We’re back live from Wizard World Madison 2019 where we celebrate the 20th anniversary of one of the scariest movies of the 1990s, The Sixth Sense. A story about a boy who is visited by the spirits of the dead and the child psychologist that is trying to help him, it was the most financially successful horror film of all time until it was finally surpassed by 2017’s It: Chapter One. The movie turned child actor Haley Joel Osment into a star and it skyrocketed the career of its writer-director, M. Night Shyamalan, who became particularly known for his use of Philadelphia as a location and a penchant for Twilight Zone -style twists.

I was 22 when I saw the movie the first time and I don’t think I’ve ever been as scared in the theater as I was coming home from that film. I was walking with my girlfriend at the time up a dark staircase into my apartment and we were convinced that when we got to the end of the stairs and unlocked the door there was going to be a dead person behind it.

Re-watching it after twenty years, it’s at first most shocking to see Bruce Willis’ gorgeous hair or how skinny Donnie from the New Kids On The Block looks, but then you start seeing all of the clues that Bruce Willis’ character was dead the whole time and it feels so obvious, which why it was such a great trick the first time around.

But while The Sixth Sense might have been a completely fictional film, it doesn’t mean that a lot of the concepts in the movie aren’t taken from real-life hauntings and paranormal experiences and here’s what we talk about in this episode:

• Everytime a ghost gets mad, the temperature drops, so what’s up with cold spots in real hauntings?
• What do psychic mediums in real life actually see when they hear messages from dead people?
• Bruce Willis’ character Malcolm becomes convinced after hearing an EVP, what’s the history of EVP phenomena?
• Olivia Williams talking about how an object can be imprinted by its former owners. Does that mean an object can be cursed?
• Poltergeist activity, apporte hauntings, and Munchhausen-Syndrome-by-Proxy as a potential explanation for paranormal activity

Welcome to See You on the Other Mike, where the world

of the mysterious collides with the world of entertainment.

A discussion of art, music, movies, spirituality,

the weird and self discovery. And

now, your hosts, musicians and entertainers

who have their own weakness for the weird, Mike and

Wendy from the band Sunspot. Okay. Episode

270 Mike from Wizard World Madison 2019.

Today, we're talking about I See Dead People, the

20th anniversary of 6th Sense, and the paranormal influences.

I first of all, the fact that that movie is 20 years old is

making me feel tremendously old right now Mike, considering

1999, the turn of the millennium,

was like that it's like, oh my god, the future is here and then the

future came and went and still no jet packs or rocket

cars. But we do have the people, you know. We

do have the entire Mike some of the world's knowledge in our hands at all

times and we can take pictures of ourselves and show them to

all our friends across the world instantly. I was excited

today because I was Mike I have the chance to take a picture with Lou

Ferrigno today and that's Mike, oh my god. It's Lou. It's the Hulk.

You know, like I remember when mister Rogers went to go see the Hulk and

everything and now Mike I can be Just don't make him mad. Right. It's

the whole like, the whole thing's over if I make him mad. But

okay. The first reaction on seeing The 6th Sense, I remember seeing

it probably I saw it the Sunday it came out in 1999,

and I went to go to University Square, which was, a theater here

in Madison. If you were a student, you could see a movie for $4 at

any time. So I'd see a movie, like, 3 times a week. And I went

to go see it, and I remember being

viscerally scared as I walked home from University Square

as in so it was me and my girlfriend at the time,

and we're walking up the stairs to my apartment and it's

completely dark. And it's not even that late or whatever. And you know the 6th

sense isn't even that gory. I mean, there's the one thing where you see the

the back of the dude's head. No. There's there's quite a few people with I

know. But I was I was used to movies with, like, a chainsaw cutting off

the guy's arm and, you know, so the The 6th Sense was just Mike was

like a nice horror movie and yet I've been more scared

afterwards than anything I'd ever seen. As we were

walking up the steps, it was dark and I remember, like, thinking

what am I gonna see when I open up my door? Like, I thought I

was gonna see a dead person when I open up my Mike, but the only

thing that happened when I opened my door was, I I saw a dead relationship.

Oh. Wow. Hey. Alright. So so Wendy,

what was your what was your first reaction? Yeah. The movie

I I actually I couldn't believe when I watched the movie Wendy the big

reveal happened at the end which Wait, spoiler alert. You guys have all seen 6th

Sense. Right? Okay. Alright. Okay. Because we're gonna spoil it anyway. Here it is.

It's kind of necessary for this discussion but, yeah. When Wendy the the

reveal happened at the Wendy, I felt like how did I not

see that all along? You know, the whole entire movie. How did I not know?

We're we're talking about the fact that Bruce Willis is dead. Right? Not the fact

that Mike her grandma's dead? No. Just the the Bruce Willis. Like I thought he

was alive and then it seemed so obvious when she

drops the ring at the end and he has that whole moment of coming to

realize that he's not actually, you know only Cole is seeing

him. And so but yeah, that movie spooked me big time and it really got

me thinking about, you know, people who experience

things in haunted houses and what is that really Mike. We

don't often define it as a specific person, but then

just thinking that maybe it's not somebody you know, but maybe it's someone else

looking for help from someone here. All of those things.

