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0:00:00
Ben Radford: Welcome to Squaring the Strange, the podcast that examines all manner of the mysterious and the mundane through a critical lens. So let’s square the strange.

(MUSIC)

0:00:11
Celestia Ward: Hey Squares and hey strangers, welcome back to episode 64 of Squaring the Strange. This is Celestia, your co-host, and with me is Ben Radford.

BR: Hi there.

0:00:31
CW: And not with us today is Pascual, and I know listeners, don’t worry, he has not quit the show, we have not run him off on a rail. He’s just had a couple of things in a row here. He’s unfortunately had a death in the family snd so he is unable to be with us this week due to that unfortunate circumstance. But Pascual, we wish you all the best and and to your family and we hope to have you back soon.

0:01:07
BR: Yes, very soon. It’s a it. I think it works well with with the three disparate voices and backgrounds. I think it’s a good mix of approaches, all sort of from a general, the same general skeptical, critical thinking angle, but pretty diverse backgrounds and experiences, I think.

0:01:26
CW: Well, it helps to have three people so we can all cut each other off when we all run too long. But we do have a third voice joining us later for the main segment, Erik Kristopher Myers, who is a filmmaker that we actually teased two weeks ago, the creator of an upcoming film, Butterfly Kisses. If you like horror movies, and if you like skeptical look at documentaries and sort of an interesting sort of meta view of all those things put together, you will like Butterfly Kisses. Now, Ben, you’ve known Erik for a long time, right?

0:02:01
BR: Yeah, well, certainly more than a couple years. He and I have lots of shared interests, everything from filmmaking to cryptozoology and ghosts and urban legends. And so there’s lots of, lots of overlap there. And when he asked me to take a look at his film, I was like, I was like, at first I was like, oh, horror film. Great. I, you know, I’ve seen a lot of these. But when I sort of saw what he was doing, it’s this really sort of meta ghost story, urban legend story, documentary, pseudo documentary, Spinal Tap meets, you know, usual suspects meets ghost hunters. It was pretty cool. And I was, I was pretty taken with it. So it was cool to get a chance to see his film and talk with it.

CW: But, well, before we get into that, is there anything you’re skeptical of this week?

(MUSIC)

BR: Yeah, I want to talk a little bit about some of those abduction rumors and warnings that people see on social media. I’ve come across them many times over the past couple of weeks and sort of being involved in scare lore and legends, I sometimes see posts written by folklorists that are sort of highlighting that there’s a new scare, a new legend going around. And oftentimes they come in the form of warnings. Sometimes with the imprimatur of police departments, other times more often sort of, you know, the average man on the street or woman on the street saying, hey my god this happened to me and watch out this is happening to you.

0:03:38
CW: Make sure you park your car this way because thieves are doing this and beware for the children and stuff like that.

0:03:44
BR: Right, I mean, Jan Brunvand in some of his books he talks about the lights out urban legend and there’s lots of different variants but one of them is that if you see somebody driving towards dusk and their lights aren’t on, don’t flash your lights at them because it’s actually a gang initiation and if you flash your lights at them, they’ll turn around and pursue you and kill you and do horrible things to you as part of a gang right.

0:04:10
CW: Oh, I should have been murdered about 50 times over then because I’m a light flasher.

0:04:15
BR: Yeah, so there’s a whole genre of scare lore and we should do a show on that. But there was a recent example that happened in early June, around June 9th, 10th, 2018. And it was a case that I wrote up in my research. I wanted to just sort of give the outlines. It was a guy named Joshua Hatley in Kansas. And he posted a message on Facebook with information claiming that a woman had attempted to abduct his child from a local Walmart. Rather than me characterizing it, let me tell you what he said. He said, I’m posting this as a warning to my friends and family around here who have children. Please keep an eye on them. Christy took the boys to Walmart with her sister a few hours ago. They were looking at some books together and as soon as Christy turned for a second to get another book to look at, a lady made a move to grab Asher who was looking at another book. Her sister saw this and Asher moved away. The woman took off and she followed. There was another female and a male with her and they left in the van in the following picture. Please guys, let this be your only wake-up call. Watch your babies while you’re in public. We live nine miles away from I-70, a major drug and sex trafficking corridor. If someone snatches your child, they will probably be gone before anyone can do anything about it. We’re counting our blessings tonight. Please count yours and hold your kids dear. This happened at 7 o’clock on the dot at the Walmart in Manhattan, Kansas, and this information has all been provided to the authorities.

0:05:38
CW: That’s a horrifying story. You mean somebody named their child Asher?

0:05:40
BR: Yes, that’s the creepiest part.

CW: That was the takeaway for me.

0:05:44
BR: Yes, you heartless skeptical woman.

CW: Sorry, I’ve had to draw too many Asher’s and Aiden’s and Hayden’s and Jaden’s and Kayden’s and Braden’s.

BR: Anyway, please direct the letters to Celestia.

CW: So this this child was this child actually Involved in an abduction attempt>

0:06:07
BR: Well, no, the post was accompanied as I mentioned by a photo of a woman It was actually an African American woman that he he said was trying to abduct The kid along with the van she drove and the license plate was clearly visible So you can see how there’s a recipe for danger here. Basically what happened was the Riley County Police, which that’s the county of Manhattan, Kansas, they first heard about it not from Joshua Hatley or his wife, Christy, or his sister-in-law, but from people who were seeing this warning on social media. It was actually shared over 11,000 times and people contacted the police saying, my God, what’s going on here? Is this is this happen somewhere else? Is there any kids been abducted what’s going on?

0:06:55
CW: Well that that’s not an effective way to call the police You should call them directly rather than trying to make a post go viral so that they see it.

0:07:02
BR: Yes. That was that would that would be my advice folks If you were ever involved in any any abductions or attentive abductions or really any crimes at all that are of a serious nature, call the police.

0:07:16
CW: They have like a three digit number now. It’s 911. Everybody’s got a cell phone. Just call the police and say a child is being abducted. We need help.

0:07:26
BR: The child’s at risk. It’s much more effective than waiting a few hours and posting a notice on social media. Just FYI.

0:07:33
CW: If you get a really crappy latte at Starbucks, post about it online as much as you want. A child abduction is a little bit more serious.

