The Basement: Brian Laythe | Ghosts, Possession, and Shadow People

The Why Files: Operation Podcast

Dr. Brian Laythe, a social psychologist, joins the show to discuss the intersection of social identity theory and paranormal phenomena. He d

Key takeaways

• Dr. Brian Laythe's published studies show electromagnetic field shifts occurring right before paranormal events in three separate instances.
• His dissertation research proved that 'belief perseverance' causes people to maintain their group ratings even after the provocation is revealed as a sham.

Main topics

• Social Identity Theory
• Belief Perseverance

Notable quotes

The map is not the territory.

Conclusion

The episode offers a unique perspective on how psychological mechanism

Transcript preview

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So if you're serious about longevity, or even just curious whether your body's aging faster or slower than your actual age, this is one of the easiest ways to find out. Right now, go to TrueDiagnostic.com and use code YFiles for 20 % off your entire order. That's TrueDiagnostic.com, code YFiles for 20 % off. Today I'm talking with Dr. Brian Lathe, a social psychologist who spent years hauling truckloads of equipment into haunted houses, then did the thing almost nobody does in his field. He published the numbers. Three studies, and in all three, the electromagnetic field shifted right before something happened. Shadow figures out of a basement with no other exit. Beach balls off of bed 11 times in an hour and nobody knows why? Speaker 3 (1:27) Beach balls off of bed? That's not a haunting human. That's a bachelorette party losing their damage deposit. Speaker 4 (1:34) I don't get it. Anyway, how do you know what goes on at a bachelorette party? Speaker 3 (1:39) I used to be an exotic dancer. My stage name was Magic Pike. Speaker 4 (1:45) Okay. Speaker 3 (1:47) You're so jelly on my wrist. Speaker 4 (1:50) Today we're covering what ghost hunting shows get wrong about those blinking meters, why Brian isn't convinced hauntings are dead people, and a personality scale that predicts who has these experiences. Speaker 3 (2:01) Not dead people. Well, I guess Grandma's off the hook. Speaker 4 (2:05) Off the hook for what? Speaker 3 (2:06) Well, every noise in the attic we blamed on her for like 20 years. Turns out it's probably just a raccoon. Or a squatter. Who knows? Speaker 4 (2:16) And there's an abandoned rectory in Cincinnati where he told the owners to shut down. That story ended his field work. And after hearing it, I wouldn't go back either. After our conversation, I'll come back and break everything down. Let's go down to the basement. Speaker 2 (2:31) Okay, Speaker 4 (2:37) I read your dissertation. Loved it. Speaker 4 (2:45) You hired actors to insult fraternities to attack their beliefs. Yeah. What was going on there? Speaker 1 (2:53) When I was in graduate school, before I officially got into parapsychology, I was really interested in the idea of social identity theory, which is, in essence, a theory that says when you label groups and make them different, you will instantly get bias. you'll instantly get prejudice. And it's silly because it's not talked about a lot, but it is a hugely robust area of social psychology research. It's not two or three papers. It's a couple of hundred. I bet. And so the whole point of the dissertation was if I bring an actress or an actor into these groups, and I basically tell the group that they're a piece of crap. Right? Well, put us in the room. Who's the group and what are the attacks? Well, I... Oh, man, this is 20-something years ago. So I did religious groups, I did fraternities and sororities, and I did a couple of political groups. And I actually had to extend my dissertation time because I actually ended up going to, I think, I want to say at least three, if not four colleges or universities to get enough groups to do it. Speaker 4 (4:02) That was a chunky paper. Yeah, yeah, Speaker 1 (4:04) yeah. Speaker 4 (4:05) I'm surprised you pulled up a dissertation. Well, hang on. Your dissertation is the whole theme of your career, that dissertation. You Speaker 1 (4:15) think so? Speaker 4 (4:15) I do indeed. It's all about beliefs and how if someone has a belief that's strong enough, no matter how much you insult or attack it, they will not waver. Speaker 1 (4:26) Yes. No, I mean, you're absolutely right. That was incredibly insightful. I should have caught that. Speaker 1 (4:33) Well, yes, because the reason I even got into graduate school was I started in psychology of religion, right? So the idea was let's look at group differences. Let's look at what happens when you bring an actress in who says, I am mad at your group. You did this to me. You did that to me, which was essentially what they would do. They would claim to be from another student organization. Tell us what specifically. Give the attack. I am trying to remember. It's like... Then make it up. Then make it up. Oh, make it up. Okay. You look funny and smell... No, there was... If I remember... Like conservative kids, liberal kids. Several sororities, several fraternities. The claim was they came from a rival student organization. Sure. And that they had complaints about people's behavior in the group. And I did keep, I did actually keep the manipulation rather generic because I didn't want them to be able to track or trace. Sure. Right. By the way, ethics review for that one was not fun getting that approved. Oh