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. A production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Nol. They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer Alexis code named Doc Holiday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. Welcome as always, fellow conspiracy realist. This is our weekly listener male segment where we hear from the best part of this show, you and your fellow listeners. It is, of course, as we've said previously, the most wonderful time of the year, as decided after great deliberation by us. And we're we're encountering some paranormal things today, we're encountering some ghostly things. We're encountering some unsolved mysteries. So where should we begin today? I have an idea, what if What if we start with the unsolved mystery and we go to the realm of dream and then we go to the realm of the afterlife. How does that sound you? Guys. Sounds great. It's like a real journey there. Yes, so, uh so, first off, to set this up, we have talked at length about crypto cryptocurrency, and we've also talked at length about mysterious disappearances or unexplained deaths. Uh. One thing that many people outside the crypto space don't know is that the official identity of the inventor of blockchain and bitcoin has never actually been officially revealed. And uh that for a lot of people's the main mystery of bitcoin. But there's another one that we just heard about recently that I don't think we've ever jumped into. Have we No, we have not. And Chris wrote to us, I think today, is that correct, Ben? I think Christ to us today or yesterday, just today, and and just said, I'm not sure if you've covered the mysterious death slash perhaps disappearance of bitcoin investor Gerald Cotton. Fascinating stuff. Well, Chris, no, we have not. But now we've we've all dealt into it a bit. We dipped our toes into this realm, and my goodness, there is stuff worth discussing here. We may not get to everything in this moment, but I think we're going to talk about it more especially do to the content of the first article that I jumped into and researching this topic from Business Insider from September of this year. Netflix true crime documentary dives into cryptic death of crypto millionaire Gerald Cotton, and I thought Netflix is making a documentary on this already. How do we not know about this? Well, Uh, it just flew under the radar. Honestly, seriously, I had no idea. There have been so so many crypto security issues over the past several years, and we've talked about a ton of them. We just talked about one in our last episode that we recorded of Strange News. This one is weird. This one's very weird because it deals with perhaps a person who faked their death or a person who did in fact die but took with them a fortune. Very strange, and it has to do with the nature of cryptocurrency and blockchain and the way that you can get keys to those kingdoms. Very weird. So let's let's jump into this. The Netflix show is going to be called Trust No One Colin The Hunt for the Crypto King and it is all about this guy, Gerald Cotton, who was the founder and CEO of an exchange called Quadranga or quadringa c X crypto exchange, and he died suddenly in two thousand eighteen. When he died, he was running this exchange kind of like Mount Cox that we've talked about before in the past, where they're kind of the go between between people who are looking to buy and sell cryptocurrency or exchange cryptocurrency for other currencies, like a popular one. Right now, it'd be like crypto dot com or coin base is an exchange. It's like a app where you can purchase it. But people always recommend that you don't leave it on the exchange because if you leave it on the exchange then things like the Mount Cox hack or collapse could happen. And technically, if you don't have that crypto in your own encrypted wallet or bank situation, it's not actually here's yet. Yeah. There in lies some of the weirdness that honestly, I don't fully understand. And you can make fun of me as much as you want, and the reviews or wherever you are, you awesome crypto people that know way more than me. But I just don't know a lot about this, but I'm learning. Ha ha. Look at this guy doesn't know everything. I know the integrity to admit it instead of pretending otherwise it doesn't matter. I so, uh, this person, Mr Cotton, he likes to control this stuff, and honestly, I don't know other ways that would make something like this more secure. Where he actually stored around a hundred and ninety million dollars worth of bitcoin, and he was the guy who was in charge, so he had the passwords that were needed to access those funds and to manipulate those funds make trades and changes. When he died, that information, at least according to the people around him and his wife who became executor after he passed, those were lost with him, so that all of that money from around seventy five thousand investors, Uh, it just disappeared. So there's a lot of interest from people who say lost maybe a hundred dollars to a million dollars. Two more are very much into figuring out what the heck happened. And he stole from the exchange, is that what you're saying, He actually stole other people's crypto that had not been taken off of this exchange. No. We read from Business Business Decider here quote Cotton encrypted and stored around a hundred and ninety million U S dollars worth of his customers bitcoin cashes and held sole responsibility for the passwords needed to access those funds. Then the crypto millionaire suddenly died in India from complications from Crohn's disease about three years ago. And yes, and when he died, he didn't give that security information to anybody else, at least according to those around him, including again