Taking Things Serios-ly with Blackwolf John Oates
Pardon me while I have a strange interlude. There is nothing else. Life is an obscure oboe, plumbing a ride on the omnibus of art. And the misty corridors of time, and in those corridors, I see figures. Strange figures.
AP Strange:Welcome back, my friends, to the AP Strange Show. This week's show is brought to you by uncle Ted's psychic lubricant and cold remedy. It's a cold tonic and something to help you photograph your thoughts. You, you can take it for, for the, the psychic powers and the way it makes you feel. And if anybody asks, it's just for your cough.
AP Strange:Uncle Ted's psychic lubricant and cold tonic. So, on this show today, we're, we're we're we're I like to joke around a lot, but today we're taking things seriosly. And my guest in doing this, this is something we had talked about since before the show started, before there even was a show. So it's exciting to have my very first return guest. You may know him from such episodes as Cruisin' in Robocop's Pink Caddy, or from the socials where he posts his, broken, rock and roll trading cards.
AP Strange:It is the one and only, definitely not a bum or a bastard, Black Wolf, John.
Blackwolf John Oates:I think I think I can at least be one of those things. And I I mean, at some point in my life, I probably will be. But thank you. You have It's glad to be back. Great to be back.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah.
AP Strange:If you were to ask Motley Crue, they would probably call you at least a bum or a bastard.
Blackwolf John Oates:I'm sure they would call me a lot worse, but I think I I've I've checked with friends of mine who know these things, and my complaints in my, my, my words against Motley Crue are ironclad and legal. They did that shit, and I I know they did that shit. So, Vince Neil, you wanna come at me? Bring it on.
AP Strange:Yep. Alright. Well yeah. So today, like I said in the in the little intro there, is a case that you and I are both fascinated with because I think this falls into kind of a category in general where there's a lot, there are paranormal things and people and stories that I feel like used to get talked about a lot more. And these days you don't hear about them nearly as much.
AP Strange:And often that's because people just consider it that it was a hoax or whatever. And Yeah. Like, it was just a little novelty, like a little blip on the radar of paranormal history and people forget about it. And that is the case of Ted Sirios projecting thoughts onto film and the book about him called the world of Ted Sirios by Jewel Eisenbud. And, yeah.
AP Strange:So, well, I guess I'll just start. Like, what is it about about this case that, that drew your attention as as something that we should talk about?
Blackwolf John Oates:It's it was one of those things that I I, you know, I think, like, I would imagine almost anybody listening to this right now, you were probably all, library nerds, and spent a lot of time at the library in the unknown section, the paranormal section, checking out any book under that title. And it just seemed like, you know, and since most of those books were from, like, that nice, like, seventy through seventy five heyday of paranormal publishing where every book had the same thing in it, and they all had Ted Sarios in those books. And it's just one of those things I saw all the time as a kid, read about a thousand times, saw all the famous pictures of the Chicago Water Tower and whatnot. And I just, you know, it's one of those things that if only looking at those books, you'd think that this was a very important case in, you know, paranormal, you know, literature. And then, you know, I guess unlike a lot of your listeners probably, I I spent a lot of time away from the paranormal.
Blackwolf John Oates:I did I kind of fade away from it throughout, like high school and whatnot in college. And when I came back to it, it's one of those cases where I'm like, where the hell is Ted Sirius? What happened to this guy? It's just like, this guy projected thoughts on the film and we don't talk about him anymore. It just seemed like it was a very important thing for a while and then one day it just people stopped caring about Ted.
Blackwolf John Oates:And I've always wondered why.
AP Strange:Well, I think yeah. And and I think that's due in no small part even, subliminally almost, to the fact that it's kind of one of those where even if you don't necessarily know that it's a hoax, people will, kind of assume it was right. Or assume since we're not talking about it anymore, it must have been. And that's why, that's why they stopped talking about it at some point. And, in looking into it, when you read the book now, I mean, it should be, it should be noted as, as we both noted looking into this, that if you want it like an account, if you want multiple different versions of the TED story, you're shit out of luck.
AP Strange:Cause really what we have is Doctor. Jewel Eisenbud was the one studying this and, really the only one taking a very detailed account of it, not for lack of trying on his part, though.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah. It seemed like there was, like, that like, there was, like, a Fate magazine article and then, like, some something else before this book, and that was it. And Right. People had tried to get people interested in this story, and it just didn't happen. And then with mister doctor Eisenbud was became fascinated, it became like a quest of his.
Blackwolf John Oates:So, like, this was gonna be the case or whatever that he could use to, you know, prove this stuff was real.
AP Strange:Yeah. I mean, it was actually the editor at the time of fate, Curtis, Curtis Fuller.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah.
AP Strange:Was the one that introduced them, because he wrote he wrote a letter to Mhmm. To Eisenbud in response to an article that Eisenbud had written, that didn't make him very popular with, a lot of other psi researchers at the time.
Blackwolf John Oates:Oh, that's right. That's right. Yeah.
AP Strange:Yeah. And that's that's kind of that that's kind of what begins the whole story. And it's kinda funny to think that, like, quite literally when especially since Jewel Eisenbud, as we'll get into, is a psychoanalyst,
Blackwolf John Oates:in training.
AP Strange:He comes from the, kind of Freud psychoanalysis school. And so it's kind of funny that literally fate brought them together. Oh, that's
Blackwolf John Oates:right. Beautiful. The kind of wordplay they come to this podcast for. Beautiful stuff.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yep. But, I mean, that's kind of, like, what a lot of, a lot a lot of psychoanalysis is based on is is is that kind of play on words, like dreaming, which is that and, you know
Blackwolf John Oates:Oh, there's a there's a big old steaming pile of of, word analysis deep in that book about Queen Elizabeth.
AP Strange:Yeah. I don't
Blackwolf John Oates:if you remember that part, that that part, I I had to put the book down for a moment and give a good hearty chuckle. That was that one was stretching a little bit of credulity there. But
AP Strange:That was stretching quite
Blackwolf John Oates:a bit. Yeah. And it
AP Strange:was funny too because he really overlooked the more obvious one, which just that it was the queen mother and, you know, Ted was Ted had, like, mommy issues, basically.
Blackwolf John Oates:He did he did touch on that. He did mention that the queen mother and Ted's mom thing, a cup he did touch on that, but he really stretched the whole I mean, I I I don't know if we should get into that yet because it's a it's there's a lot of story left to get to tell, but, yeah. His whole was it the nuclear submarine? He was trying to find a nuclear submarine called the Thresher.
AP Strange:Yeah. And Yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:He produced a picture He was
AP Strange:trying to make that a hit.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah. He produced a picture of Queen Elizabeth, and doctor Eisenbud does some serious, who who's there's a there's a woman named Esther involved somehow too? Is Esther Ted's mom?
AP Strange:Ted. Yeah. Esther is
Blackwolf John Oates:Ted's mom. That's right. Okay. So this whole thing with, like, Thresher, Esther, queen mother, or queen Elizabeth, or something like that, and then just mixes the letters up, and he's like, you see?
AP Strange:Well, yeah. It was like the Latin name for the queen. Yes. But yeah. So
Blackwolf John Oates:It was it was it was stretching in a bit.
AP Strange:Right. Right. But yeah. I mean, to to to do this a little bit in order is is Eisenbud is brought to me Sirius as an example of of something that that could be shown as a as a repeatable psychic experiment that could kind of refutes Eisenbud's idea of of the elusiveness of this kind of phenomena. Mhmm.
AP Strange:I think what we're getting at there, we were getting a little ahead of ourselves, but just for the audience that maybe doesn't doesn't know. The the whole thing that made TED a really interesting subject was, the way they set up these tests. Eisenbud was doing everything he could to to set it up scientifically and with the right parameters to ensure that there was no fraud and, there were all these layers to it. Right? So anytime anytime they had a sitting the idea was that Ted was supposed to psychically project his thought onto a onto the camera's film.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yes.
AP Strange:And there was a whole group of people around. And sometimes he was able to do this, but it usually took quite a while to get to those.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah. And, like, well, the process was that, you know, Ted would use was the is a an old Polaroid. Correct? The old an old model of Polaroid camera was what he preferred or whatever. And so they would get, like, four or five people there, other doctors and and wives and people's kids and stuff.
Blackwolf John Oates:They would all be there to witness this. There'd be someone taking notes, and, they'd all bring their own cameras. They'd all bring a bunch of their own films so that and then Ted would start doing his thing where he'd start looking at the cameras. Look he'd look at the camera and then tell him when to trigger it or he'd trigger himself, and they'd start pulling out the the the the the the, the pictures. And usually, it would start off with Ted not getting anything.
Blackwolf John Oates:Correct? Is if I'm not Yeah.
AP Strange:I should
Blackwolf John Oates:remember how this would usually go. It's a it would probably usually start off slowly and but as the night wore on and sometimes, like, looked like up to, like, five, six hours at a time Right. It it would just start going through rolls and rolls of film, and Ted would start getting excited. And he starts saying, I'm getting hot.
AP Strange:Yeah. Take his clothes off and stuff.
Blackwolf John Oates:Just take his take his clothes off. Oh, we I think have we have we mentioned the fact that Ted was a raging alcoholic yet? I think that's an important part of that. Yeah. Yes.
Blackwolf John Oates:It's important to mention that Ted Sarios is a mid fifties. He's, like, mid fifties, chain smoking, hair trigger, crazy, raging alcoholic, Chicago bellhop.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yep.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah. So
AP Strange:Unemployed bellhop. That was kind of the funniest point. It like, he's always described as having been a bellhop, and because that's the only job he's he ever had for any length of time that was stable. And Yes. That's an important thing here is that the the stability was not something that worked well with Ted Sirios.
AP Strange:He didn't like regularity. And the only time he he ever had a stable job was as a bellhop at the Chicago Hilton. And, otherwise yeah. You're you're right. He was an alcoholic.
AP Strange:He was a live wire.
Blackwolf John Oates:It makes it difficult to talk about him even because the whole thing is so scattered and bizarre and was just, like, a very narrow slice of this guy's life. So it it's very difficult. I don't know about you, but I've been trying to explain this to my girlfriend and to my friends for, like, three weeks. And I was just like, the hell are you talking about?
AP Strange:Right.
Blackwolf John Oates:It's so it's such a difficult story to to, like, really put a to put your thumb on and hold it down because it's just like like Ted himself, it's very squirrelly. It's very hard to pin this down and really give a decent, like, thumbnail sketch of, like, what the hell this is all about. I mean, I'd say we're we're trying to start it from the beginning, but it it's just it's so easy to go off on tangents about this. It's very difficult to
AP Strange:to put
Blackwolf John Oates:it in.
AP Strange:I mean, you know, in speaking about the show, and and probably how long we'd be talking about it, I was like, I really, it's hard to say because, Yeah. I was talking to to my wife, my muse, Pam, about about about the show today, and it's just like, you you could just say there's a guy who could take pic psychic photographs, photographs basically of his thoughts and a doctor that studied him. And he did that for a couple of years and then was unable to again, like end of story. Yes. And it it you could say that or you could talk about it for an hour and a half and that ends up being like the only only way to briefly describe what we're talking about
Blackwolf John Oates:here. Yeah. Because you keep on yourself going, oh, wait. Hold on. Let me go back a step.
Blackwolf John Oates:Let me go back a step.
AP Strange:Right. You have to
Blackwolf John Oates:keep going back and, like, layering it on. And because it's such a it is such a fascinating story. And Ted is just a a straight character. He's great.
AP Strange:Yeah. He's he's a likable character at an arm's length. Like, I get the feeling that he's, like, really funny fun to read about. But if I had to deal with him for lengths of time that, Eisenbud was asking people to deal with them
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah. So, like, at the moment
AP Strange:the amount of time he dealt with them Yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:I I think
AP Strange:for about years.