Lord. So they would just basically come in and make very generic complaints about other people's behavior in the group and how they should know better and you shouldn't treat people this way, et cetera, et cetera. And I set up like a three stage assessment. right so how much did you like the group before we did this then I'd have the person come in and give the complaint. And I'd be like, now that you've heard this complaint, because my whole claim for making this believable was I'm a representative of the student council and various bureaucracies of the college. This is a new technique we're trying out because we want to give people voices and let people respond to complaints. So I tried to make it sound bureaucratic and believable. It does. Yeah, I tried. I think some of them saw through it, but you did the best you could. It was a pretty overt manipulation. So then I'd give those same ratings again after the complaint. And here's what's interesting. So I'd have the actress come out, then I would do a complete debunking, right? Guys, I'm full of crap. I would literally be like, and I'd literally say that, like, guys, I'm full of crap. None of this is true. This is Talia. She's an actress. That was one of her name was Talia, a lovely person. You know, come in and say hi, and she'd wave and kind of bow and walk out. And I'd say, now, but before you go, I want you to fill out this sheet one more time. Because one of the variables I was interested in was what's called belief perseverance. And it kind of ties into confirmation bias, which is more popular nowadays. But there were earlier studies that basically showed that once a person buys into an idea, right? And of course, we see this in marketing and everything else, right? We see this everywhere. Yeah. And also, of course, where campaign money goes to affect who, right? Democrats never try to influence. Republicans and vice versa, you go for the middle. But belief perseverance research basically says once you establish that somebody is good or bad at a thing, and it's given, not even really have to be given by an authority figure, they tend to persist in that belief. The early studies were interesting because they divide groups into people who are going to evaluate suicide notes. Wow. Whether they were, and I'm a bad academic. I can't remember the actual names of the authors of that study. But they would come in with group A and go, you know what? You were really good at distinguishing these suicide notes. And then they'd come into group B and they'd go, oh man, you suck at this. You're only getting like 10 % of these right. And then at the end of it, they'd do the same thing I did in my dissertation, which was, guys, we're liars. None of this is true. We're academics. We're the experts that told you this. And by the way, we just lied. Does everybody understand that? Right? And they're like, uh-huh. Before you go, how good do you think you are at evaluating suicide notes? They completely persisted in their belief. They Speaker 4 (8:12) did. Speaker 1 (8:12) Yes. So the people that were told they were good at it, even though the whole thing was a sham and proven to be a sham. They're like, I'm really good at evaluating suicide notes. And the other group is like, I'm bad at it. It just, it persisted. True to form back to the dissertation. I do ramble. I used to be a professor. Sorry. When I'd look at the change. Your student ratings, by the way, you mentioned that. The student ratings? Yeah. Have you read your ratings from students? No, I don't look. No, you don't look. Do you look at your comments? Absolutely not. Exactly not. Speaker 4 (8:41) Your reviews are very good. Oh, thank you. They say you're snarky. You will insult someone. But you can take it. You ramble, but it's always brilliant. Speaker 1 (8:50) Well, that is awesome to hear. And I'm still not going to look at my comments. It's been about seven, eight years now since I've been a regular professor. But no, the point of the dissertation, and I am rambling again, there was about a 15 % to 18 % shift, if I remember, in negativity. So what was your value of the group beforehand to after my actress insulted you? And you'd see about a 15 % to 18 % drop. And then, of course, after we said, hey, this is all BS, their ratings didn't change a bit. That 15 % to 18 % drop persisted even after we gave them every excuse in the world not to believe in it anymore. And it was across ideology. And that was one of my major claims. And it's not a unique claim, but I was kind of driving home the point, which was, you know, This stuff happens regardless of whether we're dealing with religion, whether we're dealing with politics, whether we're dealing with affiliation with a sorority or fraternity. This appears to be a generic phenomena. Like this belief perseverance tendency and group ideology is just something. It doesn't matter what your belief system is. You can be pro-Red Cross. You can be pro-feminist. You can be pro-MAGA. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. The group effect is the group effect. Speaker 4 (10:04) Well, you had an interesting hypothesis that I think turned out to be wrong, which was if you are attacked from within your group, it will sting more. And that turned out not to be the case. Yes. So what was that like with a committee watching? It's midnight. I'm three hours deep into research for next week's episode, cross-referencing declassified documents and half-crazy witness statements, and my brain is starting to fog. That's usually when I reach for coffee. Except coffee at midnight means staring at the ceiling until 3 a.m. instead of sleeping. That's the exact trade-off Ultra was built to solve. 