From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. You've reached stuff we don't want you to know. You can turn back now or leave a message after the beat beeed. Uh, I guess Hey, my name is Matt. I'm on the show. I'm not really sure why I'm leaving this voice message, but I just want you guys to know. I really like the other two people on the show a lot um. The one who's talking right now is not that great, but you know, overall the show I love to listen, Matt, I disagree with you entirely. Uh As Noah, one of the guys you just mentioned, you're the You're the greatest one of the bunch. Wait, how did you get on this voicemail? It's a party line. This whole episode is one long voicemail. Uh. They called me Ben. We're joined with our super producer Paul Decon. Most importantly, you are still you. You are here that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. On the party line episode right, and you've heard us talk longtime listeners about our call in line on previous episodes, but we've never actually played any of the voicemails that we have received until that is today and in the weird meta setup that we just created. Fair this is one of the first voicemails you're hearing uh to to you from us. I imagine in fact, when we first started the number peek behind the curtain here, we were originally concerned that we might not get that many of your fellow listeners involved. So just imagine our surprise recently when we checked this and discovered we had well over a hundred voicemails and Matt, huge thank you to you for assembling these all in one place, listening through to everyone and giving some some at times hilarious descriptions. Have a file name. Well, there are some hilarious people that call in and some gosh, some people that have knowledge that I just can't understand, the unfathomable knowledge They've got personal experience and a lot of the things we've discussed before. Other people are just really really sweet. But there is and there are a few creeps there. At least one they ran the gamut. I think it's fair to say, but somebody I just have to give a shout out to Johnny Planet, who if you go through. I don't know if he's included in this episode. I don't think he is, um, but Johnny Planet has called in at least twelve times. I want to say the twelve might be overshooting a little bit um, but man, he just really really has some cool and interesting experience. Is throughout the worlds of psychedelic drugs at a certain time in his life, other substances at a time in his life, and lots and loss of surfing. So it was a bit of a psychoknot Yeah, he's a fascinating dude, Johnny Planet JP. That name is up there with Dr buzz Rendezvous for sure. For sure, I feel like they should hang out a where with the Doctor Rendezvous. Dr buzz Rendezvous. Doctor Rendezvous was the nickname for buzz Aldrin. It was a whole thing about this. Yeah. Oh yeah, buzz like buzz Aldrin from the from the discussion we had about buzz Aldrin. Yeah, from the earlier episode. Oh I learned. I don't want to derailist too much, but I learned a cool buzz Aldrin fact just while we're here. Do you know how much extra he got paid to travel to the Moon as in like expenses or some kind of you saw this too, right, Yeah, he made a grand total of an extra thirty three dollars and thirty one sets on top of his regular pay, and it was all in freeze dried ice cream. Sure, yeah, freeze dried freeze dried ice cream and Moon dollars, which, unfortunately for Doctor Rendezvous turn out not to be a Earth currency, but they are delicious as they are made of Swiss cheese. Yes, yes, these are the facts behind moon dollars, and the fact behind this show is that we want to thank everyone who has called in so far. In a surprising relief to our super producer Paul, we have collectively decided not to play every single one of the one plus messages in today's episode. However, we are going to play some of the messages, ones that inspired us, intrigued us, gave us a chuckle, maybe a shiver, and will be surprising each other a little bit along the way here. So, if you've left us a message, scoot to the edge of your seat you might just be on the air with us today. If you have not, however, left us a message, don't delay. Drop us a line we do listen to which one you can take a cue from your fellow conspiracy realist and reach us directly at one eight three three T d w y t K. You guys always do that, and I never can join you. You can join anytime I feel left out. Again, we have to point this out. Do not call one eight hundred s T d w y t K. Was that one? What nine? Well, if you call that, you apparently, according to this caller, you get this. Hi, this is Christine calling from West Virginia. Did you know that if you dial one eight hundred eight three three seven eight three five, do you get an offer for a Caribbean crewse I just thought you might want to know that by yeah, conspiracy cruise. Maybe that is a real thing, the conspiracy cruise. Yeah, we had an offer to go on in a while back. But honestly that number could be fishing of some sort. So don't don't call that number and give anyone any information. We are not affiliated with that. We are one eight three three seven eight three. But information is power, right, that's right. So no word yet on what the nine number leads to. If you are filling adventuress, that's the real party. Line. Give it a shot, but don't be very hesitant to give your credit card information ever over the phone. So we found so many cool voicemails. Matt, since you took the backbreaking time, I'm imagining to set all these up. Do you do you want to do the honors and kick it off absolutely. Our first message comes to us from Michael. Gentlemen, my name is Michael. I am from Sydney, Australia. I'm a big fan of the show. I have something that you might find interesting to do some research into. It's a little place in Australia called Pine Gap. It is actually the property of the United States, is one of the and I of States, the largest c I A listing huss in the world. And there's always been a rumor that an Australian Prime minister was brought down for thinking about removing Pine Gap from Australia. Might be worthwhile you guys taking a look at it, and it would be great to hear that as a show. Well. Well, well, Michael keeping an eye on