell you. Somebody I should be writing a letter to though, being like, stop this madness.

Why do you believe that that mass-produced piece of plastic would be something that would be able to summon a demon from beyond?

I have no reason not to believe that's the case. Also, just pop culture. Like pop culture. And I don't believe it was the... Have you ever seen a Ouija board commercial? I don't believe I ever have. Like I've seen commercials for mousetrap or crossfire. Like I've never been watching football and then it goes to commercial and it's like, kids, boys and girls, Ouija boards.

I take your point, although I would say...

But the thing is, the reason I bring it up, I'm sorry to interrupt, is it's that I've never seen a commercial, but I seem to know everything about Ouija boards.

Sure, so Pop Culture has told you that... Well, two things. First of all, ladies and gentlemen, check the podcast notes. We'll be putting a YouTube link to a Ouija board commercial because I am 99% sure those commercials exist. But outside of that, your point is, culture has trained you that this experience will be truly supernatural in a way that is inviting an outside demonic force into your life, more so than it is tapping into possibly some sort of subconscious connection between the people participating in the Ouija board.

You're saying subconscious meaning like, oh, no one's admitting to moving the little things?

Yeah, well, it's a, like I-

And that I'm attributing any movement that might happen to a demon.

Yeah, because I would say, it's not that I believe that it's impossible to communicate with intelligences beyond our understanding. My feeling is that a Ouija board is probably not the way that that communication is gonna happen.

That is naive, sir.

I've had a lot of people tell me that. And again, the point of this podcast is not to look down on these things. I would love nothing more than to have a Ouija experience that I said, okay, I cannot explain how on earth that would happen.

So if you had a Ouija board and you used it with friends and then you found that no results, no conclusive results, are you like, this is bullshit, I need to return this toy? Or is it like, oh, we tried? And then even by virtue of saying, oh, we tried, I guess that meant you did at one point think you can speak to the dead with this, which means again, the marketing has worked. And also if you can in fact speak to the dead, I just feel like what, like the Ouija board, it's like the dark web for ghosts. Like where I feel like maybe if on the other, for us it's a game, but on the other side, it might just be like only bad ghosts know about it. It's like, hey, hey, other ghosts, come with me to the dark web where for a Bitcoin you can possess Chris.

Yeah, listen, if it was the dark web for ghosts, I'd be trying to order cocaine through it. And I feel like that's not something that you can get. There isn't a-

Like a Silk Road, but like a Spectre Road.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's the ghosts of El Chapo is not on the other end offering to sell me kilos through the mail, but-

Just gonna answer this real fast. Hello, you're on with Ed.

Chris has never ordered cocaine from the dark web or from a ghost. Furthermore, Chris has never done cocaine. Additionally, you, the listener, should never try nor buy cocaine, which is an illegal drug.

Okay, thank you. Well, that was nice of him, huh, Chris? Anyway, you were saying?

I guess my feeling is like I... And look, it's not entirely fair because it is tough to say that you could have a Ouija experience that is truly inexplicable. There are a handful of things that I suppose if I did a Ouija board with my friends and I said, hey, spirits, prove to me that you are not just my friends subconsciously manipulating the planchette. And I asked the Ouija board, tell me my deepest secret. And the Ouija board spelled out an answer that was accurate. I suppose that would move me a long way to convincing me that there was something else that wasn't my friends.

Here's a better question, because you're saying by virtue of it, knowing your deepest secret, it's not your friends.

Well, it could be me. It could be me moving the planchette subconsciously.

Well, here's the thing. That's why you wanna keep deepest secrets that are very embarrassing. So that way you would never reveal it on your own. Your friends wouldn't know it. And if the ghost revealed it, be like, dog, that ain't me. No way, dude, that's not my secret.

Well, I would say that to my friends, but deep down I would be spooked knowing, well, how the fuck would this board or my friends or whatever's happening here, how would they know this? Because they couldn't know it because it's something only I know.

What is that? Did you want to listen to us?

I'm not gonna say these things on mic because we're gonna test this someday, obviously. But even then, I would have a hard time ruling out that it wasn't me subconsciously manipulating the planchette. Although I guess maybe a way that you could do an experiment would be for me to not participate and for me to have two or three friends participate, ask it questions that only I would know the answers to. And if my friends were able to gather those answers from the Ouija board, then I would be much more convinced that there was something beyond our understanding, manipulating.