0:07:40
BR: You would think so you would think so and so so what happened was the the police contacted Hadley and they said okay, what’s going on here? I mean, this is this is on your Facebook page We’re not aware of the seduction, but apparently this happened So they all went to the the Walmart in Manhattan, Kansas, and they looked at the surveillance camera footage which showed nothing. They showed the footage to Hattley and he said, I didn’t actually see what happened. He said that it was actually his wife, Christy, and the sister-in-law that reported this. And so it sort of went from, hey, here’s this horrific, terrifying experience that I’m relating to you, you on social media about my child, you know, nearly being abducted to. Well, it turns out that it’s something that my sister-in-law told my wife and then my wife told me and then I put on social media.

0:08:31
CW: And neither the wife nor the sister-in-law told them they didn’t report it to the police They just reported it to the the father of the child.

BR: Apparetnly, yes, you can see why there’s some there’s some red flags here so as more and more questions arose people the police became concerned because I didn’t remember that that Hadley had had shared a photograph of a real woman and her vehicle with the license plate.

0:08:57
CW: Well how did he get, do you know how he got this photograph?

0:09:00
BR: Well apparently he talks about how the sister-in-law says that she followed her out to the car and took the photo before they she took off. So that’s that’s the story. Apparently the sister-in-law gave the photo and the story to Joshua Hatley who then posted it. Now, why? Again, there’s lots of things that are a little fuzzy about this whole situation. And so he acknowledged, Hatley acknowledged, in fact, there had been no abduction. And to his credit, he issued a statement and I’ll just, I’ll just read it to you. Several days ago, my wife and her sister were shopping with our two sons at Walmart. In the course of their shopping, my sister-in-law claimed there was an incident involving another woman attempting to abduct our youngest child. As a result of the circumstances at the time, we believe this to be true as my wife did not see the events unfold with her own eyes. This was shared as a warning post on Facebook and quickly went viral. We’ve remained on top of the issue and after conferring with detectives at RCPD and reviewing the security footage from the event, we have determined there was never any real danger to our sons or the general public, and that our relative misrepresented what truly happened to us and to management. The woman involved and her family are completely innocent, and we would like to apologize to them. We believed there was a real danger present and did what we thought was necessary to help mitigate the issue. We are truly sorry for any damage that may have been caused by this event, and we hope you understand there was no malicious or ill intent behind our actions. We only wish to make sure children were safe and perceived threat. Again, there’s some weird things going on here, right? So there’s some questions remain, including why Hatley’s relative or sister in law would falsely accuse another woman of trying to abduct the child. I mean, I would I have not seen the store footage that hasn’t been made public. So I don’t know what the footage shows, but according to the police and Hatley himself, there’s not even an attempted abduction. There’s nothing there. So the question is, OK, what’s what’s going on here? Did his sister-in-law make it up? Was there some sort of grudge against this woman? Was it all a misunderstanding? And if so, how did that even happen? I mean, if you if you truly believe that a child in your family was the victim of an attempted abduction. And you believe that so much that you’re going to follow the person out to their car, take their photograph and photograph their car and put it on social media. How do you not call the police?

0:11:24
CW: I mean, the one entity that could do something with a license plate number would be the police.

0:11:29
BR: So it’s a classic case of sort of scare lore and rumor mongering, where you had thousands of well-intentioned people sharing the information, they had no reason to doubt because why would you doubt that? If someone says that a child they’re with in their family was the victim of an attempted abduction, why would you doubt that? Who would make that up?

0:11:51
CW: Apparently, a sister-in-law.

0:11:52
BR: Apparently, so, right? So, who knows? I mean, it could be that and again, just to be clear, I can only go by the news reports that I read. I have not traveled to Manhattan, Kansas to look at the footage I can only go by what’s there, but it’s it’s not clear whether it was motivated by racism again The in this case that the family that reported is white the woman that was accused is African AmErikan It could be that it was done for attention You know, it’s a the story was of a heroic aunt chasing a gang of would-be child abductors out of a store, that’s compelling, that’s dramatic. Or again, was it a sincere misunderstanding? I mean, who knows.

0:12:32
CW: Now, we have not heard anything from the woman who was accused, from the person who owns the vehicle in question?

0:12:40
BR: We have not heard anything from her. Apparently, we’ve not heard anything from her. It’s not clear whether she accepted Hatley’s apology. There may be lawsuits coming.

0:12:50
CW: I was about to say they might be hearing from her lawyer soon.

0:12:52
BR: Well I you know and I would think they would be entirely justified in that. Keep in mind that that when you see these warnings on social media and there’s lots of them this is only one of many many but in this particular case there was a a photograph and a license plate of a specific vehicle attached to this warning. Usually when these sorts of fake abduction warning circulate, it’s just like, oh, there was an attempted abduction, but we don’t really know any details. It’s sort of generalized and there’s nothing. There’s no action. It was a white van full of clowns, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. As as happens. But in this particular case, because it was tied to an identifiable person, that makes it all the more dangerous.

CW: Yeah.

BR: And keep in mind that, you know, these sorts of fake scares and scare lore, people react viscerally to this. You see this, for example, the rumors of child endangerment with the famous pizza case in Washington, D.C. that was alleged to have been involved with with Hillary Clinton in a sex ring.

0:13:57
CW: In the cosmic pizza shoot up.

0:13:59
BR: Yeah, you had a guy that saw this false rumor on social media claiming that there were kids being held captive in this pizza place and he goes in there with a gun. And you know, everyone is really lucky that nothing happened to this woman that was falsely accused.

0:14:17
CW: Yeah, I’m also sort of reminded of, we did a brief piece quite a while ago about receipts that are shared online with horrible, horrible statements written on them by the server, or potentially by the server, potentially by a very angry, biased bigot of a patron. But you don’t know, you’re just getting, you’re just seeing the Facebook blast out of, hey, look at me, I had to go through this thing, this horrible experience, and you don’t know the truth behind it. Now, this is not an abduction report that is being sent around by the local police department, by the sheriff’s office, by a center for child protection or anything. This is just this is just a person and you don’t know if any of it is true.

0:15:03
BR: Absolutely. And and, you know, keep in mind that in the original post, Hatley explicitly said that this has been reported to police now of course apparently that was false. They had not been reported to police from what I can tell.

