Otherworld - Interview with Elijah Wood and Daniel Noah

Episode Date: December 23, 2024

I sit down with Elijah Wood and Daniel Noah to discuss their interests, experiences, and theories surrounding the paranormal. Together, they co-founded SpectreVision, a production company specializing in horror and psychological thrillers including Mandy, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, and Color Out of Space. Check out our Merch Follow us on: Instagram, TikTok, Twitter For business inquiries contact: [e-mail] If you have experienced something paranormal or unexplained, email us your story at [e-mail] To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to Otherworld. I'm your host, Jack Wagner. In this episode, I'm joined by Elijah Wood and Daniel Noah. They're the founders of Spector Vision, hosts of the podcast visitations, and two people have gotten to know recently while working on Otherworld. When we met, we immediately started talking about the paranormal, our work, and the things that interest us. It was one of those conversations that got very deep, very quickly, and could have gone on. For hours, I remember.

I remember thinking, I wish I was recording this because it'd be a really good interview episode of Otherworld. I'm sure pretty much everyone is familiar with Elijah Wood from his long and incredible acting career. I mean, he played one of the most recognizable film characters of all time. I obviously knew who he was, but what I didn't know was how interested and knowledgeable he was in the paranormal and horror movies. These interests are what led him to start the company Spector Vision, along with writer Daniel Noah, and some others. Spector Vision is known for producing some of the most beloved genre films of this era, like Mandy, a girl walks home alone at night, and Color Out of Space. If you haven't seen these movies, I highly recommend

checking them out. They're really good. The company also recently expanded into podcasting with the launch of Spectrevision Radio. I wanted to bring these two on because I know they've both always been fascinated by the paranormal, but not necessarily as a real-world phenomenon, more of a genre for storytelling. However, that changed somewhat recently for them, and I think the story behind that is a really interesting one. When we talked about this in person, I thought their journey into exploring these topics was so compelling that I needed to get them on the podcast officially to talk about it in an interview. I really enjoyed. my conversation with these two, and I think you'll enjoy listening to it.

This is my interview with Elijah Wood and Daniel Noah. Okay, welcome to Otherworld. I am joined now by Elijah Wood and Daniel Noah of Spectrevision. Welcome to the podcast, fellas. Thank you. What a pleasure. We love your show. Do you?

Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah. I'm very flattered by this. I mean, you have told me this, but it was shocked. I'm not sure if you're just saying that to be nice. No, listen, Jack,

I think you, I mean, I turned, I turned Daniel onto it, which is shocking, considering that Daniel's, you know, paranormal tendrils reach far and wide.

And it hadn't, it hadn't crossed his purview. And listen, I think it's a really notable show. What I'm really attracted to, as far as the paranormal is concerned, certainly in podcast, format is just hearing people's real experiences. And what you offer is a real deep dive into a variety of

different kinds of paranormal experiences as well, which often is not necessarily the case when there is an entity profiling the paranormal. It tends to lean pretty heavily into ghosts and well-trodden territory. And I think what I love about other world is that it, it's, presents this really broad spectrum of what the paranormal is and people's unique experiences. And they're incredibly human and relatable and fascinating, emotional, you know, which I think is actually what the real spectrum of being in a paranormal experience or having had paranormal experiences. They're not always scary. Anyway, I just think you provide a really wonderful platform for the full spectrum. Wow. Thank you. That's an incredible compliment.

Exactly what I wanted you to come on and talk about today. That's a wrap. That's all the questions I had, and thank you for coming on. But no, you both, your co-founders of Spectrevision, which has been around for a long time, It was rebranded to Specter Vision, but you guys have been working together on projects for quite some time. Well, how do you guys know each other in the first place? Let's start with that.

Yeah, we met on a project that never came to fruition that Daniel was writing. It was a road comedy that I attached myself to as an actor, and we were trying to get this movie made. And we're having kind of regular meetings over the development of the project over the course of, almost a year, right, Daniel? Something like that.

Yeah, probably about that. And over the course of these conversations, you know, we would also stray from the topic of the film we were trying to get made and talk about all of our other interests. And one that kept coming up was a shared love of, mutual love of genre and horror, particularly the kinds of genre and horror at the time that were not being made or facilitated, at least in the U.S.

That since changed. We're still in a kind of extended. renaissance of horror and genre. And then also, I think the idea of, I had been floated in this idea of wanting to produce films being a part of, you know, the development of something from the ground up and seeing it through to fruition, loving the creative process of filmmaking that I'd been engaged in for a super long time, but not from that side. And I think there was also this idea of the notion of being producers that we found quite difficult to find.

which are these non-transactional producers, producers that are there for the life of a project because they believe in it and have a heart response to both the filmmaker and the material and create kind of a reality around those filmmakers to ensure that their work is protected. So it's just kind of like a combination of those things that we sort of started to realize that we had a similar interest in those elements. And, you know, I think one of us said, well, why don't we start the company. It was you. It was me. Yeah. We had no idea what we were doing, you know. We had no prior experience. Well, Elijah, I want to ask you, I mean, spoiler alert for the audience, Daniel is very heavily involved in the paranormal and has no shortage of stories. So I will be

asking you a lot about that later, best assured. But Elijah, how did you become interested in this stuff? Like, have you always been? Or I mean, since, I can remember. Since I can remember. Yeah, it probably goes back to, it probably goes back to when I was probably five or six. I have an older brother, seven years older than me. So when I was six and seven, five, six, seven,

he was renting movies with his friends as like a teen, yeah, as an early teenager. And they would more often than not be horror films. and he would sort of sneak me into the room to allow me to watch these movies as long as I didn't tell our parents. So I was exposed to horror movies pretty early and there was just, you know,

this kind of gravitational pull towards it, partially because it's this thing you're not supposed to see. It's the forbidden fruit. It felt illicit and exciting and fun to see something I wasn't supposed to see and it was scary. So there's that, that pole. And then, you know,

The older I got, the more the paranormal aspect of that became interesting to me. And some of that was through books initially. Scary stories to tell them the dark was huge. Those books were massive for me, even goosebumps to a degree. And then seeking out, you know, real stories. So those are obviously fictional ideas. but certainly inspired by the paranormal. And Edgar Allan Poe, I remember also really being attracted to.

I was just kind of attracted to horror and horror adjacent things. And the paranormal is obviously a major part of that, and it's depiction in horror cinema. So, yeah, it was kind of since the very early days of my life, pretty early on. And then, you know, then you just become fascinated with hearing individual stories, people's actual experiences. And I was always the one at social gatherings like bending an ear to, you know, what have you

experienced? What have you seen? And just loving to be regaled with with true stories. So, yeah, always been fascinated by it and, you know, a healthy sort of fear of it, but always kind of lent into it as well from a young age. And Daniel, what about you? I mean, what's your background? and where did you initially come from on these topics?