But why is it that you, like where does it say anywhere that ghosts know anything about any of us?

Well, it doesn't, but I'm saying-

Because you might just be like, oh, this Ouija board is broken. Why is it broken? It doesn't know anything. It was like, cause Bob Stevens or whatever who's talking to us doesn't know you.

Well, sure, that's possible. That's possible. I would say generally though, I think the idea of a Ouija board is that you're conjuring things that know general information about the people in that's part of the field.

I don't know, you might be conjuring someone from like 1945 and it might not know like what the internet is. And then so it might, you'd be like, hey, what's the best way to meet a girl? And the ghost is like, have you tried changing the way you walk to work?

Go to the library. Go to the library and look for the lady with the glasses and the bun. She's prettier than you know.

Yeah, well, I'm just saying like, so you're putting a lot of, I just feel like if-

You contact a spirit that died from diabetes and he's just begging for orange juice the whole time. And you're like, listen man, I don't know.

Why orange juice?

That's what diabetics, I feel like, cause it has a high sugar-

That's what they long for?

It has a high sugar content. So if there's sugars going- I had a physics teacher in high school who would use a giant job with a hut-sized man. He's dead now so I can slander him. But he's a huge dude and he would send my friend, he would just go, Michael, orange juice. And he would send my friend Mike to the cafeteria to get him orange juice. To get his blood sugar back.

You gotta thought, cause at first I was like, what is this, a guy of scurvy? Why does he need, but.

Not vitamin C, sugar.

Was it always Michael?

It was always my friend Mike.

So Mike, so that's the thing. It's why you gotta show people early on in your life that like, I'm not weak. I'm not gonna do. Cause next thing you know, you're the guy that people are snapping at. Like you're like just snapping to and be like, Michael, orange juice.

This particular teacher snapped at everybody. He was very much, he thought of himself as the guy who ran the school. So he was, you would run.

Most people with diabetes too, they're a proud, misinformed people.

It wasn't the diabetes so much as it was, he ran the school musical, which was a whole other thing, but he would definitely make demands of students and you would listen because he didn't mess around.

Cause you don't want to get cut from Bye Bye Birdie.

You don't want to, yeah, listen, you get that third lead in South Pacific and you're hanging on to it for dear life. But okay, so where were we?

We were talking about Ouija boards. We were talking about communicating with the dead.

Right, right, right, Ouija boards. What I was gonna say was that Ouija boards aren't the only way people are communicating with the dead these days. You ever hear of spirit boxes?

No, what is that?

So spirit boxes are essentially these little radios that sweep AM or FM radio bands and create a stream of sound that the dead can use to communicate. They were invented really recently, like in 2002.

Really?

Yeah, by this paranormal researcher guy who was into EVP or electronic voice phenomenon, which I'm sure everyone listening to this show knows, but this guy, Frank Sumption, was the first to try this. He was the first to try to contact spirits through this AM, FM radio band thing. And his invention is sometimes referred to as Frank's Box in his honor. I also saw that there was a Joe's Box and an Andy's Box, but I don't know the difference between Frank Joe and Andy's Boxes.

Do you think it was actually like the community called it that or he originally was like, and if you want to talk to a ghost, Frank's Box, the only box for Talking to Ghosts. And it was like, we're going to call it something else because I don't want to, Frank's Box, can I only talk to Frank's on this?

No, you can talk to any spirit in the vicinity on Frank's Box. I do think that Frank Joe and Andy have all passed to the other side. Frank definitely has, he died in 2014. And he built these boxes. He essentially did-

Do we know what happened to Frank's Box? Like the original Frank's Box?

Is that- Yes. He basically, he built, it was kind of like a bigger version, I think, of what some places will actually sell now. But he essentially disabled the piece in a radio. Like when you turn from band to band on an AM or FM radio, there's actually a little device in the radio that stops the band from just continuing on throughout each step of the radio band. And so he basically just disabled that little piece and he made 180 of these boxes and distributed them to anyone he thought worthy of, quote, hearing the voice.

Oh, wow.

Of those 180 boxes, there are only 97 left.

Did he not tell people, hey, I'm sending you a box if it was just something in the mail? I was like, what the fuck is this? And someone just throws it away. Like, why are there so few left?

I mean, that's about half of them, right?

