Dr. Jack Hunter | Greening The Paranormal, Animism, & Foreign Intelligence

00:00 Embrace yourself, because you're about to dive into another free first hour episode of the Higher Side Chats. And we just want to let you know that whether your looking for a companion through your paranoid insomnia, entertaining yourself through one of life's mundane activities or trying to ward off the internal screams from all those sad smothered souls around the office THC is here and you should know that every episode of the higher side chats has an entire second hour for PLUS members Sign up at thehiresitechats.com and you'll get years of plus show archives, lifetime forum access a special invite to Greg Carlwood's monthly joint sessions MP3s of THC music bonus episodes tour videos and 10% off t-shirts grinders And whatever else ends up in The HireSite store It's $8 a month that you won't miss so become a Plus member and treat yourself in these troubled times always action packed and commercial free

00:51 Which means you'll unfortunately never hear my voice again. 1930s President Franklin Delano Roosevelt addressed the nation through a series of radio broadcast known as the fireside chats His aim was to reassure the common man that our society would recover from its troubled times From 1930 and I deal with a different kind of fire For a new era of worldly frustration we offer a fresh conversation, I'm Greg Carlwood

01:27 These are the Higher Side Chats. Happy Dazer here again, higher side chatters from sunny San Diego I'm Greg Carlwood and i have always wondered how a person can be pulled from their car on a country road taken aboard a silver spacecraft and poked at by mysterious greys only to come back with the message that we need to take better care of the planet I mean, we do need to take better care of the planet but if a tiger at the zoo told me that...I might have other things on my mind. Still this is a persistent theme of alien abductions telepathic Bigfoot encounters spirit contact time slips near-death experience Marion apparitions intense psychedelic journey and all sorts of stuff under the high strangeness umbrella So much of it contains the stewardship theme that i sometimes wonder if these entities and manifestations aren't produced by Gaia herself

02:16 And that is one of many interesting ideas that does come up in Greening the Paranormal, exploring the ecology of the extraordinary experience. A fascinating book of essays and articles from bright minds that are not afraid to fold the weirdest of weird things into an ecological framework that was edited and compiled by the great Dr Jack Hunter Jack was here once before on the release of his previous book, Engaging the Anomalous? Collected Essays on Anthropology, the Paranormal Mediumship and the Extraordinary Experience. Where we talked largely about his doctoral research with the University of Bristol studying and participating in sessions with spirit mediums, the contact experiences with a spirit named Charlie, and the work of the great late Charles Forte

02:59 Since we last spoke, on top of greeting the paranormal Dr. Hunter has also released Spirits Gods and Magic An Introduction to the Anthropology of the Supernatural which looks at the history of evolving ideas on such strangeness and recontextualizes this relationship with the spirit world as a good anthropologist would They certainly make good topics of conversation so let's do the damn thing. The paranormal PhD, the certifiable Dudas priest and anthropologist of the anomalous Dr Jack Hunter welcome back to THC! Thank you thanks for having me You got it man I'm so happy to do this again had a blast last time and funny enough i actually just saw in your bio about you being an ordained dudus priest and unless that's a typo is that something that came out of the church of the big lebowski?

03:47 It is, yeah. I'm an ordained Judith Priest so i'm licensed to do weddings in some states of America but probably not to do them here in the UK Well we're certainly taking weddings seriously these days as a serious spiritual tradition right? Yeah Well that's awesome man nice to have that on your resume if you ask me but I really like both of these new books that you put out green the paranormal in particular has a lot of fun 40 and stories and fresh ideas for approaching the paranormal. And something that bumps up against the climate change topic can sometimes be a trigger for some of the listeners out there. But putting all that aside, it's obvious that a lot of people treat the earth like a rented hotel room living in cities tends to erode the respect we have for the natural world and the biggest multinational corporations fill the land sea and air with toxins and steamroll as much as they can and they don't really face any social consequence

04:48 And at least some of that might relate to paranormal experience and the frequency of those experiences, right? It might well do. Yeah I mean part of the overall theme of the book is that engagement with a natural world so participation in ecology So you know whether that's going outside into your garden or going trekking in the wilderness Or you know some people will participate in ecology through you know scuba diving or whatever surfing and things like that but through different kinds of engagement with the living natural world we open ourselves up to extraordinary experiences. One of the things that I noticed while i was doing my research for this book project, was that actually there seemed to be a bit of almost like a feedback loop effect so that when people participate in ecological

05:39 Systems they have these extraordinary experiences and then i said in your introduction when they come back from those experiences, they have a renewed kind of sense of connection to the natural world. Increase desire to kinda do stuff to help so interesting feedback loop going on there where you know the more we engage with the world the more we have extra new experiences and the more we have extraordinary experiences, the more we want to engage with the world and boost biodiversity in that kind of thing. So it's one of the main threads that runs throughout that whole book Yeah, and I think it's a good one. You know people say you don't know what you have till it's gone And I would hate to see that happen when it comes to some of the amazing natural landscapes we have because these aren't things you can just Rebuild like a mall that collapses like they don't come back quickly if at all another theme that runs through the book is to do with biodiversity and you know animism and the idea that animals and plants and other kinds of

