This Paranormal Life - #342 Ectoplasm - Is Ghost Slime Real?

Episode Date: November 21, 2023

In this, the Year of Luigi 2023 people believe that ghosts are completely immaterial; that they come and go without a trace. But that has not always been the case - for hundreds of years people have believed that ghosts and spirits can create a substance called ectoplasm. First made famous in pop culture by Ghostbusters in 1984; it appeared on movie screens around the world as green slime, but in reality it can be so much much more. On this week’s episode Kit and Rory explore it’s history, the disturbing victorian-era images of ectoplasm and, by the end, smear ectoplasm all over their faces. Obviously.Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTubeJoin our Secret Society Facebook CommunitySupport us on Patreon.com/ThisParanormalLife to get access to weekly bonus episodes!Buy Official TPL Merch! - thisparanormallife.com/storeIntro music by www.purple-planet.comEdited by Philip Shacklady Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Do wizards store their powers in their hat? Can demons swim? Asking because drowning them isn't working. Answers to these questions and more on THIS PARANORMAL LIFE! Oh! Hello and welcome to This Paranormal Life. This is the comedy podcast where every Tuesday

me, Kicker, and Movena, this guy sitting across from me, Rory Powers, each week we dive into a different case and decide by the end of the episode whether it's really paranormal or not. How are you doing today, Rory? Doing fantastic. I mean, that intro question, trying to drown demons, are you trying to drown them with water or whiskey? Did I mention I was asking for a friend?

I just need to qualify that before I say industrial strength pipe cleaners. Okay. Bleach. Mostly bleach. Mostly bleach. No, I'm doing fantastic, Kit. You know, we're actually both just off the back of a friend's wedding back here in Northern Ireland. Yeah.

Which was a pretty boozy affair in itself. Yeah. boozy affair in itself yeah um if it's not your first time listening to the podcast you will be registering the fact that my voice now sounds like the hollywood movie trailer guy a lot lower than usual drinking for three days straight but it was a great excuse to uh you know see some friends from back home see some members of a crew that we used to hang out with who are exclusively known as the haggard crew right yeah yeah yeah for legal reasons i can't really divulge the activities that they got up to or the members of said crew but it was great to see some familiar faces yeah we're not going to get into the specifics but in the words of drake uh when we take a pic i gotta blur out like three faces because the feds can't see those

eyes there's one person uh who we've talked about on the show before, a friend of ours called John. Yeah. And at this wedding, I think a few people had been told it was their job to keep me and John away from each other. Right. You didn't know this going in in advance,

but it became clear. Once you saw that the knight was being orchestrated against you that you you know you you turned up and they basically handed you horse blinders and were teasing you with a cattle prod to keep you away from john yeah because there's apparently when john and i have a few drinks we wrestle each other yeah this is something that's happened a lot in the past i i'm telling you i don't instigate it it's this is it's just it's almost like animal instinct kicks in i do think this is one side of the story i don't think john would agree um i don't trust either of you uh you you did this at my stag do sure yeah we had a little tussle and i had to tell you off uh like a teacher at about three in the morning you were like my pregnant wife

is sleeping upstairs yeah you opened the door to see john with me in a headlock i'm trying to bite his fingers off it was getting real aggressive but it was only extra funny because i found out about this we both did and i was like i was like you know what john we should be super well behaved tonight to prove to them that we're fine. We're not a liability. And, you know, they don't have to worry about us. I think it was about half 11 to midnight. John comes over to me at this point.

The tie is undone. The top buttons are popped. Right. And he comes over to me and goes, Rory, there's a couple of people over there that bet that I couldn't pin you to the ground. I was like, John, no! No one said that. There's no way that was a real conversation. Those are the voices in your head, John.

Are the people in the room with us right now, John? I was like, don't give in! You know this is what they want! Don't let them win! I'm happy to say that we didn't wrestle. Yeah, thank God. Yeah, I wasn't even even done you did it at my stag do and then you also did it at my wedding day uh bear oh no that was a bad one in the ghost room as well yeah yeah yeah that was that was the one where we had to take a big pause from the the john and rory wrestling fed Federation because I borderline cracked my skull on a concrete tile.

I got slammed so hard. So, yeah, that was the beginning of the end, I think. So I'm glad to hear that you're able to temporarily squash the beef with John for this moment in time. It's a good thing you guys do live in separate countries. Yeah. And it's a good thing John's never been to a This Paran paranormal life live show or else the show might not go on it's true look in a lot of ways guys i'm a professional wrestler because every day i wrestle with shit

i wrestle with the paranormal i wrestle with my ex-wives their legal punishments that are coming at me 24 7 and i also wrestle with a pretty difficult addiction to peanut butter M&Ms. So, yeah, I have a lot of struggles in my life. I didn't know where that was going. If the peanut M&Ms work at drowning down the demons, let me know. Otherwise, Rory, I think, you know, speaking about all the above, as you say, you wrestle with the paranormal every single day. I'm afraid I'm only going to be adding to your problems because we've got a giant heaping pile of the paranormal ready to dive into on today's podcast.

Whoa. All right. Quite a big investigation, quite broad. The listeners will already have seen what it is from the title of this episode, but one that I kind of can't believe we haven't got around to talking about sooner a case that's big and broad sounds like it's ready for the ring brother let's get ready to rumble am i right weighing in at 5 10 and nine stone six pounds soaking wet we have you guessed it john he's he's scrappier than he looks i will say he is he is uh we are going to get into today's investigation right after a couple words from today's sponsors a quick reminder every episode of this paranormal life is available ad free right now at patreon.com forward slash this paranormal life. Rory, as you well know on this show, we often

cover unbelievable events like UFO crashes or sightings of cryptids from all around the world. But in order to be the ultimate deciders of paranormal fact or fiction, sometimes we need to investigate a phenomenon. Something in the paranormal that is seen time and time again, but is bigger and sometimes stranger than any one story. That is exactly what we're doing today. We are, of course, covering taxation. Is it theft? Why should I make a nickel while the government makes a dime?

