On High Strangeness and Creativity with Daniel Noah

Do you believe fairies exist? Each day, more people are coming forward with stories of encountering otherworldly beings. Join me, Jo Hickey-Hall, on the Modern Fairy Sightings podcast as we hear from people who are ready to share their experiences. Like a tree stopped walking, and you walked with this weird gait. Hard to take a double take, Because in front of me were two elf-like goblin-y things. So the red light was gone and now this black shape is forming. They then stopped, looked round at us, chuckled, and then just vanished in front of our eyes. Whether you're already a believer or full of intrigue, come open-minded and open-hearted and make your own mind up. The Modern Fairy Sightings Podcast on SpectreVision Radio. SpectreVision Radio. And so finally they were like, Daniel, you have to write it. And I was like in a panic about it. Um, that weekend it was, it was, this outline was due like in a week and that weekend happened to be contact in the desert where I saw you guys. Um, so I, I started with, I said, okay, I'm gonna, this is, I know this is going to involve mantis beings. That's so that's all I had. Right. And so I started reading about mantis beings and, and when Ariel, my wife and I were driving out to Palm Springs for contact, I said, do you mind if we listen to some podcasts about mantis beings? Sure. So we're listening to these podcasts and we're driving on the highway. And at one point, Ariel reaches up and she puts the visor down. And a praying mantis falls out from under the visor. It lands on the median in the car. And we're both like, shut up. This just can't be. This is crazy, right? Welcome back to Cosmosis. I'm your host, Kelly Chase, alongside my co-host, J. Christopher King. Today, we're joined by someone who's become a true kindred spirit on this path. Daniel Noah, co-founder of SpectreVision. As many of you know, we joined SpectreVision Radio back in August alongside some of our favorite shows like Haunted Objects, Weird Studies, Modern Fairy Sightings, Somewhere in the Skies. and new voices that we've been excited to discover like conscious observers. From the moment we met Daniel, it was clear we were navigating the same waters. He is an artist and an experiencer whose creative life is shaped by the same questions, tensions, and moments of wonder that animate our own work. We wanted to sit down with Daniel for a conversation about experience, creativity, vocation, and the strange liminal spaces where they meet. These are the conversations that feel most alive for us right now. And Daniel brings a depth, honesty, and curiosity that we think you're going to feel immediately. We also got to talk with him about his new project, High Strangeness, a five-part comic book series inspired by firsthand accounts of real paranormal encounters unfolding in the dimly lit borderlands of human experience. Issue number one is already out, and issue number two drops this week on Wednesday, November 19th. I was honored to write an essay on synchronicity for issue number three, which will be released in December. We'll have links in the episode description so you can explore the series for yourself. And before we dive in, a quick reminder. If you want to go deeper into the work we're doing, you can join our Patreon at CosmosisCommunity.com. Members get ad-free episodes before they go public, monthly community calls, and access to our private Discord server. Also, our docuseries Cosmosis, UFOs and a New Reality is now streaming on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, and across multiple other platforms. You can find all the links at cosmosis.media. So without further ado, here is our conversation with Daniel Noah. Thank you. Daniel, it's so great to have you here. Welcome to the show. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Well, for everybody who's watching, I know that people have noticed we've gone through some big changes over the last few months. And a lot of those changes were inspired by our move to Spectre Vision Radio, which is the new network we're on. And Daniel is one of the co-founders of Spectre Vision. we have also really kind of found Daniel to be a friend and a kindred spirit and someone who has, you know, really helped us sort of rethink how we want to approach the work that we do. So we really wanted to introduce you to Daniel and to get him a chance to sort of talk to you guys about SpectreVision and what's so cool about it. I mean, he's also got some great projects that he's been working on, a new film that SpectreVision just put out. So Daniel, do you want to start by just sort of telling people what specter vision is sure yeah um well specter vision is um we i suppose up until the last few years have been known as primarily a producer of film um we started the company close to 15 years ago and it's was founded by myself and elijah wood the actor um we met on a project that i have was a screenwriter of and he was attached to play the lead-in that didn't get made and i think we kind of met each other at a point in our careers when we were feeling exasperated with the way that the studio system worked or rather didn't work and um we're looking for a change that was part of it but part of it was that we also um realized that we had this sort of almost bizarrely like supernatural venn diagram of overlapping interests that were really weirdly specific. And it was a little bit like that scene in stepbrothers, you know, did we just become best friends? A passion for design and a certain kind of music and, but most importantly, a really, really deep love of genre. And at that time, which was back in about 2010, And the horror space was really dominated by movies that I quite like and respect, but were maybe not exactly a SpectraVision vibe, like Hostel and Saw. And, you know, again, really admire these films and friends with the people who make them. But I think, you know, Elijah and I felt like we were kind of missing the the sort of elements of genre that were maybe a little bit more. For lack of a better word, feminine or, you know, that, you know, we're a little more skewed, a little more literary that that dealt with maybe themes that were a little more subtle. we would always talk about refer back to Rosemary's Baby and Don't Look Now and films like that that were that were, you know, using genre as a kind of a Trojan horse to tackle topics that were maybe complex and difficult that were part of our day to day lives, you know, spiritual, emotional, social, psychological issues that maybe an audience wouldn't willfully sign up to deal with. But if you trick them, you know, by kind of baiting them in with the promise of a genre experience, and then you find that you're dealing with things in a therapeutic way. And I think that's kind of always what genre does at its best is it provides a platform to process difficult feelings that maybe you don't have a platform to deal with in your life. so um uh we kind of started the company without any idea how to start a company we didn't do anything in a normal or correct way we didn't raise money or open an office or hire a staff or anything like that we just kind of started um networking through our community of friends and and um other other creatives that ran the gamut from people like anna lilia mirpour who wrote and directed a girl walks home alone a night who really had just made one short film at that time to lee one l who wrote saw who um was the writer and star of cooties which was the these were the two films that we made first and both have got into sundance and both were you know fairly big titles out of that year sundance so we were kind of off and running and um and uh yeah and then we