VYS0055 | Merry ChristMups! - The Muppet Christmas Carol - Vayse to Face with Phil Ristaino: Saturnalia 2025 - Show Notes

God help us, every one! 'Tis the season of good will to all creatures and, even better, that jolly old elf, Phil Ristaino, returns to Vayse after an absence of only 4 episodes for an urgent meeting about the Muppet Christmas Carol, a film which he had never seen before researching for the episode!

With Phil's help and encouragement Hine and Buckley joyously delve into a film which has been a Vayse favourite for over 3 decades, discussing the sad and sudden demise of the genius that was Jim Henson, the connections between the muppets and spirituality, why the Muppet Christmas Carol is one of the best Christmas movies, if not one of the best movies ever made, how the spirit of Jim Henson visited his successor to the voice of Kermit... and how the Muppets got the best performance of his career out of Michael Caine (recorded 4 December 2025).

Phil Ristaino online

Jim Henson and the Muppets

The Muppet Christmas Carol

Charles Dickens - Wikipedia

Christmas Recommendations

Groundhog Day - Wikipedia

Buckley's Final Question

ChatGPT

Vayse online

Website

Special Guest: Phil Ristaino.

VYS0054 | You Can't Make An Omelette Without Breaking A Few Egregores - Vayse to Face with Joshua Cutchin - show notes

Having released 53 episodes of Vayse without interviewing Joshua Cutchin is nothing short of an embarrassment - and one that Hine and Buckley are keen to make up for. Joshua is a writer, a researcher and a musician, having written modern classics of weird non-fiction including A Trojan Feast, Ecology of Souls and most recently the mind-bending, mind-expanding and mind-blowing masterpiece, Fourth Wall Phantoms.

Like hungry Sasquatches devouring a Roc egg, Hine and Buckley are in a feeding frenzy, ravenous for Joshua's thoughts, ideas and insights. The particularly wandering conversation goes all the way from real-life encounters with fictional characters to the fabric of reality itself and the possibility that our beliefs are what holds it together... and, naturally, Hine and Buckley take the opportunity to introduce Joshua to the Peanut King... (recorded 6 November 2025)

Joshua Cutchin Links

Website - joshuacutchin.com

Instagram

You Can't Make An Omelette Without Breaking A Few Egregores

Fourth Wall Phantoms by Joshua Cutchin

Jaques Vallée - Wikipedia

John Keel - Wikipedia

Jane Goodall - Wikipedia

Bigfoot - Wikipedia

Where the Footprints End: High Strangeness and the Bigfoot Phenomenon by Joshua Cutchin and Timothy Renner

Ecology Of Souls by Joshua Cutchin

King Kong - Wikipedia

King Kong Trailer - YouTube

Stan Winston - Wikipedia

Ray Harryhausen - Wikipedia

Unexplained!: Strange Sightings, Incredible Occurrences, and Puzzling Physical Phenomena by Jerome Clark

Raincoast Sasquatch: The Bigfoot / Sasquatch Records of Southeast Alaska, Coastal British Columbia & Northwest Washington from Puget Sound to Yakutat by J. Robert Alley

A Trojan Feast by Joshua Cutchin

Anomalist Books

The Field Guide to Lake Monsters, Sea Serpents, and Other Mystery Denizens of the Deep by Loren Coleman and Patrick Huyghe - Goodreads

The Ark Encounter

Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism by Howard Schwartz

Claude Lecouteux - Wikipedia

Aimé Michel - Wikipedia

The Shadow - Wikipedia

John Constantine - Wikipedia

Embodied Imaginations: Fictional Characters Making Experiential Crossings into Real Life: An Unusual Phenomenon by Chidambaram Ramesh - Goodreads

Tulpa - Wikipedia

Fourth Wall - Wikipedia

Metalepsis - Wikipedia

Deadpool - Fandom

Deep Weird: The Varieties of High Strangeness Experience - edited by Jack Hunter - Goodreads