I'm here for it. That did start off as a joke, but the more I think about it, the more pissed off I get. Obviously, in the commune, we don't pay taxes. Well, sorry, the people do, but we don't. But just thinking about Uncle Sam dipping his greedy little paws into the pockets of the little guy makes me sick. I'm going to wrestle

him. I am. But at the same time, Rory, nothing makes me more sick than potholes and roads. Taxes are how we fix potholes. What? Yeah, that's what the money goes to, so. No, sorry, the guy who fills in the potholes, Phil, fixes the potholes. He's paid by taxes, I think.

I actually don't know. I don't know how any of it works. I thought he did it out of the goodness of his heart. All I know is I owe them a lot. No, we're not really here to talk about taxes. Let me show you the topic of today's investigation by winding back the clock. All the way to 1853. The location is, of course, classified.

But between you and me, brother, this country starts with an S and rhymes with Blitzerland. Okay, not that classified. Not that classified, then. We're in Geneva. We're in a darkened and candlelit home of Agenor de Gasperin, a French statesman and spiritualist, and in his home, he's conducting a séance. Ooh!

We call out to the spirits behind the veil of the unknown. Show us a sign so that we may know we are not alone. Six people sat evenly spaced at a large round wooden table by candlelight, each looking concentrated and worried. I think I felt something, said one of the guests meekly. Show us a sign beyond a shadow of a doubt. Just then, the candle went on. The room went black and the table violently rocked,

knocking crystals and pads of paper flying as it jumped into the air and backed down. The guest screamed until suddenly... Agenor lit an oil lamp lighting up the room and everything stopped Agenor what is this madness? This is a cruel trick Mr. Gaspran What did they want

then? Why did they come here? If when it works it's a trick. No they wanted to be communicated with. They were hoping for a nice little uh chill sort of dm back and forth with ghosts you know that they would let's face it the only reason you go to a seance is purely selfish you know people like us sure we do it for pure intention such as communicating with the paranormal yeah most people want to know where their uncle is or where

their grandmother is and uh whether they're upstairs or downstairs quite frankly they want to know how hot granny is right is she boiling hot or is it kind of a nice temperature aka heaven right all i'm going to say is for for people like this you can't flirt with the world of the paranormal all right the world of the paranormal hits hard and it hits fast, okay? There is no in-between. Once you open up the barriers to the dark worlds, that door is getting smashed off the hinges.

You can't just have a little peek inside and you can't get upset when tables get flipped and lights go out. It's a bit like trying to flirt with, I don't know, say, a bucking bronco, a mechanical bull in a bar. You ever try and flirt with i don't know say a bucking bronco a mechanical bull right yeah in a in a bar you know try and flirt with a rhinoceros it doesn't work like the mechanical bull the paranormal from the outside you know it looks manageable fun even and then after a couple

bud lights you're thinking you could have a go and you're going to be the first person to set that high score and stay on that thing. And little did you know, the ghost of, that's right, John is going to come in and suplex you through that table. That's why me and Rory don't so much as watch a horror movie at the weekend without being kitted out in full Edo period samurai armor. Because you don't know what's going to happen. An Indiana Jones style boulder could emerge from the paranormal realm and start chasing you. Anything could happen. Yeah.

If someone so much as sends me a spooky picture, I make sure that when I open that attachment to the email, I'm driving my car at 100 miles per hour. So that if it's too spooky i can just turn into a wall so dangerous through checking your email at that speed as i say as you know his guests are pissed frankly at how just how south this seance has gone what didn't go south, it went north. It went very well. I was like being like, this pizza is too cheesy and too delicious. I'm furious.

This doesn't make any sense. It is no trick, ladies and gentlemen. We have been visited by those beyond the veil. In fact, they have left their mark. He reached to the table, was now still and touched it, then brought his fingers to the light of the lamp. Good Lord, what is that? It is the same thing that moves the table,

the ectenic force, the psychic force which the spirits use in our world. Only this, this is left behind, remains in the physical world. Some call it ectoplasm. The other guests leaned in, scared but fascinated, at this white, gooey substance now lining the table. One brave guest touched it. It was sticky, thick, with white strands through it. Keep an eye on the guy who, before he's finished explaining what the sticky white fluid is on the table, he's already got his hands all over it. Just like, some say that even touching it

means that this guy's like putting his finger in his mouth, licking his hands. Whoa, what the f*** are you doing? It's completely poisonous. Do you even know what that is? Ghost jizz, right? No! If that's what you thought,

why would you put it in your mouth? That's why we're all here, right? Interdimensional jizz-m. Everyone goes, oh, Jesus. I'm here to talk to my granny. Rory, what happened to Agenor and his guests that night was not the first, nor would it be the last interaction that paranormal adventurers would have with ectoplasm.

Mr. Pars, how much do you know about ectoplasm? Well, Kit, Agenor, ectoplasm is a common theme when we're talking about seances or interactions with the world of the paranormal. Did you turn Australian for a second? I was trying to do like a pun on the guy's name. As you know. As you know. As you know. I thought you just slipped into it. No, no.

As you know. As you know. Sorry. As you know. As you know. Agenar. Sorry, Agenor. Agenar. It's the only kind of physical footprint we have when we're dealing with cases that involve ghosts or spirits or poltergeists. Creatures or entities from another realm that, for the most part, have no way to really physically interact with the human world. But this seems to be occasionally a little

little remnant they can leave behind ectoplasm all right you smart little son of a bitch why don't you host the rest of the episode was that right i didn't realize you were such an expert on ghost jizz uh you know when you've been in the the profession as long as have, you've seen a lot of both ghost and regular. Right. You know, there was a few years back in the paranormal industry where, you know, investigating the paranormal wasn't quite paying the bills. So me and Rory had to turn the podcast production studio into a kind of triple X paranormal filming studio. We won't go into that any further. But Rory, your assessment of ectoplasm was pretty much bang on.

This is it. Ectoplasm is a weird one. Now, it has come up in a handful of other investigations, but only fleetingly and never really as like a central piece of evidence or the smoking gun thing that we have to look at. Normally just as a bit of an afterthought, some kind of proof of a ghost sighting. And in that sense, it is kind of unique because surely the whole point historically with ghosts is that they leave absolutely no trace. They are just see-through and they come and go like vapor. Yeah. So, I mean, what is this thing? Is it supposed to be like part of their skin?