0:15:20
CW: So as soon as you find out that that detail was false that kind of sheds the whole thing into this murky, well who’s lying about what and how much are they lying kind of zone.

BR: Exactly as we pointed out if you if if your child or a a close family member’s child really has been the victim of an attempted abduction, you don’t wait a couple hours to post on Facebook. You call 911. You call the store security. But again, all these details sort of get lost in this sort of panicky rumor mongering. And I don’t want to go too deep into it, but it’s just important for people to remember that just because you see some sort of warning, particularly about child abductions, doesn’t mean it’s true. And as you know, this is one of my areas of expertise. I’ve extensively researched faked abductions, both of adults and children, and they’re much more common than people realize. Now, that’s not a reason to disregard them. That’s not a reason to be skeptical of any warnings about abductions. But the reason to be careful about what sort of rumors and stories you pass along on social media.

0:16:32
CW: There must be some kind of something in the water this week about sisters in law. I just had another acquaintance on Facebook claim that he had proof that illegal undocumented Mexican immigrants get get preferential approval for welfare and all sorts of other benefits because his sister-in-law, 35 years ago, applied for welfare and pretended to be Mexican and filled out the Spanish page of applications and she was approved right away.

0:17:02
BR: Oh, well, there you go then.

0:17:04
CW: Oh, 35 years ago, my sister-in-law did X. Right off the bat, I’m like, no. Of course, my response was, so you’re saying that your white sister-in-law defrauded the government 35 years ago. So all these supposed illegal immigrants sucking at the government teat might actually just be white people defrauding the government. Okay, let’s go with that.

0:17:28
BR: Like your sister-in-law.

0:17:29
CW: Like your sister-in-law. Don’t trust sisters-in-law. There’s something wrong.

0:17:33
BR: Ah.

0:17:35
CW: Anyway, we’ll just keep trying to fight the good fight.

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0:17:51
BR: Welcome back to Squaring the Strange. This week we have a special guest on. His initials are EKM, also known as Erik Christopher Myers, and he is the writer-director of several films, but most recently, Butterfly Kisses. We’ll be talking to him very briefly. Unfortunately, this week, Pascual is not able to be with us. He’s got issues to attend to, but I am, of course, joined by Celestia. Celestia, are you there?

0:18:17
CW: I am here and ready to talk about Butterfly Kisses, which I watched just last week.

0:18:21
BR: Well, you were in for a treat. So who’s this EKM? Is that EKM here with us?

Erik Christopher Myers: This EKM is right here. Ah! Sort of like a combination of EVP and EKG or something.

0:18:32
BR: Exactly. I’m trying to go with the whole theme of the show.

0:18:36
CW: Should we call you Eek for short or Erik or what do you prefer?

0:18:40
ECM: Celestia, you can call me whatever you’d like. Ben, you have to call me Erik.

0:18:46
BR: Ouch! It’s great having you on, man. This is going to be fun.

0:18:51
CW: Now, it’s a shame Pascual was unable to join us this week due to unforeseen circumstances, but he and Ben both contributed to what will become a bonus track to the DVD for this movie, right? You want to tell us why you decided to contact them and what all they contributed?

0:19:09
ECM: Yeah. I considered what I was going to do for some sort of an audio commentary track that you’d find on the Blu-ray. I personally wasn’t very interested in doing a director’s commentary. It just felt to me a bit narcissistic to sit in front of a microphone and talk about my artistic vision or whatever you want to call it with finger quotes. I would prefer that people are able to watch the film and take from it whatever jumps into their mind, whatever thoughts it might provoke. So I thought it would be interesting to have someone else do an audio commentary track. Ben came immediately into my mind because, number one, I’m a huge fan of this podcast, so I’m really, really flattered and honored to be on here today. So thank you very much for this opportunity. been following Ben’s work since, gosh, I mean, specifically since the Sandra Mansi photograph analysis and investigation that he did. That was what, 2004, 2005?

BR: Yeah, something like that. It’s been, I suddenly feel old, but yes, it’s been quite a while.

0:20:17
ECM: Yeah, that’s really what sort of put you on my radar. So I’d seen you contribute to some other books and some magazines and whatnot. And you jumped into my mind because just of the way that you very insightfully tackle these topics. So I thought it would be very, very cool if Ben were able to do an audio commentary track and basically deconstruct this film from a sort of, and I know skeptical is sort of a naughty word right now, but from a skeptical perspective.

0:20:50
CW: I like the word skeptical, by the way. I’m old school. I like it.

0:20:55
ECM: I like it, too.

0:20:57
CW: Well, we should probably talk about why somebody like Ben would be good to do a bonus track for your movie. Give us the old elevator pitch for what your movie is about and what inspired you to lean toward that subject matter.

0:21:12
BR: Well, hold on. Let me give you an introduction. Right, so, In A World, where… Go ahead.

0:21:17
ECM: In A World, fraught with danger.

CW: Ooh, you guys are both good at that.

0:21:21
ECM: Yeah, I think he’s better at it than I am. The elevator pitch is that Butterfly Kisses is essentially a documentary about a documentary about a documentary. So it’s super, super meta. And it’s basically looking at films like The Blair Witch Project and, you know, films that, for the three people out there who don’t know that the genre has been labeled found footage, found footage is any sort of faux documentary that is passing itself off as being discovered footage that has been abandoned by the filmmaker or discovered at a later date. And so I was looking at films like the Blair Witch Project or Paranormal Activity and wondering what would happen in real life if somebody were to discover discarded film canisters or a box of video cassettes or what have you, and thought that they had found a documentary that was being made about an alleged supernatural incident that led to the death and or disappearance of the filmmakers. And so that’s what Butterfly Kisses is. It’s the story of a wedding videographer who discovers a box of tapes. It’s 11 years old. It’s about a local urban legend. He believes that he has found the real thing and that he’s going to be able to make millions of dollars off of this. And so he is now going about town and he’s trying to vet the footage. He is trying to find video experts or paranormal groups or whomever else can authenticate it or endorse it. And all the while, my documentary crew is following him. So it’s sort of three movies in one.

0:23:19
CW: This is like Peterson-Gimlin meets Inception meets Blair Witch. There’s a lot going on here. There’s a lot of layers.

