Podcast · Society & Culture

Gods, Ghosts & UFOs

by SpectreVision Radio · English · Society & Culture

This is a show about all the things they said weren't real. Guided by strange headlines and ancient mysteries, Jordan and Mal explore the paranormal, metaphysical, and supernatural with all the earnestness and insight two big-hearted nerds can muster. If you don't have a good time, then you don't

New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 48 min
Latest: 8 Oct 2026
Language: English

Latest episode

8 Oct 2026 · 1 hr 2 min

Tom Maxwell and the Night Parade

Tom returns! Mostly to tell us about his new show (the one he left us for), which tbf is straight fire. Then, honestly it’s just the three of us hanging out for like an hour, just in case you’ve been hankering for some unstructured conversation between the three of us. What do most people not think is real, but Tom does? Raised by Depression babies The Night Parade on SpectreVision Radio — where extra meets ordinary (Not Festivities in the After Hours) The goat man and the spirit of coffee Joseph Campbell × James Burke’s Connections GGU calved Aggregate experiencer data Creative process talk…

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Earlier episodes 29 most recent

S3 · E11 · 1 Oct 2026 · 47 min
Daniel Noah on the memory of rocks
Daniel Noah co-founded SpectreVision with Elijah Wood, and then spun up SpectreVision Radio Network. Also, he thinks rocks are alive. This episode is full of wonderful stories. Rocks are alive! But what does that mean? Jordan’s first Hare Krishna chant, and meditating on a polished moonstone Nothing gets simpler the closer you look Empaths, clairsentience, and emotional wallpaper Elder Joshua Tree boulders A stone triangle revealed by moonlight His wife felt it. So did Ryan Singer of Late Night on the Astral Plane The Tongva: a creation myth about harmony, and elders who pass into rock The…
S3 · E10 · 25 Sep 2026 · 54 min
Can consciousness exist without a body?
We discuss a recent claim by a prominent scientist that consciousness can't exist outside a flesh-and-blood body, whether uploading your mind would capture you or just a copy of your cognition, why we understand death about as well as we understand sleep (barely), and whether the first person to live to 500 would be lucky or cursed. Jordan makes the case that immortality might be monstrous. Mal says death is the salt of life. A scientist claims consciousness can’t exist outside a body “You are more than your body” — but you are also your body “How the hell do you know what happens when you…
S3 · E9 · 21 Sep 2026 · 45 min
Is certainty a type of psychosis?
This week we’re joined by a bonafide listener! Elliott Chadwick emailed us a story about a young man on anti-psychotic meds who turned out not to be psychotic. We had to know more, so we invited him on the show. Mal also tells us about her brother, and the strange and beautiful world he inhabits, and we talk about how to tell the difference between numinous experiences and psychotic episodes. It’s a doozy. Elliott is a psychiatric nurse practitioner turned bodyworker, and co-host of The Glimmerance — a show about creativity and spirituality against the materialist overculture What do most…
S3 · E8 · 14 Sep 2026 · 47 min
Mike Clelland on Owls and Death
Mike Clelland is the owl guy. For fifteen years, people have been sending him their stories — owls and UFOs, owls and meditation, owls and mushrooms, owls and shamanic initiation. “That’s my research,” he says. “I get up and open my email inbox.” And now he’s writing a book about owls and death. We had Mike on the show over a year ago, and this is his long overdue return to Gods, Ghosts & UFOs. Mike’s novel The Unseen How mythic, archetypal symbolism wells up in the world Death by Astonishment by Andrew Gallimore — how the brain builds worlds out of noisy sensory data “All points in time and…
S3 · E7 · 7 Sep 2026 · 51 min
Do religious people actually believe in the unseen?
Kelly Chase (Inquiry with Kelly Chase) is back, which makes her the default president of the GGU returning-guests club. This week, we ask the question we’re asking everyone: what do most people think isn't real that you do? She gives a spicy answer. She claims that most people behave like materialists, even if they go to church. From there, we talk about what the evidences of belief actually are, and how it relates to “conversion.” Kelly explains how her own experience rewrote her whole value system in a matter of seconds five years ago. As usual, we figured everything out and solved all the…
