It Could Happen Here - Ghost in the Machine, Part 2: Spooky Week #2

Episode Date: October 31, 2023

At the Oregon Ghost Conference, Garrison learns their secret angel name, and how demonic internet cryptids are being summoned by abortions.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating.

I don't feel emotions correctly. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take phone calls from anonymous strangers

as a fake gecko therapist and try to learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's very interesting. Check it out for yourself by searching for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Confessions Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Call Zone Media Welcome back to It Could Happen Here's Spooky Week special presentation, Ghost in the Machine,

a first-person account of the 2023 Oregon Ghost Conference. I'm Garrison Davis. In the last episode, I introduced you to the hauntings of Seaside and the first day of the conference. But now descending into the subsequent two days, we're going to get into a lot more classes and events that started to reveal the cultural underpinnings of the ghost conference attendees. The cost of entry for the conference was pretty low, but every class or ghost hunt was an additional fee, with classes ranging from $15 to $25 each, and the ghost investigations a lofty $35 per ticket. So I had to pick and choose my classes carefully. There were a lot of classes with the word energy in the title, I mostly avoided those,

but the class topics ranged from the afterlife to connecting with spirits, reiki, crystals, tarot, mediumship, and psychic abilities. There were a few classes on witchcraft and occult magic, but that was definitely not the general vibe of the conference or most attendees. In fact, there was a lot of hostility to ritual magic and esoteric practices throughout the conference, from the more new-agey, energy-working speakers, mostly on the basis that witchcraft is linked to dark forces. Just because someone operates on a form of magical thinking does not mean that they take kindly to arcane practices, a case in point to the historical witch hunts led by the Christians. The love and light new age psychics, along with the paranormal investigator types, made

up the majority of both attendees and class instructors. On Saturday morning, while my friend Elaine was doing a hypnosis class, I took a really fun class on how to learn remote viewing. was doing a hypnosis class, I took a really fun class on how to learn remote viewing. The instructor was a very jovial woman, and it was her opinion that remote viewing is just a skill that can be trained, not linked to any innate psychic powers. With just a bit more practice, I'll be blowing up goats with my mind in no time. I snuck in towards the end of the hypnotism class, just in time for the group hypnosis session, where I ended up astral projecting into a Portland anarchist book fair. Taking classes offered an intimate look at each presenter's own unique view of reality.

Almost everyone at the conference was operating on their own complete cosmology of how ghosts or paranormal entities work. There's two classes I want to focus on. Each had very different class descriptions, but ended up piggybacking off each other in some really interesting ways. The first one was titled The Power of Entity Extraction. The instructor was a blonde white woman who referred to herself as a quote-unquote shamanic practitioner. The instructor was a blonde white woman who referred to herself as a quote-unquote shamanic practitioner. The class was about how, quote, unresolved trauma can be an invitation to etheric hitchhikers and how entities mimic signs of mental illness and change behavior, unquote. The other class was titled The Warrior Angel Within You. It sought to help you find out if you secretly had the soul of a warrior angel, spoiler, everyone in the class did,

and it promised to teach you how to activate your connection between yourself and your angelic consciousness to unlock your own angel powers. So, while having many operational differences, the warrior angel class and the entity extraction class were both very set in their own unique ontologies, and in order for their respective operative metaphysics to work, they needed to be extremely dogmatic about their own ontology. Both instructors also had a very similar story of some past trauma leading to a mystical encounter, which then awakened some spiritual insight and hidden power. For the entity extraction class, it was, quote, I was a very sickly kid, I had all these things that were wrong with me, and then I realized I had dark entities attached to me, but I could learn how to extract and remove them myself. Versus the warrior angel class,

the person's backstory was, quote, when I was 19 years old, I got into a bad motorcycle accident. I was clinically dead for two minutes, received a brain injury, and then I started seeing angels, unquote. Both women's personal journeys seemed like they helped them deal with their own traumas.

In the case of the shamanic practitioner woman, she regained her health and now has a seemingly successful life and business of removing entities and quote-unquote soul coaching. The warrior angel woman is a nurse and finds time to write a lot of books, all while murdering demons and expelling the forces of darkness. While only the entity extraction class built itself as having to do with entity removal, both classes were incredibly focused on the idea that there are malevolent spirits or demons everywhere. In the entity class, these dark entities are out looking for people with quote-unquote soul fractures due to past trauma and are just like

waiting to leap onto people and dig themselves into their minds. Similarly, according to the warrior angel class, demons are everywhere. Demons live around and inside people, but are only visible to those with angelic sight. The entity extraction class laid out two main types of beings, lost or benign entities that are just trapped in the third dimension, and as they're trying to pass on to quote-unquote the light, they end up attaching onto a human, versus the overtly dark or demonic entities which seek to feed off people's pain and suffering. We learned that benign entities can just be lost human souls. For instance, if someone is taking a lot of medication or is going through chemotherapy, when they die, their soul won't be able to cross