Very very make you think kind of movie. Yeah. No. It really was one of

those things. And first of all, it was nice and slow. Because if you guys

remember the late nineties, we just come off of Scream. And

so Scream came out in 1996, and after Scream, like it was back to

Slashers. And it was back to Mike teenage kids being in

trouble and great gore shots and and scary movies. And

so all of a sudden Wendy movie like you have a

movie that's super slow that nobody's just getting recklessly

stabbed or anything cut off, You're just Mike,

okay. When is the other shoe gonna drop? Yeah. So I think some of the

tension at the same time was accomplished by the fact that you

didn't really know, when something horrific was gonna

happen. And you didn't know also if the kid was crazy or

not. I think Right. I think that really helped, like, because in the beginning

you're Mike, well, it might be a like this might like Bruce Willis might turn

into a psycho at any time. Yeah. And it's also disturbing that

really the only gory stuff, you know, people bleeding or missing parts

of their head or things like that, is only seen by the child in the

movie. Mike none of the other grown ups are experiencing it, so it's just Mike

thinking about it through that standpoint of if I were a child and I saw

something like that. I mean, I don't think I even saw horror movies with that

kind of gore until I was well well over Cole's age. Oh, man.

I, my dad let me watch the thing

with him when he rented it from the he watched John Carpenter's

thing when I was Mike 7. See, I guess I was more sheltered. And he

remembered because he had seen the original Thing From Another World from 1951

with James Arness and it's like this the the creature effects

aren't spectacular, let's say. And so he remembers

watching that as a kid and he's like, oh, well, the thing from another world

wasn't that scary, so we can watch this new thing. And we're watching it,

and, like, when the dog's head, like, rips open and the thing comes

out, I'm, like, openly weeping. Yeah. What do you think when you're a little

kid? Oh, my god, dad. You don't know what to expect and that kind of

thing. It's like Yeah. And he's Mike, he was watching. He said, this movie's

awesome. What's what's wrong with you, boy? And that's why

we're here today. It's the beginning. It's the beginning of it all. Probably to discuss

psychiatrists. No. But we talk

about the influences behind the 6th sense and,

especially some of the real life paranormal influences. Number

1, I'm surprised 20 years later, when you see,

Vincent Gray, who's the guy that kills Bruce Willis's character,

when you see him show up Mike it's Donnie Wahlberg from the New Kids on

the Block. Like he's like, you weren't hanging tough enough, Bruce, and he found

a puppy. Yeah. But he doesn't have the mullet and he's like £50 lighter. So

Right. He lost £43 in order to play,

this character to seem emaciated, to seem desperate, to seem crazy.

And he certainly is effective. Yeah. Very.

And so and also originally he was supposed to be buck

naked. So Donnie, he wasn't supposed to be in his tighty whities. He was supposed

to be naked. Interesting. But in order to keep the PG 13

sure. To keep the PG 13 rating, we didn't get to see little Donnie. But

the fact that Donnie agreed to that role, you know, that's a pretty, like, intense

role to play. Well Even in tighty whities, let alone naked.

Mike, you Wendy, sign up for that. He's only in there for about 7 minutes

of the film, and then it ends up being, you know, something you

really remember. But he was trying to get himself be taken seriously as an actor.

And one of the things I mean, great act it seems like great actors

always love to lose weight for a role, and that's how we respect them.

Christian Bale lost, like, £50 for The Machinist.

And when you see him in that movie, you're Mike, oh my god. Like, you're

like you feel like Christian Bale's, like, mother-in-law or something.

Somebody feed that boy. You know, you're just watching, like, oh my god.

There, Robert De Niro lost and gained a huge amount of weight for

Raging Bull. Tom Hanks in Cast

Away. Tom Hanks had to lose and gain so much weight in Cast Away

that Robert Zemeckis went and filmed another movie.

Oh, the one with Michelle Pfeiffer and Harrison Ford where he kills her. It's not

that great of a movie. It's you know what I'm talking about though. Right? Yeah.

Like we it's it's like it's a ghost, you know. But it's not as good

as we remember Cast Away, but he shot a movie in between

the different, schedules for Cast Away so that

Tom Hanks could lose and gain the weight necessary for the role. So Donnie

Wahlberg, he didn't just wanna be the new kids guy. Otherwise, we'd think of

him like we think of Jordan Knight or whatever. Well, and plus, like, the movie

would not start off on that serious tone if it's Mike, woah.

I'm gonna shoot you. Like I would I would watch that film.

But the thing is so psychiatrists being killed by their patients is

actually a fairly serious thing. And

this is from The Washington Post in in 1990. It says about a half a

dozen studies, including the 1976 report from the University of

Maryland, suggest that an estimated 40% of psychiatrists

are assaulted at some time in the course of their career, primarily when they're young,

but, you know, by patients. 80% of psychiatric nurses,

20% of social workers, and 10% of clinical psychologists are attacked

by a patient at one time or the other. So, like, that was the first

thing. Like, being a psychiatrist is a dangerous job.

In addition, you're playing with somebody's mind. Like, they can kill you. And so, like,

that was, like, that's that's gonna be a fairly, like, no, like,

psychiatrists no mind control ways or whatever to not get

killed by their patients, but they don't. So I

just thought that was an interesting statistic. But let's talk a little

bit about the actual paranormal stuff that they use in the 6th sense and maybe

ways that has been used in real life. Okay. And the

first thing is the cold spots in the room. And

Cole says that whenever the ghosts get angry, there's a cold spot. And of

course, the famous when he says, when I see dead people.

Like, you know, his you can see his breath.