0:23:27
ECM: It’s funny because when we were first pitching it, we were pitching it as the inception of found footage. So it’s super, super meta. It’s very, very meta.

0:23:38
BR: I have to say, you know, I was really impressed with the, for lack of a better phrase, the intellectual heft of it. It was a well-written script and it was knowledgeable about urban legends and about skepticism and about all these things and it was just really refreshing to me. And that’s one reason I was really glad to participate and I was really glad you contacted me about it. You know I’m an old school film buff. I’ve written and directed a couple animated short films and I’ve been to lots of film festivals and this and that and you know I grew up in the in the 80s and 90s watching a lot of really bad films, slasher films and this and that and at some point I probably just become jaded because it’s like oh okay I know I know the formula they’re using and this is going to happen next. And it was really cool to see a film that somebody had actually given some thought to rather than just a series of jump scares and formulaic tropes. And so that’s one thing that really got me excited about it.

0:24:41
ECM: Well, I thought that with your film knowledge you would be able to appreciate it in a way that other like-minded individuals, their focus might not be there the same way yours might be. But again, being an avid listener of this podcast, that’s plug number two.

0:24:55
BR: We need a ding for that.

0:24:58
CW: Ding!

0:24:58
ECM: That’s it. There’s also the fact that the film is, in so many ways, about skeptical inquiry. So it’s about trying to get to the root of why people believe in things that they believe in. I’m a huge fan of cryptozoology and of the paranormal and conspiracy theories and all of that fun stuff from the skeptical side. And at the heart of that, you run into the question of why do people believe in the things that they believe? Whether that’s, just to push a couple of buttons, whether that’s religion, whether that is Bigfoot, or whether that’s chemtrails. Why do people believe the things they believe, and then why do they sort of selectively section off any facts or data that does not support their hypothesis? And so that was something I was really trying to talk about in this film. If it’s about one man’s sort of obsession over this footage that he’s discovered that he’s convinced is real, but no one else believes in. Everyone around him is saying, well it’s a hoax, or it’s, you know, some kids were making a horror movie that they didn’t finish and you found the rushes. There are a million and one reasons for why the footage that he has found that we show throughout the movie is bogus, but he can’t see that. All he can see is that it’s going to make him millions of dollars and it’s going to jumpstart his failed film career. And all the while, my documentary crew is chronicling his sort of path into willful self ignorance. And I thought particularly with the topics you guys address so very well, it felt like a good fit.

0:26:56
CW: Well, this is absolutely a perfect follow-up to the episode we did on documentaries and how they can be misleading. You peel back some layers of what I’m sure goes on in real documentary making and you shed some light on the human motivations behind it. Getting a sellable angle with this footage is this guy’s white whale. He is very motivated to do that. And you see how he walks through the steps of, okay, well, this paranormal group doesn’t believe me. We just need to find somebody who will and get them on camera. You’re giving the viewer this backstage pass to sort of see what goes on. And you’re kind of overt about, yeah, we should question our motivations here. When you’re putting together a narrative, what are you doing in service of that narrative? And how much is your will to form that narrative versus what the evidence actually shows?

0:27:46
ECM: Yeah, and you know, you talked about that quite a bit in your episode about documentaries. And it’s very much along those same lines in that we can’t trust anything we see anymore. Everything is malleable. There’s a whole section of Butterfly Kisses where we start examining what footage this filmmaker, Gavin York, has included in his assembly of the found footage and what footage he’s taken out and why and that anything can be selectively edited to tell whatever story it is that the editor wishes to tell. We see that all the time and you look at that show, The Staircase, that’s on Netflix right now. And once you start doing a little bit of digging, you find out that there was a lot of selective editing that went on there that can in many ways color your perception of the events. Even so-called reality television, we know that so much of it is scripted or key scenes are reshot, or again, in the editing, events are manufactured that did not occur on the day. And so that’s sort of a key point here with Butterfly Kisses. Can you trust anything that you see, which then takes it back into the whole system of belief? Why do you believe in what you are seeing.

0:29:13
BR: Yeah, and I think there’s there’s a great line in there where York is sort of sort of tongue in cheek or not sort of defending the suggestion that perhaps he may have been bending the truth. But he’s like, well, you know, found footage. What does that really mean? You know, he’s sort of like, well, you know, it could be that someone just found it. Or does it mean that, you know, he’s sort of like, you know, intentionally blurring the lines like, well, you know, it could be it could be fake found footage, it could be real found footage, you know, whatever, you know, buy my, buy my found footage.

0:29:46
ECM: Yeah, that’s a, and that’s another interesting thing that that I really wanted to tackle here, which was all genre of film requires a suspension of disbelief, even documentaries to a certain extent. And if somebody did find footage that they were saying, this is the Blair Witch Project for real. This is real supernatural footage telling a narrative story. Nobody would believe it. Absolutely nobody would believe it. And it’s because we are at a point where anything can be faked. There’s no convincing photographs of the Loch Ness Monster. And we have absolutely nothing to realistically support the existence of UFOs. The data just isn’t there yet. It doesn’t mean that it won’t be found perhaps, but the data just isn’t there. But the ironic part of that is, is that the more realistic it is when it is brought forth, the more quickly we discredit it.

0:30:46
BR: It seems to be of the same principle in EVPs. In my recent book, Investigating Ghosts, I talk about how there’s this really interesting for twilight of ambiguity in which if an EVP, that is an electronic voice phenomena, a ghost voice, if it’s too clear and too obvious and too realistic, nobody believes it because it has to be as the same with ghost photos or Bigfoot photos, there is this sort of twilight zone where if it is too ambiguous and it could be anything, then people are like, well, it is nothing. But if it is on the other side of the scale, if it is like, hi, I am a ghost. I died in 1938 and my name is, you know, then there is like, oh, that is obviously, you know, it is obviously a bull. And so, exactly as you are pointing out, there is this sort of hazy sliding scale of it has to be this like a Goldilocks, Goldilocks version of evidence that can’t be too clear, it can’t be too ambiguous, it has to be just right and then people will just go with it.

ECM: Well first off, when I die, if someone does bring some sort of audio recorder to my grave site, I am now specifically going to say my name is Erik Christopher Myers and I died in the year  blah blah blah.