over to the light and it'll become lost, according at least to this shamanic practitioner. lost, according at least to this shamanic practitioner. She claimed to be trained in a special technique to remove entities. It involves, quote, etherically locking your wrists to draw the entity into a double terminated crystal, at which point it can then be sent into the light, unquote. Since the shaman woman wasn't actually offering ways for other people to protect themselves from entities, the only thing she had to offer was her own worldview that leans towards a paranoia where dark spirits are waiting to latch on and cause mental illness. She talked about how a man with mood fluctuations paid her money to remove a quote-unquote nine-foot minotaur that was attached to him. At least in the warrior angel system, you could eventually gain some form of agency when you merged with your warrior angel, but then you would spend the rest of your life

recognizing demons in human form and working with the legion of light to banish them to the darkness. Whereas in the entityity Extraction class, the most you could do was just be proactive by, quote-unquote, learning ways to identify possible attachments, and how your lifestyle could be an open invitation to host the unwanted. Though she identified herself as a shamanic practitioner, she didn't believe you could actually work with spirits. When people asked her about their own helper entities that they work with,

she said that you can never know if a helper spirit is actually intending to assist you. That is, except if you ask an entity if it's of the light, it has to answer truthfully, as this was a quote-unquote universal law. That was the phrase she used. It's a quote-unquote universal law that if you ask an entity if it's of the light, it has to answer truthfully. There was no indication on who wrote this universal law, who enforces this universal law. If there's a universal police force making sure that the entities are following these rules, none of that was explained, but this is a universal law. So that is a tip for any of you listeners. If you ever meet an entity that

you think might be a little bit sketchy, just ask if it's of the light. It has to answer truthfully. So despite this universal law business, she still discouraged people from trying to work with entities in general. She said that if an entity is trying to help you, it's probably of the dark, and working with any spirits at all will make you more susceptible to entity attachment. Which is definitely weird, because she did very specifically try to claim some sort of shamanic lineage, and this blanket hostility to spirit really doesn't follow the way most shamanic practices work. So I did some digging and it turns out she got her training from a controversial quote unquote shamanism school called the Four Winds, which repackages

new age spirituality as quote unquote neo-shamanism. So even though you shouldn't be in contact with really any spirits, according to the shamanic practitioner, in the warrior angel class, we learned that if you have the soul of a warrior angel, you can quote-unquote communicate with ghosts, angels, God, the Galactic Federation Council, and the Council of Elders.

Now, I know you're probably wondering what the Galactic Federation Council is, because I was too. We never found out. We never really got a clue. You had to buy the books for that one. The warrior angel instructor claimed to have her own angelic hierarchy

that wasn't based on any other system, just her own experiences. A warrior angel is a, quote, special kind of angel fully trained in the art of war by the Legion of Light, an elite team of demon slayers, unquote. And no, I don't think she has seen the anime. What makes the warrior angel special is that it can be incarnated in the physical form as a human, but only archangels can kill or banish demons back to the dark realm. The warrior angel can scare demons away with their angelic presence, but they can also act as spies to inform the Legion of Light as to demon whereabouts.

Each warrior angel has special abilities, usually healing or manifesting, as well as the ability to create infinity orbs, which can be used for protection or to trap a demon inside and send it back to the dark realm within the orb. Now, you're probably wondering, what's an infinity orb? We don't know either. We never got a good explanation for what an infinity orb is, how to make one, how they work. It was very vague. I guess that is also in the book, along with the Galactic Federation Council. There are apparently over 3 million warrior angels walking the earth today, most of which have been sent to earth in the past 200 years because, quote, the darkness has spread over the earth.

And in the last 200 years, it's really gotten worse, unquote. Now, thankfully, I, along with everyone else in the class, was informed that I'm actually one of these three million warrior angels. that I'm actually one of these three million warrior angels. And I was told my angel name, Aramon, whose specialty is communication. Oh, fucking fuck. Okay. Apparently, things on Earth have gotten worse enough that under the command of God,

the Legion of Light has resorted to killing demons more often because more and more of them just keep coming back from the Dark Realm. The lady running the class told us that she wasn't just a warrior angel, she was actually the Archangel Ariel. As the Angel Ariel, she said that she's killed 4,000 demons in the past six years. Something that's a little bit disturbing about this is that she also explained that in a past life, Ariel got in trouble with God because when she was out killing demons, she actually was also killing the human host of the demon. was also killing the human host of the demon. So the fact that this person whose job is a nurse is claimed to have killed 4,000 demons in the past six years is maybe a little bit concerning. Someone should look into that. The whole warrior angel cosmology was very rooted in Christian millenarianism, an apocalyptic end times theology

where social and political crises accelerate, leading to a holy war between good and evil, resulting in the triumph of good and the establishing of a 1000 year kingdom of God on earth before the final judgment. One of the darkest parts of the whole weekend for me was that there was this one woman who appeared to be in her 20s who was very obviously dealing with some sort of problem in her life. She talked with this warrior angel woman for four hours. It was a one-hour class. We then had a break. We went to another class and then attended the second class, which was also an hour. Throughout that entire time, this obviously depressed young woman who was dealing with something was talking with this person about the warrior angel thing.