Blackwolf John Oates:We're we're trying to we're see, we're trying to explain how this how these experiments went, and we're already way off topic again because this is it's so hard to talk about this guy. Because, like, so, like, you they'd bring Ted into a house, or a hotel room, or a laboratory, or any place, and it would start off with this guy trying to put his thoughts onto coat onto Polaroid film. It's not happening. He's getting pissy. Everyone's getting upset and get kinda bored.
Blackwolf John Oates:Then Ted starts drinking. They start trading drinks for pictures, and then Ted starts getting, like, about six hours in, Ted starts getting hot. And then when he starts getting hot, they start getting what they call whiteies. Mhmm. Which is when the picture's all white, like fully exposed, which isn't supposed to happen when you have your hand covering or you're covering up the lens.
AP Strange:Right.
Blackwolf John Oates:And then and then when they start getting whities, they'd start and then after that, Ted would get excited, and they start, like, handing him cameras at a feverish pace, and he's just snapping photos off. And then suddenly, things appear. Right.
AP Strange:Yeah. Pictures of things.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah. Of usually buildings
AP Strange:Right.
Blackwolf John Oates:Or cars or occasionally people.
AP Strange:Right.
Blackwolf John Oates:So
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah. And, one really important part that we do have to mention here as well for especially people that aren't familiar with him, is the Gizmo.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yes. The
AP Strange:Gizmo. Is is really important because, that's the most suspicious part of the whole story Yes. And what people will point to right away as as the reason that he's able to quote fake this.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yes.
AP Strange:And, the Gizmo is basically a tube.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yes. And it
AP Strange:Often make it I always thought he had, like, a device.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah. Same here. And I always pictured kinda like a long, like, six inch length of, like, PVC pipe almost. It's why I always kinda pictured it in my head. Right.
Blackwolf John Oates:But it probably was much smaller than that, which surprised me.
AP Strange:Yeah. It's only it only seemed to be, like, an inch or two long most of the
Blackwolf John Oates:time. Yeah.
AP Strange:What what they said was you would use the, I think, the black cover that would be around the film from the Polaroid
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah.
AP Strange:The the Polaroid films. It was just kind of like like a packaging product Mhmm. That that that you would normally throw away, and he would roll it over so that it became a tube. Mhmm. And then he'd be looking through it like it was a like it was a sight glass.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yes. Like one of
AP Strange:those, like, old ships captain sight glasses or something.
Blackwolf John Oates:He put it over the lens of the camera and look into it. Yeah.
AP Strange:Yeah. And I mean, that helped him, I guess, focus his psychic energy or whatever.
Blackwolf John Oates:That's what that's what that was his claim that it it helped him focus. And sometimes he would hold it. Sometimes he'd ask other people to hold it. Sometimes other people would hold it as a as a means of trying to, like, thwart any any sort of, you know, trickery. But, yeah, I was I I was very surprised to find out it was, like, yeah, like, no bigger than, like, a little like, yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:Like, very, very small. Like, like, I I can't even describe, like, a
AP Strange:like a film camera size. Enough that
Blackwolf John Oates:you
AP Strange:that if you had your fingers curled around it, it would be totally concealed in your hand.
Blackwolf John Oates:Like Mhmm. Yes. Yes.
AP Strange:So, yeah. And and the other important part to note about the gizmo is that it's spelled g I s m o.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yes.
AP Strange:Because Ted is more or less illiterate. Anytime you see any examples of his writing, you can't spell for shit.
Blackwolf John Oates:Okay. So he dropped down the fifth grade, I believe, was what they yeah. Fifth grade dropout.
AP Strange:Fifth grade dropout even though he claimed to have been a whiz at school.
Blackwolf John Oates:He's still playing it. Yes.
AP Strange:Yeah. This is the other part. This is another really difficult part here is that we don't really have a good account of Ted's life because we only have Ted's story. And his story is sketchy as hell, and he's an unreliable narrator. Yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:I I don't leave the instructions to say that Ted Sirios is a fucking liar. Like, he is a tall tale teller of the highest order. He is there's yet nothing reliable about Ted Sirios.
AP Strange:Yeah. And he's also a legend in his own mind. And the Absolutely. Into great depths with this is that he doesn't seem to perceive it's a great title for the book, The World of Ted Sirios, because that is what it is to Ted. Like, the world revolves around him.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yes.
AP Strange:And anything that doesn't doesn't affect him directly or, interact with him or reflect him to himself in some way Mhmm. Doesn't matter. You know? Yeah. It's just yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:Ace Eisenbud said that people are only Ted people around Ted were only judged as far as their relationship to Ted and how they felt or how he felt they felt about Ted. Like, there is there no one was ever just a good guy. It was a good guy if Ted liked him or he was nice to Ted or he believed Ted or he was a bastard or a bum if he did anything in any way to for Ted and Ted's desires. So Right. Yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah. And I know it is a great title for the book, and I really do wish there was more of the world of Ted Sirinos in this book because I would love to spend about a week there. Yeah. It sounds fantastic. I've I I I've had this book, just a small piece of Black Bulls John Oates trivia.
Blackwolf John Oates:This is the first book I ever bought off Amazon. Oh, wow. That's, like, twenty two years ago, my friend. I was I I I in my early twenties, there was a good year where I was too broke up for the Internet. Yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:So I moved in with a friend of mine who had a a DSL line, which was just, like, you know, heaven on earth. And he was like I'm like, Amazon, what's this? And he was like, you can buy book you can buy books here? And I was like, I've been looking for this book for, like, a big chunk of my life. And, I was like, do they have this book?
Blackwolf John Oates:And they're like, it's only cost a penny. And I ordered a copy of the world of 10 series, and I ordered also a copy of the twelfth planet, Zecharia Sitchin. So, really, important day of my life right there. Two very important books. And but I've, I've been trying to read this book for, like, twenty odd years.
Blackwolf John Oates:It's been sitting on my shelf unread forever. And, one of the reasons I wanted to do this was to force myself to read this book. And I'm not there's no no regrets there. I'm glad I read this book now.
AP Strange:Yeah. Because Although it is it's written in a pretty dry clinical style.
Blackwolf John Oates:That I did wanna say that. There is about the middle third is is it's, it's it's bad. Middle there's, like, 40 pages where Ted's name isn't mentioned once.
AP Strange:And, like, for a
Blackwolf John Oates:book that's called the world of Ted Sirius, it seems odd, an odd choice to make.
AP Strange:Well, I mean, getting back to that that inner world of Ted, I found it interesting that the way Jewel Jewel Eisenbud described him is that, like, he had no interest in watching TV or, like, reading. And if he's just left to his own devices, he would quietly sit drinking and smoke chain smoking cigarettes and just kinda staring off in the space. Yeah. Like, there was, like, an interior world and, like, he didn't wanna watch TV because it wasn't about him. Like, he wasn't interacting with it.
AP Strange:You know?
Blackwolf John Oates:When he'd be brought into a person's house because it seemed like for, like, about a year there in the city of Denver that Ted Sirios was, like, the parlor trick of the year. You gotta have this guy over for dinner. Call call Jewel. He'll bring his friend Ted over. You're gonna see this shit.
Blackwolf John Oates:And it just seems like Ted was, like, the dinner guest to have that season. And but they said, like, before the festivities of Ted taking pictures would start, he just sit by himself in the corner. He wouldn't talk to anybody. He just sit and drink and smoke and wait until it was Ted time. You know?
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah. And then it was boom. Ted's here. Alright.
AP Strange:Or he'd get restless and just take off.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah. And then
AP Strange:he'd end up getting arrested or something like that or getting beat up at the bar. Like He
Blackwolf John Oates:he got beat up a lot. That's right. He did. He got his ass in a film a couple of times. Yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:And there was also some less than savory things about, Ted and a 16 year old psychiatric patient. Yeah. Ted was not a Ted was not a very yeah. You said you said earlier, it from a from a distance, Ted's a fun character, but there's obviously a an unsavory side to Ted. Right.
AP Strange:Well,
Blackwolf John Oates:he liked he liked animals a lot, though, apparently.
AP Strange:Yeah. I mean, he had his he he had these good qualities where apparently, he he loved animals more than people. Like, he he generally, you know and he he had almost kind of a, preternatural knowledge of them being within within range.
Blackwolf John Oates:Mhmm.
AP Strange:Where, like, he would just notice a bird, like, mid sentence stop and be like, oh, check out check out that little fella over there. And it would be a bird that was, like, inside the bush. And it would be pretty far away. It would be just really hard to see, but he's just like, whoop, there's a bird over there. Or, like, knowing about a dog that was dangerously close to being in the road several blocks away where you couldn't even really see it.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah. There's
AP Strange:a upset about it. You know?
Blackwolf John Oates:There's a story about, yeah, like a dog trying to get trying to cross the street, and Ted, like, holds up traffic for the dog to cross the street. And then he starts yelling at a guy with no legs who was holding up traffic crossing the street. Like, oh, god, Ted. What a great guy.
AP Strange:And around kids. He was really good with kids.
Blackwolf John Oates:He was great. Kids loved him. Kids Right. When he go to these dinner parties, the kids would just would he talks to kids before, like, the the show, you know, but then when the all all the stuff we get started, the kids would love it. They'd be they'd love to be a part of it.
Blackwolf John Oates:And Ted loved, like, the kids holding the camera or, like, handing the camera to him or and stuff like that. So, yeah, he was a, yeah, he was a showman, but, yeah, he was not not comfortable with people if they weren't servicing, you know, Ted's needs or whatever. So yeah. Just Well,
AP Strange:you know, as long as they weren't bastards or bums.
Blackwolf John Oates:Or bums. Bums and bastards. Yeah.
AP Strange:I was hoping for the word crumb bum. I was I was hoping that
Groucho:would pop up.
Blackwolf John Oates:You think crumb bum would make an appearance, but, unfortunately, no. It didn't. I you think I think I think crumb bum is just too much for Ted. He's just very simple. Bums, bastards.
Blackwolf John Oates:You know? No no more than that.
AP Strange:Right. Sometimes assholes, he would say.
Blackwolf John Oates:They were they were assholes too. I think there was a couple of I wrote down I wrote down some quotes. I'll have to dig them up, because they were just so damn good. Yeah. Where were we as far as his, we were talking about it.
Blackwolf John Oates:You see, again, we're off topic because this is the world of Ted.
AP Strange:Well, no. I'm talking about him and and the way he, you know, in the way he interacted with the world and how, how he perceived it. You know? So just kinda giving an overall character, assessment of Ted. So I don't think we're far off topic.
AP Strange:You know?
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah. I mean Oh, go ahead.
AP Strange:Because the the whole thing about kids and animals really just drove home to me that he really was a kid. He was kind of an overgrown kid.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yes. Like, when
AP Strange:he left school at fifth grade, he experienced the freedom of being, like, still a kid, but not, not not encumbered with with the school life of a kid. And I don't think he ever mentally progressed past that. You know? He wanted to forever be the dropout fifth grader that he was at that time, just hitting the road and doing whatever. You know?
Blackwolf John Oates:I think he think he pretty much was. I mean, he was definitely just yeah. He's a a large child. And Yeah. Yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:No. I I I you know, I I think I I I don't know. Where do you wanna go next? Before we get more off topic here, because we could just do this all day, where do you wanna go next? Let's try to keep it let's try to let's be the anti TEDs and put some structure to the anti structure of TED series here.
AP Strange:Well, that's actually where I was about to go. So maybe you just psychically intuited that. Like, shit.
Blackwolf John Oates:Get a Polaroid. I'm hot. I'm hot. Where's my gizmo?
AP Strange:But those of you familiar with your George p Hansen or maybe the whole Terratopia episode will recognize the word anti structure. And and never was there, like, a truer embodiment of anti structure there than than Ted Sirios. Because he never, like we said, he never really held down a job. He never really, lived a normal life. He basically did what he wanted to do and, didn't have any kind of structure like like any any one of us would normally have.