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That's takeultra.com for 15 % off with code BASEMAN. After you purchase, they're going to ask you where you heard about them. Please support the show and tell them you Speaker 1 (11:40) heard from Speaker 4 (11:40) us. Speaker 1 (11:41) Well, okay. Now, there's some exceptions to that because there is the scapegoat effect. Speaker 4 (11:45) Because what Speaker 1 (11:46) people don't think about is I belong to group X. Well, actually, the easiest way to think about this is Protestant religions, right? 400 years, 4,000 denominations. Why did that happen? You start with one church. Somebody decides that God's toe is blue. A subset decides that God's toe is green. Let's fight about it. And what happens? You get a schism and you get a new denomination. Yep. So, and this is one of the really big points about the power of belief systems, which, you know, ties into conspiracy theory and all the stuff that you guys carry on about, which I love, is whenever you get a disagreement within a subgroup, you have this risk of creating a new nested in-group out-group. And depending on how severe it is, you may end up getting that schism and a split. And of course, organizational psychologists and really anybody in business or anybody with an organization knows this as well. But the data is pretty clear on that. So yeah, that unity and that need for unity drives, I think, a lot more than people realize in terms of what people advocate and don't. We were talking before we went to air about academic Speaker 4 (12:55) gatekeeping. It sounds like this applies there as well. Oh, God. Speaker 1 (13:00) Yes. And, you know, it's like it's almost it is religious. You know, how dare you speak of the heresy of non-objectivity? But it's never been objective. And I think and to be fair to academia, is there really any business, any group, anywhere in the world that is truly objective? Speaker 1 (13:25) Everyone from experience whether you're working at a Walmart or whether you're working for a large corporation Like I don't like that mythology that we promote that somehow there are these groups these organizations that are Pure and clean of human nature and behavior ha yeah exactly So but no academia is political and even though that's heresy to say we shouldn't be surprised by that Everything is political So yeah, you know I will say you can publish parapsychology-related topics more easily today, particularly in the last 10 to 12 years. More mainstream journals will accept anomalies, right? Anomaly psychology, anomalistic psychology, or parapsychology. And now you do have to jump through a few more hoops. And if you've got a decent editor, they may just desk reject it. You won't even get to peer review. They're like, no. And in some ways, you're like, thank you. Right? Because, but it can be done. You know, I think maybe 20 years ago, if you had an anomalous topic, you were going to have to go to the parapsychology journals or the anomalistic journals, you know, JSE, PA, all of those, right? Nowadays, there is a select set of maybe 10 to 15 different journals that if you don't get too ridiculous in your claims, they will take your manuscript and the peer review will not be atrocious. There are sometimes exceptions. Speaker 4 (14:52) Dr. Eric Wargo sat right there, and he's a pretty accomplished social scientist, and he said psychologists were the most aggressive, the most heinous on the subject. Yes. Almost like we're attacking their belief system. Speaker 1 (15:07) Yes. Speaker 4 (15:09) Yes. Speaker 1 (15:10) There Speaker 4 (15:10) it Speaker 1 (15:11) is. It has been my, this is just my personal experience, so I'm not trying to judge the entire field. I find that... There is more ideological capture in the social sciences. than there is like in STEM fields. I think I've even seen some surveys that suggest that the physicist and the biologist is like, yeah, ghost, maybe. But you get over into psychology, sociology, even anthropology, and they're like, no. Speaker 4 (15:43) This is left brain, right brain drift. That's what's happening. I mean, social sciences are emotional. Speaker 1 (15:50) They are. But I would still expect them to do the things that scientists are supposed to do, which is I don't care what your topic is, what your research design look like and what does the data Speaker 2 (15:59) say. Speaker 1 (16:00) Yes. But that I think has probably been a myth in all science. But again, it's not a condemning thing for me to say this. where are you not going to find ideological bias? In a social human system where everyone has attached belief systems that they prefer to use. And then of course, monetary and reward and everything else structures that are piled on top. Sure, funding. Yeah. And to pretend that that doesn't matter. Like the ethical person will, you know, kill their family and go without a job so that their kids starve. No, they're not going to. No. So it is a political game, not one that I enjoy. And I try to stay away from it as much as possible. Speaker 4 (16:39) Yeah. It's like, what's the NSF into this year? Yeah. Tell me about the VHS tape that you wish you still had. Speaker 1 (16:48) Oh, the fire experiment. Okay. Man, you dig. This was, okay. So story time. This was when I first