his wife is an executor. So all these people want to figure out what that happened, They want to track their money down. It's it's out there, it's somewhere right and due to the nature of blockchain, like you, you almost know where it is right, you know exactly where it is and what's happening to it. You just can't access it. And that's got to be terribly, terribly frustrating, especially if this is a meaningful amount of money for somebody, which I guarantee it is. But then, of course, when someone like this dies, they are the sole person who has control over a large amount of money. So you know, around two hundred million dollars, there are going to be rumors spreading that perhaps this person didn't actually die you know, show me the proof that this person is actually dead, because you may think, well, perhaps this person is on an island somewhere, which I believe he did purchase an island. He also purchased a Sessna. He also purchased a yacht with an extra gas tank, um because he needed to be able to sail, according to the story in Vanity Fair, um all the way to the Caribbean without stopping in Canada or the United States very specific gask. So this Netflix shows coming out in is going to attempt to track down what happened to this person, if he is indeed still alive or what You can look to the sun out of the UK. You can read a little bit more about this about why people believe he quote died rather than died. You can also head on over to I Think It was Coin Highlight was an interesting website that had some pretty good reporting on this. And there's one other place you should go if you want to learn more about this story, and that is Vanity Fair. There is a huge, huge article that came out in twenty nineteen I believe the end of that year titled Ponzi Schemes, Private Yachts and I'm missing two fifty million dollars in crypto. The Strange Tale of Drina or Quadriga. Um, it's a long read, just to forewarn everybody, but I think it's gonna be worth your time. There's tons and tons of detail in here about this person, who he was, and why a lot of people believe he may have just left with that money. Pretty cool stuff. Yeah, this could be a full episode because it's like a heist. It's gets like a case of potential, you know, disguise and intrigue and faking one's own death. That has all the things. Um. It's this interesting thing too about the whole blockchain. I mean, is it purports to be all about transparency, but yet it's used for all kinds of catchy shady dealings. Uh, And it is pretty easy to make things disappear. Uh. You can trace the providence of it, you know, through the blockchain. But it's sort of the same. This isn't exactly right, but the way that um, you know, the the CIA can trace phone calls using metadata but not actually knowing who exists on either end. Um, it's kind of like that, Like it's it's it's still pretty easy to obscure. Yeah, I just want to leave you with some of some of these little details that you can get out of that Vanity Fair article. Guys, four days before Cotton had left for India on whatever trip he was on. When he passed away, he changed as a will around and left all of his money twelve million dollars in real estate holdings. Uh, the Lexus, you got to give that away, the Cessna, the Gulliver, which is the name of that giant yacht that he owned, and a hundred thousand dollars for the care of the chihuahuas. It all like his will that he made four days we're leaving sent all that stuff out essentially in the case of his death. And um, I don't know, it's a little weird. Maybe he just was trying to cross some teas dots of eyes when it comes to international travel and you know the perhaps dangers that may lie within that. Or maybe he was trying to move his money around before he disappeared. Yeah, that's the interesting part here, because the the timing is weird. Right, First it could just be unfortunate timing, but secondly, I was looking in the details of the the chain of custody for the body, which was apparently returned to Nova Scotia after the police said they had no objection to the official death certificate which came about from a local municipality uh in Jaipur right where. And this is not a ding on anybody, but it it's pretty widely acknowledged that it's not impossible to bribe people fairly easily in certain parts of India, especially when you're at the local or street level government. So I'm not saying I'm not saying he faked his death. I'm saying things can happen. It seems very strange that he was the only whole are of those keys right? This is a big venture, a lot of money involved, a lot of people involved. If something happens to him, like in this case, he knows that that's it. If you can't get access to that money anymore. Mm hmmm something. What did you say last episode? We're not necessarily in the fish factory, but it's smell a pretty fishy. It makes me wonder if any of these like Crypto or like, I don't know, we haven't really even seen. It's such a new space that we haven't seen, like the big Crypto, you know, criminal syndicate. Right, we don't know, I don't have a face yet. They're just like, you know, folks like this or like, you know, these developer types, sir. Because it's even still kind of sketchy to like more traditional Wall Street folks. And it's like, you know, we've got El Salvador and the president of El Salvador announcing that that country is now going to start accepting bitcoin as legal tender alongside the US dollar, And you gotta wonder is that gonna lead to it being a haven for like crypto criminals, you know, Like I don't know, it's certainly a country you hear about corruption taking place in. So I'm wondering if you know, if people are out on the lamb with their you know, sacks full of crypto, uh, if that's