And of course, Bruce Willis' wife, whenever he's in the room, you

see her showering. And and cold spots,

it's a classic ghost kind of thing. During the, during the filming

of the movie, M. Night Shyamalan actually said that there was

no way, to make CG breath, computer generated

imagery, breath, look as good as they just

did when they just put an icebox in the room. Like, they made the room

as cold as possible. They filmed most of the interiors in this,

old convention hall in Philadelphia, and so they could just Mike leave the

heat off while they were shooting and that would make it cold enough where you

could see their breath. Which is funny because when I was just re watching it,

you know, the second time I've seen it Wendy years later, I

thought the I actually thought it looked like bad CG. You think, like

Every time I saw that No. That that was real. That was real. And the

thing is in paranormal investigations a lot, the cold

spot in a room where that shouldn't be cold, it may be the

indication of something there. Most of the time temperature drops are used

to kind of vindicate some other piece of evidence.

And let me see if I have my if I brought

my Oh, wow. Humidity and temperature Show and tell.

Right? So you get one of these off of Amazon and they're like $30 or

whatever and it's a humidity meter and Mike scientists use

them and things and also guys that go into haunted bill like haunted

quote unquote buildings to see if there's any kind of stuff. See this little

humidity meter if, like right now it's 68 degrees in this

room. I'm a little hotter because I'm wearing a scarf but that's because I'm a

victim of fashion not paranormal. But the thing is when you hold it

out, like certain parts of the room might be 5, 6 degrees

colder than another part. And that's just has the probe right at the end of

it. It's not like picking up the temperature over there or something. Right? Correct. So

when you're in a certain area so Mike the idea of cold spots

being, the, like the the

harbinger of a paranormal event. I mean, that's, that's pretty standard in

paranormal stuff. The thing is though, people will just say, like, oh, it feels

totally colder in this world. Right. You notice it. It's it's an easily noticeable thing.

Right. But that's why you need the little meter or whatever to be Mike, okay,

over here it's 5 degrees different. Now that could be the placement of, you

know, anything else. Right. But when it's accompanied by,

something like a EVP electronic voice phenomenon, we'll talk about in a

second, or it's accompanied by a flashing of the lights or a change of

the electromagnetic field. They have these little EMF meters.

And these you see these on Ghost Adventures and Ghost Hunters all the

time. And whenever, you know, it detects

electromagnetic fields and also, changes in

the electromagnetic field. So when you're, like so when you put them

next to your phone or whatever, they're gonna take off a little bit. But let's

say you turned your phone off like a good paranormal investigator, And you're going

somewhere and, you know, I thought that these were pretty silly

for a long time until I've been in a couple

investigations. We are one at the, Museum of Modern Art in New York

City, and we're talking to an artifact. And it felt like

the silliest thing in the world because you're just Mike, alright.

Do you have anything you wanna tell us? And then it goes bing. I'm like,

come on. And then we started asking him questions, and it kept on binging binging,

like, in response to it. Now is that necessarily a a haunting?

Is that necessarily an intelligent apparition or something? No. It could be just us thinking

about it and making it happen kinda thing. But the fact that it was responding

in that situation, and there's been a 1000000 other situations where I've been like, is

there a spirit in the room? And nothing happens. I'd say, like,

99% nothing ever happens with the k two meter. So when it does, all of

a sudden you're thinking, okay. But you so let's

say you get a change in humidity, a change in temperature, and then a change

in electromagnetic field, and it's accompanied by something,

you know, an EVP happening on your recorder. Then you're

like, alright. You kinda use those things Mike cold spots,

and Mike EMF readings to kind of bring it all together

so it's not just one kind of anomaly happening. It's several types of anomaly

happening, and then you can be like, okay, something weird happened here. I don't know

what it is, but something weird. Yeah. Getting back to that cold spots, and

measuring the temperature too, you'll see a lot on a lot of the ghost hunting

programs where they use, like, a thermal imaging shot so that,

you know, if something happens and they'll go back and look at the footage and

see, like, a blue handprint or something. You know? I mean that would be that

would be awesome actually. But usually it's more of just, you know,

visually being able to see where the cold spots are. But you can actually

buy thermal, lenses that connect to your phone or

whatever for relatively cheaply. Absolutely. And even if

you don't wanna use it for paranormal things, maybe you just wanna pretend you're the

predator. Or check your barbecue grill. Right.

You know, this is something, so obviously

Wendy Cole sees spirits, he

sees them like we he's like we think of Bruce Willis in the movie. Like

a solid form, like like a person sitting there. Right. So the thing is in

real Mike, Bruce Willis, if you see him as a ghost, he obviously wouldn't have

any hair. And he didn't have any hair in 1999.

But in the, you know, as in the ghost he did. But when you're

watching the movie, you know, the ghosts are solid as regular it's

it's like somebody it's like you guys sitting there or Wendy sitting next to me.

Wendy we talk to psychic mediums, that's the

first question I always ask, because I have seen a couple of weird

things, but I would never say that I see dead people. But we talk to

people often who say that they see dead people. Or they communicate with

dead people. And I always wondered that too, what does it feel Mike? But

it's a 6th sense. So it's a sense that those of

us who don't have it, it's really hard to describe. It's like

trying to explain what something tastes like to somebody who doesn't have taste buds or

something, you know. Right. The thing is, you know, there's a couple of ways

that people see dead people fairly frequently for

people who are not psychic Mike me. I'm actually probably anti psychic. When I get

around psychics they can't seem to do anything either.

It's it seems that, crisis apparitions

happen when maybe someone you love is

passing away, and then you'll see them

walk by your room or something. A lot of times what'll happen is, people

will think they'll they'll say that, someone's walking see Mike

somebody walking around the stairs or that they think their mom's home or they think

their brother's home or they're Mike, and they see them. And then maybe they don't

talk to them, but they see them there, but there's no way they could have

possibly be there because it's the time they died in a car accident or in

the hospital or things like that. And so these crisis apparitions seem to be the

most common kind of way that people see dead people. And,

I mean, I've got several, like, crisis apparitions that happened in my

family of where, you know, I had a couple of cousins. And when

their mother passed, they they talked about the the day

before she passed, they had the same dream about her That's cool.