Ferris Bueller's Day Off - Wikipedia

Ferris Bueller's Day Off - Trailer - Youtube

The Big Lebowski - Wikipedia

The Big Lebowski - Trailer - Youtube

The Trickster and the Paranormal by George P. Hansen - Goodreads

Jacques Vallée Still Doesn’t Know What UFOs Are by Chantel Tattoli - Wired

Anxiety Dream - Wikipedia

Gift For Gardening: Is The Green Thumb A Myth? by Nikki Tilley - Gardening Know How

Placebo - Wikipedia

What’s It Like to Take Google’s Mindfulness Training? by Mirabai Bush - Mindful.org

An Airplane-Sized Bird and Roc Eggs in 1961 Miami - American Strageness - Thunderbirdphoto.com

The Monster Munch Monsters - Fandom

Smiths Crisps - Monster Munch - Dream - 1977 - UK Advert - YouTube

American Gods by Neil Gaiman - Goodreads

Hellier Season 1: Episode 1 | The Midnight Children - YouTube

Terence McKenna - Wikipedia

Hyperstition - Wikipedia

Mitch Horowitz

Mr Peanut - Planters.com

Game of Thrones - Wikipedia

Seinfeld - Wikipedia

H. P. Lovecraft - Wikipedia

Cthulhu - Wikipedia

Kenneth Grant - Wikipedia

The Blair Witch Project - Wikipedia

The Philadelphia Experiment - Wikipedia

The Montauk Project - Wikipedia

The Roswell Incident - Wikipedia

Austin Osman Spare - Wikipedia

Albert Ostman - sasquatchalberta.com

Joshua's Recommendations

King of Morning, Queen of Day by Ian McDonald - Goodreads

New Moon by Ian McDonald - Goodreads

Wolf Moon by Ian McDonald - Goodreads

Moon Rising by Ian McDonald - Goodreads

The Ridge by Michael Koryta - Goodreads

Rabbit Trap - Wikipedia

Arrival - Wikipedia

Fargo Season 2 - Wikiepdia

Red Dead Redmeption 2 - Wikipedia

Reservation Dogs - Wikipedia

Esalen Institute - Wikipedia

Labyrinth - Wikipedia

The Muppets - Wikipedia

David Bowie - Wikipedia

Hellboy - Wikiepdia

Slimer - Wikipedia

Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey - Wikipedia

Kermit the Frog - Wikipedia

Vayse online

Website

Twitter

Bluesky

Instagram

Bandcamp (Music From Vayse)

Ko-Fi

Email: [email protected]

Special Guest: Joshua Cutchin.

VYS0053 | The Mongoose Files - Vayse to Face with Gayle Fidler - Show notes

Ever since their childhood days reading the Usborne Book of Ghosts, Hine and Buckley have been obsessing over the mysterious mercurial mammalian Manx marvel - Gef the Talking Mongoose. And finally bringing Gef chat to Vayse is writer, paranormal researcher and selectively supportive spouse to a lard eating champion, Gayle Fidler.

In recent years Gayle and her curious collective of cryptid-hunters have made a pilgrimage to the Isle of Man to investigate Gef and immerse themselves in strangeness of his story. Her incredible adventures include some uncanny synchronicities, an unlikely team-up with a movie star, an unexpected connection to Aleister Crowley... and the unpredictable guidance of a certain Dr Allen Greenfield... (recorded 1 September 2025)

Gayle Links

Gayle on Spooky Isles

Gayles on LAPIS - Simon Pegg Stole Our Mongoose

Gayle Fidler Author Page - Leg Iron Books

The Mongoose Files

Gef The Talking Mongoose - National Geographic

VYS0007 | Too Much to Dream Last Night

VYS0021 | Song of the Dark Man - Vayse to Face with Darragh Mason

Spirit Box Podcast on YouTube

Song of the Dark Man - Father of Witches, Lord of the Crossroads by Darragh Mason

Twin Peaks - Wikipedia

Twin Peaks Trailer - Youtube

The Mothman Prophecies by John A Keel

Fourth Wall Phantoms by Joshua Cutchin

Weird Weekend North

What Magic is This?