Is it like just a bit of goo they leave behind that's dripping off of them? Well, this is the million dollar question because most people think of a kind of a slime, a kind of a gel or something like that. But there is much more to it than that. The story goes that spirits are floating around in their world, but they can't just appear as nothing in our world.

I suppose because we have, you know, even within the multidimensional laws of the paranormal world in our world, we still have physical laws, know laws of conservation of energy laws of momentum things like that right that the world seems to obey at least in our world that if we throw an apple in the air it comes down due to gravity and so there's nothing in our world that is made of nothing everything is either like a gas a solid a liquid or plasma so even ghosts i suppose this is the idea even they need a kind of physical vehicle for entering our world that when they cross over to our reality they're somehow surrounded by this stuff and that's almost how we see them and that is ectoplasm

that's actually a really cool idea i didn't think that before. They have to take a form in our world and that's what it is, goo. But it's strange, isn't it? Because it sounds like A, a bit scientific and believable and B, like absolutely fundamental to how they appear in our world. But isn't it strange that it just kind of

never comes up that much in kind of ghost cases we've covered over the years. Like everyone today seems pretty much happy that no that ghosts just swing by, turn up in the back of photographs, but there's no physical remnant for them. Yeah. I mean, it's funny hearing a scientific explanation or somewhat scientific,

because I bet there's also some very non-scientific explanations where people are like, you know, the gap, the tiny hole between the spirit world and our world requires lube for the ghost to get through. For them to squeeze through, it really requires, yeah, to be a slippery little fish. We don't know where they get it from, but they get this goo and they just stuff it. They smear it around this and that's how they squeeze through. Everyone's walking out of the paranormal lecture at Paranormal Harvard. I'm not done. There's a lot more to talk about with ectoplasm. I think there's a big question we're going to get to at some point in the episode, and I don't want to jump the gun, but I do want an answer immediately. What does it taste like?

All right. Well, I don't know if we're going to be able to satisfy that because I don't think anyone has been mad enough to do that. That's where people are going wrong. You know, we sucked on a cow's titties and that's how we got milk. Right. Well, I didn't. So it's time to start eating ghost jizz. Okay. You have to stop.

And editor Phil, don't cut that out into a video clip. This is absurd. And I know that you're going to cut that out and a video clip this is absurd and i know that and i know you're gonna cut that out and it's gonna be on the this paranormal life out of context twitter account can you imagine you eat a handful of ectoplasm you become a ghost and you're like it worked the guy leading the seance is like you just died you didn't become a ghost it killed you i think it's toxic it's a portal to their world. You're like limp body is just face down on the table in front of you. I'm free. It worked. You just died.

You know, that is something in old school movies, investigators, detectives of all kind. Investigators, detectives of all kind. Those motherfuckers, they couldn't even see so much as a cow pat on the ground or a footprint or some kind of powder or liquid without them bending down on one knee, putting their hand in the substance and then tasting it. Yeah. And they'd be like, hmm, they were here very recently. I think they went northwest. Yeah. I don't know if that's a thing that hunters do in real life but in all the movies that's what the hunters do they like pick up a bit of dirt and

put it in their mouth and it's like it's like it's still warm they've been this way and like i don't have you eaten enough dirt that you know what fresh dirt tastes like compared to old dirt i mean you even see it in like uh crime movies where like the detective he'll kneel down next to the kilogram of cocaine ripped open the floor he'll taste the cocaine he'll go it's cocaine it's like you shouldn't know that yeah you're the guy trying to bust the cocaine dealers why do you know it's coke that wasn't a sample you did a fat line off the table you cut it up with a credit card first we all know it was cocaine by the way because this was a cocaine deal right where someone was buying cocaine packet says cocaine yeah and detective is like flicking the needle tying his wrist up with a belt injecting himself it's heroin all

right it's like you're just doing drugs on a crime scene good shit too you know i think we should actually stick out here overnight with all the gear, you know, and see if they come back to the scene of the crime. Yeah. All I'm saying is, you know, we judge those people quite a lot, but I think it's probably even worse to be someone that turns up to a random room, sees a pile of sticky white liquid and puts that in their mouth and says, there's been a seance here. Right. I can see why people don't do that something became apparent to me while investigating this case that i think by far the most famous and popular way that people know about ectoplasm is from the ghostbuster movies yeah it plays a pretty big role in ghostbusters and honestly is probably a huge part of why people know about ectoplasm. It first shows up in the 1984 original movie as a creepy residue

left behind by a ghost sighting in a library, which is similar to how ectoplasm is known in the real world. And then in Ghostbusters 2, the whole movie is pretty much about ectoplasm. What they call psycho-magnotheric ectoplasm uh what they call psychomagnotheric ectoplasm which is very powerful and whatever it touches comes to life even the statue of liberty wow i'm just now realizing i don't think i've ever seen ghostbusters 2 that's crazy uh but it's true i mean in that first movie you've got that big ghost that flies around i think his name's slimer his name is literally slimer i think he hits people or goes through them and when he

passes through them, they're like basically it's like a f***ing Bukkake session. The walls and everything is lit up with slime. That little dude hasn't been touched in a while. If you catch my drift. Alright, we've seen the movie.

We get it Also that's not how Ectoplasm works It's not a measure of how recently A ghost has been communicated with The librarian told him to shush And he popped Like Rory in sixth form

Library He was hot for teacher but like I say really fascinating idea of ghosts entering our world and we need something physical to see them now that sounds a bit unique

it sounds a bit out of fashion that we don't really need that anymore because people just see ghosts all the time but of course it made me think about the iconic imagery of ghosts is if you want to dress up as a ghost for Halloween, you wear a bed sheet. Yeah. And of course, where does that come from? But that's the idea.

The idea being that ghosts are see-through, completely invisible, unless they're covered by something physical. Right. So in this case, ectoplasm, goo. Exactly. Quick pop quiz bit of ghost trivia, Rory. Okay. Do you know the real history for why ghosts are always under sheets?

It sounds like it's going to be a joke. Nope. It's completely serious. It's just the way that I'm telling it sounds like I'm teeing up a hilarious punchline. It's because they'll scare the sheet out it sounds like I'm teeing up a hilarious punchline. It's because they'll scare the sheet out of you. So it was a joke.