decided, I think it was 2009. And I'm like, okay, I'm going to grab me some community college students and we're going to ghost hunt. I'm going to do it. I'm going to go all in. So I got the equipment, because I'd loved parapsychology for years. I was in the closet on the down low reading it, reading a bunch of books. And of course, had a strong religion background. I'd already started studying various religions and various magical and esoteric practices as well. So we went to this house that the story was, and I think it was our first official investigation, had a nice camera set up, had some EMF meters. I'm like, yay. Speaker 1 (17:34) And the lady had a disabled child. And she told us that there were toys turning on and off, right? Nothing, you know, that happens, right? And that her kid was seeing scratches. Wow, okay. They couldn't account for some of the wounds and scratches that were on the kid's body. And so they asked us to come and do an investigation. And of course we did. And we set up cameras. At the time, my dear friend Kay Owen, who kind of trained me on the ways of ghost hunting back in the day, was with us. And she had old school VHS tape recorders, right? Yep. So honestly, not a super eventful night. I think in particular, nothing just insanely crazy happened. But of course we assigned the footage and started to do the review. One side note, did see a kind of a shadow person, black figure in one of the films. But this is, and I've never seen this since. And on our scale, this is one of the rarest things to see. On the SSE, this is like, you know, you do not get a high endorsement of this. I get a call from her. She's like, you got to see this. I'm like, okay, Kay, what's going on? She's like, you just got to see this. So she pops in this VHS tape. And I want to be clear. This was a double wide, like a double wide trailer, right? So we were in the kitchen. Dining room was, I use my hands. I hope that's okay. Dining room was right here. Kitchen was right here. We had the setup right here. We're talking six, seven feet away. We had eyes on that dining room the entire time. There was never a point in time that anyone wasn't, just because that's where the base camp was, right? So we're watching this video. And I did not see this. Like I said, we watched this the entire time. And on this video, I kid you not, there was a four, I'd say probably a four to six foot gout of blue flame. Blue. Blue flame. Yes. No lie. Blue flame. I'll swear to it, to my dying day. And this had carpet in the dining room. Shot straight up out of the middle of the dining room carpet. I'd say for about two and a half seconds. Just. Tall. I mean, I doubt like somebody had stuck a fireworks nozzle, right? Or a gas nozzle and shot straight up. And never seen it since. And what was interesting was it was only on film. What Speaker 4 (19:56) was the room like? Speaker 1 (19:57) The room was, again, it was one of those small kind of dining room areas that you see in like a double wide trailer. But was there residue? Was there smell? Nothing. Nothing that I can remember because we saw it post hoc. It was only on the VHS tape. Blue Flame is a chemical fire. Speaker 1 (20:14) Wow. So yeah, I wish you had that tape. I wish I had that tape. And it's probably gone by now. And so, you know, it's an anecdotal story at this point. But no, to this day, I'm like, how the hell Speaker 2 (20:25) did that happen? Speaker 1 (20:27) You know, and I would definitely put that as, you know, that was anomalous. Because again, we walked back and we had wires set up. And we walked past that room and into that room probably 50 times that night. We would have seen a scorch mark and it would have left a scorch mark. Because it was four or six feet high, of course. There was no tube or like, in other words, it wasn't like it appeared above the grave. It was like straight up out of the carpet. So I would imagine, you know, certainly, and certainly the owner would have been like, hey, who's been smoking cigarettes in my house? Right. Right. No, nothing. And again, now, Kay at the time was like, this is a bad sign. She said, I've only seen this three times. She had like a 20-year history at that point. She's like, normally people's houses burn down when this comes, when I'm like, oh, luckily that didn't happen. Within a Speaker 4 (21:11) month and a half or so, she said, right? Yep, yep. Speaker 1 (21:13) The house stayed standing? Yep, nope, no problems. Speaker 4 (21:16) Did you ever figure Speaker 1 (21:17) out what was going on in that house? Well, you know, that's kind of a loaded question because even from the get-go, we never tried to do overt explanations. And I have to admit, looking back on it, I wish I'd have done more. care support. Because at the time I was young and eager and I wanted to capture objective phenomena and I was trying to devise a method for kind of reliably separating this stuff kind of objectively, right? Into core classifications. To my knowledge, I don't know if it ever resolved. I do know she had two friends and they were like drinking margaritas on the front porch. And I also remember Kesha's TikTok had just come out, which is an odd memory to kind of put together there. But no, we never had a clear explanation. We did go through the toys. They did turn on for us kind of by themselves and behave oddly. So, you know, a little bit of anomalousness there. But in terms of finding any source for where the scratches or cuts could come from or, you