The Paracast Newsletter
June 22, 2025
www.theparacast.com
Paranormal Researcher Larry Arnold Reveals Frightening Episodes of Spontaneous Human Combustion (SHC) This Week 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 and later 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 for subscribers to The Paracast+ are now released 24 hours earlier. Flash! Now includes over 100 classic episodes, so 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 (June 22, 2025): After 19 years, paranormal researcher Larry Arnold returns to talk with Gene and cohost Tim Swartz about the strange and frightening phenomenon of spontaneous human combustion (SHC). He is regarded by many as the world’s expert on SHC, but others regard him as a “mystery monger” and “world-class fool.” After leaving Lafayette College and a brief career in electrical engineering, Arnold founded PSI: ParaScience International in 1976 to pursue the exploration of Fortean anomalies and consciousness. His controversial article published in August 1978, titled “Meltdown…at TMI-2,” would 8 months later be termed “uncannily accurate” by The Philadelphia Inquirer in presaging the future of that nuclear power plant’s “impossible” Class IX meltdown near his home. The tragedy was best known as Three Mile Island. This discussion will cover both the nuclear incident and his 1995 classic title, “Ablaze!” This large book contains hundreds of unbelievable examples of The Fire Within, culled from long-forgotten obscure medical journals and never-before-published interviews with witnesses to the impossible. Arnold has been a guest on hundreds of radio and internet-radio programs and a number of radio and TV shows that include provocative radio host Howard Stern. He has also delivered lectures at a number of colleges and universities. His “unofficial” website is www.ParaScience.com. Caution: This episode has graphic descriptions of episodes of spontaneous human combustion.
After The Paracast — Available exclusively to Paracast+ subscribers by June 21: Paranormal researcher Larry Arnold presents additional case histories of spontaneous human combustion (SHC). Speaking with Gene and cohost Tim Swartz, he offers not just case histories of this frightening phenomenon but detailed refutations of claims from some of SHC’s devout critics. Much of his evidence is presented in his 1995 book, “Ablaze!” This large book contains hundreds of unbelievable examples of The Fire Within, culled from long-forgotten obscure medical journals and never-before-published interviews with witnesses to the impossible. After leaving Lafayette College and a brief career in electrical engineering, Arnold founded PSI: ParaScience International in 1976 to pursue the exploration of Fortean anomalies and consciousness. In addition to “Ablaze!” he is author of An author of “The Parapsychological Impact of the Accident at Three Mile Island” (1980) and “The Reiki Handbook” (1982). He has also had articles published in, among others, Fate; Fortean Times (United Kingdom); INFO Journal; Life; Pennsylvania Association of Arson Investigators (PAAI) Newsletter; Pennsylvania Magazine; Pursuit (Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained); Esotera (Germany); Science Digest; Seeing Journal; Rainbows; Susquehanna Monthly Magazine; UFO Annual, UFO Report, and UFO Universe. His “unofficial” website is www.ParaScience.com. Caution: This episode has graphic descriptions of episodes of spontaneous human combustion.
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. And look for @theparacast on Bluesky Social, Facebook, Threads and X.
We Go to See Ray Palmer
By Rick Hilberg
Edited and Annotated by Gene Steinberg
Ray Palmer at his Amherst, Wisconsin home in 1965. Photo by Rick Hilberg.
[Controversial UFO/sci-fi writer/editor/publisher Ray Palmer is one of the reasons that a number of teens around the U.S. connected and began to meet and share their views about the flying saucer mystery. He is also famous, or infamous, for his avid promotion of the mystery, and many of the core elements of the legend originated with him. Given his status, we were all very anxious and curious about meeting him. And, that, in itself, was a strange adventure. — GS]
So Gene has asked me to write a few words about our visit to see and interview iconic UFO and paranormal writer and publisher Ray Palmer back in October of 1965. Damn, has it been sixty years since yours truly, then a young saucerer and publisher of my "original" UFO Magazine, joined Gene, Allen Greenfield and Jim Moseley in Chicago to drive up to Palmer's home and printing plant in Wisconsin?
Anyway, all of us were extremely active in the UFO field back then. We became acquainted through an early social network, the “Saucer Club News" section in Palmer’s Flying Saucers magazine. Notably, Gene, Allen and I had an unfortunate incident earlier that year in Washington D. C. at the headquarters of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomenon, NICAP for short. That was the UFO club headed up for a number of years by legendary author Donald Keyhoe.
[A curious aspect of history: NICAP’s headquarters were situated in a simple office complex located off DuPont Circle. It was actually near the place where the alien, Klaatu, was shot by his pursuers in the classic sci-fi film, “The Day the Earth Stood Still.” — GS]
Now a day before our the NICAP fiasco went down, we had a pleasant meeting with Keyhoe at a diner near his home in Luray, Virginia. Accompanying our little group was Martin Salkind, a friend of Gene’s who avidly followed the UFO saga.
