It's Hollow Earth, UFOs, the birth of Sci-Fi, and more wierdshit than you can believe as we present a super-cut of our 2-part interview with Jerry Drake and Jeb Card about one of the foundational stories of "weirdshitology" in a new ginormous single episode. 

And there's a little bit of reading if you want to follow us down the rabbit hole... 

EXTENSIVE show notes freely viewable at Patreon.




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Karen and Matt check in from the UK! Karen is on tour promoting her new book Bitch: The Journey of a Word.  (affiliate link)

Islands are engines of language diversity

Borley Rectory

Mentioned for future coverage (but touched on before):

The Black Monk of Pontefract

Episodes covering Enfield and Poltergeists

Boleskine House

Some Nessie & Scotland coverage

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A fascinating chat about Australian Magpies (Gymnorhina tibicen) with Dr. Grainne Cleary in which we talk about the role of stories in creating monsters, the role of citizen science, and lots of cool biology facts about these birds. Not everything about Magpies is black and white, it turns out.

Why do birds do that? (affiliate link)

Your Backyard Birds (booktopia - Australian bookshop)

And remember:
Why do Birds Sing? will be dropping into stores September 2nd, 2025!

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Blake recounts his recent visit to see Robert the Doll, and his findings after a deep dive into newspapers and other literature.   Patrons get follow-up info from the girl who was the subject of the "true doll haunting" from episode #114! 


Karen's latest book:  Bitch: The Journey of a Word

Recent death "associated" with demonic doll Annabelle

Official website of the museum hosting Robert the Doll

Call for Papers: Of Gods and Monsters II (July 15, 2025 - November 1, 2025)


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Flashback to October 2016! Updated content on Robert coming soon.In this week’s episode of MonsterTalk, we talk about demonic or evil dolls, and look into the history of one of America’s most famous creepy playthings: Robert the Doll. Our interview is with Dr. Cori Convertito, Curator of the Key West Art and Historical Society, which oversees the Fort East Martello Museum, home of Robert the Doll.Robert the Doll links

• dramatized film (now "Films" as of 2025)
• authorized history book
• novel
• Facebook page
• Twitter account
• official website
• Stories about Robert — Lore podcast

Videos

• Child’s Play (not based on Robert the Doll. See episode for details.)
• Twilight Zone — Season 5, Episode 6: Living Doll
  (watch Episode 6 on Amazon)
• Twilight Zone — Season 3, Episode 33: The Dummy
  (watch Episode 33 on Amazon)
• Trilogy of Terror — a creepy doll classic

Further Reading

• The Science of Superstition: How the Developing Brain Creates Supernatural Beliefs by Bruce M. Hood

Music

• Monstertalk Theme: Monster by Peach Stealing Monkeys
• Additional music: Creepy Doll by Jonathan Coulton.

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Flashback to January 2018:
In this episode of MonsterTalk, we return to discussion of the Ultraterrestrial Hypothesis (UTH) and what seems to be its growing influence in paranormal circles. It’s been used to explain UFOs, mothman, bigfoot, fairies, dogman, ghosts and many other phenomena which defy scientific demonstrability. Now it crops up again in a new film event titled Alien Intrusion which turned out to be a stealth evangelical creationist film which suggests that aliens and UFOs are actually demonic. We are joined by MonsterTalk alum Joe Laycock, Natasha Mikles and Jeb Card to discuss the UTH and Jeb’s Paranormal Unified Field Theory (PUFT) as it relates to this film and the work of John Keel and others.

In Research Of…

MonsterTalk

Joe Laycock Natasha Mikles

Jeb Card

Music

Monstertalk Theme: Monster by Peach Stealing Monkeys

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FLASHBACK to December 2013:
A FAMILIAR VOICE returns to MonsterTalk as Dr. Karen Stollznow joins us to discuss her (then new) book, God Bless America.

Items of Interest
Haunting America on Amazon

More information on the case of Anneliese Michel

Wade Davis’s book on Haitian zombies — The Serpent and the Rainbow

More reading on the Satanic Panic — In Pursuit of Satan: The Police and the Occult

Music
Monstertalk Theme: Monster by Peach Stealing Monkeys

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Flashback to May 2015:
IS THERE A LOST CITY somewhere that formed the basis of the legend of Atlantis? Dr. Kenny Feder returns, not to praise Atlantis, but to bury it.

Kenny Feder: Selected Works

The Past in Perspective
Frauds, Myths and Mysteries
Linking to the Past

Related Links
Atlantis by Donovan
Podcast — Archeology Fantasies
In Search Of… Atlantis

Music
Monstertalk Theme: Monster by Peach Stealing Monkeys

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We will be playing some episodes from our archives for a few weeks this Summer - let's kick it off with this classic from October 2013! THE WARREN OMISSION.WAS THE STORY OF The Conjuring the true story of how Ed and Lorraine Warren fought demonic forces in Rhode Island? In this special episode of MonsterTalk, we hear a different side to the story of America’s first family of ghost hunting. Features interviews with investigators Joe Nickell and Steven Novella.