going to become a destination for them. Yeah. Two of the UH. And I think there's another African country that is also engaging in a digital currency. I think it's uh. Nigeria is issuing they banned a crypto exchange, and earlier today the news drop that they're they're issuing something they call the e Nira, I mean digital currency. I think is is going to be unavoidable in the future. But with this, the two biggest conspiratorial angles I've seen are people arguing that Cotton faked his own death. Fancy word for that again is pseudo side that's pretty yeah, that's pretty cool, or the other theories that his death exposed was an actual Ponzi scheme, which is possible. But the the thing that the thing that we have to say to be fair is successfully faking your death is extremely difficult for a number of reasons, uh with and again we'd need to do an actual episode on this. But like, from what I understand, this is one of the people who would have the ability to do so. Like you guys pointed out, that's not a normal yacht, you know what I mean. That's also uh, that's that's a long distance we could disappear for a while yacht. But if you want to fake your death effectively, the people that I believe have done so successfully have almost always done it in a foreign country if they're US based, because it's a little easier to get around the rules in some countries, or they've just gone off into America's Great Wilderness and decided they were going to live off the grid in a kind of miserable life until they were caught. But I, I just I don't know. Man, it's so hard to actually fake your death in a sustainable way unless you have scads of money and unless yeah, and unless you can if you ever want to travel from where you have to be able to circumvent the customs and border control systems, which he could. Yeah, Derek's is that money again? That's superpower. You can figure out all kinds of interesting ways around rules and laws if you got that moolah. Well, there you go, Chris. We've just scratched the surface there. But uh, you know, I guess we'll all be watching that Netflix shout out. You're welcome Netflix, where all that stands between them and bankruptcy. All right, we'll be right back, And we're back with another message from you. Yes you, triple Z. I'm talking to you. Uh triple Z rights in with a subject line Lucid Dreaming Paralysis. Hey guys, a long time listener, first time email. You can call me triple Z. I did I love the show. I'm a big fan of the strange news segments. Thank you. Um. At a young age, I was really interested in Lucid Dreaming. I would stay up for a day until I was physically tired and try to keep my mind active when I attempted sleep. Uh. The idea is to trick your brain into keeping your consciousness active while your body is asleep. From doing this, I believe I developed sleep paralysis. UM. That affects me still to this day. It happens once in a while. I wondered if you guys had any experience with lucid dreaming yourselves or heard of anyone getting sleep paralysis from it. Again, love the show, Thanks guys. UM. I found a ton of really really cool stuff. There's a lot of new studies being done into dreaming, which is neat because, I mean, one of the articles I read, uh in see science Focus UM lead with the the idea that, hey, we're sending billionaires into space and all this stuff, and uh, you know, solve so many mysteries of the universe, you know, through science. But one thing that still remains largely out of reach is the state of dreaming. And that is because it's hard to study something that is purely subjective to an individual. You know, you can study brain wave patterns and things like that, and you know, monitor breathing and the way the body behaves. But you can't exactly like shove a camera on somebody's brain and see what their dreams are like. So you would rely on that subject to be able to describe it to you. And that's something that lucid dreaming is playing a big part of. I think it's pretty clear, but to anyone that isn't familiar, lucy dreaming is is like triples, he said, where you essentially train yourself Two. It happens during r E M sleep, which we know rapid eye movement, which is the state of sleep where dreaming kind of kicks in. And if you can keep yourself aware, uh of being awake and of being you know, in the waking world while still experiencing that R A M state, you can technically at the very least be aware of your dreams, describe them, you know, in a sort of a cogent kind of way, or even steer them if I'm not mistaken. Isn't that right? Then We've talked about this in the past, and the notion that you're supposed to be able to almost like drive your dreams better that way. Yeah, yeah, the idea is, uh, it's odd because the ideas or the phenomenon. From a scientific basis of sleep, prowesse and lucid dreaming are not that different. They're both kind of a hybrid state of sleep, and there's some really interesting studies done on that. There's not really a lot of substantive work yet on a causation between lucid dreaming and sleep paralysis. But you can teach yourself to experience lucid dreaming. I've I've experimented with it in the past. Uh, mainly mainly due to some uh personal interest. Shout out shout out to Brian. Yes, I'm the one who has dreams in a shared universe. But you're absolutely spot on. Well, these are Um, this is a skill that people can teach themselves, and the steps are relatively simple. But your mileage may vary. And for a lot of people they'll encounter they'll encounter sleeping lucidity in relatively short bursts, like without a d percent success rate. Yeah, mileage may indeed vary, and that's I don't know, this is my theory, um, you know. And being not like a sleep scientist or anything, but almost the way you put