Not with me. John.
Look at my phone. Well, look at my phone.
Oh shit, can I pick it up? No, no.
OK dude, that is wild. Have you ever picked that up?
Yeah, I told you I've had it. Before, yes, yeah, that's right.
They're asking what they're asking.
What you can tell them it's up there.
That just gave me chills so. Brian's mother passed away.
He's been getting phone calls from her and he just got one
now. What you just heard was the
moment our friend Brian received a phone call in March of 2025
from his mother. His mother passed away in the
winter of 2024. Wait until you hear the full
message. Welcome to Splintered Spirits, a
podcast hosted by me, Gary and my nephew Johnny from Santa
Paranormal where we try to prove his theory that ghosts are the
fractured memories of the living.
If you've been listening or if you follow John, you know he
communicates with spirits using what many in the paranormal
field consider to be controversial phone apps.
Spirits manipulate the device to create speech from digital radio
and or electromagnetic waves. But what if spirits didn't use
the app to talk to us? What if they simply dial us on
the phone and leave a message? Our guest this week, Professor
Callum Cooper, author of Telephone Calls from the Dead,
walks us through this very specific type of electronic
voice phenomena, or EVP, and gives us some emotionally
poignant advice on how to approach a call from a loved one
that's passed like Brian's did. Let's dive into the
conversation. John, how are you?
I'm. Good.
How are you all? Right, All right man, so we've
got we've got a very. Powerful one.
Today. We've got a big episode today.
This is definitely, definitely hits close to home.
We're going to get going. We're going to dive into this
conversation. And our guest today, he is one
of the leading voices at the intersection of science and the
unexplained. Professor Callum Cooper is a
chartered psychologist, a senior lecturer at the University of
Northampton, and an internationally recognized
author and researcher with advanced degrees in psychology,
education research methods. He has spent his career
exploring what happens when science meets subjects like
death, bereavement, human consciousness, and yes, the
paranormal. He sits on the council of the
Society for Cyclical Research, serves as a scientific advisor
to both the Forever Family Foundation and the Windbridge
Research Center, and has earned numerous awards for his
contributions to skeptical activism and science
communication. His groundbreaking book,
Telephone Calls from the Dead, which is this right here for our
fans, Telephone Calls from the dead.
And we'll put a link to this in our all of our BIOS for anyone
out there listening. This book explores one of the
most fascinating frontiers in afterlife research, which is
unexpected calls from those no longer living.
And today, he's joining us to help make sense of one such call
that one of our friends to the to the pod and to John's socials
has received. So with that, we want to welcome
Professor Cal Cooper. Professor Cooper, how are you?
Welcome. I don't know if you can hear
that. I don't know if you can hear
that intro. Could you hear us when we were
talking? Or was it?
Yeah, but flattered. I was blushing.
Thank you. Very much wonderful.
I'm glad. Thank you so much for being
here. And I forgot I should add here,
by the way, this is a super handsome gentleman.
It's like John, I feel like in the paranormal space.
We are. We've got to up our game.
Yeah, for real. All those list of
accomplishments, would you have expected to see someone so
young? I would not.
It's like it's, it's crazy. Just got you just got to keep
battling on. If you want something, go get
it. Fair enough, man.
That's it. So Kyle, listen, I'd like to
start everything off with on this podcast with with with a
basic question here on Splendored Spirits.
And it's this. What do you think spirits are
and what happens when we die? Well, that's quite a big one,
yeah. What are spirits?
Well, well, people have believed that there's this essence that
may leave the human body at the point of death and survives on
in some way that we can either experience or interact with or
communicate with. And this is what people define
as spirits. And that's what it would be if
it were to be an actual thing that we had, you know, concrete
evidence for. It's an aspect of personality
and consciousness leaving the body and surviving in some way.
Do you? Believe.
It I accept that there's good evidence for it.
I'm a, I'm a scientist and this question has come up so much
recently, I think because I've been dealing with it for a good
20 years now about do, do you actually believe in the things
that you're, you're studying? Well, it's not about whether I
believe or don't believe. I'm interested in the evidence.
So I say, well, what if I was a midwife?
What if I was into geography? What if I was into chemistry?
Would really most people come to me and say, do you actually
believe in this kind of, you know, process of birthing like
birthing pools? Do you believe in birthing pools
or do you believe in, you know, these kinds of rocks formations
or well, it's about evidence for it being good or evidence for
its existence and and so forth. So when it comes to
parapsychology, how good is the evidence for telepathy?
People of course experience it all the time because they talk
about it. Whether it is actually that kind
of process of mind to mind interaction or not, people can
relate to that kind of experience the same as ghosts.
So how good is the evidence for it?
So my job as a psychologist is to look at what we already know
of psychology and what could explain it without jumping to an
explanation we don't have a process for.
And then if that explanation doesn't apply, can we entertain
this idea that it's a new process and it might be a mind
to mind interaction and something might be leaving the
mind while we're living to gain information or even beyond
bodily death? So I'm all about how good is the
evidence. I have no vested interest, as
much as that might sound weird. I'm fascinated by the topic.
But I'm all for the data either being explained away, which
would be great, or the data showing that something new is
there to be learned. Love it.
I love that answer, I really do. And your work, you know, it
bridges science and spirituality, obviously, right?
When we're talking about how do your peers in academia respond
to your research in parapsychology?
Well, all my peers at the University of Northampton
especially that they're all parapsychologists pretty much.
We, we've got a very large department within psychology.
I think there's probably 40 of us and, and some of those are
counselling psychologists and psychotherapists.
And we've got three main research departments within
psychology dealing with counselling and positive
psychology and child and adolescent mental health.
And then the other one is a group called EEKS, exceptional
experiences and consciousness studies.
So that's parapsychologists, transpersonal psychologists,
consciousness study researchers, researchers, cognitive
psychologists and neuroscientists.
So 5 different domains all under one roof, looking at unusual
experiences. So every day I'm surrounded by
people doing the same thing as me.
I'm just leading some things. I lead the third year module and
I'm supervising a lot of doctorates in that area as well.
And even at the California Institute for Human Science, I'm
Co director of parapsychology education with Doctor Jeffrey
Mishlov. So in all of my kind of main
work, I'm with parapsychologists.
So my peers are all for it and think, you know, we're doing
ground breaking work here. Why is psychology like that?
You know, Why is that the role that seems to be the closest to
paranormal events? You know what I mean?
Like, why? What is that role in that
connection with those two things?
Some would argue not. Like the weekend before last.
I was with Professor Bernard Carr, and he's one of the vice
presidents of the Society for Psychical Research.
He was one of Professor Stephen Hawking's students, doctoral
students, and naturally he's a physicist.
So he believes that many of these experiences could have
something to do with multiverse and are actually more of an
aspect of physics than they are of psychology.
But still, we're dealing with human experiences.
You've got a human who has had an experience, who reports their
experiences. So you can't not deal with
psychology in the mix. But is there experience due to
misperception or new perceptions we don't fully understand the
processes for? Or are they just witnessing
aspects of physics that make it seem like they're having a
telepathic experience, a precognitive experience, or
seeing, you know, visions of the dead or sometimes visions of
living people who are verified to have not been at those places
at the time they were reported. They were elsewhere, like miles
and miles away. So their physics has an
interesting part to play. But the paranormal is approached
by a number of different disciplines.