Oh, and one thing to add, I always believed in it. That's an important... Really? Okay, I was going to ask. As we delve into Daniel's story, I have always kind of believed in the possibility of everything. I'm sort of the opposite of the skeptic. Not quite opposite, because I'm not like a tried and true believer, but I have a very open mind.

and believe i've always believed in the paranormal um so that that's that's just an important sort of note as we know was there a reason or just open to it just open to it um yeah no not not a particular reason not i've had uh i've had some minor uh encounters with the paranormal that were semi direct mostly indirect but enough to lend validity to my what was already you know what was already a belief system got it okay daniel what about you what was your stance originally oh boy you sure you want to go here this is going to take a long time yeah well were you always a believer or did this kind of like hit you no you weren't no i was a hardcore extremely rigid skeptic i didn't believe in anything and and i i from a very young age i had a

really, really deep and profound fascination with tales of the supernatural in the space of fiction, which I think had a lot to do with just a lot of childhood trauma that I found a platform to process through the Twilight Zone and Universal Horror Movies, which is, I think, one of the great assets that Tales of the Supernatural brings to humanity is it is a chance to work through really difficult feelings in a kind of imaginary theater, you know. So I'd always been very attracted to that stuff and study did. And, you know, I went to NYU. I studied dramatic writing.

And even then I was always sort of academically delving into an understanding of the machinations of supernatural stories and the psychology of them in terms of, you know, what they do for people and what the appeal is. But I didn't believe in anything. and if anything I was even maybe a little bit hostile toward people who believed. Hostel. Hostel.

Yeah. Yeah. Physically? Yeah. Yeah. He used to give ferocious beat downs. No. No.

Just judgmental. And, you know, I kind of rooted myself from this perspective that people who believed in this stuff were kind of weak and that they were buying into a really base wish fulfillment. that satisfied, you know, just really universal human emotional problems of dealing with death and loss. And, you know, I didn't, I thought, I thought it was all imaginary. Yeah. And you were a writer. I was, yeah. I mean, I'm still a writer.

Well, you still are a writer. Yeah, yeah. But you were more of a day-to-day cranking out. Yeah, I was a, I was a well-paid, unproduced Hollywood. writer, which is the thing I didn't know existed until I became one. I did that for about 10 years. That was the time that Elijah and I met Elijah at a really pivotal point in my own life in which I was thinking about getting away from the studio system and refocusing on indie film where I felt like maybe I could kind of take control back and work on projects that I cared about and have more agency

to actually get them made. And so, you know, when Elijah said, hey, let's start a company. It was, although I had not thought about being a producer until he proposed it, it was a very, it was a welcomed opportunity for me because I really was, I was very, very tired with the grind of, of Hollywood. Okay. I think it's time I should just ask you about like when you first started experiencing things because. Yeah. This is a major reason why I've asked you to come on here and talk. Yeah. When did that take place? There's, there's a lot of different ways to answer that but I but I think there's

when I first started experiencing things and and then there's when I first began to realize that I'd been experiencing things are sort of two different ideas well so when after Spector Vision came into being

and started to have a presence we would get invited to these events like conventions and film festivals that horror themes because we were making horror films and they were often put up at like famously haunted locations so we we found ourselves at these haunted places and one of them was the stanley hotel and that's this park colorado which i think very famously well they purport to be i

think i think they claim they're like the most haunted man-made structure in the world or something and and but you know the the the story is that stephen king had an experience there that led to the shining and that like room two three seven is based on a room at the stanley hotel so i of course thought this was a bunch of poppycock and um but so we were there together and and um actually ironically it was our second year the first year we were given this sort of like we were brought in a like vip investigation with two guys who we later remet as part of planet weird carl fifer and um and coner um I'm forgetting Conner's last name at the moment,

but who work with Greg and Dana Newkirk. But at that time, they were just, they were like the in-house investigators. And I remember they, they, we did some stuff with them that at the time I remember thinking like, oh,

we're being conned, you know, like there was, yeah, there were like voices in the room and there was like stuff moving on the table and, and I, I just completely dismissed all of it.

But the second year, we were there, we went to, uh, a friend's room, late at night and there was a Ouija board came out and and you know I was like rolling my eyes at this I thought it was ridiculous and I think it's sort of important to say that I had not had my hands on a Ouija board since I was very very young kid so so you know look I I I always

feel like I have to say that you know I'm a behind the scenes kind of person I'm I never stopped being uncomfortable with being a story. And there's, I think, part of what's hard about being an experience or if you're a person who isn't, you know, who doesn't necessarily like enjoy attention, you know, is the fear that you're coming off as seeking attention or that you're somehow grandizing your experience or, you know, portraying yourself as some kind of Messiah or something. So I always feel like I need to say that because it's always this little voice in my head as I'm talking about this stuff. That's funny.

It's a funny thing. I mean, it's funny to like people think that because like it really doesn't get you very far telling these things, you know. Sure. There's a reason you guys have had to make a company specifically to give this type of material a home, you know. Yeah, you're right. It's not like. But I have, I've been a key. of making this up to get to garner attention.

Wow. Wow. Yeah. That's amazing. It's been inferred. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, or that I'm enjoying it too much or, you know, things that are that are to a guy like me, like really uncomfortable to hear that perspective. Because it's so not who I am.

I'm all about, you know, I'm a producer. I'm about throwing light on other people. And it took me a very long time to be able to talk about it. of this stuff because of, in part because I was just so uncomfortable about making myself the story. But anyway, that's a very long, winded way of saying that various combinations of people went on the Ouija board and there was no response. And then a third combination came up of which I was a part. And I have to say that I, looking back, I now do believe that what happened was probably because,

I was on the board because I've now done, I didn't touch a Ouija board for years after this experience and I've recently started to do it again. And every time I do it, there's an extreme response on the board. Really? Yeah. Oh, wow. Wow. Yeah. I mean, I don't even know if I told you about when Greg Newkirk was over in my house last year, we went in my backyard and it was even more extreme than what

happened at Stanley. It was, it was insane what happened on that Ouija board. but anyway, we started, you know, the planchette started to fly around and, and Elijah, check me if you feel like I'm embellishing anything, which I sometimes worry I'm doing. It was, it was moving with a speed and force that, to me, with someone who was like touching it felt like it didn't kind of defied physics a little bit, like how forcefully it was moving around. And I remember I kept taking my, like kind of float, making sure my fingers weren't pressuring it enough. Sure. Pause that kind of movement. And I noticed that the other three people were doing the same thing. So we had this interaction with, you know, someone who, interestingly, we all were referring to as a girl, even though when we went back and read the transcript, realized it never identified a gender.

That was interesting. But a little girl named Ava who described drowning in a late. and like her mother allowing her to drown. And it was very, it was very affecting. And I think that was, for me, I think it was the first of what became many times, subsequently when I was experiencing this on a really deep and cellular level.

And, you know, like, yes, I'm watching the planchette move around and I'm seeing that happen, but I'm also, my whole body is like a tuning fork. You felt something else? Extreme, yeah. I think a lot of people did that night. I don't know. Did you, Elijah? Did you feel?