Half of these are gone? Frank, half of your boxes are gone, dude.

I mean, maybe people contacted something scary and they destroyed half of them and someone's going around like a vampire hunter destroying the other 97.

That's not bad. That's not a bad idea.

Oh, yeah, this was invented in 2002, so this is not that long ago.

That's not a long time for half of the supply to be destroyed.

Yeah, so I would love to know from listeners if anyone's actually used one of these original boxes and what it was like. But Frank Sumption wasn't the first guy to try to use electronics to communicate with the dead. I'd always heard that Thomas Edison had claimed to have developed a method for talking to the dead. So I did a little research and found out that's not quite true. Edison never claimed that he did invent a method for talking to the dead.

He just stole it from Tesla.

Yeah, well, there's quite a bit of evidence that he was trying to invent something to talk to the dead. There's a really great, and I highly recommend even if you aren't a skeptic, there's a great article on Frank's box that we'll put in the show notes that Skeptical Inquirer published in 2010. I know Skeptical Inquirer has a bit of a mixed reputation in the paranormal community, so I won't discuss any of the conclusions they draw. You can imagine what those are, I'm sure. But the facts that they dug up are really interesting. They trace the origin of the Edison rumors to an 1890 interview where he talked about communicating with quote, life units or atoms of the deceased. And I don't know how far down the rabbit hole you want to go on this because Edison had some wild beliefs.

I mean, I'm happy to go down the rabbit hole, but before we go down the rabbit hole, I have a quick question for you regarding Talking to the Dead and inventions. But I feel like I had read once that some women inventors, you know, a long time ago, just they would have no respect because they're women. So they would like say that a ghost of a man told them about the invention. Like so weird thing where like, because women weren't respected in that field or in society, you'd have like a woman invent some dope shit. And then they'd be like, you didn't invent this, you're a lady. And she's like, yeah, you're right. It came to me in a dream from a man or a ghost of a man told me about these circuits. You got me anyway.

Yeah, I've heard of that. I can't remember what specific invention or device or whatever, but yes, I have heard. And there have been other times where people have laundered the idea of an invention or information. Like I read somewhere once that some of the remote viewing experiments that like the CIA was doing was also possibly cover for information that they were getting from spies, that if they just used, it might be obvious or too obvious where some of the information was coming from. So they would be like, oh yeah, we remote viewed it.

I think the British during World War II, us and them invented radar. The idea that carrots give you great vision, I believe comes from this propaganda campaign that like the allied countries eat a lot of carrots so we can see better. As ridiculous as this sounds, I'm pretty sure it's true that like to cover the idea that we had invented radar before the Germans knew, we had all this propaganda about like, yeah, we just eat stuff that we can see further, that we can hear better or whatever. But it was, I believe, to combat the idea that we didn't want anyone to know that we had this new technology.

You hear that, you see right, eat your carrots.

That was a little bit of an aside. You were saying about Thomas Edison and that he's an absolute monster.

No, no, no, Thomas Edison is a nice guy, I think, but he had some crazy beliefs. Well, the first one's not really that crazy, but I think it was kind of forward thinking for the time. Edison didn't believe that life on Earth actually originated on Earth. In the final chapter of his posthumously published The Diary and Sundry Observations of Thomas Alva Edison. He said, I cannot believe for a moment that life in the first instance originated on this insignificant little ball which we call Earth. Little, that is, in contrast with other bodies which inhabit space. The particles which combined to evolve living creatures on this planet of ours probably came from some other body elsewhere in the universe. So already a forward thinking guy, but this is where he really goes next level and gets a little cuckoo. Edison told the New York Times that he believed that the human body is composed of 100 trillion infinitely small life units. Each of these units is smaller than microscopic and beyond what the human mind can conceive. He expanded on this and he said, I believe our bodies are composed of myriads and myriads of infinitesimal entities, each in itself a unit of life which band together to build a man. In our bodies, these entities constantly rebuild our tissues to replace those which are constantly wearing out. They watch after functions of the various organs just as the engineers in a powerhouse see that the machinery is kept in perfect order. Once conditions in the body become unsatisfactory in the body, either through fatal sickness, fatal accident or old age, the entities simply depart from the body, thanks a lot entities, and leave little more than an empty structure behind.

Wait, hold on, does that mean death?

Yes, once you die.

