Talking to the Dead

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[00:00:21] Experience the freedom of Liberty Herbicide from BASF. 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 Europe? We need an apartment, a shitty apartment. Can we use your apartment for 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 gonna be about.

[00:01:40] And they were like, oh yeah, you know,

[00:01:41] someone's gonna be at a Ouija board.

[00:01:43] And they're gonna be, I'm like, you know what?

[00:01:44] You can't use it.

[00:01:46] Everything I just said, it's time for... Time for... Scanner, what does that thing do? Hey, everybody, welcome back. Thanks so much for listening.

[00:03:00] We really hope that you are still liking the show after these first three episodes.

[00:03:04] Something really important for housekeeping right off the top. like, subscribe, rate, review. You guys have been really great on Apple Podcasts already, rating and reviewing, but if you haven't, just even the simple rating of a couple stars, however much you like us, and the nice two, three sentences would be awesome. You wanna pop some stars on Spotify, you wanna pop some stars on Pocket Cast, or whatever you listen to, they got a star option. Throw us a few, that'd be great,

[00:04:20] but most importantly is let people know we exist,

[00:04:22] that would be cool too.

[00:04:23] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:04:24] So while we're in housekeeping, Ed,

[00:04:26] what did you do for Halloween? 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 Elma so they kind of get the Elma have 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

[00:05:40] Halloween. Do we have any shout outs we want to do? I think we have a correction.

[00:05:43] Last week we mispronounced one of ouric traditions. So my theory is it's almost like Freddie versus Jason, where in that movie, the parents on Elm Street tried to bury what happened so that they can strip Freddie 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 if they remember how powerful they are

[00:07:03] in Halloween, Stonehenge might turn on again and start working or whatever the hell it

[00:07:08] does. Full size. Is it 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. All the families came back. So there was 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.

[00:08:21] Some were like fucking ochre-tah-n.

[00:08:24] And he said they were dirty.

[00:08:25] He said they were like dirty and used.

[00:08:27] He was like, what the fuck? 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. 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.

[00:09:42] Ed, all this info comes courtesy of a guy named Robert Murch, Yeah, a lot of great pre-code horror was done there. Yeah, I know you said there's not much information on Charles Kenard But we don't know anything about like what his profession was or anything because we know this other guys a coffin maker And it's I don't know is he going home and inventing the Ouija board is he like using coffin tops? Well, I don't know if you think coffin is different than a casket I'm very sure coffin is like a wooden box. Why do a coffin was a wooden box?

[00:11:04] I just didn't know it was different than a cast say is I believe a casket is

[00:12:06] 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

[00:12:11] Kenner novelty company to make and market the talking board but they weren't calling it a Ouija

[00:12:16] board at that point. But you know all of this was in like the 1880s, 1890s and though we're not

[00:12:22] entirely sure who we can say actually invented it. Robert Merch theorizes that they became so popular at that time period. The last sound a lot of people made was like scratching at the fucking roof of their coffins. They've 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 their word medicine. That's a good one for future episodes. Being buried alive is truly a really scary proposition.

[00:13:42] I have a person who we can bring on for that probably.

[00:13:45] Are they dead?

[00:13:46] No, they're just a fan.

[00:13:47] Oh, okay 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

[00:15:01] with the shittier one.

[00:15:02] Well, I mean, look.

[00:15:03] No, I will not look.

[00:15:04] Tell me more about this,

[00:15:05] Planche, Planche.

[00:15:06] The planchette spelled out O-U-I-C-A-N-N-A. 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 the New England most places... New England did a good job with its like, historical places will remain protected

[00:16:22] for a long time. Like, fuck it, Paul Revere's house isn't a 7-Eleven.

[00:16:25] But I guess, if like, the thing you, the two dudes who created Google, they built the first server and they, I guess they couldn't afford it. They didn't want to build a housing for it. And they just use Legos. And that original like 40 gigabyte server

[00:17:40] in its Lego enclosure is at Stanford University.

[00:17:43] Oh, that's cool.