Elijah? I don't know that I can say that I felt anything. He was chilling. But I was certainly, you know, listen, senses are heightened when it feels like it's happening. and that you're actually making communication, and you've done your own mental checks as to whether or not this is really happening or not. So, you know, insofar as feeling that buzz of energy

that's spread amongst three people around the board, sure, yeah. So anyway, you know, we converse with her for a little while, and then eventually we asked her, was there something you'd like us to do? And the response was the word follow. And then we said follow where. And the response was the numbers three, two, and four. And then it just went cold.

I remember everybody in the room saying like, she's gone. And it indeed was over. And then someone who was in the room had looked on her phone and she said, oh my God, room 324 is one of the most haunted rooms in the hotel apparently. And so we were like, I guess we got to go to room 324, right? So by now it's in the middle of the night. And this was an interesting phenomenon. It was the first time I'd ever experienced.

It felt like maybe 20 minutes. But when we kind of went back over the timeline, we realized it had been hours that we'd been on the Ouija board. So a very small group of us, I think Elijah was you and me and maybe two or three other people. we went up the stairs. We were on the second floor. And as we ascended,

there was a couple standing there who were in hysterics. And they had just had some kind of an experience, and they were kind of incoherent. And what we finally got out of them was they had just seen the figure of a child, like a ghostly figure had appeared in front of room 324. Well, yeah, they had just,

they described that they had seen it, they had seen something down the hall. So it was a classic, like, they looked like they'd just seen a ghost. Like, they were in a state because mere seconds prior to us arriving, they had seen something. And they pointed to where it was.

And then we walked down the hall, and sure enough, where they had seen the ghost was directly in front of the door for that, that room. Which was pretty compelling. That is, that is very trippy.

but Elijah, at the same time, like, was there a part of you that was, I mean, you're a very famous and recognizable person. Like, was there a point that you were wondering, like, is this, like, some elaborate, it's a horror conference, right? Like, like, did it ever go through your head at some point? Well, and there was an immersion game going on.

So there was a lot of stage stuff. There was. That did occur to us. But also, I think it's important to say that the festival was over. Yeah. So there was, like, all those people had gone home. But anyway, sorry. Listen, it's possible, I suppose, but it felt very authentic.

And the two people that we ran into, we'd not seen the whole weekend. And they saw, so they had just seen a little girl outside of the room. They didn't say a little girl. They said a small figure. Yeah, they saw a ghost, yeah. Yeah, but I remember the, I was pressing them for details. And I remember the guy said something that was really profound and has really, has always stuck with me and been kind of for me a little bit of a doorway.

to an understanding of how this stuff works. I said, what did it look like? He said, I didn't see it with my eyes. I saw it with my mind. Wow. And I didn't really process that at the time, but now, however many years it is later, gosh, what year would that have been?

2014, it's been, but it was about 10 years ago. Yeah, I think it was 2014. I think you're right. Yeah, I mean, 10 years later, now having had so many experiences, I understand that on a very deep level, that I think sometimes these things circumvent your ocular nerve and they just go straight into the mind, which is where the things that you see exist anyway. You know, you're processing information that's coming in through your eyes and you form a model of a thing based on data that you've interpreted. And I think

paranormal things sometimes they just go right in there. So this was, this night, was this like a moment for both of you guys, kind of like awakening to this? It wasn't so much an awakening for me because I was already a believer. I wasn't, I wasn't coming from a place of disbelieve. I was, I've been, I've been leaning in my whole life. So for me, this was, yeah. And for me, it was just the most, um, because I had,

only done the Ouija board once or twice prior to that without any really compelling results. So for me, this was this was like the first time I'd done the Ouija board where it felt that there was something really compelling happening and that we'd genuinely had a conversation with a spirit. So yeah, so for me it was just a kind of confirmation of what I already believe. And Daniel, you've had a lot of experiences like after this, have you, have you seen things? Like, what would you say is like the most extreme thing that's happened to you? Yeah. The most extreme.

I don't know. Or most frightening, perhaps. Whatever has caught you most off guard. Well, I think that our first visit to the Queen Mary was the one that was the most frightening to me. And that was about six months later. So what I will say is that, you know, I left that experience. And by the way, we, we learned that. a friend of ours who had been in the room a couple days later

texted all of us and unfortunately none of us can find this article but he had found this little news item from like the turn of the century about a little girl who had drowned in a lake on the property. And her name was like Evelyn, I think. It wasn't so... Really? The name that came through on the board was Ave or it's like A. I think.

And so the name of the girl who had drowned was Evelyn. So it was, that was maybe in some ways weirdly the most corroborating thing, that there was this actual news story of someone who had died that matched the story that we had, that we'd told on the board. But I left there feeling like very kind of excited. because it's exciting to think that there's more to life than, you know, it's like adult, the paranormal is adult Disneyland. It really is.

It's so thrilling. But even then, I still wasn't quite ready to go all in on it. And Elijah always teases me because back when, you know, the beginning of our friendship when I was a skeptic and he would always say, you have so many, like the most paranormal stuff of anyone I know. And there was this weird kind of cognitive dissonance of that I would tell these stories and then I would like dismiss them. And so then the Queen Mary happened, which maybe is such a long story.

I'll try and keep it really brief. And we've told it many times before. But it was we basically respect to the Queen Mary. We were guests of the ship for a few nights because we were working on a project that involved the ship. And we kind of like treated ourselves. to a ghost tour without permission. So we were sneaking around the ship and we went somewhere that we really should not have been.

And became lost in the bowels of the Queen Mary. It was really like a horror movie. We could not find our way out. And we ended up in this very kind of dramatically scary area where there was this deafening metallic banging. And we heard two men talking in this room. And when we went in, the voices just evaporated. But the banging was everywhere. And we eventually got out.

And then that night, I was kind of tormented in my hotel room. There was like violent banging on the door. And my phone kept ringing off the hook. And that was the night that I began to understand that while there were four of us there, and all four of us saw and heard. heard the same things, I was experiencing them in another way as well. You know, that was, you know, more on the, you know, I guess a kind of sixth sense, you know, a vibe, a feeling.

And so you asked me if I've seen things. I don't see things. And I've learned that there's different kinds of sensitivity. oftentimes what's happening is that I'm feeling feelings that aren't mine. And they can be so strong that I've even had times when I've been having a conversation with someone who has a hidden emotion that I feel so strongly that it actually starts turning into information. I'll start like forming a not a visual image, but like a model of a person that the person I'm talking to has traumatic feelings about.

I'll start like sort of getting a sense of that person and understanding what that person did to the person I'm talking to to make them feel the way that they feel. And I've checked this a couple times dangerously. I was going to say, I'm like, this is. this worked out for you? Yeah. There's been a couple times when I've actually said, you know, I've taken a risk and asked about it. And the people have been like stuck.

