Peer Beyond The Veil

In 1735 on a dark and turbulent night in the New Jersey Pine Barrens, Jane Leeds was struggling to cope with her twelve children. Upon finding that was indeed pregnant with a thirteenth, she cried out in frustration, proclaiming that the unborn child would be the devil itself.

When it was born the child appeared to have hooves, thick wings and the head of a goat. It growled and moaned, pushed itself free of the midwife, and flew away, up the chimney and away into the pines. Still seen to this day, the unholy child would be known forevermore as the Jersey Devil.

Such stories are surely only folk tales, myths, legends, with little more to them.

But the Jersey Devil is not the only thing haunting the dark corners of the garden state.

The third state to be ratified in 1787, it has a long history which is mired in horror and bloodshed, murder and mystery.

From the Spy House in Bayshore, where legendary pirate Captain Morgan tortured people in the basement to the Devils Tree in Bernards Township, a supposed gateway to the otherworld which curses any who try to fell it, there are no shortage of terrifying locations.

In these twisting times that we all now live, many of us are confined to our homes.

But no virus shall halt the intrepid.

Leading the charge, determined to continue the investigation into what walks those dark hallways, those lonely graveyards and ancient inns, Richard Moschella has a project in his hands.

His New Jersey Paranormal Project, comprising a perfectly-selected group of extremely talented and dedicated investigators, have made it their mission to unearth what lies beneath.

Richard recently compiled some of the most gripping, most compelling, downright weirdest tales from their project into a book, and he joins us tonight to talk about some of them, and to share with us what pulls him from his home, time and again, to Peer Beyond The Veil.

Before we drop off the cliff into the murky waters of season 2, we step outside for a breath of air and to analyse what draws us all to be here, and to allow ourselves to appreciate that we are all just simple humans, all on our own journeys. 

In this small but varied community, we occupy the same websites, chatrooms, conference halls, and we read the same books and listen to the same podcasts.

The overall quest for answers and for the truth, or indeed, our truth, is that which connects us.

But we are all here for very different reasons.

Some may take scientific approaches, eager to put in place the next tiny piece of data which leads us in the right direction. Some are looking for a spiritual enlightenment, a way to connect with themselves, or the universe around them. Some look for ways to communicate with lost loved ones, to pass messages or to understand what lays ahead for themselves.

Amongst us, there are a million people with a million different reasons for why they search for that which they do.

And it is that, which truly connects us.

We are human beings, and we each appreciate that we do not have the answers to life’s mysteries.

And so, if the loud noise and bright lights of the paranormal are taken away, the individuals behind, walking, often alone, through the cluttered darkness, form the basis of all of this.

There is no man I know of who better identifies and showcases the beauty and the pain of the human story than Jim Perry.

Host of the critically-acclaimed Euphomet, a film-maker, researcher and radio broadcaster. We have the great pleasure of welcoming Jim to the show tonight as he tells us a little about what draws him to Peer Beyond The Veil.

Peer Beyond The Veil is back this March with a brand new season, bringing you more tales from behind the thin grey curtain. 

The county of Lancashire in northern England has a long and varied history of the paranormal and the unusual.

An ancient place, wrapped in centuries of toil and warfare. The buildings, many of them as old as time, still stand in places, holding the memories of what has been. A place of witches, spectres, ghostly black dogs, the lady in white and the lady in green.

The county, and the neighbouring cities of Manchester and Liverpool, paint a textured canvas of spooky colours, wisps of the unknown and the ancient twist around the stone homes and forgotten factories and mills. Where better to be a ghost hunter?

Tonight I am joined by Dan and Lindsay from Paranormal Encounters UK, a leading paranormal investigation team from the area who actively chase down that which many of us hide from.

They get themselves into the darkened spaces, the forgotten old buildings. When the door knocks, they knock back. Employing simple techniques, not swamping themselves in tech, not running for running’s sake, they seek to debunk everything first, yet have a wealth of fascinating, terrifying, entirely unexplainable evidence on film. I asked them what led them to chase the darkness and Peer Beyond The Veil

In the mid-19th Century, as paranormal research groups and organisations sprang up across the continent and into the new world, the great library of such study began to amass on the dusty shelves, each ruffled old page taking us one tiny step closer to a perceived truth, a new enlightenment, a greater understanding of what our place is in the world and beyond, and what is truly going on inside the greatest enigma known to mankind, our own minds.

As we moved into the twentieth century, our minds were as open to such notions of extra-terrestrial existence, post-mortal existence and telepathic ability as they had ever been.

Individuals such as Charles Fort paved the way for the writing of Keel, Barker and Mosely, von Daniken and Vallee.

And then, quite recently, the medium changed and ideas were able to be broadcast internationally at the simple push of a button.

And so today’s researchers, whilst still writing incredible books, have turned to their own voices and the wonder of the internet to broadcast and to connect with one another in instants.

