The Paracast Newsletter
December 1, 2024
www.theparacast.com
Discover Amazing "Out-of-the-Box" Paranormal Encounters in New York's Hudson Valley with Professor Wham on The Paracast!
The Paracast is released every Sunday and available from our site, https://www.theparacast.com, your favorite podcast app, and the IRN Internet Radio Network. All episodes from 2022, 2023 and 2024 now feature better audio and fewer ads. We are also re-releasing some of our most popular classic episodes.
WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU HAVEN'T SIGNED UP FOR THE PARACAST+ YET? PLEASE SUBSCRIBE TO THE PARACAST+ SO YOU CAN SUPPORT THE SHOW AND ENJOY THE ULTIMATE PARACAST EXPERIENCE AT A SPECIAL LOW PRICE! We have another radio show and we’d love for you listen to it. So for a low subscription fee, you will receive access to an exclusive bonus podcast, After The Paracast, plus a special version of The Paracast with all the ads removed, when you join The Paracast+. We also offer a special RSS feed for easy updates of the latest episodes on your device. Episodes are now released 12-24 hours earlier. Flash! Take advantage of our lowest rates ever! Act now! It's easier than ever to susbcribe! For the easiest signup ever, please visit: https://www.theparacast.plus
This Week's Episode: Gene and cohost Tim Swartz present a visit with the one-and-only Professor Wham (Dr. C.S. Matthews). She is a journalist and has also published poetry, short stories, academic papers, a textbook on New Religious Movements and most recently a survey of paranormal reports and experiences in the Hudson Valley, "Mysterious Beauty: Living with the Paranormal in the Hudson Valley." She is also the author of the novel "Final Season — A Lovecraftian Quartet." Professor Wham has studied religion, new religious movements, occultism and paranormal experiences for over four decades. She has advanced degrees in Religious Studies and American Cultural Studies and is an ardent environmentalist. She has practiced Sufism for two decades and has studied Swedish-Finnish runes/shamanism and Mid-Hudson Algonquin Indigenous traditions from native teachers. Professor Wham lives in the beautifully haunted Mid-Hudson Valley of New York State where she teaches at local colleges and works for a prominent non-profit organization. Her site: https://www.professorwham.com YouTube: ProfessorWHAM
After The Paracast — Available exclusively for Paracast+ December 1: Paranormal expert Professor Wham returns to talk with Gene and cohost Tim Swartz about incredible and out-of-this world encounters over the years in New York's Hudson Valley. Also on the agenda are her weird paranormal encounters, some "out of the box," the long history of UFO phenomena and what she regards as the problems and limitations of the so-called "disclosure" movement. She is the author of "Mysterious Beauty: Living with the Paranormal in the Hudson Valley" and a novel, "Final Season — A Lovecraftian Quartet." Professor Wham has studied religion, new religious movements, occultism and paranormal experiences for over four decades. She has advanced degrees in Religious Studies and American Cultural Studies and is an ardent environmentalist. She has practiced Sufism for two decades and has studied Swedish-Finnish runes/shamanism and Mid-Hudson Algonquin Indigenous traditions from native teachers. Professor Wham lives in the beautifully haunted Mid-Hudson Valley of New York State where she teaches at local colleges and works for a prominent non-profit organization. Her site: https://www.professorwham.com YouTube: ProfessorWHAM
Reminder: Please don't forget to visit our famous Paracast Community Forums for the latest news/views/debates on all things paranormal: The Paracast Community Forums.
Remembering Old Friends
By Gene Steinberg
The world is smaller. The world is colder. In the nearly 19 years in which I’ve hosted and produced The Paracast, we’ve had four “permanent” co-hosts. Two are no longer on this plane of existence.
So David Biedny, a brilliant mind with a unique approach to paranormal research, co-founded the show, and served as co-host from its debut in 2006 through 2010. He died in his sleep on January 29th, 2024, but I didn’t learn of the sad event until months later. David had not been active in the field for years.
While David was new to the world of the strange and unknown, he was widely respected as a graphic designer and special effects artist. He once did a stint at George Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic, where he worked on such films as “Hook.” He was also a regular guest lecturer at Yale delivering presentations on mastering Adobe Photoshop. I first contacted him when we both were regular contributors to several tech magazines devoted to users of gear from Apple Inc.
When I started one of the first podcasts, “The Tech Night Owl LIVE,” I ran a regular segment appropriately entitled the “David Biedny Zone,” where he delivered his frank and off-center views of the tech world. During the course of our conversations, I learned of his intense interest in UFOs and other paranormal phenomena. The development of The Paracast thus seemed natural.