AP Strange:And maybe I I would venture to say definitely that's that's why he was able to produce results, you know.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah. I mean How
AP Strange:did you describe him?
Blackwolf John Oates:Well, yeah. I mean, I'm like when I was thinking about because I I just think probably because it the city of because it takes place in Denver. Like, Ted's from Chicago. Correct? Right.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah. But doctor Eisenblad's in Denver. And at some point, he pays for Ted to come to Denver and live, like, in his building or his apartment building or whatever. And Yeah.
AP Strange:So we
Blackwolf John Oates:could kinda keep an eye on Ted, gave him a stipend, tried to keep him around so you had access to him. Because, apparently, the the these photo sessions would take a lot out of Ted. He only do, like, one a week, but they were trying to find a way to make him do this more often at less stress. And so he paid for Ted to come out to Denver and live with him. And then, like, Ted would get get really irritable, get bored, and then go back to Chicago, and then come back to Denver and go actually so I I I guess just because it was Denver, I thought, they he's like some kind of, like, Neil Cassidy figure, like like, from, like, on the road, just, like, this fucking maniac packing all this stuff up in, like, an old Studebaker and just cutting into Chicago overnight.
Blackwolf John Oates:And then wiring, asking for money, then just showing up a week later back at your door, like, asking for scotch with, like, a with, like, a 16 year old girl with them. It's like, Jesus, Ted. What are you doing? Yeah. Like, it's like it's just my my imagination of, Neil Cassidy crossed with, like, you know, like, Kreskin or, like, Ori Geller or something.
Blackwolf John Oates:I don't know. Like, it's I
AP Strange:feel like I feel like we ought to do a sketch where, like, this is this is, like, a sixties sitcom TV show. And, like, you have the wild and crazy, serious character that's supposed to be producing psychic results of the doctor just kind of like, oh, Ted.
Blackwolf John Oates:Ed. But it does seem like, yeah, if if he would definitely, I I'd imagine in this situation, he played by Don Knotts. I I don't know why. I just see Don Knotts. Who I don't know who else could play.
Blackwolf John Oates:I mean, I think it would have to be in the seventies, though. Definitely have to be a seventies.
AP Strange:I don't know. Maybe like Jack Clugman.
Blackwolf John Oates:Clugman, maybe. But yeah. Maybe. I don't know. I'd have to think about that.
Blackwolf John Oates:But there's definitely someone out there who's the perfect Ted Sarios.
AP Strange:But, you know, he was that's no longer with us.
Blackwolf John Oates:No longer well, definitely. I don't I don't think if you're gonna show the age of Ted Sirios, you definitely can't be a a man who takes care of himself.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:But oh, yeah. So, yeah, he was just this wild man driving back and forth from Chicago to Denver on I I like we said, I mean, I think we talked about this. Like, I yeah. He did doctor Eisenbud did give him a stipend, but I don't know how much it was. Like, I'd how this man had managed to survive all those years and just bouncing back and forth is I I had to assume there was some unsavory ways of gaining, money perhaps in there.
AP Strange:That's what I wondered too. And I mean, maybe Eisenberg couldn't speak to that if he didn't know about it, but and maybe he intentionally didn't know about it. But I I assumed that there was some kind of hustle going on.
Blackwolf John Oates:Oh, definitely. They just yeah. He's definitely Must
AP Strange:have been a side hustle. You know?
Blackwolf John Oates:Well, I mean, he has because, like, you know, he's there's a part where, Isabud talks about during the, the photography sessions. Like, he would, like, tell people what they had in their wallets or, like, tell people what kind of house they lived in. Like, there's definitely a huckster carny quality to, like, Ted Sirius. Like, I bet I could tell you where you got those shoes. You know?
Blackwolf John Oates:That kinda, like, huckster quality to Ted Sirius. I would almost guarantee that there's, like, some kind of, like, you know, card oh, like, mind reading card shenanigans in a barroom somewhere, like, in Kansas City.
AP Strange:Yeah. I mean, because yeah. That sounds like those are the kinds of things that you would get with, like, as party tricks from somebody that knows a little basic mentalism or slight of hand or or, you know, magic tricks is is is like that little those little things. But that was also part of the experiment, which Yeah. I think is funny because the average experiment would go that the, the people that came to witness it would bring their own camera, like you you said, and their own film.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah.
AP Strange:But they would also bring a photograph that was in an envelope that you couldn't see through.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah.
AP Strange:And that was the target. So Ted not only was supposed to be projecting an image onto film, it was an image he didn't know existed and he hadn't seen. Right. He he only knew there was an image in an envelope, and he had to already know what that was in order to project it.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah.
AP Strange:So he's doing two different psychic operations at the same time.
Blackwolf John Oates:Impressive. Yes.
AP Strange:And then yeah. So it didn't count as a hit unless it touched on the target, which to me was astounding.
Blackwolf John Oates:Dad dad oh, I forget. I wrote it down somewhere. I can't find who that whoever that doctor was who was like, oh, yeah. There was a he did it. There was a building on the film, but it wasn't the one I picked.
Blackwolf John Oates:So it had to be a it had to be a miss. Like, are you fucking kidding me? What are you talking about? That the the the I I don't I can't that just that made me so angry. I had to put the book down for a minute.
Blackwolf John Oates:Well, he so you got him. You oh.
AP Strange:It's such a weird thing. Like, the way that you know? And and and it's funny to me too because you'll see people within the paranormal that talk about, oh, you know, science doesn't take this seriously or we need better scientific approaches to this or the people that pretend that they're doing science.
Blackwolf John Oates:You
AP Strange:know, there's a lot of people out there. Well, I tend to do this scientifically and then they go on to talk about things that's not at all scientific or controlled or Yeah. Or peer reviewed or anything like that. But but the way parapsychology has always been the the the the way the data has always been interpreted to me has always been really strange. And when you actually look at the numbers, sometimes it's either more or less impressive than than you thought from the outside.
AP Strange:And this is a good example of that where, like, it it's kinda like, you know, if he if he produced a gigantic cathedral of a photo and and the person was looking for, like, a a little, a little cottage
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah.
AP Strange:On a lake. And they're just like, well, I mean, he got a photo, but that is not what I wanted.
Blackwolf John Oates:It's not what I wanted.
AP Strange:Yeah. But he's still he's still psychically projected a photo. So, like, is like, if you're just looking at numbers as hits versus not hits and you count that as not a hit, then, you know, you need a you need a more complicated rubric for for analyzing this data.
Blackwolf John Oates:Well, and and Eisenbud gets frustrated by this too because he's like, this extra layer is hampering this.
AP Strange:Right.
Blackwolf John Oates:Because if we're just talking about because what's what are we trying to do here? We're trying to project thoughts on film. He's doing that. Right. But Ted insists on this other level.
Blackwolf John Oates:Ted insists on a target. So Ted's making it harder on himself to be taken seriously, and all Ted wants is to be taken seriously. In fact, he demanded a PhD at one point.
AP Strange:Yeah. He wanted a lot of other people.
Blackwolf John Oates:He just what this I don't need a way to honor. He just wanted a PhD. And but, yeah, he Ted was making it harder on himself to even get it right, to get the respect he demanded. Because I was in budget was just like, can we just put if we just tell them we're putting thoughts on film and you put thoughts on film, then we win. We get what we want.
Blackwolf John Oates:You're making this harder, but I have to do it this way. You know?
AP Strange:Yeah. Yep. But, yeah, I mean, speaking of him wanting to become doctor Sirios, I guess, and getting an honorary, doctorate, he did did get to experience that a little bit when he got arrested, and he told them that he was doctor Eisen. But Oh, I
Blackwolf John Oates:was hoping you're gonna bring this up because if you weren't, I was going to. Yeah. So you got a you got arrested for public drunkenness. Was it drunk driving?
AP Strange:Probably.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah.
AP Strange:I think
Blackwolf John Oates:it was drunk driving. Told him he was doctor Joel Eisenbud and then gave out psychoanalysis in in the in the jailhouse, all the guards until I've really fucked them up.
AP Strange:And they were all bastards anyway.
Blackwolf John Oates:He purposely gave him bad advice. I was like, that's just awesome. I love this guy.
AP Strange:But he did enjoy being treated like an intellectual while
Blackwolf John Oates:working with
AP Strange:a psychologist. Yeah. So Hey.
Blackwolf John Oates:I don't I think the one of the misconceptions is that Ted was stupid is he's not. He was very bright. He was very perceptive, and he was very slick.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:I I I mean, I don't doubt that Ted had a pretty severe drinking problem. It seemed like he I don't think he can put down that much liquor and not have one. But I do think that was all part of a a con, you know, to put people at eat, to put people, you know, off guard around him or to sell him short because it makes his little to sell if you sell him short, think he's just crazy, then when he does get it correct, does put, you know, a thought on film, it makes it all the more impressive.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah. But it's also kind of classic misdirection in a way.
Blackwolf John Oates:Oh, definitely.
AP Strange:The but but yeah. I mean, I it's tough because I tend to I'm, I'm leaning in favor of of this phenomena was legitimate. So, from the outside here, that's what I'm going to lean toward. I can't say for sure, but I don't buy any of the skeptical explanations for what it was that Ted was doing.
Blackwolf John Oates:There were there were too many because I mean, we we just we we've only talked about the way that it was done normally, like, normally in quotes here. Because, like, yeah, you're the way they would want it to go was that, you know, Ted says there they put the Gizmo, he takes the picture. They didn't shit like take the lens off the camera. They went in other rooms and took pictures in other rooms while Ted thought at them. You know, and put him in a Faraday cage.
Blackwolf John Oates:They put him in a lead lined room. They put him, you know, just they're they they changed the format so many times, and they still got something on most of those occasions. And now I'm with you. I I I I'm not gonna for any way try to explain how this guy did this. If he faked it or not, I'm equally impressed.
Blackwolf John Oates:I really don't care. But, yeah, I'm leaning towards something was something was going on, with this with what Tim was doing. I I can't I can't put any kind of logic to it. I can't explain how he did this.
AP Strange:Yeah. And regardless of what happened and how it happened, the photos themselves are are pretty damn cool. Yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:They are. I I was actually thinking, like, you know, we're we're we're finally getting around to to doing some redecorating around our house. And I'm like, these would look really cool. Like, if I took these out and I printed them out on photo paper and frame some of these, it look pretty rad on my wall. I think I might do this.
AP Strange:Right. Yeah. I guess all the photos are in a collection at the University of Baltimore, Maryland.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yes.
AP Strange:The Eisenbud collection is in there. And I'm like, man. I wish they wonder if they'd part with one. Like
Blackwolf John Oates:Oh, I know. Oh, I would a % pay for an authentic Sirius. A %. But, no, I I I and, like, there's just I could go I could talk for hours about, like, how cool some of the photos are, but there there's a I don't know where you wanna go next with this, but, yeah, there's there's an unreality to the photos that I find very Yeah. Fascinating.
Blackwolf John Oates:You know, I I look at them and I don't I I mean, do we wanna get into the dream logic, or where do we wanna where do we wanna where do we wanna get into
AP Strange:the next steps? Yeah. Because they do have this kind of surreal dreamlike, kind of quality to them. And they do kinda they kinda reminded me of what I was talking about a couple episodes back with the Twilight Zone. There's just one episode per chance to dream where he's, like, at a carnival and everything's kinda it's like they use the fish eye lens and some of it and, like, turned it sideways and, like, parts of it are blurry.
AP Strange:Yeah. And that's kind of like, there's a warpedness to every picture, and everything's a little bit off. Mhmm. And, Eisenbud recognizes this as, like, what your brain does to images in a dream. The way it it will subvert, things so that they don't make sense in a physical reality.
Blackwolf John Oates:Mhmm.
Groucho:And
AP Strange:they're just ever so slightly different. And and, Yeah. I mean, I I absolutely love them. I find the ones, especially with people, to be really kind of off putting and eerie.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yes.