06:39 Living entities also have a spiritual or consciousness side to them. I've been playing with the idea of biodiversity also being equivalent to psychodiversity you know the mall, different species of plants and animals that we have the most psycho diverse our world is nothing yet At the moment we're living in the sixth mass extinction. This is a major event and the most unusual thing about this particular mass extinction compared to others, it's predominantly anthropogenic it's being produced by human beings so we are in an extraordinary position now where unfortunately over the last hundred years or so we've lost almost like I can't remember what exactly but its shockingly high of 50%

07:28 Species over the last hundred years of human activity and just think about that in terms of psycho diversity You know, we're also losing as well as the rich genetic and biological Data that's contained within all these species. We're also losing all those different forms of Consciousness different forms of cognition and different forms of you know experiencing the world. Mmm, so really, you know biodiversity crisis is also a crisis of mines you know we're losing different forms of consciousness intelligence which no one put in those terms it's really shocking and scary. Is and yes that is kind of the crux of the animist argument that these are all forms of consciousness types of minds as you might say and thats just really fascinating way to look at because when

08:20 you get into the paranormal and you start to look at well who's studying this stuff, you obviously come across i research pretty quickly and that's important i think we are learning some things from. The parapsychology realm but that's kind of a limited view of consciousness is not just about human beings consciousness seems to permeate through basically all living things in of course that is kinda the crux of where u come in as an animist That's the perspective you're bringing to the table i think it's a good one. Yeah i'm thinking now is what would be like to approach the world from an animus perspective, no in terms of the way that we behave and interact with the world because we know that our western society is as you said again introduction pumping all these chemicals into the atmosphere and doing also so terrible things we need a kind of change of narrative

09:19 I think animation is one of the ways that we might be able to change the narrative. But in order to do that, we need to dig into the kind of animistic traditions that are sort of lying hidden within our own society and culture. And that's where the paranormal comes into it because now we have this strong current of the paranormal in our society although its viewed as kind of taboo and people don't like to talk about it and that kind of stuff People have the experiences and the police are there. I'm essentially when you look at the paranormal and take it in its broadest sense, you got things like mind to mind communication and existence of spirits in different kinds of entities and when you think about that really what you doing with again is animism so i think the paranormal anyway is our as a part of maybe remnant or

10:11 I'm sleeping for our earlier kind of animus thinking. So by engaging with the paranormal community people who are interested in the power normal and making them realize that what they're actually interested in is there, cosmos that's alive with lots of different forms of intelligence then maybe those people to become engaged in trying to do something about this biodiversity crisis that we going through Yeah and i really do think there's a parallel between paranormal experiences and their frequency and their potency and just wild animals like both have been driven out by our industrialization and if we didn't have zoos or even photographs like how many people wouldn't believe that jaguars are real

11:00 like cuz you wouldn't see one in the middle of new york city just like bigfoot or a lot of these experiences i think the cities are too noisy for these kind of things, a lot of paranormal experiences are somewhat subtle or they require like maybe a stillness or quietness or focus to even get into that zone and. I think it is a simple as saying look at things we know exist and how off the radar they are from industrialization and why couldn't paranormal experience be the same especially if it is so tied to the natural world. Yeah i think there's a real connection between like you say wildness in the paranormal you know the power normal something that is uncontrollable. We can't predict when it's gonna happen that's part of the problem the power psychology got with it because its one of those phenomena that seems to work.

11:52 Really intense strange social situations that can get into the lab so the paranormal seems to be fundamentally about wildness. So it's not surprising then you know that when people go out into the wilderness they have encounters with flying saucers in the woods and he can't is with bigfoot and that kind of thing because there engaging with the wilderness, what we are thinking about this recently no how I think we may talk about permaculture a little bit but in permaculture they have this way of kind of like mapping out around your house. Like a sector analysis or zone analysis and then talk about having zones zero is like yourself and then zone one is your house and it goes all the way out to zone five, i'm done five is the wilderness

12:40 I need to talk about the need for having wilderness corridors that come all the way up to zero right into the south because it's going out into the wilderness where we learn about, you know how nature works and then we can bring that back into their home and incorporate into our gardens. I think there's an interesting connection between this idea of the wilderness on the edge of the garden where you go for inspiration and weather while things live. And then also like, yeah i do that being fairies at the bottom of a garden and things like that tell me to children to go look for the fares in the bottom of the garden they run down there and it's done those places where the garden merges from being attain place into being a wilderness place and that's where paranormal experiences seem to happen

13:28 Let me think about again, this is a weird example but you know the Kelly Hopkinsville goblin encounter and the goblins are all out on the edge of the garden and they're kind of coming in and out of the shadows. And then they're coming up to the house it's like The Wilderness you know on the edge coming up through wilderness corridors right up to zone zero! But yeah I think there's a connection there between The Wilderness and extraordinary experiences I don't know exactly what the mechanism is, but it seems to be there. I agree bigfoot encounters are when people are camping and typically a lot of UFO encounters are too Rendlesham forest A lot of these missing time getting put back in the wrong place things It's when you're out on a country road in isolation Isolation is a huge factor in this stuff but I guess