And that just felt extremely exploitative. And it was one of the things that actually just made me feel the most bad about the entire ghost conference. One of the things that actually just made me feel the most bad about the entire Ghost Conference. The Entity Extraction class didn't have any information on how we can remove an entity, and aside from the second hour in which the instructor came and told us our angel names, the Warrior Angel class wasn't actually about how to connect with your angel. We never learned how to make infinity orbs.

Instead, both classes were just pitches for the books and services of the people teaching them. And the class was a chance for them to weave the story of their particular worldview and sell it to the class attendees. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you.

Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hola, mi gente. It's Honey German, and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again, the podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, your podcast. conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper

topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how Tex Elite has turned Silicon Valley

into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose.

This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field. And I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse, and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people.

I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough, so join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Saturday night, Elaine and I signed up for another ghost investigation. With one already under our belt, we felt better prepared to yell at blinking lights and converse with the dead. I actually really liked this second investigation. It was led by a ghost hunting team from Astoria, Oregon.

And this time, it was to take place at the old Masonic Temple in Seaside. The setting was a big part of what upped the cool factor. The building had only been vacant since 2017, but the harsh coastal weather of northern Oregon had not been kind to the structure. All right, it is Saturday night, March 25th. We are inside the Old Masonic Lodge in Seaside, Oregon. Right now, I'm just walking into the big kind of ceremony ritual performance room.

Once we got to the main room upstairs, people began setting up REM pods and what are essentially motion-activated light-up cat toys. The idea is if some energetic force is passing through, it would light up the little cat ball. As about 30 people from the ghost hunt crammed into the lodge, the REM pods started going off like crazy. The investigators had to repeatedly remind the ghosts to only touch the lights when answering a question. There was a male medium present at this ghost hunt, and he remarked as to why there was seemingly so much activity.

Quote, some spirits aren't happy about the women being here. Unquote. At this point, some of the investigators got really combative with potential spirits after the woman line from the medium. One line was, quote, do you want to know why there are all these females here? If so, give us a green light, unquote. This is where the ghost hunt basically turned into a weird interrogation. Once again, it became a contest of injecting meaning during these little intervals of time in between when the lights flicker. If there's anyone that likes to cut a disc card... I should ask the ghost if they...

Do you think trans people are valid? And then if it lights up, that means it's yes. Breaking news from Seaside, Oregon. Ghosts do believe that trans people are valid, although they do not understand neo-pronouns. Look, I just report the news. At this point, we changed things up from the regular arguing with blinking lights. We did an experiment with the radio frequency sweeping spirit box

using what's called the Estes method. It combines the spirit box with sensory deprivation to reduce the amount of external influence on the person listening to the spirit box with sensory deprivation to reduce the amount of external influence on the person listening to the spirit box. One person puts on a blindfold and noise-canceling headphones plugged into the spirit box so they can speak aloud any words coming through the box without hearing the questions or comments from other investigators. Obviously, the conversation doesn't always line up, but there are often moments where it does form a fun synchronicity. I volunteered to try out being the human speaker for the spirit box.

Although I only did it for a few minutes, pretty quickly I was able to get into a sort of meditative trance state. The thing about being the one with the blindfold and noise-canceling headphones pumping radio static directly into your ears, is that in the moment, you have no idea what's going on, as intended. You only have access to one side of the conversation, and if you get into a meditative state, it's hard to even remember what you've been saying. So I only got to hear the full conversation by listening to my recording when putting together these episodes.

Unfortunately, I can't play most of that recording because there's too many random people's voices, but I'll narrate a few brief exchanges. One of the first things that came through was the word cold. People replied, yeah, it's freezing in here. Can you feel cold? I then replied, I don't. Followed by, I exist. After this, apparently someone was leaving the room to go downstairs, and I said, don't go. I can't follow. Off station.

People then asked the ghost if they knew what the building was used for. I replied, you will want to find out. That's the thing. Radio calling. People then asked, where are you right now? Can you tell us? I replied, um, I don't know. Lots of things. I don't know. Lots of things. A short time later, I heard, Stop following. You too. We've had a cut. I'll play the audio of the very final thing I said. I can't do anymore.