AP Strange:There aren't that many of those, but, I mean, like, there's one that I took a picture of out of the picture in the book. Just three men standing in a line.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yes. Are you gonna put some of these you're gonna put some of these, like, on Instagram or whatever with the, yeah, Good. Good. Yeah.
AP Strange:Oh, yeah. For sure. I'll probably have a whole week of just sharing serious photos when this is done.
Blackwolf John Oates:Excellent. Because if you weren't, I was going to. Was like, these
AP Strange:are two people. Can. Yeah. But but yeah. I mean, the three men standing together, I mean, that gave me, like, men in black vibes.
AP Strange:Like, I was under three men. You know? And, like
Blackwolf John Oates:There's another one, like, a page or two over from that one with, like, people sitting in a field that they're shot from behind. That one's really great too. I really like I really like that one. No. And, like, there's there's one quality that that, Eisenbud talks about too that with that they're shot from impossible angles and from, like, any some of the some of the photos that we're able to actually kind of, like, recognize, like, put to a place, they would go to those places and not figure out how the if if if there was trickery, if they took a photo if Ted took a photo of this the Water Tower or, like, was it the, Denver Opera House, whatever the place that he got a picture of, and there would be no way to get this photo.
Blackwolf John Oates:Like Right. You'd have to, like like, raise a guy on, like, a platform, like, 30 feet in the
AP Strange:air and
Blackwolf John Oates:try to do it. Yeah.
AP Strange:Yeah. You you'd have to have some kind of bucket lift or something, and it would be, like, in the middle of the street hovering 30 feet off the ground or something like that. You know?
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah.
AP Strange:And even then, you wouldn't be able to do it with a Polaroid camera.
Blackwolf John Oates:Like,
AP Strange:that was one thing they they found is that there were there were certain things that you would have to do with the lens to focus it correctly with a different kind of camera that the Polaroid didn't allow you to do. So somehow he was still capturing fine details like that with with a camera that should never have been able to pick that up.
Blackwolf John Oates:But also, like, there was either like, there's the famous one of the Canadian Mounted Police
AP Strange:Yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:Hangar that the word Canadians misspelled. Or there would be there's the Chicago Water Tower, which has windows, but in Ted's picture, the windows were crosses. Or there'd be slight architectural flaws. There would be there's a photo of a plane, a biplane that he took Yeah. That that the the wing struts are inverted.
Blackwolf John Oates:So there was there would be these slight flaws to it or almost as if, like, like, you're not getting a true vision. You're getting Ted's vision
AP Strange:Right.
Blackwolf John Oates:Of you're getting someone because, like, I I am not an artist. I I couldn't draw you a building I saw yesterday for memory. I could approximate it. I can might get you there. Might get you halfway there.
Blackwolf John Oates:I might get you through three thirds of the way there, but I'm not gonna get it just right. And that's kinda like what Ted's doing here. Ted's just it because I don't know. It's coming from Ted's brain, not from the real world, I guess, you would say.
AP Strange:Yeah. So, I mean, that's interesting on a number of levels, especially the spelling because, like, as I already said, Ted couldn't spell for shit. So it totally makes sense that if he was imagining an airplane hangar, it makes sense that you'd see things misspelled because he didn't know how to spell. Mhmm. Which I I mean, that's the crazy part because the the explanation is that he was somehow hiding a miniature transparency of a photograph inside the Gizmo.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yes. And
AP Strange:then also in every case, being able to do this surreptitiously with everybody watching him and have enough light coming through the Gizmo in order to, make that appear on on the film through the lens, even though as we established, there are cases where they removed the lens entirely, you know?
Blackwolf John Oates:Yes. Or shot pictures from another room.
AP Strange:Yeah. Or did it in the dark or did it from 50 feet away, you know. Yeah. That is so and, I mean, other people were handling the gizmo or the camera from time to time.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah. And not to mention I'm
AP Strange:really surprised nobody ever tried to, say that the whiteys were caused by him, like, cracking the camera open briefly and exposing the film to light. You know, that that would make sense to me. But Yeah. But but but if if that's the explanation, it doesn't account for the fact that he'd have would have hits with targets that he had no knowledge of otherwise.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah.
AP Strange:He would have to know in advance that they were gonna do that. So that would be even more impressive is he's precognitively, hitting the target and then, and then bringing a negative with him. Because I imagine it would have to be like microfilm or a film negative that he chopped up and put inside the gizmo. But beyond that, with the with the alterations that his mind did according to Eisenbud, he would have to also alter the image beforehand.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yes. So you're
AP Strange:gonna have to change the spelling in that photo or he'd have to change the windows to crosses or he'd have to so where was he getting these mocked up images that are taken from weird angles or, like, because they never find photos that that match exactly what it is that Ted produces.
Blackwolf John Oates:No. And there's other photos too where he did there's photos where there's collages of different items in a room. There's photos that are a a series of two or three in a row that would be like an an an object coming into focus. Like, there's there's one, like, a three a three picture set of the Washington Monument coming into focus. There are pictures there's one that was he told them to go into another room.
Blackwolf John Oates:They took a picture, and in the picture, they were he had changed the order of the people standing in a in a room. It it was I don't there's one I still try to figure out what it meant. I was I read it, like, three or four times. Like, he told them to take a picture in another room, and in that picture was the room Ted was in with people standing in it that weren't in the room with Ted when the picture was taken. I I don't understand how you do that, and I don't even quite understand the picture.
Blackwolf John Oates:Like
AP Strange:Yeah. It it's it's because I you got to a point where some things are so weird that they're almost impossible to describe. And it's like you said, they're trying to explain it to your friends or, like, coworkers, like, what this book is about. And they're like, what the hell is wrong with you, man? Why do you read this weird shit?
AP Strange:Like, I don't know what you're talking about. Yeah. But, but when phenomena is that weird, I think it it's easy to dispatch for a skeptic because they're they don't have to, somebody like the amazing Randy. I guess we we could probably just address this now since I already kind of, mentioned what his theory about it was. Yes.
AP Strange:Somebody like the amazing Randy doesn't actually need to contend seriously with the, with with the data or or with the, the claims. You know? He's he's not he's he's not honestly making an effort to debunk it. He is just trying to get rid of it. Right?
AP Strange:And that's easy for a skeptic to do, especially with somebody like Ted because he's a drunk. He's, he's he's unemployed. He's a wild card. He's a wild character.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah.
AP Strange:Kind of aroused about, I guess. Yes.
Blackwolf John Oates:He would be I think he would be aroused about. I think it would it qualifies.
AP Strange:And it's easier to dismiss that, but then it's just as easy for science and scientists that maybe even would be sympathetic to look at it like parapsychologists
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah.
AP Strange:To, to kinda just let it fall away and be like, oh, like, I don't know what's going on. There are a lot of people that didn't wanna see it in person more than once, and they'd be like, yeah. Yeah. Just send me the data when you're done with your weird experiments here. You know?
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah. There was I think there's more than one person who who basically said, like, yeah. But what does it do? We're kinda like, so what's the point, though? It's like and there you're right.
Blackwolf John Oates:There wasn't a point to what Ted was doing. This wasn't going to reveal anything. You're not going to it's too scattershot for, like, to try to be used like remote viewing was. It's too there's no grand insight being gleaned from this. It's just a fucking weirdo putting pictures on a Polaroid.
Blackwolf John Oates:And there's nothing you can really get out of that. You know? There's only so far you can go with it. So it really I don't think it appealed to people who want more out of this kind. They want the grand answer.
Blackwolf John Oates:They want to they want answers to their questions about the paranormal or the afterlife or whatever. They don't they want more than just a fucking weirdo putting pictures on a Polaroid.
AP Strange:Yeah. And, I mean, part of part of this kinda reminded me of remote viewing.
Blackwolf John Oates:I I I think there was there there was definitely a hint of remote viewing in this or at least, like, the germ of that idea. Like, we just you could use this because they you tried the whole thresher thing. The woman was like because that was a submarine that was lost, I believe. The navy lost a submarine. They didn't know where it was.
Blackwolf John Oates:And it was like, well, maybe Ted can find it.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah. And then just because Ted was interested, not it wasn't the target at the time, but Ted was obsessed with this, Russian rocket
Blackwolf John Oates:Yes.
AP Strange:That that was going into space. So he ended up taking a photograph of that, and it just kinda looked like a almost like a weird bottle shape.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah.
AP Strange:But then, I guess, I'm I hope I'm not confusing the timeline, but I think, like, a couple weeks later, there was a published, drawing of what this, craft was supposed to look like.
Blackwolf John Oates:He was he was also obsessed with getting a picture of Mars before Mariner four did.
AP Strange:Yeah. So that was the thing that reminded me of remote viewing.
Blackwolf John Oates:Same here. Exactly. That that wasn't I remember reading about that. I think it was in the, that Jim Mars UFO book. What was it called?
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:I can do what it was called.
AP Strange:Alien Agenda?
Blackwolf John Oates:Yes. Alien Agenda. Yes.
AP Strange:Yeah. Classic Jim Mars. But it was a thing that really happened. I think it was 1976. Somebody in the remote viewing program was trying to remote view Mars.
Blackwolf John Oates:Didn't, what's his name? The guy who was always on Art Bell, Ingo Swan, didn't he Yeah. Remote view Jupiter, I believe, too? Yeah.
AP Strange:Yep. Yeah. And I think they remote viewed the moon as well.
Blackwolf John Oates:Mhmm.
AP Strange:Or maybe it was one of the moons of Jupiter. I can't remember.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah. Something like that. Yeah.
AP Strange:Yeah. I I I know Ingo Swan was doing some of that, and, one of the other people was too, I believe. But I have a Fate magazine article about it somewhere.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah.
AP Strange:So, well, I mean, the other thing is that psychic photography existed way before Ted too. He wasn't the first person to do this.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah. There's a Japanese doctor. I wanna find that book. That was one of the things I read in there. I have got to find the book this guy wrote.
Blackwolf John Oates:He was having
AP Strange:Tomokichi Tomokichi Fukurai. Yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yes. They They were have he was having people project, like, just, like, simple things like letters and Japanese characters onto photographic plates through a sheet. Correct?
AP Strange:Yeah. Right.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah. That that was fascinating. I'm like, I need to know more about this.
AP Strange:Yeah. I I I think you can get copies of that. I mean, I was looking for I was looking this was back in, like, nineteen o nine, I think Yes.
Blackwolf John Oates:When
AP Strange:you published this book. And I I did find some old copies of it, but, you know, not not too clear on on how good the quality is. So I'm gonna continue looking. But I think there are more modern editions of it. I just would recommend caution and and, Yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:Of course.
AP Strange:Make sure they're not just, like, weird print on demand scans that are of questionable quality. You know?
Blackwolf John Oates:Usually are. I'll check the Internet archive as well. I'm sure I can find it, but I was like, that's definitely something I need to check out. Yeah. There there's Oh, I
AP Strange:I think I did find digital copies, but, I mean, you know me. I like to have the, the old one. So
Blackwolf John Oates:No. I I I I don't I used to I I have a habit of printing out, using my copier privileges at various jobs to, print out books off Internet archive.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:Now I have a book
AP Strange:that I
Blackwolf John Oates:didn't have before. Thanks, Jack Brewer. Yes. No. So, yeah, apparently, I I I know you this is a spiritualism, things like that are a big interest of yours, but, yeah, apparently, like, photographer as soon as photographer who was invented, they were like, let's get pictures of ghosts immediately.
Blackwolf John Oates:That was the first order of business.
AP Strange:Yeah. And I mean, it's it's fairly easy to do, with double exposures.
Blackwolf John Oates:Mhmm.
AP Strange:I I think I I think one of the earliest ones was near me that, Mumler guy in Boston was known for for psychic photography.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah.
AP Strange:And the book that I've talked about in the past, the, Charles Hadaria, the the Jesuit priest Yeah. In Austria. He did his own psychic photographs in the book where he was just he didn't tell you how he did it, but he's he did tell you that they were fake. Like, one of them is really cool because it's just like a big hand covering the two people that are sitting for a portrait.