14:20 Part that's hard to wrap your head around is from an animus perspective i tend to think of a consciousness being pegs to a thing like human or even plant consciousness. But what we peg some of these paranormal consciousness as to are they completely detached did not have physical components no well, I mean there's lots of different ways that we could think about it and i think you know when people like the Romans and the ancient Greeks would talk about the noumen loci or, you know, the spirit of place. You know perhaps you can have entities or something that are manifestations not of an individual object but maybe of a whole landscape or you know collective kind of manifestation It's not that far off thinking...you know..the kind of thinking that some people have about the Gaia hypothesis

15:15 You know that the whole of the world is a single living organism and that might have some kind of super consciousness that contains all of the mini consciousnesses within it. I think you could like a fractal of consciousness in a way, you can zoom out and you know whole landscapes could become sentient when you zoom in and then there's individual organisms within that are also sentience So perhaps it's something to do with that. They don't necessarily have to be linked to a particular plant or a particular rock, but maybe the combination of all those things? Who knows! It is interesting there is movement to recognize the personhood of whole ecosystems at the moment like the Whanganui River in New Zealand was recognized as having the rights of personhood a couple years ago and the river Ganges was recognized for having the rights of personhood

16:08 Yes that we treat them as persons rather than as resources to be plundered i mean maybe it's happening into a similar kind of sentiment. No holy systems can also have a character or personhood and if you think about the engage with them on those terms and behave very differently inside them yeah yeah i mean hey we granted Personhood the corporations you think we could do it for a river mountain to i mean that's kind of a little more important if we're gonna just start throwing around personhood labels let's put on some of these things instead of, buy sir yeah so what are there and maybe i'm just too obsessed with categorization or breaking things down our labels charles ford would have a field day with me for that but.

16:57 I think about this idea of play spirits or maybe a whole forest and it's all these consciousness is coming together in a sort of soup and then it's like what the value to me of. Maybe making contact with the disembodied consciousness is to get a feel for its personality or it's thoughts or ideas and then that gets really hard in not kind of consciousness soup setting up we're talking about landscape of all these. Kinds of different minds working together maybe tapping into that having a mind to mind communication its like,

17:35 How do we know who's thoughts are what is that the grass talk to me or is at the redwood trees at the dandelion maybe that's not important but that remind my mind goes and it gets pretty confusing. Yeah it reminds me of my mediumship research and the way that developing mediums, the way that the spirits manifested through them over a period of time, weeks or months. And it was the circle leader who would kind of focus in on little twitches or little movements and things and identify those as belonging to a particular spirit. So you know for example in one seance the medium's hand might be twitching so the circle leader will see that twitching hand and start to interact with it and then eventually build up a dialogue with it

18:20 So it's almost so, it's a similar kind of thing within this like mind soup that you're calling it. You know you can focus in on elements within that and engage in smaller dialogue in a way by picking out one particular rock within the landscape and holding it engaging interaction or with your cat at home picking up the cat extracting from the landscape and holding it in your arms and engaging with it I think you know we can narrow our focus down into individuals and then we can, broaden out the customs of landscapes in the whole planet and how would i reckon even on to a cosmic scale.

19:03 We're talking about panpsychism and that kind of stuff, and consciousness being inherent in matter. Then it's not just on our level It goes all the way up to the cosmic scale and right down to the macro-micro scale as well Yeah! Just a matter of tuning in in a way or focusing our attention onto different levels of that thing I agree and i think that's like what astrology is the consciousness or the energies of various planets and they seem to have an effect on the earth it's like yeah we can scale that up we have a category for looking at consciousness

19:40 and planets and also people but the things in between we are so good at maybe we need to get better and one point you do ask the question as it pertains to mediumship what is it really is that the survival of consciousness after death or is it super side. And you make the point that we don't even really know after 150 years of research. Well, what are your thoughts on the mechanism behind mediumship and how you think we could really solve that puzzle given that we haven't solved it yet? Where does that research need to go? What are they not looking at? How can we push through to a legitimate answer?"

20:20 I think the usual thing with these kind of controversies, is that the truth is usually somewhere in between. So there's no reason why you can't have spirits and Super Sai at the same time! They're not mutually exclusive phenomena, theoretically anyway... Yeah! I reckon that somewhere along the line, Sai is going to have to be or whatever Sai is must be the mechanism by which spirits do what spirits do as well. Psychokinesis and ESP, telepathy and those kind of things must be the mechanisms that spirits use to communicate with each other in the ether or wherever they are. And also you know in poltergeist cases and stuff psychokinesis would be the mechanism by which a non-physical entity can manipulate physical matter so they're not mutually exclusive

21:18 So in order to make strides forward we're gonna have to start thinking more same old things so i think a little bit more holistically about these things and not trying. Prove one way or the other but she's trying to see how these different things relate to each other and i think that might be one way of taking this further forwards I don't know if it'll get to the finished answer, but well that's a good point. Maybe it's not either or but maybe super side development is required to make contact with after death consciousness you know it really could be kind of a weird form of both and that does just get right back to the whole issue of If this is how complex our minds are and how little we understand of our minds Good luck

22:06 Digesting that for plants minerals crystals animals because it's just gonna be up. It shows you how much work we have to do exactly yeah i think its interesting now like slowly mainstream science starts to come on these things as well, you know like with all the recent research on plant consciousness and plant neurobiology and things are my gun no the intelligence of octopuses in squid some things like that slowly piece by piece of seeing the things that we'd reserved humans like you know intelligence and memory and learning again, even things like culture finding that crows in sunken fish even have culture is pretty amazing it's just a matter of like i said before focusing on engaging spending time with these things.