Full Notes

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We're joined by Erik Davis to discuss his book High Weirdness - a history of psychedelics and counterculture as a triptych embodied with three prominent figures: Terrence McKenna, Philip K. Dick, and Robert Anton Wilson. From Blade Runner to the Illuminati to Magic Mushrooms these three laid down foundational blocks decades ago that underpin (or perhaps undermine?) our present. 

Terrence McKenna
Philip K. Dick
Robert Anton Wilson

Pyrrho - ancient Greek skeptic

Our coverage of Operation Mindf*ck (part 1 and part 2)

Erik Davis links:
Burning Shore (Substack)

Techgnosis (huge web archive)

Techgnosis (Book - Affiliate Link)

High Weirdness (Affiliate Link) - the Audiobook read by the author is very good.  -B.

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We’re joined by Matt Baxter to discuss what we thought was a horror film but turned out to be something quite different.Warning: This film and episode deal with suicide, murder, abortion, politics, religion, and pretty much most of the hot potato topics we generally try to eschew. Hopefully we do a decent job of discussing it.

Nefarious (streaming) – Affiliate Link

More on Blaze Media

Some reviews:
7th Day Adventist review

A Christian review with interesting comments

Reddit tackles Nefarious

Horror Obsessive – really didn’t care for the “bait & switch”



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Matt Baxter returns to join Karen and Blake in a discussion of allegedly haunted “bothies” in the remote hiking regions of the UK. This episode contains some discussion of guns, suicide, and cannibalism.

Links to further reading/listening:

What is a “bothy?”

Mountain Bothy Association

BBC’s Uncanny episodes we mention:

Don’t Sleep in this House – December 2021

Return to Luibeilt Christmas Special 2024

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Jerry Drake returns to discuss his new book:
Hazel was a Good Girl: The Murder that Inspired Twin Peaks

Jerry has been with quite a few times to discuss Grimoires, Jack Parsons, The Hollow Earth, Internet Mysteries and Ghost Lights and we're excited to see what he makes of this real life unsolved murder with ties to one of the most influential shows to ever air on TV.

This episode does discuss murder, sexual assault, and other sensitive topics. It's not really explicit but it might not be suitable for children, hence the tag.






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We're back with part two of our 2-part coverage of the 1976 episode of The Six Million Dollar Man that introduced a generation of kids to Bigfoot, and the idea that the creature might be interconnected with space aliens living inside a California mountain.Related
Links:

The Bionic Book by Herbie Pilato (affiliate link)

Operation Plowshare

The Six Million Dollar Man series (DVD)

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Karen joins Blake to discuss the influential 2-part episodes of The Six Million Dollar Man that introduced a generation of kids to Bigfoot, and the idea that the creature might be interconnected with space aliens living inside a California mountain.

This is part one of a two-part special edition.

The patron edition has extended footage and no modern commercials.

Extensive show notes available here:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/128686370?forSale=true 

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Blake and Karen take a minute to catch their breath and talk about where things are in their lives and what's up next in MonsterTalk news.

Links:
Bitch: The Journey of a Word

Adhesive Capsulitis 

Idiopathic Illnesses

Mechanical Turk

Speaking Machine

Replica of Speaking Machine (YouTube)

Wolfgang von Kempelen

Deep Mind

Deep Blue

Marvin Minsky

John McCarthy

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This is part two of our two part look at Dragons and how these mythical beasts are being used to promote Creationism. Our guest is Dr. Philip Senter and he's the author of a new book about this topic.  We use the word bullsh!t a lot in this episode so I slapped an explicit tag on - but I don't think it's too explicit otherwise. 

Get Dr. Senter's book here: The Real Story of Dinosaurs and Dragons

News story about Mokele Mbembe being compromised by Creationists

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This is part one of our two part look at Dragons and how these mythical beasts are being used to promote Creationism. Our guest is Dr. Philip Senter and he's the author of a new book about this topic.

Get Dr. Senter's book here: The Real Story of Dinosaurs and Dragons

Read more about "The Dragon of Bologna"

Another Book about fake historical zoological specimens 

The National Center for Science Education has long been a source for how to take action to combat the injection of Creationist material into public education.

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Matt & Karen went out for a little getaway weekend to Victor, Colorado and ended up investigating the allegedly haunted Victor Hotel. Did Eddie die in the hotel elevator? Was Matt caught in embarrassing circumstances? Find out inside!




The show notes here won't show the images so you'll need to hop over to our episode webpage to see them.
https://www.monstertalk.org/s04e28-the-victor-hotel-ghost/

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We're excited to welcome back Peter Bebergal. This time we're talking about mysticism and dybbuks. Be sure and check out the links below including the upcoming talk Peter is giving April 14th for The Last Tuesday Society.

Peter on Jewish Boston podcast

All the Haunts Be Ours (affiliate link) 15-Disk Horror Collection

The Ibbur from Jewish mysticism

Peter will be talking monster culture for The Last Tuesday Society on April 14th at 3 pm ET - check it out

Grab all of Peter's Books at Amazon and support this show!

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