know, deep voices, you know, from Beelzebub telling them that the child was possessed. Nope, nothing like that. When you're Speaker 4 (22:20) doing the research like that, especially when you're blown away by, I guess it would be pyrokinesis. Yeah. Do you forget that there's people there? There's... There's people in distress there. Speaker 1 (22:30) Yeah. And, you know, one of the things we ended up doing fairly early on in those days was we moved away from residentials, residential hauntings, because they are, and of course now with more years and experience, you know, you need a lot more support for those individuals. You know, what happens on the television shows, I'm not saying it's wrong, but it is promoting a particular point of view. And nowadays, I would say absolutely. You need to ask what their expectations are and you need to investigate what their state of mind is, you know, psychological history. And then really just ask, what do you want us to do here? Right. Do you want us to try and debunk this? Do you want us to just document the evidence? If you're looking for a cleansing, we don't do that. You know, in hindsight, you know, it could have been done better back in the day. Speaker 4 (23:20) I bet most people just want validation. I just want someone else to see this. Speaker 1 (23:23) They do, but that becomes problematic with residential investigations because if you don't get the evidence or you go, actually, this is really explainable, they don't tend to like that. Speaker 4 (23:34) No, because we're back to your study again. Speaker 1 (23:36) Yeah. And in those days, I really, really tried to say, you know, we're being scientists here. We're going to come in, we're going to, you know, try and get the best data we can, and we're going to try and rule out whatever we can. And beyond that, we'll let you know if we found something, but we'd say up front, we don't do exorcisms, we don't do cleansings, we don't do X, Y, and Z. Yeah, the belief component, obviously from Ghosted and other papers, is such a powerful component. There's almost quasi-therapy going on. Yes. And that raises some ethical issues too. Speaker 4 (24:13) Well, before the vocabulary and transliminality and all of that, Before you knew what any of this was called, what happened to you, like, as a five-year-old? Speaker 1 (24:25) I have had a long series of, you know, and to make the skeptics happy, if you want to say hypnagogic episode or altered state of consciousness or, you know, whatever, fine. I don't even really care. But I've had a series of kind of paranormal experiences from a young age, including some pretty negative encounters in my early years, like say 12 or 13, that actually led me to become religious because it scared me so bad. I was like, okay, I need to have a talk with God. Speaker 4 (24:57) Yes. Speaker 1 (24:58) And I won't lie, I think that's probably shaped a lot of the course of my life. Now, if, you know, it's tricky. I don't know if I'm really different or not, but... I try to make a distinction between explaining the thing doesn't tell you why it occurred in the first place. Of Speaker 4 (25:18) course. Speaker 1 (25:19) But I don't think that distinction is commonly made in science, and I don't think it's commonly made in a lot of discussions of the paranormal. Let me kind of tangent and give you an example. Let's say I had a Star Trek tricorder, right? Cool. And so I got to time travel, and I'm going to go back, and I'm going to witness. the resurrection of Jesus, right? And so I put my tricorder out, and hopefully this isn't offending anybody with blasphemy, and now suddenly I have all the information, right? I'm like, oh, look, the cellular structures did this, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I can explain this now. Speaker 4 (25:57) Well, Speaker 1 (25:57) okay, great. but the guy still came back from the dead. Speaker 4 (26:01) We tend to think the money in our bank account is always going to be there when we need it. But your bank can close an account. 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That's YFilesLovesGold.com or text Files to Metals and do it now while you're thinking about it. Right. Right? I mean, so... He still did it. Speaker 1 (27:14) Yeah, the why is not the how. Right. So, you know, I had... That's exactly Speaker 4 (27:19) right. That's a great way of putting it. You could show the data and people would say, yeah, but he did it. Yeah. That's neat, but he did it. Speaker 1 (27:25) Yeah, because really we're digging into what are the fundamental mechanisms of the universe. Right. In the sense of, and you know, here's a bit of a bender, and I promise I'll come back to paranormal experiences. We talk about chance all the time, right? And there may be some philosophers of science that are going to get mad at me about this. How do you know it's chance? I'm talking about the normal distribution. There is a distribution of odds for dice, right? And we say it's going to perform in this certain way. And we know there's a certain odds of getting, you know, two six-sided dices. There's a certain odds of getting two. There's a certain odds of getting 12. And those are universal. But with a particular roll. I got a seven. Well, that's chance. How do you know it's chance? What's the actual mechanism? What's the actual thing that gave you a seven? And the honest answer is, we don't know. You can call it God. You can call it chance. You can call it probability gremlins. There's no answer for that mechanism. So I separate this idea of, obviously, laws and probability and math works. Another way to... to think about it. We know there's a relationship, a really well done relationship between depression and anxiety. And you might see in a research paper, you know, depression is significantly related to anxiety. Well, what happens if I change that language to sadness demons bring anxious demons? I just change the words. I can't say it for you wrong. Yeah, I mean, the math doesn't change. The statistical outcomes don't change. The methods don't change. As Speaker 4 (29:00) someone who has depression and anxiety, it does feel like demons. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 1 (29:04) And, you know, well, that's a whole other tangent. But and again, I'm not doing this, you know, to engage in sophistry. I'm not. But one of the things that I've really had to struggle with over the decades is making sense of God, the universe. It's something that I've just kind of been obsessed with for a long time. I'm not claiming to have those answers. But it is something that I think about all the time. If you claim Speaker 4 (29:27) to have the answers, I Speaker 1 (29:28) wouldn't believe you. Well, and you shouldn't. You know, I don't require anyone to agree with what I, and that's the point. You don't have to agree with me and you might not want to. But I do recognize when humans pretend to know something versus when we're like, we have these rules. We know these rules work well. But the map is not the territory. And that's not even an opinion. That's objectively demonstrable. Speaker 4 (29:55) Yes. Speaker 1 (29:56) So full circle. I had an experience when I was 12 or 13. I had some hypnagogic episodes when I was younger. Hypnagogic meaning before sleep? Speaker 2 (30:06) Yeah, Speaker 1 (30:07) yeah. Or waking up. Or I actually had a spiritual experience. Who knows, right? Too young and it's not like there were psychologists to do a checklist at the time. Speaker 4 (30:16) I had one too and we're going to talk Speaker 1 (30:17) about it a little bit later in this show. Well, I remember before that happened, being nine or ten and waking up, and I swear to you, there was a Tyrannosaurus rex downstairs. Downstairs? Yes. So you got out of bed? No, I didn't. I sat up, and I heard a T-Rex. Whole roar, big footsteps. Roar, Speaker 4 (30:36) psh, roar, psh. How do you know it wasn't like an Allosaur or a Triceratops? Because I'm Speaker 1 (30:41) psychic. Speaker 4 (30:42) Okay. Speaker 1 (30:44) Okay. Nevermind the hallway was only three foot wide. It was a T-Rex, damn it. And honestly, it was freaking me out. And I remember screaming. I remember screaming for my mom at the time. Now, I did start to catch on after about the 20th footstep. I'm like, wait a minute. There's like 12 steps here, right? And then, of course, the next thing I know, and that's why I think it was a hypnagogic experience, is my mom was in the doorway. I didn't see her coming to the doorway. Just poof, right? Right. And for the listener, if you're not familiar with these either hypnagogic or hypnopompic episodes, it's stage one sleep, right? So you're kind of in the sleep stage, but you're kind of awake. It allows for full auditory, visual, and kinesthetic hallucinations. This Speaker 4 (31:27) audience knows this is the land of the shadow people. Speaker 1 (31:29) Yes. But by the way, when they say, we know this occurs, they've classified it this way. But in terms of deep research that's gone into this, you know, I think about Hufford's classic book about Night Hag, right? Speaker 4 (31:44) And Speaker 1 (31:44) the curious note that in some cases there'd be very weird objective paranormal phenomena in association with Night Hag that was independent. Like, oh, the dresser drawer moved by itself. Again, I'm not a fan of, oh, look, we took something mystical and turned it into a science term. Now it's all better. I'm like, bullshit. There's... Speaker 4 (32:05) That's what they do. Speaker 1 (32:06) Yeah, but that's Speaker 4 (32:07) a Speaker 1 (32:07) problem. Because here's my thing. I don't think that science can't do it. I think they can. I tend to look at that as if you really wanted to do it, you'd get down and dirty. And you would do a series of papers and you would figure out how to operationalize this stuff and you would separate the wheat from the chafe. But I don't think that gets done. I think we very often will take a term, was it mass psychogenic illness? No, sick building. building syndrome. You ever seen the papers on sick building syndrome? They're like, oh, all this weird stuff occurred. Well, it's sick building syndrome. What's that mean? What does that mean? Yeah. Good question. Because the paper isn't really going to tell you either. There's no explanation for why this phenomena still occurred or why it was isolated to a certain area or why this entire group of individuals. you know, had these weird, you know, physical problems and illnesses and everything else. They're like, nope, we'll just call it sick building syndrome and we'll move on. And I think that's where there's areas where parapsychology has basically bled into the mainstream. It just hasn't been sufficiently covered. Just my two cents, and I'm sure a lot of people would disagree with me on that. But I am rambling. Do we want to go back to my experience or do we want to let that go? If Speaker 4 (33:24) I need to bring you back, just trust that I will. Okay. Everything