it, bad I think makes perfect sense. That's the lucid dreaming and uh, sleep paralysis are seemingly sides, two sides of the same coin. And I'm wondering if lucid dreaming is like the positive side, uh, and sleep paralysis is the negative side, Like, couldn't you also lucidly nightmare? You know? Is it? What is sleep paralysis if not a lucid nightmare where you're sort of trapped in that state between waking and sleeping, but also they lost control of your body. Yeah, but in your lucid nightmare, you could grow wolverine cloths and like anything that's coming at you, you're good to go because you can heal yourself and you've got wolverine cloths, unless it's paralyzing, lee, terrifying, and then you're just like, you know, stricken because it does feel like you know the commonalities between people that experienced sleep paralysis is they often have suffered some kind of trauma it seems, you know, or or there's some triggering you know, event like it just doesn't come out of nowhere usually. But I'm sorry if that's way off base, folks, let me know, um, but that that that is my understanding from that food is that film that actually ended up being quite scary. It was called like the nightmare I think about the shadow people and sleep paracess. Well, there's there's another. Another distinction is reading a study a little while back that said, this is how I know that there hasn't been a lot of substance research into a causation between lucid dreaming and sleep paralysis, which hopefully triples the is good news um for you because it helps us eliminate one of the possible causes. Uh. Sleep paralysis involves a full return to consciousness to wakefulness while you're muscles while you're still experiencing muscle a tonia, which is why you're you're not thrashing all the time when you're having a very active R E M phase. On the other hand, lucid dreaming evolves getting some of your waking consciousness back while you're still fully asleep, so you're not the differences in sleep paralysis. You kind of are. You're much closer to being quote unquote awake than you are lucid dreaming and lucid dreaming. You're just kind of like realizing you're in the matrix, you know what I mean, Or you're having that inception moment where you're like, hey, tops usually stop spinning. For anybody wants to read more about that, I'd recommend Terror and bliss commonalities and distinctions between sleep paralysis, lucid dreaming, and their associations with waking life experiences. Is it the sexiest title? No? Is it a good read? Yes? I don't know if you guys are listening to Radio Rental this season as it's come around, But there's a story in there about a woman who witnesses what her husband was having a sleep paralysis episode on. So who knows if it's real? Who knows exactly what's happening when it just came out, And it's making me think about this, the difference, you know, lucid dream and then waking up and perhaps part of your brain is still in a dream state, or actually seeing an entity into your room attacking your husband. Yeah, that's not good. Um, it's interesting. I mean, we've talked about the the idea of lucid dreaming being a pretty ancient concept, right. In fact, I believe Aristotle had some cool stuff to say about it. Oh yeah, Aristotle described it um as quote, often when one is asleep, there's something in consciousness which declares that what then presents itself is but a dream um roundabout way of saying, you know, you're like awake dreaming basically. But you know, there are some studies looking into this concern over people that have taught themselves how to lucid dream the idea of like getting stuck or something or having it be harder to wake up. Um. It always make sure you think of like nightmare in elm Street movies, you know, like, oh I can't wake up? Uh, that would be terrifying too. And to me that fear seems to be somewhat intertwined with sleep paralysis. Um. But then it seems like you've read a little bit more of these studies that I that I'm that I'm seeing. Did you see a direct correlation between the two or are they just kind of operating on similar principles? Um, because our our listeners seems to believe that his practice in uh um lucid dreaming led to the sleep paralysis troubling them. Yeah. So well let's talk a little bit triple X about the the most important thing, which is techniques or things you can attempt to lower your likelihood of sleep paralysis, which is a terrible feeling. Also, yeah, I've been I've been caught on the ass out end of a lucid dream. You know what I mean. You jump off the building. You're supposed to wake up before you hit the ground. I didn't. It's not cool. Wake up if you can. But with with sleep paralysis, uh, some of the big indicators, like the only common indicator between both sleep paralysis and lucid dreaming is what are called disassociative experiences. But sleep paralysis is a little bit different because sleep paralysis can be it's likelihood can be increased by your stress and anxiety in waking life. Not the amazing film, but you know, you're just day to day while you're not sleeping life. And you can also predict a likelihood of sleep paralysis based on sleep quality. So if you're if you're natural, like if you are one of those people who has successfully acquired society's current six to eight hours in one block kind of pattern, that's that's the one that's normal in society, but it's not really normal for humans. Um, if you have that down and then you're something in your life means that you have to break that cycle and you have to you know, start sleeping in a polyphasic manner, or you're just getting less sleep than normal, or you find yourself sleeping for like long ten hour burst routinely, then messing. What you're doing at that