the watchers, are you? Yeah? We really appreciate this one because it is absolutely correct and it's something maybe a lot of folks here in the US don't know. Pine Gap is a genuine thing. In fact, there's a little bit of news regarding Pine Gap. There is a spy thriller about the base or set in the base, that is coming out very soon. I'm not sure when it's going to reach the States. Oh my gosh, what is it? An Australian production. Yeah, it's called Pine Gap. That's perfect, Okay, So let's get into what this is. Yeah, so what is it's like? It looks from the look of it, it looks like Epcot Center, a bunch of giant, kind of hexagonal golf ball looking things, just like the networks, the other Five Eyes networks in the UK alities and what I think it's code named Project Rainfall. You haven't called that there? Well, that was part of the Snowden revelations, that the Rainfall name there and everything. But it's officially called the Joint Defense Facility Pine Gap or the j d FPG. And it has a really weird town next to it, right, Alice Springs is a small town close to the base, and a ton of experts who work at Pine Gap live there, at least I think as a two thousand and sixteen According to the New York times at least nine of those residents were Americans. Yeah, so it's kind of got this oak Ridge vibe or the what was the name of that town that we encountered when we were in the like the zone of radio like lack of complete lack of radio frequencies, radio waves of any kind. Yeah, I think it's just called the zone of silence right now, the National Radio Quiet Zone. Yeah, Zone of Silence sounds much more sinister, but yeah, very similar, right, And what do they do from from this this listening station? They also not only do they monitor incoming um surveillance, they also control spy satellites, right, yeah, Yeah, the place is fascinating. The facility can you might even go to the history of the facility. So in nineteen sixty six, there was this idea that there needs to be a some kind of space research facility that's going to be used by multiple people. So the Australian government as well as the United States government, and because of some of the locations in Australia that are somewhat isolated, they chose this area in Pine Gap and then in nineteen seventy they started like operating this big facility and it's grown over the years. And uh, and like you're saying, well, it's usage has kind of changed over the years, but it's always had some kind of control by the c i A, the n s A National Security Agency, and the National Reconnaissance Office that's the n r O, and it's officially part of the that echelon program that we've talked about before in the past. Yeah, and it makes you wonder what you would have to do bureaucratically speaking, to be able to visit the base in person. Yeah, the installation, I should say, or at least get an understanding of what's being collected. Well, a big thing that's collected is something called geolocational intelligence, which I believe has to do with coordinating air strikes and helping to pinpoint with great precision locations and triangulating data so that you can actually strike with a very high level of accuracy. Also, on a lighter, more inspiring note, this same technology can be used to find down to planes theoretically because it is so precise. Well, that's nice. That's at least one. Um, So let's just we're not gonna get too deep into this right now, because I think this is probably everything. I agreed I'm so glad you said that. We've we've talked about men with Hill before in England, which is another facility such as this, and just to get in this really quickly. According to the intercept, there are two primary missions for this this command post, at least in the recent years, and it's crazy. One is called M seven six and UH and that's the whole spy satellites thing where it's it's actually uh providing continuous coverage of the majority of the Eurasian in mass in Africa, which is you know a thing looking at continuous coverages in twenty four our surveillance. Yeah. Yeah, it's unlimited data. It's exactly unlimited. It don't stop. Then this was later upgraded again, according to the intercept, um as part of the second mission, which is M eight three hundred it's probably M A d U and it involved for satellite a for satellite constellation that covered the former Soviet Union, China, South Asia, East Asia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and territories in the Atlantic Ocean. All the hits, all the good stuff, all the good ones. Wow, that's a lot of stuff. That's also Dennis Reynolds quote. So we would yeah, We would absolutely love to do an episode on this. Maybe we can do it as part of a live show in Australia one day, right, or maybe in New York and Boston and Phil. Yes, yes, yes, that's true. So let's let's hold that and thank you Michael for taking the time to call. Uh. We have another call, I think and this is one that you found right now. Well, yes, Bennett is indeed, let's roll the tape. Hey guys, it's the least hurt. Just listen to the show. Thank you so much for the shout out. UM a big fan. UM. I wanted to follow up on one of the all of Us projects posts UM that I posted the Facebook group, but on twenty three and Me and the possibility of geno and targeted ads that y'all mentioned in an earlier podcast of this week. I believe so in Mojitski started twenty three and Me and two thousand and six and two thousand and seven, Modjitski and Google founder co founder Sergei Brynn got married. However, that same year, in two thousand seven, Google invested three point seven million dollars in twenty three and Me. So my big question is without you know, trying to be care not to slander. Is what is the possibility that these two have had a greater plot between the two companies from three and these conception because you know people that I generally know is that people usually know each other for at least one year before they get married. UM, So two thousand six, the company started, two thousand seven, they get married two thousand seven. Google invests you want to talk about data and UM targeted ads? I mean, what a better partner except for baby Facebook up until recently, UM to pair up with. So let me know what y'all think. Thanks so much, guys. By Yeah, this