Blackwolf John Oates:That's pretty cool.
AP Strange:And, yeah, I mean, the way you do that is that you open the shutter all the way, hold your hand in front of the photo, for a little while, you know, hold it there for about ten seconds and then close the shutter, and then take the photo photograph. Yeah. You're gonna you're gonna have this ghostly hand in print there.
Blackwolf John Oates:That's very
AP Strange:cool. Yeah. Which raised the question in our minds too. Would you be able to take a psychic photograph with digital cameras that are on cell phones?
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah. We'd I I we I know we had talked about making our own gizmos and trying this. I have not had a chance to yet, but I think maybe, before this goes up, it's something we you and I need to do is try to do our own. I I do I do If anyone listening to this has not done so, there are Ted was on TV a couple of times. And, like, when there's there's people recorded Ted's, photography experiments, and you gotta see this guy in action.
Blackwolf John Oates:It's it's a it's a riot. He is just like, you called him a live wire. He's just he's all full body energy. Like, he is just really into it. So I think we need to definitely need to do our get ourselves into the right frame of mind.
Blackwolf John Oates:We gotta get shit house drunk apparently. I'll just start smoke I'll just start smoking again and, just stay up all night and try to get a picture on our our on our cameras.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:I think it's I think it's necessary at this point for science.
AP Strange:Yeah. I mean, it did seem like it required a lot of physical exertion on his part. So I don't know how down I would be for that, especially because he reported bleeding from the anus.
Blackwolf John Oates:There was he had if it was a good session, he bled rectally. Yes. Doctor there's there's there's there's more than a few, anus references in this book. Doctor Eisenblad was a Frodean in every possible capacity.
AP Strange:Yeah. Including, being incredibly obsessed with breasts.
Blackwolf John Oates:Well, there's breasts, and there's also, very early in the book, Ted the is it the first time they they meet? Yes. It is. Yeah. The first time they meet in the hotel room in Chicago, it's not going well.
Blackwolf John Oates:They're not getting photos. Ted's getting pissed off, and Ted asked to take a shower. Right. And, Ted goes and takes a shower, and he calls doctor Eisenbud in and just, like, flashes him.
AP Strange:Yeah. He's a good day. Day, dude.
Blackwolf John Oates:And then for the next three or four pages, doctor Eisenbud cannot stop talking about Ted's penis. He he brings up his, how pleased Ted is Ted is with his penis and how Ted wants you to know how pleased he is. And Ted wants to know how pleased you are with his penis. It's happened several times. This is, like, in the first twenty pages of the book.
Blackwolf John Oates:So you know you're in for a good ride.
AP Strange:But also during that time, Ted produced a photo that was, of significance to Eisenbud. Yes. And this is what I would think of as a synchronicity because it was something that was on Eisenbud's mind. But and it's because it's so specific to Eisenbud because he had just the only reason he was in Chicago to begin with is because he had given a, a talk.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yes. A lecture.
AP Strange:Yeah. A lecture that hadn't gone well. Like, it wasn't received well and people didn't seem to care. And it was in it wasn't in Chicago's, I think, Cleveland or something like that. But Yeah.
AP Strange:He made Chicago on his way back. And it wasn't received well, but the lecture itself was, about how the crescent symbol and ancient, ancient lithographs and or not lithograph. Well, you know, ancient symbols Yes. And all the way through to, like, the archetype of that is supposed to symbolize breasts and, like, the divine feminine in some way. Mhmm.
AP Strange:And so, I mean, he basically did a lecture on boobs for, like, an hour.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yes.
AP Strange:And people were just rolling their eyes or not as interested. And, in in one of these pictures, there's a very obvious pair of breasts represented by the the building that the It
Blackwolf John Oates:was well, I just read this because I I just read this this morning. It was, not a building. It was street lights.
AP Strange:Oh, yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:When you turned them over, when you turned the photo around, it was boobs. And I I'm not gonna say I saw the boobs. You know, I can and I can no. I know boobs. They they look like boobs to me.
Blackwolf John Oates:I'm not Yeah. I'm just I wasn't terribly, like, convinced that these were in fact the boobs that, but, what it doesn't Well,
AP Strange:but I guess if you see if you see boobs everywhere. Now, I mean, like Yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:Which apparently he does.
AP Strange:I'm not opposed to that. But, like, I I was looking at this photo, and I just could not find the boobs. Like, I spent so long being like, what the hell is he talking about?
Blackwolf John Oates:I did too. I did, like, on the I think because you can kinda see what he's talking about as far as, like, crescents, and one of them has a slightly darkened area that I guess could be a nipple, I guess. But I'm not the boobs was for but the thing was that it was, like, a year later when Eisenberg was like he's like, oh, Ted was trying to tell me in his own special way that I was right. But, also, the same the same day, they got a photo of a hotel that had the word Stevens on it. And it was an old Chicago hotel.
Blackwolf John Oates:It was no longer called the Stevens. So the photo was, like, would have to have been, like, 30 or 40 years old for it to have been labeled the Stevens Hotel. And the doctor who was, like, shooting down eyes and butt's theories was doctor Stevens.
AP Strange:Right.
Blackwolf John Oates:I was like, Ted, you shouldn't have.
AP Strange:Yeah. But it wasn't spelled the same. No. The hotel had a v, Stevens with a v, and the doctor was with a p h.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yes.
AP Strange:But if you think about it, a v is just a crescent and also a boob. So
Blackwolf John Oates:It's it's just it's like those fifties pointy boobs from, like, the, you know, the Mamie Vandoren movies.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:So, you know, that's what it was. It it so he Ted was Ted being the man that he is, I'm sure, had, you know, Girlstown or one of those girls in, juvenile hall movies in mind and you know?
AP Strange:Yeah. I I'd the only thing I could think of at that part in the book was that scene from Naked Gun with Leslie Nielsen driving away from the airport. Everywhere I look.
Blackwolf John Oates:Where I look.
AP Strange:Swope to her by three of her.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah. That was that part that was the other part that that made me roll my eyes hard was when he was like, oh, Ted was just thinking of me, but he didn't realize he was thinking of me. And he was trying to make me feel better. Like, I don't I I I don't doubt that Ted has a a soft side here and there, but I don't think this was it.
AP Strange:He didn't even know you yet, dude.
Blackwolf John Oates:He just met you. Granted, you gave him a bottle of scotch. What which in Ted's world is a pretty good gesture. Yep. But, yeah, the boobs thing.
Blackwolf John Oates:It was I was a bit much.
AP Strange:I actually have in my notes here, Jewel Eisenbud, psychoanalyst, parenthesis, obsessed with boobs.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah. I had a couple of times in here, I have, again, with the fucking penis, goddamn Freudians. There's like, okay. Screaming, bashing his head on the floor, then stripped down to all of his phallic glory. Okay.
Blackwolf John Oates:Cool. Calm calm the fuck down, man. Then there's like, oh, there's also a lot of there's a part where there's a part Ted's constipated. Like, it gets this book gets really, really into some very odd granular details of the process. And, he's talking about bowels for a while there.
Blackwolf John Oates:And he equates Ted being constipated to not being able to take a picture to get a a photograph.
AP Strange:Yeah. I mean and he also had his friend, one of his associates that sat in on one of the things that had, like, a whole a whole anal theory around psi abilities.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yes. The anus doctor. The anus investigator.
AP Strange:The anus guy. Yeah. Yes. He actually refers to him as that.
Blackwolf John Oates:He calls him the anus investigator.
AP Strange:Well, because he he didn't wanna use the guy's real name. Apparently, the guy didn't want want his name in the book. So he's just like, so my anus friend, the third man. A third man, also a friend of long standing seems to be more interested in discussing his own latest research interest, a new approach via communication theory to the psychophysiology of the anus.
Blackwolf John Oates:Oh my gosh. Yeah. Freudians, man. You this is what you're gonna get when you hang out with a bunch of Freudians for a while.
AP Strange:Yeah. You know, like, I can't claim to really understand psychoanalysis. Like, I'm not as I know people love Jung. I'm I'm not as well read on Jung as a lot of people are, and I assume a lot of people haven't read as much Jung as they let on. But, Freud, all the psychoanalysis that I've ever read, I'm just like, you know, it might not be that it's a universal human thing that all these things are related to sex.
AP Strange:It's maybe just these guys just couldn't stop thinking about sex. I don't know.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah. Yeah. I'm I'm in your the same boat as you. Like, I don't pretend to know more about this than I do. But, yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:The and I do think, the Freud thing is pretty well discounted at this point, and you're not gonna find a lot of pure Freudians out there. I think Freud kinda gets a lot of love just kinda like, hey. Thanks for being the first. Right? You know, someone someone had to be the first to do this.
Blackwolf John Oates:Freud was the first to do this. You gotta love him for that. Thanks for starting our field, but we don't need all the penis butthole talk. It it's good. We're good now.
Blackwolf John Oates:Not everything's pressed, dude. Stop. Just because someone took a picture of a headlight doesn't mean he thinks he's helping you he's he's helping your breast ideas. We're we're done. I mean and but me and and the thing is too, I mean, the whole boob thing for Ted.
Blackwolf John Oates:I mean, he had he was a mama's boy, so maybe that was it. Maybe that was the boobs thing for Ted. Yeah. He had, like
AP Strange:see, now we're doing it. You know? Well I mean
Blackwolf John Oates:It's in there too. It's in the book. Eisenbud theorizes the same thing that Ted keeps going back to boobs because he misses his mom. Yeah. He lived a block from his mother his whole life.
Blackwolf John Oates:You know? Like Yeah. Ted loved mama.
AP Strange:And his his dad died when he was relatively young.
Blackwolf John Oates:I I I don't and I think we're leaving out the most important thing here. Ted's dad was a professional wrestler.
AP Strange:Yeah. That's amazing.
Blackwolf John Oates:That is awesome. Ted's dad was a professional wrestler.
AP Strange:And then he he retired from that and started his own little cafe.
Blackwolf John Oates:A Greek man who started a Greek diner. God bless him.
AP Strange:Yeah. A Greek Chicago diner. I can only imagine. I would love to go back in time and have a euro there.
Blackwolf John Oates:A %. That's gonna be a hell of a sandwich. I guarantee you a big I have this image of a giant swarthy Greek man just Yeah. Fixing me up a big old hoagie. Here you go.
Blackwolf John Oates:You know? A big, like, French dip. Oh, this is fantastic. This is the best sandwich I've ever had. Homemade pickles and stuff, like kalamata.
Blackwolf John Oates:I'm I'm I'm down to eat the cereal's diner right now if it existed.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yep. I would at least like a photograph of it.
Blackwolf John Oates:Ed, can we get a photograph of, like, you know, the moussaka at your dad's diner, please? Can we can we work on this? I'm sure it's great.
AP Strange:I need some baklava right now.
Blackwolf John Oates:Exactly. Let's work on this. Yeah. I said but I can guarantee the coffee there is probably just like, be, like, just knock your socks off, man. I'm sure it
AP Strange:was great. Yep. How should we stuff.
Blackwolf John Oates:I I meant to miss this
AP Strange:earlier. Cigarettes.
Blackwolf John Oates:Oh, there's there was definitely a lot of cigarettes going on. I'm sure I I would have to imagine there wasn't a breath in Ted's dad's body that didn't come through a cigarette. Unfiltered. No questions asked. Yep.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah. But, I I I did mean to mention this earlier because I I I had forgotten about this. We had talked about the remote viewing. How Ted found his powers is absolutely fascinating, and we didn't touch on that. Do you remember how Ted found his powers?
AP Strange:Yeah. No. I I'm glad you brought this up because I would have forgotten to mention it. But, also, nobody ever mentions this.
Blackwolf John Oates:No. It's the craziest story.