So he means at death, they move out.

They move out, yes.

Wow, okay. But also, he's just talking about, he's not talking about midichlorians, he's talking about, I think, just like regular body stuff.

He said that there are these life units that are constantly repairing us and fixing us and powering us, and then when we die-

What I'm saying is, is that he just didn't have a word for what we actually know now. He just called them life units? Or do you think there's something separate than like red blood cells, white blood cells?

I think it's separate, because I think he would have known about those. And this is also, this is all going somewhere. So the reason that these life units are important, he said they were indefatigable workers. Is that how you pronounce that word? Being indefatigable?

I don't know, with our luck, one of our Facebook group members is gonna be named indefatigable. We'll be apologizing for that in a week.

Being tireless workers, they naturally seek something else to do. They either enter into the body of another man.

How do you put up a no vacancy sign on our bod right now, dude? I gotta get a little no on that light.

Yeah.

I don't want some other guy's life for us.

It's like a dead guy spitting in your mouth, basically.

Although I will say, they seem like hard workers. And you don't want anyone like novice on the job. So I guess you kind of want someone who's like, made some mistakes on previous bodies before they show up on yours.

Yeah, well, that's his point. The next part of the quote is, they either enter into the body of another man or even start work on some other form of life. At any rate, there is a fixed number of these and it is the same entities that have served over and over again.

So we're out here like, it's us and life.

The life units, yeah.

Us and life units sharing this planet.

Ed Voccola and the life unit sounds like a great punk band. So for Edison, it followed that if these life units existed, there would be a way to communicate with them after the human they inhabited passed. He didn't think that it could be done through spiritualism though, which is kind of my feeling. He was quoted in 1920 as saying, the methods and apparatus commonly used and discussed are just a lot of unscientific nonsense. And I assume he didn't specify, but given that that would have been coming on the heels of spiritualism in the United States, I assume he means table knocking and spirit boards and the rest. He said, for my part, I am inclined to believe that our personality hereafter will be able to affect matter. If this reasoning be correct, then if we can involve an instrument so delicate as to be affected or moved or manipulated, whichever term you want to use, by our personality as it survives in the next life, such an instrument, when made available, ought to record something.

So he's saying that people who believe that ghosts exist and say that they moved my spoon one inch, he's saying that if that's possible, then we should be able to record that.

Yeah, or that if there are ghosts that you shouldn't need to use, what he would view as like a magic method to communicate, but instead would be able to communicate through some kind of more scientific method.

Something that's repeatable.

Yeah, so he did test a device at one point. This was reported after he died. This was reported in 1933 and he died in 31, but it was reported that he tested a device privately with a group of other scientists in the room that he hoped would allow spirits to manipulate this very feeble electrical current, but he never had any success with it. But I think that's really interesting because in a way, I think Frank's box kind of follows Edison's thoughts on this, which with the idea that spirits should be able to manipulate weak frequencies or currents, because Frank's assumption explained the way the box works like this. He said, quote, it's been my experience that if one supplies something that the spirits or entities can use to make voices out of, then they will speak. That something is called raw audio and contains bits of speech, music and noise. The entities remodulate this raw audio to form voices. At least I think that's how it works and who really knows, which that last part's a little.

That's his own, that's from, that's from Frank's mouth.

That's from Frank's mouth, yeah.

So Frank was literally like, press this switch, a light will turn on. But it also might not. It's like, well, I'm not buying your switch then.

Yeah, that's the only difference between Frank Sumption and the people who invented AI. Is they're just like, yeah, it works. And Frank was humble enough to say, I think that's how it works and who really knows.

Where Thomas Edison was doing it long enough. He was in the game long enough to know that like, hey, if this isn't gonna be the light bulb, let's just do it behind closed doors with a couple of close friends. In case we fall on our face with this, no one knows.

Yeah. One of the other guys in Frank's online EVP community.

It's just so weird how recent this is.

Yeah.

That like, yeah, he would have had forums and message boards in real time.

Yeah. And the same community, I didn't jot down what the name of like the message board or the specific community name was.

I'm sure it's called like Frank's Boys.