has been a hot topic for us lately, I think in a couple of different directions, because we've done stuff on targeted ads. We've done stuff on the Golden State killer for example. And how this these DNA databases that are being created kind of without the full knowledge of the participants, right. And I think I've said before that as part of another show I worked on, I spit in one of those vials, not for twenty three and me, but for Ancestry and of only I just kind of started realizing the ramifications of what I might have done UM in terms of like, not that I have anything to hide, but what if what if one day my SPIT ends up in a database and there's some connection to a pre existing condition or a family um genetic marker that might lead me to be declined from being ensured. I mean, these are like new territories that are as a result of this technology. And then the way people are just giving it away, and what twenty three and me is doing with the information, which is what uh yeah, they are obsessively hoarding it. They're also sharing it with law enforcement agencies. We got a lot of feedback on this when we did the update on the Golden State killer. But we should also emphasize this. You don't have to join twenty three and me. You just have to be related to someone who got arrested or was ever in the military. And we say related even distantly. It works. And the concern is that that there are not very good laws on how this information is used and how much you were allowed to know about how it's being used. Right, So, the scary and most plausible examples so far is the insurance, the privatized insurance thing that that you had just been alluding to. Right, the idea that your children before they're born could be treated as if they have a pre existing condition due to a medical test that they did not consent to. And that is not even what we're talking about. We're talking more about the relationship between and Wajiski and Sergey Brand of Google and would just keep being the CEO and founder of twenty three and me um both super young, super rich, super influential people in the tech world. Um. As we know, Google has its hands in everything from like mapping satellites to you know, committing every book on the plan it to a digital document of some kind, to obviously first and foremost revolutionizing search, and all of that is for the purposes in some former fashion of getting people's behavior and being able to track the way people behave and use that to help sell ads and ultimately to predict behavior even further. Right, Yeah, exactly, So what a Matt, What a match made in heaven this relationship between these two young star cross lovers. And I thought our callers point about how you know, I mean not to editorialize and insert ulterior motives in the situation, but it is a pretty interesting marriage of convenience in terms of the synergy between the two types of tech that those companies provide, right, yeah, and they The other aspect of this that might interest in people is that searchy and and divorced in I believe that's right, that's right, that's right. And and but the investment that we talked about, that happened pretty quickly as well, pretty subsequently after the marriage. And I don't know, obviously you can invest in someone's company without marrying them, but uh, it's weird. It's a weird confluence, you know what I mean, Whether or not you think there's a conspiracy or something shady going on, the timing is very strange. And then I know you have feelings about this stuff. I can see you kind of. I can see the gears turning there with you. I'm wondering what you think about this? Well. I have two feelings. The first is that influential, powerful, rich people tend to hang out with each other. So I can see how perhaps these people, you know, an inspiring CEO of someone who's going to create a company and do this thing, hanging out with you know, somebody at Google. They hit it off. I can imagine how their relationship came about without conspiring to you know, fund of this company or something in partnering and all that in the same vein my my thoughts go to what could Google possibly use all of this stuff for out side of the marketing and advertising sphere, Like when you're when you're creating such powerful algorithms and artificial not necessarily intelligences, but versions of artificial intelligence like pre intelligence. Um, what do you do with all that DNA information? Oh? Well, it depends on what you could make the world a better place. I think you could too if you look at you know, health health wise, like how do we fix certain things and issues with DNA? But you could also just catalog like what is a human and patented? Yeah, you could patent that. A friend of mine who was just visiting with New York over the weekend pointed something out to me I thought was really interesting. Um, the idea that mainly what we use AI for today is pattern recognition and like digging through insane amounts of data sets. So you know, who's better that pattern recognition than Google with like the whole dream thing and the way they can pull data out of this neural network or whatever, because people are feeding into the system constantly and it's like, you know, like our caller was saying, what better relationship could there have been than maybe at one point Facebook? But now Facebook is sort of tanking, and I think people are being much more cautious about what they feed into Facebook now. I think of some people are. But Google, you're just just like you're in it, man, Like if you've got Gmail, they're reading your emails and you know it and you don't even care. Or if you know someone who has Gmail on their phone and they hang out with you and you talk to them. The microphone part is true. They're collecting massive amounts of data. There was something interesting on the twenty three and me website too. In their defense, they say, genetic information that you share with others could be used against your interest. You should be careful about sharing your genetic information with others. I think they're missing the fact that they are the others well, and it is the interests like the interest of humankind against the interesting human kind, because they're the robots can figure out how to annihilate us even faster. But