you know we really built something that's really unique and i think we're very blessed in that we're completely autonomous and we don't you know we don't have like a viacom telling us what to do um so really now our third partner lauren singly who joined us a couple years ago you know we we are the decision makers and for better or worse and um and so you know eventually that led to the last couple years where we've been really focusing on expanding the scope of the company and what it does. And that is everything from getting a little bit more loose about the genres that we are dealing in, but it also means expanding into other mediums. So we launched the podcast network in July of 2024. And we have this comic book imprint called high strangeness that we're doing with only press and a management division and art and collectibles and a record label. And we actually have a few other things in the works as well. And I think the idea is that when you're, there's a certain kind of space in the culture that we're engaged with. And once that bond is formed with your consumer base or your fans, your friends or whatever you want to call them, there's no reason why you should stay locked into one medium. You can interact through all different channels. And that's what we're trying to do now. Yeah, that independence, Daniel, know, I think is what really attracted Kelly and I to you and SpectreVision early on. And it's so inspiring that you've been able to keep at it this long and keep your independence in the media landscape that we find ourselves in today. You know, you were talking about horror and genre, and you mentioned Rosemary's Baby, which of course has supernatural themes, you know, and now there as a whole segment of people that probably only know about spectra vision through the lens of paranormal phenomena research that way the podcast network that deals primarily often with paranormal and horror themes how early did that really come into the conversation for you and elijah and anybody else with spectra vision and how did that really flourish so much over the course of the last years it's a it's a really fascinating story that in itself almost feels paranormal to me um you know it started with us just simply acting on impulse and and um chasing the things that excited us without you know really maybe giving it much thought and i've always had a profound love of tales of the supernatural that dates back to when i was a little boy and um you know very early on And I discovered the Twilight Zone. So it's sort of like a seminal experience in my life when I was five years old and had just gone through a lot of tumult with like a divorce and moving a lot. And then my mother had just gotten remarried. And so I had been experiencing a lot of disorientation. And one morning I woke up. We just moved and I woke up very early on a Saturday morning and raced into the living room to turn on the TV, expecting to see Saturday morning cartoons, which in the 70s was a thing that happened on Saturday mornings. But I didn't realize it was too early. And so the Twilight Zone was literally just starting. And it was the pilot, which I also, in retrospect, feels sort of destined or something. And it was the episode called Where Is Everybody, which is about a guy who at the top of the episode, he he's in the small town. He he just kind of looks around and everyone's gone. And the process of the the narrative is that everywhere he goes in this town, there's an there's evidence of someone having just been there. So there's a cigarette smoldering in an ashtray or there's a tea kettle whistling and swinging doors. But he can't find anyone and can't understand where anybody went. And I think so for me as a five year old, just seeing the sense of loss and disorientation that I was attempting to deal with in my own little five year old mind and heart, seeing that depicted was a revelation. And, you know, I'm I'm describing this with the benefit of an adult's understanding. none of this was conscious at the time but from that point forward i was just all in on on horror and and you know cartoons became a lot less important and i you know became this voracious consumer of the twilight zone and other strange things like that um and also there i had a lot of kind of important horror moments throughout my life which i won't go through all right now but But so just was passionate about it. But ironically, I was a skeptic. I didn't believe in any of it. I just only engaged with it in the context of fiction and all the therapeutic benefits that I just described. when the company first got established one of the things that I learned is that when you produce horror movies you get invited to haunted locations a lot so sometimes it would be for an event that was staged at a haunted location or other times for projects and I of course didn't take any of it seriously And in 2015, I had an experience at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, which for anyone who is interested in the paranormal, this is a big place. It's the hotel that inspired Stephen King to write The Shining. And there's Shining stuff everywhere. I won't get into that story right now. I've told it a lot, and it'll take an hour. But I'll just like the thumbnail is involved a Ouija board and it was absolutely undeniable things. Things moved in the room and there was an interaction with a spirit of a little girl who we actually later found an article that described death that she described on the Ouija board. And, you know, it was it was a really powerful, life changing experience. And then there was a second one that happened on the Queen Mary about six months later. And at that point, I had to contend with the fact that this was something that was ongoing. But perhaps most significantly, I realized that it had been happening my whole life. and that the ferocity of my skepticism was in direct proportion to my sensitivity to this stuff. And it was almost comical when I started to look back at all the things that I had somehow justified to myself as being normal. And once I kind of accepted it, admitted it to myself, it was like a cap got blown off a gasket or something. It just became kind of relentless. And I was very confused about it and didn't really know what to do with it or how to talk about it and was terrified of telling people because I could only hear these words through the ears that I used to receive them, which is to say someone very judgmental and very, you know, kind of conceited in some ways. I would think lesser of people who believed in this stuff. And so I was kind of in the closet And I used to feel uncomfortable equating being a closeted experience or to queerness But I subsequently realized I think it's a fair comparison because it's this secret that you walk around with, which is absolutely core to your identity as a person. And you know that when you tell people, it's going to fundamentally change their understanding of who you are. And it did when I finally did start telling people. I'm happy to say, for the most part, positively, there were some negative interactions. What ended up happening was we were publicizing Visitations, our podcast, The Elijah and I do, that we used to do for Shudder, which is not really it's not about the paranormal. It's just about creativity and sort of the folks on horror films. And so the publicist called one day and asked if we had heard of the show Spooked. which is Glenn Washington, the show, which is, you know, listener stories about ghosts. And part of my secret life was that I was a voracious consumer of paranormal podcasts because it was really one of the only places that I could go to feel like I wasn't alone and to get any kind of context about any of