Like how the hell did you know this? You know, and I've said, I don't know. I don't know. But it tracks. So, okay, the very long winded way of answering your question, when did it start for me? After the Queen Mary, then something else happened in my home that, you know, it was like a series of things happened that my girlfriend,

who's not my wife, Ariel and I experienced together. And then it just kept happening and kept happening and kept happening. And to the point where I lost track. And I started to replay the tape of my life and realize, oh, this has been happening my whole life. It's, it's, you know, and I think that for some reason, which I, that's actually not for, for some reason. I'm coming to understand what the reasons were.

Now I'm very engaged with them. You're very engaged now. I'm very engaged now. Well, that's, I mean, well, Elijah, did you witness this transformation that's like taking place? Oh, yeah. I watched this. I watched this in real time. Fascinating.

And, and, I mean, thrilling, you know. I, because I was also one of the people in his ear about how it seemed like there were brushes. And I didn't know any of the sort of clairvoyant stuff that he'd experienced earlier in his life. But, like, he would tell stories about his daughter seeing something in the room on more than one occasion. And recount these stories, like, isn't that funny, but it's, but not believing it at all. And I would, I would have the opposite reaction, which is, I think your daughter may have seen a ghost. Like, you know, you're in such denial about the president. about it. Yeah, well, that's the thing. I don't remember what your, yeah, what your explanation

for those moments were. I don't either. You just didn't, you just didn't buy it. And I thought that was crazy. I don't know. But you were the, you were the one telling him it was a ghost. Yeah, I just, that that presented some evidence that there might be something going on, you know, and the idea that children are more sensitive at a certain age than we as adults are. And I've always found kids seeing ghosts really fascinating. And that kind of the veil being thinner, it seems, from like, you know, when they're born until about two or three years of age. And I've heard other, like, I know other people in my life whose kids have also had similar

experiences. I just find that really interesting. So I latched on to those stories. thinking, well, that's really compelling and interesting. And he kind of wrote it off. So, yeah, this process of, of, like, the unraveling of the skepticism and then, like, total embracement has just been really fun. It's fun to watch.

And to the degree that, like, you know, he, he has gone beyond my own, like, I don't have, much of my own personal experience with the paranormal. I'm fascinated by it. I lean into it. I seek it out. But I haven't had any, I've had minor experiences, but nothing that would create sort of what feels like a definition of sensitivity or anything like that for myself.

So I'm merely on the sidelines as a believer, or watching someone who is, you know, going through kind of an extraordinary transformation. And it's fascinating. And as a result, you know, there's been, it's been a learning process for me, too, because there's so much of the paranormal. I think my sort of paranormal purview tended to exist

within the world of ghosts and, you know, poltergeists, maybe demonic entities, non-human entities. things like that, right? My world has been kind of blown open as a result of the journey that Daniel has been on that has exposed me to, you know, various cryptids and sort of the full spectrum of what the paranormal has to offer and what is really beyond the veil. And I'm in some ways more fascinated than I've ever been. And I get a really great researcher as a partner because I just get, I get so much of this information, uh, through both him and then colleagues that now work

with us, you know? Well, I'm, I like the term various cryptids that, maybe, maybe I want to ask you, like, what is your favorite, uh, what's your favorite, like, subcategory of all these strange things, you know? What fascinates you most? A few things. I'm, I'm fascinated by, I'm fascinated by, cultural entities that seem to be locked to culture. So like for instance, a gin doesn't really exist in Western culture, but a gin

very much exists in Eastern culture and in the Middle East specifically. That there can be entities that manifests culturally and that there is actually a divide

I find really interesting. I actually spoke to it. Someone I used to know went to Japan on a job, and he had a paranormal experience at an apartment that he was staying at, where the entity that he saw resembled the ghosts that are depicted in Japanese horror and in literature, the way that they're described. And so that's, I thought, well, that's so wild. that you would experience something that, I mean, was that his own mind putting those pieces together based on sort of where he was in the world?

Or, you know, can entities sort of be locked culturally to a certain place and manifest in different ways? I'm fascinated by that. I'm also fascinated at the notion of interdementiality, that some of these things aren't necessarily from a spiritual realm but are in another dimension, you know, for the notion. the longest time, I don't think that that was even something I was aware of. Wow. That's a very thorough answer. I'm very fascinated by all of that, though. Especially the cultural thing.

I mean, I kind of wonder, well, there's a few things to tap. Well, your gin episode is incredible. Yes. I was just talking to him this morning, actually. That story is terrifying and so unbelievably fascinating. I have some theories about this. Cool. Yeah.

Well, I think there's a few possibilities. One is that, and this is not, you know, this is Jacques Valet's theory. It's not mine, you know, passports to Magonia, but is that there are entities that root around in our brains to find costumes to wear that will be somewhat familiar to us so that when they present themselves to us, we have a context for them. So there's, you know, your friend in a apartment in Japan, there was some entity whose true form we can't possibly know who poked around in his brain and went, oh, he saw the ring. Right. That's what I'm doing today. So, you know, so that's one. The other, which I find really interesting, is that we, I mean, this is, you know, I have only a count. casual understanding of this, but, you know, there are, it is understood that when a person

encounters something for which they have no context, they can't always perceive it as it is. And there's the famous story about, I'm not sure if it was Columbus's ships. And there's, you know, some native peoples who had never seen ships before. and there was this, you know, there were all these ships descending on the shore and they literally couldn't see them. They just didn't see anything on the horizon, right? Yeah. Now, you know, is that true story or not, I don't know, but it's the point of it is that

the other possibility is that it's not them putting on costumes, it's us dressing things up, but we, so he, you know, whatever it was that he encountered. So our perception is colored by our own inputs, right? He made it with like the ring because that he was in Japan and that's what he just like put it into a form for himself that he could, he could, you know, that was like what he was expecting to see. Or this is just an actual ghost running around Japan that inspired the ring movies also. Okay. So this is like I'm saying that in the form of a joke, but like I don't mean it as a joke actually. I'm with you.

This is the third, the third option. in some ways it's my favorite. And it's one of the things that I found so puzzling when these experiences start happening and I continue to is how cliched they often are. You know, when you tell these stories back and you're like, Jesus, I sound like I'm, I sound like I'm telling the story of like, you know, a straight to video Halloween movie. They're so riddled with genre cliches. Like for me and the Queen Mary, like three knocks on the door, you know, it's, give me a break.

But what I started to wonder is, is the reason these are cliches that they're true, right? That what consciously or unconsciously, storytellers have been documenting the way that paranormal phenomenon works. This does, yeah, it sounds like very trippy stoner conversation, but, you know, that is not that far off from what's being researched right now. That's right. And it's very fascinating to me, too. I'm, it's, it's fun to think about that stuff. I,

I often wonder that myself, especially with creativity and if consciousness is external, or not contained within the brain, like, uh, yeah, what does that mean? Because I,

everybody's different. Um, I mean, we're all creative people here in this interview, but like, everybody has their own process. But for me, I don't like,

I've never like sat down and like worked on creating stuff. Like all my ideas, they don't, come from me being like, okay, now it's time to write. I'm like, I'm usually like walking around and something will just hit me out of nowhere. I'm not even thinking about it, right? That's like kind of my process. So it is fun to think about that coming from outside because it sort of feels like it sometimes.