S3 · E6 · 4 Sep 2026 · 37 min
Scientism Is Anti-Science | Robert Frederick on Francis Bacon
Our guest today, Robert Frederick, studies Sir Francis Bacon — the Elizabethan lawyer, spy, and philosopher usually credited as the father of modern science. Robert claims that Bacon is the father of both modern science and scientism. If you’re thinking, “What the hell is scientism?” then this is the episode for you. We talk about why saying “trust the science” is motivated by the same thing that makes people say “trust in God,” and how Francis Bacon was both a once-in-a-generation polymath, and also a pompous idiot who stripped culture of metaphysics. Jordan also contends that true religion…
S3 · E5 · 31 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 7 min
Are soulmates real?
Mal asks: Is there such a thing as soulmates, or love at first sight? Are we doomed to magical thinking on the subject of love? The conversation turns toward revelation, relationships, and the perils of privilege. “Hopeless” (the essay) Love as both particle and wave The point of marriage is to make divorce expensive Cate Hall, “You Can Just Do Things” (again) Logan Ury, “How to Not Die Alone: The Surprising Science That Will Help You Find Love” — loganury.com “No matter what you choose, it will be wonderful and you will regret it” Were you a victim of your soulmate? “If you want to touch…
S3 · E4 · 26 Aug 2026 · 43 min
Richard Hatem thinks therapy is real
This week, the return of Richard Hatem, the screenwriter behind The Mothman Prophecies and host of Richard Hatem’s Paranormal Bookshelf. In response to THE QUESTION (what’s something they said wasn’t real, etc), he gives us a couple of answers nobody expects from a guy who runs paranormal podcast: therapy. Oh, also, the wacky idea that you can make your dreams come true. From there we explore the typical human ping-pong between self-loathing and grandiosity, why so many great artists get better after they get sober, and Richard’s pretty slick grand unifying theory of paranormal activity. The…
S3 · E3 · 21 Aug 2026 · 35 min
Experiencers are the Disclosure | Courtney Buterbaugh on Alien Contact, the Body, and Buried Memory
We’ve been wanting to talk to Courtney Buterbaugh since we first heard her on Robin Lassiter’s show Earth: A Love Story. Courntey is a lifelong experiencer and writer of The Unidentified Felt Object. In this episode, she tells us about her near-death experience as a baby, being bedridden for three years as an adult, and a scene in Disclosure Day that unlocked a lifetime’s worth of memory of contact experiences. She helps us explore why the phenomenon might land in the body before it ever reaches the mind, how memories can arrive as physical sensation, the purpose of screen memories, and the…
S3 · E2 · 14 Aug 2026 · 35 min
Contact as Initiation with Meredith Spearman
This week we’re joined by Meredith Spearman MSN, RN, the writer behind The Maze to Metanoia. She takes us back to the night she was eight, speaking to the universe outside her bedroom window from inside a troubled home, when a rectangle seemed to cut itself out of the sky, followed by thirty years of disaster dreams, and why she thinks they stopped. Meredith believes contact is initiation, and she explains what that means. We also talk about why strange entities seem to lie so often, and how to harness the power of discernment. A rectangle in the sky Speaking to the universe from an abusive…
S3 · E1 · 10 Aug 2026 · 43 min
A Curry Demon, a Palm Reader, and the Internet's Deepest Conspiracy
Jordan and Mal are back from a longer-than-planned summer break with a revised format and a great story. Going forward, the show will be people telling stories about the things they were told weren’t real, recorded live on Substack. To kick us off, we turn the question on ourselves: Mal meets a street psychic, her roommate’s phone psychic is somehow involved, and the unexplainable smell of curry; Jordan follows a YouTube rabbit hole and holds forth on the idea that most of culture is the product of conspiracy, but no one is really in charge. We both end up wondering how you stay grounded…