the things that were happening to me. And so I knew spooked well, like I heard every episode and many times. so the publicist said you know we know this is kind of random but if either of you has a ghost story we can book you and it'll be really good exposure for visitations um elijah kind of looked at me and he was like it's all you buddy um elijah is not an experiencer but he's extremely supportive and extremely curious he's always had a fascination with this stuff and it's been with me for many of the most important events that have happened he just doesn't experience them the same way I do you know he they don't you know he we see in here the same things but I'm receiving a flow of information that is a little unique or at least unique between the two of us I felt like I had to say yes to this and and it was in part because one of the things that spooked had done for me that was um challenging in one way it made me feel less alone but it also made me feel more alone because out of the 100 episodes i had heard i never once heard anyone say that this was something that happened to them over and over again and so i started to think am i the only person in the world that is having repeat experiences and of course i'm far from the only person in the world but just at that time i didn't i had no one to talk to about any of this i didn't hadn't like discovered any of the books yet or anything and so i felt like um there might be a reason for me to do this and and it kind of i guess harkens back to a philosophy i have about making art and i think this kind of speaks to your question about how the paranormal has woven into our um our company which is you know ostensibly about making art I've always believed that the primary function of art is to comfort people and to let them know they're not alone with feelings that maybe people think are completely unique and strange. And so I felt that with this opportunity to be unspooked and to talk about what my repeat experiences, that it was an opportunity to become the resource I couldn't find. and so I agreed to do it and uh I don't think I even understood how popular that show is until the episode dropped um you know I it's like syndicated on NPR and so I you know it was everybody in the world that I knew seemed to hear it and my secret was out um like I said for the most part I think what I'd underestimated was I'm in a creative community people are very curious So it was almost overwhelmingly positive. There were some maybe slightly more challenging reactions from people, but for the most part, it was quite good. And then, you know, perhaps a little bit cynically, you know, my partners were like, this is maybe good for the brand, you know. So what happened next was, you know, I discovered Valet and Kiel and Charles Fort and really started understanding like I'm far from the only one. There's a world of other experiencers out there. I didn't even know the word experiencer, by the way. Kiel was really the thing that ripped me open. Like Operation Trojan Horse is a major book for me. It's like my catcher in the rye in some ways, even though so much of it is just is very dry. He described certain phenomena that I just I remember I read that book on that we were on Joshua Tree and I can literally remember the moment exactly where I was sitting when I read this passage, which I'll paraphrase. which he said, I think he sometimes says 10%, sometimes 30%, but he said 10% to 30% of people have a slightly broader receiver in their mind. And these are people who see ghosts and cryptids and mothmen and UFOs and have precognitive dreams. And for those of you who are in the 70%, nothing we say will ever convince you is what he said. And I think more eloquently, for those of you in the 30%, you know exactly what I'm talking about. And if you're in the 70%, nothing we say will ever convince you. And I, that was just such a beautiful articulation of the struggle that I've been having that, um, I just remember feeling waves of relief, like that there was a document out there of what I was, what I was struggling with. um so um i think the first manifestation for me was that i started you know as the guy who kind of we don't really have formal roles of the company but i have you know been called the head of development i mean most of the projects are sourced through me but not always but um but i realized that i realized a couple things one which was fascinating was that most of the films that i had been a part of shepherding were strangely really accurate portrayals of the phenomenon that were before I knew any of this stuff. And I found that in and of itself quite interesting. So that was one component. But the second was that, you know, I now now that this was sort of like conscious, I found myself assessing projects based on how accurate they were and uh and like the you know the the joke that we always make is that i once passed on this really great bigfoot story because it didn't have telepathy and i was like i can't be a part of this it's not true and i think you know But with that, that led to, so the other thing that happened was I had, after I did Spooked, I started getting asked to do a lot of podcasts. And, you know, I think it was sort of novel that someone from, you know, quote unquote, Hollywood was talking about this stuff. And I just made a, I had a policy. I was going to say yes to anything. It's a big, small, professional knot. But I just I just for about a year or two, I just said anybody who asked me to talk about this, I said yes. And the thing that really got me and I think it was maybe if I were to assign importance to certain events, you know, one of them being. The the Operation Trojan Horse and then the second being. This letter that I received from a young woman named Jessica, who I now, you know, I'm friendly with. who had heard me interviewed on Ufomet. And, and she wrote this note to Jim, which he forwarded to me, which essentially said that she has, she was an autopsy technician in Mount Shasta. Imagine that. And for years, she would sometimes have an overwhelming, she would experience the circumstances of the death of the body that she was examining. and, you know, She once described like seeing a man hanging by his neck from the rafters. And there was even a time when she, I think I'm getting this right, that she felt like she knew was able to like in her mind solve a murder. But she didn't ever talk to the cops because she was like, what are they going to think I'm nuts? And she thought she was nuts and had really not talked to anyone about it. And so what the note said was that essentially, and I'm paraphrasing her, but that it was she had heard a lot of people talk about their experiences and read a bunch of books, but that it was so easy to dismiss people who you could accuse of fishing for attention. right that she was so moved that again someone from hollywood i don't even know what that word means but um you know her perception was someone who had something to lose was willing to speak about it publicly is she was so inspired by it that she had quit her job and was moving to la to figure out how to apply her gift in ways that would help people and so this was profoundly moving to me. And it was what led to me kind of going to my partners and saying, listen, you know, we already have a company that's known for work in this type of space. It's not that big of a step to kind of put one foot into nonfiction. And if we do this, we might be able to provide a home for people that don't have one and, and, uh, build a community, a network, if you will. And, um, and so, you know, my, my partners were super supportive about it and, and, uh, and that's really what led to starting the podcast network