After presenting a series of guest cohosts after David’s departure from The Paracast, highly skilled author and researcher Christopher O’Brien took on the task. He stayed until 2018, when he went off to devote more time to ongoing research and his pet project, developing a network of detection equipment to record paranormal events around the world.
In the years after leaving The Paracast, Chris made occasional guest appearances to talk about his various projects.
On the morning of Sunday, November 24, 2024, I received an unexpected and devastating Facebook message from one of Chris’ friends that he was involved in a “medical emergency.” It reportedly resulted in a fatal auto accident in Sedona, AZ.
In recent years, Chris’ faced serious health challenges as the result of his chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) condition. He was hospitalized on occasion as he coped with his illness. On the day of his death, according to his friends, he was suffering from breathing problems when he drove to the emergency room for treatment. His car went out of control and struck a cement sign, according to Sedona police.
Chris had an extensive range of experiences not just in the paranormal field, but as a designer, musician and actor/model. In 1989, he set himself up in the San Luis Valley straddling Colorado and New Mexico, where he checked out a wide range of recurring paranormal experiences. It resulted in three books, The Mysterious Valley (1996), Enter The Valley (1999), and Secrets of the Mysterious Valley (2007), books that chronicled the incredible UFO waves of high-strangeness that have long plagued this region.
But that wasn’t all. Two of his subsequent books also set the standards on paranormal investigation. “Stalking the Tricksters,” published in 2009, focused on a wide range of legends across the centuries.
According to a blurb describing the book, it covered “Manifestations of the Trickster persona such as cryptids, elementals, werewolves, demons, vampires and dancing devils have permeated human experience since before the dawn of civilization. But today, very little is publicly known about The Tricksters. Who are they? What is their agenda? Known by many names including fools, sages, Loki, men-in-black, skinwalkers, shapeshifters, jokers, jinn, sorcerers, and witches, Tricksters provide us with a direct conduit to the unknown in the 21st century. Can these denizens of phenomenal events be attempting to communicate a warning to humanity in this uncertain age of prophesied change?”
His final book set the standard for research into reported episodes of cattle mutilations, “Stalking the Herd: Unraveling the Cattle Mutilation Mystery,” published in 2014. At the time of his passing, he was working on a sequel that would provide extensive background information about the events reported in the original book. It was apparently never completed.
Chris was also a skilled video editor, and regularly worked with such documentary film producer/directors as James Fox and Ron James.
While I regarded David and Chris as friends, my ongoing contacts with them were largely by email and phone. I met David in person only twice, at a Macworld Expo, a trade show covering Apple gear. We did have a number of personal phone conversations where he talked about his life, particularly the problems he faced with ongoing illnesses and relationships.
My relationship with Chris was closer. We met fairly regularly at a UFO conference held each year in and around the Fountain Hills, Arizona area. He also visited my home a few times; we even recorded a show or two in my studio.
He also did some personal favors for me that reflected his kindness, for which I was always grateful.
Since The Paracast began, I’ve had the sad experience of losing other friends. Some of them were well known in the UFO field, such as Tim Beckley, Stanton Friedman, John Keel, Jim Moseley and Brad Steiger.
Indeed, Jim was one of my closest friends for almost 50 years. He was my first employer, when I signed up as Managing Editor of his Saucer News magazine. I remember back in the mid-1970s when I lived in an apartment just a few blocks from his. Every few nights, I’d drop over and we’d chat as he consumed his favorite whiskey, cigarettes and, quite often, a joint. All right, I did partake in the latter.
I’d see Stan once or twice a year at a UFO convention, though we never actually hung out. Same for Brad, who was, along with Jim, one of the first guests on the show.
I encountered Keel on more than a few occasions, first when he showed up at the small Saucer News office as a writer gathering information for an article — never published — in Playboy. He contributed occasional letters and other material to my counter-culture UFO magazine, Caveat Emptor.
I also saw him every so often when he was connected with a Fortean group in New York.
But I knew Tim for almost 60 years, first when he set up his first flying saucer club and magazine as a teenager. Some years later, he moved from his parents’ home in New Brunswick, New Jersey to a run-down rent-controlled apartment on East 30th Street in New York City. For years, I actually worked at a design studio in the very next building, so we saw each other often.
When The Paracast was established, Tim, by dint of his vast contacts in the paranormal universe, was recruited as a co-producer.
In passing, David and Tim had a short-lived but contentious association with one another. But I never took it seriously.
It is easy to dwell on these losses. In the wide universe, most of the people I’ve known over the years were part of the UFO community. I’ve been lucky to know them; they meant a lot to me in various ways, and I will always cherish the memories.
Copyright 1999-2024 The Paracast Company. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy: Your personal information is safe with us. We will positively never give out your name and/or e-mail address to anybody else, and that's a promise!