English Kabala - Wikipedia

Secret Cipher Calculator

Steve Davis - Wikipedia

Isle of Man - Wikipedia

Culture of the Isle of Man

TT Races - Wikipedia

The Great Laxey Wheel - Manx National Heritage

Christopher Josiffe

Gef - The Strange Tale of an Extra-Special Talking Mongoose by Christopher Josiffe

VYS0010 | Amazing Stories - Vayse to Face with Dr Allen H Greenfield Pt.1

VYS0011 | Weird Tales - Vayse to Face with Dr Allen H Greenfield Pt.2

Nandor Fodor and the Talking Mongoose - Wikipedia

Nandor Fodor and the Talking Mongoose Trailer - Youtube

Folklands Podcast

Alexander Cannon - Wikipedia

Aleister Crowley - Wikipedia

Boleskin House

Loch Ness - Visit Scotland

Chillingham Castle

Isle of Wight

Sam the Sandown Clown - On the Wight

Mothman - Cryptid Wiki

2024 United States drone sightings - Wikipedia

Kenneth Arnold - National Air and Space Museum

LAPIS Conference

Lapis lazuli - Wikipedia

Twin Peaks - The Owls Are Not What They Seem - Youtube

Jack Parsons - Wikipedia

HP Lovecraft - Wikipedia

Kenneth Grant - Wikipedia

Mark Frost - Wikipedia

Thelema - Wikipedia

Eraserhead - Wikipedia

Eraserhead Trailer - Youtube

Mulholland Drive - Wikipedia

Mulholland Drive Trailer - Youtube

Inland Empire - Wikipedia

Inland Empire Trailer - Youtube

Prospero's Isle by John Callow

I know Catherine the Log Lady

The Stargate Conspiracy: Revealing the Truth Behind Extraterrestrial Contact, Military Intelligence and the Mysteries of Ancient Egypt by Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince - Good Reads

John Whitmore - Wikipedia

Jim Clark - Wikipedia

Sinister Forces by Peter Levenda - Goodreads

Battle Cat - Fandom.com

The Muppets - Wikipedia

Labyrinth - Wikipedia

Labyrinth - Just a Worm - YouTube

Paddington Bear - Wikipedia

Basil Brush - Wikipedia

Vayse online

Special Guest: Gayle Fidler.

VYS0052 | Goddamn Shit-sucking Vampires - Halloween 2025: The Lost Boys - Vayse to Face with Sorcha Ní Fhlain - Show Notes

"Sleep all day. Party all night. Never grow old. Never die." - Sounds exhausting. This is not how Hine and Buckley do Halloween anymore. So, instead of re-living their twenties, or the Lost Decade, as they call it, they talk to Dr Sorcha Ní Fhlainn about the greatest horror movie of the 1980s, or the Lost Boys, as they call it.

Sorcha is a film critic, a writer, an academic - a Reader in Film Studies with a specialism in American Film at Manchester Metropolitan University specialising in Gothic Studies and Horror Cinema, with a particular focus on Vampires - and an all-round legend who helps Hine and Buckley get their teeth stuck deep into Joel Schumacher's 1987 masterpiece without getting lost in the gory details (but never over-looking the Corey details).

The Lost Boys stands up well to scrutiny (well, mostly...kind of...) and Sorcha leads a discussion ranging from the transplanting of vampiric folklore from dark-ages Europe to MTV-era USA, the history of the vampire as a metaphor in literature and cinema, the way in which the Lost Boys and contemporary 1980s vampire movies, Near Dark and Fright Night contributed to queer horror, exactly what it is that makes the Lost Boys one of the greatest movies of all time... and what's the deal with the greased up, pumped up, beach-party thrusting sax-player and why is it that he's brilliant? (recorded 6 October 2025)

Dr Sorcha Ní Fhlainn

The Lost Boys

Sorcha's Recommendations

Vayse online

Special Guest: Sorcha Ní Fhlainn.