0:32:05
Something we did stuggle with is how to replica lake monsters from the 1970s backwards, these very ambiguous sort of shapes in the water, mostly silhouettes. And I wanted to play with that with, you know, with the boogeyman that is in this film, who’s called based on whatever playground you were on and whatever generation you were on, he’s either, you know, Peeping Tom or the Blink Man or any of these other names. And I wanted to have footage of him that had that level of ambiguity, particularly the first time that he’s caught on film. So that you’re looking at him, you’re like, well, you know, maybe it’s paranormal, maybe it’s just a guy standing there, maybe it’s an artifact, a digital glitch or something like that. Because as we all know, so-called blurry photographs are the best photographs.

0:33:10
CW: I gotta say, it really, it had the effect you wanted it to. Because I’m an avid skeptic. I don’t believe everything I see, and I don’t really jump at most horror movies. But when you see something that’s ambiguous like that, it still has the effect of raising the hairs on the back of your neck. Ooh, I sort of see that. You see that? Oh, that’s weird.

0:33:35
ECM: Yeah, yeah. I wanted his first appearance to sort of strike that chord. And that even if, you know, ever afterward, whenever this entity appears, you’re sitting there and you’re like, OK, well, I’ve gotten past that. And, you know, all the experts are saying it’s fake and it’s probably just this, that or the other thing. That first appearance, the hope is that, you know, at least one hair will stand up on the back of your neck. Because you’re like, what’s that? You know, be willing to buy into it for one second and say, OK, well, I could see how somebody, you know, who is finger quotes more gullible than I am, might think that this is real.

0:34:09
CW: Yeah, well, and then you, you do throw out a very skillfully alternate explanations. It’s not, it’s not shoehorned into this is a typical horror movie and here’s what the audience should believe, quote unquote, based on a true story. Here’s the poltergeist doing exactly what the poltergeist does, and it absolutely wasn’t anything else. You have enough ambiguity thrown in just a little bit later after that hair-raising tingle on the back of your neck, you hear from other people giving other explanations. And it’s almost like a good primer for anybody who is not used to watching a documentary about something paranormal with any sort of skeptical mindset, it sort of helps edge you into having a skeptical mindset about stuff you will watch in the future.

ECM: Yeah, I walk that fine line between loving horror movies and loving urban legends and ghost stories and monsters and all of those things, and also being somebody who sits there and decides he’s going to figure out how it was done. You know, what is the mechanism behind the image or the photo or whatever it is? And so I tried to approach this as if I really were making a real life documentary about a real life guy who is presenting what he claims is real life, supernatural narrative footage. And I would approach it that way. I would want to find as many people, many authorities on various subjects, you know, people who know about folklore or paranormal investigators or people who understand film or the way the film is put together, or people who like, you know, are featured in the film who do audio design and can listen to the content of the audio and discern whether supernatural sounds are things that were put there or they’re happy accidents or something they can’t explain. That’s what I would really do. I would set that up. I tried to approach this as a film where I could tell what would hopefully be a creepy But at the same time, tear it down as I really would if I were making a documentary. I would bring people in who knew about folklore and specifically the folklore of the area or audio experts who would be able to listen to sounds and say, well, that’s a real supernatural sound or that’s something that was put in by another filmmaker or whoever else. That’s how I would realistically approach it. So it was fun to create a horror movie while at the same time tearing down the very story that I was telling.

0:36:56
CW: Very cool. Now can you tell us about how long you’ve had an interest in urban legends and folklore and what sort of expertise in that area you brought to this?

0:37:06
ECM: It’s been a passion of mine since I was a little kid. I loved horror movies from the time I was practically out the gate. And I found a power in fear that I didn’t experience in any other facet of my life until I discovered Unconditional Love. But it was a very primal emotion. And so obviously it led me to being a horror film fanatic, which led me to the source of horror. Where do so many of these stories come from? The first film that legitimately terrified me was The Exorcist. And of course, the first thing you do is you start reading up on the facts behind the so-called true story that inspired the film. And then once you find out that there are these real stories, well, they’re 10 times more fascinating than the films. And I just went down rabbit hole after rabbit hole after rabbit hole.

0:38:07
BR: Well, yes, let’s talk a little more about your cinematic influences. As I mentioned before, I’m a huge horror film fan as well. Some of my favorites are Jacob’s Ladder, Bug, Frailty. Exorcist was certainly up there. I tend to be drawn to these psychological thrillers, the sort of ones where it’s not just, you know, slasher films and jump scares and that sort of schlock, which, you know, whatever, I’ve seen my fair share of those, but at some point you’re like, all right, well, what else is there? So what are some of the influences on your filmmaking?

0:38:39
ECM: Again, The Exorcist, and it’s a masterpiece of filmmaking, but there’s so much that’s being said there. And that is the sort of film that is very much the product of its time. Lightning in a bottle that can absolutely never be duplicated or replicated. You know, everything that it was saying about the generational gap and our inability to trust our leaders and our children transforming into foul-mouthed, long-haired dropouts, monsters, for lack of a better term. That film has so much that’s going on, particularly as it’s talking about sort of abandoning the conventions of our modern social structure and going back to God. I love the original Nightmare on Elm Street. That definitely dips its toe into the satanic panic of the 1980s, which I find extremely fascinating and compelling. The sort of dark secrets that lurk behind picket fences in Everytown, USA. Films like that, films that I feel that I can receive a surface scare or enjoy with a beer, but there’s so much to talk about afterward. And that’s the sort of film that I want to make. I would rather that, you know, I make something that after people see it, they want to discuss it.

0:40:06
BR: There’s an interesting parallel I want to bring up between Butterfly Kisses and A Nightmare on Elm Street, which is that the villains in each, Butterfly Kisses, of course, or Peeping Tom, Butterfly Kisses and Freddy Krueger, in both of those, part of what makes the character is there’s this sort of endurance test. And when Wes Craven was doing Nightmare on Elm Street, you have this notion of the only way to keep the bad guy away is to not fall asleep, because he’ll attack you in your dreams. But of course, you have to fall asleep, right? So this is one of the things that made it so scary. It’s this terrifying sort of primordial, you know, somatic fear, because it’s something that you need, it’s like breathing. But you have to go to sleep, but if you go to sleep, you’re gonna get attacked.