In the same room, the same thing, and they they were saying like, Mike know,

did you I had a dream about mom last night, like and then I think

this is gonna sound weird, but you were there and his brother was

like, no, I I was in the dream too. And and so these are regular,

not psychic, working class kind of people who wouldn't be the kind of people we

they when I talk about ghost stuff, they're Mike, that's stupid. Except for the

time I shared a dream with my brother and our dead man visited us. That

one time. There's always something extreme too usually. And so these

so crisis apparitions can often be very physical things

or they can be something like receiving a phone call.

Interestingly enough, I was talking to somebody who was,

like, a guy that worked at Verizon in maybe a higher level. And he

was saying, well, we we don't know exactly why these things

happen. And he goes, most of the time, they're probably just,

that they're they're just missed Mike, mistimed

phone calls. But he's like, we don't get a lot of mistimed phone calls,

but the number of times that people report that they had a voice

mail left to them after somebody they loved had died and then they got the

voice mail later and, it's it's a it's a fairly

frequent occurrence. It it occurs a lot more frequently than you think it does. And

so, those kind of things with a guy from Verizon was he's

like, yes. That absolutely happens, and no. We don't have an

explanation for it. It's it's those kind of things that make

you think, okay. Maybe there's something to it. But the the most common kind of

seeing dead people for regular people Mike maybe me or Wendy who aren't

psychic or whatever is a crisis apparition and someone appearing

to you, and that can often be something very solid Mike that person's in the

room with you. But Yes. As you

were saying with the, the psychic mediums that we've met and talked

to, and they'll just, you know, they'll kind of look at you and be like,

I see. Oh, you're yeah, there's a person there.

And I just I wish I could I wish I could know what it is

that they're feeling or seeing, you know, because I want to sometimes I see or

hear weird things, and I'm

like, oh, is that am I receiving a message? But usually it's just my

brain, you know, interpreting a pattern or something like that. But I've I

always ask them, Mike, can you try to describe what it is,

you know are you are you seeing a person? Are you seeing an an aura

or whatever? And very few people are able to answer that because like

I said, it's a 6th sense. It's not something that I can relate to. But,

we did have a guest on our show who I thought did a really good

job of explaining, how she receives messages from angels. That's right.

Yeah. And so she she she said that, she had seen her dead aunt

or whatever when she was Mike 3 years old. That was the first time she

was asking her mother, who's the lady next to her. Her mother just thought

she was kidding or whatever. And she was describing what she was wearing

and, her mom's like that that person's not with us anymore.

She's like, what? She's standing right next to you. She pat me on the head,

you know. Right, which is, freaky. I guess not because it's a

friendly aunt. It's not like a deadly aunt. Yeah. But she said that the

angels that spoke to her sounded kinda like Yoda. Yeah. We have a MP

3 of her is what she said. It's half in my head and half out

of my head, and that that took a little getting used to.

At first, it sounds like an overtone. Like, have you ever heard well, of course,

you're a musician. It sounds like rolling harmonics,

kind of cascading harmonics. It's tonal first, and

then it falls into a sentence.

And oftentimes the sentence is chunky and

blocky, and it may have 5 or 8 words, yet each

word has this massive attachment to it. So as the translator,

I will say the sentence and then I'll say and I wish I could give

you an example, but unless it's actually happening, it's a little rough.

Then I will say, okay, so here is the actual, you know, here's, I'll say

this angel is saying blah. What they mean is, and then in our

colloquial discussion, English is a horrendously

linear language. I've gotta unpack all of that and

explain the nuances and explain what this means. And that means because the nuances,

the gray areas are contained in the tonal over ringing.

So there's a 5 or 6 or 8 or 12 words or whatever that are

just semi oddly placed. And it reminds me of have

you ever seen the use of ghost boxes on

paranormal shows where Oh, yeah. These okay. I feel like a

living ghost box. I feel like they're beaming through things and whatever

the most relevant concrete word to represent a multi

concept is being pulled and then because they

certainly don't speak English. I mean, they speak whatever, and they've gotta make sure

I understand that. So it comes in it comes in as a tone and

it forms into a funky sentence that I get to unpack to make

some sense. So I thought that was a great it

really helped me kinda understand as as well as a

person with only 5 senses can, the experience that she

has when she's talking to dead people. You know what I think is interesting about

that too is that the use of language, so Wendy

think about how when somebody is writing you a text message, and we all have

friends who are like text challenged, text truly challenged

maybe. They send you a text and you're like, oh, that person just sounds like

a jerk or I have no idea what they mean. And it's because you're missing

the nuance. When you talk to them in real life, it they're fine socially,

but it's it's the the text is just the words, and it

doesn't have the facial expression or the body language or anything like

that. And then I think it's the way she was describing with that she gets

a series of words, and then the harmonics kind

of imply, what the meaning.

So the harmonics that come through that she hears are the

body language and the nuances. And so I just thought that was an interesting way

to describe talking to, some kind of entity.