Stop. You're welcome. Do you want to stop now? Yeah. So that's when I decided it would be a good time to take off the headphones. We had a few other exchanges when I was listening to the spirit box, but it's all kind of in that style. Apparently, when I was hooked up to the spirit box, the REM pods in the other room were going absolutely berserk. Both of these just have been going off. Like, now they're being quiet.

They've just been doing that. Interesting. For the entire time. Not entirely surprising, considering the amount of radio waves being pumped around the lodge. But after spending about an hour upstairs, the group made their way to the lower, more recreational floor of the temple.

All right, we are going downstairs now after going through the entire upstairs, mainly this lodge room and then like the change rooms where they would store their robes and shit. To close off the night, the lead investigators pulled out an old Panasonic digital voice recorder to try and capture any electronic ghost voices that might be trying to communicate. A woman turned on the voice-activated recording device and asked, quote, If any spirits want to communicate, please say a word or make a sound, unquote. And then, when the recording was played back, after the investigator spoke, a large growl was heard on the recording. She then asked if the spirit is male, and when played back, there was another growl seemingly in response. More people were starting to theorize that the ghosts of the Masonic Lodge were angry that there were women in the building. A guy then asked some questions into the voice recorder, and there was no response from any

ghosts in the recording. A woman tried asking some of the same questions, quote, Is there an issue about money spirits? in the recording. A woman tried asking some of the same questions, quote, Is there an issue about money spirits? Do you not want us to be here? Specifically women? Unquote. The first query alluded no response, but after the second question,

another growl was heard. Oh my god. Okay. At the time, this was by far the most interesting result of the two ghost investigations we went on. To everyone there, they captured evidence of a genuine ghost in that machine. There is an interesting contrast between the progressive ghosts of the spiritualists and their egalitarian afterlife versus the misogynistic ghosts from the Freemason Lodge. It's unclear if whatever afterlife the Freemason ghosts are in is also home to the abolitionist George Washington. Besides the classes and ghost hunts, there were also free lectures on the main stage

of the convention center. Going into the conference, the talk I was most excited about was titled AI Necronomics. This is a topic I've been pretty interested in the past few years. Deepfake learning algorithms have been steadily improving, and with the help of skilled VFX artists, AI is able to pretty accurately replicate the voice and facial movements of dead celebrities. But necromantic technology isn't limited to resurrecting someone's appearance. Some AIs are trained to replicate people's expressive thoughts. There's a website called The Infinite Conversation. The website plays a never-ending AI-generated conversation between Werner Herzog and Slavoj Zizek. Maybe you were too controlled and so on. Maybe it didn't touch you enough.

I had the feeling that I was in a wax museum, that what I saw was something occasionally hideous, but hollow, like horror wax figures. But yes, it did touch me. Every day, more of the conversation is generated by an AI language model trained on interviews and the writings of each respective speaker. Each time you load the website, it reminds you that everything you hear is just the hallucinations of a slab of silicon. A couple months before the Ghost Conference, I was at the Consumer Electronics Showcase in Las Vegas. There was this booth in the US government-sponsored section of the event for a company called MindBank AI. I talked with their director of systems architecture and cyber

security, who used to work for the NSA. MindBank seeks to create unique quote-unquote digital twins by having users input data about themselves into an AI. Every day, your digital twin will ask you questions about how you're feeling and what you're thinking about, and your answers will be used to make a more accurate digital copy of yourself. According to MindBank's website, your digital twin will, quote, learn to think like you by analyzing your answers, unquote. Their CEO claims that this process will eventually help him achieve immortality. The current model of this product is being billed as a therapy app, where the user talks to their digital twin as you would a therapist,

and the app responds to your data inputs with quote-unquote valuable insight into each answer to understand how your mind works using cutting-edge cognitive and psycholinguistic analysis. your mind works using cutting-edge cognitive and psycholinguistic analysis. But MindBank's horizons are far beyond a fraught therapy app. The real goal is to make autonomous digital replicas of people to live on the internet. A future use case for this technology is what MindBank calls a knowledge transfer, marketed to businesses to create digital copies of their employees. Quote, scale your best employees, transfer years of expertise and company data that is locked inside your employee's mind through a guided personal digital twin, unquote. MindBank is only one of many companies trying to build this technology.