No, it's a fact. It can't be. It can't be. Yeah, sheet is a type of ectoplasm that comes out of humans when they're scared. Or have had too many burritos. Okay. No, it's because of burial shrouds or death shrouds. The idea being for hundreds and hundreds,

maybe thousands of years, God knows, when people died, they were, I suppose a little bit like a mummy, you were wrapped in a kind of a sheet or a shroud, which is known as a burial shroud. So even as long ago as several hundred years ago this was a common i guess like costume was to wear a sheet and people would kind of know that was associated with death i mean i'll just show you here's a ancient painting of like a little kids kind of playing with each other pretending to be ghosts oh i see well the exact

same way that if you kind of wrapped yourself up with bandages, people would be like, oh, that's your costume. You're a mummy. Exactly. When that was just, you know, how the ancient Egyptians prepared their dead. Pretty cool, though. I like it. So clearly, ectoplasm is showing itself to be a little bit of an old school paranormal interest or phenomenon.

One that we haven't talked about a lot in modern times and it is true there was a kind of heyday of this kind of thing particularly back in the 1800s when our first story took place with Agenor when sort of seances mediumship and exploring the paranormal became really all the rage and it was kind of seen as a little bit of like a new science. Yeah. Talking to the dead. These spiritualists became obsessed with capturing ectoplasm or photos of ectoplasm. Generally trying to provide evidence from the seances they were having.

After all, Rory, we know that evidence is the name of the game. If they could prove that ghosts had been around their seances everyone would have to finally believe them yeah this is interesting I never even thought that you could get a physical thing from an experience with a ghost you know when we talk about people hunting for bigfoot they're trying to get fur samples or see footprints in the mud and get plasters made of that you can get a lot of physical stuff in that hunt. But with a ghost, in the past, we're always looking at, as you said, photographs or audio recordings sometimes.

So the idea of being able to get a physical sample from a ghost or a spirit, that's a really cool idea. It kind of just makes sense. I think that's my whole experience with this case. It feels obvious, even though it hasn't come up that much over the years but yeah that if if a ghost or a demon turns up at a seance and starts rocking your table and throwing your shit around the room i mean dusting for prints sounds like a pretty good idea yeah and so some of this evidence became pretty sensational photographs of seances and ectoplasm travelled all around

the world and were discussed and debated in journals and attempted to be debunked by sceptics. All the while, spiritualists were trying to prove that the paranormal was real once and for all. I think it's about time I show you some of these famous Victorian photos of seances and crucially, ectoplasm. Okay. Okay, Rory, time to feast your eyes in some photos of ectoplasm in seances. Oh, Jesus. Okay, what am I looking at here?

This is a woman. I think this is probably the medium. As you can see, a f***ing face is coming out the side of her head. Yeah. Made of something. Is this the wrong picture that you're supposed to show me? I thought this was going to be

like a bit of goo dangling from the ceiling after a seance. It looks like a lion. It looks like Tony the Tiger is popping his head around by this woman. Yes.

I think you are going through the first signs of ectoplasm exposure, which is denial, confusion. Because as I say, we are expecting ectoplasm just to be slime thanks to the Ghostbusters movies. Couldn't be further from the truth, brother, as you're about to see with the rest of these photos. Ectoplasm is, think of it much more with what I said earlier, which is, this is like the ghost taking a physical form.

It's like there's literal material around them. Right. I want to clarify, though, at no point in this episode so far would you have led me to believe at any point that it was anything but slime. All we've been talking about is slime and goo for like 35 minutes. I said the ghosts need stuff to take their form. And I'm now showing you Tony the tiger attached to a woman's shoulder. And that is just what ghosts look like. That's the Lucky Charms leprechaun.

Yeah, I'm starting to realize I know less about this than I thought. All right, let's move on to the next one. We won't dilly-dally for too long. Okay. What the hell is this? All right, that is a medium blindfolded, and there is ectoplasm coming out of his mouth and nose. Is it?

And there are arrows pointing to it. That looks like a glove. That's a ghost hand. It looks like there's basically a glove coming out of their mouth, almost like they're pretending like they're a squid. And those are the tendrils below. Not entirely convinced because that doesn't really even look like foam. That looks like cloth.

A lot of times ectoplasm is cloth. As you said, it takes many forms. Many, many forms. Okay, we're not going to, we can come back, but let's keep moving. Sometimes it's goo, sometimes it's a dish rag.

Here's another one. Ectoplasm bursting out of a woman's mouth. I cannot overstate how much this is cloth. That is quite literally just a rag. That is ectoplasm sir yeah i mean which could be cloth like i will give to you it could be it could be a borderline towel but i cannot stress enough it is ectoplasm if this is not cloth and this is some sort of like foam yeah or uh material yeah Bear with me for a second here because this is going to confuse some listeners at the start. It looks like caulk.

Caulk, the white foam that you use to like seal. You have made this episode quite toilet humored enough. No, this is why I need you to bear with me. The thing you use to like seal up the waterproofing gaps around the side of things. Oh, yes, caulk. Caulk. Spelled caulk, but unfortunately pronounced caulk. It is pronounced caulk.

C-A-U-L-K. Yes, it's like a foam sealant that you use, you know, for like bathroom tiles, things like that. That's kind of because it expands. Yes. That's kind of what it looks like. Okay. Yeah, I'll give you that. That's kind of because it expands. That's kind of what it looks like. Okay. Yeah, I'll give you that. That's exactly what it looks like.

All right, moving on to next image. All right, this one's mad. This one is a bit mad. This guy. So, again, stuff coming out this guy's nose. But this time, crucially, stay with me here, the stuff is covered in faces of people.