0:41:03
CW: I can never sleep again.

0:41:05
ECM: Exactly.

0:41:06
BR: Yeah, but in Butterfly Kisses, so not to give too much away, but you know, the character Peeping Tom, I mean, he, as you mentioned, he’s the blink man. We didn’t really talk so much about his character but he appears in between blinks and he sort of comes closer and closer each time and so in in the in the very first scene there’s this this found footage this woman saying that if you found this footage you know please spice this together something else and you know and then she ends with saying something which is really weird which is you know I don’t know that I can keep from blinking. And you’re like, what? What? And then all of a sudden, you see, you had this sort of tantalizing, creepy detail. And then you later, later, you know, you later realize that that in order to try and keep peeping Tom away, people have to try to keep from blinking, which, as with trying, you know, as with trying not to fall asleep, you can’t do.

0:42:02
ECM: Yeah, on that track, I should probably talk about who Peeping Tom is to address that point. The urban legend in Butterfly Kisses is surrounding a train tunnel in Ellicott City, Maryland. And it’s a real place that teenagers go to and scare themselves to death at night. And the urban legend that is told in Butterfly Kisses is that if one has the strength of will to go to Ilchester Tunnel and stand on the far side of the trestle and look down the length of this tunnel at the exact stroke of midnight without blinking for one solid hour from midnight to 1 a.m. Peeping Tom or the Blinkman or the Flickergeist, whatever name you heard on the playground as a kid, he will materialize at the stroke of one, provided you don’t blink once, which is of course a supernatural thing or a superhuman thing that nobody can actually do. But if you have the strength of will to do this, Peeping Tom will appear. The gag, though, is that once you’ve seen him, you cannot unsee him, and every time you blink, he gets one step closer, blink, one step closer, blink, one step closer, until he’s nose-to-nose with you. And as you’re doing everything you can to try to hold your eyes open and not do that final blink so that he can get you. He reaches out with his long eyelashes and he tickles your cheeks. Butterfly kisses you, forcing you to blink, and then he scares you to death.

0:43:46
BR: I love it. I just love it.

0:43:49
CW: That makes Bloody Mary sound like a candy striper.

0:43:53
ECM: I wanted it to evoke things like Bloody Mary, the ritual that one must do to invoke the creature or what have you. Going back to what you were saying about a nightmare on Elm Street I mean part of what makes that such a primal concept is that horror, you know by definition is the is is the inability to prevent the unpreventable or know the unknowable and I thought that there was a lot to be said with the concept of neurological or biological functions. Everybody has to blink, everybody has to sleep, everybody has to eat, everybody has to use the bathroom. These are things we can delay often at great, you know, risk to ourselves, but ultimately we will lose. The only way out is death, which is ironic because the very thing that you are trying to safeguard yourself against is trying to kill you. So that was something I wanted to play with. I wanted to play with something that we all must do. And it also, you know, sort of in a way reinforced the notion of the urban legend, which for me, beyond just placing the story of Peeping Tom in this very, very meta documentary that is filled as much with real people playing themselves as with actors playing fictional characters, by presenting it as a documentary and by featuring a real location, this train tunnel, that has a real reputation for being haunted, but no particular boogeyman ascribed to it, I thought that I could sort of play a little bit with the concept of false memory syndrome. And hopefully, people will see this movie and even if they see it and they say, oh, it’s that, you know, that’s that fake documentary. But maybe they’ll say it’s that fake documentary about that real urban legend. I heard about that when I was in fifth grade, or my brother told me about that. Something that immediately lodges and embeds in their mind, based on a real place that they have gone to, that teenagers go to every Friday and Saturday night, that they really believe is haunted, and that it would take on sort of a life of its own, while at the same time not be able to be completely immediately discredited the way something like Bloody Mary is. With the blink test, if that’s what you want to call it, the staring contest at Illchester Tunnel, you have to do something that most people can’t. If anyone can, you have to be able to hold your eyes open for one hour and focus on this tiny pinprick of light at the end of the tunnel. And if you blink once, it’s all over. You can’t just repeat it. You got to come back at a later date. But I heard about somebody else who did that. I know somebody down the street who did that.

0:46:55
CW: So you entered into this not just trying to create a cinematic legend, but retroactively create a real legend in people’s minds. Like Freddy Krueger, everybody knows who Freddy Krueger is. He’s a cinematic figure. But nobody actually thinks, oh, well, Freddy Krueger, yeah, you know, he’s been around since the 1800s and he really does scare people in their dreams. And it’s a real folklore character. You’re trying to sort of reach back into the collective consciousness of people who might see this movie and sort of embed some folklore yourself.

0:47:29
ECM: Yeah, I mean, if I were just doing a standard narrative film about the Blinkman. It would be a movie and that’s what it is. However, as I started really kind of constructing what this project was going to be, specifically that it was going to be a documentary inside of a documentary inside of another documentary, and again, really tried to populate this film with as many real people playing themselves, either recognizable people or people that just by grabbing your phone and googling their name, they pop up. They’re real people. And I thought that this could be a very fun multimedia experiment in a way, particularly, you know, for somebody like myself who’s really, really into folklore and urban legends. And so what I did was, the first thing I did was I sort of decided to build this movie in such a way that the found footage that everyone is talking about throughout the course of the documentary, rather than taking a Blair Witch approach and saying, it’s real. No one would believe it. It’s been done. So I took it the other direction and I said, it’s going to be found footage that throughout the entire course of the documentary wrapped around it, we’re going to be telling you it’s fake. It’s fake. We’re going to tell you all the reasons why it’s not real and constantly discredited at every opportunity. So that it almost becomes a case where you have this found footage that is starring actors that you’ve probably never seen before intentionally. But then the documentary that’s telling you repeatedly found footage is fake. The found footage is fake, is filled with real people and including myself.

0:49:32
CW: Now, can you mention some of these real people or is that too much of a spoiler.

0:49:37
ECM: Sure, sure. Well, we’ve got Matt Lake, who is our resident folklore expert. He is the author and editor of a series of books, the Weird U.S. series. He’s very well known out here on the Eastern Seaboard for Weird Maryland and Weird Pennsylvania.