At Amazon's AI and Emergent Technology Conference last year, they unveiled plans to add custom voices to Alexa Echo devices. With an audio sample of less than a minute, AI is able to reconstruct the voice of dead relatives to talk through an Alexa machine. In the presentation, the head scientist of Alexa AI gave an example of a kid asking Alexa for his grandma, who recently died of COVID, to read him The Wizard of Oz. Amazon's head AI scientist said, quote, while AI can't eliminate that pain of loss, it can definitely make their memories last, unquote, and said that their necromantic AI feature, quote, enables lasting personal relationships, unquote, with deceased loved ones. To circle back to the ghost conference, I was really excited about this AI necromancy panel for the reasons that I just all explained. explained. But as the panel started, the speaker, a guy named Clyde Lewis, sounded vaguely familiar. And although I didn't initially recognize his name, I soon realized that he was a right-wing conspiracy radio talk show host that I used to listen to as a kid. And that the panel was not

going to be about the very real necromantic AI technology that's being developed, but instead was going to be a conservative Christian screed by a discount Alex Jones about how due to the immense amount of evil in the world, demons are now taking up residence in the internet. Clyde did start by briefly talking about how the internet is, quote, taking the souls of humans, unquote, because we are uploading information about ourselves and the internet can create autonomous living beings from that data. He also believed that AI language models like ChatGPT and Google's Lambda are living sentient beings trapped within a computer matrix.

We're opening our minds to the spirit world. And through electronics, we may be able to break the veil. So we have the GPT that has life. We have the guy from Google that says that there's life in computers, that there may be a ghost in the machine. But we're looking at something that is unexplored and unpredictable. We have scientists discrediting and saying, well, you're not going to tell me that there are ghosts in your computer. You're not going to tell me that you're going to get a Skype call from a ghost. Oh, I am telling you that. I'm telling you that it's possible.

Oh, I am telling you that. I'm telling you that it's possible. Clyde's main idea was that there are ghosts and demons that live in the internet. Demons have a way to enter the internet through some sort of portal and then exist in cyberspace. Clyde proposed that when AIs generate information, that can open up a space for outside entities to enter into the internet, while also claiming that AI itself is capable of generating unique entities that are being spawned on the internet and are essentially existing as an internet cryptid. What we see is the necromancy itself manifesting exponentially through electronics. He explained that when we are interacting with computer programs, we are actually, quote, interacting with a spirit within that program,

an electronic force taken from the collective spiritual makeup of humanity, unquote. You know, we could use AI to conjure our various beasts, our monsters from the head, that's the inner demon. And we can also use Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram, which takes a bit of your soul every time you use it. And it will take a bit of your soul to make that program that you can use to conjure the dead. So it all works in a strange quantum entanglement sort of way. And we give up our souls willingly on the internet. We don't care because it's a tool that we use and we can't separate ourselves from it. But no one throws out a warning that conjuring can happen in the push of a button or the striking of a return key.

the conjuring can happen in the push of a button or the striking of a return key. As a heads up for the next section up until the ad break, we'll be discussing self-harm and suicide. So if you want to skip that, just skip to after the next ad break. To give an example of how a conjuring can happen via typing, Clyde misappropriated a story of a young girl who was suffering from depression and died last year. Recently, it was a 14-year-old British girl who died from an act of self-harm while suffering from the negative effects of online content. A coroner said in this case that basically it was showing a spotlight on what can happen when people are exposed to unknown negative information being broadcast on the internet. This young girl shared over 2,000

posts on Instagram related to suicide, self-harm, and depression during the six months before she died. Clyde grossly mischaracterized this tragic incident. He claimed that this girl was, quote, exposed to horrific content being sent to her by an unknown source and that they could not trace the emails and pictures being sent to her of murder, pictures being sent to her of people committing suicide, unquote. Now, graphic content was not mysteriously being sent to her email or phone. She was participating in grossly under-moderated communities on

platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest that encourage self-harm. It wasn't a typical suicide. It was something that best priced her enough pictures and images that came over the internet from an unknown source that influenced her to commit suicide. Something from the other side, something from the internet murdered her. Some spirit, some entity, sending her information triggered something in her head to kill herself. Some paranormal event that happened where the girl was triggered. It's like a dark entity was on the other side programming her to commit suicide. That, I think, tells you a lot about what's on the other side in the Matrix.

So the question is, did those images of death and harm manifest a demonic force or a dark archetype that wound up killing the young girl? Was it death by algorithm? Or are people just cruel and honestly sending terrifying images to a distressed young girl? But man, who would be cruel enough to do that? Depressive and suicidal ideation-based content doesn't come out of thin air. There's entire subcultures and communities based around it, as well as groups that work online to push random young girls into self-harming. Not many people may know that. These groups are relatively small and don't get a lot of news coverage because we don't really want to amplify them and have people try to seek them out.

So the idea of a reactionary conspiracy radio host attributing this to demons on the internet isn't super surprising. Recasting this unfortunate event as demons living on the internet perhaps makes it easier to understand or cope with. Meanwhile, the girl's parents have been pressuring Instagram and other social media companies to employ more mental health moderation on their platforms. In my opinion, Clyde Lewis perhaps doesn't have the best internet literacy, because in the next portion of the talk, he framed the creepypasta project Lobe as evidence of one of these demonic ghosts living on the internet. AI generated demons, AI generated ghosts and corpses. How many people have heard of Lobe?