is it also inevitable that this sort of information would be cataloged and categorized stop. I think it's inevitable. But and I'm scared, but well, that is up to the future to decide, you know what. Another thing I found out about having this conversation with my my my buddy matt Um is about a book that I'm really excited to you that I have not read yet. It's called The Inevitable Understanding the Twelve Technological Forces that will Shape Our Future by a guy named Kevin Kelly, who I believe is the founder of Wired dot com, and he is actually where this article twenty three and me goes global and it's data mining efforts that I'm pulling some of this info from is from. And this book, from the sound of it, is a much more What's I'm looking for cautiously opt mystic view of the way a I will affect our lives in the future. It's more like things like that that idea that everything we do will one day be a subscription, whether it's our housing situation, our clothes, are dishes, like everything in some form is going to be a subscription base and that's not necessarily a bad thing. And also one of his theories is that AI is not going to be about a one stop shop artificial intelligence sensient creature. It's just gonna be better machines that are more specialized and suited to doing one particular thing really well. So I kind of that, I don't I like that idea. Just just trying to temper the gloom here a little, right, Yeah, And that's what a lot of experts agree will be the case, rather than some overarching I in the sky Skynet thing. There's one thing that predicts weather patterns, there's another thing that makes sure the food you want is ordered on time, you know. And speaking of inevitable, it's to I'm for in a massive spoiler alert, a break for a word from our sponsors, and we're back, folks, fellow conspiracy realists and skeptics alike. I don't want it to go unmentioned or unnoticed here that our colleague NOL has selflessly been playing the clips that you're hearing here, So thank you for going the extra mile, Nol. We have one here that I thought it was pretty funny. I don't know if you guys had a chance to listen to it yet, but it led me to a weird thing that will end up digging into. Hey guys, my name is Amanda. I'm a longtime fan and I was just listening to your episode on the Kennedy Curse. UM at the top, I was just hearing a lot up after I'm seeing thrown around. UM, I figured I could contribute. I am born and raised just on the very upcurt of um soft and proper, And while I worked very very hard to sort of mask my accent in a way. UM, I do occasionally get a person who will ask me, you know, can you say Harks the car and Harvard Yard, And I'm going to give you the monologue that I usually get back to them, which goes a little something like this, Um, you can't catch you can and have a ya, because have a yads not actually attack. What you gotta do is you gotta go down. Then you would come back to the pack and garage underneath the block and commons. They're only gonna chat you like twenty bucks a day kids like you can't beat it. So I hope that helps you, guys, navigates a little bit better. And UM, i'd really appreciate it if you came out and visited us, you know, so, UM, I'd love to see there when you do. Catch you guys later. Oh yeah, and Savantha, we we hope that it is a pleasant surprise to you if it is still a surprise that we are indeed visiting Boston in October. Oh, so we should also make sure this episode comes out before October. That's a good idea. So we will be doing a live tour. We are stopping in Boston. Yeah, you can go to stuff they don't want you to Know dot com and click on the handy little uh what tour? What is it? Tab? Live shows, Live shows tab? Click on that one and you get tickets there right now if you want to. Yes. And furthermore, this accent, this accent comment was I thought that was a pretty cool line. That was great. You gotta go to the cop pac underneath, like the way it also just broke out of the mold of the traditional sing song you kind of like bs little adage and really just went good with full Boston Like this is literally how you have to do this. And we love playing with accents and voices on this show. Originally I had thought, oh, this is cool. We get to hear other people's impressions, you what I mean? But it lead it led me to something weird that I hadn't thought about before, which is apparently accent changes are perceived. Changes in accent are a huge part of some theories that used to be really close to you, Matt, the the idea of faked deaths or body doubles, particularly with Paul McCartney. Yeah, yes, yeah, tell me more. I will, I will. So strange accent switches have been noted in at least three conspiracies relating to celebrities. One was Lindsay Lohan. One's Avril Levine. That's a that's a newer faked your death replaced cony. I'm going to search from Avril Levine stuff. Now does she write skater Boy? She did? Okay, and she also married Chad Kroeger from the most hated band in America, Nickelback. They're still at the top of the list. I think they are. Yeah, they're probably much beloved in Canada. Thought yeah, and hey, smash Mouth, you'll be number one one day. They're my favorite band, I I know. Man. So another person who was cited for this accents, which would be Paul McCartney himself. And it's it's a strange thing because, as we've discovered on several other episodes or past shows, accents are entirely mutable, we speak like we hang with to quote dilated people's and it's a good one. You should check that out. Yeah, do you like that one? And if we all moved to a different part of the world, the three of us and Paul and you listening to this, eventually, not only would our accents, assuming we all spoke English, change, but they would tend to change together. So if you're from a different part of the U s or if you're from a different part of the Anglo sphere, then not only will you sound less British or Australian, but will sound less and less American depending on where we're living. That's really cool, Ben, Well, it's just I'm saying it's possible that Lindsay Lohan and Avril Leving just started living somewhere else, just hanging out with different people. Man, But Paul mccarton, he's dead. That's pretty that's pretty rock solid, right, Paul. You