The Paracast

Gene and guest cohost Tim Swartz explore the encounters of younger people with the world of the paranormal with Amanda Paulson, an investigator based out of Spokane, Washington. With a passion for paranormal-centered philosophical discussion and 14 years of experience, she now travels as a solo investigator and content creator for her blog, Pretty Fn Spooky and will be starring in the upcoming documentary, “Death is With Me.” She’s been investigating the paranormal as a solo investigator since 2019 and has now traveled all over the United States investigating places small and large. Her investigations have included many well-known locations, including Waverly Hills Sanatorium, the Conjuring Farmhouse, the Mojave Desert and the Lizzie Borden house, where she spent the night in the home completely alone — without any employees or other guests.

Gene and guest cohost Tim Swartz present Texas-based cryptozoologist Michael Mayes, who has investigated sightings of both out-of-place known animals and those that may, or may not, exist for the past 15 years. The discussion will focus on such topics as the way pop cultural influences have made it more difficult to seriously study Big Foot. Mayes has appeared on numerous podcasts and radio programs and on the television show “The Lowe Files” on the A&E network. Michael blogs at the Texas Cryptid Hunter and is author of the illustrated children’s book, “Patty: A Sasquatch Story,” “Shadow Cats: The Black Panthers of North America,” and his most recent book: “Valley of the Apes: The Search for Sasquatch in Area X.” He is also a sitting board member for the North American Wood Ape Conservancy, one of the major organizations that examines such phenomena.

Gene and guest cohost Tim Swartz present the fascinating and wide-ranging views of paranormal researcher Joshua Cutchin. He is the author of five critically-acclaimed books: 2015’s “A Trojan Feast: The Food and Drink Offerings of Aliens, Faeries, and Sasquatch” (translated into Spanish as Banquete Troyano); 2016’s “The Brimstone Deceit: An In-Depth Examination of Supernatural Scents, Otherworldly Odors, & Monstrous Miasmas”; 2018’s “Thieves in the Night: A Brief History of Supernatural Child Abductions”; and 2020’s “Where the Footprints End: High Strangeness and the Bigfoot Phenomenon,” Volumes I & II, with Timothy Renner. His latest book is his two-part masterwork: “Ecology of Souls: A New Mythology of Death & the Paranormal.” Prior to pursuing his dream of becoming a full-time author and musician in 2015, Cutchin served as Public Affairs Director of the University of Georgia Hugh Hodgson School of Music for three years.

Gene and guest cohost Tim Swartz are visited by paranormal researcher and author Michael Huntington, who has investigated the unusual since the late 70s and presents wide-ranging viewpoints of such phenomena. He has traveled to hundreds of places in the U.S. with his family, documenting strange locations and lost lore — building a paranormal location GPS research database with multiple thousands of locations. He has also been a guest on dozens of paranormal, cryptid and UFO-related radio programs (including “Somewhere in the Skies,” “Spaced Out Radio,” and “UFO Classified”), has appeared on television discussing UFOs, and has been interviewed for several documentaries  — including the cryptid feature “MoMo: The Missouri Monster” and the “On The Trail of UFOs” documentary series produced by Small Town Monsters — as well as the “Creature From Big Muddy” film and the upcoming “Grand Tower UFO” doc produced by Red Room Media.

Gene and guest cohost Tim Swartz present a combination of pop culture and the paranormal, how they influence each other, with author/researcher Paul Dale Roberts. Roberts became involved in reviewing comic books and interviewing comic book creators for Jazma Online! www.jazmaonline.com. He published one comic book entitled “The Legendary Dark Silhouette,” that has been optioned by independent movie producer Howard Nash. In 2004, Roberts became a paranormal investigator and with 750 investigations under his belt and 750 paranormal articles he has written lead him to be in documentaries. He is also a Fortean investigator in which he investigates ALL things paranormal from Mothman, Chupacabra, UFOs, Crop Circles, Ghosts, Poltergeists, Demons and more. He is the owner of HPI (Hegelianism Paranormal Intelligence – International). and his articles were featured in legendary author Brad Steiger’s and Timothy Green Beckley’s books. His most recent book is “HPI Chronicles: Haunted Great Wall of China and Other Stories.”

Gene and guest cohost Tim Swartz present UFO writer and publisher Rick Hilberg, an individual Gene has known for longer than either cares to admit. They first became acquainted when posting messages in the original Saucer Club News section of Ray Palmer’s Flying Saucers magazine. They became fast friends. Hilberg has been writing, publishing and investigating UFOs and related phenomena since 1962 and was one of the founding members of the original Conference of Scientific Ufologists, which later became the National UFO Conference. It was a key part of what was then labeled “Middle Ufology,” because of its responsible and even-handed approach to research in the field. He was the editor of UFO Magazine (the first American version), Flying Saucer Digest, and several Fortean publications, and has written and published more than 20 books and booklets on these subjects since 1965.

Gene and guest cohost Tim Swartz present a UFO abduction update from researcher Kathleen Marden. She first became interested in UFOs in 1961, when her aunt and uncle, Betty and Barney Hill had a close encounter and subsequent abduction in New Hampshire’s White Mountains. She spent 15 years in painstaking investigation of the Hill abduction case and continues to seek the scientific analysis of the compelling evidence. Marden has worked on three comprehensive studies on nearly 5,000 experiencers, two of which she initiated and saw to the end, and has five professionally published books. Her latest book, “Forbidden Knowledge: A Personal Journey from Alien Abduction to Spiritual Transformation,” offers a deeper insight into Kathleen’s own life and works. Her essays have been published in several additional books and magazines. Over the years, Marden’s work has been acclaimed by her colleagues in the UFO field. She is the 2013 recipient of MUFON’s “Researcher of the Year” award and the 2021 recipient of the International UFO Congress “Lifetime Achievement Award.”

Gene and guest cohost Curt Collins present a UFO research update from Rich Hoffman, an Executive Board Officer for the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies (SCU). SCU is composed of 150+ scientists, engineers, former military, academia, and business professionals who work to solve the phenomena using scientific methodologies and leverage current technologies to investigate them. Hoffman is also a member of a team of scientists and engineers working in UFOData, a project within CUFOS and a member of the UAPx effort to do instrumented studies of strange phenomena along the Pacific coastline and other hotspot areas. These efforts seek to utilize technologies such as radar, multi-spectral cameras, and electromagnetic detectors and other technologies in order to study the UAP. Professionally, Rich is an Army Information Technology (IT) defense contractor with Chugach Government Solutions.