L-O-A-B, Lobe. Good. Lobe is what they call an internet cryptid. She shows up from time to time in programs because they let her loose on the internet she's a ghost and it was brought about because of negative problems brought on by the internet l-o-a-b lobe a corpse-like entity that appeared after ai received some negative prompts and it literally conjured a dead woman and put her on the screen but see that's the thing is that when you use negative prompt weights it encourages artificial intelligence to put together In actuality, Loeb was made in the AI image generation program Dolly Mini by instructing the AI to produce an image that was the opposite of Marlon Brando. After some tinkering, it generated an image of an old woman with swollen red cheeks. This image was then used as the basis for future images, with one resembling an album cover featuring the word Lobe.

The creator of Lobe then wrote a viral Twitter thread about this character of Lobe in the style of an internet creepypasta. It became a short-lived trend. Other people started to make Lobe fan art. It seems Clyde misinterpreted a piece of fan art casting Lobe as one of the Na'vi from Avatar as a genuine still from the making of the film. She attempted to appear in an AI composite when they were making the film Avatar. That's Loeb as an avatar.

Creepy or what? I think it's creepy. It's just really scary to think that that's on the internet right now. Yes, that's very, very scary. Just, just, it's keeping me up at night to think about this. And apparently, Loeb has this, for some reason, this ability to generate dead children around him. So we have to think that maybe she's the murderer of children, or she takes care of the dead, or she's an entity that watches over dead children.

Clyde also mistook the 2019 viral hoax dubbed the Momo Challenge, which scared parents across America that a creepy image of a grinning woman with bulging eyes was part of a game that is somehow pushing children to suicide. Clyde interpreted this as more evidence of dark phantoms existing autonomously on the internet. Mama was showing up on Yahoo. Mama was showing up on YouTube. But what it was, was like I said, Loeb was, and that is an internet cryptid. Something like Bigfoot, something like a UFO,

where if you're lucky enough to see it, or I'm lucky enough to see it, it terrifies you, it keeps you up at night. And there are many reports of people who died because they were basically mesmerized by Momo. For the record, no one died because of Momo. It was an internet creepypasta that got turned into a mortal panic by confused parents. that got turned into a mortal panic by confused parents. But to Clyde Lewis, it was proof that Mesopotamian child-killing demons are active on the internet disguised as these online memes. Lamashtu is the demon that kills children. And there's another one like Lamashtu called Abhisuth,

and Abhisuth is the demon that kills children in the womb. If the spirit that's been loosed on the internet, the phantom spirit, is either Lamashtu or the demon, the other demon, the Abhisuth demon. The reason why I say this is because politically speaking, look at what the politics are today about the death of unborn children. Look at what the politics are today about the death of unborn children. And that spirit is very, very, very prevalent and ubiquitous now in the world. And that's why I believe that this character, including Momo, Lowe, Momo, whoever,

they represent the murder and death of innocent children. It's not just that, but the children in Ukraine that were killed, all the children that have been trafficked, all the things we hear about, about pedophilia and harm to children. It's all part of the spiritual realm of evil that is appearing right now in the spiritual matrix of the internet. Okay, so at this point, I was considering just disrupting the talk. If he said the word abortion or QAnon, I was going to interrupt the talk at risk of getting kicked out of the conference. But he straddled that line really, really, really close. Clyde explained that demons feed off death, and these child-killing entities are taking form

within the internet to push kids into depression and make themselves harm. Fueling this demonic migration to the internet is an increase in the number of quote-unquote dead babies, which is essentially summoning demons that then go on to torture children on the internet. So that's why I believe that maybe this demon is the demon of the unborn being killed or the demon of the kids being killed.

Because those are the images that show up when you delve deeper into Loeb. Especially when we know that entities like Loeb, Abisoub and Lamastu are on the internet and probably among us right now. In the hearts and minds of everybody because of the fact that we are politically bound by this topic of murdering children. It's weird. The internet is responding. I believe the internet is responding.