23:03 to realize actually how complex every single component of this complex system is. It's nuts! It is, and let's get into plant intelligence a little bit because that's something that I think people are hearing more about but maybe not the details... To quote the intro section you have where you mention this, you say in their book Brilliant Green Plant Intelligence Researchers Mancuso and Viola call for a radical shift in the way we think about plants. They explain, A compelling body of research shows that higher-order plants really are intelligent—able to receive signals from their environment, process the information and devise solutions adaptive to their own survival. What's more they manifest a kind of swarm intelligence that enables them to behave not as an individual but as a multitude

23:56 Peter Wallenbind's book, The Hidden Life of Trees for example collects together evidence suggesting that trees are in fact social beings who live in communities. They look after their young and elderly by sharing their nutrients amongst themselves even the stumps of long fallen trees continue to be supported with nutrients by the rest of the community and they communicate with one another through complex chemical signaling Micro has no networks the fungal networks can you expand on some of this and elaborate on your favorite examples of plant entry intelligence for people who just don't consider it a big deal. Yeah i think some of the most interesting recent research has been the work of monica gagliano, she's a researcher in australia and she's been doing really fascinating research on things like plan memory

24:51 I'm planning yes i have plans are able to learn then implies that they have memory and you know our standard models of memory in private need to have a brain to do that but plants don't have brains not the same way we do anyway, setting the new interesting research on plant intelligence is busting open a lot of things that weed. How does necessary for consciousness or intelligence i'm showing that you know There are other ways that intelligence has been able to manifest in the world i know you know some people think it's really silly to expand or extend but you know i wouldn't be surprised if further down the line. I don't know how long it will take like a hundred years two hundred years but you know someone eventually will discover a way to interact with rocks you know what i mean on whatever level of consciousness there on

25:46 Yes take this long to recognize the intelligence of plants is pretty engagement and eventually one day we might even do it with rocks and other forms of matter. Don't have a new biological system but may have consciousness in some way amazing Great potential for sure and monica gagliano she's been on rune soup a really amazing episode apparently her experiments were inspired by messages she got. From plant spirits kind of in a shamanistic way i mean that's pretty interesting like they were calling her to do some some experiments

26:25 That's one of the most refreshing and interesting things about her book. Thus spoke the plant, I think it was called? Yeah! And she would go on these sort of like diet retreats and would just eat the roots or trees or bark of trees and spend time out in the wilderness with a tree. Through these rituals, almost like ritual ordeals she encountered you know the intelligence of the trees in communicating with them In a lot of cases it was from her experiences that she came up with these ideas for novel experiments that she could do in the lab. This is fascinating like, in a way almost like scientific validation of the intelligence of plants coming about through interaction with plants on a psychic level which is amazing. For sure its like a collaboration of sorts which is pretty strange and uh

27:22 Oh sorry what are you saying? I was just gonna say, collaboration with the plants might be the way forward. Yeah exactly ask Mimosa how to do an experiment that illustrates its intelligence because apparently it has some ideas! Yeah exactly And i love a good paranormal story that doesn't fit into the conventional molds of spirits bigfoot or aliens and This one is just a great story from the forward of green in the paranormal and it's got a kind of nature skin on it but this is a story of paul devereaux who is someone i wasn't too familiar with until this book but he seems to be a pretty popular author on some of these subjects. But you tell us a pretty wild story and that intro about him his wife out doing field research for a book project where they were just trying to,

28:15 Geographically map some of these older accounts of ferry paths from folklore accounts in Dublin and he says they came to a fork in the road and where the road forked was a patch of grass. He says, quote, Suddenly standing on the grass there was a figure between two and three feet tall. It was anthropomorphic and fully three-dimensional. The figure was comprised of a jumble of very dark green tones as if comprised of a tight dense tangle of foliage it didn't seem to quite have a face just ahead with deep set eyes peering out of the green tangle

28:53 As we crawled past it in our car, the figure started to turn its head in our direction and then vanished. My wife called out oh shit! And we looked at each other and you saw that? He asked rhetorically. The whole episode lasted for about a minute-and-a-half he says but it was subsequently an actual if transient objective observation seen by two people." That's really interesting because yeah he has another witness right there that can say you saw that thing too and just crazy i guess it sounds like some sort of elemental or fairy creature of some type. The green man or something like that right

29:33 Yeah, it's interesting because it opens up thinking about folklore and that kind of thing. And how encoded within the folklore like the folklore of the green man have these ideas of nature connection being like a presence in nature that we can reconnect with them things like that so just really interesting and also they overlap obviously with the fairy tradition you know there are in Ireland and fairies are associated like I was saying before with these wilderness places. So now you're out in the middle of nowhere Down a country lane and you have an encounter with a fairy that seems to be an embodiment of nature It's the perfect story to encapsulate this idea of greening the paranormal. That's true, it's true and Speaking of Paul Devereaux he seems to be known for his work on orbs or UFO sightings which she calls earth lights