is fine. I Speaker 1 (33:28) trust you, AJ. Speaker 4 (33:28) Just trust me. We talked a little bit about that you were pre-seminary. What's your relationship with God like now? Speaker 1 (33:37) I have a very, when I say good, I have a very, very intense relationship with God. But most, probably a line, I'm less heretical when it comes to Catholicism. I think the standard Catholic would accept me a little bit more than a Protestant would. But I'm definitely a heretic in the sense of... In Speaker 2 (34:00) what Speaker 1 (34:00) way? Well, again, I've dabbled with a lot of spiritual systems, and I've been heavily influenced by Kabbalah, particularly Victorian Kabbalah after Golden Dawn got a hold of it and everything else. So Speaker 4 (34:13) theosophy as well? Speaker 1 (34:16) Indirectly. Of course, Blavatsky kind of fed, I mean, they don't say it a lot, but Blavatsky definitely fed into the Golden Dawners. Not a fan of Crowley, for the record, but that's a whole other story. And I don't take, you know, Golden Dawn material at face value. But I will say that, and forgive the butchery, the Otz Chiam, you know, the Tree of Life, if you really look at it as a structural metaphysical system, you know, ten manifestations of God, each representing different aspects, conveniently tied to various planetary influences which are universal. And, you know, of course, the tarot applications where you see the various paths of the tree. And then you apply as above, so below, and the four systems of them. And I'm like, this is an insanely good classification system. It is. The Emerald Tablet Speaker 4 (35:05) is right behind me. Speaker 1 (35:05) Yeah. And I've never been able to let go of that. So I think in some ways I might be more of a Jewish mystic or a butchered Jewish mystic or a bad Jewish mystic because, of course, I'm not Jewish. But, no, I think a lot of my view of God and Christianity and religion in general is very Kabbalic in nature. Speaker 4 (35:25) And Gnostic as well. Yes, Speaker 1 (35:27) yes. Although I don't know to what extent... Speaker 1 (35:32) Gnosticism is complicated. It is. And again, I tend to get a little gun shy when people are like, yes, I've seen heaven. It's got 72 layers. Here's the 72 names, right? You know, 72 angels of the Shem, Hamaphoresh and all that. But an Speaker 4 (35:46) ancient Jew would say Jesus was Gnostic. Speaker 1 (35:49) Yeah. Yeah, he would. And I wouldn't go against basic Gnostic principles. And if you've ever kind of dived into the history of that, Elaine Pagels. I think is not a bad source. And of course, I never say this right, Nag Hammadi or Nag Hammadi, I can't remember. You know, I think the idea of Gnosticism early on, before the more orthodox side of Christianity decided to, you know, structure the churches, was kind of close to Protestantism. Okay. Well, I mean, think of it this way. Not modern Protestantism. No. If you think about the idea of we're not going to worry about structure. God is an individual searching sort of thing, right? You must look inside. Speaker 4 (36:39) God is in here. Yeah. He's not in that building. Speaker 1 (36:41) Which, if you think about it, if you're trying to make an organized religion, that's a little tricky. Speaker 4 (36:46) Yeah, we need Speaker 1 (36:47) to leave Speaker 4 (36:47) those books out. Speaker 1 (36:48) Yeah. Well, and to be fair, right? How do you create a unified church if you're going to say, hey, here's a few rules. You need to find God on your own. Speaker 4 (37:02) No good. Speaker 1 (37:03) Yeah. You're not going to, you know. And in fairness, you know, with young Christianity and, you know, unfortunately a lot of Christians are not familiar with early Christian history. They're not even aware of how the Bible was formed, which frustrates me some days. Why? Speaker 1 (37:21) Would you have included all the books, the Apocryphon, Speaker 4 (37:25) Enoch? Speaker 1 (37:28) No. Man, you're about to make me say several controversial things, so I guess I'm going to say them. What's the worst that can happen? Oh, you'd be surprised. Actually, you probably wouldn't. Let me think about how to say this. Speaker 1 (37:44) Pseudepigrapha. I love it. I love all those books. But maybe I'm a little bit of a snob in the sense of, if you are a person of faith and you care a great deal about your faith... And by the way, I don't have any judgment about whatever faith a person has. I really am... Neither do I. I really am a... If God has called you, God, quote unquote, universe, God has called you to something, I believe there's a purpose for that. It's not my business to muck with your relationship. Speaker 4 (38:09) We're just having a conversation. This channel knows I have great respect for religion, all of them. Speaker 1 (38:14) So I don't, you know, if a person has been called to traditional Catholicism, in my mind, that's your path. You should follow it. But I don't have any sense of exclusionism with religion, which gets me in trouble. Why? Why would that get you in trouble? Well, because a lot of people's fundamental religious beliefs require that exclusionism, right? I mean... Even modern, actually Catholicism has some loopholes they get around. They do. But particularly with Protestantism, which is the younger form of Christianity, this is the way, this is the path, and this is it, and this is best. Speaker 4 (38:50) And if you don't follow this way, you don't go to heaven. Speaker 1 (38:52) Yeah. Speaker 4 (38:53) Right? I