Now as many of you have heard, we were literally thrown out of the office by Richard Hall, the assistant director of the group, because Gene was a staff member of Jim Moseley's Saucer News magazine, and Jim was critical of some of NICAP's policies. After being given the bum's rush at NICAP, we reached out to Ray Palmer via phone and, after that conversation, drafted a notarized letter on the incident and mailed it off to him for publication in his zine. In turn, RAP wrote an article on the misadventure for Flying Saucers entitled “No Investigations Can Actually Proceed,” in other words NICAP.
[Now I actually ran into Hall a decade later, at a UFO confab in Fort Smith, Arkansas. We shook hands, exchanged pleasantries, and basically buried the hatchet. Let bygones be bygones, and I only regret we never had the opportunity to have him as a guest on The Paracast. But we would never have brought Jim on for such an episode. Sadly, Hall died in 2009. — GS]
But enough of that background. We were all anxious to actually meet with Palmer and not only interview him but ask him a million questions about his views on saucers and whatnot.
Anyway, Gene and Jim traveled from New York City and met me at my home in Cleveland where I would drive our crew to rendezvous with Allen Greenfield, who would take the train from his home in Atlanta. We booked rooms at the luxurious Conrad Hilton Hotel on Michigan Avenue in the Chicago Loop.
[Most of the details of our stay at that luxury hotel are lost in the mists of time. But I cannot forget its irritating architecture, requiring that you walk around many intersecting hallways to find your room. And, yes, we did get lost a few times. — GS]
After meeting up with Allen upon our arrival in the Windy City, we all had a fine dinner at one of the local restaurants and talked way into the night about all matters saucerish.
The next morning, we all piled into my '61 Oldsmobile and headed north after a quick breakfast. I believe we drove on old U.S. Highway 41 past Milwaukee where we turned west on to Wisconsin Highway 10 headed for Palmer's headquarters in the tiny community of Amherst, Wisconsin.
Having talked to Palmer before the trip to get specific directions, we were looking for a mailbox on the side of the road in Amherst that read "Olssen", as obviously Palmer didn't want his devoted fans to just drop in for a visit unannounced. But his directions were perhaps a little confusing. We actually got lost until Jim suggested we stop at a service station, perhaps the only one in Amherst, and ask. Sure enough, the attendant pointed us to Palmer’s home, located just a few minutes away.
Palmer met us at his rather attractive stone and brick residence, with its big printing production plant adjacent, and invited us in into his home for refreshments. The complex overlooked the beautiful Tomorrow River, and gave every evidence of being worth far more than one expected from his constant near-poverty pleas.
After all these years I'll be damned if I can recall all that we all discussed. But we were there for several hours and all asking questions, and RAP was very gracious and willing to answer them all. I do remember Gene setting up his recording equipment and doing a very professional radio type interview with Palmer. Afterwards, Palmer was only too happy to give us a quick tour of his plant, and after taking some photos we left to return to Chicago.
But there is more to it than that. The text of that interview was published some years later in the first issue of Caveat Emptor magazine, which Gene and his first wife, Geneva, published. Ever the skilled promoter, RAP revealed that his friend, Richard Shaver, of dero and tero fame, spent several years in a mental institution when he claimed to be in the caves occupied by those creatures. It was new to us, then, but we later learned that Shaver’s incarceration may have been the result of family-related interference.
Despite this, RAP said he believed Shaver based, in part, on some weird and frightening personal experiences.
No matter. Shaver heatedly denied the story and, in a follow-up article for Caveat Emptor, indicated why he felt his long-time friend betrayed him.
Another highlight of our trip: Our crew had a visit with famed UFO author Jacques Vallee. He had written his original book on the subject, “Anatomy of a Phenomenon,” and was busy trying to get the word out. The session took maybe an hour or so. After we left, Jim’s curious reaction was that Vallee seemed unduly hyper and he began to speculate, half seriously, about the man’s psychological issues.
The day after our return to Chicago, we returned to our homes where we considered our brush with UFO history.
But hey, that's another story…
Rick Hilberg has been writing, publishing and investigating UFOs and Fortean matters since 1962. He was the editor and publisher of several saucerzines over the years, the very first UFO Magazine and Flying Saucer Digest being just two. He's also written and published almost twenty books and booklets on various UFO and paranormal topics over the years.
While he's retired from publishing he still writes on the topic for two journals as well as regularly posts historical UFO items on Facebook. He also does occasional radio interviews and has appeared on The Paracast with Gene several times over the years.
Copyright 1999-2025 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!