[00:17:44] It's like it's on display there.

[00:17:45] Yeah, it seems like what they were trying to do

[00:17:46] with this room years ago.

[00:17:47] So they may have solved it by now, 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, so I mean, yeah.

[00:19:00] Like when you recreate your dead loved one

[00:19:02] through their text messages or whatever,

[00:19:03] it's not really them.

[00:19:05] But no, I think there's a couple I'm waiting with faded breath. Yeah. Yeah. So, all right, there's a bunch of other people involved in the creation or laying claim with 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 Fold, who started marketing

[00:20:20] the board nationally and got it in like the Sears catalog, and then it really started

[00:20:24] making money.

[00:20:25] He figured out kind of how to market it.

[00:20:27] Is this like, Harler trick game. 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.

[00:21:41] It was like going to a horror movie is now you got a reason to get close and it really

[00:21:45] took off as like a dating activity for teens. 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,

[00:23:00] who named the Ouija board, told everyone she could,

[00:23:03] don't play with the Ouija board, it lies.

[00:23:07] I mean, I's pretty brazen. She sold the idea. Okay. 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.

[00:24:22] So I left the fold stuff out.

[00:24:23] And if people want that,

[00:24:25] I'd love to hear more about it.

[00:24:26] And Chris does most of the research.

[00:24:27] So if people. Pop culture, and I don't believe it was the, it was the, have you ever seen a Ouija board commercial? I don't believe I ever have. Like I've seen commercials for mouse trap 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, interrupt is I, it's that I've never seen a commercial,

[00:25:43] but I seem to know everything about Ouija boards.

[00:25:45] Sure, so pop culture has told you that, 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, 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

[00:27:03] that would happen.

[00:27:04] So if you had a Ouijaello, 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 Norbuy Cocaine, which is an illegal drug. Okay, thank you.

[00:28:20] Well, that was nice of him, huh, Chris?

[00:28:22] Anyway, you were saying?

[00:28:23] I guess my feeling is like, I...

[00:28:25] And look, it'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 wanna listen to this? I'm not gonna say it,

[00:29:40] I'm not gonna say these things I might

[00:29:41] because we're gonna test this someday, obviously.

[00:29:45] But even then I would have a hard time ruling out 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 it so it might you 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

[00:31:04] Yeah, go to the library and look for the lady with the glasses in the bun. It's why you got to show people early on in your life that like I'm not weak. I'm not going to do. Well, 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 were one of those people with diabetes too.

[00:32:21] They're, they're a proud, they're a proud,

[00:32:24] a misinformed piece.

[00:32:25] It wasn't the diabetes so much as it was.

[00:32:27] He ran the school musical, 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 is a Joe's box and an Andy's box, but I don't know the difference between Frank Joe and Andy's boxes.

[00:33:40] Do you think it was actually like the community called it

[00:33:43] that or he originally was like,

[00:33:45] and do you want to talk to a ghost?

[00:33:46] Frank's box. 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, the fuck is this? Someone just throws it away? Like, why don't you send me a few left? I mean, that's about half of them, right?

[00:35:00] Like a little bit.

[00:35:01] Half of these are gone, Frank.

[00:35:03] Half of your boxes are gone, dude.

[00:35:04] I mean, maybe people contacted something scary There's a great article on Frank's box that we'll put in the show notes that skeptical inquire or published in 2010. I know skeptical inquire 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 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

[00:37:44] obvious where some of the information was coming from. we call Earth. Little, that is, in contrast with other bodies, which inhabit space.

[00:39:03] The particles which combined to evolve living creatures on this planet of ours our 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 at death, they move out. They move out. Yes. Wow. Okay. But also he's talking about he's not talking about midichlorians. He's talking about, I think, just like regular body stuff.

[00:40:22] He's saying that there are these life units that are constantly repairing us 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 you 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

[00:41:41] over and over again.

[00:41:42] So we're out here like it's us and life.

[00:41:45] The life units.

[00:41:46] Yeah.