don't like that. Speaker 1 (38:54) I don't either. But again, if that's where a person is, that's where a person is. Everyone can get to heaven. That's your way. Yeah. I've got my way. Yes. Now, I would say there are universal morals. Don't be an asshole. Sure. But I also think there's a distinction between what we might call the social morals that we have and, of course, as a social psychologist, understanding that religion is not the same. The rules we follow now in various religions are not the rules that were followed 60 years ago. Very much a difference between dogma. versus the core books upon which a religion is established. All that having been said, I love the Apocrypha, I certainly love the Catholic Apocrypha, and I like the Gnostic texts, but I also want to be balanced and say if Paul and the various future bishops, those New Testament books, all of which came before the Gospels, Speaker 4 (39:58) They Speaker 1 (39:59) did have a goal, which was we need to keep this alive. And I do have to give due credit and say, how else were you going to do that if you weren't going to unify under churches and rules? That's a great point. And how were you going to survive? Because at the time, early, early Christianity was a cult. A cult, not a cult, right? Right. You're going to go mainstream if you're going to spread this good word, so to speak. There's no difference between a cult and a religion. Well, just numbers. Just numbers. Now, in secular conveyance, right, that's, you know, people hear cult, and they're like, yes, and we kill children and goats and do like, you know, that. But no, in a very technical academic sense, numbers is what makes you a religion. Sure. So no, I'm kind of open-minded about both sides of it. I see why it happened. I see why orthodox religion, right, so to speak, occurred the way it did. But I do think, going back to the Gnostics, that some of that introspection and personal enlightenment and... if I remember Pagels correctly, the fact that various people would take turns being the priest or the minister or the rabbi. You know, and the way Pagels sets it up, this just was not going to work for an organized religion. Speaker 1 (41:10) I'm just a fan of the Gnosticism. Not so much the modern form where there's, I can't remember, 36 layers with passwords that you have to get through. I think that might be a little too much. I Speaker 4 (41:22) agree. More like the Book of Philip and the Book of John. That's more my speed. So you're in social sciences, psychology, and you start to talk about parapsychology, and someone said you will never speak to another human being again. Speaker 4 (41:40) Who was that? Who told you that? Well, actually, I'm not, I don't, did I say that? Someone said that to you. Oh. Don't go into the field because you'll never be taken seriously again. Speaker 1 (41:53) Honestly, that was my undergrad advisor. And in fairness, the degree of bias when you're looking at the 80s, early 90s towards Parasyte was significantly more robust. Oh, sure. We've gotten, you know, society as a whole has gotten a little more loosey-goosey in the last 30 years. I'd call it Speaker 4 (42:16) open-minded. Speaker 1 (42:17) Yeah. That's fine. And in terms of, you know, psychology, religion lit, there's been about a 10 % decline in Orthodox religion. Adherence to it in our society really, I think, persistent now for about 30 or 40 years. So we are seeing a cultural paradigm shift. That's interesting because church attendance is up. It is now. It is Speaker 4 (42:38) now. Speaker 1 (42:38) And if, man, because I am not going to go into politics on here, but if you objectively look at what has occurred in the last 10 or 15 years, we have had a lot of challenges to what we would call the unified social fabric of America. That's Speaker 4 (42:56) not left or right. That's all of them. Speaker 1 (42:58) Yeah. But as a result, if you're kind of familiar with the dynamics of it, if you don't have a message, Many messages will compete. Yes back to social identity theory now you have your in groups in your out groups So I would say that the onboarding of religion recently is a counter move against the 2015 right kind of left-leaning Material and so I don't even know how that's gonna pan out. Speaker 4 (43:23) I don't I don't either but I'm glad it's happening Balance is good. It is good Speaker 4 (43:32) I think, were you a professor by day and then giving ghost tours at night and tarot readings? Because you started, I guess, a student club, right? Yep. And I think it had a terrible acronym. Was it ASAF? Speaker 1 (43:46) Yeah, ASAF. Yes, yes. ASAF, okay. Okay, in my defense. Go ahead. In my defense, and I'm going to own this for the entire field, social scientists are shitty at naming things. Speaker 4 (43:58) I see that. Speaker 1 (43:58) We have multiple names for the same theory. We're bad at it. I will own my sin. Yeah, it turned into Israel, which isn't necessarily the best name either. I noticed Speaker 4 (44:10) that. It went from Asaph to Israel. Yeah, Speaker 1 (44:12) yes, in 2014, I believe. Speaker 1 (44:17) So what were you doing? Where were the tours? Well, actually, we did the tours as part of fundraising for when we actually filed for nonprofit status. So the whole nonprofit started originally as just students volunteering and me kind of showing them the scientific method and us basically me having a gaggle of research assistants. What were you Speaker 4 (44:36) teaching at the time? Speaker