0:49:56
CW: I think, yeah, I’ve seen the Weird Vegas book and Ben, you’ve got like a bunch of his books, don’t you?

0:50:00
BR: Yeah, I’ve got two or three on my shelf.

0:50:03
ECM: Yeah. Yeah, he’s he’s kind of a big deal out here in that respect. We’ve also got Eduardo Sanchez, the director of the Blair Witch Project.

0:50:07
CW: I was so excited to hear him play a cameo on the movie because I kept thinking, well, wow, he’s he’s he’s this is an homage sort of to Blair Witch. I wonder how the Blair Witch people feel about it. Oh, there he is!

0:50:20
BR: I was thinking exactly the same thing.

ECM: I thought it’d be cool to trot him out and to let him sit there and tell you, hey, look, I kind of created this genre. It’s bogus and here’s why it’s bogus. I can tell you why this guy’s footage is fake because I’m the one who created this.

0:50:39
BR: Honestly, that is one of my favorite scenes in the film. I was just grinning. I’m like, this guy gets it. It was so mad at it. It was just washing over me and trickling down like, all right, I get this now. That was just, it was just, it was a brilliant touch.

0:50:56
CW: That was the ultimate fan service plus inside cinematic debunking. I enjoyed that quite a bit myself.

0:51:03
ECM: I’m glad you liked it. It was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun. We have real paranormal groups, inspired ghost tracking, let us come and, you know, show them the footage so they can weigh in on it. We have an interview with Gavin York, the filmmaker on DC 101, which is a big rock station out here. David Sterritt, who’s a film critic and author, he’s discussing the sort of transparencies in the narrative and how films are constructed and why this found footage is very much embracing the tropes and conventions of the genre, which gives away that it’s not real. We’ve got a lot of real people in here and they’re all playing themselves. So again, going with the whole game of misdirection, and again, I’m in it and my crew is in it, we play ourselves. And so the gag was sort of, how long can a person sitting down and watching this movie go before they start to realize that they’re being punked, for lack of a better term. The hope is that you’re sitting there watching and going, this is a real documentary about a fake documentary.

BR: Or is it?

0:52:16
ECM: Or is it? And by taking it to the next level and saying, the urban legend that I’m going to be based around a real place that is reputedly haunted.

0:52:31
CW: Now Ellicott City, what is your background of Ellicott City? I’ve actually been there a few times. I’ve got some friends who live there and it’s such a down-home AmErikana kind of place. They’ve got a beautiful main street and I remember a wonderful movie theater they had there. And I know they’ve been through quite a bit of damage with the recent flooding. This happened twice in three years now. What’s your background with Ellicott City, Maryland?

0:52:59
ECM: I grew up right down the way. As a result, I was one of those teenagers hanging out on Main Street all weekend long and going up to the various ruins and going to the train tunnel and looking for ghosts. You are probably just as aware as I am that all of the historic district there has this reputation for being haunted. There are numerous shops, numerous taverns, various businesses that all have a ghost or two such that in the autumn months there are ghost walking tours. This is the place and this is where this ghost is and we’re going to end up at this bar and have a drink and maybe you’ll see the ghost that wanders through the bar. And it has this reputation. So it was the perfect environment to set this story. And so what I did was, after creating the urban legend, going back 10 minutes ago to your original question, was I decided that I was going to, independently of the film, I was going to start going online and sort of seeding the internet wherever humanly possible with articles written under pseudonyms about Keeping Tom the Blinkman of Ilchester Tunnel, and writing an article for this website, and putting an article on this place, going to message boards, and asking people if they know anything about this legend. And in a weird way, it sort of began to take on a bit of life of its own as it’s inspired Reddit threads and it’s creepypasta. I got up one morning about a year ago and turned on my computer and there is a paranormal ghost show on YouTube that had done an episode on this legend.

0:54:46
CW: That had to feel devious and victorious at the same time.

0:54:53
ECM: It was really awesome. It was cool because, again, being into all of this stuff, the movie is the movie and I’m a filmmaker. But if also as a as a as a Fordian guy, if I could in any way sort of inspire belief in a new bit of local folklore, then so much better.

0:55:15
BR: Well let me ask about your background in filmmaking and writing and directing and all that. This is not your first film. What sort of got you on this path? Other than, of course, I mean, you mentioned your love for films, but most people love films. But most people don’t end up doing what you’re doing. So what brought you there?

0:55:34
ECM: Storytelling, I mean, it’s all about storytelling. And the sort of power that stories have, whether that’s fear or the ability to make you laugh or whatever else that might be. And so I was always writing. I was always performing. I was always doing something. I was always in the school play or in drama club or whatever. And filmmaking was just something that I always wanted to do. If there’s a way to sort of bring in these sort of fringe interests that I have, that’s even better. Because I mean, if you’re going to be spending, and let’s face it, you know, making films, it’s a particularly independent film, it’s a long and laborious process, you gotta entertain yourself the entire time, as well as hopefully entertaining other people.

0:56:21
BR: Yeah, it’s not for those who are easily bored or have any limits on their credit cards.

0:56:28
ECM: Yeah, exactly.

0:56:30
BR: Well, now the name of your company is Four Fingered Films. What’s wrong with the fifth finger? What’s going on there?

0:56:37
ECM: I could say something witty, but the truth is that it’s kind of a silly story. I was doing one of my senior film projects when I was in college. I went to Towson, Celestia. You went to University of Maryland?

CW: Actually, I went to Johns Hopkins. We had a lot of parties at Towson or joint parties.

0:56:55
ECM: I’m sure you did.

0:56:57
CW: There weren’t that many women at Hopkins, so all the fraternities would invite all the Towson girls over too.

0:57:04
ECM: I can believe it. Yeah, I went to Towson and I was just doing a documentary project. This classmate that I’d never seen or met walked up and asked what I was doing and asked if he could be on camera. And I was like, well, why should I put you on camera? And he held up his hand in front of the camera and he had four fingers. And as a gag at the beginning of that documentary, I just called it Four-Fingered Films and had an image of him holding up his hand in freeze frame. And it’s just sort of been that way ever since.

BR: You say, you’re just the man I’m looking for. I’ve been scouring this earth for the last eight years. I finally found a man with four fingers.