Frank's Boys and Frank's Boxes. So this other guy in the community, Tom, offered this explanation that I actually, you know, it makes a lot of sense to me. He said, this is sort of like using an electronic larynx or holding an electric razor to your lips and mouthing words. The vocal apparatus changes shape and resonance characteristics, making a sufficiently randomized sound, like a buzzing razor, sound like words. And spirits may do something similar near an EVP recording microphone, either semi-manifesting a vocal apparatus or by utilizing some of their own sound-altering technology. So he's saying, it's like when you get behind the blades of a fan, you know, and you go, whoa, and the fan word then sounds like your voice. He's saying it's like that, but with radio noise, that the spirit essentially speaks through the noise by kind of manipulating it with their voice, which is not loud enough to be heard by human ears, but they can push it through white noise.

So there was a time in history, especially during the Great Wars, where people knew Morse code, like knew it.

Yeah.

Like more people knew it then than have ever before or after. And I wonder if like, so that's a pretty nice thing to know if you're a ghost, because it wouldn't require as much energy to just do like dots and dashes, even through like a radio blur, like messing with radio or messing with like with knocks, anything like that, like to be able to basically convey language through knocks and clicks and beeps and stuff. It's a pretty good thing to know in the afterlife in terms of being able to say things with as little energy as possible.

Right, well, I'm sure that's kind of what table knocking was. I mean, I'm sure at some point it evolved from knock once for yes and twice for no into table knocking in Morse code or whatever. But anyway, that's the history of Frank's Box. And my skeptical side says Frank's Box is really just a random word generator with an extra level of spooky on top because of all the strange noises that you get when you flip through a radio really quickly. I mean, how many horror movies is there a spooky crackly radio noise?

The film White Noise, maybe you've heard of it.

Yes, the film White Noise, but also just like every horror movie where a radio turns on. There's a thousand examples of this. It's creepy. There's also a phenomenon called pareidolia, which is the mind's natural attempt to find patterns in images or sounds.

That's funny. I actually just watched a like Ted talk or something with some guy who's like playing an audio clip for a room of students in an auditorium. And it's like, as the audio is playing, the words of what it says is coming on the screen. And it's like, okay, yeah, it said like two watermelons or whatever. But then he's like, puts up new words that sound just like it. I should have picked a better example, but now I'll have to say like blue watermelons. But you know what I'm saying? Like it's the exact same audio clip that keeps going through. When he changes the word, you 100% hear that new sentence.

Yes, that's exactly, that's pareidolia. Well, I'd say that's like guided pareidolia. Pareidolia in the wild would be why you see Jesus on a piece of toast or Ed's butt when you look up at a cloud or something.

Is that the same thing where humans always see faces and stuff? Is that also pareidolia?

Yes, yes. And I wanna say it's like the reboot of Twilight Zone in the late 80s or early 90s had a really creepy episode about a lady who saw faces and everything except they were real and it scared the hell out of me. But anyway, that's all pareidolia and it's why all white noise and EVP stuff to me is really creepy, but it's questionable because you're listening and you're expecting to hear an answer. So it isn't really surprising that eventually you do hear an answer. When I tried this, I tried it a little differently. I got a spirit box off Amazon and I went to my friend's apartment.

So it wasn't an official Frank's box. It was like, it's not wish.com. You're not getting like a Spirit Airlines box, which is the worst version of it.

That's the thing. People sell and make all kinds of models of spirit boxes now with all kinds of settings. I saw one, like the fanciest high end one that Zach Bagans uses on Ghost Adventures has a built-in flashlight and a cold spot detector or something, which you really don't need. I'm sure if I knew like three things about how a radio works, I could probably build one on my own.

I'm happy to build a Scared All The Time. I mean, I want nothing to do with using a spirit box, but I'm happy to make a Scared All The Time spirit box that has quote, all the bells and whistles. And it quite literally has bells and whistles on it. And so I was like, this is the Cadillac of spirit boxes. It's got all the bells and whistles. And it was like, well, I had a hard time hearing the ghost because these bells and whistles kept ringing.

Yeah, every time you think you catch something, it's covered, it's like a spirit box built into a tambourine. You can't, you can never quite get clear audio.

It's wildly inconvenient. It's super loud. And the only thing we can gather is that angels keep getting their wings.

Yeah, so this is how I did it. I went to my friend's apartment. She'd never had anything supernatural happen there, but her apartment was way older than mine. So we figured it was probably a better shot at talking to something there. And the way that we set this up was based on a way that I saw to do it online, which I like as far as like an experimental set up.