VYS0051 | Can You Recommend The Moon? - Vayse to Face with Phil Ristaino - Show notes

Finally finding someone who is more obsessed with Twin Peaks and Under the Silver Lake that they are, Hine and Buckley enthusiastically welcome Phil Ristaino to Vayse. Phil has an intimidatingly impressive CV, as an actor, artist, singer and host of the joyful, thoughtful and perhaps a little insane Post Relevant Podcast, a podcast which analyses the meaning and symbolism of Under the Silver Lake and Twin Peaks the Return in minute, intelligent and perhaps a little insane detail.

The discussion galavants from Phil's special areas of obsession, Under the Silver Lake and Twin Peaks, to his wider thoughts on magic, the essential intrinsic delight of creativity, art as an expression of life... and then out of nowhere Phil recommends the moon... (Recorded 9 June 2025)

Thanks to Phil for his time and thanks, as always to Keith for the show notes - you can find him on Bluesky here: @peakflow.bsky.social

Phil Ristaino online

Intro

Vayse to Face with Phil Ristaino

Phil’s recommendations

Buckley’s closing question

Vayse online

Special Guest: Phil Ristaino.

VYS0050 | One And The Same - Vayse to Face with Peter C Hine - Show Notes

By some miracle Hine and Buckley have made it to episode 50 and to make the occasion they welcome to Vayse close collaborator and friend of the show, Peter C Hine. Peter is a podcaster, writer and musician from Manchester UK. Together with Stephen James Buckley he co-founded Vayse, a podcast about weird stuff, now celebrating it's 50th episode. The conversation flows from how Vayse was formed, how Peter first became interested in all things weird, why his magical practice is on pause, how deep disillusionment with the current occult scene runs, what does the future hold for Vayse and just how many time can he mention Six Ways, Hellier and Penny Royal in a single interview? (Recorded 22 May 2025)

Thanks to all our guests over the last 50 episodes and to everyone who has listened. Thanks as always to Keith for sorting out the show notes - you can find him on Bluesky here: @peakflow.bsky.social

Buckley’s/Hine’s Intro

Elon Musk's 14 Children: All About the Tesla CEO's Sons and Daughters and the 4 Women He Shares Them With - People.com

Vayse to Vayse with Peter C. Hine

The AP Strange Show: Exploring the Afterlife with Peter C. Hine (3xtC)

Peter’s recommendations (and music project)

Ted Lasso Official Trailer | Apple TV+ - YouTube

Buckley’s closing question

Vayse online

Website

VYS0049 | Machines of Loving Vayse - Vayse to Face with Sequoyah Kennedy v2.0 - Show Notes

Imagine, if you will, a world burning as society crumbles (is this stretching you?), in the perpetual, scorched twighlight of a dying planet, the determined foot of a tall figure crushes a skull on a landscape forged of human bones - that foot belongs to Sequoyah Kennedy and the human bones are the vestiges of the common myths and misunderstandings about artificial intelligence... apparently AI's are better than humans at devising effective metaphors in order to convey useful information - and we'll have to hope for their sake that's true.

In this episode Hine and Buckley invite back to Vayse one of the most intelligent and articulate humans in the material world, Sequoyah Kennedy. Since the Nonsense Bazaar ended SK has gone deep down the rabbit hole of large language models and has returned to help Hine and Buckley get their heads round what artificial intelligence actually means in 2025 and dismisses some of the ubiquitous confusion which surrounds the topic: is the best use of AI as personal assistant and unpaid artists? Are there demons haunting cyberspace? Do androids dream of electric sheep? and he touches on one of the big questions of our time - are we all in very real danger from this soulless, characterless mockery of human ingenuity with no empathy, no conscience and no soul... or will Elon Musk just finally piss off so that we can live in glorious harmony with our wonderful, wise robot buddies? (recorded 11 March)

Thanks to Sequoyah for his patenience in explaining these ocmplex ideas to two middle-aged luddites and thanks, as always to Special K - the man who makes sense of our ramblings, Keith who once again did a sterling job of the show notes. You can give him a follow on Blue Sky here: @peakflow.bsky.social

Sequoyah Kennedy online

Sequoyah's Patreon - Find the links to SK's custom chatbots and other great content here

Hine’s (?) Intro

AI Voice Cloning: Is It the Future or a Cybersecurity Nightmare? - Neil Sahota

Vayse to Face with Sequoyah Kennedy

What is Late-Stage Capitalism? - The Balance

Sequoyah’s recommendations (and other stuff)

ChatGPT website

Buckley’s closing question

Data - Best Moments - YouTube

Vayse online

Website

Special Guest: Sequoyah Kennedy.