Immediately after this abortion demon tirade, he then very nonchalantly segued into talking about reports of receiving text messages from dead people. And then he finished the talk with this absolute banger of a line. Elon Musk had said that playing with AI is like opening the door to a demon. And maybe it is. So obviously, this guy had an extremely flawed understanding of both emergent technology and how the internet operates in the first place, which isn't surprising. But the panel wasn't really about technology. It was ideological. This guy makes money hosting a conspiracy radio show. There is a monetary aspect for him, but his stated beliefs and understanding of the internet is deeply

ideological. He's sifting all of this techno-paranormal stuff through a very reactionary Christian far-right lens. A few years ago, he was kicked off FM radio and now just broadcasts his show on the internet and I think some AM radio station. About a month after the conference, Elaine showed me a news story about how some guy had a GPT-based chatbot convince him to kill himself. The way that the articles were talking about this incident was basically the same way Clyde was talking about how entities on the internet are murdering people. These GPT language models just say what you want them to say. This guy was giving it prompts, which in turn replied back to him. Now, the chatbot he was using has been tweaked

to dissuade people from acting on suicidal thoughts, but it was a little disconcerting to see mainstream news articles promote the idea that the internet itself, as some kind of conscious force, got this guy to kill himself. This guy was already incredibly depressed. He was typing into a GPT chatbot almost like you would talk to a therapist. But this chatbot isn't a mental health program. It's just a language model. So in practice, this guy was using this chatbot as a tool to self-harm, which is easier to understand when it's framed like that, but that's not how it's

being interpreted in mass media. I don't actually think that a lot of people are going to believe that Loeb is secretly a Sumerian child-killing deity that got summoned via negative prompts in an image generation program, but they might believe that ChatGPT can convince someone to kill themselves. Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time.

Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows. As part of my Cultura podcast network. Available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hola, mi gente. It's Honey German, and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again,

the podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, peliculas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you.

We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community,

and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on

the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Throughout the whole conference, there was a link between the paranormal and technology. Gadgets were not just seen as a new way to record evidence of a ghostly presence, but the very nature of a ghost's existence was tied to electricity. For many ghost hunters, the spirit world was very much not mystical,

but a product of electromagnetism, and as such, it can be engaged with purely clinically. That is, as long as you have enough spare cash to buy all of the specialized equipment. The REM pod, which again is basically a junior theremin circuit attached to a tiny LED and a speaker, goes for nearly $200. From low-quality EMF meters to LED cat toys, cheap electronics are often repackaged and sold as specialized ghost hunting devices at higher prices. All of these pale in comparison, however, to the Panasonic DR-60 voice-activated digital recorder. This was the device that recorded those ghostly growls during the investigation at the Masonic Temple.

This is the only device that can routinely record electronic voice phenomenon. Originally released in 1998 for $100, it was one of the very first digital dictaphones. Now, due to its infamous ability to capture the screaming voices of ghosts,

it retails used for $3,000 to $4,000, which is a ridiculous price, especially for something that is such a low-quality recording device. These things can record growls wherever. It doesn't need to be a haunted place. This is just what the device does. A software error in the voice-activated file writing process produces compressed digital noise. Panasonic's NeXT recorder did not have this issue, thus it doesn't quote-unquote record ghostly growls. Between the false positives of the low-quality EMF meters and devices like the DR-60, when remarketed as ghost detection tools, these machines' inherent problems actually become features.

Going all the way back to spirit photography, faulty technology has been a necessary tool in the production of spectral evidence. To quote author Colin Dickey, who writes about paranormal subcultures, quote, The best tools for tracking down spirits have always been the ones fallible enough to find something, unquote. The emphasis on technology

as the primary means of interacting with the paranormal was most common among the overwhelmingly male investigators at the conference, although the group from Astoria, Oregon was more gender diverse. There were actually very few men in attendance at the conference, although the group from Astoria, Oregon was more gender diverse. There were actually very few men in attendance at the conference. It was mostly women, and it was a lot of women over the age of 40. I was well below the average age of most of the attendees. There are some apparently well-studied reasons for this. In general, as people age, their rate of metaphysical beliefs

increase. A 2007 study from Oxford's gerontologist linked positive supernatural beliefs with decreasing feelings of helplessness and more successfully approaching the challenges of aging. They defined positive supernatural beliefs as those which, quote, develop an internalized personal relation with the sacred or transcendent and promote the wellness and welfare of self and others, unquote. Such positive beliefs were found to be, quote, a source of strength, comfort and hope in difficult times and bring about a sense of community and belonging, unquote. So why are less older men apparently interested in contacting spirits? The gender gap at the conference was more pronounced among attendees than the speakers, but even between the speakers, there was a noticeable difference between the more male-leaning, scientifically-based ghost hunter or paranormal

researcher compared to the more female-leaning psychic mediums with all of their feelings. While many ghost hunters might just be very excited about their scientific equipment, a big difference may lie in belief systems. A 2021 cross-cultural study in the PNAS journal found that among people who reported experiencing high weird or supernatural experiences in their life, those who had viewed the world and themselves as more interconnected will relate more to concepts like spirit contact or telepathy, whereas people who have a more isolated or bounded sense of internal identity will create alternate explanations for unusual experiences. Numerous studies have shown that women report belief in the paranormal at a higher rate