You know, I don't know what Wendy it is or whatever she's talking to. Dead

people. It's obviously dead people. But speaking of

talking to dead people, I I think

Bruce Willis gets convinced that Cole, in in the movie, he gets convinced

that Cole is telling the truth when he listens back to this,

audio tape where he's interviewing the guy that killed him, Vincent Gray. And

so Bruce Willis is interviewing, interviewing him. He was recording it. He steps out

of the room, and then he hears

this voice in Spanish. So or Italian or

something. I I thought it was Spanish. Spanish and he says something he's like and

it means in Spanish I don't wanna die. That's a creepy one of the creepiest

moments in the movie I think. That that like goosebumps. And so that's

how he realizes that Vincent, the guy

that killed him, was afflicted by the same kind of thing that Cole is that

he can that he could see dead people too. And so it's that EVP, it's

that recording, even though he couldn't hear it in

regular life, somehow the tape picked it up.

And that's probably one of the most, you know, the popular things that they do

in paranormal investigations today is that you'll say in the room,

is there anybody here? You know, like it's the usual. It's like, can you tell

me your name? And then you can't

hear anything, but then sometimes things get picked up on a digital

or or a tape recorder, or people just use their phones too. Like there's

EVP finder apps and things like that, and it's

basically just a regular digital recorder you can get.

But the idea is that maybe the digital thing can pick or somehow

that the spirit can use the energy or they can

make an imprint of what they want heard onto the

recorder that they can't do to your ears. Right. And so,

you know, interestingly enough the guy that came up with EVPs, his name

was Friedrich Jurgensen and he wrote a book,

in the late sixties called voice transmissions with the deceased.

And he was originally interested in recording bird songs.

And, what happened was while he was just recording the songs of birds,

he was starting to get other voices coming through his tape recorder.

And he talks about in his book, voice transmissions with the

deceased, and he didn't really sound like Arnold Schwarzenegger in real life, but it was

really close. And so Friedrich Jorgensen,

he was finding that, he was getting these voices and he thought that the voices

were from space. And that's funny because Tesla

thought the same thing, when he was working on the radio in,

the the early 20th century. He thought that he was talking to

people from Mars, but he was getting strange

voices coming through his radio, and he's Mike, they must be from

Mars. Now Friedrich Jurgensen also thought they were coming from space and thought they were

aliens or, you know, some some other

place. But he

realized that it must be ghosts when he heard his mother's voice come

through. And so he was recording it and he heard his mother's voice and

she called him by his nickname and asked him if he was there.

And so that made Friedrich, realize that

he may be having a voice transmission. Pretty compelling. And so and, you

know, and then he'll listen to an album and things like that. And so EVPs,

in the beginning, you know, was just a guy in a tape recorder, and he

thought he was gonna record, like, pretty bird, you know,

pretty bird songs. And it Wendy up changing his entire life because he did a

lot of research then into, trying to communicate with

the dead through that. And so you'll often see on, you know, the

we'll always do EVPs and the ghost reality shows obviously that, you

know, and they use the zoom like this one and carry it out and I'll

ask the spirit some questions or use the phone. And we did a

a ghost investigation at Ripley's oh, okay. I'll go back to that one. Mike play

it for you. We did at Ripley's Believe It or Not in the Wisconsin Dells

earlier this summer. That's a museum there if you guys ever been up there in

the Dells, and it's a lot of fun. There's a lot of, like,

weird artifacts and things there and, like, there's a the brain of a dead

German serial killer. That's I guess that's I guess,

extremely weird. I guess that's fun, but it's

interesting. And so we did a ghost sent to us at about 1 o'clock in

the morning. And we had a group of people. It was mainly people from Chicago.

It's the Dells. Right? And so and and we're up there.

And we're doing this investigation. And people that I

had interviewed and discussed about different hauntings and who

had worked there said, you know, the weirdest thing is probably the hair

dryers that turn on and off on their own. And I'm Mike, okay.

Hand dryers. Hand dryer hand dryers. Not Mike not blow dryers, but like the

hand dryers in the men and women's bathroom would turn it off on and off

on their own. And I'm Mike, okay. I I guess that's weird.

But Mike we've been there for about 3 hours and if you ever been in

a ghost investigation, you know that as you get into Mike hour 45,

and nothing's going on, you're getting pretty tired and, like, what am I doing with

my life? Like, I used to have promise and things like that and I used

to have hope. But instead, I'm here inside this weird

museum Asking questions. At 12:30 asking questions into the Into the

air. Into the ether. And and but but so I'm

sitting there and I actually was sitting on a bed made of duct tape,

outside of the the women's bathroom.

And, there was another guy who was sitting there and he's

like, do you hear that? And I'm like, no. He's

like, the hair or the the hand dryer's on? I'm like, oh, yeah.

I hear that. He's like, nobody's been in that bathroom for 5 minutes. And I'm

like, wait. But I heard like 3 times. He's like, me too. I'm like,

okay. So I guess we heard that. But that could be an electrical thing.

Whatever. But this coming up is an EVP that I heard,

that somebody who was on the investigation, her name is Ursula Bilski, and she runs

a Chicago Hauntings tour and a Chicago Hauntings paranormal

convention we just went to last week. That was really fun. But,

she was taking her laptop, like, not a not a voice

recorder, not her phone. She was taking her full laptop walking around and doing

EVPs. She went into the bathroom, maybe 20 minutes,

after we said we'd heard the hairdryers turn on and off, and then she was

just asking some questions. And, here's what she picked up.

Okay. Did anybody did anybody hear anything there? Yeah.

What did you hear, a sentence?

Okay. Search play it again. K. Because it goes quickly.

Well, this is a good test to see what you can get. Because it's open

for interpretation, obviously. We don't know. No. I'll tell you. The first time

I listened to it, I totally heard, I'll get you, Ursula.

That's what I heard. Now I'm gonna say and and I heard that before. Like,

she's like, hey. Check out these cool EVPs I got. And then she just plays

them and didn't have any particular, the sentence associated with it. Like, I just put

that in your head. Now see if we play it again. See if you hear

that.