I've got colleagues here in the UK that have specialized in it
from the point of sociology, from anthropology, from the
media, and especially how the media portray the day and the
kinds of shows that get put out there and how best to put
programs together to actually give, you know, interesting
portrayals. History, philosophy, theology,
you name it. You can approach parapsychology
from so many different angles. It's quite the tool really for
kind of placing itself with other sciences and arts to
actually explore why people embrace these experiences, find
them fascinating whether they believe in them or not, and
explore what they really mean to us as human beings.
John, I saw you light up when you said like multiverse
dimensions. That's something you talk about
like you don't know all the time.
You believe in. All the time.
So, you know, yeah, I don't, you know, for John here, I, I think
I told you so. John's my nephew and he's gotten
quite popular on TikTok over the years for many, many years.
He's doing other controversial things, which is like he uses
spirit boxes and phone apps talking to spirits at grave
sites, which many people have always said don't have spirits
there. And we're familiar with how the,
you know, the, we know the spirit box thing is very
controversial and people have their doubts and everything
else. And I've seen all the copycats.
My fascination with John here is that he always the responses he
gets is less about the words used, but the personality behind
the words used and the Q&A that he has going on there.
And that's what I just find like it's bananas, right, when he's
talking to spirits. And that's sort of this idea of
talking to spirits. I think, you know, when I heard
about your book, you know, telephone calls from the dead,
how, how did you get into that? Like what was your, what was the
for you? What was the catalyst that sort
of led you down that path? I I think it was two or three
things. One, I was reading books by I
don't know if you can see him there.
No, I've moved them. There's a you can see Eileen
Garrett just there. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But. Scott Rogo's over there as well.
So D Scott Rogo, I was reading books by him and Raymond Bayliss
when I was an undergraduate doing psychology at the
University of Northampton and and Scott and Bayless, Scott
Rogo and Rainbow Bayless had done forwards for each other's
books now and then and I was just buying loads of their books
at the time on eBay and Amazon. They were going for next to
nothing because this is before I kind of re popularized what they
were doing. So I was finding them quite
cheap because no one was reading their material particularly.
And I got one book out of the library called Apparitions and
Survival of Bodily Death by Roman Bayless.
Read it from cover to cover while I was in the kitchen in
the halls of residence and doing my washing in the laundry room.
And you know, you're waiting for your clothes to tumble dry.
And I was just captivating page after page.
I thought this is really well written.
It's really accessible writing and it's also very
knowledgeable. This guy knows his literature
and he was, I think, the librarian for the California
Southern Californian Society for Psychical Research.
And they were both members of both the American and British
SPR. So I kept looking for their
books. And then I found one titled
Phone Calls from the Dead from 1979.
And I bought a copy of that and just threw it on the pile of the
other books because I just thought, well, there must be
stuff like that written all the time and I've just never
bothered to look. Then MSN News, as was my main
way of looking at news at the time, reported a train collision
in California with a guy called Charles Peck being on one of
these commuter trains. And there's a freight train
coming the other way. And it was so big it was causing
live news reports for the recovery of people that are on
the train and what had happened. And apparently his family were
reporting repeated phone calls from his mobile phone.
They knew nothing of the train collision.
And when they picked up the phone, they were getting static.
And when they phoned back, it either went straight to
voicemail or they just got nothing.
So when they saw on the news that it was the very train he
was travelling back on, they thought he was trapped in the
wreckage. So when they got calls, his
wife, his son, his daughter, they were shouting, you know,
don't worry, dad, the rescuers are coming.
They're on their way. I think they'd actually got in
touch with the rescue team and said our father keeps calling
from his phone, He must be trapped in that.
So apparently they started working extra hard to try and
find him. It was by about 3:30 in the
morning, so 3:30 AM. They found his body.
Apparently he'd died on 1st impact and they never recovered
his phone. For me as a psychologist and
even a budding 1 then I was an undergraduate, I thought, well,
you know, the phone's been smashed.
It's trapped in the wreckage. It's just repeatedly calling the
last people in the call register.
He's on his way home. So it's going to be his wife,
his son, his daughter, that that's where he's heading.
That's most likely the last people that he contacted.
The fact that it was never found is no mystery.
There must be so many things that in that collision just got
smashed, thrown, were never recovered.
But is the fact that the family took comfort in believing it was
a phone call from the dead. The media pushed it as a phone
call from the dead. So I thought, well, what's in
this book that I've just thrown on the pile from 1979?
That was 2009. So what's in this book?
And I read it cover to cover and my goodness, there were full
blown conversations recorded of 1020 minutes with people that
the next day were found to have been dead a week or a couple of
weeks or something like that. That's completely different.
You're actually interacting with this person who is verified to
have been dead for some time and then following up with how the
telephone works, whether there was a record with the telephone
companies and things like that. So that's what got me
interested. I started doing a few articles
on it, even text messages from the dead, because text messages
become a new thing. And I found that there were some
news reports regarding that. And I think by about late 2010,
a friend of mine in Portsmouth on the South Coast of the UK,
put me in touch with a publisher and he said you should really
take all your articles, get some more material together.
You should really kind of do a sort of a second volume to the
original book. So Telephone Calls from the Dead
really acts as a follow on because I talk about Rogo and
Bayliss, but then I talk about where?
Where are we now? Yeah, I read it and it's So what
if in your, in all the cases you've found what have you is a.
How do you distinguish between what is, you know, a
psychological projection, a coincidence or a grief
hallucination, you know, in these respects, you know, or, or
in something genuinely anomalous, you know, like, how
do you, how do you do that? So what would be most likely
down to conventional explanations?
There's a lot where people say they wrote, woke up to the sound
of ringing phones and believe that the phone had lit up and
someone had died at that time. Or they got a text message but
there was no sender information connected.
And then the next day they find that someone has passed away, or
it's close to the time that someone's died.
There's all these ones where there's little bits of
coincidences that seem like there's comforting signs of,
well, your friend's passed away and you've gone to sit in the
garden and a Robin lands next to you.
Or you white feathers suddenly start appearing.
Or you, you, you kick your shoes off and you hear some change
land on the floor and it's a few pennies and things like that.
And you think, well, I don't leave spare change lying around.
Where, where's that come from? But then you start to make this
link between the person that you've lost.
So they're very kind of small coincidences, but you're making
a meaningful link between them. So those, I would argue, there
could be a number of conventional explanations where
we could say how many times has that happened and you've not
noticed it and not drawn a link because no one's died.
So it's just another daily occurrence.
Oh, excellent. I found a quarter on the floor.
Brilliant. Stick it in the pocket.
You don't think about it. It's just great, you've found
some change, but no one's died. But the fact that you know
someone's died and then you think 1/4's fallen from the
ceiling, that becomes more significant.
This man's after my heart, by the way, You're after my heart.
You look good. You're talking my language.
Just stop that. I I tell you guys see, because
Cal it's like John, John will jump in here when we get to the
story, certainly for a lot more, but it's like on his on his,
he's a mainly a live streamer. So most people are constantly
digging into him about his beliefs and like this is this or
this is what his spirit is like. You don't know that this is
could be a coincidence. He's he's the most skeptic of
the person doing skeptical of anybody doing it right.
So in all of your studies, the things that you've seen, you
know, Cal, are there common patterns across some of these
cases where you start to really starts to point to something
real happening beyond chance or error?