Yeah, it looks like he's exhaling a newspaper. Right, through his nose. He's sneezed an entire newspaper. I appreciate it. Maybe I could link in the description of this episode some links to some photos of this stuff because it is rather hard to wrap your head around. I do recommend checking out,

just Googling the word ectoplasm and seeing the Google image results. It's really not what you think because I also thought like after a seance, you'd be like, oh, that was crazy. Is everyone okay? Look. And then there'd be like a little puddle on the table

or something. It's like, oh my God, look, we can see the remnants of the spirit that was once here. Apparently, what really happens is the medium leading this whole performance becomes a human fire extinguisher. And foam starts spewing from their mouths. If that's what these pictures are leading leading us to believe it's way more dramatic uh and way more cloth cloth based material than i that is a tea towel under his vest as well right it is um there's clearly something we've lost in the history books here some sort of idea about what mediums do that i suppose i guess it makes sense we know that

mediums they are the medium they are the interpreter of the spirit world and so somehow this is like a side effect of bringing spirits into your body to communicate is that you end up sneezing out the financial times next one wow i mean very similar to what we've seen before. I guess a medium or someone performing a seance and a huge bit of cloth dangling from their mouth. No, it's ectoplasm. You've got to stop calling it cloth. Brother, that's straight up cloth. It looks like a clown's handkerchief that you pull and pull and pull

and it has no end. It's reached the floor. Oh, dear. All right, here's where it gets a bit wackier. There is Sure cloth Going around this person's eyes But attached to the cloth Is a ghost

Is any of this paranormal? Because this is an overwhelming amount of That's a ghost That's a ghost Attached to cloth I've never been shown so many pictures of towels in my life And asked what I think. This is crazy.

No, that's a seven-foot ghost standing next to them. The medium has towels coming from their eyes, I guess, that links up with... That is insane. It's basically a mannequin. Yeah, a full mannequin of a ghost, pretty much, is what it looks like. It's a little creepy. I mean, in general, if these were framed and put in someone's bedroom, you would think they were a serial killer.

This is quite creepy images. Oh, yeah. I love that in this one as well, you know, from your explanation, you're like, this one as well uh you know from your explanation you're like sometimes when these spirits interact with our world they have to take on a form which is ectoplasm also sometimes they're just ghosts they have human forms and faces and there's also ectoplasm involved right well yes they need the cloth i mean ectoplasm to take the form all All right, we've got one more that's a bit like this. Peace your eyes. Okay. This is, I'll just cut to the chase here.

This is Punch from Punch and Judy. Yeah. Seven foot tall, standing over a medium. This is a man with a pillowcase on his head, wrapped in cloth, barely, barely even coming from the medium. Yeah, this is astonishing scenes, really. Rory, was that anything like what you were expecting i feel like i've just been shown images from a bed bath and beyond catalog nothing but towels i feel like i walked into a hot press the way i'm surrounded by tiles

uh that was not what I was expecting at all. I think you're probably right. It's Ghostbusters and, you know, ectoplasm in pop culture that has made me to believe it was ever going to be some kind of, like, transparent goo when the reality is,

let's face it, seances, mediums, they also have a history of being put on by charlatans as a way to steal money from people no one said the c word maybe back then people were a little bit more gullible so they were like you know what we can put foam in our mouths and pretend like there's ectoplasm coming here all right because i think if you if you i haven't done it really but if you go to a medium who communicates with the dead oh sorry sorry i'm sorry you said you had done it I haven't done it really, but if you go to a medium who communicates with the dead.

Oh, sorry. Sorry. I'm sorry. You said you had done it? I haven't done it. Oh, you haven't done it. Oh, well, let's all pull up a chair and listen to what Roy has to say about not going to see a medium. But I believe, even though I haven't, that the whole ectoplasm coming from the mouth is a practice that people don't really do anymore.

Because the ghosts communicate differently today. They text. They have iMessage. Hey, we've got ghosts from the 1500s. Okay. Rory's maybe not feeling 100% convinced. No. You know, the glove doesn't, the cloth glove doesn't fit and he must have quit.

All I'm saying is if you're getting a seance done and you're about to start, just ask your medium to open their mouth and show you the inside first before you begin. Imagine you walk in, the seance is like, come in. And you walk behind the shower and they're like, mom, you ready? Are you ready to start my seance? Why are you talking like that? No reason. Cheeks packed like a f***ing squirrel.

Just balls out the side. Okay, I appreciate it's a little hard to grasp. Those black and white images are not necessarily that convincing. No. There is more evidence and we have more stories of what is going on with ectoplasm and thankfully a bit more modern approaches to the topic that we're going to get right into after a couple words from today's sponsors. Nice one. We're back talking about ectoplasm, an extremely odd phenomenon, one that I, as the principal researcher in this case, was keen to find modern encounters of

so that we aren't just stuck with Charles Dickens-level stories about it. So I turned to what should really be the real US Library of Congress. Reddit. A little bit worried about where this is heading. If you're asking for ectoplasm samples on Reddit, I'm quite nervous about what is about to come. Literally. I navigated to the rspermdonors subreddit

to find some people who know a little bit about this kind of stuff. No, we're in the paranormal subreddit. And user prolificmystic wrote, Subject line, is this real ectoplasm? I'm curious to see if anyone has heard of this before. On several occasions now, I've seen a small black wisp. Almost like a small wisp of smoke, but black as black could be. I saw it a couple times, but it was the third time that I saw it, it was about the size of a grape and then morphed into a single strand. I reached out to grab it, but it disappeared,

leaving no trace in my hand. The next time I saw it, it floated in front of my face, but when I tried to touch it, it started to float up towards the ceiling. Now, I've told other people in my home about it, but I was the only one that had seen it. Until last night, when my boyfriend also saw it. We were lying in bed watching TV when we suddenly heard someone yelling. I told him to mute the TV but there was silence. We checked out the house and came back upstairs to bed and just a few minutes later the black wisp appeared just above me right in front of my face. Wow.

I immediately pointed at it and asked my boyfriend if he could see it. He said he could. I put my hand out and this time the wisp floated directly into my hand and left a black mark. I touched it and it smeared onto my skin. The consistency was closest to like a creamy black eyeliner. Then, as I'm staring at my hand in shock, my boyfriend exclaims that the black wisp was coming off me, because he was seeing it rise from my legs. But then it disappeared. I personally didn't see it rising from my legs, only he did. I'm trying to understand how something can interact three completely

different ways. It disappeared one time, next time it tried to keep away from me, and then last night it marked my skin. Most of the similar stories I can find suggest this could be ectoplasm. Has anyone ever seen or heard of this? Wow, I've never heard of anything like this before. Right, in kind of our paranormal studies. Yeah, I mean, is there any kind of our paranormal studies yeah i mean is there any kind of link to ghosts or paranormal activity or is it just this weird smoke we often study a ghost poltergeist appearing in different forms or you know interacting in different ways uh we've looked at orbs and kind of and you know uh oneebi kind of light sources and things that are ghosts but appearing in different ways and i guess this is maybe something like that.

