Bus Stop Seminars

In honor of spooky season we're going down to Key West to visit with one of the most haunted objects in history, Robert The Doll. He's considered to be one of the inspirations for the Chucky franchise and has haunted thousands of people who made the mistake of not showing him respect. Robert's display case at the Fort East Martello Museum is littered with countless letters of apology to prove it. If you deal with him at all, you must ask his permission. Please don't haunt us Robert!

The Ummo Affair is one of the most elaborate alien hoaxes ever conceived (at least that we know about!). Starting in the 1960s and carrying on for decades, over a thousand pages of highly detailed letters were mailed to various recipients throughout Spain, France and other parts of Europe. Along with the letters came cryptic phone calls and even staged UFO sightings all claiming to be from members of an advanced civilization that had arrived to Earth from the Planet Ummo. The scientific concepts in the letters were complex enough to fool scientists and spawned its own industry of books and symposiums on the subject. The volume of information and level of detail made it hard for people to accept that it all came from one man, Jose Luis Jordan Pena, who later admitted in the 1990s that it was just a trick to see if he could get people to believe. The story eventually grew out of his control and inspired multiple dangerous cults centered around the Ummo legend. JUST WAIT TILL OURS GETS STARTED!

Michael Aquino was a decorated U. S. Army officer specializing in military intelligence and psychological operations who was simultaneously running his own branch of Satanism called the Temple of Set. We're getting a little dark this month! On this episode we're not only diving into a how strange his life was but also taking a look at the landscape of contemporary Satanism between the atheistic, political activists of the Satanic Temple to the terrifying side of the Order of Nine Angles. Hail Yourself!

In observance of America's semiquincentennial, we're going to dive into the legend of The Count of St. Germain - a larger than life figure who is considered the "God of Freedom for this system of worlds," in esoteric tradition. He was, from what we know, an 18th century adventurer and alchemist with no known age or origin who somehow charmed himself into the highest ranks of European society. He possessed more talents than seemed possible to gain in a single lifetime and ALLEGEDLY made himself immortal. His status in the centuries after his SUPPOSED death has elevated to that of an Ascended Master. It was said he warned Marie Antoinette of the coming French Revolution. It was also said he was even present at the signing of the Declaration of Independence. OR was this all nonsense and was the Count just an extremely clever conman? Perhaps!

For the first of our Bus Stop Bench series we're joined with special guest John to discuss the use of LSD in the 1950s; primarily by the U.S. government but also how it seeped into broader society. The buttoned up & repressed era of the 1950s is not a time we typically associate with acid and yet that's when the research really kicked off. So throw on your best tie dye cardigan and join us as we play stickball with your mind!

The Sarajevo Safari was an ALLEGED war tourism phenomenon that POSSIBLY happened during the siege of Sarajevo between 1992 to 1996. Wealthy foreigners MAY HAVE been paying huge sums of money to the Serbian military for the opportunity to shoot civilians with sniper rifles. It could be a complete myth, but the story has carried on to this day and just last year (2025) the Public Prosecutor's Office in Milan opened an ongoing investigation into the alleged participation of Italian citizens in these horrific crimes. We wanted to come back with something light!

The 1st semester of Bus Stop Seminars has come to a close. We'll be back soon once we've banked some more episodes. In the meantime, please leave a comment for any topics you'd want us to cover. Thank you very much for joining this cult in progress! Happy Holidays!

To close out our series on the life and mind of John A. Keel, we're going to dive into his master's thesis on the paranormal subject captured in the book The Eighth Tower. Does it make sense? No. Does it have any real evidence? Also no. But is it just the kind of ludicrous escapism your life has been craving? Maybe!

Have you heard about Mothman, but never felt like reading the book? Do you want three guys at a bus stop to give you all the talking points so you don't have to? You got nothing better to do right?

For this series we're going to explore the life and work of ufologist John Alva Keel. The man responsible for the Mothman Prophecies, in some ways the Men in Black franchise, as well as the concept of "ultraterrestrials" to explain the UFO phenomenon. Join us on the bleeding edge of Woo Woo!