Like, is there a? What would you say you know?
Yeah, so some of those cases start to push the boundaries
beyond it. We could even talk about some of
the ones from living people. So Scott Rogo had one himself
where there were intention calls.
And you think, again, is this a memory thing?
But then again, we've got some interaction here.
So one of his was it was 10:00 on a bright Thursday morning,
and I was thinking about making a call to a colleague of mine at
the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute.
Although I thought about making that call, I never actually did.
But by 4:00 that afternoon, I got the surprise of my life when
I got a call from the research assistant at the very
psychologist I'd thought about calling.
He said he was answering my message.
When I asked what in Blazers he was talking about, he said that
at 10:00 that morning, a caller had come into them.
The caller had left my name, my number, and asked that the call
be returned. And yet he's adamant he never
actually made that call. Sometimes a whole conversation
could take place as well. So that pushes the boundaries.
And also, when you have got someone who you know, you take
the phone call and say, oh, it's Auntie Mary on the phone.
She's called to say happy birthday to me.
Isn't it lovely? Does anyone else want to chat
with them? You pass the landline phone
around, so you've all spoken to her, and the next day you find
out that she died a week prior. So you've got multiple
witnesses, You've got a conversation taking place.
It's something you could follow up with a phone company.
In some of the instances Rogo and Bayless had, there was no
record of that call taking place at that time, yet all of the
ones were logged. And so that's why Rogo and
Bayless also started to think maybe if these are paranormal
communications, they're taking place inside the phone, not
through the phone line and phone system.
It's it's the device itself that's being manipulated
somehow. So those start to really push
the boundaries of conventional explanations.
And you asked about categories. They did find categories, they
found themes. So those that might be more
conventional or where you're grieving, you're at home alone,
the phone rings, you hear a word, a voice, a name, sound of
static. And you think that's, that's
that person or could even just be someone going mum, dad.
Well, if you've lost a child. You know, that could be enough
to satisfy you that you've had a communication.
But hands up, how many people have called mum and dad?
There's a lot of people around the world called mum and dad
and, and so it could be a missed number.
The kid suddenly hears this person wailing and crying over
the phone. They put the phone down without
apologizing or saying sorry, I think I've got the wrong number.
So for the receiver of the call, they've had the satisfaction and
communication with their alleged deceased child.
But it it could go beyond that. So that's a simple call, just
the words and phrases, no response.
Type 2 are prolonged speaking for 1020 minutes.
After the call you discover that person has died.
Type 3 are answer calls. You make the call and have a
long conversation with someone that afterwards you find out is
dead. Or a long conversation with
someone who afterwards you find out was nowhere near a telephone
to have taken that call. And you find that out because of
meeting up with them or speaking to someone else saying they
weren't home that day. You know, they've been out of
our house for a week because they've been away on holiday,
but you called their landline and yet someone answered their
phone with their name, voice characteristics, knowledge.
They answered the phone call that you made.
The final type that Rogo and Bayless had were those intention
calls. You intend to make a call, you
change your mind. It still takes place for the
other person. And when I looked at these
cases, I found that some of them would be a mixture of Type 1 and
Type 2. So you could know someone was
dead and yet repeatedly have calls from them and sometimes
extend the conversation. Those are right, but those are
the most common, right? Like.
That's no, no. Those are the most rare.
No, those are rare to know someone's dead and repeatedly
have calls from them. Got it.
Type one and two could be OK type. 2 are the more common
ones. Type one, yeah, yes, that's what
I meant. Type 1 and Type 2 are the most
common in your book. And then it was like, wasn't
there like a type 5 that you thought?
So yeah, I split it into. I kind of shifted that so they
had four. So simple prolonged answer an
intention and I moved one category up to put a fourth one
in. It was mixed calls.
So the first four are all related to the dead and the
fifth one the intention calls are just related to the living.
So I sandwiched mixed calls in as fourth place.
Have you now, dude? Which one?
What's something that's giving you complete chills in your
research where you're like, that's a ghost and that's real?
Like, is there anything you could point to that was like,
all right, that, you know, tell me anything you ask.
I was. Going to ask two things that's
very similar to what I was going to ask go.
For it ask that's. What you know, what piece of
evidence, what piece of data and not like coincidental data,
like, you know, like hardcore data makes you go, I'm going to
continue researching this, you know, as a forefront to, you
know what I'm doing and you know a priority, if you will.
I suppose there's two in recent times that I really like. 1 was
in my book and it was it was a mixed call and I think it was
maybe from my early articles. A guy reached out to me and said
that he was aware of parapsychology when he was doing
his his doctorate because one of his supervisors had written a
textbook on it but didn't really teach on it.
He just dabbled and he was aware when the Bob Morris, when Bob
Morris took on the Coercive parapsychology chair at the
University of Edinburgh, he was a parapsychologist from
California, saw that there was this opportunity to become take
on a chair, a professorship at parapsychology and he won it
over other people when Edinburgh took it on.
And this guy said that he got this passing interest and it
made him think of a childhood experience.
He knew of the Rogo and Bayliss book.
My articles have clearly sparked his interest again.
So I called him Doctor Jones and he said that when he was about
11-12, maybe a bit older, his parents had split up, but they
were still living amicably under the same roof for the sake I
guess of finances and so forth. But the roof just off doing
their own thing that I think their parents had like separate
living rooms and stuff so they could just come and go and make
sure the kids are OK until maybe, you know, something made
it more convenient to go their separate ways.
The mother had rekindled a friendship with a childhood
sweetheart. And they mainly spoke over the
phone. I think I call him Richard in
the book. And so two to three times a
week, she'd take the kitchen phone that got the long cord on
it and she'd go off into another room and shut the door and have
these 1015 minute conversations. And this went on for weeks and
weeks and weeks. Then Richard ended up in
hospital and was poorly and and then found out they passed away.
A couple of weeks go by, telephone rings in the kitchen.
She goes to answer, it is away 1015 minutes.
And she comes back and she's white as a sheet and everyone
says what what's wrong? And she said Richard's just
called. And then it happens again and
again, two to three times a week.
These calls come through just as they did when he was living.
And she goes and has these conversations now one time she
goes out shopping around the time that these calls would come
through. And Doctor Jones, because he
later became a doctor in the social sciences, he said as this
young boy, he thought, well, what do I do?
The phone's ringing. He goes to answer it, and he
hears the sound of just whooshing in, the sound of wind.
And as though something was about to make a noise on the
phone and he didn't know what it was, he just shouted, she's not
here and slams the phone back down.
And he said in later life, he wishes he'd just held on to find
out what exactly is it that mum was listening to?
Who was she speaking to? And he had to wait for years and
years and years to actually find out.
So around the time that he contacted me, which is about
2000 and nine, 2010, I think she'd passed away the year
before, somewhere around there. So late naughties and he managed
to get hold of her Diaries that they were still in storage.
She'd kept Diaries that would hold like 3 years at a time.
And he found that period of time and thought what on earth were
these conversations? And it's just bizarre.
So yes, everyone's witnessing a telephone ringing.
Yes, she's going away for a conversation.
But these diary accounts say Monday morning my darling called
to say that he loved me and would always be at my side.
He says he comes on the wind to speak to me and make sure that I
am safe. I have trouble sleeping.
He says now you will sleep. Goodbye my darling, I love you.
I'll be back to speak with you soon.