June 22, 2025
www.theparacast.com
Paranormal Researcher Larry Arnold Reveals Frightening Episodes of Spontaneous Human Combustion (SHC) This Week 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 and later 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 for subscribers to The Paracast+ are now released 24 hours earlier. Flash! Now includes over 100 classic episodes, so 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 (June 22, 2025): After 19 years, paranormal researcher Larry Arnold returns to talk with Gene and cohost Tim Swartz about the strange and frightening phenomenon of spontaneous human combustion (SHC). He is regarded by many as the world’s expert on SHC, but others regard him as a “mystery monger” and “world-class fool.” After leaving Lafayette College and a brief career in electrical engineering, Arnold founded PSI: ParaScience International in 1976 to pursue the exploration of Fortean anomalies and consciousness. His controversial article published in August 1978, titled “Meltdown…at TMI-2,” would 8 months later be termed “uncannily accurate” by The Philadelphia Inquirer in presaging the future of that nuclear power plant’s “impossible” Class IX meltdown near his home. The tragedy was best known as Three Mile Island. This discussion will cover both the nuclear incident and his 1995 classic title, “Ablaze!” This large book contains hundreds of unbelievable examples of The Fire Within, culled from long-forgotten obscure medical journals and never-before-published interviews with witnesses to the impossible. Arnold has been a guest on hundreds of radio and internet-radio programs and a number of radio and TV shows that include provocative radio host Howard Stern. He has also delivered lectures at a number of colleges and universities. His “unofficial” website is www.ParaScience.com. Caution: This episode has graphic descriptions of episodes of spontaneous human combustion.
After The Paracast — Available exclusively to Paracast+ subscribers by June 21: Paranormal researcher Larry Arnold presents additional case histories of spontaneous human combustion (SHC). Speaking with Gene and cohost Tim Swartz, he offers not just case histories of this frightening phenomenon but detailed refutations of claims from some of SHC’s devout critics. Much of his evidence is presented in his 1995 book, “Ablaze!” This large book contains hundreds of unbelievable examples of The Fire Within, culled from long-forgotten obscure medical journals and never-before-published interviews with witnesses to the impossible. After leaving Lafayette College and a brief career in electrical engineering, Arnold founded PSI: ParaScience International in 1976 to pursue the exploration of Fortean anomalies and consciousness. In addition to “Ablaze!” he is author of An author of “The Parapsychological Impact of the Accident at Three Mile Island” (1980) and “The Reiki Handbook” (1982). He has also had articles published in, among others, Fate; Fortean Times (United Kingdom); INFO Journal; Life; Pennsylvania Association of Arson Investigators (PAAI) Newsletter; Pennsylvania Magazine; Pursuit (Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained); Esotera (Germany); Science Digest; Seeing Journal; Rainbows; Susquehanna Monthly Magazine; UFO Annual, UFO Report, and UFO Universe. His “unofficial” website is www.ParaScience.com. Caution: This episode has graphic descriptions of episodes of spontaneous human combustion.
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. And look for @theparacast on Bluesky Social, Facebook, Threads and X.
We Go to See Ray Palmer
By Rick Hilberg
Edited and Annotated by Gene Steinberg
Ray Palmer at his Amherst, Wisconsin home in 1965. Photo by Rick Hilberg.
[Controversial UFO/sci-fi writer/editor/publisher Ray Palmer is one of the reasons that a number of teens around the U.S. connected and began to meet and share their views about the flying saucer mystery. He is also famous, or infamous, for his avid promotion of the mystery, and many of the core elements of the legend originated with him. Given his status, we were all very anxious and curious about meeting him. And, that, in itself, was a strange adventure. — GS]
So Gene has asked me to write a few words about our visit to see and interview iconic UFO and paranormal writer and publisher Ray Palmer back in October of 1965. Damn, has it been sixty years since yours truly, then a young saucerer and publisher of my "original" UFO Magazine, joined Gene, Allen Greenfield and Jim Moseley in Chicago to drive up to Palmer's home and printing plant in Wisconsin?
Anyway, all of us were extremely active in the UFO field back then. We became acquainted through an early social network, the “Saucer Club News" section in Palmer’s Flying Saucers magazine. Notably, Gene, Allen and I had an unfortunate incident earlier that year in Washington D. C. at the headquarters of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomenon, NICAP for short. That was the UFO club headed up for a number of years by legendary author Donald Keyhoe.
[A curious aspect of history: NICAP’s headquarters were situated in a simple office complex located off DuPont Circle. It was actually near the place where the alien, Klaatu, was shot by his pursuers in the classic sci-fi film, “The Day the Earth Stood Still.” — GS]
Now a day before our the NICAP fiasco went down, we had a pleasant meeting with Keyhoe at a diner near his home in Luray, Virginia. Accompanying our little group was Martin Salkind, a friend of Gene’s who avidly followed the UFO saga.