point is you're you're forcing a readjustment reaction from from your brain, and that can lead to the states of hybrid sleep that can lead you to sleep paralysis. And furthermore, I would advance the idea that calling them calling them sleep quality, anxiety and life stress as though they are three separate things. It's not. I mean, I get it, but the distinction is not super bright because if you have anxiety and life stress, that is almost certainly gonna mess with your sleep quality. There are very few people who are like, man, this is crazy. I'm so scared. I'm so miserable. Thank goodness, I still get my six to eight. Do you know what I mean? Yeah? I mean, even with like sleep aids, it's not always quality sleep. You know what I mean? Are like people that need to drink alcohol to try to fall asleep. That's that's going to be like a very poor quality sleep. And if you have one of those fitness trackers, you can usually tell. I think it's about how long you stay in our him So I can't remember exactly, but there's definitely ways of like gauging the quality of your sleep. I alluded to it at the top of this of this story, I just want to wrap up with it. Uh. There is there are some kind of interesting developments being made in dream study that that hinge directly on um observing folks that have the ability to lucid dream Ken Polar is a psychologist and dream researcher at Northwestern and he has this to say in this article on Science Science Focus that I found memories of dreams can be missing some parts of dreams and can be distorted and incorrect. So if that's all we have to go on, then building a solid science of dreaming can be difficult. Um. He goes on to say that what he and his colleagues have discovered is that if you you know, observe folks that are lucid dreaming, they can come up with a system of codes uh that allow them to almost communicate directly with the dreamer and get more vivid descriptions. So, along with his partner another scientic research are named concholy Um, they use some labs in France Germany and the Netherlands to essentially exploit that level of awareness that lucid dreamers are able to exercise, and they you know, gathered several experienced lucid dreamers, one of whom I believe an artist who who uses lucid dreaming to create these really cool I mean, sorry for lack of creativity here, but but dreamy kind of geometric um ink pen and ink images that almost looked like these weird mazes that are kind of mixed with like cave paintings or something. They're really really cool um. But they use beeps and flashing lights um, and they are able to kind of almost uh it's almost like a guided hypnosis thing where they're then able to give instructions um to the lucid dreamer to kind of give them feedback, and then they take notes accordingly. So it seems very very new, but very very cool. Oh, it's it's it's it's um. Oh, what's the name of it? Dream yoga, yoga nitra. It's like an ancient technique, but there I'm sure they're applying the more scientifically rigorous applications right to clarify the Indian Hindu practice of yoga nidra is similar to the Tibetan Buddhist practice of dream yoga. People have been on to this for a long time. You know, it's like it's kind of free entertainment depending on do you guys remember that film Waking Life, of course? I still my favorite moment in that film is when the person has kind of achieved a state of lucidity, the protagonist, and they ask one of the entities they're encountering, what's it like to be a dream? And they just never answer, sort of the whole thesis of the of the film. In a lot of ways, it now it makes me think about the techniques to train yourself to be able to lose a dream. I don't know if you guys ever tested some of these out where you well, what are a few of them, Matt Well? Someone where if you have a small light, like a candle or something that you can focus your eyes on while you're laying down and starting to drift off, and but keeping yourself awake, focusing on the candle, which would ground you in the real world, in your space where you actually physically are, where your body is, while your mind starts to go elsewhere. Um and like shut itself down essentially, and if you do that enough times, your brain then kind of finds itself awake in that space between dreaming and sleeping. And that's kind of the gateway at least. Yeah, that doesn't work for everybody, and it doesn't work every time, but and there are other techniques to and some you know, work for some and some work for others, and you know, obviously probably people can find ways of figuring out themselves. UM, it's interesting this article. I can't recommend it highly enough by Christian Jarrett for Science focus dot com. It goes on to mention something we've talked about recently on it was either strange new user or one of these uh, the idea of um using uh dreams or influencing dreams to sell stuff, uh that we talked about it. We talked about a cores Light campaign that was really more of a gimmick. I don't know that it was. It didn't feel like it was actually trying to hijack people's dreams. But the to the ability to do that and the inherent kind of badger out of the madness of all of this. This field of research, you know, is a little worrisome because as we know, I mean the pure you know, um, ethical version of a thing, whether it be a scientific discovery you know, like the atomic bomb, or or or technology that leads something like that, it's ultimately going to get out in the world. And you know, when something gets out in the world, it's inevitably going to end up being exploited by terrible people. So um, it's an interesting field to keep an eye on, but it does have some troubling you know, dystopian sci fi kind of future ramifications if