Do you guys hear that then? So that's that's the

thing too. Mike, once you like, on TV, they'll always put the

EVP up, Mike, what they think it says even before you have a chance

to listen to it. So, I heard I'll get you, and I'm like,

if I got that EVP, I have been Mike, I'm never going back to you.

I'd be sleeping with one eye open and I'm like, believe it. I don't believe

you know, believe it or not. But I mean The fact that the voice also

just sounded like Mike it was scary sounding. And

you could hear that the hairdryer in the background. So little things like

that. Never Mike.

Alright. Speaking of

imprinted and cursed objects.

There's the part. That was pretty good. Nice side. Thanks thanks for

catching your cue there, guitar. There's the

part in the movie where Olivia Williams' character, Bruce Willis's

former wife or Bruce Willis's widow, but but

Right. She's talking to that young couple and they're gonna get married and she's

talking about the former owners of the ring and saying,

you know and it's a comedy moment because the guy's like, oh, wouldn't you

like something plainer? Because he doesn't want to spend that much money on the on

the engagement ring. And, she says, like,

she's imagining the person that had the ring before.

Yeah. And and she's being very romantic and an extremely

awesome salesperson there. A good example for anybody trying to learn

sales. But you know, she's a genuine character and and so in that

scene she's talking about the concept of people leaving an

imprint on an object and then it it

remaining with the object after that person is done owning it.

And this is a concept in the paranormal world,

that is often associated with dolls. There's

there's famous dolls such as Annabelle Mhmm. Or Robert

the doll down in Florida. And it's just

the belief that, you know, if somebody Mike a little child has this

doll that they love so much and they're carrying it around and hugging it all

the time and taking it everywhere they go and just putting

their energy into it constantly that, you know, they might take that object

someday as they grow out of that or whatever happens. It goes to

goodwill, but it still has the energy that that human

has imparted on it or imprinted on it. Right. And some days it's

it's beautiful like Toy Story and some days it's like child's play.

So I guess you never know what you're gonna get. Right. But

imprinting or having an imprint in an object is also kind of Mike me

think of the whole stone tape theory, which is, you know,

where a lot of, residual hauntings, people believe

when an event happened that was extremely powerful or traumatic or just

intense, that the surroundings

absorb some of that energy and hold on to it and then release

it over time again and again. And then people are experiencing

that as several people seeing the same ghost, you know, walking

through a room or, they'll see I remember in Nashville, there

was a train station that had several people saw the same thing, a

soldier and a woman embracing and then leaving.

That was related to a story there, but Oh, yeah. At First Avenue in

Minneapolis, in the in the bathroom, people will often see

Mike a like what they think is a Vietnam veteran, Mike, wearing the

fatigues and things like that. So several different people have seen, like, dressed in that

kind of outfit, not really doing anything, just walking through it. And the idea

that maybe they went to a concert there or something like that and

somehow they left their energy. And it it's this idea so when you think about

vinyl records, vinyl, it's the grooves in the record and when the when the needle

goes over the groove, then sound is played. Well, okay,

that works with audio. Well, what would happen if somehow

visuals were enabled, able to

burn themselves into the wall somewhere, like

sound can be, embedded into the grooves of a

record. And then and when the right conditions are happening, it just replays it

like a videotape. Doesn't mean the ghost is there coming to get you. What it

means is you're rewatching something that happened several, you know,

a couple of years ago. However the event is captured in that object

or that wall might be transmitting itself, you know,

into your mind psychically somehow. And if you if you wanna know Mike

the they call it the stone tape theory, because there was a a

BBC movie made in 1972 called The Stone

Tapes. And, it was by a guy named Nigel

Keneally who, more popularly wrote, Quarter Mass.

So if you've seen Quarter Mass in the Pit or 5000000 Years to Earth or

the Quarter Mass Experiment or anything like that, it's the same author

as that. And because I love that, he was a big influence on Doctor Who

and so I love to watch all that, like late 19 fifties and early 19

sixties British sci fi. And the stone tape, movie,

is it Mike it's cool because they nobody named the whole paranormal

theory after it. And so, but that idea of the

imprint and idea that an object could be cursed. Now if you wanna see

cursed objects in real life, there are several places that you can

see cursed objects in real life and there's several haunted

museums out there. Number 1, if you guys go to Las Vegas,

you can go to Zach Bagan's Haunted Museum and see the guy from Ghost

Adventures place and anybody been there?

Alright. Well This guy right here. That's the first we

get off the plane and I told my wife, like she's like,

what do you wanna do today? And I'm like, Zach Baggett's Horn Museum.

And she's like, what? For real? I'm like She's like, great. Hell yeah. So,

and that was Mike the first day in, like, 8 years that it snowed in

Las Vegas too. So we went from downtown to the museum. It was about a

mile and a half and it was amazing. There

there's actually a haunted doll there which has a spirit box

playing. If you guys haven't seen a spirit box, what this does is

that it runs through the channels and

it sweeps through the channels and then you try to

So it just goes through and then it stops certain places and sometimes people hear

words. But they have a spirit box going at

Mike, oh, I'd say 85 decibels in this room

with a haunted doll, and it's like see what you can pick up and ask

the doll questions. And it's really fun, but there's little things like

that where you can see this, one is a,

a cauldron that Ed Gein supposedly boiled off the skin,

in the people that he had, exhumed. And so

that cauldron there is supposed to be cursed like the people that carried it around,

supposedly died shortly after or got some kind of cancer. All

of that is completely unverified, but that does not mean that the haunted

museum isn't a lot of fun. But that's not the only place you can go

to see it. Mhmm. There's also Ed and Lorraine Warren, who are the couple

who were made popular by the movie The Conjuring, is a fictionalization

of their, adventures. But they had that

doll, Annabelle. And if you're looking up there, you can see

there's Annabelle inside the museum. Now the Annabelle doll in the movie

obviously is the scariest doll in the history of dolls. Like if

so who would buy that doll for their kids? It's a sadist. Here,

honey. Right. Have this doll. You'll never sleep again.