AP Strange:Outside of this book, I have never ever heard this part of it, which is like the origin story for Ted Sarios' ability to photograph.
Blackwolf John Oates:It might be the most fascinating part of this book. It's insane. I I thought this was the best part of the book. I and I can't believe he wait he waited till, like, the last chapter to put this in there.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:He gives you, like Oh, no. I mean, it's of dry ass shit about the the all the different experiments and all of his theories on, you know, archetypes and shit. And then at the very end, he's like, oh, yeah. There's pirates. There's fucking pirates.
Blackwolf John Oates:And no one mentioned pirates earlier?
AP Strange:It's during the only stable time in his life when he's working as a bellhop. One of the people he works with at the hotel, a man named George Johannes, found that Ted was easily susceptible to hip hip hypnosis.
Blackwolf John Oates:He was like an amateur hypnotist. Not like a like a car.
AP Strange:He just Yeah. But, I mean, I think there was a spiritual component to it too because they mentioned that he was, like, he worked with, like, the ideas of of Mesmer Mhmm. Anton Mesmer, where Mesmerism is kind of it's not the same thing as hypnosis. A lot of people can conflate them, but there there is a lineage there. Hypnosis comes out of Mesmer ism.
AP Strange:Yep. Anton Mesmer believed that everybody had basically magnetic fields, animal magnetism.
Blackwolf John Oates:Magnetism. Great scorpion, by the way. But yeah. Go ahead.
AP Strange:So so, essentially, he had Ted channeling, the pirate Jean Lafitte.
Blackwolf John Oates:Like, okay. That was I I need I need a clarification. Did Ted choose Jean Lafitte? Did George Johannes choose Jean Lafitte, or did Jean Lafitte disappear? I I was unclear on that.
AP Strange:Well, alright. So, I mean, in spiritualism, if most mediums classically will have what's called a con a control.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yes.
AP Strange:And this is the spirit that shows up and allows them to talk to other spirits.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yep.
AP Strange:So they're kinda like the middleman.
Blackwolf John Oates:Holds their hand, walks them through it. Yes.
AP Strange:Right. So I think Lafitte was just Sirios' middle, you know, control spirit, but he seems to be, like, the only one Sirios is really talking to.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah.
AP Strange:So I I don't know that anybody chose that. It didn't seem to be the case. But, also, they were trying to get what they were trying to get out of it was helping to find buried treasure. Yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:Well, it started off, like, asking Ted to go walk around places. Like, he would start off, like, hey. Go check out I think, like, South Africa was one of them. A couple different places, like, just, like, just to see if Ted could go there and see it and describe it.
AP Strange:But, again, there's a lot like remote viewing.
Blackwolf John Oates:Remote viewing. Yeah. Exactly.
AP Strange:That's what
Blackwolf John Oates:the term of viewing.
AP Strange:But, but yeah. I mean and and then even when he wasn't trying to do that, Lafice would be, like, present in these, like, transmissions and stuff. So, like, I I guess this resulted in a few attempts by by George Ohanis and maybe, like, associates of his to go try to dig up treasure in different places, but never never actually worked. But, I mean, I I've heard of this before where, like, Gary Geller would do similar things. Like, people would hire him to, like, psychically find out where treasure was buried or, like, where to drill for oil and stuff like that.
Blackwolf John Oates:Okay. It says here I I just I had to look this up, so it's driving me crazy. Ted began to show promise along these lines as finding loot that and that the guide suggested be Jean Lafitte. Someone suggested Jean Lafitte. Doesn't say who.
Blackwolf John Oates:So it was suggested that that that Ted take on Jean Lafitte as his guy. I think Jean Lafitte appeared. I I I don't know how this works. Do you just ask for Jean Lafitte? If he is he available?
Blackwolf John Oates:Is he on another job for somebody else?
AP Strange:Is he
Blackwolf John Oates:doing a racketeering, gig for the, Brooklyn DA? I what what's going on? I don't I don't know how this works.
AP Strange:Yeah. Well and I and I thought this was funny too because it's, related to history in your neck of the woods.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah. I, I I of course, everything down here is Jean Lafitte. He's a very big local hero down here in New Orleans. We have a whole parish named after him, a whole city named after him. My friends and I, when we were just out of high school and, for the first of our lives had no curfews, we'd go take and drive down to Lafitte and drive around these swamp back roads and stuff like that.
Blackwolf John Oates:So it was always a lot of, I've been a lot of fondness for Lafitte.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, that's kinda
Blackwolf John Oates:the Cool place.
AP Strange:Cool unexpected synchronicity there.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah. I was I was happy to see Jean Lafitte, and I I I just thought it was just fucking great that like, this, there in our University of New Orleans, the, the the mascots, the privateers, they because of Jean Lafitte. And it's like this worthy, handsome swashbuckling guy with a big mustache and a saber. And so I'm picturing the UNO mascot guiding Ted through, like, the cosmos. And, or if any football fans out there would remember the, you know, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, their old, their old, mascot was the buccaneer.
Blackwolf John Oates:This, again, a swarthy, mustachioed gentleman. A mustache, not unlike your your own, AP. Yeah. Like, so I'm just picturing this guy, like, helping Ted through, loot locate loot. I like the I like the word loot too.
Blackwolf John Oates:I I don't think we use the word loot enough anymore.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:They found this booty. Well, of course. Well, you know.
AP Strange:Yeah. Booty is also good. You know?
Blackwolf John Oates:But no one's no one's looking for loot anymore. No one's searching for loot. No one's digging up loot anymore. It's just it's just one of those words I wish would come back into, with Crumbum. You know?
AP Strange:Yeah. Crumbum.
Blackwolf John Oates:Crumbum's looking for loot. It's great.
AP Strange:Yeah. That and, giving someone the business.
Blackwolf John Oates:Ted gave a lot of people the business, I'm sure. Ted was given a lot of business.
AP Strange:What are you giving me the business?
Blackwolf John Oates:Hey. Hey. The crumb bum. That. As, some great TED quote.
Blackwolf John Oates:I'll save great TED quotes for later because we were talking about so, yes, TED, his friend George is having TED go on these psychic journeys to find loot, and they apparently found stuff is what they say in the book.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:But they got there too late. Like, they found they they came upon other people digging up, like, a box of money.
AP Strange:Right. Right.
Blackwolf John Oates:And they're like, shit. We're late. Ted, here's an idea. Can you take a picture of the place you see the flute so we can get there faster and find it?
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:So Ted starts fucking around with a camera and taking pictures. It starts he just takes pictures of the wall.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:And he starts getting things. Right? He starts
AP Strange:Yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:Getting images. And Yeah. Go ahead. Continue.
AP Strange:Well and I'm gonna say the wild part about this is that he produces these things, and then he gets kind of obsessed with it. Mhmm. And then he throws it all away. Like, he throws the camera away eventually and the photos and everything because he decides that it's just this unhealthy delusion that he developed.
Blackwolf John Oates:It is he goes to a doctor too. Right?
AP Strange:Right. And that's what the doctor tells him. The doctor basically tells him you're just delusional. Mhmm. But he has actual evidence of it.
AP Strange:So, like, he's producing physical evidence of something very paranormal, and, it's freaking him out. Like, he doesn't know what to do with that. So and he goes to a doctor. The doctor tells him that he's losing his grip, and he needs to stop doing whatever he's doing.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah.
AP Strange:So he just gives up on it. And he convinces himself that he was crazy before, like, a couple years later, he decides to try it again.
Blackwolf John Oates:Well, he was hypnotized by the doctor who Right. He was him and then and then, the hypnotism wears off apparently. And so Ted decides to try it again.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:And this is when he starts experimenting with it, like, trying different methods to get the photos.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yep. But I I mean, that is a wild thing, and it's, like, one of these central things to the book. And one of the central things to the paranormal really is that, no matter how much proof you get a lot of the time, at the end of the day, people are going to walk away from it if they don't know, like, how to categorize it or what the mechanism is or how to describe it or Yeah. Find a use for it.
Blackwolf John Oates:You
AP Strange:know? Like Yeah. Even even Ted himself tried to walk away from it. You know? Like,
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah. It's it doesn't it it's like he his power is it's unfortunately, because it's kind of uncontrollable, it's never going to go above the level of a parlor trick. It's always gonna it's gonna be this really cool fucking thing he can do that is no of no real use to anybody, which is unfortunate because it's it's it's it's I don't know. It's it's an you can't categorize it, but it it's it's something incredible.
AP Strange:Yeah. I mean and it certainly seems that way to me. But, I I find this with a lot of people and that that tend to get, discarded or disregarded. And, and, and that's why I have a certain affinity for the people that are like absolutely ridiculous. And, I've applied this same logic for years now.
AP Strange:And, you know, I, I had started with the theory that the most ridiculous sounding stories are probably the ones that have something we can benefit from learning. Like and and the the the ridiculousness there is there to make us discard it. You know? Yes. Yeah.
AP Strange:And then when you apply that to people too, I had, like, a a dark night of the soul with that because I was like, like, Ernie Geller is somebody that I've gone back and forth with over the years, and I'm just like I mean, now, like, fuck him just because of his political beliefs. But Yeah. Like, but, I mean, over the years, it's just been like like, oh, That guy, you know, like, what a what a what a joker. You know? And then, but it it it occurred to me if I have to, like, stick to my own, my own rules here
Blackwolf John Oates:Mhmm.
AP Strange:Like, a lot of the stuff he claims to be able to do is ridiculous. And a lot of people think he's just a hoaxer and doing, like, the spoon bending and stuff like that.
Blackwolf John Oates:Mhmm. And
AP Strange:I'm like, there probably actually is something worth looking into there because because it's so ridiculous, you know?
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah.
AP Strange:So and I mean, he's apparently done his own thought photography, But, you see this is true with other characters. Like, one of the best direct correlations to Sirius, I think, is Ted Owens. I don't know how familiar you are with Owen.
Blackwolf John Oates:I know the name. What what what remind me.
AP Strange:Well, he was the PK man.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yes. Yes. The PK man. Yeah. Yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:There's yeah. I know you know that. Yes. Yes. Yes.
AP Strange:Yeah. Also an alcoholic. Also kind of like a quirky, abrasive character in a lot of ways. Mhmm. His psychic contact with was with minted beings on a on a flying saucer that he referred to as SIs or space intelligences.
Blackwolf John Oates:Mhmm.
AP Strange:And, he he worked under test conditions with JB and Louis Louisa Ryan when he was young. Mhmm. And then later with doctor Jeffrey Mishlove, who was the one that ended up writing the book about him. And, you you know, he's he's somebody that has, like, a whole, a whole list of of, accurate, weather predictions that he made.
Blackwolf John Oates:Mhmm. You
AP Strange:could consider them predictions or you could say that they were something that he, created made happen. He manifested, you know, but he is said to have also caused UFO sightings, blackouts, all kinds of anomalies. And this is all stuff that's documented in a way that you could classify as very scientific, you know?
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah.
AP Strange:But he's a ridiculous person and he's a drunk and he's, he says he's talking to to space manoid. Like, so so I a lot of people don't even know about him. Like, he's just a a a a name that's kinda, like, if you say PK man, maybe people do, but, the if you just say Ted Owens, like, it's kinda you have to sit there and think about it. But he's, like, kinda one of my favorite guys because he is so out there, so ridiculous.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah.
AP Strange:And he's a lot like Ted's serious where
Blackwolf John Oates:Absolutely. Yeah. No. I just Tedster is just one of those I I I've I guess that even when I was not looking into this stuff anymore, I was doing other things in my life. Like, it's always one of those just thoughts that I always came back to in my life was this Ted Sierrios guy.
Blackwolf John Oates:So I always thought it was the most fascinating story, and that just those the photographs are they have a way of working into your mind. They you don't forget those photos. They're they're eerie. They're creepy. They're amazing, and they're just inexplicable.