They're asking the question, is it a ghost? Is it ectoplasm? Is it something to do with the spirit world? Usually you have the crime and no evidence to prove it. It's weird to have the evidence, but no crime. You're like, I mean, something happens, but I don't know why or what it is. I wish I could call this the smoking gun, but there's no gun, it's just smoke. It's just smoke. Yeah. You're like, I mean, something happens, but I don't know why or what it is. I wish I could call this the smoking gun, but there's no gun.

It's just smoke. It's just smoke. Yeah. That is kind of scary. Does it sound like what we've been describing at all? You know, we've been pretty general that ectoplasm can be kind of anything from tiles to faces appearing on material to slime yeah it's a it's kind of anything it's a bit of a catch-all ectoplasm at this point there could be like half of a smoked cigarette in a park gutter and someone could be like ectoplasm takes many forms interesting interesting

but i don't really know if that counts if there's's a half-eaten Oreo on your kitchen table, or you're like, hmm, the ectoplasm has been left here by the spirits of another world. Right, did you just forget that you started a packet and didn't finish it? Yeah, but I mean, black smoke that becomes goo rising from your own legs? Call someone, for sure.

A doctor or a priest? I don't really know. I would say it's not the only report I found on Reddit. Here's just another example. User HamboneCharlie wrote, has anyone else seen their own ectoplasm? I swear it has happened to me twice. One time I was sitting on the toilet thinking, come on now, thinking, please God, don't let me die on the toilet. thinking, please God, don't let me die on the toilet. This was thicker and whiter than cigarette smoke. The other time, about a year later, while I was alone, sitting at a desk. Both times, I saw it coming out of me, and I immediately knew what was happening,

and I sucked it back in. These events were years ago, while I was was suffering through debilitating depression. So that's kind of interesting. This is in actually both stories. They're maybe more similar than you would think. Granted, the color is different. But actually, both people are saying that the ectoplasm was coming off of them, which might sound different to earlier.

But actually, it's kind of the same thing. Ectoplasm is always coming out of a medium or some kind of person. How did he suck it back up inside him? I think... He really... We really moved past that pretty quickly. I think the toilet was a bit of a misnomer. I think he just happened to be sitting in the toilet. I think this was personally coming out of his mouth,

which we saw many versions of in all the photos. Okay. I just don't want you to get ahead of yourself. I see. All right, it's coming out of his mouth. Okay. I mean, is it ectoplasm? Is it bud?

I don't know what this is Well it's either that Or he's hitting a goddamn elf bar Blueberry vape juice Steaming like a kettle Yeah But he said it was thick and white Thicker than cigarette smoke

So it is smoke? It can be Go to a doctor figure out what's wrong with you it's either that or i mean i do like the fact he thought he was dying which is very fair if you see thick white smoke coming out of your mouth while you're sitting on the toilet for an extended period i would think my soul was leaving my body right yeah you're watching it literally leave you behind yeah the breath of life is leaving you behind i mean i would say you know growing up here in northern ireland uh seeing your hot steam escaping your mouth is kind of 80 to 90

percent of living here right well because it's so cold you see your breath pretty much all the time. Right, yes. There is the effect of, yes, if your breath is, what, warmer than the ambient temperature outside, you will see, yes, steam. Yeah, so, you know, I can kind of visually imagine what this is like, but I've never sucked the air back in to my to my body before only whenever i've been hitting a triple xl backward filled with blueberry haze i've kind of been able to you know do the jellyfish yeah whatever it's called yeah uh only then have i managed to suck it back in wow um is this man still alive uh this was posted a while ago, so it's quite hard for me to verify that.

Okay. But we have to assume that if he lasted long enough to post this to the Reddit.com website, that he is still with us. If I have that stuff kind of trying to leave my body, I say let it go. Get it out. Shrek voice, better out than in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. It doesn't seem like something you want to keep inside you. It's like in the movie,

This is the End, when James Franco was getting raptured up to heaven because he was a good person. And then he starts boasting to all his friends who aren't getting raptured and going,

ha ha, suck my dick. Right. And then he immediately gets dropped by God. Yeah. You know, if you suck back in your soul or the ectoplasm,

you're going to be wondering the rest of your life, maybe that was you going to the promised land. That was you leaving this life and you kind of messed with the plan. That's true.

That's true. We never know. That is the nature of the paranormal. It is the unknown by default, Rory. We may never know by discussing ectoplasm.

We may never know what it is we're truly dealing with. Without getting, you know, down our hands and knees and licking this stuff off the floor, we'll never know really what it's like, what it does, whether it's real, whether it's really associated with the paranormal. Until now. I have sourced, Rory, off the internet, the dark web web I might add oh no some real deal Ectoplasm oh shit kid is holding a little container of goo

Very happy to say it's not white Which I think is what a lot of us were worried about oh yeah now I've been looking at this for approximately five seconds and already I can say I want to eat it. Yeah, I kind of do, too. I'll be honest with you. So this is pretty exciting. We have, I believe that this was sourced from a kind of farm to table grass fed ghost farm. Right. Where they kind of go to paranormal sites and very ethically and sustainably source ectoplasm for paranormal investigators.

And, you know, Rory, me and you went to paranormal Harvard. We had many classes where we had to perform experiments using stuff like ectoplasm. So we need to have a source. And so that's what we have today. Have you opened it? Oh, Jesus Christ. That is nasty as hell. Wow.

It's crusty. So you just take a look at that stuff. I don't think I want to. Really? But it does, on the front of this little tin, say, ectoplasm with pictures of two little ghosts on it. Right. I will say the front label is a little bit graphic design.

It's my passion. It's pretty low budget. But, you know, as I said, this is a mom and pop ectoplasm shop. It's been a long time since I've played with slime. Do you remember being a kid and like all you wanted was slime for some reason? Right.