30:24 One of the chapters in this book is by Simon Wilson and he analyzes Paul's Earthlight idea and the suggestion, paul makes that these are paranormal experiences that are co-created when imaginal consciousness interacts with the landscape. Can you elaborate on what he saying there because it is a really unique take on these orb or UFO sightings people have? Yeah, I mean there's a few different ways that Paul Devereux has explored the way we might be able to interact with the landscape. So one of the ideas is that there can be certain areas in the landscape that are more radioactive or have higher levels of background radiation so when we go those places on

31:11 on whatever level it interacts with our neurochemistry and induces hallucinations and things. That's not to say that the hallucinations are necessarily, you know, not real it might be just one mechanism of interacting with stuff And then there is other ideas about things like magnetism and that kind of stuff that can interact with our consciousness. Then there are other ideas about ley lines and subtle energies So one of the idea is when we're going out into landscape We can engage with these subtle energies and as they interact with our imagination we have visions of entities in.

31:48 It's a cool idea. I quite like it. Yeah, he writes about something called tectonic strain and that it's like sometimes in paranormal experiences they're triggered by people having really intense migraines or something and you could almost say this is a parallel to an earth migraine, a tectonic strain that opens up some form of consciousness. And to quote Simon Wilson's chapter on this, he goes on to say The next step Devereaux takes is to argue that ancient humans knew of these effects and built structures to produce and enhance the experience. Stone circles, that is, are portals to the soul world. Devereaux presents survey evidence to suggest that

32:31 Not ley lines, but fault lines were the defining element in the placing of Neolithic monuments in the landscape. Stone circles were erected in the vicinity of geological faulting or similar features and served somehow to accumulate and strengthen the energy produced by tectonic strain The builders were able to predict and coordinate the movements when the god energy would be released In this way, the gods did appear on Earth says Devereaux. And that is really, really interesting! I don't know that i've ever heard anybody equate the types of monuments that seem spiritual these stone circles and stuff...I've never heard anyone equate them to fault lines rather than ley lines maybe there's so many lines that you know you can always find one in proximity of these things perhaps but that is a really fascinating new idea yeah it's pretty cool

33:28 I don't think it's necessary saying that every stone circle is built on a fault line but certainly some are and there are really interesting associations between fault lines and different kinds of UFO experiences. It makes sense if these things are there, they really are associated with these subtle earth energies then people thousands of years ago probably would have had more chance of experiencing them than we do because all our light pollution and that kind of stuff We've ruined it for ourselves really. So maybe they were more aware of these things and they did incorporate them into their belief systems and also into their sort of ritual infrastructure, I think it makes sense

34:12 But it's obviously quite a controversial idea as well. Which I like around here! And another author in Green the Paranormal, Nancy Wissers? Is that how you pronounce her name? She wrote about the Lenape Indian tribe's idea of recruitment by the earth and that gets into these things we're talking about but can you explain that a little bit? Yeah there's a nice thread that runs through the book to do with indigenous American ways of thinking the natural world but also you know that spiritual well there's a part of that and nancy's chapter she talks about how she met these people who seem to have, being brought up in a completely different way of looking at the world i may would talk about you know. Again like many animistic people like that person personhood trees and animals and things like that is another great chapter

35:08 taking an indigenous american perspective by lance foster in the book where he talks about a native american chief called plenty coup and he's trying to cross this river and they have this interaction with that kind of. What they take to be like spirit of the river is kinda will pull back captures them and there's a great message in that story because plenty coup interact with this thing Give an offering when they finally managed to escape from it instead of coming to try and hunt or kill it all. In the modern example maybe like bring it back into the lab for analysis they decide to leave alone, yes messages that needs to be a place in the wilderness for these really wild things to exist without us interfering with them

35:56 No we stumble across them we don't want to disrupt them again you wanna leave them in that place they could be like the rarest living things. In the world super rare creatures forms of consciousness out there yeah it's like the old king kong motif, bring in that thing back from its native land And i really love that plenty cool story it's very strange he and his war party are preparing to cross the mississippi river. They know that the water seemed weird just right off the bat they looked at like something happening here and they dropped in offering of buffalo fat n and,

36:42 It's supposed to float but it sank so i mean they're also like that strange too and then they're trying to cross on horseback. And one guy gets grabbed and he gets kinda lifted out of the water and he's, i think still on his horse and is hovering above the water and finally they What i guess plenty to start kicking the empty space underneath the guy and hit something invisible that you describes as feeling like greasy feathers. And then the guide is horse are released and they go on about their journey and it's just got so many weird little details to add n, i wonder if other people in the missouri river have had similar experiences yet

37:30 It's amazing and i just love the idea that there are these special places little hidden pockets where these forms of intelligence taken residence. Every now and again we have to stumble across them it's up to us then what we do with that we, pursue it or leave it to its own devices i think you know leave it to its own devices is the best option Fair i mean in that example someone could say what is the value of keeping that thing there if it only is going to, prey upon people perhaps is there a flip side to that me know we just supposed to stay out of the river if we acknowledge that there is this something their in this missouri river let's say then.