It sounds like Chris was using the Estes method, but may have skimmed over some of the instructions.

I thought it was a good idea, which was one of us asked the questions and the other listens to the spirit box with noise canceling headphones and they were holding a notepad. So the idea is my friend closed her eyes and turned on the spirit box. So she's just hearing the noise in her headphones. And I would ask questions that she couldn't hear because she's just listening to the noise, listening for words and voices. And so her job was just to write down whatever she heard coming out of the noise. So when you listen to a spirit box, mostly you're just hearing static and white noise and little blurbs and phrases, a half word here and there. And then every once in a while, you'll hear a more full phrase. And so the thought is at the end of the session, I compare the questions that I have written down to the answers that she has written down to see if there's any kind of a pattern to see if the spirits were actually answering anything. Again, not a perfect setup, but I think it's more compelling than just recording the whole session and then listening back to it later and being like, oh, I heard something.

No, it is. That's a better, it's a better use. It's like more of an experiment than an experience.

Yeah, so we tried it for about 20 minutes and the results were interesting. I wasn't entirely convinced, but the box's answers sort of lined up with my question. So like the first thing I asked was just, are there any spirits here? And the first thing she'd written down.

Was it no? And it was like, well, then who said no? Don't try and trick us ghosts.

We are not smarter than us. No, but the first question I'd asked was like, are there spirits here? And the first thing she'd written down was something along the lines of like many all safe. So like, it wasn't like a direct answer, but it was like, oh, okay, that kind of fits as an answer to the question. And there was, a lot of the rest of it was kind of gibberish.

So many all safe. So basically the ghost is being like, it's standing room only in here, but this is like a all ages show.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then the part that creeped me out kind of in the middle of the session was that I'd asked if there'd been any deaths in the apartment and she'd written down, and again, you can't line this up exactly, but right around where I'd asked that question, she'd written down, beating, beating.

Wow.

So we Googled afterwards and we couldn't find anything about violence or death in the apartments or anything like that, but it kind of made the hair on the back of my neck stand up a little.

You wanna hear a quick story about apartments or houses in this case.

Yeah.

In the state of California, I think it's one of the only states where legally you have to declare to a buyer whether someone died in the house or something like that, or like crimes in the house died in the house. Like you legally being like, hey, and by the way, 300 people died in this house. So my buddy bought a house a couple years ago and there was like a grisly murder in it. There was a grisly murder in that house. And a friend of his, this is the worst possible present, a friend of his researched the murder. It was just like a old murder and found black and white crime scene photos from in his house. Of like, the stairs are still the same in that house. Like you can objectively see, I mean like things have been updated.

Yeah.

In the home and stuff. But you can see like, that's his house. And he got them like as a house warming gift.

Wait, did he frame them?

I don't know exactly because I think my buddy was like, I don't want this at all.

Oh my God.

I've never seen them. I just know that somebody thought that was a sweet gift. He was like, I'm good, thank you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't need to bring that energy back around into this house. I saw there was a Quibi show when Quibi was the thing for a second there called Murder House Flip. And it was, I assume they were renovators or something. They would find houses where murders had happened and then they would renovate the room where it happened. And they would try to be like quirky about it. So like, I think the pilot episode was something where there had been suspicions of cannibalism and so they redid the kitchen.

Yeah, I was about to say like that's, the renovations there I guess would be saging. It would be like blessing. It's not traditional renovations where it's like, oh, a guy was shot with a Tommy gun, so we're just gonna like plaster up these 15 bullet holes.

Yeah, I mean-

Like that's murder renovation. Oh yeah, your mom got an ax through the fucking body and then it embedded itself on the floor, like we'll take care of this floor. That's murder renovation. But being like, I heard someone ate a thigh, a human thigh in here, so we're gonna give you a new range. Like I don't see how that's helpful at all.

I don't even know, I would hope that the murders were maybe not even, it seems in very, I mean, this whole podcast isn't pretty poor taste, but that seems like in very poor taste and that's coming from me, so.

I'm sure it's the guy who gave the photos to my buddy, he's probably his show.

Yeah.

That guy seems to be pretty tactless when it comes to stuff.

So anyway, the Spirit Box experience was, I'd certainly do it again. It was a cool thing to try. It had a couple of creepy moments, but it's really imprecise. I could watch as she was writing, so I could make note of what seemed to come as an answer to questions and what seemed to just kind of be random, but it's not an exact science and I wasn't left fully convinced.