know he's the only one that's not dead. Ringo, I always forget about Ringo. Gosh, I'm a bad person. No, that's Paul's replacement. According to the what you're doing. I see what you guys are doing here, acting as though this is real. Yeah, the wal ristless Paul. That was the That was the clue, isn't Paul is dead? Paul is dead like a backwards mask and on the white album did I make that up? It's open to interpretation. Whenever you hear I bury Paul, Paul says. Okay, Paul says, I buried Paul. It's actually cramp Verry sauce. Oh, yeah, that's idle. I've heard that as well. We should to an episode on backward masking. It's a huge part of the Satanic panic, and it's a huge part of a lot of music conspiracy. Stairway to Heaven, he goes mass Sweet Satan, Yeah, which is is weird because the ones that you can actually find improve do exist. You know, the statements that you can hear when a record is played backwards, they're usually not that terrible. No, that is that one's hilarious though. He says there was a little tool chance he made us offer all Sweet Satan. Come on, that's creepy really, but it's it's you know, it's not like they're saying. On December eight ninety three at four p m. We got together and killed a child. That the longitude and latitude there, thus and this and that, because that's what I think, that's what a lot of people during the Satanic panic ages were alleging. So thank you again, Samantha. That was that was a lot of fun. Let's let's go on now to a message from Dan. Hey, this is Dan mccollumn, a physician practice in August at Georgia, wanted to call as a follow up to the Cuba Neurological issue episode, there was a GEMA article the Journal of the American Medical Association that published finding some neurologic deficits that were present in the survivors of this alleged attack, and they described a whole bunch of very technical things such as neurological testing that involved the vestibular system, everything from scoring water in people's ears to see what their eyes do, and a lot of other stuff, and they described significant results. However, that has come under attack because some very shoddy methodology. So it looks like they used to cut off of as just justifying neurologic deficits, which means that almost everyone would have at least one a normal test out of the thirty seven tests. It could be subscided, so the odds that that you would actually be normal by the testing are very very low because they just kept testing it again and again. It was roughly at coin toss about whether any individual would actually be negative on notes. So three of the six people that completed every test would have actually been normal on every test. A shady side note is that a ridiculous cough is never noticed in other trials. We usually use five percent or less as it cut off for normal. So it seems likely that there was some pressure for this journal to to accept this, which could have been political, are due to funding because they do make money by selling reprints of these articles. So it's really unclear is exactly why this has got missed in the peer of view process, which as a peer of viewer and myself is very difficult, And they could have just missed this because it was buried in electronic supplement. So when I originally read the article, I thought this was a proof of objective issues with the neurological status of these folks that were working at the Cuban embassy, but instead it looks like this was just poor science. So extreme thing is is that this is likely due more to psychological read since you know prominent on his mass hysteria. UM, but I think that I don't want to diminish the fact that these folks are suffering from something that we're a tremendous amount of subjective symptoms just isn't good data that it looks like these were actually objective harm to them. It's hard to see how a mysterious sonic weapon could have done this. So in all um, I think this is more of a psychological thing. These folks do need help, but it's less because of brain damage toe to this weapon and more due to, um, the stressful situation of being in Cuba doing a very tough job. So in all um, very interesting podcast. You'll keep doing what you're doing. And thanks again. And that was our medical resident, smart gentleman from Augusta, Dan, Thank you, Dan. Shout out to Augusta too, that's my hometown. What up, What up, Augusta, And thanks for bringing me up these fantastic points. Dan. I think that's something that we kicked back and forth when we did our original episode, was the possibility that there could be without diminishing the suffering of people, a psychological aspect to this. The story dropped out of the news pretty rapidly, right, And if you check some of the news so far, you'll see you'll see reports dating to around this time last year, maybe a little bit further after, where in people from other countries also stationed as diplomats in Cuba reported experiencing similar symptoms. I believe a Canadian diplomat reported similar similar symptoms. There were some allegations that something similar was occurring in China, I think for a time, but at this point it has been considered officially not solved, I believe so far. But there isn't a lot of focus on the methodology of the research. As Dr Dan Augusta points out drugs, I'm just making doctor nicknames. What do you guys think, Augusta Dan or Dan Augusta. We just call him Dr Dan, Dr Dan going, Dr Dan Augusta, who we're going to have to reach back out to whenever we have a question like this, or just have him come down to the studio. Is Augusta coming down? Where's Augusta? It's on about two hours on I twenty east. Okay from here, all right, so heading towards the water, that's right, nice, Okay, So we went through and we found the jama article the Journal of American Medical Association that we believe Dan was speaking about it. It comes from March twentie and it goes through and we can read some of this stuff. A lot of it is um honestly difficult for me to comprehend as a layman, a lay person in this in this field, in a medical field. But let's go through this. In the findings action of this article, they note that there's a series of twenty one individuals that were looked at for this. They were exposed to directional, audible, and sensory phenomena and there