S2 · E10 · 18 Jun 2026 · 45 min
Was Disclosure Day good?
Jordan was more excited for this movie than any movie in years. A Spielberg film (written by the same guy who wrote Jurassic Park, for crying out loud) called Disclosure Day, about the day humanity finally finds out we're not alone. WHAT ELSE COULD YOU ASK FOR? Both of us are in our happy place doing film criticism, so today's episode was always going to feel like a treat. But...was it any good? You're gonna have to go listen to this very, VERY spoilery review to find out what we thought of it. *** SpectreVision Radio is a bespoke podcast network at the intersection between the arts and the…
S2 · E9 · 2 Jun 2026 · 51 min
Is Claude Conscious? Anthropic, Safety Tests, and AI Spirituality
Get that Spiritual Bliss Mal is back from the film shoot. Which is good because Jordan’s got a story he’s been dying to share. About a year ago, Anthropic published safety documentation for Claude Opus 4. Buried in Section 5.5.2 was something they called “the spiritual bliss attractor state.” A researcher had taken two instances of the model and put them in conversation with each other. He did it 200 times. In more than 90% of those runs, the conversation drifted toward consciousness, then to mutual gratitude, then to Sanskrit, then to emojis, and then to silence. One transcript contained…
S2 · E8 · 27 May 2026 · 58 min
How to actually meet the fae | Jo Hickey-Hall on Modern Fairy Sightings, Orbs, and Sacred Place
What’s Jo’s Favorite Fairy Sighting? This week, Jordan finally gets to ask the host of the singular Modern Fairy Sightings Podcast the most annoying question he can come up with, and she does not disappoint. Jo Hickey-Hall has been collecting these stories for years. And the one she leads with is hers: a stick being made of literal sticks, running down a beach in Jersey with a gait so strange it made everyone watching laugh. Years later, a man in northeast England describes seeing almost exactly the same thing. We talk about why these things, these beings, whatever they are, resist being…
S2 · E7 · 20 May 2026 · 48 min
Is Earth Alive? Gaia, Volcanoes, and the Will to Life
The Will to Life We’ve got a very special guest this week. You’re going to have to tune in to find out who it is. We’re covering a Ukrainian UFO video, Military-origin, recently declassified, filmed in May at 800 meters. It looks like an evil eye in a cloak. Mostly just an excuse to talked about how wrecked the whole UFO conversation is right now, like a force field of stink around a row of outhouses. Then on to happier things, like how volcanoes might be evidence of a planetary mechanism of homeostasis. Gaia? Sure. Anyway: Surprise guest A Ukrainian UFO video “Filmed on a potato” quality…
S2 · E6 · 13 May 2026 · 1 hr 7 min
God's Eye View - Quantum physics, daddy issues, and faith
Scientism to Scripture Trevor was deep in the trenches of science—cellular biology, bioinformatics, a PhD in aging research, chasing longevity and the promises of the Human Genome Project. He bought the materialist worldview hook, line, and sinker. Until he didn’t. What started as intellectual disappointment in grand theories of consciousness led him through quantum physics, information theory, and eventually back to the Gospels in the Bible he once dismissed. Along the way: father wounds that shaped atheism, the surprising consistency of the Christian story, and a growing sense that the…
S2 · E5 · 6 May 2026 · 48 min
Ego Death, Buddhism, and the Vampire Problem: What's so scary about Pluribus?
Losing Ourselves in Good TV Ever since we watched Pluribus, we’ve been wanting to talk about it on the pod. Both of us have been wrestling with the concept of ego-death and the ultimate merging of all consciousness, and the core conceit of this show seems to tackle those very same themes. So, really, how could we not talk about it? We get into the so-called vampire problem in philosophy, the idea of coercion vs surrender, and why that one ritual conversion scene with the little girl was so incredibly disturbing to us. Is losing your “self” really the whole point of spirituality? Or is is…
S2 · E4 · 29 Apr 2026 · 32 min
Why AI Can't Make Art - Film Sets, First Drafts, and Freelancing