was, was, um, I mean, I also just love podcasts, but it was literally a way of kind of manifesting this idea of, of creating a collective, creating a network of, of voices and, and, um, and minds and who are all bonded around commitment to honestly examining and talking about the paranormal, esoteric, whatever we're calling it, the uncanny. And that's how we got here. I love that so much. And, you know, I feel like part of the reason that we joined SpectreVision, because we're very fiercely independent, and I don't think there are a lot of people who could have convinced us. to um to join a network but we were already such fans of what you guys were doing but more than anything i think it was that when we during the first early conversation like the very first conversation we ever had um i think we spent like three hours on the phone and we didn't talk business at all you wanted to talk about like like what is your what is your mission like what have your experiences been why are you doing this work and to me somebody who was coming to it from that place. I know for Jay as well, that was huge because you talk about this subset of people who have this sort of expanded range of experiences. And I would say that within that subset, there seems to be honestly a pretty significant percentage of us who, along with these experiences, we have this kind of sense of mission that although it's kind of maybe the last thing we want to talk about, that it's the thing that we're absolutely supposed to talk about. And I know for me, I carried so much shame about that in particular, maybe even more than telling people I've had precognitive events or I got a call from my dead father after he died. Like those things feel easier to say than I have a sense of mission around this. And I think I should be talking about it because there's something about that that's like self-aggrandizing or something. But there are so many of us who are feeling that way. And I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the process. You have to go through this initial process of accepting that you're an experiencer and that you've had these strange things happen and what that means. But then there's this other process that happens when this deep inquiry and affinity for this topic kind of becomes a vocation. And I don't feel like people talk about that enough. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about what that process was like. Sure. Well, and look, I mean, you know, not to reveal the woman behind the curtain, but I mean, this is a topic that the three of us have bonded quite a bit. So it's hard. It's really hard. And I think that I think that the paranormal is kind of unique in that. For people who haven't experienced it, it's really there's really not an entry point. There's it doesn't serve as a metaphor for some other emotional experience that they can plug themselves into. And I've struggled with it. I've struggled with how do I, the only way that I can achieve this goal of helping others who are experiencers feel that they're not alone and give them an invitation to join in this community is to be open about it publicly. But every time for every two people that I reach, I've probably alienated a hundred. Right. And, you know, I kind of have this deal with myself that anytime I'm doing any kind of speaking engagement, whether it's public or private, and I teach at the film school at USC. So this applies to that as well. At some point, I talk about being an experiencer. experiencer and and uh you know i i remember the first time i did i was on a panel at la comic-con and we were i don't remember what the panel was about it wasn't about this and i was in a room with maybe i don't know 300 people in it and at a certain point i went okay i'm doing it it went there was an organic moment and i spoke about being an experiencer and i'm sure you guys relate to this you the energy in the room just turn upside down it got very uncomfortable and and and i could i looked out and i you know look part of part of being the experiencer is you're very sensitive to these types of things and you can feel when emotional shifts happen and so you know i i i looked i kind of looked felt around the room and went i just freaked out almost everybody in this room is having a really hard time with me right now but i think you know similar to keel's percentages it was like 30 were like what did he say and 10 were like oh my god right and it's what happens after that's so meaningful is that it's that little cluster of people that come over they you typically wait until everyone else is gone because they don't want to speak in front of anyone and they say you know can i ask you about what you said and um and it happens in my class too um there my class is a film class it's not about the esoteric in any way um but it um i do i do there's a day when i decidedly talk about this and i related to creativity which is i think something we should talk about because i've ultimately come to believe that creativity is is parent it's you know that you're receiving signals from what keel said calls some central source which is a phrase i love um and so that's the context in which i bring it up in class but but you know every time i do i typically have about 40 students um i can i can see a large percentage of them get really uncomfortable and um but there's always one or two where i i know when I get home at night, I'm going to have emails asking for office hours. And, and then I end up kind of being a mentor to these kids in dealing with the fact that they're experiencers and, and, and that's extremely rewarding. So, um, so it's hard and, and yes. And I, you know, I think, you know, Kelly, I do, I still, every time I talk about this, there's a voice in the back of my head saying, um, it's the voice of the critic and the critic says, um, you're making this up. you're looking for attention. You're trying to make your life seem more interesting than it is. You're a liar. You're a fool. You know, it's all of these nagging doubts that I don't think I know any experiencer who doesn't talk about this. Right down to the problem of, I think we've all dealt with, which is, you know, you can have like a life changing, undeniable paranormal experience. and a couple months later you're like did I make that up did that not happen you know and uh you know you know I I've become quite um preoccupied with evidence not to prove it to anyone else but to myself right and you know so I as you know I shared a lot with you but you know I I have an unusually high number of videos and and photographs um so you know so I as you know I shared a lot with you but you know I have an unusually high number of videos and photographs So you know sometimes I go back to these things and I like I know I didn make this up I know this happened. You know, my memory is accurate. So that's so that's one problem. The other, which is why I was so moved by your episode of Cosmosis, the origin of that episode, because it's something the three of us have bonded around a lot, is that it's very hard to be vulnerable in public. And the act of being an experiencer is incredibly vulnerable. There's no way to deal with a mascot. You know, and so I think what what what I've struggled with is someone who does speak about it publicly a lot. And it never stops being weird ever, like even when I'm in the warmest room imaginable, as soon as I hear the words, my whole body gets tingly and I feel nervous and I hear the judge, you know, I hear the critic. It's one thing to talk about vulnerable things. It's another thing to talk about vulnerable things in a vulnerable way. And so it's the latter that I'm working on. And I was so blown away by the Origins episode