December 1, 2024
www.theparacast.com
Discover Amazing "Out-of-the-Box" Paranormal Encounters in New York's Hudson Valley with Professor Wham on The Paracast!
The Paracast is released every Sunday and available from our site, https://www.theparacast.com, your favorite podcast app, and the IRN Internet Radio Network. All episodes from 2022, 2023 and 2024 now feature better audio and fewer ads. We are also re-releasing some of our most popular classic episodes.
WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU HAVEN'T SIGNED UP FOR THE PARACAST+ YET? PLEASE SUBSCRIBE TO THE PARACAST+ SO YOU CAN SUPPORT THE SHOW AND ENJOY THE ULTIMATE PARACAST EXPERIENCE AT A SPECIAL LOW PRICE! We have another radio show and we’d love for you listen to it. So for a low subscription fee, you will receive access to an exclusive bonus podcast, After The Paracast, plus a special version of The Paracast with all the ads removed, when you join The Paracast+. We also offer a special RSS feed for easy updates of the latest episodes on your device. Episodes are now released 12-24 hours earlier. Flash! Take advantage of our lowest rates ever! Act now! It's easier than ever to susbcribe! For the easiest signup ever, please visit: https://www.theparacast.plus
This Week's Episode: Gene and cohost Tim Swartz present a visit with the one-and-only Professor Wham (Dr. C.S. Matthews). She is a journalist and has also published poetry, short stories, academic papers, a textbook on New Religious Movements and most recently a survey of paranormal reports and experiences in the Hudson Valley, "Mysterious Beauty: Living with the Paranormal in the Hudson Valley." She is also the author of the novel "Final Season — A Lovecraftian Quartet." Professor Wham has studied religion, new religious movements, occultism and paranormal experiences for over four decades. She has advanced degrees in Religious Studies and American Cultural Studies and is an ardent environmentalist. She has practiced Sufism for two decades and has studied Swedish-Finnish runes/shamanism and Mid-Hudson Algonquin Indigenous traditions from native teachers. Professor Wham lives in the beautifully haunted Mid-Hudson Valley of New York State where she teaches at local colleges and works for a prominent non-profit organization. Her site: https://www.professorwham.com YouTube: ProfessorWHAM
After The Paracast — Available exclusively for Paracast+ December 1: Paranormal expert Professor Wham returns to talk with Gene and cohost Tim Swartz about incredible and out-of-this world encounters over the years in New York's Hudson Valley. Also on the agenda are her weird paranormal encounters, some "out of the box," the long history of UFO phenomena and what she regards as the problems and limitations of the so-called "disclosure" movement. She is the author of "Mysterious Beauty: Living with the Paranormal in the Hudson Valley" and a novel, "Final Season — A Lovecraftian Quartet." Professor Wham has studied religion, new religious movements, occultism and paranormal experiences for over four decades. She has advanced degrees in Religious Studies and American Cultural Studies and is an ardent environmentalist. She has practiced Sufism for two decades and has studied Swedish-Finnish runes/shamanism and Mid-Hudson Algonquin Indigenous traditions from native teachers. Professor Wham lives in the beautifully haunted Mid-Hudson Valley of New York State where she teaches at local colleges and works for a prominent non-profit organization. Her site: https://www.professorwham.com YouTube: ProfessorWHAM
Reminder: Please don't forget to visit our famous Paracast Community Forums for the latest news/views/debates on all things paranormal: The Paracast Community Forums.
Remembering Old Friends
By Gene Steinberg
The world is smaller. The world is colder. In the nearly 19 years in which I’ve hosted and produced The Paracast, we’ve had four “permanent” co-hosts. Two are no longer on this plane of existence.
So David Biedny, a brilliant mind with a unique approach to paranormal research, co-founded the show, and served as co-host from its debut in 2006 through 2010. He died in his sleep on January 29th, 2024, but I didn’t learn of the sad event until months later. David had not been active in the field for years.
While David was new to the world of the strange and unknown, he was widely respected as a graphic designer and special effects artist. He once did a stint at George Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic, where he worked on such films as “Hook.” He was also a regular guest lecturer at Yale delivering presentations on mastering Adobe Photoshop. I first contacted him when we both were regular contributors to several tech magazines devoted to users of gear from Apple Inc.
When I started one of the first podcasts, “The Tech Night Owl LIVE,” I ran a regular segment appropriately entitled the “David Biedny Zone,” where he delivered his frank and off-center views of the tech world. During the course of our conversations, I learned of his intense interest in UFOs and other paranormal phenomena. The development of The Paracast thus seemed natural.