Tuesday afternoon my darling calls to say that he loves me
and is still at my side. On and on and on and on for
three years or so. Apparently the calls just faded
out. So either someone was aware that
Richard had died and they wanted to prank her because of some
sort of fallout. It's a long standing prank where
someone has committed themselves two to three times a week to
have these long winded conversations with her that
apparently has some audible anomalies in them, the static
sound and wind, and she's taken by them.
Or something else is going on. So we've got these diary
accounts, we've got his eyewitness account and something
that stuck with him for ages, so much so that it got him into
psychology. But ultimately, who knows?
I would have ripped that phone straight off the wall, throwing
it straight into the garbage. Let me give you the other one.
Let me give you the other one that's we've got a program over
here called Uncanny that's hosted by Danny Robbins and it's
on the BBC, it's on iPlayer and it's on BBC Radio 4.
When people listen to it live. It's toured as a theatre thing.
We've had the Uncanny con as well and I go on sometimes as a
guest expert. So I was in Series 2 and Series
4, which was Uncanny USA, and now it's coming back for Series
5. But one of the early telephone
episodes I wasn't involved in, my colleague Dr. Kiran O'Keefe
was, and it's called Harry Called.
So there's this guy called Will who was a student at university
and he was with his friends. And then they're all doing a
Ouija board and he thinks it's nonsense.
And he sits to one side and watches them do it, doing it.
And they ask have you got a message for anyone?
And it says yes. And they said, well, what's your
name? And it spells that HAR Ry OK,
who who's the message for WILL? And Will just said, I've had
enough now just stop. I'm I'm really not interested in
this. This is really silly.
And he goes back to his horse of residence where he stays with
the other students. Now, at that time, there was a
pay phone at the end of the corridor if you wanted to
receive calls or call home to your family.
And if you're out, everyone had a piece of paper on their
respective room. So you could just pencil on your
mom's called, called at this time, leave messages there.
And he goes back and there's a message on the piece of paper
that says, Harry called. And so he asks around everyone
and said, who's taken this? And he thinks it's his friends
and the other place that we're messing about with the Ouija
board. They've already called ahead and
left this to creep him out. And his friends later said, no,
we didn't do that. And everyone on the corridor
says, we didn't leave that. And then this happens again.
And again. He'd come back with a message
left on his door saying Harry called.
And then one time he was in his room and someone said this one
on the phone for you. They say their names, Harry.
And he goes running to the phone, picks up and he said
there was there was a voice there.
It was a man. And he said this was the early
1990s, but his voice and his characteristics were out of this
time. It was like he was from a
completely different time period.
He was just rambling on. I can't really remember what it
was he was saying, but he was just talking and talking and
talking. So this led to more calls and
then eventually him waking in the middle of the night to see
an elderly man stood in his room that he thought was this vision
of this person, Harry. So these all built and built and
built. And that one has become a
favorite episode for Uncanny. People found it so creepy that
these calls just became so persistent.
The rule, the ones just like with Poltergeist, two people had
reports of Fisher Price Ring ring telephones and stuff like
that. So yeah, some really unusual
ones. I wonder why that old man was
really into Will. Dude, it's creepy and in and of
itself, even after Yeah, you know, so.
So, professor, let me ask you a question.
Is there enough data for rendition #3 of your book?
Yeah, I mean, there's, there's loads.
I mean, I've got even just a folder just down by the bookcase
over there. I've been gathering so much.
That's awesome. I want to do a new analysis.
One of my colleagues who's a French sociologist, he in his
own book, there is a French Phone Calls from the Dead book
that's written by Laurent Kasparowiks, and he looked at
about 25 cases or so, I think, but he sent those over.
We're going to do it as an English, even though the book's
out, I'm going to write it up as an English paper for the Journal
of the Society of Psychical Research.
So that's out. We're going to collaborate on
that, but I've got more on the history and other things like
that and more cases have come in that I'll do another book that's
not written. I mean this is written like a
research report. It takes you through my process
of analysis, but I'll do a more casual one that's more about
what I've found since then and what's some of the more unique
history. We've also, I'm probably a few
months away from finishing it. If you remember in my book I
wrote about an old fashioned telephone, people creating them
in the 1920s to contact the dead.
And there was one by someone called Fr Melton, Frederick
Reginald Melton, who was based here in Nottingham.
And I found so many things, probably a couple of years ago
in the local newspaper reports about him that I thought, well,
you know that pamphlet that he made, a psychic telephone, as it
was called, instructions to build such a device.
It was very scarce. I found it as a photocopy in the
Californian Institute for Intercourse Studies, Rockefeller
Library, in Rogo's archive. And then I saw a university in
the United States a year or so ago and also got a copy and they
digitized the whole thing and put it up for everyone.
Seeing that, I thought it was unique but.
It's like straight out of. Ghostbusters, man, where it's
like they find the blueprints for the building and realize
it's a, you know, it's an antenna for the for, you know,
Yeah, you know what I mean? And it's like this guy built a
ghost phone straight from, you know, having everybody build it.
They are out there. The instructions are out there.
But I thought what we could do with my original publishers who
did Tricon books, they they said, oh, this would be great as
like a little pocket sized book. So we're going to reprint the
original instructions, but the first half of the book will be
an introduction by me to who was Fr Melton and how reliable was
he as a figure, because he seems quite a suspicious character.
The newspaper reports say that he'd faked his own death at one
point to escape his family. He'd not been paying child
maintenance. He'd been arrested for being a
political activist. That, and then this person
claims they'd built a telephone to contact the dead.
Oh dude. You're going to, you're going to
John. You got to get these plans.
You got to build this. This streams you.
This screams you to do. It.
Yeah, I know, I know. You got to think about it.
So yes, more books to come. More books.
All right. So awesome.
That's so cool. Let's all right, I want to bring
Brian so. Are we doing this?
We're doing. This.
Let's do it. Let's do it, professor.
This is going to get crazy. It's OK, Yeah.
And he's, he'll probably look, you know, this is a real.
So Brian. So, John, you set the stage of
what a mod is and everything else, and then, and then.
So I, I do streams on TikTok and YouTube and I have moderators.
They are, you know, people that are part of my community that I
trust to help me moderate the string from trolls and whatnot
and all that. So this is one of my, you know,
good friends. He is, you know, one of my mods.
He's been with me for years. His background in, you know,
military and everything else. He's got an extensive
background. This is Brian.
OK. Hi, Brian.
And should I, should I get into the hole where we were and what
we were doing, all that? I think we'd have to understand
what Brian, you know, tell us about your mom, Brian, real
quick so we understand when that happened and then.
OK, my mom passed away Christmas Eve morning at 2:11 in the
morning in 2024. She was very sick.
She was diabetic five years ago. She lost her leg, was amputated
because of an infection, and she got another infection in her
right leg while she was in the nursing home.
And a Long story short, it just went right through her body.
She was septic. She was in ICU for the last like
3 or 4 weeks. And you know, I got a call.
I was living out of state. I was living here in
Pennsylvania. Not here, sorry.
I was living in Pennsylvania. She was in a nursing home in
Florida. I could never move her because
she wasn't stable enough. And then I got the phone call
about 2:30 in the morning that she had passed, you know, and I
waited and told John the next day.
And yeah, so it's, you know, it's hard.