was a what they call a constellation of acute, persistent signs and symptoms that were identified in these individuals. There's no associated history of any kind of blent head trauma in these people, and apparently following exposure, patients experienced cognitive vestibular which honestly, I don't know what that means. Maybe you do, maybe you're like Dan, or we could just google it, but for now Matt doesn't know what that is. Also, ocular motor dysfunctions, so having to do with the eyes and ability to move them in certain ways, along with auditory symptoms and sleep abnormalities and headache. Then it goes through and it talks about the percentages of individuals and what, you know, what was found in them in there, the results of the testing, and it's just a whole bunch of stuff off that we kind of covered in that episode, like what people were actually dealing with um I. And here's the other thing. JAMA is one of those journals, like Dan said, where you have to pay to get the full information. If you want to get the whole thing, the whole article, you have to pay a subscription fee or just buy it outright. If you go through that, Oh no, no, I'm not saying I'm not about to condone anything illegal. There's always the possibility of writing directly to the researchers, the scientists, the experts who created the study, and asking them directly, hey, could you send me a copy of this not illegal because they own it, Because doesn't that money you pay when you do it the other way typically doesn't even go to the researchers through just like a third party kind Yeah, quite often, Well we should get Dan to flex his his connection muscles that Dr Dan Dan august Man. That's right, Dr Dan Augusta. If you don't you ever want to help us out, send us something we would accept it, and while we wait to hear from Dr Dan, let's take a break for a quick word from our sponsor. Dr Dan got back to us. It was fantastic, kidding, No, we're still waiting. Yeah, we haven't attempted anything with Dan yet Dr Dan. Gosh, sorry, Dr Dan, but we do have something different for our next voicemail goes back to one of our h one of our episodes that generated some of the largest amounts of response in the history of the show. A. You're talking about sleep paralysis, Ben, that's correct. Yeah, I picked this one mainly because I just like these stories. Maybe like as a strong word, but um I am. I always enjoy hearing the different variations that people have. Um but yet the similarities that seemed to continue to crop up when it comes to these stories. That's sleep paralysis. That being a phenomenon where you find yourself half awake, half asleep. Most people report feeling quite awake though unconscious, but you can't move, and typically you are confronted with some sort of terrifying vision or hallucination what have you that feels intensely real, and often it's repeated and it's something that people really really struggle with. So here's one that I found particularly chilling. Hello s T w ynt K Gang. I'm Joe from Washington Stake. I've sent this in an email beforehand, but I'd rather give my account of the more interesting event in person. So I've had a pretty storied history with sleep paralysis incidents, but you know, I'm also near sighted, pretty badly near sighted, and can barely read anything a good two feet in front of me. So strangely enough, my sleep paralysis incidents have had a more captile tone to them, and we'll go over one of the were creepy and almost eldritch incidents here. So I was sleeping in my bed and kind of woke up a little bit. It seemed that kind of huge state when you're about to go to sleep but you're not really going to sleep. And so during that kind of period of time when I began to realize I was getting a sleeper rouse this incident. It started with some auditory stuff and some kind of mumbling, and particularly the approaching steps of a quadraped and through the wall behind me. Then I heard some growling which resumed. Is I felt some sort of long muzzle, bump and brush against me. The creatures and examined my right shoulder and with its jaw and snout I swear maybe even sniffed at me, then moved to my left side through the wall and began to fight in my stint to my shoulder and left side of my neck and being wild. Voices to the right of me wailed about something about musical chairs and why won't you join us? I was pretty just at the time as well, but I knew it was an hallucination. But the liberal of accuracy whatever to that dog thing that was attacking me was astonishing, even down to feeling gentle tapped to my right and the frantic fighting and tugging on my neck at my left. Out of my experiences, none of them were as downright hostile as that one, though I remained I remained rather calm through the experience. But it was just a hallucination, But I was more or less fascinated by how immediately scary it was. I knew it wouldn't harm me, but I just rode through it and also join us has been a phase that's appeared more than once in my audible hallucinations as well. Confvention I've been super okay with dogs and I've never been bitten or attacked by one before. Only afterwards I made the connection between my sleep paralysis incident an HP Lovecraft story The Hounds of tender Loops. Could this tactile hallucination been a tender loose hound? I wasn't whacked out up hard to find an arcotic, but my bed was adjacent to a corner on the right side where I was sleeping. It did approach through the wall. And sure, it's a little absurd, but the connections to the stories rather interesting. That was great. Yeah, that guy should run for president. This the sound of it. I have to say, when I first heard this, I thought it was somebody doing this story through like a speech to text program. Also wondered that, and then he started. Once he got through the intro, his cadence became a little more natural, and uh, man, that what a great story. And that's I just thought that I I just wanted to share. Becauought it was funny. But good lord, that's probably the most visceral, uh tactile, as he put it, one of these sleep rouses stories that I've ever personally heard. And I love the connection to the love Craft, which I think tickled your fancy there, Ben, Yeah, Hounds of Tenderlos was created by Frank Bell Knapp Long and then