It does. I mean, you certainly hear various artists talk about something just coming to them that feels fully formed. Certainly was songwriting, you know, hearing songs in a dream writing it the next day. And it literally just was delivered, finished. There is something to that, you know, what that is. And Philip K. Dick, I think it was 77 when he went to a sci-fi convention in France and shocked everyone by delivering this speech. You can watch it on YouTube. It's mind-blowing in which he says something, I'm paraphrasing, but he says, you know,

I'm about to say something that no one has ever. ever said publicly, but I believe many have experienced. My work is not fiction. I thought it was until I was visited by a being from another dimension who told me that they had been feeding me these stories in order to disseminate the information to humankind. People said he's schizophrenic. You know, he schizophrenic.

But, you know, and he, I mean, you should watch this thing. It's unbelievable. He describes. I've never seen it. Yeah. and he you know he's a woman that he says he immediately remembered as soon as she showed up at his door and it's really really out there stuff but there are cases of there's um there's this book called a dweller on two planets and i forget the name of the kid who wrote it but it was written in like

the mid-1800s by this very um just ordinary i think maybe not even particularly well-educated child like he was he was in his like 14 or 15 or something and he started automatic writing and and he wrote this incredibly long book that he said it's not me it's i've channeled this being and the being as a name and i can't remember offhand what it is something the something like it sounds like something out of conan the barbarian and so this book which is written in a like the language of this book you can read it's still in print you're like no 14 year old wrote this it's not possible right and and so the book was published posth posthumously And people initially said, oh, schizophrenia, which maybe it was.

These things are not mutually exclusive. But what the book was, allegedly, was a description of Atlantis. And there are technologies that are described in this book that were like 100 years ahead of their time. It's like he described cell phones and televisions and air conditioners and just all these things that didn't exist and were not even a glimmer in humanity's eye at the time. And, you know, you wonder, like, how many of those are out there that didn't get published that we don't know about. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of things were invented in very weird ways.

Yeah. Also by people who were, like, experimenting with strange drugs and just thought of something. And it's interesting how many things started as science fiction. And then the books or movies eventually inspired people. to actually make the things, you know, like artificial intelligence, right? Like, that was just, it was an idea at first, and then people decide to actually try to figure it out. And here we are. I could be wrong about this, but I'm, I'm relatively sure that Tesla at one point or very...

Tesla would... Go ahead. He would, yeah, he would see his inventions fully formed in his head. Right. He has this famous story where, like, he got sucked into a dam when he was a kid. and like that was the first time that he had it happen where he was able to like see the blueprints and the schematics of the dam and swim out through this weird hole that he saw in the blueprints and like survived yeah didn't he say at one point i'm receiving messages from aliens i think he did i think he actually did say that i'm going to look interesting i'm sure there's somebody listening right now that's really frustrated with a strong yes or no answer yeah here we go Yeah. Tesla thought he'd picked up a signal from intelligent aliens. Yes. Wow. Interesting. He did say this.

Oh, yeah. Well, working in Colorado Springs, I'm seeing this. Fascinating. That was also kind of before the boom of people even talking about aliens or UFOs or things like that. So far before. Yeah. All right. We'll be right back after this quick break. you are clearly into this stuff now. Elijah, you've been into this. At a certain point, you sort of started telling other people

about your experiences and had mixed reactions. I have been told. When did that occur? Well, after the Queen Mary, when I kind of went, okay, this is a thing. I had been so outspoken in my disdain for people who believed in this stuff that I was kind of in this really tricky conundrum.

Yeah, wait. Elijah, can you do him back then? What was he like? Let's just wait. I feel like we need an outsider perspective on this. What was he like with that? Was he actually that hardcore? Yeah, yeah.

I mean, very, very dismissive. Very dismissive. Like what kind of stuff would you hear from him? It wasn't, it wasn't necessarily a topic. that he was on any kind of rampage about, you know? It wasn't a, it wasn't a mantle that he was, that he, or a flag he was flying. Just whenever it would come up, that there would be,

that something paranormal would enter into his or our sphere, there would just be a sort of, you know, a disbelief of it. I just knew him to be a, a skeptic. So, you know, which wouldn't manifest that often, really. It only really came up whenever there was someone offering. Running around, like, proselytizing about it. Not at all. Not at all.

And I wouldn't have even said that it was like a self-defining aspect of who you were. It just was a part of who you were. And I think by virtue of the fact that we were engaging in, you know, occasional paranormal storytelling, given that we had a production company that made horror films, and that's very much adjacent to this world, it probably would come up more often than otherwise. Yeah, that's true.

But aside from that, like he said, he wasn't proselytizing. He wasn't sort of on any kind of, it wasn't a mission. Just knew that to be the case. So that when there was this sort of these reactions based on these occurrences, which, by the way, I was present for two of these and did not have the same experience. I certainly had, I would say that our experience at the Stanley Hotel was the same as it was for everybody in that room.

And a good friend of ours wrote, Jen Yamato actually wrote a pretty incredible, very thorough article about what transpired that evening, that it feels very accurate. And narrative borders. And narrative, right. So you can read them. they're online to read and they had profound experiences as well.

I was certainly witnessed all of that and felt equally moved by the evening and the events of the evening. As far as the Queen Mary is concerned, these things didn't happen to me. I heard the banging. I don't really remember hearing the voices, but I guess I did. And I didn't have any subsequent experiences that night when I went to sleep. So as far as the Queen Mary is concerned, I recognize that there are things that happen to Daniel and that there is some sort of funniness

in terms of the vibe and energy there that evening, but I didn't have a profound experience. Yeah, so Daniel, you start telling people about this stuff. How did that go? Variously well and not well. I felt like I was in the closet for a while and really nervous about what would happen when I started talking about it to my intimates. And then also professionally, like, well, what, you know, if I, would people think I was crazy?

Would they think I was lying? You know, so I, I mean, little by little, I started kind of coming out to people and friends and family. And some people were like endlessly, limitlessly fascinated and couldn't get enough talking about it. And others would kind of uncomfortably change the subject. And occasionally, you know, get a little contentious of accusing me of being looking for attention or making things up or being gullible. That was when I heard a couple times, like, oh, you've been tricked. You know, I heard this whole pitch about how we were tricked at the Stanley. and you know

so because you know to your point you know so that you know because we they knew we would talk about it and be good press for the hotel but I you know very good press by the way I wouldn't want to go there

they said like not me I mean that that was where I learned that sometimes the gymnastics mentally people will go through to to like concoct a scenario where something was staged

become more outlandish then it was a ghost. Right? So I had this long debate with someone about the Stanley where his position was that it was a trick. It was a hoax. And I started going like, okay, let's walk through how they did it. And, you know, so it involved that Jen Yamato,