38:18 What do you think is the best approach i mean just leave it alone sure but how do we study it do you think we can communicate with that do you think we can have some experiences where there were isn't quite so on re. Yeah i'm sure there are ways of. Placating these spirits i mean no shamanistic traditions are all about that trying to understand hiking engage in a respectful dialogue with these entities i think they did the right thing by leaving alone but maybe, You know shaman or medicine man can come back later and give an offering and try to establish a more of a friendly relationship. Yes i think it's possible doing track release things we need to get them space is the same with lions in you know, physical biological predators that are in the environment they need to be there you know that keystone species without these organisms

39:10 ecosystems can collapse from the top down if these other forms of consciousness like these river beings have also involved in a must also fit into this network somewhere they must have a role in the function within it all. I think that's another interesting thing about applying this ecological perspective to the paranormal is to try and think about how these paranormal entities relate to the rest of the biodiversity and psychodiversity that surrounds us. We know how interconnected living systems are, well what is the relationship between these physical living systems and then these other possible non-physical living systems? Are they interrelated?

39:53 I destroying the physical world around us so we also destroying elements of that nonphysical world. The ecological perspective really encourages us to think carefully about the things that we do because everything is interconnected so everything we do has an effect on everything else, say yeah yes curious cuz i wonder what that function might be although if like in the missouri river example if that Is not necessarily a thing in the river but maybe. The consciousness of the river you can see how polluting the river or diverting the river, the way we do they know it is move things around where everyone are blowing up a mountain to put a tunnel through it for the highway. These things could disrupt the consciousness of the actual thing that were messing with instead of thinking about the mountain or the river as a home for whatever that is in my be the thing itself and which case

40:54 Yeah, no surprise that these experiences are less in the modern world when we are disrupting so many of these things that we maybe should think of as persons I guess. On a slightly related note to this you know about the Skinwalker Ranch and all that kind of stuff? Oh yeah! And all the weird shit that has been alleged to go on there...I don't know 100% of the veracity of the whole thing but let's just take it at face value I was just thinking you know again reply ecological framework to try and understand what's going on in the place like that we've got a like a landscape essentially, it's fenced off so it's like a section of landscape we have an abundance of weird paranormal phenomena taking place what could be the possible reasons for that.

41:41 I know like the same for if the land and the spiritual world are intimately connected. And there might be something to do with the land that i can't find on the skin walker ranch been treated correctly what's a new trend nutrient content of this oil, is it healthy place or has it been found today over the last hundred fifty years if the land has being damaged in that way Then it could be a reason for the terrifying phenomena that plaguing the place because it is being ruined and. It's not thriving by diverse landscape anymore just a thought perhaps you know an ecological perspective can open up new avenues for understanding these kind of things absolutely if we are looking at skinwalker ranch i think everybody would acknowledge that the stuff that goes on there, yes

42:36 deeply connected to the land itself and maybe there is some kind of chemical or mineral composition in the soil that facilitates this experience maybe there's an equation that opens up certain, gateways i mean people talk about quartz crystal in this kinda context a lot that it can. hold memory pretty easily, that it emits certain frequencies which might play on human consciousness and open us up in similar ways to psychedelics but without having to ingest something. And who knows what's deep in that ground? I mean we've only drilled down five miles on this earth period maybe there is something 20 miles down that is facilitating that in Skidwalker Ranch Maybe isn't ley lines but its something way deep down in that soil or something to think about

43:25 All like we were saying before with the river itself, it could be the combination of the rocks and hills and all that combined. We just gotta think outside the box when it comes to trying to make sense of the paranormal And this might be one way of doing that Yes well...we're starting to learn there are cave systems everywhere Some of these are insanely vast and some of them are crystal caves Crystal seem to be one of the most potent i guess other forms of intelligence or consciousness that are able to be tapped into it seems like from people i've talked to it seems like if you wanna start some people might have more experience with plants but crystals.

44:09 Post maybe rocks seem to be quite shabby if you really wanna get into it and maybe there's a crystal cave deep under the ground their and maybe that's something to take into account. Yeah but could be also different environmental factors going on, But that haven't been taken into account because we think about paranormal experiences. Yeah i don't know something else from another dimension or not can i say maybe when is the point and it's actually not from another dimension it's from the low feet from the earth from the trees so, I said i like about the idea think joshua cutchins been talking about it recently did you have bigfoot being wilderness poltergeist. Yes really cool idea he's not discreet entity but here is a manifestation of the wilderness, ties in nicely with what i was saying about fairies and going out to the edge of the domesticated landscape having paranormal experiences

45:08 He's a manifestation of the landscape rather than that particular entity pretty cool i agree i think that makes a lot of sense to because. Even though this stuff might sound weird to be so paranormal adjacent if you look across the board all these experiences the biggest commonality when it comes to messaging is we should take better care of your fia stewart of the earth doesn't matter becomes from bigfoot or some gray alien message tends to be largely the same and you even point out in the book is a coincidence that guys like charles ford.

45:45 They start looking at all this weird stuff and then they end up being really conscious about how we treat the landscape john keel as well is people who go off on these. Paranormal adventures they come back with those same thoughts are same conclusions and it is strange that that is what people are realizing from these experiences and it makes you think that maybe the earth is producing stuff itself Yeah i'm with john keel he came to the one of his like over arching conclusions was that something very similar to the guy idea again, is that the earth itself is conscious you talked about this being a haunted planet all these strange mothman and things like different forms of manifestations interaction with this consciousness.