VYS0048 | Chinese Sex Balloons - Vayse to Face with Edwina Quatermass-Palmer - Show Notes

Making her podcasting debut, Hine and Buckley welcome the weird, wonderful and wonderfully weird Edwina Quatermass-Palmer to Vayse. Worker of a job so secret that Hine and Buckley actually know what she does, possessor of the coolest name available to the English speaking world and wearer of a genuinely gravity defying hairstyle, EQP is an original and brilliant thinker, a valuable and treasured member of the Vayse discord community, a musician and rambler on the path less travelled. The conversation moves from early paranormal experiences in the, frankly incredibly named, Christmas Room of the Jacobean house that she grew up in, to her discovery of Crowley, root work and her dabbling in Chaos Magick. One of the most fascinating and unusual facets of EQP is her life-long relationship with the Great God Pan, and she talks in detail about how he appears to her, how he communicates with her and what this has meant to her over the years. The free ranging discussion also touches on the nature of creativity, retro-causality, the art and influence of the late, great David Lynch, and the question on everyone's lips... is EQP CIA?... (Recorded 3 February 2025)

Thanks to EQP for being so candid and open with us on her first podcast and thanks, as always goes to the great Keith, working to make sure that these podcasts make some semblance of sense, one show note at a time. You can follow hom on Blue Sky: @peakflow.bsky.social

EQP online

Intro

Vayse to Face with Edwina Quatermass-Palmer

Edwina’s recommendations

Buckley’s closing question

Vayse online

Special Guest: Edwina Quatermass-Palmer.

VYS0047 | The Weird Review Of The Year 2024 - Show Notes

[Caution: This episode contains an extreme weariness for bullshit that some listeners may find triggering] 2024 was a tough year, weird but tough. And looking back over it doesn't make it any better. In what amounts to a rapid and inexorable descent into madness Hine and Buckley pick apart the weird and, frankly, fucking dystopian year that was 2024. Bouncing between jaded despair and hysterical mania the Vayse boys mull over the topics that dominated 2024: UFOs, Artificial Intelligence and Elon Fucking Musk. Whilst stumbling around in the intoxicating embrace of the seemingly endless darkness they also uncover strange stories of interconnected dreams, robot dogs with flame throwers, robot faces with living skin, bowls of goo with pong skills, plots to genetically engineer super-sheep, a surprising number of goblin attacks and perhaps, maybe, possibly a giant lake dwelling cow...? Recorded 22 January 2025

Massive thanks to Keith who had to tackle the show notes for this long and difficult episode - you can follow him at: @peakflow.bsky.social

As usual, the news stories in this episode were sourced from the weird and wonderous website: https://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/ - bookmark it and check it daily.

Hine’s Intro

How Far Have You Travelled? - Michael Owen Carroll

January

‘Jellyfish’ UFO

Neuralink human brain implant

Stanford hypnosis booster

February

Lucid dreamers control virtual Cybertruck

Plasma lifeforms in our skies?

Oklahoma Thundercow

AI explains how to catch a Bigfoot

March

ASMR - Wikipedia

Skinwalker Ranch investigated by AARO?

When goblins attack!

Montana ‘Frankensheep’

Bigfoot in Devon?

April

Australian Govt declares no interest in UFOs

Thermonator: Rise of the Machines

Fear and non-humans in Las Vegas

Morbid masqueraders

Dirty fuel

Robbie Williams: He’s The One

May

UAP Transparency Act introduced

Vatican issues new guidelines on weird stuff

AI to blame for lack of alien contact?

Turing test passed for first time?