Speaking of left, you did leave that girl in her apartment being like, hey, here's what we found out tonight. Loaded with ghosts, I'm gonna go home. You enjoy your pack to the rafters with ghouls of a park, man, best of luck.

Yeah, it was all safe for the dead, but we don't know how it was, if it was safe or not for the living.

Do you still speak to this person?

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But you speak to her not with a spirit box, right?

Correct.

She's still with us, okay.

She's still with us, yeah. I don't need a Ouija board or table knocking to hear from her.

I just saw somebody pose the thing for their grandma's funeral. Their grandmother made these cards to give out at her funeral. I guess she knew the end was near. That had like a Ouija board on it and it said like, keep in touch.

I wanna do that.

It's actually in her like funeral material. It's like an old lady like with a Ouija board and it says like, keep in touch.

I love that, I love that.

Yeah, I'm gonna post it on our socials.

All right, well, before you do that, we've got one more piece of business. Should we tackle the fear tier? Where do we rank Talking to the Dead?

If you choose to engage with activity like that, I think it's pretty high. I think it really bothers me, it really spooks me out. That's why I've told you and many other people in my life, it's something I simply don't have an interest in. I won't engage with it just in case. And so because of that, I mean, this is a live wire for me. So it's pretty high, I guess. It's high in the sense that I'm in my own head about the fact that no good can come from it.

Right, so just to reiterate, our fear tier right now very low. We have booby-trapped Halloween candy. Very high, top of the list. We have hot piss and shit, followed very closely by the hat man. So does Talking to the Dead, does that place higher than hat man or lower than hat man?

Talking to the Dead is higher than hat man.

Wow, okay.

It's higher than hat man because it's tough. You know what, it's weird. If you're not willing to engage with it, it's lower.

But if you're talking, you are engaging. If you're talking, you are engaging.

No, I'm saying if I'm looking at strictly on the rules of the fear tier, which there are none.

We should develop some.

We should probably develop some.

Right now, we can remember where things are, but soon it's gonna be a mess.

We're gonna have to run a contest to see who was the best take on fear tier and its iconography. But yeah, if you choose to engage in something like Ouija boards, spirit boxes, what have you, I think you're opening yourself up for some really scary shit potentially. And if you're not choosing to it and you just cross your arms and you say, like I often do, you put your foot down in the sand and go, I'm not fucking doing this, then it's kind of low because my armor's up to it. And I'm not worried about it. I don't think, I don't walk through my life worried about ghosts. I don't walk through my life worried about talking to those fucking people. But if I decided tomorrow to agree to go to a seance with you, I'm gonna be uncomfortable the whole time. And then I'm gonna get home and be like, something follow me here.

Would you rather go to a seance with me or an orgy with me?

That is a terrible question. But I guess the answer is neither and that's completely valid.

Okay, fair enough, fair enough.

I feel like one of them you can do an e-vite. The other one I think you're probably gonna have to be like, listen, I called you so I didn't wanna text you. And I'm not saying which one is which.

Well, I personally, look, this one's tough for me because I feel like I have on some level communicated with the dead. I don't know that I necessarily talked to the dead, but there was some kind of communication happening there. And I was never followed by a demon. I never let anything bad into my life. And so I'm not particularly afraid of it. I've definitely talked to a handful of friends who are not really invested one way or the other in the supernatural who are like, you're fucking crazy if you think that it's okay to play with a Ouija board. So I'm fascinated by the fact that it has such a stronghold on people's imaginations that pretty middle of the road, not necessarily believers or non-believers, that the Ouija board is one thing that they're like, do not fuck with it. But I don't know, I've used them. I've had other communication experiences and I don't feel, I mean, look, if there's evil spirits, if there's truly evil spirits, they'll find me one way or another. If it's a matter of whether or not you are respectful for as irreverent as we are on this podcast, I would hope that any spirit listening knows that I treat this stuff the way I treat everything that I'm afraid of or curious about, which is I kind of joke about it. You know, when I go fly on an airplane, I talk about how the plane's gonna crash right before I get on it, because at least in my head, it's really unlikely that a plane will crash if you say it's gonna crash.

Even if you don't do that, it's statistically the safest form of travel.