I lost both my parents now so. So, and, you know, it's when I
first met Brian, we were doing, you know, we were just having a
chat online doing one of our episodes and he was telling us
that he gets phone calls from her.
And this is what led me to you, Cal.
You know, it was like this is a thing, like is this a thing?
And it and apparently it is. And remember we talked about
that, Brian, we were all online and we were telling us that this
happens to you and it's crazy. So now John set the scene in
Indiana what you were doing. I'm going to play the tape
where? The show we're, we're, we're at
a, it's a, it's a famous haunted spot out in Indiana called the,
the, the Randolph County Infirmary.
And at this point you've already received how many phone calls?
33 So at this point he's already 3 phone calls in since 2024.
At the first one, I yeah, it was in the end of December.
Was that the end of December? So only a couple weeks after
your brother passed? OK, so we're now.
This is the end of March, right? March 23rd I think.
Yeah, yeah. This is at the end of March.
So we're sitting in the attic, which used to be an old
courtroom for because this place had multiple purposes.
And yeah, I got the spirit boxes going.
We're just, I got everything charging up because, you know,
the stream, you know, battery gets eaten quick.
And a few moments before the phone call, a spirit comes
through and says your mother is calling through.
And I was using a, an app called Vox, which, which was the one I
was using at the time. And it says, you know, your
mother is calling now. None of us thought anything of
it because there's a lot of spirit chatter, a lot of
different things are being said. You know, if it's not viable and
it's not, you know, phone with the conversation, I'm ignoring
it. So we ignored it because it made
it made no sense to what was going on, you know?
And then as Brian sitting right next to me, the phone call comes
through. So I'm going to play it.
I have it really the image is just static because John's got
his camera facing out into this empty room.
But it's really the audio that we're really paying attention
to. So I'm going to jump over and
just say just so you can see what's.
Going on, I have lights on them, mom's on the phone, patch it
through. I'm not sure.
Let me start that again real quick guys, because it's it's
always a little tricky when I do this video, it like jumps on its
own, but I'm not sure we turn the volume all the way up.
So bad, so bad. Lights in them.
Mom's on the phone. Patch you through.
Not with me, John, it. Was a few moments late.
Look. At my phone.
Well, look at. My phone.
Oh shit. Can I pick it up?
No, no. OK dude that is wild.
Have you ever picked that up? Yeah, I told you I had it.
Before, yes, yeah, that's right. Dude.
That's wild bro. Thing happening.
To. Come.
That's wild, holy shit. Now let's see what I'm saying.
Wow. So they're asking what they're
asking. What you can tell?
Them it's OK. So Brian's mother passed away
recently, like very recently. And Brian, this is your dude.
Either someone's bro, I don't know if you want to read that
text message, either somebody is fucking with you or no.
You got to read it. You got to read it.
If you don't want to continue the conversation afterwards, I
understand we could talk in private.
All right, so you can see that happened live.
He received a call and then there was a voice to text, you
know, on the phone. That does it now, Brian, what
were those? When you've gotten calls in the
past, did you ever answer it? I've only answered the first one
and it was a lot of it was just straight like static.
There was nothing. I couldn't hear any voices and
it was just static, you know, nothing more than that.
And and that was from your mom's phone.
Yes, because I had my mom's phone.
So just here, just real quick, I'll speed this up.
Just so you know, the phone is active.
Yeah, the phone is still intact. It remains off and in your
drawer, right. Just so those details.
So there's still, there's, there's still service connected
to it. You know, we can still receive
calls and make calls, you know, hasn't been taken off.
You know, it's, you know, it's still paid for it.
So, but it's off and in his drawer for the most part.
Yeah. Nobody else has that number, so.
OK, now here's the message and what's really interesting about
it is the voice to text is different than the message that
comes through. But I'm going to play it.
Brian, you're here we go. Brian, this is your mom.
Can you give me a call please when you can?
OK. I love you.
Bye. So that's that was the message.
And then this is the transcription.
It says, Brian, this is your mom.
Can you call me and let me know what's going on?
Please? It doesn't matter, but it
doesn't matter when, but please give me a call.
I love you. Bye, bye.
And that's what came through on the text on The Voice to on The
Voice to text from the message, right, that the phone does.
Is that actually came through on that?
Is that actually, Brian, your mother's voice?
That's your mother's voice. Yes, it is.
You're right. Yeah, That's that's her.
I'm just, it's like John and I talked about because I didn't
listen to it until I was with John, you know, being my friend
and everything. And the Long story short, it
just sounded like when she was younger, like I remember her
when she was younger, you know, like John brought up, you know,
no pain in her voice. She sounded good, you know, so
it's not like when she was in the ICU or anything like that.
And I'm just. And you're, she was also, you
know, her mind was starting to go as well.
And you could hear it in her voice, but in that message.
You can't. It sounds like she's, you know?
This sounds like a. Chores in the house and picking
up her phone to call her son. Yeah.
So Cal, what jokes down at you first in terms of tone, timing,
voice? Well, you place me a crossroads
really as to whether, you know, in this moment, I act as
parapsychologist and you want me to explore conventional
explanations. I mean, this is a very recent
thing for Brian. It's very impactful.
Even I'm feeling it from listening to that and hearing
the back story. It's it's still very fresh.
And you know, Brian, you say you've lost also both your
parents as well. That's a big thing for anyone to
go through and know that you're you're now the next step in the
next generation. So, you know, I either have the
secondary role, which is clinical parapsychologist in
that I can tell you all the things about other people's
experiences and but the fact that these naturally have a big
benefit for us and a purpose in helping with grieving and
coping. And it's more beneficial to have
these experiences than it is to not.
Because when you don't, people try and turn to other grief work
to try and cope and move forward.
People find them very special and they revel in their kind of
exceptional nature. And I think this is great.
You're lucky if you have one. Some people might have more than
one. Some people might just have
something that's more on that symbolic level, but this is very
direct and, and seeming like this person is, you know,
contacting you directly over the phone in some way.
You know, I, there's a number of things that jump to my mind, but
I, I think for the, the purpose of a podcast like this, I don't
want to break it down. This is something that I have to
as a parapsychologist and psychologist think, well Brian,
if you wanted a 1:00 to 1:00 and we talked through whatever
direction you wanted, do you really want conventional
explanations for this or do you want to know more about the kind
of therapeutic side? That's what we go down.
So that's more the position that I would say at this point in
time is to I could go one or the other.
I. Find it compelling.
I find the timing compelling and I understand how impactful that
could be. And this is exactly what we're
talking about in terms of what these experiences can be like
for people. That that's the fact that you
got a voicemail like that is very compelling.
But I've I've got ideas here as to what it could be, but I also
know what kind of impact this is having as well.
Is it, you know, when you know, if you want to answer this based
on what you just said, but is it like from a scientific
perspective? And I'm not, I'm not we're not
trying to debunk anything here, but it is, is it like, is it
worth it for us to go to like a like a, an audio forensics to
see what that is? Or is it like what would you?
No, I, I, my opinion is that's a genuine voicemail, but that, but
I've got other ideas attached to it.
There's no need to. I, I see on some ghost hunting
shows and stuff when they're going out and they've got a
dictaphone in the hand and that they're walking around with it
and their hands all over it and there's all kind of muffled
sounds and stuff. And people are trying to make
sense of the random sound and then they start to refine it
through some sort of editing process.
Well, that's not how EVP was ever done.
