The Paranormal Nothing

Like the Salem Witch Trials of the 1600s, the New England Vampire Panic of the 1800s was a time of tremendous death as well as the perfect "breeding" ground for peasant superstitions. Colonial New Englanders came to believe that the ravaging disease "consumption" (which we know today as tuberculosis) was caused not by a bacterial contagion, but by real flesh and blood vampires literally consuming the still living members of a family. And this consumption of their vitality was taking place from beyond the grave.

The accounts of vampirism in New England would take place before famous works such as Dracula, Nosferatu and in more contemporary times, that of Max Schreck. But were the vampires of New England simply a literary or cinematic motif, like we see with so many books and movies having to do with the subject? Or are their chronicles, rooted in American history, a true story of vampire-like figures seeking victims/sustenance while remaining in the realm of the undead?

Bigfoot, Sasquatch, the Yeti, and so forth. So many names for the elusive bipedal hominid that purportedly stalks the dense forests of the Pacific Northwest. We know there are many eyewitness accounts, and we also see a multitude of grainy photos posted throughout the internet supposedly showing the outline of a "Bigfoot" type figure. Some of these photos sometimes capture glimpses of the unique face of the creature, or a footprint or even the particular cone-like structure of the head that eyewitnesses say it possesses. And of course, who hasn't seen (at some point in their life) the well known Patterson-Gimlin film which lays claim to showing a female Sasquatch lumbering across a meadow in Northern California. But without a body of evidence, there is no hard information that could be dissected and analyzed for definitive proof of Bigfoot's existence. If this is the case, can science provide an answer to Bigfoot's existence, even without a Bigfoot physical body to analyze? What other elements, grounded in hard, empirical science, can be looked at for answers as to the possible existence of Sasquatch?

The Fermi Paradox is the name given to the thought exercise proposed by scientist Enrico Fermi in 1950. The paradox asks, "If the universe is so big, containing billions of galaxies, stars and planets, and probability favors intelligent alien life being common throughout space, then… where is everybody?" What are some possible solutions to the Fermi Paradox, and of these, which are more probable than others? How is the Fermi Paradox connected to alleged alien/UFO disclosure, and how has the paradox changed our view of extraterrestrial life and humanity's place in the cosmos, in general?

The death of Elisa Lam in 2013 became a viral internet obsession. This is because of video footage released showing her exhibiting some bizarre behavior while riding an elevator in Downtown Los Angeles. The footage was released only a few days before her body was found floating in a hotel rooftop water reservoir. Authorities looking for Elisa had hoped that releasing the video would garner clues from the public about her whereabouts. The video led to a slew of conspiracy theories as the main causes of her death. Was Elisa Lam the victim of a sinister, paranormal entity that haunted the hotel she stayed at in Los Angeles? Or was her assassin someone who was actually... invisible? We'll take a look at some of the conspiracies around her death, and will then apply some frameworks to the case in order to get to the root story and see what could be the real cause behind why this cold case went viral.

The Shroud of Turin: the single most studied artifact in human history. It consists of an ancient burial cloth, containing an inexplicable image of a man who who was tortured and killed. The signs on the image point to a death via crucifixion. But the nature of the image itself, provides more questions than answers. Is the Shroud of Turin the actual burial cloth of Jesus of Nazareth? What evidence exists to support its' authenticity?

In 1903, Carl Gustav Jung, a name synonymous with the study of the mind and human behavior, actually wrote his doctoral dissertation on the topic of the psychology of occult phenomena. What led Jung to investigate and write about phenomenon such as mediums, poltergeist & other parapsychological events? And how could Jung's assertions provide a foundation for the psychology of the paranormal?

'Oumuamua, which in Hawaiian means scout, was the first interstellar object to have visited and been detected in our solar system in October 2017. The data captured for it was unique, and prompted some in the field (like Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb) to ascertain that it could be an artificial object, made by some advanced civilization that wasn't our own. What is the evidence for this assertion, and against it? And what could possibly have been the true nature of the interstellar, alien visitor known as 'Oumuamua?

A spring-heeled, fire-breathing phantom that terrorized Victorian-era London... or was the figure simply someone looking to go "viral" during mid-1800s London? We will objectively analyze the evidence regarding the mystery assailant known as Spring Heeled Jack. Was the figure simply a flesh and blood trickster, or are there more... paranormal elements to the story?

Two good friends driving home on country road on a Texas winter night in 1980 encounter a UFO hovering over a dense forest. What occurs to them next, and the after-effects of the sighting in the subsequent years, would go on to become one of ufology's best trace evidence cases of the "alien kind."

Two children in the countryside city of Cussac in southwestern France become eyewitnesses to a craft and anomalous beings. They mistake them for children at play, and then go on to witness elements of high strangeness that ensure on the part of the beings and the craft. In this week's episode of The Paranormal Nothing podcast, we'll analyze the 1967 Cussac, France "Encounter of the Third Kind" - was the encounter a hoax put on by a pair of siblings looking for attention? Or was it a legitimate case of contact with anomalous beings that up to now has not been fully analyzed?