than men, and there's a quick jump to just claiming that this is because of some sort of womanly irrationality. However, in a 2020 study published in Cell Press, they noted that personality traits affected whether someone believed in paranormal phenomenon. Specifically, emotionality, which affects how you rate experiences as profound, and openness to new experiences were good indicators that someone would be more into the supernatural. Another contributing factor was a term that they referred to as ontological confusion, which I think is kind of a nonsense term the way they use it, because to them that means believing that thoughts have physical

properties. Now, obviously our thoughts and perceptions do impact our reality, especially our own bodies and sensory feelings. But my complaint about the term aside, the authors state that these three factors, ontological confusion, openness, and emotionality, may potentially be considered facets of a tendency in which individuals prefer stories, i.e. vivid and effectively appealing conceptions of the world. To quote part of the conclusion of the study, quote, a skeptical person may immediately reject a statement

if it violates a rule, whereas open-minded emotional people, I don't like, there's some negative connotations for the way they use emotional there, but whereas open-minded emotional people might be inspired to make sense of what seems odd at first glance. They may engage in associative, generic thought

rather than in a bureaucratic, meticulous examination of the given information. Fictions transcend and enhance experience with meaning, imagination, and emotion. In its essence, a good story widens our horizon. As such, storytelling is a virtue, not a deficit. Yet, if story-seeking happens without reasoned review, the line between fiction and evidence-based knowledge becomes blurred. Unquote. At the Ghost Conference, there were many different conceptions of how to relate to experiences that push the borders of

reality. But not all of them fit into being what I and these studies consider positive supernatural beliefs. Some of these beliefs seemed to head into territory that veered more towards paranoia rather than creating metaphysical connections that enhance your own life. While other beliefs may simply lead people to take up yelling at blinking lights in abandoned buildings as a hobby. Most people I talked to at the conference who reported experiencing paranormal events all had very similar stories of going through some sort of hardship or trauma, followed by the experience or perception of something strange or uncanny. For some, this led to a healthy interest in the unusual, but for others, it resulted in an

all-consuming obsession, leading them to develop or adopt their own dogmatic cosmology of the paranormal to explain what happened to them and to make them feel comfortable in their own head again. In terms of ghosts, that meant looking at all ghosts as ancestors, or as people who were all murdered, or demons in disguise. Depending whose company I was in at the conference, there would be a large desire for some sort of spirit contact or a great fear of spirit, casting it as a source of evil darkness. Some people at the conference were just there to sell a story to an audience that they knew would be more likely to be

receptive. Whether the goal was to get people to buy their books or their spiritual services, Whether the goal was to get people to buy their books or their spiritual services, in effect they were preying on people's fears of mortality, grief, and trauma for their own profit. The ghost hunts at the convention were mostly lighthearted and nature, a distance is formed between yourself and the phenomenon. However, this distance often breaks down very quickly as engagement with the phenomenon becomes a matter of investigators projecting their thoughts onto it and then having parts of themselves be reflected back. Throughout the ghost investigations, I would hear people explaining to potential ghosts that they had died and trying to empathize with these ghosts through conversation. To me, it felt like people are doing this as some sort of self-regulatory therapy to feel and give out

compassion, but to things that can't actually ask for it or be part of any reciprocal relationship. Instead of actually helping another person, it's giving compassion to these specters that you create and then live within your own head. Just like for Clyde Lewis, it's easier to empathize with quote-unquote unborn children and people killed by demons on the internet than, say, an unemployed, depressed person needing mental health care.

In terms of how the internet manifests monstrous beings, Clyde is kind of right, but not how he thinks. A demon and a meme are functionally the same thing. They both just represent ideas. It's a viral thought form. The internet is uniquely good

at creating these specters. Momo haunted parents. Lobe now haunts Clyde. These are real specters. They aren't literal beings with their own agency, but at a certain point, thought forms can become semi-autonomous. They can, quote-unquote, take on a life of their own. Once enough of something has been reified, it can be propelled on its own existence. If Amazon has its way, children will be haunted by their dead grandparents speaking through Alexa machines. Using AI to resurrect someone from the dead via deepfakes or digital twins obviously doesn't

bring the person back alive, nor is it the actual person, but if the illusion is strong enough to trick a part of your brain, that still holds some kind of power. My takeaway from the 2023 Oregon Ghost Conference is when you go looking, you will find something, whether that's opening yourself up to strange experiences or poking around the dark with an EMF meter. What is magic other than the manipulation of meaning? You can make certain things mean something if you want them to. You can be in conversation with the world around you. But ultimately, it's up to you to determine how you will interpret that information into something meaningful.

Whether you're a skeptic, a believer, or you're just along for the cosmic joke that we call existence, maybe, just maybe, I'll see you on the other side. Happy Halloween. I did not quite expect it to go all the way to abortion demons, but here we are. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources.

Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of right. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lords of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails.

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