I feel like, because I had an older sister and then it was me and my younger brother. And, you know, when she was growing up for Christmas, it was always these amazing toys it was like the easy bake oven the barbie's dream house the like all these cool like customizable kits where you could build things and make things and then my parents would be like all right rory what do you want for christmas and i'm like slime factory comes with four different types of slime one slime is. They don't tell you which one.

It's like, I don't, that doesn't seem like a good idea. All right, what's second on the list? Slime laboratory. Make your own slime. Any color. You can make rainbow slime. They're like, all right. I think we know right now one of our children isn't going to university.

Give them the slime. That's where you're completely oblivious to the fact that your parents adopted you from the sewers. And they're like, this is so f***. He doesn't even know that he's from the sewers, but he yearns for the slime. He still wants slime.

Are you sure you don't want like a PlayStation 3 like your brother? How slimy is it? It's not slimy at all. It's actually a cutting edge video game console. I don't really see why I need digital slime if I can have the real thing. See, I was going to say, don't touch or your fingers will fall off, but we're just getting stuck right in there.

Oh my God. Right in there. I'm going to try and take some of this stuff out. This is more what I thought ectoplasm was gonna be like right i thought it would look less like an ikea towel and more like kind of a green or white nuclear goo uh yeah it is some pretty i'm getting stuck in this is wow really disgusting yeah actually it's very stringy it's stringier than you think. Full disclosure, the impulsive thought to eat the slime is almost overbearing. Yeah. I really want to eat this slime.

Yes. Well, I was thinking, Rory, that with the ectoplasm, what if we turn this story on its head? What if we can reverse engineer this? Because here in this paranormal life, we're always trying to get in contact with the paranormal. Right. And it just won't show itself to us because it knows that we're trying too hard to get paranormal evidence. What if we can reverse engineer this?

But by using, you know, this is like a cat territorial pissing. If we can cover ourselves in slime, we can let the ghosts know that we are safe to communicate with we can kind of this is the stuff they need to appear oh i see so we can almost kind of camouflage ourselves go undercover so if any ghosts are in the vicinity they're like hey we're just a couple of ghosts too hanging out what i'm saying is shoot nectoplasm all over each other. Grab some slime, brother, and get slimed.

Get slimed up. All right. Are you putting any on your face? What are you doing? I'm going to kind of... All right. I'm going to stick it to my... That's really not working out.

And I think one of the only four rules was don't put it near your eyes or mouth. Oh, really? Yeah, I think it's incredibly toxic. All right, I'm just trying to slime myself up here in order to just communicate with the other side. Yeah, Kit looks like he's receiving a Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Award. He's essentially dripping in goo right now.

I'm going for a more subtle approach. I'm just going to kind of put it around my hands. So if any... You do you, brother. If any ghosts want you know to shake my hand the ghosts will know that i'm a real one talk to me you know here we go i'm ready i'm ready to go for it kid is oh jesus christ i get it it's all coming back to me remember why i love this shit the slime so

good lord kid is literally dripping in slime if there are any ghosts in the room please come forth and make yourself known feel free to communicate with either of us i think i have personally shown myself to be a more loyal subject and a better vehicle or vessel for you to communicate through but also go with rory if you're feeling that instead it's all over you it's dripping onto your shirt uh-huh i think you should think the ghosts are gonna turn up i think one of them already turned up it looks like i'm just here to have a good time guys i think i I've made that abundantly clear. I'm on my hands and my knees, mouth open, awaiting your arrival.

All right, God damn it. I don't know how successful this has been, but Rory, at the end of every episode, we have to decide whether a given case is really paranormal or not. And with ectoplasm, we've discussed a little bit about the history and some of the times it's cropped up over the years from Victorian times through to recently on Reddit. What are you thinking?

It is a little hard to take you seriously right now because you are literally dripping in goo in the studio right now. You look like a ghost that's been afflicted by a condition called premature plasm ejaculation it affects you know one in five ghosts a condition we take very seriously on this show we really do we really do um you know average time for a ghost in a seance is two to three minutes sometimes some ghosts only make it four or five seconds before the ectoplasm erupts everywhere. And to our ghost friends,

we would say it's nothing to be ashamed of. It's something that affects many, many spirits. It does. It does. Many of the ghosts died from embarrassment. That's how they got there in the first place. So I love this idea. I love this idea of having a physical footprint for kind of a spiritual entity. I think it's really cool. I think the only problem, like I said, is, you know, when we're talking about mediums and seances, something that we probably will talk about a little bit more in a future episode. situation because I think quite famously, time and time again, mediums have been debunked. And a lot of the practices that have been used over the years have been widely accepted as being

fraudulent. And ectoplasm is kind of one of them. Because as I said, you really don't see it anymore, even with people who do believe in being able to make contact with spirits. Because, you know, by its very definition, if this physical thing did exist and was a common element in seances, we probably would have some of it in a jar by now. I mean, if it really was leaking out of all those people, like you showed me pictures of, what did they do with it afterwards? Put it in the bin it's an excellent point uh the thing is there actually are scientific samples of uh ectoplasm in libraries and university and research places around the world i actually did see uh examples of people online going to their local uh yeah say university library and requesting to view

the samples of ectoplasm that are kept there. And one of the people who worked there going like, are you sure? It's kind of gross. And it is like a slime with some fabric in it. So it did show up over the years as slime. Samples were kept. They do exist to this day. But you are absolutely right that there are crucially several verifiably proven fraudulent mediums who were exposed for just exactly like you said, holding bits of cotton, bits of gauze, bits of material in their mouth and then trying to vomit them up in the middle of ceremonies. It happened so much,

it was widely documented at the time. And there were famous mediums that were exposed in pretty dramatic fashion to the point where, like you say, probably ectoplasm fell out of favor as a means of proving the paranormal. I will say as well, we just looked at some of the supposed photos

of ectoplasm in seances, and it is some of the worst evidence we've ever seen in our lives. And it's truly hard to believe that anyone looked at one of those mannequins made out of towels and thought that that was a ghost. I don't want to stop you because you are making a lot of good points right now. But when I read the back of the tub, the first rule that I read out was don't eat the slime. And while you've been talking, I've seen several huge glumps of slime fall into your mouth and I've heard you audibly swallow.

