SOUNDS PECULIAR
Creepy Cove Community Church www.peterlaws.co.uk/ creepy-cove
Peter Laws, the reverend who reviews horror movies and freaky films in these very pages, has launched his own forteanfocused podcast. Creepy Cove Community Church is presented as a horror-themed ‘church service’ broadcast from an isolated Innsmouth-like fishing village where classic horror movies have moved from reel life to real life. It’s a clever conceit, presenting religion mixed with weird themes – but chaptering means the ‘actual sermon’ bit can be skipped if that’s not your bag. It’s definitely worth lending an ear to...
The Saucer Life https://saucerlife.com
The Saucer Life aims to “explore the history and lore of flying saucers”. Host Aaron Gulyas sets out to chronicle the concepts, events or people orbiting the mystery of UFOs. It’s strongly fortean in promising “no belief” and “no debunking”. A recent episode explored “The Top 10 Important UFO Books” – note that’s ‘important’, not ‘favourite’, so Gulyas offers a good recap of some of the classics of ufology literature. Books included are works by Frank Edwards, John A Keel (the inevitable The Mothman Prophecies), Whitley Strieber (his ‘true story’ Communion), Gray Barker, John G Fuller (the classic The Interrupted Journey), and George Adamski and Desmond Leslie (the ludicrous The Flying Saucers Have Landed).
Some of the ideas in these books might seem dated, but they are included for their importance to the field. Other recent instalments of The Saucer Life have explored the encounters of Wayne Aho and Otis T Carr, an exploration of Barack Obama as the ‘Disclosure President’, how a close encounter turned Reinhold T Schmidt to a life of crime, the tale of the mysterious Mitchell Sisters and their 1950s meeting with aliens, and one entitled “The Maury Island Mess”. Check it out.
Monster Talk https://monstertalk.skeptic. com
We’ve covered Monster Talk before, and we’re pleased to see that it’s still going strong. Although the show is about ‘monsters’, it explores all forms of that term and attempts to put things in a scientific context. Cryptozoological concerns are central, but other topics occasionally get a look-in. Hosts Blake Smith and Dr Karen Stollznow come at things from their individual perspectives, with Smith often playing things for laughs (with terribly contrived puns), while Stollznow tends to be a bit more straight. The show often has guests, such as author Adrienne Mayor, who explored the idea of robots and automata in the classical world, Sara Head on Skinwalker Ranch, Jerry Drake on Black Eyed Kids, and Dr Kirsten Sandford exploring questions around aliens and monsters.
Conspiracy Theories and Unpopular Culture www.stitcher.com/podcast/ illuminatiwatcher/conspiracytheories-and-unpopular-culture
Host Isaac Weishaupt (we’re sure that’s his real name) called his recent episode featuring American Cosmic author Dr Diana Pasulka “the most important show we’ve ever done”. It’s a wide-ranging interview that covers many fortean bases, and while some of it might need to be taken with a hefty dose of salt, it’s certainly entertaining. “This is the culmination of everything,” claims Weishaupt, and he’s not wrong in that this chat throws every conspiracy theory into a massive sinister soup. Pasulka is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and her interests are wide-ranging, including technology and the supernatural. From the UFO disclosure project to human sacrifices and demons, this instalment has it all. It’s a free-wheeling, perhaps slightly unfocused 90 minutes, hitting media manipulation, occultist and rocket scientist Jack Parsons, the history of religion,
Elizabeth I’s court astronomer John Dee, UFO crash retrieval sites, the work of Stephen King, simulation theory, and a whole lot more. By the end, Weishaupt admits: “I don’t know how to process all this.” Neither do we, Isaac, neither do we...
This Paranormal Life https://smarturl.it/ ThisParanormalLife
This Paranormal Life is, as the title suggests, a supernatural spoof of NPR’s This American Life. Hosts Rory Powers and Kit Grier have an easy rapport and set out every week to take an in-depth dive into oddball stories in an attempt to determine whether they are paranormal or not. Similar to Those Conspiracy Guys or Last Podcast on the Left, This Paranormal Life brings a solid dose of humour to the weird. Their exploration of various topics comes with comedy skits recreating key moments. They’re scripted, but Rory and Kit are happy to go off-piste when a riff takes over, resulting in them breaking character. A recent episode explored the tale of 1930s musician Robert Johnson, who supposedly sold his soul to the Devil. Other instalments tackle the shadow people who inhabit our dreams, the dark history of a California Toys R Us store, and the case of a flying saucer’s alien pilot supposedly buried in the desert in Texas. Unlike the brasher and more raucous Last Podcast on the Left, This Paranormal Life is relatively family-friendly listening as the worst cuss words are beeped out.