It was reel to reel recorders. It was clarity of sound.
It was soundproof boxes. And yet on playback, there were
bangs, scratches, noises, voices, which you should not get
a from the clarity of fresh reel to reels or cassette tapes.
And also with it being in a soundproof box.
So this idea of walking around with one where you're creating
all kinds of audible anomalies from your hands and everything
else in the building, it creates chaos.
That's a very clear cut voicemail.
You don't need to run that through anything.
If Brian says that's his mother's voice, it sounds very
clearly like a woman and I understand every word that was
said. It's Brian's mom's voice.
Wild. And, and what's, what's really
wild because again, I'm, I, I like to, you know, not debunk,
but look at things from a more logical perspective, especially
when it comes to the paranormal. I've had and we've all had this
and this can't be denied. You've had issues with your cell
phones where people leave a message and even if you check
that message, it comes in again and it comes in again, it comes
in again. What's, But what's unique with
Brian is that even after he checks these messages, they keep
coming and they're different. And what's really wild is the
fact that they they're not old. Like this isn't a message that
he's gotten before from his mom. It's a it's a new one and it's
new every time. So, you know, you know, we can,
I can sit here and and nitpick too on what exactly it could be
or what not. But what I said to Brian was how
awesome is it that of course, horrible, your mother passed
away Horrible. But nobody gets these chances.
That's it to to hear your mother's voice again and to hear
it clear, not in pain, not in distress, just normal is amazing
in itself. And that goes into what you were
talking about, professor, about the therapeutic, therapeutic
side of it, which is, in my opinion, beautiful.
People revel in it, and you know when they see apparitions at the
end of the bed, they'll say, you know, the person looked glowing,
radiant, free of pain. Or sometimes, you know, if it's
a friend, they looked younger than the point at which I first
knew them. You know, I met them in their
30s. They looked like they were just
coming out of their teens or early 20s.
And you know, that they seem like they're full of life and
they're good. And so that that in itself that
you've got the communication, which is one that changes that
person's will view about life and death and continuity
thereafter. But also this idea of this
person being OK. You might have seen them in not
such an OK situation at the end that the whole thing's reversed
and this person is free and they're looking down over me and
you know, maybe I might have another experience again.
But even just one is significant enough.
And that's if we're totally leaving this parapsychological
side of what's the explanation in it.
Have we got a conventional one that fits, you know, psychology,
physics, electronics and what we know about all of those mushed
together or does nothing seem to fit and we've got something new
to explore right now with Brian's case, unless Brian want
to want to want to explore this further.
I would say let's look at the impact of this.
And that's very impactful. It's very clear what's going on
for everyone listening, It's very clear what's going on, and
the story is very clear as well. How impactful is that?
It's remarkable if you just take it as it is and think of, well,
would I sooner have that in the grieving process or just nothing
at all? I think many of us would want a
little something like that and a little knob and a wink, an
actual voicemail message. If you just want to leave it as
that and not dig for the explanation, take it as it is.
Yeah, Professor, let me ask you a question.
Right, right. Thank you for sharing that too,
by the way. Yeah, yeah.
Thank you, Brian so much. I can clearly see how how much
that's impacting you even now. So you know, the fact that you
wanted to share it in this kind of forum as well, I mean, thank
you. And hopefully, you know, you
feel positive about it and these are kind of good experiences
when you do have them, you're not finding them scary or
anything like that or finding them a negative to moving
forward with your life. But please don't think that
there's no one to speak to. I mean, as I say, I come from a
whole department of parapsychologists and
counselling psychologists who are both.
And there's there's all kinds of networks as well to actually
understand these experiences more as well as, you know,
learning more about yourself moving forward.
These aren't signs of psychosis in the vast majority of cases.
Varieties of people all around the world have these kinds of
experiences. They're cross cultural and
they're more common than not. I think it's up to like some
surveys have said around 70% of people can relate to some form
of experience post loss. So they're, they're very, very
common. So you're, you're one of the
fortunate to get something as impactful as a voicemail message
as your individual kind of sign. But yeah, if you want to explore
it further, I'm I'm here and I can put you in contact with
people as well if you, if you want to talk to 1 and and
explore it further. I'll make sure that you have his
contact information, Brian later, if you know.
Yeah. That's something you want, you
know. Again, Brian, thank you, man,
really appreciate it. You know, I appreciate you so
much. Professor, I have a question
definitely while all this was while all this was going on,
does did you know, you know how you were bringing up the types
like Type 1, type 2, type 3, type 4 and all those.
Did you notice an uptick or a downtick in the types that were
coming through via a landline as opposed to now more, you know,
cell phones and smartphones? Dude, it's, it's, it's so funny.
I was that was, I was asked. I was even.
That was my next question. Has technology made your work
harder or? Or yeah, if there was a change
in the data with the types or a decrease or an increase, or, you
know, what the data look like. I mean, that's just fascinating.
And the the simple answer is I don't have the kind of answer in
terms of concrete stacks stats because I was just finishing my
master's degree as I finished writing that book.
And so smart technology smartphones were just becoming a
thing. The iPhone was at 2007 when the
first iPhone at 2:00. Thousand, 2006.
So I started writing on this two years later, and then another
two years later, the book was done.
The data The data didn't exist yet, basically.
No, there was a few telephone cases.
There was a few antiphone cases just like Brian's case, like
that that I'd heard of or I'd seen in newspaper reports and a
few text message cases. Most of my stuff was historical
landlines or current day landline.
So it's still the basic landline technology where whenever you
dialed a number, it, it would kind of send a signal and it
would open the signal and close the signal.
And so I even talked about a little bit when you see it in
the film Red Dragon with Hannibal Lecter.
And they gave him the telephone to a solicitor and they put a
plate over where the Rotary dial would be.
But he knows that he can just lift it up, press the kind of
the receiver down and then tap it.
So you could tap in the numbers and you could call someone just
by going 1212345 one and then you could call someone.
That way you wouldn't need the numbers.
So it's very basic of opening the line and closing the line
and then it would find the the telephone it needs to reach out
to. This stuff is now way more
sophisticated. You have got people started
using them instantly as satellite navigation in their
car. You were looking up things on
the Internet, apps started to come in so you could start to,
you know, get vouchers for things.
You know, if you've got Starbucks vouchers or other
coffee shops or McDonald's or whatever, all these things built
and you're doing most of your things and you're banking and
everything else all through your phone, which is why people are
devastated if they lose them. You've got your kids pictures on
there, you've got birthday parties, you've got significant
events, you've got things you want to remember for later.
You know, early on when you just got a Nokia phone or something
like that, you played Snake. You.
You texted people and you call people and then later on you
could take a really fuzzy, crappy pixelated picture, but it
was still the best thing. Oh my God.
You know you've got some form of camera to hand because no one
else is typically walking around with a camera on them.
So since then, websites were being developed so you could
send text messages anonymously and they will go through to
someone's phone and then you'd start paying for them there
afterwards. There is more space now for
manipulating a call or a text message than there would have
been with the landline. Rogo and Bayliss, even in 1979,
only logged 2 instances they knew of of voicemail messages.
Because the voicemail machine with the tiny reel to reel
cassettes was only just starting to come in and was only just
starting to be a popular thing. And thereafter things like VHS
players and people having home videos and things like that.
So everything was new. So I also wrote the book on the
cusp of smartphones coming in. So I'm still dealing with
relatively basic like technology.