because you did something that I've not succeeded in doing, which is talking about vulnerable things in a vulnerable way. And I think that it's all part and parcel of the mission of making art, which is art advocates for vulnerability, for normalizing vulnerability, for not demonizing it or ridiculing it. And so, you know, in this way, this is an extremely long answer to your question, Jay. I think for me, being an artist and being an advocate for experiencers is no longer two different things. yeah i i would tend to agree um absolutely and and the way that kelly was talking about earlier and yourself in terms of the way that the project and the mission and the life as an experiencer all starts to blend together and it just keeps rolling into one bigger project or it's challenging to not think of it that way in some way right yeah i mean with say the experiencer group for me and with the podcast and the docuseries etc and our other projects there i still i think of it all as this kind of like network of opportunities and something that feeds itself and i know that kelly feels similarly in in her own way about that as well and thanks for bringing up origins i you know i remember i remember exactly where i was standing when when kelly pitched me on the idea of me doing the cold open for origins she was like you know how you always get other other experiencers to be the cold open like why don't you do it and i was like it was like god damn it yeah well you know stories stories have protagonists and and it's a funny thing when you're living in public because you you are both the author and the protagonist of a narrative and it's a very complicated kind of thing and and um that that you know we're people aren't built for this kind of thinking naturally. But, you know, you have to do it. and, you know, like, you know, I, I was extremely blessed to have a relationship with Jerry Lewis, you know, the, the great filmmaker and actor and comedian and who mentored me for the last 10 years of his life. And, and, you know, he used to talk about how he, I remember when we were first getting to know each other, he would describe how he shot his films and he, he would say, uh, i'd have him in a close-up but i always made sure i had a had him in why because i didn't know what the hell that crazy lunatic was going to do and it took me a while to realize he was referring to that jerry that actor that he jerry the director would figure out how to cover jerry the actor because jerry the actor was going to pay no mind to what the director had designed that makes a lot of sense that was a i think a really um that's really instructive i think for what we we all do You know, we're not performers, but we are the subjects of our own documentaries in some ways as podcasters and public storytellers. And it's a very complex and challenging dynamic. It really reminds me. Yeah, that day when when we sat down to do that cold open for Origins, you know, we just have one other person, Justin, who's incredible, helping us out with with the shoots at this point. and um kind of running around looking at the cameras looking at all the settings making sure the light doing what it's supposed to do having like traced out the sun to make sure that it's following the right way through the window when we're going to be shooting that day you know all that good stuff playing around with the audio and there's just so many variables and yeah there's something about that in terms of like director to to being in front of the camera and i think that there's probably some of that that kelly's experience and and even yourself at this point daniel where it reminds me actually of i uh i was walking to my old art studio one day um this was maybe eight years ago and i was in my own head and i was using i was just kind of up in my mental space and i was continuing to work on the painting that i had at the studio so you know it was sitting there in my mind's eye and i'm kind of like playing around with the variables of that painting in my mind's eye as i'm walking to the studio and then like i look down and there is a girl walking out of an apartment building this is in the kind of little india area of jersey city it's indian neighborhood and primarily our south asian neighborhood and um and for whatever reason this this child like gave me this strange flash that seemed to be like a memory from like not my own life and or not like this incarnation or however you want to put that and for some and this girl looked exactly like this like weird brief flash memory all right that had no connection to my prior history and i started kept walking down the hill and i started crying out of like this weird resonance with this memory that wasn't mine right well a couple a couple months later i have an old friend i have an old friend who um is a tibetan translator like his his gig is not just translating tibetan text at a monastery but he goes to retreats and live translates for monks and things like that right and so he was coming into town into new york with this uh monk that he'll live translate for and we went out to dinner um and that was really sweet and justin this friend not the guy that works with us these days was offering to ask to translate some questions from to me to the monk and back etc over the course of this dinner and i asked him about that and i was like you know i had this weird flash and you know i just saw this girl and he was like well what was happening right before that and then i i talked about the the creative space being up in my creative head you know and and he was like ah ha ha and there's like a there's like a whole lineage to that idea there's this whole thought line and he's like that's exactly how it happens you know that is the most likely time for you to be able to kind of like dip into this larger memory well and i was blown away you know i can't remember the tibetan term that he had for this but i i was i was astonished and there's something about that in the creative act and even in that moment on set where i was like going from one completely different headspace to another and for some reason it was able to pull me into exactly the kind of headspace that i needed to be in for some reason does that make sense 100 yeah well it gets to the question of you know where when we create where is it coming from you know is it coming from within or is it coming from without and i think the answer is both or more importantly there's no difference right it's like you know if you could see forever eventually you'd see the back of your own head um uh one of the my favorite things ever made by people is a short film by charles and ray eames made in 1977 called powers of 10 you guys ever seen it yeah amazing film really brilliant and so it's it it plays like it's a psa but it's deeply philosophical so it's it starts with a couple lying on a blanket in um in a park in chicago and which is where i'm from and then the camera you know through visual effects it pulls out to the um greatest distance that in 1977 we had been able to look at or measure with telescopes, etc., which is, I think, 40 powers of 10, I think. And it details every level of when first you're looking at your galaxy and then, you know, I'm not smart enough to describe this, but then it goes back in and it goes into the pores on the man's hand and it does the same thing going into the interverse. And what's so remarkable about it is that they look the same. right and and you know i think about that and then i think about horton here's a who right which is there's there's horton is minding whoville which lives on a flower and but the thing that doesn't that story doesn't get into that i always feel like should be the the real ending is is the