later it was in incorporated into the Cathulu mythos, which is wich is a neat thing. You can do it today. By the way, Joe, if you feel like setting your wonderful thoughts and visions onto paper or keyboard and write this out as a story, you very well could join part of the HP Lovecraft methos. But yeah, I'd like to say, that's actually a pretty terrifying vision that Joe has got here. It is wonderful that he has that story, but been on, I would not want to experience that. That sounds horrifying, like a dog gnawing at you while you're hearing someone chanting. Yeah, agreed. What's the line between reality and perception as well? You know, And I think in that previous sleep Prosis episode, we had all talked about whether or not we experienced it, and most people, according to the statistics, experience something like this, even of it's just being held down or just unable to move the hallucinations very I think a big part of it's the feeling of pressure on your chest as though something's kind of sitting on you. But um, the where it gets really interesting is these kind of repeated stories of apparitions or you know, ghostly figures, and this one and this one really really got really got me. So yeah, thanks for writing and Joe, hope you're getting some better sleep calling in. Oh, yes, that's right, calling in. You're just so well spoken that we we did wonder if you had written this down, but yes, massively appreciated and speaking of ghostly figures and haunting events, we have a voicemail from someone who wishes to remain anonymous out there in Chicago. Yo. I wasn't going to contact you guys. Um I heard the end of the serial killer podcast. You guys just did. I just wanted to say, I'm out here in the West side of Chicago, and I'm pretty sure there's a serial killer that has been on the loose. Uh. Couple of newspapers have done reports about it. I think the numbers are like seventy five women have been strangled, they're smothered in Chicago, and uh, fifty of them are still unsolved. There are you know, a couple of arrests for them, but most of the people arrested obviously claim that they did not do the crimes they were arrested for. I guess here's where it gets crazy. There are also a string of bodies found burnt in dumpsters across the city for the last maybe decade that there have been no arrests for. So there may even be two serial killers on the loose here in Chicago. Uh. I don't know anything about you know, they're uh ms. I'm pretty sure multiple weapons have been used to strangle these women, but yeah, there might be something you want to look into. Definitely touched on your next serial Killer podcast. Also a big fan of the show, guys, keep it Wow. Thank you so much for writing in anonymous in Chicago. We appreciated immensely, so much so that we're probably gonna need to make this focus of an entire episode itself, similar to some of the other things we encountered today. The there's there's a fascinating thread here because specifically, this caller is referring to things run in the Chicago Tribune, So these are stand up papers. In January of two thousand and eighteen, the Chicago Tribune ran a special report detailing how seventy five women have been strangled or smothered in Chicago since two thousand and one. The vast majority of their killers got away. So the actual law enforcement of Chicago says that there is not any pattern to this. The Chicago police are denying any possible serial killer, and they're saying that this is the result of digitized hysteria right, a social media frenzy, and that they are treating the cases of missing or murdered women on a as single events rather and this I could see how it would be difficult to trust the authorities in this situation because there's a lot of violence that I think people outside of Chicago are not aware of. It's really frustrating how how much violence is going on out there as someone who is not living there but just continues to read about it, and you're like, oh, wow, more people died, And then on Lively you'll that's just me. You'll see like shootings that happened in Chicago over the weekend and you're like, wow, Okay, that's unsettling. Great, and you know, being so far away from it, but is knowing that it's happening and happening and happening and happening. Um, it's hard to wrap your head around what it must be like to be a police officer or an investigator or homicide detective living in that area where there's just so much crime occurring at any time, and how bogged down you're getting. Um, I don't I'm just trying to imagine through the eyes of all the people involved here. It's intense. And this has probably stayed in the obvious, but I mean I was recently there for about a week, and um, this is pretty quarantine in terms of the parts of the city where this is happening. I think it's pretty exclusively like on the South Side of Chicago, I want to say, because the areas that I was hanging out and it just didn't feel I didn't feel threatened. It felt very almost like overly gentrified in kind of a little bit of a creepy way, to be honest. Yeah, last time I was in Chicago was definitely the South Side where this sort of stuff was happening, particularly the dumpster discoveries. Vice had a great news piece on this last year where they noted that Chicago is well known for having one of the highest homicide rates in the country and one of the worst records for solving murders. So it is completely possible that there's an isolated event, but it's completely understandable that people would believe there was a serial killer Chicago. Also, we have to say this is not a ding on the current city because we're not Chicago natives. Absolutely, but Chicago does have an historic reputation for being a very corrupt city where in crimes were covered up, you know, dating predating the days of prohibition, right, so that timeline check out there, Yeah, it does, it does. I remember hearing rumors about I think it was Barack Obama who was coming out of Chicago, and they're like, oh man, he's a Chicagoan, Like what really? But then yeah, you know, I'm not I'm not saying there's anything to them, there's anything bad about Chicago leaving in Chicago. I'm just saying those rumors still subsist from the historical um runnings of Chicago. Yeah, and this leads us to a couple