So something I really need to explore more and see how much if
I do like a basic survey of people's experiences, again,
just more so for the sake of the numbers and gather some of the
accounts as I do it, I can see, was it a landline?
Was it a smartphone? Yeah, I only have like 2.
I only have like 2 more questions for you, man.
And I and I really appreciate your time here with us today.
And John, if you have anything else, by all means jump in.
But I guess it's like, you know, as we, as we wrap this up, how
do you, how do you feel with all of your research?
And as we're going and, and hearing this stuff, and
sometimes the tech is getting clearer, more traceable, or it's
getting worse with more deep fakes and things like that.
But do you think we're getting closer to understanding how sort
of how consciousness persists after death in your studies?
Do you feel like you're progressing, you know, and
understanding that? Do you make an interesting point
with Deepfake and then AI? I mean, the amount of kind of
fictional shows that have been made about, well, if we're using
these all the time, we've got apps and so forth, then you
could potentially have an app that's starting to, I mean, we
even talk about Alexas and things like that.
Mine's probably woken up having said that, she'll start saying
something. But you know, they're getting
your algorithms, they like it. They're saying what you like and
what you don't like, what music you're listening to and what
you're not listening to, what you're ordering off of that
popular website and what you're not ordering.
And so it's building characteristics about you that
other people could relate to. And you could say, well, that
sounds like Gary's song list. It sounds like the kinds of
things Gary would buy from that website.
And the idea was in some of these fictional shows, well, it
could record your conversations and your voice characteristics.
So what if we had an app where after you've died, you go on the
app and you say you want phone calls from, you know, your
deceased friend Steven, and you could just ring it every time
and have a pretend conversation. That's all AI and is doing a
deep fake. It's just getting all the
characteristics of Steven and putting them together and
creating a logical conversation. We could do that now to some
extent with the technology that we have.
Only a few years ago it was a thing of fiction, but we were
catching up to it. It's quite fun when you look at
even sci-fi shows. I'm a big fan of the sitcom over
here, Red Dwarf, and a lot of the things they said and that
and even in Star Trek have become an actual reality of
technology now where, you know, years ago we thought that's, you
know, nonsense. And they're playing around with
little bits of things that tech guys have put together, but
they've become an actual thing, you know, having a conversation
with someone. I'm on an iMac right now and the
screen is that thin. And that was, you know,
something of fiction only, you know, so many years ago.
But now it's a natural thing. And you can have a video
conversation with someone on your phone that was in Star Trek
and all sorts. We've caught up.
So the room for error is is far greater now when it comes to
things like that. Well, away from your your
question there, Gary. A little bit, but it's but is it
does that define consciousness? You know what I mean?
Is it like but because AI you
know you? You language for?
Yeah, I always say, I always say, because people always ask
me with my stream, hey, when are you going to start incorporating
language models? When are you going to start
using AI to decipher what the spirits are saying?
And there's all these new ITC apps popping out that deal with
the language models and AIS. My whole thing is I have to look
at it from a very bird's eye point of view.
And what if spirits can manipulate the AI and we create
something completely different? As sci-fi as it sounds, it's,
it's the truth. We don't, we don't understand,
like for example, we don't understand what and how your
mother's spirit manipulated that phone.
We don't understand how they manipulate the devices I use or
other people's devices. So who's to say that they're not
going to take a language model and create something completely
different with it? So we're trying to talk to say,
you know, Mike, you know, the spirit Mike.
And in reality, that language model completely changes Mike
into something else. And we don't know, we don't know
how far the implications can go. So I, I see what you're saying,
Professor. It's, it's, it's, it's broad.
It's, you know, it's the room for error.
The room for manipulation is vast.
And that's why I don't think, even though I've written on it
and that's why we're having the conversation today, I don't
think the telephones and the technology offer the best
evidence for consciousness surviving deaths.
Let me make a physical point. I can just grab it here.
Sure. So this, out of all the books
I've got, this is the essays from the Bigelow competition in
five volumes. I think there was like 200 and
and six successful essays that went through to be judged.
So I'm in, I think I'm in volume 5 with the essay that I was
involved in and it was half, $1,000,000 for the the best
evidence in 25,000 words for survival, a permanent bodily
death. And my colleague, Doctor Jeffrey
Mishlov, he was the essay winner for that.
He spoke about the telephones off the back of my research as
part of his essay. But when it came to the one that
I was involved in, didn't discuss any of that.
My main 2 areas that I was asked to write with three other
authors was best evidence from deathbed visions.
So people dying on their deathbed over the last 150 years
that we've kind of written on that topic.
What are the best cases where it seems?
How on earth did that dying person?
Know about this other person who's come to them that's, you
know, is dead, but they don't know they've died.
And yet they've delivered such specific information that's had
to be followed up. And also what haunting cases
throughout history have also offered the best evidence.
So I spoke about two cases, but one that was memorable was the
Cheltenham ghost. It was also known as the Morton
ghost. And it's also sort of the basis
for the film and stage play, The Woman in Black.
Now, in that case, the apparition appeared so often
that they could experiment with it.
Morton, who was the main author of the paper, who was a medical
student, she'd seen the apparition late one night and
started putting fiber across the staircase so she could see if it
will break the fiber and they follow it around the house.
It would appear in the garden. They tried to corner it and
reach out and touch it, and they had so many opportunities to
experiment with the apparition because it was appearing so
often. These are really powerful cases
that if you see those green books over there, the
proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, it was one
of the early reports with a foreword by Frederick Meyers,
who was a massive scholar at the field talking about the case.
And then he wrote, you can see it in blue just there, the two
volume book in 1903, Human Personality and it's Survival of
Bodily Death, a massive piece of work, especially on what is
human consciousness, what does it mean to us?
And has it got this capacity for surviving bodily death?
What's the evidence for it? So I think all of these other
kinds of cases that we have more regularly day-to-day, sensing
the presence of the dead, seeing apparitions, seeing them in
dreams, as much interaction as we like through people
professing to meet mediums, We can easily put those people to
the test and see if they really can deliver specific
information, really specific information, and see if this is
offering us any more information about, well, you know, how
powerful is human personality and can it actually survive?
Or is something traces of our memory at least being retained
somehow that we can pick up on? So there may be no survival of
death whatsoever, but the mind is so powerful it, it creates a
memory bank somewhere. You know, we've got radio waves
and EMF and ultraviolet. Is there a side field in
biology? In biology, we call it a morphic
field. And you know, we could talk of
all kinds of fields of information.
Is it that is it? That's what that's John's
theory, that's what John always believes is our spirits.
It's our memories that were attached to the energy of us
that's released 'cause we don't really.
Well, Mrs. Garrett, Eileen Garrett, towards the end of her
life, she didn't believe she was a world famous medium.
Very, very rich, founded the Parapsychology Foundation in
America in 1951. She'd moved over there and
funded a lot of research and by the end of her life she believed
more so that a lot of her information was telepathic.
It was coming from the sitters. She was picking up on the the
Bereaves knowledge or whoever she was working with, their
knowledge of the dead. And that's why it seems so
impressive she wasn't communicating with the dead.
Fascinating. And I like what you said about
being specific. You know, it's as specific as
you get. I was talking, I did an
interview with a woman named Simon Key from she used to be a
tutor at the Arthur Finley College and she would say they
had a word called. I loved it was like Claire
vagueness as opposed to Claire plants, you know, like that's
what you got to watch for Claire vagueness.