you really think about it. Yeah, if anybody wants to try their hand at being in one area, not or that's just kind of freestyling on on eurology. The study of dreams. One of the most effective again, your mileage may vary. Just one that has worked for me in the past is what's called the wb t B wake back to bed. You've probably experienced this, folks. If if you have dreams, you have woken up. You've woken from some dream, right, And have you ever had the feeling like, oh, I need to get back to sleep immediately so I can continue this awesome dream. Or I can't go to sleep just yet because I'll be back in the nightmare or whatever. There's truth to that because when you go back to sleep after waking up for a short period of time, you are more likely to encounter dreams, like you'll go back into r E m uh much more easily, and you'll also be more likely to lucid dream. So that's that's something I think has been very effective. And then also keeping a dream journal will help you immensely. So if you want to try those three things, UM, I wish you great success. You know, I had a weird dream the other night where it was a dream about a dream that I had dreamt many years ago, and it was one of these. It was a scary dream. It was about like I had I had gone to see us a very scary Asian horror movie UM, and I don't remember the contents of it, but something about it was just like scarier than anything I've ever seen. It was like a vision of hell or something, and um, I woke up fully thinking this movie existed and started trying to google it, and then I realized, like, this movie does not exist. I was just remembering a previous dream of having seen this dream horror movie uh from years ago. But it was very familiar and I was like, this is bizarre. I don't know what you call that, like dream javou. I mean it was very jarring, and it was a cool way. I mean I wasn't like upset or anything, but I fully was like, what is this piece of sin him that I should fully be able to find? Um and it just doesn't exist. So I was clearly dreaming about a memory of a previous dream. Whoa dreams on dreams on dreams, y'all. Yeah, some of this stuff does have a pretty patently like you know, inception an e type vibe. Um. But I think again, there's a lot of imagination that can go into thinking about the study of dreams because of how little we know about it. Um, So, any anything that's gonna push that forward I'm all for, at least until the you know, the big Madison Avenue ad agencies get ahold of it. Yeah, that's fine. This is all real, guys, You're real. I'm real, it's all real. I promise the future is now, um and uh, the future is in an ad break now. It's gonna just come into your ears, not your your dreams, hopefully, unless it's like really effective, you might I mean, who knows you it might, it might do it for you, and you might dream about it. But we'll hear that and then we'll be back with more messages from you. The time has come again, the hour grows late, the moon the color of blood. I hope it is a stormy night as you're hearing this, doc, would you mind hitting that sound cue. It's time for more ghost stories from you. Were doing this for the rest of October, and the end of October is coming too soon. Here's our first one. This is from Kyle. Kyle says, Hi, there, I hope I'm not too late for the ghost stories thing. When I was a boy, about two or three years old, I used to see a woman at night when I was in my bed. She was an old woman, and she would be over me as I lay in bed, the way you sort of sit half on the bed and lean over slightly with your arm on the other side of someone if they are laying flat on their side of the bed. She came to me on several occasions and would talk to me. She would ask questions like how are you and are you okay, and questions about my family. I was a child, and so obviously I was extremely scared of this and told my mom about this woman. My mom took notice of this as I was quite distressed about it, and she told me that if I don't want to see the woman, asked her not to visit you anymore. So that is what I did, and I never saw him again. My mom told me that it was about a few months later. She opened up a box of her stuff to unpack. As far as I am aware, we had not long moved into this flat, and it was like a box of photo albums and things like that. So my mom started looking through an old photo album. I'm playing about in the living room and come to look at the pictures and I point out the woman who was coming to talk to me because apparently my mom's grand uh editorial note us listeners, that means mother's grandmother. I can't fully remember all the things she asked me or what we spoke about, but I do remember seeing her and asking her to go away. I still can't to this day go to sleep lying on my back. It just gives me chills. This happened to us in Cambridge on To area. So that's that's the first one, and I wanted to share this with everybody first. Thank you, Kyle, I want to share this with everybody, because that's not an uncommon experience. I don't want to put you guys on the spot, but if you had any situation like that in your own lives that you're comfortable talking about, not really yes, but no, got you. Yeah, so yes to the first part, not to the second, I got you, you might be interested, Kevin to learn that you're not the only person who has written in with stories or accounts like this. There is also a rich vein of literature and lore related to children's saying things that are inexplicable or you know, maybe seemed disturbing. There was a great Reddit thread making the round several years ago where it was just scary things that children have said to their parents. Uh and and a lot of times they seem to imply, um, a ghost or the kid is maybe having an imaginary