of questions for you, fellow conspiracy realist. Have you had any experience with Chicago. Do you think there's any sand to the claims that there's a serial killer loose and at work. If so, why or why not because it sounds like a lot of locals do believe this despite what CPD is saying. Now, well, I was reading just now something out of ABC a local affiliate and ABC I Witness News and in June, they were specifically looking at the deaths of two women. UM, I just want to see here so we can put this on our list to look out for later. Um Shantia Smith who was twenty six and then UM Sadaria Davis, two women who were found like West Side building and then in Lawndale garage. So anyway, UM, just more information for you if you want to look any of this stuff up or find something out right to us, please And we're getting the signal from our trustee superproducer that we're running a little bit long. Well it's not a very nice gesture of Paul. Yeah, it's I would describe it as articulate. What do you think? There's your control. Baby's got to keep us in life. So, so as we leave the studio today, we want to end on one last call and it's not something that we're so much going to discuss as something that we wanted to share with you to get your own thoughts. Hello, UM, I was calling just because there's something on my mind, UM of your show. Unfortunately, it seems to be that the more you find out about conspiracy being true, or active foreigner political intentions trying to I guess what I'm how to get out it is. I feel like all we do is learn more and more about how there are people trying to form upboats on Reddit to gain Internet influence for corporate interests or political interests. You find out that there's Russia and internet squads meant to cause division and hatred and fatigue on comment threads. You find out that news sources are meant to inform you, they're meant to cause doubt. Ah. And I feel like I had to tap out several months ago from just learning more and more about how much things have been misleading. UM. I felt a fatigue, I felt an anxiety that the only way I could cure it was stepping away from learning more and understanding more. And it feels like these active parties trying to cause this to happen to have one and I don't know how to feel about that for my personal health, mental health, and my personal comfort. I guess um, I had to step away, and that was their explicit goal, and I just want to know how you guys felt about that. I still tune in, I still listen, um, but I just give myself a cushion space between me and finding about about the stuff that's really gonna rile me up or getting me upset, because it just seems to be hit purpose of people online too, causy feelings for motives that I'll never even begin to understand, or if I do understand, we'll just follow me out even more so, I hope to hear from you guys, or at least discuss it or I don't know what do you want to do with this opinion, but um, thank you for hearing me out. Have a good day. I think it's important just to comment quickly on this, just just to say that I think perhaps the three of us had shared some of these have shared some of these feelings at some point. I don't want to speak for you, guys, but just the overwhelming nature of the information that's out there, and the faucets that never close of news and good and bad things but mostly bad things occurring, and just how that makes you feel personally, how that affects your mood on a day to day basis. Well not to mention that we kind of have to be tapped into a pretty pretty seven just to make this show and other shows that we work on, and it's like our job, you know. I mean, my kid gives me a hard time because I'm always like looking at my phone and stuff, and I know that I'm sort of feeding the beast in some ways by being tapped in all the time. But I also convinced myself that it's for the greater good of like being tapped in for you know, stuff that I might be able to use to discuss on this or other shows. But at the same time, sometimes it's so overwhelming that like you just feel like you you want to just unplug all of it, because yes, it can have a toxic effect on your on your mental health for sure. Um, And then's something I struggle with every day just to try to balance that out and not be so plugged in all the time and also be able to temper some of this negativity with Hey, you know, people are still okay. I like you guys, I like everyone that's called in. Yeah. Yeah. The last thing, Ben, I think something he said resonates with something we've discussed before in this where uh he was, he's anonymous, this person they called in he talked about all of these entities that are like winning basically the in the fight for control, and just wanted to call him maybe his fears a little bit, just with what we've discussed about how it's a bunch of different entities and they're all vying for the same control. It's not one big monolithic entity, right, Yes, Matt, that's absolutely right, Anonymous, thank you for writing to us, and we are glad to be able to be the bearers of good news in this situation. It is possible to stay possible that there is some single group that runs the world. However, it is much more probable that there are multiple groups who feel like they deserve to run the world. They are very powerful in certain senses and very powerful in certain spheres, and they're not incentivized to get along and vultron into one big overarching thing, because what does power do. It turns a lot of people into essentially crappier versions of themselves, and those crappier versions of someone are going to be much less likely to cooperate with someone else who is powerful. They will be seen as a rival, a frenemy, of convenience or a threat to be eliminated, so it's very rare. While we're thanking people who want to thank Christine, Michael, Alice, Samantha, Dr Dan, A Joe and our other anonymous listener in Chicago. And if you have feelings about anything, if you have thoughts anything, any stories you want to share, just write to us. We're on Twitter, Conspiracy Stuff, Conspiracy Stuff Show on Instagram, call us one three three s t d w y t K said it really fast, or just write us a good old fashioned email. We want to hear from you. We are Conspiracy and how Stuff Works dot com