That's how you can spot a fraud, you know, like they're just
giving you the big broad things and.
Without the details. Yeah, without the details,
Professor, I got one more question for you and I'll let
you go. You've been absolutely
wonderful. Thank you.
We can't.
We can't we appreciate it so much.
If you received one of these calls, what's the first question
you would ask? Who's calling please?
Have I got it? Who is it from?
And that's the thing, if it's just some random dead person, I
wouldn't really be able to help. Let's assume it's somebody you
know. Let's assume it would be someone
you knew that had passed, someone you were close to, they
had passed and you get a phone call from them.
What would you? Ask.
Then I'd say you need to make me convinced.
Give me some specific information that I only I would
know that you would know. So it's got to be something like
that. I mean, there could be a few
things. So you hit them from the
science, You hit them right out of the gate.
It can't be a celebrity because there'd be so many people that'd
be able to impersonate them and what is publicly known.
So it's either going to be a dead relative or one of the the
scientists past that I know of. I mean, it could be Rogo or
Bayliss as well. You know, if they came forward,
I would know so much about them because I've delved so much into
their own personal history that, you know, there's questions that
I could ask. So I will put them to the
challenge of this is great. You know, please stay on the
line. I would I would like to actually
have this conversation, but we need to go through some
specifics here and and make sure that we're actually genuinely
establishing content. You know, there was Constantine
Roundover. Have you heard of him because of
Breakthrough, the book Breakthrough that was a
considered a really big book in the progress of the history of
EVP. And Doctor Constantine Roundover
was a psychologist. And when he brought out the book
Break Breakthrough, it came with an LP.
So you could listen to his Evps as you read the book to hear
these examples. And after he died, there were
claims in Germany, France and the USA that he was repeatedly
calling paranormal researchers to actually say I'm on the other
side and we're creating a telephone to contact living and
you need to document these cases.
I think the guy in America was called Mark Macy and he'd
written a few things a few things on this and he's got
these these recordings and I remember kind of facing them
with quite a bit of skepticism of this is unusual.
It sounds like someone impersonating round of AI mean.
It's got this very deep voice with the accent and so forth.
But over and over again and and Mark spoke very positively about
them and, you know, absolutely head on involved with trying to
understand this this contact. So yeah, there's even been these
figures who did the research, returning allegedly afterwards
and trying to get. Into it was like Houdini.
It wasn't like Houdini's thing. He would give.
He was like he gave someone a word.
Yeah, he died with a code. And allegedly the the medium
that he had kind of outed the most and spoke so negatively
about was Arthur Ford. And Arthur Ford was the first
medium to claim that he got the code, and apparently it was the
code that Houdini had died with. And so that there's the
controversy there, but that goes on and on and on that you see,
God, I've got so many things in. Like there's a little orange
book there, and that's a book first.
Of all that's the most impressive thing that you're
able to point to the book, I can.
See it? I can see it.
But I know it's that that book is by Harrowood Carrington and
it's just called Houdini and Doyle.
And it's about the the relationship and the back and
forth between Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
And it's not as straightforward as some of the the people online
make out that Doyle was deluded and Houdini got it right there.
There was a lot of personal loss with Houdini and his mother and
especially wasn't satisfied unless a medium came forward
with a message from his mother. So that really pushes out the
window any other kind of contact from other people that could be
verified, right. It sounds like Konador was
staying quite level headed that any medium should really just be
presenting satisfactory information.
But eventually they fell out. But they really were a good
working team, but you had to really push those personal kind
of losses and biases out the way.
And I don't think they could reconcile those.
And it's the same with Freud and Jung, how they went their
separate ways. Sure, both both end up being
fascinated in parapsychology, but they really ended up kind of
destroying their friendship. Hopefully I won't have an US,
John. Hopefully, hopefully not, Right.
You know, what's really interesting is like, it's funny
because I deal what I deal with in my field, if you will, with
so much. I'm trying to think of the right
word for it. Like, for example, you said it
before, like all of a sudden a bird flies by or a butterfly
goes by and people are like, oh, it's a spirit.
And I'm like, no, it's nature. Yeah, that's just a butterfly
going by, right. So when I'm doing my thing and I
am also scoop super skeptical of the apps that I use for not only
human tampering, but human error.
OK, pet audio, pareidolia, things like that.
The chaos that you speak of, cuz that chaos is everywhere while I
do this, even if I'm walking in the cemetery.
But there's certain things I ask in it and it falls short.
A lot of people don't realize it.
When I go up to like a plot and I asked for, you know, spirits,
may we have a conversation? You know, I get a reply.
Yes. OK, spirit, what's your name?
You know, without saying the spirit's name, You know, the app
in question that I'm using is on my wrist, usually pointed up at
the sky or in back of me. It's not at the grave.
So there's no visual context to the phone either.
And then a name comes through. That's the sort of viable
evidence that I look at. And that is why usually if I
don't hear a name or it's some nonsense, I just keep it moving
because it's all, you know, just it's, it's regardless whether
it's something coming through, whether it's radio or whether
it's, you know, something else. It's not viable to what I'm
doing at the time. You know, it holds no, no worth
to me. So, but everything you were
saying, just like, you know, it's, it's, it's great to know
that I'm applying those, you know, tactics.
But you're not totally 100% crazy that you're not a complete
lunatic and there are people studied and learned that have
that are doing it in a much different way and field work
like you are. But yes, it's great, man.
It really is. Wow, thank you so much.
We kept it for. Over an hour I I hope you had a
good time here and. Brian, you too, man.
Thank you for yeah, thank. You.
Professor Cal Cooper, everybody, telephone calls from the dead.
Pick it up. We'll, we'll put a link to it in
our in our BIOS here for this when we drop this.
That's it, man. Thank you so much.
You're welcome. Hopefully I will be doing an
audio version of the book soon. People have been kind of poking
me and nudging me like mad to do it, so soon they'll be.
You can go to sleep listening to the book chapter by chapter,
hopefully. Yeah, man, that's that.
Who wouldn't want to listen to this voice?
Make sure you got a picture. On there.
Have it read it to you at night. It's.
Like can be in bed with you at night and it's just.
Like in a bath and. That's it.
It's like you wouldn't want to be serenaded, gentlemen.
Awesome. Anyway.
All right, man. Thank you so much.
So how do we explain the voice message from Brian's mother who
passed away? Technical glitches like delayed
delivery, voicemail sync issues, or even phone number
reassignments can sometimes bring old messages back to life.
There's also the slim chance of a heartless prank.
Psychologically, grief in memory can play tricks on us, but in
Brian's case, the evidence would rule out both grief driven
perception and mistaken identity.
Is it paranormal? A spirit manipulating
electronics or sending messages through residual energy?
Maybe. Either way, we are left with a
mystery. Was it a fluke of technology or
something more? At Splintered Spirits, we'd like
to think it's something more. We want to once again thank
Professor Callum Cooper for joining us and Brian for sharing
such a personal story. Be sure to like, follow, and
subscribe to Splintered Spirits wherever you get your podcasts
and on all our socials. If you have a ghost story or
evidence that you want us to review, visit
ourwebsite@splinteredspirits.com to submit.
That's Splintered spirits.com. Until next time, stay curious.