C-C-C-C-C-c-c-c-combo breaker!
Spooky Month perseveres but the inherently musical aspect of the week falls, leaving in its wake a hybrid of the spooky and the auditory. Today, instead of emphatically suggesting a song or album for the month of October, I implore you to look at one of my all time favorite podcasts, Mysterious Universe.
I've been listening to MU since its inception, I think. To be fair, it was back in 2006 and I may have been in that hazy, post collegiate phase in which days string together in a seamless fashion while you look for a job to serve as a stop gap before a career takes shape. The internet and podcasting were ascendant, becoming a legitimate cultural presence. I was filling the time not searching job postings by cleaning my apartment and listening to podcasts, distracting myself with the weekly shows. I was enamored with Mysterious Universe, a podcast "bringing you news of the strange and paranormal" that touched on a childhood fascination of mine. I was, I am sheepish to admit, fascinated with anything and everything relating to UFOs, Bigfoot, Cryptozoology and my personal favorite - the Loch Ness monster. As I got older, I studied Philosophy in college, which I've found was basically these same niche subjects, only as they manifest in the mind. Same person, same weird interests, only now it was internalized through logic and self-examination instead of books about Roswell. I still adored a good conspiracy theory, only now more as an intellectual exercise than a serious debate.
I loved having the podcast on while I puttered. I started to accumulate back episodes and would listen to them on long drives to see my parents. At some point I interrupted my internet service and when I finally got my old pc back online, I downloaded every episode of MU from iTunes that had been backlogged. I had a glut of content and I was in rapture. Host Benjamin Grundy, now accompanied by Aaron Wright, intoned with pleasant demeanor about the most outlandish stuff possible. Shadow People. Scientific anomalies. Possessions. Modern relics. Anything and everything you would expect from Art Bell, only without the sinking feeling that you were listening to an elderly relative ramble on about murky memories (not to slight Coast to Coast, but they had their share of out-there guests). Grundy and Wright often take their subject matter at face value, and I love them for it. It makes for an interesting broadcast, if only for entertainment's sake. They also include some phenomenal mood music to break up the broadcasts, creating a fantastic air of peculiarity to go with the subject matter.
That's the real thing here, for me. I know so much of what they cover has little or no basis in reality. It doesn't mean it can't give me a thrill. In fact, there have been quite a few nights in which sleep has eluded me that end in me having to turn off my old-format iPod for fear of never sleeping again - stories of the paranormal and bizarre keeping me up beyond when I should have otherwise drifted off to slumber. Back in the original spate of episodes there's a report of a n investigator who made audio recordings of what supposedly was a Sasquatch in the distance. More than once I awoke from a fresh nightmare at the sounds of mournful howling as episodes played in the night, a strange and chilling sound that I couldn't really identify as a known animal. I eventually had to edit that episode out.
The point of all this is that if you want to give yourself the willies this Halloween season - listen to a few episodes of Mysterious Universe. There will undoubtedly be a mix of stories harvested from all over the world - some strange, some funny, some undeniably made up. Still, there is just that one story in the bunch that will make you reach for the pause button. Tell you what - download an episode this weekend and wait until it's late at night. Put one on and see if there's something in there that gives you the willies. Mission accomplished.