friend if you want to be more skeptical, who somehow seems to have a lot in common with a relative who has passed on or Some of my favorites were the ones that sound as though there is a the kid at least believes they have a past life. That that kind of stuff pops up in horror and it's it's not made out of whole cloth I have. UM. I think a lot of people have had visions. I mean to our earlier listeners question about lucid dreaming, about of people encounter lucid dreams at some point in their life. So the odds are on your side. But with the idea of what appears to be a visitation from someone, um in your family or someone you're close to or you knew and they passed beyond the mortal veil before you did, uh, it's it's hard to navigate, even if you're a very skeptical person. I I just want to point out my favorite of the the creepy child statement genre is there was one where these parents are driving with their kids. They're in traffic or something, and then their daughter is like four or five or something. She points to this car that's in traffic with him and she's like, that's the car. That's the car I got in that accident in before with my other mom and dad. And they're like your other mom and dad, sweetie, And then she says, yeah, they got out okay, but I sure didn't. No no word on what model of car it was, but I think we probably also have a lot of people in the crowd today who have had either your parents later told you you said some creeps or stuff, or maybe uh, or maybe you have encountered your own child saying something that kind of squidge out, you know what I mean, Like, yeah, you got an example more too many? Right, not necessarily a sibling. I didn't grow up with siblings, but it's just you know, I'm I'm easily I'm more easily squigged than one might think. I got you. Yeah, anything to do with like describing veins, for example, like or like like blood flow through the body, or like cutting that stuff makes me go a little faint. Have you ever seen the veins on some birds when they when you when they don't have feathers, Yeah, it's then they look like weird little freaking fetuses, And I don't like it. One day. Yeah, I'll add hairless cats to that. I know that they're doing their best, and what people have done to them it's unfair. Are you familiar with the famous internet hairless cat named Bingus? Yes, you're aware of Bengas. I'm aware of Bengas. Yeah. I I expressed distrust and distaste for Bengas of no fault of Bengas his own to my daughter, who's a big fan, and she canceled me. Uh, so, Fellas, I'm canceled for not appreciating the wonder and majesty that is this weird little fetusy looking, creepy veny cat named Vengas. Well maybe you can make peace with the feline. Cats are creatures native to dream, so uh, just just get yourself in a lucid dream and have a waking life situation with Bengas. Speaking of dream, ben Um, I know I asked you particularly because I know that you're you've read them, Um, are you if you've seen the trailer for the new Sandman series on Netflix? I have. I think it looks quite promising that it could be good if Neil's happy with it. I'm happy. You know, the casting of of Dream in particular, I'm not even familiar with the actor, but looks pretty spot onto me. So um and also a friend of the of the network and show, John Cameron Mitchell is is in is in it. It plays a character. So I'm looking forward to very much. And we're going to move to an excellent, an excellent series of anecdotes and legends from Robin Uh. Robin writes in Too in response to our story about the Devil visiting a nightclub in San Antonio. Remember that's the one where he partied hard and the knee he must have like dropped off, the dropped a hot single in the restroom because he disappeared. Uh, he dropped the evil kids off at the pool. Yeah, he made a deposit. Yeah. So this is funny because Robin said they stumbled across an almost identical older story, older version of that San Antonio in the seventies story in a N six compendium of Welsh folklore, and they found it just a few weeks or days before they heard our listener mail segment with ghost stories. So here just if you're sharing these, because they just tickle me to an infernal degree. First Devil at the card party at an inn in Iberswith. It was once the custom of members of local fashionable society to hold card parties and dances on Sunday nights. On Sunday one evening, a stranger arrived. He was an exceedingly handsome young man, very well dressed in a cloak of rich black velvet and wearing curls on either side of his face. He easily got permission to join the dancing party, chose the most beautiful girl in town as his partner, and made himself very agreeable. After the dance, he sat down with the rest to play cards, still with the same partner, she happened to drop a card and, stooping to pick it up, saw that this stranger at cloven feet. She fainted and never recovered her health, dying shortly after. The result was a great impetus to Sabbatarianism in the town. Wait this, this is a tale that I just heard about. There's a haunted there's a haunted manner in Ireland that has this tail as like why the place is haunted and it's now a hotel or you know, an inn in a place where you can go and ghost hunt. But it's this tail. Yeah, you gotta find it, gotta find it. Yeah, sorry, I like I just wrote, I just wrote this down in our meta for an episode we should cover. Oh wow, amazing. Okay, well this seems like a good indicator, Matt m At the very least, there's somebody weird feet who's just carousing and philandering across the land. Well, according to the legend of this place. I'll tell you the name of why doesn't find it? Uh this it was the devil and it shot through the roof, like shot straight up through the roof, and there was still