46:36 Yeah it is very peculiar that you can research from the paranormal and end up at the same argument research from ecological angle in a new end up. Encountering spirits it's like feedback loop again, more we engage with the world to have extraordinary experiences more short experiences happen when we want to engage with the world interesting it is gonna Go back to astrology and think that mercury being in retrograde is gonna have some kind of effect on our ability here to communicate smoothly or for technology work correctly

47:14 Well the earth is a lot closer to us and you would think that maybe it's positioning or what its movements through the cosmos. What also happens back then it's probably yeah it's moods exactly that kind of probably affects its mood like no it's a hot one today I'm frustrated I'm not throughout some ufo for people to deal with. Yeah send out some warning flags it's possible i think it No way it is yeah i think that's the overall argument of the book is that perhaps all this paranormal stuff isn't somewhere connected with the planet we live on.

47:54 Right and it's just a real pleasure to have you here man. You're really good at pushing through the shock and awe of the paranormal, trying to get into the mechanisms and meaning in creative multi-disciplinary ways and it's very important to do! And your obviously in deep with the thinkers on anthropology and ecology and that side of the coin what would like to see from people who are more focused on the paranormal side, like the researchers that I might interview or hosts in positions like me. What do you think is the key to getting further down the road rather than spinning our wheels like we have for so long? Yeah, I think part of it is being willing to challenge the established models. So

48:52 In anthropology for example there are models like functionalism and things like that which i kind of. Very well established in pretty much most anthropologists a function list of one form or another, end my approaches always been to say that's fair enough like functional ism is the thing you know things do perform functions but it was always something More as well like this always the experience of mediumship for example explain in terms of social function or psychological function then what about the actual experience itself. So you know, you need to be able to expand the established models to incorporate new things whether that's to take experience seriously or then to take the literature from parapsychology seriously. And just to see the connections that exist between different disciplines different ways of looking at the world and trying to understand the world a little bit more holistically

49:48 I'm in terms of complexity i'm not reducing things down into not trying to make things simple because like you saying before the world isn't simple, solving the riddle of size and gonna be a simple solution is going to something that reveals fundamental complexity of the whole thing. So yeah that's my advice is to try and think beyond the established models because chances are. The truth of the reality behind the whole thing is far weirder than we could possibly imagine. I like it good advice i will take that heart and man i'm glad we can do this again, lotta fun remind people where to find your website or you and what did you gonna be working on next

50:34 Yeah well you can find out about me and my research I got a website which is jack-hunter.webstats.com it's a bit of long URL but doesn't really matter, you can find me on Facebook as well if you look for Dr Jack Hunter i've got couple interesting projects in the pipeline at the moment In November, coming up my thesis I finally managed to transform it into a book. So that will be being released in November Manifesting Spirits and that's all about my experience with mediums and trying to make sense of that whole thing. And then in May I've got another book coming out on edited collection with an anthropologist called Diana Espiritu Santo and that one is called Mattering the Invisible

51:21 I need a collection of essays exploring different ways that matter is used to conceptualize invisible forces spirits, even things like the climate or the higgs boson and things so it's really challenging us to think about the role of matter. in paranormal experiences. Because you know we try to talk about paranormal experiences as providing evidence of the immaterial world and stuff, but that doesn't mean that matter isn't fundamentally involved with it so that's what that book is about And then something I'm really excited about at the moment is a new project that I just started to put together about Scooby-Doo and the paranormal and thinking about the influence of Scooby-Doo on different paranormal subcultures

52:07 So you know, like ghost hunters and skeptics people take what they want from Scooby-Doo and use it in different ways. So I've got a whole bunch of things going on at the moment... I don't think i'm gonna be stopping anytime soon hopefully! Man, you're a busy guy and always doing something interesting. Trying to write one book kicked my ass and I don't know if I'll ever get it done! And you're making them like hotcakes so very awesome always interesting stuff It has been a real pleasure glad we could do this again and keep up the great work man Thank you very much There we have it people, Dr. Jack Hunter the coolest name in anthropology pulling together some of the most interesting voices and unique ideas in that sweet spot between ecology and the paranormal And it really was the popularity of recent shows that dipped back into traditional paranormal topics That got me looking around for something similar

53:08 People really seem to like Joshua Cutchin and Tim Renner's episode talking about their book Where the Footprints End, for example. But that was back in August! Time really seems to fly around here but... I saw that Jack had this compilation out and thought it was a good way to be able to tap into one of the more minor veins in the THC lifeblood, that do have a higher side flavor than them. And highlight them together in one episode because separately they might be a little thin for full two hour conversations on their own Also, I think for several of these authors writing about a paranormal overlap with ecology is more the exception than the rule when it comes to their typical work. And it's probably just part of that natural process we've mentioned 1,000 times if you spend time in nature If you get yourself outside of the smog and smart cities enough You'll feel a bit different when you get out there off-the-radar and its when your most likely to experience something we consider paranormal

54:13 a hike, a camping trip, or a drive down an old country road. So often it is that same story so it makes sense to pick the brains of ecologists about this overlap And it's sad that people are so polarized and firmly planted in their ideological camps, that even getting a whiff of something that vaguely relates to the Earth and its health in any way can set some people off. Even though I'm well aware that the International Tribunal on Climate Change was tasked with finding a human cause for it, and they isolated CO2 for that... They made CO2 emissions sound scary while ignoring all the other data related to our very complex environment because it's a lever they can pull to control the people, throttling peoples energy and water usage. Kamala Harris just said that government could and should limit peoples access and consumption of red meat to fight climate change?