who's, you know, at the time was a senior writer for the L.A. Times was paid off by the Stanley Hotel to bring in a rigged Ouija board that was connected by magnets to like a military grade machine that was in the they somehow knew what room we'd be in and it was in the floor upstairs and then they hired this couple you know it's just at certain points like that okay that sounds very expensive and involves a great deal of cloak and dagger amongst people i consider intimate friends um that doesn't seem very plausible uh whereas the ghost scenario is pretty clean but but then you know what what started happening too is like you know my anxiety about what would happen professionally is that you know and elijah a poor guy bears witness to this all the time we'll go we'll sit down for a meeting about a movie or something and the person's like hey can we talk about your paranormal stuff like it's there's there's just people who are fascinated by this everywhere and some of them are experiences and some of them are just curious and

but um so then you know we we ended up starting the podcast network, Specter Vision Radio, which has kind of ended up largely my fault, but, you know, is really heavily leaning into this space and, you know, a very dedicated examination of all different aspects of the paranormal. And actually, we haven't even really started rolling out most of those shows yet. They're still in various states of production. But so it's interesting how one of the things we've realized, and you probably see this too, is that people who are horror fans generally are also really interested in the anomalous experience. There's, like this blurring of, or like this distinction between what's real and what isn't

or what's fiction. Some don't, though. I've encountered some people are like the opposite. Is that right? What have you found? I mean, I've met some horror directors who don't believe in any of it. Oh, same. Yeah, same.

Which is fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, including some of our close friends, you know, whom I debate with about this stuff all the time. I mean, I don't think he would mind my saying because Mike Flanagan's been very open about that. He always says, you know, I'm open, but nothing's ever.

And, you know, after I saw Midnight Mass, I said, dude, I promise you you're an experiencer. You did stuff on that show that is such an accurate. You captured so accurately what it's like to have a paranormal experience. I did not know what you just guessed. what it's like you you're i'm convinced he's he's like i was before before the crack of the egg so to speak what so not to uh not to go back too hard on this but like you you told me that um you told me it was pretty bad like like the reactions people had like you had did you have

some like falling outs over this or something like i i don't want to like throw anybody under the bus. We could be general. Yeah. I mean, I had a very particular, there were a couple. I was fascinated talking to you about this because you told me that like when you started talking people that about how you've seen ghosts and stuff like that there was a like it caused it had negative impact in your social life. And I remember just saying to you, I'm like, what? Like why? Well, not not globally, but there are a couple of specific relationships that I just don't talk about

it anymore with those people. And it sucks because they're people who are really important to me and there's a part of my life that I keep hidden from them. And so it's it doesn't feel good. And occasionally like something. And you know, these are people who just, I guess they're not listening to me on podcasts or, you know, they're not somehow not hearing about it anywhere else. But well, that's fine. I mean, we listen to our friends on give interviews. You know, I don't think anybody does really.

but um but yeah but it there were two there were two specifically that i you know i don't want to say you know who but but that it really bums me out that they reacted the way that they reacted and and they reacted in a way that was like not only disbelieving but it was like kind of insulting it's like what kind of stuff you know one was like you're gullible the the thesis was you're gullible and the and the second was you're just trying to get attention both of which are hurtful, you know, things to say, or there are certainly hurtful things to hear. Yeah. Yeah, it's an odd, it's an odd position to take.

I feel like it says more about the individuals than it does about, you or I think that's just an odd. I think, you know, we all have, we all have different, even if we don't believe it. So if I was a skeptic as your friend and I didn't believe anything that you, that you've experienced, I would still, I wouldn't, I couldn't feel compelled to invalidate your experience either, you know? I think like that, that, because it's valid for you. And whatever, whatever I personally believe about what that was, I don't, I certainly don't know that I would, I would then become accusatory about, you know, the, the sort of hidden motive behind it. because as we discussed earlier, you're not going to necessarily win a great deal of attention because you believe in the paranormal. I mean, it's a kind of a polarizing thing on a occasion, certainly in the grand, you know, sort of the mainstream world.

Of all the lies to tell, this is not really worth it. It's sort of a silly notion to get attention for something that is, that really polarizes people is just, it's a bit silly. Yeah, it's an odd position to take. We all believe different things. There's plenty of things that people believe that I know, friends that have belief systems that I don't agree with or that I don't share in that belief system,

but I don't invalidate their experience or I'm not angry about it. It's such a weird thing. I have sympathy for skepticism, A, because I was a skeptic, but I also, to acknowledge that there's more to reality than we know is an extraordinarily humbling act. And it requires a real courage of saying like, hey, I don't know what's happening. I'm not in control.

I'm maybe not at the top of the food chain. I'm not the big dog in the room. And it's hard. It's hard to admit those things. And I think certainly in Western culture, contemporary Western culture, we're, we are ferociously dedicated to denial of spirituality as a culture. It's, you know, almost everything we do is about a denial of ambiguity. We are not good with ambiguity, Western culture.

We are totally intolerant of it. Unless you are deeply religious, of which a lot of Western culture is as well. So there's that side of the... Yes, but even a lot of organized religion is still, it's as organized as it is because it doesn't want to allow for ambiguity. Right. So it's, but yes, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, but, but, but, you know, most, you know, most organized religions, they have rule books, you know, and, and there, I'd love a rule book that explained what's happening, you know, in my weird universe. I don't think it exists. The outright, yeah, the confidence of that denial is puzzling.

Yeah, well, well said. I will say, I mean, you might not want to answer this, but is there anything in the realm of the paranormal that you do not believe in? Like, because I will say that it's funny, I read all the emails. There are some things that I've just like never gotten a submission about. Oh. Oh, interesting. I'm curious what you've not gotten. a submission about.

It'll be silly when I say stuff like vampires. Like vampires. That's the stuff that's something that says like a million stories and movies made out of it like I've never received an email about it. Right. Or anything close to it. Right. Which.

Yeah. Let me be clear, I'm not shocked that I haven't gotten a vampire story. Wherewolves? I haven't gotten a werewolf. I've gotten like a wolf-like story. And there's dog man, which... I've gotten some, yeah. Which is a werewolf essentially.

But stuff like... Yeah, it's weird what you get and don't get. Yeah. I believe in everything. And the reason I believe in everything... You have a vampire pill? What's that? Are you a vampire believer?

I think that we're living in some sort of holographic reality. I can see that. And so as a result, anything's possible. And so I think, you know, just like you, Elijah has a friend that went to Japan and saw the girl from the ring. You know, was the girl from the ring there? What does that even mean that question? Was she there?

He perceived her. So was as real as a pencil to him. So, you know, it is anytime anyone says they experience something, if they believe it, as far as I'm concerned, it's real to them. Yeah. And then so then you get into this philosophical question about reality existing in the subjective versus the objective. I don't believe in not believing in things. It doesn't, to me it's illogical to say certain things exist and certain things don't.

Because nothing exists and therefore everything can. That is a very big answer to the question of do you believe in Dracula or not? But, you know, I've not received any emails about that. Well, you will now. I probably will, which is the thing. Or I know I'll probably get emails being like vampire-like entities or something. Sure. I've definitely gotten that, you know, but it's fascinating, like, how much folklore, old tales exist about things that are present.