I’m not a doppelgänger says Lavigne

Chinese ‘pandas’ were spray-painted dogs

E.M. phone home

More goblin attacks

Police officers in Zimbabwe desert station citing goblin attacks - Cite

June

10% chance of Cryptoterrestrials existing says Harvard study

Robot faces made of living skin

Nevada monolith

25-foot-tall rideable bike breaks record

July

Alleged Roswell metallic specimen analysed

MUFON claims to have material of ‘non-human’ origin

Mars may have hosted microbial life

Proposed seed repository on the moon

South Korea develops remote mind-control device

Extreme eater dies during livestream

August

Man found dead on beach surrounded by headless chickens

Early ‘hobbit’ hominins shorter than we thought

Stonehenge ‘altar stone’ came from Scotland

Liquid water found under surface of Mars

Yet another goblin attack

Scientists train goo to play computer game

September

First civilian spacewalks

Prince Philip fails to meet alien

Flurry of activity at Loch Ness

First lucid dream communication

Moon affected by COVID-19 pandemic

October

Trump protected against spells say witches

100 right-footed shoes stolen

Viral pyramid pup

Animals get drunk more frequently than we thought

Extraterrestrial life could be thriving near Uranus

November

Tucker Carlson ‘physically mauled’ by ‘demon’

43 monkeys escape lab

AI tells student: “Please die. Please.”

690452 TikTok trend explained

Alex Jones’ Infowars bought by The Onion

Drone-cember

US Air Force bases in UK swarmed by drones

New Jersey drone flap

‘Mirror life’ microbe research poses threat to life on Earth

Tomb of ‘real Santa Claus’ discovered

Buckley’s closing question

Vayse online

VYS0046 | Ding Dong Merrily On High Strangeness - Vayse to Face to Face with Stephanie Quick and AP Strange: Christmas 2024 - Show Notes

Ho, ho, holy shit that's another year gone and Christmas is here again! To mark the ever-increasing speed at which the years fly past in a blur of spiralling anxiety and gathering doom, Hine and Buckley invite two of the nicest, wisest and funniest people in Weirdosphere, Stephanie Quick and AP Strange, to help them celebrate away the winter blues.

Drawing on the British tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas, Hine, Buckley, Strange and Quick (also the title of the upcoming Vayse autobiography) work their way around the cardinal points, each telling a ghost story from the place in which they were born: the North and South of England and the East Coast and West Coast of the US. There are tales of a murderous jester who stalks the corridors of a Cumbrian castle to this day; a red haired woman who haunting a pirate-built cottage in New England; a missing bride at a Christmas wedding in a very haunted stately home in Hampshire; and a revolutionary Californian abolitionist who still throws nuts from trees over 120 years after her death... and they discuss three lesser known British winter traditions: Raymond Briggs' Snowman, ignoring Thanksgiving and moaning about the weather... (recorded 8 December 2024)

Thanks to AP and Steph for preparing the stories and thanks to Keith for another year of show notes - follow the man on Blue Sky: @peakflow.bsky.social.

Merry Christmas everyone, thanks for listening!

Steph Quick online

Ghost Dog is a Mystery Box (Steph’s blog)

AP Strange online

AP Strange's Weird Writings

Hine’s intro

A Visit from St. Nicholas - All Poetry

A short history of the Christmas ghost story

Yule - Wikipedia

Buckley’s ghost story: The Murderous Jester of Muncaster Castle

Muncaster Castle - Wikipedia

AP’s ghost story: Ocean Born Mary

New England - Wikipedia

Hine’s ghost story: The Mistletoe Bride

Bramshill House: Legends - Wikipedia

Steph’s ghost story: Mary Ellen Pleasant

Steph's Notes on Mary Ellen Pleasant

Christmas weather

Radiation Fog - Weather.gov

Christmas recommendations

Beltane Ranch and Vineyard website

Buckley’s closing question

Hands: A true case study of a phenomenal hypnotic subject, by Margaret Williams - Goodreads

Vayse online

Vayse Website

Special Guests: AP Strange and Stephanie Quick.