I'm hungry. So it's actually keeping me going pretty nicely. My hands don't move anymore. I don't know if you can see that on camera. My hands cannot move. My fingers cannot move. My fingers cannot move. They're gelled together. I'm sort of worried that actually this is a replication of ectoplasm and it is basically glorified superglue. The reason you can't move your hands isn't because

there's slime on your hands. It's because you're eating the slime. I think you might be becoming paralyzed. Okay. I think I have about two minutes before the podcast ends forever because I will die. So let's try and wrap up this week's episode or let's cut to the chase. Is this a yes or a no? Stop licking your lips. If you don't want to eat the slime, stop licking your lips. It smells good though. I know it does.

It's quite minty. It is. But that's, I think, just to keep it kind of fresh. It doesn't mean you should eat the slime. Because remember, rule number one, don't eat the slime. There's only four rules on the back of it, and they said that one twice, I think. Yeah, well, I'm going to keep it in the fridge and just try it with a little lasagna later tonight. Hey, I like this story.

As I said, any story that involves kind of physical evidence in the spiritual world is always going to pique my interest. evidence in the spiritual world is always going to pique my interest. But today, even with this kind of physical representation of slime that we have right here in the podcast in front of us, I don't think this is enough for me to say that I truly believe ectoplasm is real. So it's going to be a no for me this week. Couldn't agree more, Rory. I guess the idea is broad enough that we could be disproven pretty easily in future if if there's some evidence, really, of ghosts out there. But everything we've talked about today seems like total bollocks, even the stuff that's covering my hand. So I guess that makes it a double no. Oh, unbelievable.

I mean, the good news is if ectoplasm really does exist, I think Kit's going to die any second now from how much slime he's eaten. So we might actually have an interaction with a ghost where ectoplasm is involved. Stop eating the slime! Sorry, it's just... I think I'm losing my hearing on account of the slime. Right, so you know it's the slime

that's making things worse. Some things are worth dying for. Even if you couldn't hear me, you'd know to not eat the slime. We've got to get this over with. Thank you for tuning in to this week's episode. If you can't get enough slime in your life, if you're like 14-year-old Rory and you live for the slime,

you are going to want to head over to patreon.com forward slash this paranormal life, where for as little as five bucks a month, you can get access to over six years worth of bonus content that we've been putting up there for our loyal Patreon supporters, uh, who support single-handedly makes making this show possible. Yeah. We also do some really cool things like, uh, raffles and giveaways where you can win actual props and things from the studio from the show is it uh too too soon to say kit that we will be raffling off this slime well i think i'll be having this for lunch tomorrow but i think we'll probably be able to get another couple tubs in to to raffle off i think that'll be a bit of fun all right that sounds like a good

idea don't eat the slime huh if you win it don't eat the slime i have to speak up junior there's slime in my ears uh i should say if you enjoyed this episode please give us a lovely little review on apple podcast or spotify wherever you listen to your podcast makes a huge difference for us in making this very show it does yeah or if you're interested in watching videos of kit who i assure you right now, this isn't a bit. He is literally dripping in slime. You can check it out on YouTube, on Twitter, on Instagram, on social media, on the internet. And at the end of every episode of this paranormal life, we like to shout out those who are supporting us on the, well, the shout out tier as it happens. Let's get into a couple right now. So thank you very much to shana helmer shana always takes the blame oh that's good no not really even when it's for things that clearly weren't their fault like

there'll be like a car crash in another continent and shana will take to facebook and and claim responsibility for it and it's like you really I understand you're trying to do a nice thing and, like, take responsibility, but, like, no one really expects that. It's kind of ridiculous. Right. It seems like you're doing a lot of bad things all over the world.

Right. So maybe ease up, Shayna. Yeah, unless you're the Green Goblin. I don't think that's possible. Thank you to Donna Travis. Donna's a goner. She passed away? Don't tell me she ate the slime.

She ate the slime. What? It's too... What's she supposed to do if someone hand delivers a box of spaghetti bolognese flavored slime to your door? It definitely wasn't flavored

like spaghetti bolognese. It's probably just stringy like spaghetti. And she ate it. And she ate it. It's absolutely irresistible. Hey, i'm right there with you donna because i've got about five minutes of life remaining and i regret nothing thank you also to stephanie miller uh i paid stephanie to be a medium and help connect me

with my loved ones who had passed away and i arrived five minutes early before the seance and saw her eating a towel god damn it evany i don't appreciate that damn it i really don't i thought that kind of practice died out that's ridiculous thank you also to ann sutton i like ann sutton because she works for nothing she shouldn't i think that's illegal, no. What have you got her doing? Just like regular stuff in the commune, you know, harvesting crops. Incredibly back-breaking labor. Oh, it's intense. It's intense.

But, you know, she gets to keep all the kind of misshapen potatoes that aren't good enough to be eaten by like the kings and things. They can be eaten. they're just very hard so i guess she does work for something she does work for something inedible vegetables and thank you finally today to goat herder goat herder jesus where have you been we have goats running amok in the commune, and we need someone to herd them. Please come this way. Yeah. By the way, we're saying herd, not like hurt.

We don't want you to hurt the goats. Yeah, because we had an incident last time. Someone said they were a goat herder. Yeah. A goat herder, and we misheard them. In hindsight, he was cracking his knuckles while he said it. But we just thought maybe that was like a shepherd thing. But he punched a goat day one and we fired him.

So please, goat herder, come to the commune. We do need your help. I know pretty much anything goes in the commune, but not that. Thank you so much to goat herder. Thank you to everyone who's supported us lately and always. We'll be back with more shoutouts from next week, along with what will hopefully break our horrendous drought of double no's on this podcast. Hopefully we'll have a stonking solid goal double yes for you.

In the meantime, remember to live fast, investigate. Eat slime. I changed my mind. Eat the slime. Right? Kid's still alive. Eat slime. I changed my mind. Eat the slime. Right? Kid's still alive. It seems like he's gotten stronger. I'm going to eat a fistful of slime right now.

My eyes are green. Live fast, eat slime, and die young, baby. You will if you eat enough. I have a it already.