Blackwolf John Oates:Like and I I've always this is one of the stories that stuck with me my whole life. And Mhmm. I got and I said that the first book I purchased on Amazon was the world of Ted Sirius because I've had this, like, lifelong fascination with this guy. Because, yeah, he is ridiculous. He's a madman.
Blackwolf John Oates:And I remember too seeing I think I think there was I do believe he was on on in search of at some point. And he was definitely on Arthur c Clark's mysterious powers or the hell that show was called. He used to be on discovery. So I remember I remember seeing footage of the guy being crazy. And so it's always just yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:The most outlandish people are the ones that I have a fondness for as well.
AP Strange:Yeah. And it was the Arthur c Clark show. Was it's not mysterious universe. It's
Blackwolf John Oates:like mysterious universe. Unexplained powers, something like that. Yeah.
AP Strange:It has
Blackwolf John Oates:it has the crystal skull in the eyeball. That's like the the yeah.
AP Strange:Right. It was that show where those two guys demonstrated, like, how the gizmo worked. Mhmm. But and and they claimed that James Randi was the one that had figured it out, I think.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yep. And the and the thing is, like, if you do that, you do get something that is similar to what Ted Saros was doing.
AP Strange:Right.
Blackwolf John Oates:Like, you can make a photograph that looks, for all intents and purposes, similar to a Ted Saros photograph or thotograph, whatever you wanna call it. Right. But never once has anyone ever done that under the conditions that Ted Sirios was working under. Right. And that's the that's the that's the rub there.
Blackwolf John Oates:It's like, yes. Of course, you can every everything you can show me how to bend a spoon. You could, show me how to fake a weather report to some detail. You know, if you know enough about the weather and how it works, you could try to fake your way through that. Or, there's a lot of ways to fake this stuff, but, yeah, no one is I mean, was it, Eisenbud who offered James Randi, like, look, I'll let you get trashed.
Blackwolf John Oates:You can get as drunk as Ted gets and do and show me how to do this. Like Yeah. No one's ever been no one's ever done it under the same conditions that Ted's done it.
AP Strange:Right. Yeah. And and, you know, basically, Randy got on TV and declared that he could easily reproduce it, and everybody just took took his word for it His word
Blackwolf John Oates:for it. Yeah.
AP Strange:And moved on. And, and then and then Eisenbud was like, alright. Well, you know, make good on that and just do it. But you have to do it under the same conditions. Right?
AP Strange:Mhmm. And, and Randy just kept weaseling out of it. And that's the thing is, like, he had a habit of doing that. He he would always and that's that's what a lot of these, conjurer, like, magician skeptics do is they define their own rules for how it's gonna work. And then if you take them up on their, debunking method, then they still want to define the terms and they'll find whatever way they can to weasel out of actually doing it because it's not as important to demonstrate the trick.
AP Strange:The the important part is instilling in the minds of the people that it is a trick.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yes.
AP Strange:You know? So, I mean, that's why, you know, you have the disciples of James Randi are are, like, kinda teller, who I generally like. But Same here. I mean but they're kind of of that same milk where, like, anybody that believes anything spiritual or, you know, metaphysical is is full of it. You know?
AP Strange:Yeah. Well,
Blackwolf John Oates:and that's, like, I I'm all for the James Randys of the world going out there and taking down the Sylvia Browns and the John Edwards of the world. Right. Yeah. Fuck those people. They're scumbags and they're taking money from people who are in pain and suffering and, you know, making fools of them.
Blackwolf John Oates:And I said, if you wanna take those fuckers down, be my guest all day every day. I'll even help you pay for it. But, like, if you're like, that's good, and that's that's decent thing to do. But, yeah, there's no reason who's Ted hurting by doing these photographs? Like, what's the Yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:Like, what's the, what do you why do you I I don't know. Why the rush to why the rush to just, you know, dis disparage this? What's why the rush to prove it as fake? I I don't see.
AP Strange:Yeah. It's it's kinda just like another notch in his belt or whatever. Yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:Exactly. Yeah. Like I said, there's people out there doing actual harm. You could you could buy if you wanna go ruin their careers, be my guest.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:But Ted's not harm well, Ted harms that that Ted was harming lots of people. Never mind. Don't take that back. Ted was a piece of Ted was a scumbag. But, yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:Not with photos, though. Not with the photos. The photos are cool. And that that's
AP Strange:the part. That would happen is he would expose himself to somebody while doing the photos. But
Blackwolf John Oates:Usually a, consenting adult at least, you know. He did wreck a car once, too. That was kinda great. Where'd the goddamn road go?
AP Strange:Yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:Goddamn road go. What was the other one? The, another great TED quote where he screamed it when the or print my TED quotes here. I'll show you goddamn son of a bitch and bastards what's funny. Yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:Son of a bitchin. One word.
AP Strange:Not gonna lie. I have used that before.
Blackwolf John Oates:I'll show you goddamn son of a bitch and bastards what's funny.
AP Strange:Well, I that was okay. So that was when he was taking a test with, an electroencephalograph attached to him. So he had, like like, electrodes and things stuck in his hair into his head. All these to monitor him while he was doing this.
Blackwolf John Oates:And, I'm Oh, go ahead. Go ahead.
AP Strange:The yeah. The EEG guy was just like, nah. Something funny is going on here.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah. He he, he he took the first he he he shot off the first, the the next photo just to get it out of the roll in case he was doing something ahead of time to to the film. Right. So he's like, in case there's some funny business going on, he'd snapped off the first photograph and threw it away, and Ted got insulted by the funny business line.
AP Strange:Yeah. And it was like a yeah. It it it but it seemed like it was a slow burn. Like, it started to sink in with him. And then he got pissed, and he's just like, I'll show those son of a bitch and assholes what's fucking funny.
AP Strange:And he's like ripping things out of he's like ripping his own hair out.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah. And he starts, like, grabbing and show up the walls and throwing it around and, like, stormed his way out the other slamming doors. Oh, man. That's just great. I just don't I think that's one one of the things we're missing here these days is is those characters.
Blackwolf John Oates:This guy's a character, and I wish there had been more opportunities to get a taste of Ted serious in this world. World.
AP Strange:Like Yeah. But I think we all knew somebody that was sort of that kind of character that Yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:Of course, we do. Yeah. I mean, you and I have long service industry careers. So I know that we we we've been more than our share of, like, just fucking wing nuts.
AP Strange:And I mean, I think, like, people it's certainly of an era too. So, I mean, some of those people were still around in our when we were kids, if you're at, like, a fam like a cookout, like an employee or something or the big family gathering or something. And there would always be one of those old men around that's like, oh, yeah. We're gonna pour me a little shot of that. It's it's for my cold for my cold.
AP Strange:You know? Yeah. Yeah. That was, like, one of Ted's one of the one of Ted's jokes said, like, nobody ever thought it was funny, but he would try it all the time. It's like, oh, it's just for my cough.
AP Strange:You know?
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah. He's there's definitely, like, uncle Ted vibes.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:Where he's not really your uncle. He's just a guy who lived next door to your grandparents, like, forty years ago, but he keeps showing up at family functions. And you just call him uncle Ted. You're not related to him, really. Oh, yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:Definitely. Definitely uncle Ted vibes. But just in general, though, he's a hell of a character, and and I I just Yeah. You know, it's a shame that he wasn't on TV more. We don't have enough we don't have more footage of this guy.
Blackwolf John Oates:Because there is that really cool footage of him affecting a TV camera, which is fucking cool as shit. Like, I'm sorry. That is that is really cool. I sent you that, didn't I?
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah. It was wild. So, we'll record that and people go I think it's, like, was it, like, German TV? Because it was, like, a German voice over.
Blackwolf John Oates:It might have been. It's, like, it's a it's a forty three second clip, and Ted, like, runs up to a TV camera and throws his hands over the camera and starts doing his thing. God. He goes, like, he he goes, like, got it. And then for, like, a splash, there's a fucking building there.
Blackwolf John Oates:Like, that's cool. Like, I I don't I don't know. Yep.
AP Strange:Yeah. Which goes to show that there this works on other levels. And, and, like, I mean, that's what was significant about the Polaroid cameras too is that in the past, anybody that had ever done thought photography did it with a more conventional camera or one that had plates. You know? The old old old cameras had plates.
AP Strange:And, in those cases, there was ample, ability to tamper with it. With a with a Polaroid, it it's developing right in front of everybody's eyes. Like, there's no dark room. There's no, messing with it ahead of time. Like, they're pulling the they're pulling the photo out and and watching it develop.
Blackwolf John Oates:Oh, yeah. They even went so far as to have film bought in California, sealed in a metal in a lead box and mailed to them and not open till the very second it was used. I mean, they went to some pretty lengthy, you know, some great lengths to
AP Strange:make sure that it yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:To make sure that this to kinda cut there's, like, there like I said, there's a tooth like, a take two a third of the book is just this really, really, really excruciating minutiae of how they did every one of these tests and all the different ways they tried to shield out electromagnetic activity and radiation and infrared and any number of things. This is the middle of book is quite dry, but it does show you the the length that these guys went to to try to get the proof here. This was this wasn't just, like, as much as it kind of turned into a parlor trick sometimes because you can't help it with a guy like Ted Sirio. So he's gonna he's gonna start doing his carny routine, and he's gonna be on. He's gonna be shirtless and chain smoking and chugging scotch in your living room, and it's just kinda hard to keep it serious at that point, but they were really trying hard to keep this as contained as possible and get proof.
Blackwolf John Oates:It wasn't this wasn't a joke.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah. And, I mean, that's all he wanted, I guess, was a little a little respect and a little booze.
Blackwolf John Oates:But it does occur to me too, though, that Ted's never really all that curious as to as to how he can do it.
AP Strange:Yeah. He doesn't care.
Blackwolf John Oates:He really doesn't have any That's
AP Strange:for somebody else to figure out.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah. He has no insight as to, like I'm sorry if I if if I just woke up one day with the ability to take pictures with my mind, I would have a lot of really deep serious, like, existential questions at this point. Like, I'd be
AP Strange:Well, I don't know. Just because having having having produced results with some magical operations in the past, I've realized that whenever I've thought too hard about the mechanism behind it, it makes it that much harder to actually do it the next time.
Blackwolf John Oates:You know, I guess what I'm missing though too is that it's Ted Serios. He would never of course, I can. I'm fucking Ted's cereals.
AP Strange:Right. Yeah. Or should he be me? That's why he's thinking about it.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah. I think I guess that's what it is. He's like, yeah. Of course.
AP Strange:In my own mind, I think it's like a flow state sort of thing where if I was able to do something and, that that shouldn't be able to be done. And I, you know, I have done some pretty crazy things in my life, but, like, if I sit there and wonder about it and try to pick it apart and figure out what the mechanism is, the next time I try to do it, I'm gonna be thinking about that instead.
Blackwolf John Oates:Oh, yeah. No.
AP Strange:I'm not. You're playing basketball and you were just in a flow state and just hitting, you know, like, just the net time time Oh, yeah. Over and over again. Then you started thinking about what it is what is it what is it that I'm doing right now that's making you so good? You'd instantly start messing up.
AP Strange:Right? Well, one
Blackwolf John Oates:of the things that struck me no. I'm very much I I when I play basketball, if I think about it, I can't shoot. When I Right. I I was I discovered too. I I a couple of years ago, I started taking guitar lessons again for a while.
Blackwolf John Oates:I started playing for a while again. I hadn't played in years. And when I'd be playing at home and practicing, I'd be doing just fine. I go to a lesson and sit in front of my teacher. I can't do shit.
Blackwolf John Oates:I fuck everything up.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:I can't do it. And it also one thing about Ted that made me that I thought about myself, not to put myself in the the same, category as the great Ted Sirius. But, like, I when I would when I'm in school, when I would be in grad school, I I or in college, I can't write a paper. Just I can't do it. I have to be under the worst possible pressure under a time limit.