Now as many of you have heard, we were literally thrown out of the office by Richard Hall, the assistant director of the group, because Gene was a staff member of Jim Moseley's Saucer News magazine, and Jim was critical of some of NICAP's policies. After being given the bum's rush at NICAP, we reached out to Ray Palmer via phone and, after that conversation, drafted a notarized letter on the incident and mailed it off to him for publication in his zine. In turn, RAP wrote an article on the misadventure for Flying Saucers entitled “No Investigations Can Actually Proceed,” in other words NICAP.
[Now I actually ran into Hall a decade later, at a UFO confab in Fort Smith, Arkansas. We shook hands, exchanged pleasantries, and basically buried the hatchet. Let bygones be bygones, and I only regret we never had the opportunity to have him as a guest on The Paracast. But we would never have brought Jim on for such an episode. Sadly, Hall died in 2009. — GS]
But enough of that background. We were all anxious to actually meet with Palmer and not only interview him but ask him a million questions about his views on saucers and whatnot.
Anyway, Gene and Jim traveled from New York City and met me at my home in Cleveland where I would drive our crew to rendezvous with Allen Greenfield, who would take the train from his home in Atlanta. We booked rooms at the luxurious Conrad Hilton Hotel on Michigan Avenue in the Chicago Loop.
[Most of the details of our stay at that luxury hotel are lost in the mists of time. But I cannot forget its irritating architecture, requiring that you walk around many intersecting hallways to find your room. And, yes, we did get lost a few times. — GS]
After meeting up with Allen upon our arrival in the Windy City, we all had a fine dinner at one of the local restaurants and talked way into the night about all matters saucerish.
The next morning, we all piled into my '61 Oldsmobile and headed north after a quick breakfast. I believe we drove on old U.S. Highway 41 past Milwaukee where we turned west on to Wisconsin Highway 10 headed for Palmer's headquarters in the tiny community of Amherst, Wisconsin.
Having talked to Palmer before the trip to get specific directions, we were looking for a mailbox on the side of the road in Amherst that read "Olssen", as obviously Palmer didn't want his devoted fans to just drop in for a visit unannounced. But his directions were perhaps a little confusing. We actually got lost until Jim suggested we stop at a service station, perhaps the only one in Amherst, and ask. Sure enough, the attendant pointed us to Palmer’s home, located just a few minutes away.
Palmer met us at his rather attractive stone and brick residence, with its big printing production plant adjacent, and invited us in into his home for refreshments. The complex overlooked the beautiful Tomorrow River, and gave every evidence of being worth far more than one expected from his constant near-poverty pleas.
After all these years I'll be damned if I can recall all that we all discussed. But we were there for several hours and all asking questions, and RAP was very gracious and willing to answer them all. I do remember Gene setting up his recording equipment and doing a very professional radio type interview with Palmer. Afterwards, Palmer was only too happy to give us a quick tour of his plant, and after taking some photos we left to return to Chicago.
But there is more to it than that. The text of that interview was published some years later in the first issue of Caveat Emptor magazine, which Gene and his first wife, Geneva, published. Ever the skilled promoter, RAP revealed that his friend, Richard Shaver, of dero and tero fame, spent several years in a mental institution when he claimed to be in the caves occupied by those creatures. It was new to us, then, but we later learned that Shaver’s incarceration may have been the result of family-related interference.
Despite this, RAP said he believed Shaver based, in part, on some weird and frightening personal experiences.
No matter. Shaver heatedly denied the story and, in a follow-up article for Caveat Emptor, indicated why he felt his long-time friend betrayed him.
Another highlight of our trip: Our crew had a visit with famed UFO author Jacques Vallee. He had written his original book on the subject, “Anatomy of a Phenomenon,” and was busy trying to get the word out. The session took maybe an hour or so. After we left, Jim’s curious reaction was that Vallee seemed unduly hyper and he began to speculate, half seriously, about the man’s psychological issues.
The day after our return to Chicago, we returned to our homes where we considered our brush with UFO history.
But hey, that's another story…
• • •
Rick Hilberg has been writing, publishing and investigating UFOs and Fortean matters since 1962. He was the editor and publisher of several saucerzines over the years, the very first UFO Magazine and Flying Saucer Digest being just two. He's also written and published almost twenty books and booklets on various UFO and paranormal topics over the years.
While he's retired from publishing he still writes on the topic for two journals as well as regularly posts historical UFO items on Facebook. He also does occasional radio interviews and has appeared on The Paracast with Gene several times over the years.
Copyright 1999-2025 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!