So the real Annabelle is a Raggedy Ann. It's Raggedy Ann. And

It's just so simple. And they but they keep her locked up and they say

don't touch her because, the people they had got Annabelle

from, you know, horrible things had happened to them. And that's the

idea. Plus, what Wendy's looking at the bottom there,

there is the traveling museum of paranormal and the occult and you can often see

it at conventions and that's run by Greg and Dana Newkirk, from

planetweird.com. And you can see different

items and touch them and play with them in real life, and that's a lot

of fun. But when Wendy's looking at a psychomanteum,

which is a black mirror, and and the idea of the

psychomantium is if you stare in it long enough, things start appearing to

you. And so this psychomantium was only

people had stared at it and had only seen, like, evil things appear to

them, or they'd seen their face as an old person, or their face with a

skull and everything. I was looking at it and I still

looked good, so I wasn't sure exactly what that was about. But, Wendy,

did you see anything in the psychomedia? No. I just noticed I had to fix

my lipstick a little bit. Right. So it's like how did I get so

old? I was young and exciting when the 6th sense came

out. So but the thing is, so this idea though

of imprinted objects and cursed objects, that's something that is very

popular in the paranormal world, and there's places and Wendy people you can visit who

can show you cursed items that they've collected over the years.

And so another thing they talk and they they they show in the

movie is poltergeist activity. If you remember the scene

where Bruce Willis's widow is given

that guy that's interested in her a little kiss, you know, and it looks like

and you're thinking when you first watch the movie you're like she's cheating on Bruce

Willis. She's in for a world of hurt or something, you know, and what happens

is Bruce Willis breaks the glass and and walks off. And they're

shocked because the glass broke for no reason. Right? It's like, oh my god.

Well, when something crazy like that happens and there's no

visual part of it, that's poltergeist activity,

which in German just means noisy ghost. And so people

see people having those things like a a spoon flying

across the room or a plate. Are they cupboards opening and closing? Right. But

yet it's not a or even like a banging on the wall or a chandelier

shaking. That kind of thing, is that, you know, a

poltergeist. And so I think the popular

idea of the poltergeist, at least from the 19 seventies, was that

it wasn't actually a spirit or an entity who was causing it. It

was, psychic activity happening within a teenager

because poltergeist is usually centered around teenage

girls, specifically. Sometimes boys, but oftentimes girls. There's a

famous case in Milwaukee, in the late 19th

century, of a 15 year old girl who was working in a boarding

house, and all of a sudden all this poltergeist activity was was happening to her

all the time. And it got so bad that the person

that, the people that were staying at the boarding house were Mike

local factory workers. The owner of the factory came down to see what

was going on and, he's like Wendy was in the room,

crazy stuff happened, you know, with the girl and then when she left it stopped

happening. So she ended up getting fired, because of

supposed poltergeist activity in the late 19th century. So it's

it's often attached and I think it's kind of like puberty gone wild,

you know, because Stream. Your hormones will all of a

sudden create these, you know, create these emotions that then can affect the

things around you. And so if you're sensitive or angry or

upset then a a plate will break or a window will

break or something like that. So that idea of poltergeist

attaching itself to adolescence, is a very 19 seventies kind of

thing. I think it's fairies, but that's a discussion for another time.

And so Mike that broken window is one example, but another example is the

necklace that keeps on going back and forth. So Wendy, what's that about?

Well that's just, there is a type of haunting that is referred to as an

apporte, And that's just when you put your keys down and then

you go back and they're not where you left them, but then they might return

Mike a week later or something like that. And that's a term used

for kind of a mischievous playful ghost that likes

to mess with you. Like to hide stuff on you.

Right. So the bumblebee necklace that, Cole keeps

getting blamed for in the movie for taking his grandma's,

his, well his mother's necklace from the grandma.

He's getting accused of that, but it's it's really just the the apport.

Right. Moving it around. You know, and speaking of that particular scene, I mean that

kind of, you know, it's the unfinished business

ghost. So, obviously when,

the Toni Collette and is talking to,

Haley Joel Osment in the car and that's the tearjerker scene. Climax of the

movie. And it's funny, I was I was reading, an oral history of The

6th Sense and M. Night Shyamalan, Wasn't sure that the cameras were

working during that scene, but he was running out of money and so

after it was done after it was done a big scene, the big cry your

eyes out scene of the movie, Wendy Collette and Haley Joel Osment were

just like emotionally spent Mike you got it right And, he's

thinking, I don't think I have it. Mike, he thought he did not get the

scene. He was like Ma'am. He's like, they're gonna murder me if we have to

shoot this again. I had to and he's like, I'm gonna have to ask more

money to shoot this again. But then he ended up getting it. But he

was totally he was terrified at the Mike, but it was that idea. So

that particular scene of the movie, Cole,

Haley Joel Osment's character tells his mother, about

his grandmother about his grandmother, her mother,

saying hi and she's like that's not funny and then he goes and

describes to her, some information. Gives her the message. Yeah.