understanding that horton also lives on a flower right there's a horton also has a minder that's outside and also whoville maybe also has a little city on a flower it goes on infinitely in both directions and um i i do believe that this is what's happening like in and in one way we're giants and in another we're bacteria and we're so locked into the reality that we're in that we don't think about these things like we don't think about where we fit in in the grand scheme of nature but um but you know so when you create where you know where is that coming from i think you know anyone who's creative has had that experience of where it's not mine you know you feel like you're channeling something and and and then you know we also talk about automatic writing as and in that context we say well that's literally a spirit is taking control of your hand but but you know they're a painter can say well a spirit took hold of my brush right it's they they all it is the same event in my opinion and and where it really gets wild is also 77 for some strange reason um uh which is also the year i saw the twilight zone uh was that philip k dick speech in paris um when he was um he was the keynote speaker at a sci-fi convention and he showed up with this stack of typed papers that he read from and he said um i think i love the way he says it he says i'm about to speak about something that as far as i know no one has ever spoken about before but i believe i'm i am far from the first to experience it and he literally says that he was visited by one of his own characters who explained to him that his stories are real and that they exist in alternate realities. And he then talks about deja vu being that he says we live in a simulated reality. He basically describes the movie The Matrix, right? Which I'm sure, you know, was largely inspired by that speech in some ways. But, you know, he took it to the next level and literally said, I receive my stories from creatures, entities outside of our reality. I think it's such an interesting thing, this kind of way in which I've come to see creativity as being paranormal in the way that you're talking about. You know, I'm a multimodal experiencer. Some people would say a super experiencer is the term that's starting to be used. It's hard for me to identify as that when you're when your best friend is Jay. I just my spectrum is a little skewed or even I mean, Daniel, like I'm the very lucky recipient of many of your like incredible photos and videos. I've never met anybody actually who has so many that are so compelling. It's really fascinating. So I don't always identify that way. But I found that even with all of these different experiences that I've had throughout my life that were anomalous, that probably what I I experience contact most frequently or what I've come to identify as contact through the creative process where there's that moment where you're creating this thing. and I know that it's I know that it's finished when it doesn't feel like mine anymore that's how I know that I've gotten to the place that I'm trying to get to when it feels like like a plant that started to like grow towards the light like a light that I didn't know was there is when I'm like okay now I've I've done it now it's ready to go out into the world and a new and so I think for a while I was almost reluctant to share that experience because it's so deeply spiritual and And it felt like I don't know if I even can do this with other people. But then once I started doing it with other people and understanding that collaborative creativity, particularly with people who also experience their creativity in that way, unlocks this whole other level. Like the making of Origins was really kind of a spiritual experience in so many ways. And like we brought in Justin, who did a lot of camera work for us and a lot of the kind of really gorgeous landscape and nature shots that were taken. And there's this one shot in the show. It's just like a couple of seconds, but it's it's just the light coming through the trees, the sun coming through the trees in the forest. And I feel like somehow with that shot, he managed to articulate the heart and the thesis of this episode in a way that I couldn't have written if I had 5,000 words. And it's just it's a really beautiful thing when it comes together like that. And so I guess where I'm going with this is what has it been like to grow the SpectreVision network? Because you're kind of like becoming this node for people like us who are, you know, experiencing and creating and living and working and following a vocation in this way. Like, has that been what has that been like for you? Well, it's wonderful. I love it. I mean, I'm at my best. It took me a lot of trial and error to figure this out about myself. But where I am, I think, most useful and happiest is when I'm in service of other creators. It's the juice for me. It's what I love doing. And for years, I did it with film directors. But now I feel like I'm able to do it with folks like you. And I mean, it's incredibly gratifying. Maybe it's some thinly veiled form of narcissism. I'm constantly proving that I'm of value to myself by supporting other people. But, you know, it's great. And, you know, at a time when there's a strange confluence of like the media landscape kind of collapsing and being in my 50s, sometimes and whatever the fuck is going on in the greater society. sometimes it's kind of hard i go i don't know what this sense of um things coming to an end is from i don't know if it's that i'm contemplating my own death or that's the end like my industry's falling apart or is there some hopefully healthy armageddon around the corner all of the above none of the above i don't know but i think that this the word the message behind all this stuff is really important it really matters and and i guess it gets back to what you're saying about our first meeting. I mean, the best meetings are always the ones where you don't even talk about the work. You know, you realize, oh, we didn't even talk about it because you've met someone so like-minded that you're, you know, you're just like a kid at a sleepover. You just want to like stay up all night talking about everything. But yeah, I mean, you know, I care very deeply about this stuff and I care about it being represented honestly and by people who are caring and compassionate like you guys are and like any industry there's toxic as you guys well know there's a lot of toxicity out there too and and so i think which is also you know one of the sort of primary um tenets of spectra version that that i didn't mention that elijah and i talked about very openly was we wanted to create a space that was free of toxicity which is so hard to find it be business um and i think you know so that hopefully extends to this but you know i i I appreciate you describing me that way. And yeah it I would say you know maybe one of the most gratifying things I done in my life There something else that you been doing recently that is tied in with SpectraVision and tied in with the paranormal You have this new comic book, High Strangeness, right? Here's issue one. Issue two is coming out this week. Here we are in November on Wednesday. and you already have book three in the can how you're doing this with pony press you're doing this with a writer named chris condon you're can you describe the process of how this kind of came together what does this look like and you know it seems like a unique collaborative effort with you kind of organizing uh other creators like you were talking about just now and yeah anyway How did this all come together? Are those other creator collaborators interested in the paranormal? Did they come into this with those