[00:41:47] So Austin life units sharing this planet. 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

[00:43:02] communicate, but instead would be able to communicate through some's his own. 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.

[00:44:25] It's like, why not buying your switch then?

[00:44:27] Yeah. 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 in 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,

[00:45:41] either semi-manifesting a vocal apparatus

[00:45:44] or by utilizing some of their own sound

[00:45:46] altering technology. like to be able to basically convey language through knocks and clicks and beeps and stuff. Yeah. 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

[00:47:00] in Morse code or whatever.

[00:47:01] But anyway, that's the history of Frank's box.

[00:47:04] And my skeptical side says Frank's box

[00:47:07] is really just a random word generator have picked a better example, but now I have to say like blue water balance. But you know what I'm saying like it's the exact same audio clip that keeps going through when it changes the word you 100% hear that new sentence. Yes, it's that's exactly that's Paradolia. Well, I'd say that's like guided Paradolia. Paradolia in the wild would be why you see Jesus on a piece of toast or Ed's butt when you

[00:48:22] look up at a cloud or something.

[00:48:23] Is that the same thing where humans always see faces and stuff

[00:48:26] without also Paradolia?

[00:49:22] I saw one, like the fanciest high end one that Zach Beggins uses on Ghost Adventures

[00:49:25] has a built-in flashlight and a cold spot detector

[00:49:28] or something, which you really don't need.

[00:49:32] I'm sure if I knew like three things

[00:49:34] about how a radio works,

[00:49:35] I could probably build one on my own.

[00:49:36] I'm happy to build a scared all the time.

[00:49:39] I mean, I want nothing to do with using a spirit box,

[00:49:41] but I'm happy to make a scared all the time spirit box

[00:49:45] that has quote, all the other listens to the spirit box with noise-hansling 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

[00:51:02] noise, listening for words and voices.

[00:51:05] And so her job was just to write down was something along the lines of like, many all safe.

[00:52:20] Wow.

[00:52:20] So like it wasn't, it wasn't like a direct answer,

[00:52:22] but it was like, oh, okay, that kind of fits

[00:52:25] as an answer to the question.

[00:52:26] And there was a lot of the rest in it. There was a grizzly murder in that house. And a friend of his, this is the worst possible present, a friend of his researched the murder,

[00:53:41] it is just like an old murder,

[00:53:43] and found black and white crime scene photos

[00:53:46] from in his house. was something where there'd been suspicions of cannibalism and they so they redid the kitchen. So like yeah, I'd 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 guns. We're just going to like plaster up these 15 bullet holes. Yeah, I mean, like that that girl in her apartment being like, Hey, here's what we found out tonight. Loaded with ghosts. I'm going to go home. You enjoy your pack to the rafters with ghouls. Yeah. A part of the best of luck. Yeah. We don't. It was it was all safe for the dead, but we don't know how it was if it was safe or not for the living.

[00:56:23] Do you still speak to this person?

[00:56:24] Yes.

[00:56:25] Yeah.

[00:56:26] But you speak to her not with a spirit box, right?

[00:56:28] Correct.

[00:56:28] She's. 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. Like 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 trap Halloween

[00:57:41] candy, very high top of the list. We have hot piss and shit followed very closely by 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'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

[01:00:20] that I'm afraid of or curious about,

[01:00:22] which is I kind of joke about it.

[01:00:24] When I go fly on an airplane,

[01:00:26] I talk about how the plane's gonna crash 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. You need to potential. I'm potentially 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.

[01:01:41] The same way I'm disrespectful of anything

[01:01:43] is when I'm talking about them.

[01:01:44] But in reality, in the moment to moment,

[01:01:46] I certainly would treat it with respect

[01:01:48] and I wouldn't wanna raise its ire. 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 like, I do think they can be dangerous, but in the same way a tornado is dangerous, where like, the tornado isn't coming for your town because it's personal.

[01:03:03] It just exists and it's coming and 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 a band and song experience crazy. All right. Well, listen everybody

[01:04:22] Thank you so much for tuning in. We love you all you're the best