And you see very often in real life experiences. and then some that just aren't to the point where it's almost like, well, where do that even come from? Yeah. Okay, I asked you guys about what you don't believe in. Like, what most fascinates you guys now, and especially when it comes to like the movies that you're working on and the projects you have, like what fields are most interesting to you?

Well, when it comes to our films, I actually don't think we're seeking, but rather we are receiving. Yeah, I mean, that's the simplest way to articulate it. I think we're not ever really, we don't have an agenda in regards to the kinds of topics that we'd like to engage with. We are interested in receiving ideas from filmmakers and writers that elicit a response, that we feel like we can't deny that we need to be a part of helping facilitate. So, yeah, you know, maybe early on. when we were starting our company, as we were,

as the horror landscape was still very much being rewritten in the United States and the world. Maybe we were a little bit more specific about wanting to engage with, you know, a ghost story or a possession story, but not really. I think we're just interested in hearing

really great, exciting ideas in the genre space. And that elicited a response that we feel, we yeah we can't deny getting behind you know um yeah i have to ask a selfish question but you guys both have listened to the show are there any episodes that uh stand out to you as favorites or topics yeah good i was going to say that's what you on the spot the gin episode really stands out um as being very scary and very real um

Yeah, go ahead, Daniel. I'm sure you've got that one. I've forgotten the name, but that six-part series that you did with the Scandinavian girls. Oh, Jesus. Yeah. Yeah, that one really haunted me. And I, like, I found myself just riveted for all six hours. And I still think about it a lot.

It's, you know, it's, of everything you've had on, it's the hardest to accept. But they just don't seem like they're lying. I mean, dude, I spent a year on it going through that. Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, and they and they were, you know, we live in an era where like the, even when they were like 20 or whatever, you know, they were recording everything. So they've, you know, they've got these videos and recordings that, you know,

it would be one hell of a long con if they were making this thing up. And like a con for what, too. That's like what I run into a lot with. Yeah, for what? That's a running theme with this stuff where it's like a 10 year long con for what to ruin your life a little bit, like to be very difficult, you know. Yeah. So that's, uh, that was a, yeah, that was an undertaking for me just making the episodes.

I, and the, the, the time I spent going back and forth talking to all those people, you know. Yeah. To an extent with those, with that series, I wanted to give people the experience I had. Sure. Going through that, like kind of ping ponging around, but, uh, they said some things that, like, you know, Jack, this might resonate for you, but something that I'm increasingly finding as by virtue of how outspoken I am

about this stuff and the work that we're doing in the documentary space, just meeting more people in the, you know, like we've been talking recently and like, like, this is maybe off the record if that's okay. Okay. Yeah. But one of the things I'm learning is that there are certain things that even people like are not talking about publicly.

and and so like you know we've been you know there's things that we've learned from some of these people that it's really I heard some of that stuff in those girls stories and I was like there's no way they read this somewhere like I like I they're referring to things that I don't think have ever

I've never seen written about or talked about but I have heard people the know describing and that that was one of the things in particular about them that really got under my skin. I was like, that made me believe it. I'm sure you guys have heard a lot of weird stuff anecdotally that's not recordable from people you've met.

Yeah. Yeah, Daniel has. I don't know that I've encountered anything directly. You've heard some of it. You've heard any cool stories, Liza? I'm not asking, I'm not actually going to make you tell them. I've heard loads of cool stories, but I feel like a lot of that also comes from Daniel.

And I don't know that I've directly on my own been told a story that isn't something that I can talk about. You know, look, the UAP disclosure movement, if that's what we're calling it, is an incredibly complex cat's cradle of people and agendas and tutions. And it's, you know, there's, it's hard to know what an. information you can trust. It's hard, it's hard, but they're, they're definitely, this term catastrophic, catastrophic disclosure is a really interesting term. And this is what, you know, Danny Sheehan says, this is not my idea, it's his, but he always says, the assumption is that what's meant by catastrophic disclosure is that it would be catastrophic for society. But that's not what that means. It would be catastrophic for all the people who have broken the law to hide

this stuff for decades, whose lives would be destroyed, whose fortunes would be lost, and whose freedom would probably be revoked because they'd be incarcerated. That's what catastrophic disclosure refers to. And what is holding back the people who are in possession of the knowledge of what's happening with UAPs and the actual physical hardware that's been recovered. What is holding them back from disclosing it is not the fear of ontological shock or so it's the fact that they're lawbreakers and that that that they to disclose this stuff is to incriminate themselves there's billions of dollars in government money has been shifted around and illegally and and you know there's this is this is stuff is in possession of the military industrial complex which is not necessarily

government you know it's it's um it's it's a private it's it's largely the private sector. And this is what we're up against with UAP disclosure. I hope I'm not getting myself murdered by saying this on your podcast. I'm sure it's fine. I'm sure it's fine. I don't think I'm the first one to say this. No, no, no, no.

Yeah. But the stuff you hear on the side is always interesting. I mean, some of the most fascinating things I've heard, I mean, maybe just because I'm curious and like rabidly persistent, but they're the ones that like I haven't been able to do. like or somebody to tell me like a crazy story and then they'll back out you know

they won't work again or whatever like what well one of them I don't want to one one was from like an actor like it was like a family friend and I mean I can't tell the story but it's it's a very long saga and hopefully I could do it one day but you know

somebody you meet out in the world and then they're like oh yeah I've heard heard like this crazy thing. You know, obviously the most tantalizing stories are the ones that people want to talk about. Sure. Which for the most part, I feel like people are hesitant to talk about this type of stuff, you know. Yeah, in fact, it's funny, you know, going back to that notion of feeling like you can be discredited or that it's, you know, talking about it publicly can elicit, you know, responses that

you don't want. I don't know that I agree with that in regards to certain aspects of the paranormal, but when it comes to aliens, there is a stigma associated with it due to a probably fine design by way of utilizing individuals who do experience things or see things, using that information against them to sort of discredit them as a means of keeping a shadow on what's really going on. So, yeah, the alien world is subject to the most amount of crazies. And I don't know that, yeah, and I don't know that they're all crazy. I think it just, I think that there's obviously a lot that we don't know that's being probably

willfully hidden from us and, you know, programs that we feel like, I feel like I've been uncovered in regards to, you know, disinformation programs and, you know, stringing people along, allowing them to be speakers of things that they have encountered or seen, just enough real information to sort of, to be able to string them along and then to invalidate them, you know. So it's an interesting, it's, it's a interesting, it's. an interesting space specifically for that reason. Yeah. What the, you know, quote unquote powers that be of done dating back to Roswell is, you know,

it's part of a program to humiliating people who come forward. And so that no one wants to do it. And it's systemic and it's designed. It's a design. It's very much by design. But, you know, these whistleblowers now are finally taking that on. And, you know, the fact that there's such respectable people have sat on the floor of Congress and testified under oath about this stuff is helping, you know, it's helping. Yeah.