After presenting a series of guest cohosts after David’s departure from The Paracast, highly skilled author and researcher Christopher O’Brien took on the task. He stayed until 2018, when he went off to devote more time to ongoing research and his pet project, developing a network of detection equipment to record paranormal events around the world.
In the years after leaving The Paracast, Chris made occasional guest appearances to talk about his various projects.
On the morning of Sunday, November 24, 2024, I received an unexpected and devastating Facebook message from one of Chris’ friends that he was involved in a “medical emergency.” It reportedly resulted in a fatal auto accident in Sedona, AZ.
In recent years, Chris’ faced serious health challenges as the result of his chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) condition. He was hospitalized on occasion as he coped with his illness. On the day of his death, according to his friends, he was suffering from breathing problems when he drove to the emergency room for treatment. His car went out of control and struck a cement sign, according to Sedona police.
Chris had an extensive range of experiences not just in the paranormal field, but as a designer, musician and actor/model. In 1989, he set himself up in the San Luis Valley straddling Colorado and New Mexico, where he checked out a wide range of recurring paranormal experiences. It resulted in three books, The Mysterious Valley (1996), Enter The Valley (1999), and Secrets of the Mysterious Valley (2007), books that chronicled the incredible UFO waves of high-strangeness that have long plagued this region.
But that wasn’t all. Two of his subsequent books also set the standards on paranormal investigation. “Stalking the Tricksters,” published in 2009, focused on a wide range of legends across the centuries.
According to a blurb describing the book, it covered “Manifestations of the Trickster persona such as cryptids, elementals, werewolves, demons, vampires and dancing devils have permeated human experience since before the dawn of civilization. But today, very little is publicly known about The Tricksters. Who are they? What is their agenda? Known by many names including fools, sages, Loki, men-in-black, skinwalkers, shapeshifters, jokers, jinn, sorcerers, and witches, Tricksters provide us with a direct conduit to the unknown in the 21st century. Can these denizens of phenomenal events be attempting to communicate a warning to humanity in this uncertain age of prophesied change?”
His final book set the standard for research into reported episodes of cattle mutilations, “Stalking the Herd: Unraveling the Cattle Mutilation Mystery,” published in 2014. At the time of his passing, he was working on a sequel that would provide extensive background information about the events reported in the original book. It was apparently never completed.
Chris was also a skilled video editor, and regularly worked with such documentary film producer/directors as James Fox and Ron James.
While I regarded David and Chris as friends, my ongoing contacts with them were largely by email and phone. I met David in person only twice, at a Macworld Expo, a trade show covering Apple gear. We did have a number of personal phone conversations where he talked about his life, particularly the problems he faced with ongoing illnesses and relationships.
My relationship with Chris was closer. We met fairly regularly at a UFO conference held each year in and around the Fountain Hills, Arizona area. He also visited my home a few times; we even recorded a show or two in my studio.
He also did some personal favors for me that reflected his kindness, for which I was always grateful.
Since The Paracast began, I’ve had the sad experience of losing other friends. Some of them were well known in the UFO field, such as Tim Beckley, Stanton Friedman, John Keel, Jim Moseley and Brad Steiger.
Indeed, Jim was one of my closest friends for almost 50 years. He was my first employer, when I signed up as Managing Editor of his Saucer News magazine. I remember back in the mid-1970s when I lived in an apartment just a few blocks from his. Every few nights, I’d drop over and we’d chat as he consumed his favorite whiskey, cigarettes and, quite often, a joint. All right, I did partake in the latter.
I’d see Stan once or twice a year at a UFO convention, though we never actually hung out. Same for Brad, who was, along with Jim, one of the first guests on the show.
I encountered Keel on more than a few occasions, first when he showed up at the small Saucer News office as a writer gathering information for an article — never published — in Playboy. He contributed occasional letters and other material to my counter-culture UFO magazine, Caveat Emptor.
I also saw him every so often when he was connected with a Fortean group in New York.
But I knew Tim for almost 60 years, first when he set up his first flying saucer club and magazine as a teenager. Some years later, he moved from his parents’ home in New Brunswick, New Jersey to a run-down rent-controlled apartment on East 30th Street in New York City. For years, I actually worked at a design studio in the very next building, so we saw each other often.
When The Paracast was established, Tim, by dint of his vast contacts in the paranormal universe, was recruited as a co-producer.
In passing, David and Tim had a short-lived but contentious association with one another. But I never took it seriously.
It is easy to dwell on these losses. In the wide universe, most of the people I’ve known over the years were part of the UFO community. I’ve been lucky to know them; they meant a lot to me in various ways, and I will always cherish the memories.
Copyright 1999-2024 The Paracast Company. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy: Your personal information is safe with us. We will positively never give out your name and/or e-mail address to anybody else, and that's a promise!