Blackwolf John Oates:And as soon as, like, everything is in, like, all the pressure is on me and I have and I can't think about it anymore. I just have to fucking do it. It just kind of comes out of me. You know, it's like a like a like an incantation at this point. Just boom, it's there.
Blackwolf John Oates:And Right. I and that's kinda what Ted would do. He just ramped and he just ratchet up the pressure over and over again. Get drunk or get crazier. Nothing's happened.
Blackwolf John Oates:Nothing's happened. And then when everyone's getting ready to leave, everyone's miserable and tired and bored. And once they get the hell out of there, all of a sudden, they start showing up. That's when Ted gets hot, 02:30 in the morning, and you gotta work tomorrow. And Yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah. No. That seemed to be how Ted worked too. It was just like this absolute yeah. This flow state that Ted would put himself into, and bam, there's a water tower or whatever else you can come up with.
AP Strange:Yeah. And, I mean, it's kind of funny too because he did eventually just lose it. And, like, there was one time he got a picture, and it was just a picture of some curtains. Yeah. And he never got a photo of anything like
Blackwolf John Oates:That is so great. That is the best. Yes. The last photo was curtains.
AP Strange:Yeah. And and the Eisenbud, like, recognizes immediately, like, well, it's that's the final curtain. You know? That's that's that's it. You know?
AP Strange:Like Ted
Blackwolf John Oates:did it his way. And but, yeah, there's a there in that Arthur c Clark thing, there's they they meet up again, like, in the eighties, I guess, whenever that was filmed. I guess it was late seventeenth or early eighties. Ted looks like fucking shit. Ted looks terrible.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah. And they try to do it again, and it's just pictures of Ted's face, which are also kinda cool. I'd actually like a few of those from my wall. It's just these close ups of Ted's, like, crazy eyes. And, it's it's, yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:The fact that Ted here has lived lived to 02/2006 too, it just absolutely amazes me.
AP Strange:Yep. Yep. He's just one of those one of those old old, sauced individuals that just never never kicks the bucket, I guess.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah. No. It's a very whenever, like, the, you know, when the world when the world's oldest person dies, and then they they go to they go to interview the next person, whoever's the next person in line, like, so and always a 18 year old, man in Japan who drinks about a quart of wild turkey a day.
AP Strange:Yeah. And
Blackwolf John Oates:I always smoke three cigarettes a day. Like, oh, okay. Well, you're good then. It's always that way. Yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:I live off raw meat, wild turkey, and three three Winstons a day, and that's how I keep myself alive. And, like, of course,
AP Strange:you do. Yep. So, so, yeah, I mean, we've I think we've pretty adequately covered this. There's a lot of different avenues you could probably keep going down with this and pulling apart. And,
Blackwolf John Oates:yeah, I mean, I really didn't know how we're gonna talk about it. I honestly, I I'm just reading it, and it's just like it's just this mess. Yep.
AP Strange:Yeah. And like I said earlier, it's the kind of thing where you could just say, well, this guy took pictures with his, like, psychic projections. You know?
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah.
AP Strange:His inner mind. He took pictures of his inner mind with the Polaroid camera, and there was a doctor who studied it. And that's the story. And that really is, like, what it is. Yeah.
AP Strange:But I mean, I guess the greater story, the legacy there is almost nonexistent. It's just that Sirius almost gets forgotten about entirely or just thought of as being somebody that managed to perpetuate some kind of crazy hoax for a couple years in the sixties.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah.
AP Strange:But, but I I don't know. There's a lot more going on. I mean, like we said, there's a channel pirate. There's like, the nature of the photos themselves and the way that they seem to be subverted versions of reality with maybe some, insights into Ted's psyche going on there.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah. Definitely.
AP Strange:There was, like, a even an X Files episode where, like, the killer was a thought a thoughtographer. Like, his thoughts were being projected onto films, and they had to use the thought the photographs as as clues.
Blackwolf John Oates:I need I need to watch this one. I never that that's my dirty secret. I've never seen the x files. I'm sorry, folks.
AP Strange:I apologize. Four, episode four, and it's called, which is like a German word.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah.
AP Strange:A lot of the titles of the shows are X Files love their little German titles, but it's a pretty cool episode. I mean and it's funny because I remember watching it when it first aired, and I'm, like, a lot younger. And I'm just like, oh, it's a Ted Sirios thing. Like
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah. You
AP Strange:know? Yeah. Mulder Mulder name dropped Sirios in it because I mean
Blackwolf John Oates:That's fantastic. That makes me very happy. I I just think I I think Ted Sirs is one of those guys. Like, I hope, like, some hope a writer writes a novel about Ted. He seems like he would be, like, right at home in, like, a Pynchon novel.
Blackwolf John Oates:Like, Ted Sierras should have been in a in a Pynchon in a in a Thomas Pynchon novel at some point and or at least a footnote in the David Foster Wallace novel, something like that. Because it just seems like one of those characters who exist in the fringes who had who lived a pretty extraordinary life, did extraordinary fucking things, and just gets forgotten. And I this that's really makes me sad. And
AP Strange:I still think like a Ted and Jewel sixties style sitcom or seventies style probably. Like a seventies sitcom of Ted and Jewel. Yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:Or like, or like a like a a detective show, a Ted Serios PD Yeah. PI or something. Like, he can he he, like, he photographs the crime scene and yeah. Like, just like the expository, like, finds clues. And just, like, it's just no like, it's like Columbo except that, you know, there's a guy with no shirt on screaming at a camera.
AP Strange:Right.
Blackwolf John Oates:Come into the bathroom. I'm gonna tell you something. And and, yeah, it's just naked Ted.
AP Strange:What are you doing, Ted? I'm trying to find the son of a bitchin' murderer is what I'm trying to do.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah. This is this is a good show, and I I think I'd watch this show. It yeah. I know. And when we first talked about this, I I think, like, three weeks ago or four weeks ago, you were like, hey.
Blackwolf John Oates:Let's do the show, and, and, here's a date. We'll do it this day. I mean, great. So I started looking online for things. And there was actually more than I thought.
Blackwolf John Oates:Like, there's a couple of podcasts covered this already.
AP Strange:There's a
Blackwolf John Oates:couple of, like, videos where people talk people talking about it. And and I I intended to watch all of that, but then I read the book, and I was like, there's nothing I'm gonna glean from these anyone else talking about this. I think you're it I think that the story of Ted Sirios is just that's it's in the book. That's all there is to it, and there's really nothing more to explain. All you can do is kinda, like, let the book wash over you and try to make sense of what you read.
Blackwolf John Oates:And Yeah. And I I think they're trying to explain Ted Sierras is absolutely fruitless.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah. But he is he he was a fascinating character, and this is a fascinating case study. And at the end of it, I don't know what to make of it really, but, I I figured there's still gotta be these people out there. And it kinda shows you the value of some of these, obsolete media, or obsolete, tools of media, like Yeah.
AP Strange:Film cameras. Like, film cameras are they're still around, obviously. Like, people still do take film photos, but, they're not nearly as prevalent as they were. It was No. Once the only option, but it would be interesting to see if you could actually reproduce some of this stuff digitally.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah. Absolutely.
AP Strange:But on the other hand, it it's it just reinforces the value of keeping some of that analog equipment around. Like, yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:No. Absolutely. It does. And I I I I haven't I came in the last time I owned a camera. You know, it's been decades.
Blackwolf John Oates:So they actually owned an actual film camera, and it makes me kinda wanna go to the thrift store and find one. But it also reminds me too that I I I think some of the, people, you know, who are interested in the stuff like you and I are and all the people listening, Go to the library and find these old seventies books, like, the Unexplained that have, like, just these compendiums of weird stories from the seventies and sixties because there's gotta be more of these guys out there. There's there's there's another TED series out there to be discovered and to be talked about. And I I would think think of another one that kind of now has a, a nice, kind of a resurgence in popularity is the Pascagouli incident, which is the one of those other stories that always stuck with me in my life because Pascagouli is like an hour from where I'm where I live. And I it's and that's another story that's completely bonkers and just
AP Strange:Yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:Unlike any other abduction story in the in the literature. And, you know, I'm glad to see that that story is getting a resurgence of popularity now. And, hopefully, the there's more stories like that out there that people can start looking into again because there's those crazy stories are out there, and I think they should be told.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So so as we bring those to the close, to to a close as it were Curtains,
Blackwolf John Oates:if you will.
AP Strange:Curtains as the curtains drop. You know?
Blackwolf John Oates:Yep.
AP Strange:We face that final curtain. You know? Yep. Mistakes, we've made a few. But
Blackwolf John Oates:No. No. Yeah. I mean, that's fine. We know that.
Blackwolf John Oates:We're just you.
AP Strange:That's what editing is for. The magic of editing. You know? Can't promise I'll get it all. Sometimes I just give up and, like, whatever.
AP Strange:I stuttered there. Deal with it, people. Oh. Yeah. So, I mean, what what's what what's on the, what's on tap for you?
AP Strange:You're how far are you into the, broken Oh,
Blackwolf John Oates:it looks like I'll be done cars. May, early June. If I it actually occurs to me right now, I forgot to do one today. I'm a have to do the one do one over dinner tonight. I completely forgot.
AP Strange:Right.
Blackwolf John Oates:But, yeah, that's all I've got on the plate right now. Just work and idiot hair metal trading cards. I'm running out of good ones, though. It's getting hard. Like, I got nothing to say about testament and exodus.
Blackwolf John Oates:I'm losing shit. I'm losing out I'm running out of things to say. I I can't make fun of ACDC. Like, really, what's what do you make how do you make fun of ACDC? You don't.
Blackwolf John Oates:You just kinda, like, enjoy ACDC.
AP Strange:So I'm
Blackwolf John Oates:hoping I pull some better ones out soon. But, you know, it's a it's a passion project at this point. It's it's just I mean, I I'm I I I started hoping I get answers for about what Brockham was thinking and what they were up to. I'm never gonna that's never gonna happen. So at this point, it's just like, I need to see this through, and maybe I'll get something out of it.
AP Strange:Yeah. Alright. Well, good.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah. Otherwise, I I'm, just hanging out in my house, working. It's about to get might we might get snow in New Orleans this week, so that's, exciting. That doesn't happen very often. So Yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:Looking forward to that.
AP Strange:Getting snow here. So that's, it's kinda nice because we haven't for the last couple of winters. So Yeah. It's good good to have a return to normalcy in the Northeast.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah. I'm looking forward to it. Our 25 degrees in New Orleans is really unusual, and people don't know how to handle it. It's, I mean, give us a hurricane or a flood, and we're fine. We'll just we'll just drink beer through the whole thing and then, you know, go out and clean up later.
Blackwolf John Oates:But Yeah. 25 degrees is just that's absolutely it it it just makes everyone here lose their minds. They can't drive anymore. We don't have to go to work. Like, it's just cold.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Blackwolf John Oates:It's just cold weather. You've you've opened your fridge before. It's just like that. That's all the way outside now. That's it.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yep.
Blackwolf John Oates:That yeah. Well
AP Strange:Alright then. Well, thank you for being my very first return guest.
Blackwolf John Oates:Alright. I wanna immediately apologize to your fans for that. Listeners, I apologize, and I wanna apologize for my first appearance. I was heavily caffeinated and just way too excited to talk about RoboCop. I think it was more subdued this time, but we'll see.
Blackwolf John Oates:Yeah.
AP Strange:Well oh, no. I mean, I think people enjoyed that one. I did get I I did get good feedback on that. So
Blackwolf John Oates:I do I do I have I do request to be back for for another, third time's a charm. I have a lot of ideas. So, you
AP Strange:know, if you if you
Blackwolf John Oates:have any you wanna throw at me, I'm always down.
AP Strange:Alright. Yeah. That sounds great.
Blackwolf John Oates:Alright.
AP Strange:So alright, man. Well, Black Wolf, thank you again, and, I will talk to you soon.
Blackwolf John Oates:Oh, it's a pleasure, sir. Have a
AP Strange:good one.