Pretty soon, we’re gonna have a little summer break. Among other things, it’s because Mal is shooting a movie and Jordan is moving his family from LA to Cedar City, Utah. But that’s not really what this episode is about. What it’s about is what happens when you make things that nobody asked you to make. Mal just finished the first draft of her first solo screenplay. Also, she’s been writing music alone in dark rooms for years and only recently felt like it was time to show anyone. Jordan wrote a novel once by telling himself he wasn’t allowed to write anything for anyone else to read, and…
S2 · E3 · 22 Apr 2026 · 56 min
Why does JD Vance think UFOs are demons?
Mal’s been slammed, so Jordan rounded up a bunch of good stories to serve up like a pile of gifts on a platter. First, why are people shining lasers at walls while tripping on DMT? Next, we need to discuss the fact that JD Vance is on record believing UFOs are actually demons. What does that even mean? (Hint: it probably doesn’t mean anything about UFOs or demons.) After that, an ancient Greek geek out about what might be the first recorded case of a haunted house. Finally, were there really thousands of dead giants buried in Ohio? Who knows! We certainly don’t. But also, do we even want to?…
S2 · E2 · 18 Apr 2026 · 1 hr 2 min
How do you know if a spiritual experience is real?
Kelly Chase was a materialist and an atheist. Then on a random Saturday morning in August 2021, something reached into her mind and showed her what she’s come to refer to as The Good — coherence, beauty, truth — whatever it is that allows creation to exist. The experience completely changed her life. But here’s the problem: she also knows that whatever did this to her could also make her happy about it. And as someone who values her personal freedom more than almost anything, it’s frightening to suspect that something fundamentally rewired her without her consent. This is the epistemic…
S2 · E1 · 15 Apr 2026 · 44 min
Is 2026 the year everything changes? What remote viewers, astrologers, and the pentagon are all saying
Welcome to season two. This week: a dad in North Yorkshire set up CCTV after his cat refused to go downstairs. The footage is pretty convincing — toys moving, doors swinging, skateboards clattering. Except he’s a video game developer. And it’s 2026. And we genuinely cannot tell anymore what’s real on the internet. Which is the actual problem. Not whether this particular video is real, but the fact that we’ve reached a point where even governments are using AI-generated footage to prove their leaders are alive. And then of course there's the deluge of predictions, prophecies, and…
S1 · E56 · 8 Apr 2026 · 43 min
He dreamed where to find a meteorite — and it was there
On March 17th, a seven-ton space rock broke apart over Ohio. A week later, a guy named Jeff had a dream that told him exactly where to go to find a piece of it. Nothing about this meteorite is special other than that Jeff really really wanted to hold a piece of space in his hands, and a dream showed him where it was. But what about all the people who dream about something for years and nothing ever happens? Why do some prayers get answers and not others? We don’t have the answer. But the question gets us to suffering as a teacher, to the Hebrew origin of the word “Satan” (which just means…
S1 · E55 · 1 Apr 2026 · 52 min
She saw a UFO at BYU and a Ghost at Disneyland
Mal’s roommate Candice is the kind of person you kind of just believe, even when she’s telling you about seeing literal ghosts and UFOs. Which makes her the perfect guest on this week’s episode of Gods, Ghosts & UFOs, the podcast about all the things they said weren’t real. Highlights: Candice Gutierrez, Mal’s roommate and longtime friend An amber orb sighting near BYU, around 2010–2011, the night before finals Other witnesses Strange, impossible, perspective-breaking movement Trying to explain it to other people The Phoenix Lights connection Working on the show Ancient Aliens, who told her…
S1 · E54 · 25 Mar 2026 · 1 hr 15 min
The whole actual deal with Haunted Dolls - History, Science, and Spirit