kinds of, with, you know, wanting to follow things like Men in Black and the Abominable Snowman and whatever else you're going to be covering in this? Yeah, yeah. It's been fascinating. I mean, it came about very organically. um i had a meeting with um hunter garnson and his team came into the spectra region office a few years ago and they just had the idea of collaborating with us on something but there was no agenda about what it was and i had the um at one point hunter like started looking over at my bookshelf and i was i could tell like something had caught his eye and i said what are you looking at and he said oh he noticed that i had the um time life mysteries of the unknown series he like And if you've got those, you can spot those spines. And, you know, he he was like, is that the mysteries of the unknown? I said, I said, are you into this stuff? And he was like, very much so. Are you into this stuff? So it turns out he's like us. And and that led to, OK, let's let's put a project together that is in this space. But even more specifically. Sitting with someone else who was a content creator, who was also an experiencer. I mean, he I don't think he identifies himself that way, even though he has told me about several experiences that he's had. But eventually we came around to the fact that there is this kind of new school of thinking. It's not that new, but it's it which is, you know, the 40 and Kylian Val alien should be the unifying theory. Right. Which which, you know, when I first discovered it, when I was first grappling with everything that was happening to me was like hugely revelatory. And just was like the first time anything made any sense. Like, oh, right. Of course, all part of the same thing. Nothing else makes any sense. The idea of the unifying theory had never really been dealt with. And, you know, even the I love the movie, the Mothman prophecies, but it doesn't really capture the book in ways that were, I'm sure, the fault of the studio, because I've heard I've never met the screenwriter, but I'm constantly hearing about what a great guy he is. Um, uh, so it, you know, became like in comics, there's so much freedom to experiment. The, the mission was let's do the first series that is, um, truly a truly accurate representation of the phenomenon as we understand it. And which is, you know, strange and beguiling and, and, and it, it kind of gets at one of the things that, that I had been struggling with just as a storyteller, which is that part of the tension between paranormal phenomena and the movie and television business is that the traditional three-act story structure demands a resolution, right? It's a mysterious soul at the end. And as anyone who's experienced the paranormal knows, it's the exact opposite with the paranormal. A structured narrative, Aristotelianly structured narrative, begins with a big open question. It narrows and narrows and narrows until there's an answer, a pinprick. The paranormal is the opposite. It starts with a pinprick, and the more you engage with it, the bigger and more vast and confusing it gets. There is no end. I mean, I don't know about you. I've never on any paranormal thread I've pulled have I ever gone, there's an answer. Actually, one time, only one time did I actually get an answer. And that's in its nature is, you know, its nature is that it refuses to give you answers. It's part of how it challenges you. And I do have come to believe that it is each of us who is an experience or who chooses to engage is in an intimate relationship with the phenomenon. You are in each other's lives. You're trading messages back and forth. I mean, they're subtle. you've got to really be paying attention to receive them but um so the there's this inherent problem of you know it's it's why although i do watch it sometimes but i you know i i get so frustrated with like the discovery plus programming because they force these resolutions on things that are just not real they're just totally inorganic and so you know as it pertains to storytelling in a Hollywood context, this is very challenging because to really portray something accurately and truthfully in this field means to leave it open-ended or open-ended is not even the right... It's endlessly unfolding. It never stops. So this was the other thing that we spoke about with this comic book series was it's only in comics that you could get away with something like this. So it's five issues. You know, there may be another season. We're talking about it. I'm waiting to hear. But it's, you know, I hope I'm not spoiling anything, but it gets bigger and more mysterious as it goes on. The first story is fairly straightforward. The second, a little less. And by the fifth, it's you're just in Candyland. Fantastic. Well, it's really phenomenal. I was really honored because I got to write an essay for the third edition, which will be coming out next month. It's about synchronicities. And I got to tell the story, among many other things, how I got together with my husband. And but really a synchronicity that rerouted my entire life. Like my the version of me that exists now could not possibly exist if this hadn't happened. So that was a fun, a fun story to tell. And we'll definitely be reminding everybody next month when that comes out. But I also wanted to take a minute to talk about another project that just came out, the film you guys released, Rabbit Trap, which I was so blown away by. I thought it was absolutely phenomenal. And I think our audience would really enjoy it. Particularly, I know there's a lot of overlap with our audience and the audience of another phenomenal podcast on the Spectre Vision Network, which is the Modern Fairy Sightings podcast. I think if you're into that kind of lore that you're going to absolutely love this film. But I think it's such a beautiful example of what you were talking about at the beginning of what a genre film can be, where kind of, you know, you have all of this mystery and lore and all of that. But like the real horror kind of ends up being confronting the self and like the darkness comes from this sort of deep transformational initiatory process without giving too much away. But I just wanted to congratulate you on that film and recommend it to people because I thought it was stunningly beautiful. the soundtrack and the score is just haunting and the whole thing was really beautiful yeah i really appreciate that yeah i mean you know all credit goes to brent cheney who wrote and directed the film and he he is welsh and um he himself is not an experiencer but he's extremely interested in it and and you know he set out to he wanted to um he wanted to depict the experience of fairies in in a way that he understood to be the way it really works which is to say it's nothing to do with Tinkerbell, right? Like a fairy is almost an idea as much as it is a, you know, a creature. And so, you know, that was a, it was a tricky film and, you know, he, it is one that becomes more and more mysterious as it goes on and doesn't give any easy answers. And, and, and there was a tremendous tension around that as we were making the film. And, you know, there, there's a lot of money tied up in these things and and there's a lot of anxiety about withholding clear answers and you know credit to our financiers of a line who were supportive of these really challenging decisions that we ultimately made um and the film's been very divisive you know there are people who are you who they don't enjoy the experience of not being given an answer it's very unpleasant for them and others who like you guys were like oh my god thank god you know thank god someone actually did this. I believe that this, the film will stand the test of time because it is