55:09 Not, you know over logging chemical dumping poisoning the water and the air big factory smokestacks. No they want to take away one of our primary sources of nutrition despite factory farming of course but red meat kind of important I think And yeah, all this hype was more or less phase one of the very control measures that COVID has justified. And if COVID dies down they'll go right back to using the climate change argument for why these controls must be implemented and obviously that's a different show but it has to be said because even the word ecology is going to trigger some people insane I know but this is what I'm dealing with sometimes

55:56 Though there should be nothing wrong with caring about the Earth and wanting it to be clean. Whether or not an uncontrollable grand solar minimum is going to push humanity to the brink of destruction, or not right? But I did enjoy some of these ideas presented. I liked the thing about Earth lights. I am compelled by the thought that some of this high strangeness might be manifestations from the earth itself Weird but i suppose nothing should be off the table when it comes to this kind of stuff I've said this before, but i do love the paranormal branch on the THC tree. It's one of the pillars! But it's hard to keep from just saying the same old things. Obviously Jack expressed that today too... The field has been spinning its wheels for a long time

56:44 I don't know how these paranormal centric podcasts do it, because on the conspiracy side of the higher side coin there's always something new going on we can talk about or a different chapter in history that we can dissect. But paranormal episodes are just much more difficult to make unique It is why Josh Cutchins work is so awesome time after time all these books he has written are very unique deep dives into specific threads And it's also why I thought Jack screening the Paranormal compilation was worth diving into. That and that paranormal encounter stories always rounded out quite nicely on a day like today, so i like this one! Jack is a calming presence in chaotic times

57:31 And with the next three episodes of THC already on the books, we are doing everything we can to avoid the whole political sweeps week bullshit bonanza and just do our own unexpected thing. But if you liked the first hour today in the second hour We got into things like sensing animal consciousness and intelligence soul birds and spirit possession of animals a hidden predator, and the privacy of our own minds. Fractal geometry and ecstatic experiences... And a little something called psychic naturalism. Fun rapid-fire stuff that really speaks to what I'm saying about a plethora of ideas put into one episode

58:14 Definitely check out the authors and idea makers themselves if some of these names were new to you. And if you appreciate their thoughts, obviously this show is often just a resource connector I suppose so consider yourself connected. Sign up for PLUS get the full two hour episodes! I'm really proud of the lineup lately and for what's coming up next Might as well get in now. Treat yourself and get the full archive, a lifetime forum membership where you can tell me about your stories and theories for the joint session plus member episodes, and you can get mp3s of all the THC music that I've had made over the years! And speaking of that...I've been working with Lauren Silva again aka Monty

58:59 whose voice you've heard in a lot of these closing cover songs, and we have several new ones in the works. For those who don't know I try to think of Weird Al style THC related parodies of popular songs. I write the lyrics and turn them over to one of a few different artists to perform which is hard to do. Deliver a cover song exactly how it would be delivered in my head when I wrote it, especially if the words are weird like Archon but it's a fun thing I like to do! It keeps us from getting dinged for using copywritten music or controversial enough as it is but like I said we got some new ones and even though this one still has to go through a final mix and I'll put it up for download when that happens next week

59:49 I'm just too excited and i'm gonna play it today. I like it a lot, It's been awhile since we did any new songs. I don't know how many Ed Sheridan crossover fans there are but I think you'll like the THC version better! and it's a good fit for this episode in particular so here we go. Again big thanks to Dr Jack Hunter and all the great minds in Greening the Paranormal, big thanks to Lauren for helping me out again check out her work as Monty The Artist M-O-N-T-I she is the best! And I'm getting out of here... I've done my part your move Big Feet Elemental Beings and Recruiters Of Gaians Stewardship Your fucking move

1:00:32 When you see weird lights outside of your door Something sits on your chest when you sleep It might be a pattern, You've been through before Or you might have those screen memories Darling wait till we get some proof Still will make them see And baby I tried the camera easy People can't get free from mysterious grace It's getting just a bit out of hand We really just want to get back on with our days Don't care about the hiberting plan So honey now

1:01:47 Don't walk into the skinny arms No, they came from the sky from out of the stars Place something on my beating heart Oh baby this damn life is too bizarre I can tell when they're gone cause' my memories fade But we know that it's not just a dream

1:02:25 Cause they never put me back exactly the same way And the pain is as real as a scream Honey arms might be the whole goal, I sense a theme The higher side chats has covered all that we're breaking free People can't get free from mystique

1:03:05 It's getting just a bit out of hand We really just want to get back on with our days Don't care about the hybriding plan But for now, don't walk into their skinny arms No they came from the sky from out of the stars Play something on my beating heart I'm Chocoload Baby this damn life is too bizarre So honey now Don't walk into the skinny, oh No they came from the sky From out of the stars Play something on my beating heart

1:04:43 Baby this damn life is too bizarre Honey I think we're on some kind of far Baby this damn life is too bizarre