Some information that only that, you know, his grandmother could

know and it's that his grandmother's proud of her

and that his mother never got to realize that in, you know, while

while her mother was alive. So it's a really powerful scene and it's it's like

a it's a verification of that he's talking to dead people and stuff,

but it's this idea of unfinished business. That

seems to drive a lot of, like if you go see a psychic

medium or a gallery reading or something,

it seems like a lot of times a spirit will Mike say like,

okay, Your aunt has something to tell you.

And, you know, sometimes it's little Mike I'm proud of you, like,

Cole wanted his mother to hear. Or sometimes it can be

Mike, I want I need you to watch out for your brother or something like

you know, little messages like that. But it's that unfinished business

that we'll often hear about in ghost stories and in real life paranormal

events that there's something they they needed to do but they couldn't finish doing before

they died, and they need to get that last message across. And so I thought

that was really powerful that that was instead of the climax of the movie being,

well, like taking them the mother to jail who did the the

Munchausen syndrome by proxy and was poisoning her daughter. That's Misha

Barton from The OC. I didn't realize that.

And you know she was like 12 at the time they were filming the movie.

And she thought that the set was haunted, the actual old Philadelphia

Convention Center. And I looked it up. I couldn't find any ghost stories specifically about

the Philadelphia Convention Center. And it probably just because she was a 12 year old

girl and she was working on a a set, about a ghost

story. It's scary. It's gonna and and they're keeping it cold all the time so

you can feel your breath. You're gonna think that the place is haunted. But

you'd think that that would be the climax of the film that this is gonna

be they they bring this woman to justice, for poisoning her daughter.

And such a, such a powerful moment, but instead

it's the moment with the mother. Well or the moment when

Bruce Willis Mike she drops music blending on the floor. You know, I

forget the real climax of the movie is when Bruce He realizes he's dead.

He's dead. It's just it's so fast to the ending at it. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

You know, there's you know, it's just like, Bruce Willis is dead. Holy crap.

And then, the movie ends and And you're Mike, how did I not see that

coming? It's terrifying movie. Home. You

know, Munchausen Syndrome by proxy is

that's what happens when a Munchausen syndrome is not just

hypochondria. It's not just Mike it's not the idea that you think you're sick.

It's making up that you're sick so you can get attention. By proxy

means that, you are making

someone else sick so that you get the attention for taking care of

them. And it's a very really rare thing. They call it Munchausen

syndrome. There's a movie called The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, which is,

Terry Gilliam film about this guy that tells tall tales and crazy stories.

It's named after that character, not from that movie, but from the legend of

of, Baron Munchausen, that they created Munchausen

syndrome. And so, also

poltergeist events when you talk about adolescence, A lot of times these things

happen in homes that are have abuse

and and things like that going on it. And it's not necessarily

paranormal. One of my friends used to be a ghost hunter in Milwaukee, and he

went he had a group with a police officer, and they went to a lot

of different places. And after a couple of years, he said, you

know, I don't really believe in ghosts anymore. I'm like, why? He's like, because all

the places we go to, it's mostly just abuse and addiction. And he

goes, it's he's like, I don't believe in ghosts as much as I

believe in evil. And I'm like, thanks for that. Yeah. That really

takes the fun out of ghosts sometimes, doesn't it? Yeah. Right. But,

that idea though that I mean, poltergeist activity is often a

mask for abuse, and so I thought that was just an interesting part of the

movie. Alright. So, we're reaching the

end of our time. For anybody, this is gonna be you guys were here so

you don't have to listen to it again, but we have 269 episodes of the

See You on the Other Side podcast, and every week, we have a song

associated but, you know, inspired or a song we've written that kinda

pertains to discussion, because we're musicians, we play in a band, and you can

check all that stuff out, all of the episodes at othersidepodcast.com.

And if you missed anything today, feel free to check out episode 270

Yep. Episode 270. Which will be this conversation. So if there's something you missed or

you wanna come back and check. And, we're gonna play you

guys a song real quick before we head out. Yeah. We got

a couple minutes. Well, it's always fun coming to Wizard World and

seeing the amazing costumes and cosplay and imagination that

everybody puts into creating the characters that make

these events so much fun. For the song this week, we reached back

into the archives for a track that we released not too long after The 6th

Sense came out. We thought that the chorus fit perfectly for this film where a

child finally finds someone that believes in him, and he can stop being afraid of

the ghosts that surround him. So here's our old school

sunspot song to go along with the 20th anniversary of the 6th sense,

Flower Child.

The trout. I treat it as a material

grass. I cut down and shut up.

Thank you for listening to today's episode. You can find us

online at othersidepodcast.com. Until next

Mike. See you on the other side. Once again, we

wanna thank everyone who joined us for the live recording of this episode at

Wizard World Madison last weekend. We'd also like to thank our

Patreon supporters, The community for CU on the other side that

chats with us, shares their ideas with us, and helps us to better understand

what our listeners are interested in. So thank you

very much. We really appreciate everything you do for us and we look forward to

the monthly hangouts that we have, which we do have one coming up very

soon. Also, a huge shout out to doctor Ned

who's supporting us at the level where he gets this shout out every single

week and truly sincerely Ned from the bottom of our hearts. Thank you for all

that you've done for us and for continuing to be such an enthusiastic

supporter of Sunspot and to see you on the other side. Everybody

have an awesome Halloween, a great week, and we'll catch you next

week.

What am I doing with my life? Mike, I used to have promise and things

like that and I used to have hope, but instead I'm here

inside this weird museum Asking questions. At 12:30 asking

questions into the Into the empty air. Into the ether.