But, you know, it's there's there's reprisals against these people that range from like humiliation to actually completely destroying, dismantling their livelihood. And so, so we're just, you know, everyone, people are terrified to talk about it. I think that's why there's such a particular stigma around aliens. It's like 50 years of conditioning. Yeah. And I think it's that. I think it's that. I think it in it,

you know, it, it clashes occasionally with, with new age sensibilities and new age ideas. Yeah. Which are, which are more often than not, you know,

stigmatized individuals, uh, who are, you know, labeled as crazy. Um, in some cases they are. Like,

you know what I mean? Like there is a, there's a, a genuine clash of of elements that that serves to invalidate almost all of it by virtue of the fact that it's this intersection of of new age belief systems and you know and mysticism and religion and you know psychedelia it is such a crazy cross section that by virtue of it being this cross section it kind of starts to like tear away at the what is at the core which there is that there is something really going on, you know?

Yeah. It's really fascinating. And like, you know, these sort of festivals that take place in Roswell or like conventions around aliens, like, you know, people, unfortunately look at those people with derision and look down on them as these sort of, you know, fanatical idiots. And it colors the entire spectrum. And again, to, you know, define design, it works beautifully to, to, you know, obfuscate what's, you know, the viewpoint away from the thing that's really happening.

Yeah. Whether that's intentional or not, I'd say that with all of this stuff, you know, people want to have it be binary. They want to be real or fake. In reality, this is a huge mess. And like, with all of the paranormal, just scroll, go on TikTok and search paranormal evidence. And like, you're going to find millions of videos that are completely fake, just nonsense. Or people believing in stuff that's just beyond nonsense. Like basically engaged in, I don't know, like a form of role playing almost. With some stuff, there's things out there that just not even remotely grounded in reality. Yeah.

Yeah. Where it's just fiction, right? Because I think some people do associate this stuff with fiction. But within that, there's very valid things and it's a big mess. And I think the average person just wants to either say, I'm all in or I'm all out. So I think that's the difficult thing with these topics. Yeah.

And, you know, certainly as it pertains to certain aspects of the paranormal, it's very difficult to prove. It's some of these things are not necessarily provable by, you know, the usual scientific means. And because of the fact that we need to rely on those systems for, to believe what's in front of us or to believe the world around us, then a lot of these things cannot be proven, you know. It's certainly if you take in, you know,

the general sort of scientific means that we applied to everything else. Well, guys, thank you so much for joining me. Before we wrap all of this up, what are you guys working on now? What do you have coming up with Spectrevision that you guys are particularly excited about? Yeah. Well, we just premiered Jim Hosking's new film, Ebony and Ivory, who did the Greasy Strangler, a fantastic fest. And so that's coming, draft house releasing is putting that out at some point in 2025. We've got a new movie that we're getting ready to make with a filmmaker named Kyle Edward Ball, who made a beautiful, very important horror movie last year called Skinnamarink.

So that's something that we're doing with, we partnered with Josh Safdi and his company. And we're doing it at 824, so we're shooting that next year. And then on the podcast front, you know, Mitch Horwitz's show is currently unfolding extraordinary evidence. It's actually exactly about what we were just talking about is the problem of proving the paranormal and laboratory. story. So that's currently rolling out. And then the new season of Euphemat, Jim, Jim Perry's show, the first episode just came out, which actually features Elijah and me going back to the Queen Mary to revisit the experience that we had there and very fascinating, fascinating results. So that's, it's called To the Queen. And that's came out, it was dropped about a week ago.

We are wrapping up our last season, or the second season of visitations, which is the show that Daniel and I have together, where we interview people in their homes and workspaces, and it's been really lovely to get back to that. We had done that with Shutter a number of years ago, with a little bit more of a sort of focus on fear in art. And we were always really keen to revisit that format because it just, it, it, it lends itself to really intimate conversations about life and the artistic process and, you know, our collective experiences and how that influences who we are and what we make. So I'm just excited that that's back in the world and that, you know, we're wrapping up season two, but but very much looking forward to season three and beyond and thinking about. you know, future conversations that we can have with, with individuals. So that's been really, I'm excited for people to keep listening to that. Amazing. Well, guys, thank you so much for coming on. It's been great to meet you so recently. And it's good to just have people around that do something similar to this weird job I found myself doing. Yeah. Yeah. And like that night we had the other

night for Halloween, that, you know, that panel that we did of ghost stories, that really, that I found that really, really exciting. And it reminded me of the thing that we've all talked about at varying times over this conversation is that thing of like being out in public and having someone that you're talking to engage you in a story, you know, their experience of the paranormal. And that's sort of what that felt like, these people coming up and telling these anecdotes. It very much felt like it was the moth, but for paranormal stories. So I really hope we can do that again because it,

It was really kind of electric. We're getting ready to drop that recording on the Euphimet feed. Oh, great. Oh, nice. People can hear that. Oh, fantastic. Yeah. Yeah, Jack, thanks for coming out for the test.

Yeah, thank you for participating. Yeah, I was on a panel with these two for the audience, who's not aware. Halloween. Well, actually, it was the night before Halloween. The night the Dodgers won the World Series. Yeah, that's right. Which is very funny. It was a very specific crowd there of people who are.

not watching the World Series in Los Angeles. That tracks. That tracks. But yeah, I went afterwards outside of my office, they're like doing donuts and blowing shit up. So it was funny. Yeah. Anyway, guys, thank you so much for coming on. It's been great to talk. And folks, thank you for listening.

Thanks, dude. All right. Thank you so much to Elijah Wood and Daniel Noah for speaking with me. If you want to hear more from them, in particular, if you want to hear more about their adventures investigating the paranormal, you can check out the show Euphemette, which is a Spectrevision radio show. In particular, episode 54, titled To the Queen, is about their adventures in the Queen Mary and their long, complex relationship with it. It features Elijah and Daniel. By the way, the Queen Mary is a ship, a very old ship that's docked in the port of Long Beach that's supposed to be haunted. I don't know if we actually mentioned that.

You can also check out the show visitations. This is not a paranormal show, but it is hosted by Elijah and Daniel. In this show, they visit some of their favorite creators in their own homes and have intimate conversations about the relationship between their lives and their art. Thank you once again to Elijah and Daniel for coming on the show. You've been listening to Otherworld. Otherworld is executive produced and hosted by myself, Jack Wagner. Our theme song is by Coberman. This episode was edited by Haley Pearson.

Our artwork is by Coldassack Studios. Nikki Kate Delgado is our associate producer, production help by Haley Pearson. Please show us your support by subscribing, leaving a five-star review, and telling your friends about Otherworld. If you want to hear bonus episodes, you can become a patron at patreon.com slash Otherworld. Our social media is at Otherworld Pod. Thank you to the team at Odyssey, J.D. Crowley, Jenna Weiss-Berman, Leah Reese Dennis, Rob Morandi, Eric Donnelly, Matt Casey, Morriccurran, Josephina Francis, and Hillary Schuff. Follow and listen to Otherworld now for free on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.

And finally, if you or somebody you know has experienced something paranormal, supernatural, or unexplained, you could send us your story at Stories at Otherworldpod.com.