Yeah, I know, but it doesn't help when the wings start shaking when you're up there.

When I'm up there and that happens, I don't have a fear of flying. I do, I get motion sick, but if something happens on a plane, I do often go like, well, this is it. And then that's it. I'm like, well, this happens. I'm a person who fell like two floors in an elevator.

Oh yeah.

And that was one of the scariest moments of my life.

I have nightmares about that all the time.

But that is something where I'm like, I don't agree to die that way.

Right.

Where I agree when I get in a plane, I'm like, I can die that way.

Yeah. Well, I take Xanax when I go on a plane now, so I don't agree to anything. And if I do, I'm on Xanax, so it doesn't count.

That's probably why I got so many orgy invitations when you're on flights. So here's a question. What amount of this is, if you don't look for trouble, you're not gonna find trouble? Because you said, if an evil spirit really wants to find me or do something to me, it'll do it. But is it that it hasn't done that to you because it's like, I'm not looking for trouble, I'm not gonna find trouble?

Potentially you're asking for trouble. Sure, I get that. I mean, I don't know. I would never approach any kind of spirit with disrespect. Like talking about it, I'll be disrespectful the same way I'm disrespectful of many things when I'm talking about them. But in reality, in the moment to moment, I certainly would treat it with respect and I wouldn't wanna raise its irer.

Those are like church rules a little bit in the sense that even if you're a fucking punk, jerk kid, a scoundrel, you're still like lower your voice when you go in a church.

Yeah, exactly. And I'm kind of the same way with a lot of this stuff. I feel like I give it the respect it deserves when I feel like I'm near it or around it, but otherwise I'm as curious and open and silly about it as I would be with anything else. So I don't know, this is interesting though, Ed, because this is the first time we're split on the fear tier. We've agreed on prior fear tiers, but this one you're placing it really high and I'm placing it really low, which raises the question, do we average it?

We will average it, but what's interesting to me is the seesaw effect here of by engaging with it, I'm placing it very high, by not engaging with it, I'm placing it very low, where for you, engaging with it still places it low. And so it's a split the difference, I guess.

At the end of the day, I think my attitude towards ghosts and spirits is that I tend to believe they exist, but I think they exist the way any other force of nature exists, like wind or rain. So I do think they can be dangerous, but in the same way a tornado is dangerous, where the tornado isn't coming for your town because it's personal. It just exists and it's coming, and if you're in the way, something bad will happen.

I watched a fucking movie, The Grey. It was about wolves and Liam Neeson.

Oh, Liam Neeson, yeah.

And there's a fucking line in that movie that just has to be bullshit. It's like, oh, wolves are the only creatures that seek revenge or whatever. And I'm like, how do you know? Also, really?

It's a good question. I don't actually know if that's true. I'd kind of believe it because they do have such relatively complex social behaviors for animals, but I don't know, I don't know. I'd place wolves way higher on the fear tier than I'd place Talking with the Dead.

No, we're gonna do like a Jack London style episode at some point. Like a survival, yeah, like a fucking soccer team goes down.

The great outdoors. Here's an idea for an episode. What about Abandoned Towns?

Ah, maybe. I'm not against it. I mean, is it cold?

It sounds cool, it sounds awesome.

I think people would be really into it.

Write in, tell us how much you love an episode about Abandoned Towns.

You know, since we're on this subject organically, anyone has any ideas for Abandoned Towns, let us know.

If you're from a cool Abandoned Town, if you visited a cool Abandoned Town.

You've been to an Abandoned Town.

I have been, but I don't want to talk about it now because we might do it on a future episode.

All right, well, we both have a little bit of Abandoned Town experience.

Crazy. All right, well, listen, everybody, thank you so much for tuning in. We love you all, you're the best. I'm Chris Cullari.

And I'm Ed Voccola, who refuses to use a Ouija board.

And this has been Scared All The Time. We'll see you next week.

Scared All The Time is co-produced and written by Chris Cullari and Ed Voccola.

Edited by Ed Voccola.

Additional support and keeper of sanity, Tess Feifel.

Our theme is the track Scared by Perpetual Stew.

And Mr. Disclaimer is ****ed.

No part of this show can be reproduced anywhere without permission. Copyright Astonishing Legends Productions.

Good night. We are in this together.

Together.

===TRANSCRIPT END===