so relentlessly truthful. But, but yeah, I appreciate you saying that. No, I love that. And I think, I really believe that if you make something for everyone that you've essentially made something for no one. I totally agree. Yes. The people who get it will get it for sure. Yeah. Yeah. One thing I wanted to mention, because I just, out of respect to the people on the high strangeness, I did, I wanted to correct something. um high strangeness is the so the i designed this the story arc but each episode or each issue is was written with uh another writer um so you know there's a different and another author excuse me another writer and illustrator and a letterer and a colorist so it's a different team and it for for each of the five issues and i won't run through them all right now but um but so it's sort of like this beautiful uber collaboration and some of the most exciting talent in comics. And to answer your other question, Jay, about were the other members of the team paranormalists? I didn't know at the beginning because we were just kind of casting it based on talent and who was suitable, like a suitable fit for each story. But inevitably, there would be a moment in each process where it would come out that, Yes, almost everybody on the film is an experiencer to some degree. And in one case, I'll let them name themselves, but one person has become one through the process of creating this story because elements of the story begin to appear in their life. And I would get these texts and say, yeah, this is how this works. the last thing i want to say about it because it kind of ties everything together that we've talked about today is um the um the fifth story is um it the fifth story takes place so it the five stories leap through time it's 67 75 83 2001 and the fifth story is meant to take place kind of outside of time and so well i don't think he would mind me outing him but i went to whitley streamer we are all know and i said i don't know anyone else who can write this first of all i think i think the thing that whitley is unfairly deprived of is he's a brilliant writer like he's everyone just talks about him as you know the alien guy but the man is incredible writer So, you know, I I offer I said, would you like to write this one? And he said, you know, initially said yes. His schedule ended up so that he couldn't do it. And so we found this out pretty close to the deadline and everybody went into a panic and they were like, who else can do this? And I was like, there's nobody like it's, you know, Whitley's been outside of the stream of time. And they said, can you do it? And I said, absolutely not. I don't know what that is out there. I can't. so you know it's like okay what about we started running through all these grant morrison was like we're never going to get grant morrison and so finally they were like daniel you have to write it and i was like in a panic about it um that weekend it was it was this outline was due like in a week and that weekend happened to be contact in the desert where i saw you guys um so i i started with i said okay i'm gonna this is i know this is gonna involve mantis beings that's so that's all i had right and so i started reading about mantis beings and and when ariel my wife and i were driving out to palm springs for contact i said do you mind if we listen to some podcasts about mantis beings sure so we're listening to these podcasts and we're driving on the highway And at one point, Ariel reaches up and she puts the visor down. And a praying mantis falls out from under the visor. It lands on the median in the car. And we're both like, shut up. This just can't be. This is crazy, right? After contact was over, we had booked a house in the desert for a few nights. So we went out to Joshua tree and we found this place that was on the edge of nowhere. It was like right up against the military base. So, um, truly no one else around for miles and miles. And, uh, and I was like, I have to come out of here with a story outline that I don't know how to write. And so, uh, we got packed and I walked out and I had these little red notebooks I work in and I, and I, I, I opened my notebook and I put it down on this table outside. And I felt like an idiot, but I looked up and I said, okay, I'm ready. I'm ready to receive, right? And then I just decided I'm not going to think about this anymore. And throughout the weekend, ideas kept coming to me and I was scribbling them and scribbling them. And by the time we left, I had a story that I didn't understand. And I decided, okay, I'm going with this. So I turned it in and I said, I don't fully understand this, but this is what I received in the desert and I'm going to honor that. And this is the story that we're going to tell. So we brought on Christian Ward is, you know, co-wrote the script with me. But really, I think the fifth book was written by entities from outside of the stream of time. And I think it's a nice way to wrap up all of the elements of our conversation. We'll see how it goes. I'm very nervous about it. I hope that it actually resonates for people and makes some degree of sense. I'm so excited. I can't wait for it. It's great. That's so cool. It's interesting how mantids have that. So many people have had experiences like that, where the larger, kind of paranormal mantid beings talking about them having experiences with them yeah all of that people then have these like bizarre synchronicities with like the little guys and that seems to be well now they're they will i'd never seen a mantis before in my life and now i'm seeing they're like all over the place now it's hard to ignore yeah it's they see you now they see that's right oh gosh well daniel this has been such an incredible conversation i feel like we could just keep talking for hours and hours um it's been so great to have you here thank you for thanks for everything man like it's been so great to join spectre vision it's been so great to just get to know you as a friend and to have you as a a mentor and a peer and a collaborator and all of the things so thank you and uh it's been fabulous having you here oh man i i echo every single word you said back to you guys i feel like i'm i'm learning from you and i'm um um i'm i'm starstruck by you guys. You're rock stars. Oh, gosh. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Thanks, Daniel. Thank you. That's it for this episode. Cosmosis is brought to you by Spectre Vision Radio and on Talkalypse Productions. If you want to check out our docu-series, Cosmosis, UFOs, and a New Reality, head over to cosmosis.media to find out where to watch. Music for Cosmosis is by Michael Rubino. The soundtrack for season one of our docu-series is now available on all major music streaming platforms. If you want to go even deeper and support our work, join us on Patreon. You'll get early access to ad-free episodes, monthly Zoom calls with us and special guests, and more. You can find all the links in the episode description. And with that, we'll see you next time. now receiving frequency transmission what scares me is getting stuck really late at night in an unfamiliar town at some intersection that has an inexplicable red light that shouldn't even be red because there's no one around for miles. It's three in the morning, and yet there I am, the engine idling, and the seconds are ticking, and I'm looking to the left, and looking to the right in the shadows. At that moment, I'm always convinced that I've been set up by the forces of darkness, and this is the moment when something is going to come out of the dark at my car, and that thing is going to be... I don't know. Let's just say the Wendigo. Sure. Transmission complete. Stay tuned to Spector Vision Radio. Stay. Stay.