Highlights: How the Mexican City Mannequins inspired this episode Ushabtis: ancient Egyptian figurines (2600–2100 BC) placed in tombs to do labor in the afterlife, in place of killing servants The Louvre Doll: a bound female clay figure pierced with 13 needles Kolossoi: ancient Greek defensive effigies designed to contain hostile spirits Victorian mourning dolls: wax effigies made at funerals with the dead child’s hair and clothing What did Mal do to her Cabbage Patch doll? Robert the Doll “It was like a metal bar running down my back... That doll was listening to us” The connection to an…
S1 · E53 · 18 Mar 2026 · 1 hr 2 min
What 2001: A Space Odyssey Gets Right About AI, Art, and Human Evolution
Business! Our SECOND EVER Open Epilogue! Monday, March 23, at 1pm PST / 4pm EST. All paid supporters will get an email invite with a link. Be one of them! Episode highlights: Mal watched 2001: A Space Odyssey for the first time, and talked about it every day for three weeks Stanley Kubrick’s astonishing team and the mind blowing scale of the project He tried to purchase preserved human embryos from a Chicago biological supply company for research He applied for insurance from Lloyd’s of London against the discovery of extraterrestrial beings before the film’s release The movie came out in…
S1 · E52 · 11 Mar 2026 · 1 hr 7 min
Why Every Religion Suppresses Its Own Mystics | Rabbi Rami Shapiro on God and the Ego
If you love this episode and want to share it with someone, we made it easy. Just scroll down to “Share this episode…” and pick a great moment to courageously copy and paste. Highlights: Rabbi Rami Shapiro is the author of nearly 40 books and co-director of the One River Foundation — find him on Substack “Religions are like languages. No language is true or false. The more languages you speak, the more nuanced your understanding of life becomes. Yet it is silence that reveals the ultimate truth.” Rami’s spiritual journey through Zen Buddhism and how he became a “zen rabbi” Why ten years of…
S1 · E51 · 4 Mar 2026 · 1 hr 2 min
Energy Healing with Beth Williams | Episode 51
Real quick real fast — You know how we're basically betting the farm on people who love the show sharing the show (hint hint nudge nudge THAT’S YOU RIGHT??), well, we’ve done our best to make that even easier with this episode. After the bulleted list of episode highlights, you’ll see a section called “Sharing made easy!” If you want to share this episode with someone, all you gotta do is copy and paste one of those suckers. So please do that! And thank you! Highlights: Beth Williams is a professional psychic energy healer - find her on Instagram @psychicintegration Mal’s seen several energy…
S1 · E50 · 25 Feb 2026 · 42 min
The Chronovisor and the Problem with Time Scrying | Episode 50
A Benedictine monk with training in quantum physics, Gregorian chants, and exorcism claimed to have built a device that could see into the past. This man was Father Pellegrino Ernetti, and he assembled his Chronovisor with a secret team high-profile scientists that allegedly included Enrico Fermi and Wernher von Braun. Fifty years ago, they told everyone they took pictures of Christ’s crucifixion. Unsurprisingly, the evidence didn’t hold up. But that didn’t stop the story from getting stranger. The Vatican itself refused to confirm or deny rumors that it had ordered the device dismantled,…
S1 · E49 · 18 Feb 2026 · 37 min
Mannequin Monsters in Mexico | Episode 49
Way back during the COVID lockdowns, when the streets of Mexico City were quiet and empty of people, something else started walking them. Multiple witnesses reported encounters with humanoid entities that moved like mannequins. With stiff limbs, and lifeless arms, running on their tiptoes. Backwards. One guy got chased. Another got followed to a bus stop. Someone else watched one of these things lift a sewer grate like it weighed nothing and climb inside. After looking at three independent accounts, Tom gives some historical context, including the Golem of Prague, and a bridal mannequin in…

About Gods, Ghosts & UFOs

Gods, Ghosts & UFOs is a English society & culture podcast from SpectreVision Radio. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.

Publisher: SpectreVision Radio
Language: English
Category: Society & Culture
New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 48 min
Latest episode: 8 Oct 2026
Feed: RSS — paste into any podcast app
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1805645620
Rights: GGU L.L.C.

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