a whole or you know, part of where there was a hole where the devil escaped. But then the real history is that the woman, rather than dying and like classing it dying shortly after, she was actually kept hostage essentially in the house by the people who owned the house and her family's because she was she had gone what's going to say this mad because of her experience loftus Hall in off this hall. Okay, well, here's here's the second one. We'll we'll dive into Loftus Hall. Let's do it. Let's get supernatural with it, let's get spooky. This next one, also from Robin, is called Second Sites and Warnings the Deacon's Vision. Some sixty years ago or more, there was a gathering of the Calvinistic Methodist at Aberystwyth, which I am probably mispronouncing, apologies Welsh friends. Two deacons who came to attend it were lodged in a house on the front now part of a larger building. They were given a double bedded room next to the drawing room, but chose for the sake of warmth to sleep in the same bed. Sure they did sake warmth, okay, to their surprise, for they supposed themselves the only guests. They were kept awake by the sound of dance music next door. Presently there was a heavy thud as of someone falling, and then the door of their room was opened, and several persons entered, carrying what appeared to be the body of a woman dead or in a faint. This they laid on the unoccupied bed and went away, paying no attention to these two deacons. The latter got up, but found no one dead or alive in their room or the drawing room. The landlord in the morning said that there had been no music or dancing, and that there were no other guests in the house. Sometime afterwards, however, they received a letter from him saying that a party of English visitors had since had a dance in the drawing room, during which one of them, a lady, had fallen dead. In her body placed where the old men had seen it in their earlier vision. Usually not shared unless it's a folly. Ad I love that term. Well, that's another great one. Do we have any dates associated with these? Are these are just this is lore? Well we know they were before, right, because that's when the couple was published. That's that's where we'd have to start. Um, folly ad is for a new one. I'm familiar with the term. It is a description that's it's not perfect, maybe a little accidentally offensive to people, but it's described as an identical or similar mental disorder affecting two or more individuals, usually members of a close family. So one of the most famous examples in popular culture of what has been called folly a d before was the report of these two teachers who were visiting Versailles and they felt they had traveled back in time just for a brief moment. Remember that story. They saw ghosts, they saw historical reenactment, whatever it was. Ultimately the mobilely Jordaan incident. Yeah, it seems like what probably happened in that case was that it would be as though we were all, uh, the four of us and you, fellow listener, It's as though we were all on a road trip and we went to one of those towns in Virginia where they're like his, how Witchen, but the gloial way and like uh ing, and then you stumble. You know, it's like it has always stumbled across one of those towns and did not know that re enactment towns were a real thing. That's kind of what they encountered. But with this, it's a little bit stranger because this opens the door for another theme we can hopefully explore in uh In in a future listener mail segment when gets stories from you folks, And it's this claire voyance, the idea of precognition. Right. We we know that time works in a very strange in a very strange way once you get down to very small levels, and we explored this in our two part episode on dreams. We've also received numerous reports, anecdotal, of course, of people who say, like I, I fundamentally know if something has happened to my twin or my close sibling, or I suddenly know if something has happened to loved win right, it's usually a close relative, but not always um And those are stories. You know, three of us of fall more on the skeptical side, but we want to believe more more importantly, we want to find a true explanation for these things. And those visions are not super rare, you know what I mean, They're not the rarest pokemon in the world of alleged psychic experiences. So I wouldn't be surprised if we have some of our fellow conspiracy realists writing in to let us know. Oh, keep your spooky stories coming, folks. Uh, this is always joy for us to read them. We read every email we get. We cannot wait to hear from you. Some thanks to everyone who wrote in. Good luck out there on the boundaries of sleep and that what in particular? Uh, and and let us know, let us know what really spooks you out in this the most wonderful time of the year. We try to be easy to find online, oh are we ever? You can find us on the Internet in the usual social media places of note, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, where we operate under the handle conspiracy Stuff. You can also find us on Instagram at conspiracy Stuff show. Yes. And if you don't like social media, that's fine. I don't like it either. I mean it's fine, it does what it needs to do. But if you want to use your mouth to talk to us, hey, you can do that. Call our number one eight three three st d W y A t K. You have three minutes to leave a message. Say whatever you will. Please give yourself a very cool nickname. We accept all of them. We're excited about it. We can't wait to hear from you. If you've got too much to say that can't fit in three minutes, instead send us a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at iHeart radio dot com. 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