Such is the case with my guest tonight.

Described by my fellow paranormal countryman Nick Redfern as “one of those individuals at the forefront of skilfully negotiating the dark waters that will ultimately provide us with the answers we seek”, he has secured his place at the council fire of today’s true greats. With numerous books and, quite incredibly, numerous active podcasts to his name, Micah Hanks joins us tonight to talk about what it is that keeps making him Peer Beyond The Veil.

Warning: contains actual EVP recordings.

One thing is certain though, for those whose pathway has been opened to such things, life can be a rollercoaster of weirdness.

Shadow figures stand in the corner of rooms, horrible old hags wake you from your sleep, and flickers of communication from wherever arrive to you throughout the day or week like junk mail.

It is something that most would say cannot be turned off, and something that should ideally be embraced and not shied from. Regardless, it is often beyond their control or command.

My guest tonight has spent her life being visited by the beyond, and has accepted that is now a part of her normality.

With a huge array of published books covering topics such as haunted hospitals, haunted hotels and haunted objects and items, and now her very own fascinating podcasts ‘The Ghosts That Haunt Me’, it is our great pleasure to welcome Eve S, Evans to the show to discuss how she has now come to accept the normalcy of being able to Peer Beyond The Veil.

The glimpses of the truth, the reality, the secret, that we civilians occasionally stumble onto are kept hidden away at all costs.

When information leaks, it is always deliberate. They tell us that there is disclosure, that they are willing to share information, but either it is intentional misinformation or their hands are otherwise forced.

What they know, whoever ‘they’ are, is a secret they will, and indeed have, killed to protect.

Human collateral damage is immaterial. We’re all dispensable when it comes to the master plan.

Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid admitted himself that what information we have only scratches the surface of the research and materials that the US government hold.

And whilst some nations are more open about their research programs and funding, there is still a huge veil of secrecy draped across government involvement.

My guest tonight is trying to lift the lid, rip down the curtain, kick the door off its hinges and expose the cover-up. His books detail not only the great UFO cover-up, but also that of 9/11 and of global warming, amongst others.

Far from being a conspiracy theorist as such, Andrew Johnson joins us tonight to talk through his work exposing the lies that we are habitually told. Whilst the governments aim to keep we the people in fear, drip feeding their own agendas into our lives and shaping us how they wish, Andrew implores us to try to Peer Beyond The Veil.

Many of us, perhaps too many, approach the wide-ranging fields of paranormal research with a little too much paranormal and too little research. A huge element of subjective belief and influence goes into it all, and as there is often no scientific explanation to support or validate it, science often falls at the wayside.

My guest tonight approaches things a little differently.

A clinical psychologist by trade, with a PhD awarded from the University of Glasgow for his work on hypnosis, Peter McCue falls on both sides of the aforementioned fence.

A believer that there are indeed a range of strange, unexplained, and by virtue, paranormal things that occur in our world that are yet beyond the reaches of modern scientific explanation, he approaches each case with a well-trained clinical approach.

The conclusions he draws have seemingly more weight attached to them as a result.

His books, including Paranormal Encounters on Britain’s Roads and Britain’s Paranormal Forests are extensively researched, sources cited in meticulous detail and packed full of the weird and wonderful happenings in our ancient country.

It is our great pleasure to welcome Peter to the show to discuss with us a little about what makes us want to Peer Beyond The Veil.

Scientists discover many new creatures each year, and they’re not all tiny bugs and sea worms, there are big lizards, monkeys and lemurs and sloths, dolphins and rays and species of deer and in 2010 a new species of clouded leopard. All of them existed in our world and we mostly had no idea they were there.

Some of these creatures appear to us by chance, they show themselves when we were looking for something different, in places we maybe didn’t expect. Others are searched for more intentionally. Perhaps there existed stories or tales of them from remote villages, or we found traces of evidence from a creature we didn’t yet recognise. Many of them take years and years of painstaking research to finally discover, teams of specialists go into the wild season after season, chasing down leads and reviewing hundreds of thousands of images from trail cameras in the hope of catching a glimpse of the illusive beasts.

Not too long ago, a team of specialists knew that Canadian black bears had been coming south, over the border and making homes around the forests of the Pacific North West. Hair and scat was found, very occasionally, but it took the team of highly trained trackers and experts more than five years to actually see them for the first time.

Zoological journalist and author Richard Freeman has dedicated his entire life to tracking down some of the more illusive creatures that may, or may not, share the planet with us.

As a cryptozoologist, Richard has penned 8 books and holds the role of Zoological Director for the Centre for Fortean Zoology.

He has expeditioned to some of the most remote places on the planet in search of cryptids like the Yeti, the Orang Pendek and the Almasty, and made huge strides in his pursuit of the once-presumed extinct Thylacine.

Richard joins me tonight to discuss his work and to tell us why we may not have to try that hard to Peer Beyond The Veil.