0:57:43
ECM: Well, it was interesting because I stayed in touch with him and he had a cameo in my first feature, which was called Roulette, and it just so happened that he turned out to be one of the same people who believes in chemtrails and all of those other sort of things. So I guess he inspired me in more than one way.

0:58:02
BR: Interesting, interesting. Well, I’m curious, give us a little bit of background in terms of the filmmaking process. I’m curious, I mean, how long was the shoot? How was it in terms of casting and shooting? Did you run afoul of the cops and do any sort of guerrilla stuff? Or what was the shoot like?

0:58:19
ECM: There was a little bit of ducking at times, hiding from cars, but for the most part, it was all in the up and up. And we shot the film in 2015. And in order to sort of create the illusion that the documentary is taking place 11 years after the student found footage was shot, we shot the found footage in the winter months. And we were either blessed or cursed by the Norse gods with snow every day we filmed. Which, great, it adds production value. It’s fantastic. And then once we wrapped all of that up, I think it was like two months of shooting, and there was a lot more footage that ended up on the cutting room floor. We had to assemble all of that, and then we had to be able to take it to all of the real people playing themselves and rely on non-actors to, you know, just, you know, imagine what they’re talking about on camera, you know, from reading dialogue in a script. We needed to give them something real and tangible to look at, to study, to make their own notes and come up with their own points of view on. So I think we took another two months getting that together and then we shot the documentary proper in the summer and it had this incredible effect of, you know, visiting the same locations during different eras within the narrative and, you know, you see the location at one time and, you know, there’s snow dumped upon it and then you come back and it’s the height of summer and everything is blazing green. So, again, it added production value and I hope, you know, created a little bit of an unconscious connection for viewers where they’re able to buy into the plausibility that these are different eras.

1:00:08
BR: Well, one thing I just want to point out for people who aren’t really film buffs or know much about filmmaking is that one thing you find is that really for a film to be good, there’s a whole lot of things that have to come together. There’s lots of ways a film can go wrong. There’s only a few ways they can go right. And if the acting is good, but the sound is bad, the editing, the writing, production, design, there’s so many elements that people don’t think of unless you’re sort of in that world. And it all comes together. And that’s one thing I like about this, particularly for an independent film. I’ve seen lots and lots of independent films, and there’s lots of more like, oh, the production is great, the writing is good, the sound is good, but the acting is like, ugh, you know, you just sort of, your heart sinks because you know these people put in so much time and effort into it. And again, there’s so many things that have to go into the mix to actually have a successful film. And I just wanted to highlight that because, again, you can, as you know, I mean, films can be made or broken in editing, right? You can shoot the best stuff, but if you don’t have a good editor, then it’s all this incoherent mess. And so that’s one thing I like about Butterfly Kisses, is that it really gels on a lot of different levels.

1:01:21
ECM: Well, on behalf of the cast and crew, thank you very much, because, I mean, there were really incredibly talented people, you know, the cast and the crew, but, you know, the art director and, you know, the composer and production designers. There was so much that went in. And again, you are working on a shoestring budget to try to make something that is hopefully going to trick the audience into thinking that it can compete with whatever is playing at the Cineplex this weekend. In regards to editing, the reason why it’s 2018 and, you know, we’re doing the festival tour and getting ready for release, but it’s been three years since we shot is because we filmed so much that the original assembly was three hours long. And I mean, it was, it was a monster. And there was about five minutes where I was seriously considering turning it into like a five or six episode series, but on the independent filmmaking track, you know, a nice solid 90 minute film is what you want to try to get out there for maximum viewing. And so it was a battle. For a year to get it down to 90 minutes, we did test screenings. It was, it was a very exhausting process and, and, and yeah, I mean, anything can be made or broken in editing. And it was, it was hard to tell this story that worked, you know, maybe it was a little bit flabby at three hours, but you know, the more you start cutting, it becomes a battle for clarity, especially when there are so many characters and stories and themes that you’re trying to address.

1:02:56
CW: Editing, especially in any sort of thing that has a documentary format, editing is the most strenuous part of it.

1:03:03
ECM: It is, absolutely. It was challenging.

1:03:06
CW: Do you watch Doctor Who at all?

1:03:08
ECM: I, okay, all right, here’s my relationship with Doctor Who.

1:03:12
BR: You heard it here, folks. This is Erik’s relationship with Doctor Who. Do tell.

1:03:18
ECM: It’s either going to be interesting or it’s not going to be interesting at all.

1:03:22
BR: I was in the bathroom at Heathrow. No.

1:03:24
ECM: No, no, nothing about Heathrow. I do have a relationship with Heathrow. But my relationship with Doctor Who is that I am not a fan.

1:03:32
CW: Okay.

1:03:33
ECM: I have worked for the past couple of years, however, as a mentor for an autistic filmmaker named James Billion who does Doctor Who fan films.

1:03:45
CW: Oh.

1:03:46
ECM: I have learned much more about Doctor Who through the process of mentoring him and helping him direct, helping him edit, and all of these various things. And in that process, I learned about Weeping Angels.

1:04:01
CW: I was going to ask you if you knew about the Weeping Angels. Bingo.

1:04:06
ECM: So the fact is that one of the on-camera personalities in Butterfly Kisses said to me as we wrapped the film in late 2015, she said, there is this autistic filmmaker and would you be willing and interested in working with him and helping him with his Doctor Who films? And I said, absolutely, totally, no problem, let’s do it. And so I jumped in and along the way, as I am wrapped Butterfly Kisses, as I’m editing and re-editing and re-editing and re-editing, I’m learning about Doctor Who and I’m like, fuck.

1:04:50
CW: Well, it’s not, the episode is called Blink. And yes, you have a similar word there, but Doctor Who is its own animal. It’s not something you could make a feature length documentary, real life horror movie out of, but it is the scariest episode, fans usually say, of Doctor Who, because as you know, these weeping angels, they get closer each time you blink.

1:05:19
ECM: Well, as I had my oh, f**k moment, I didn’t worry about it too much afterward. And the main reason for that was, you know, I looked at it realistically and I said, well, you know, part of what I was going for here is I was trying to tell, I was trying to show found footage that very much adhered to the tropes and to the conventions of the genre. You know, all of the things that you expect to see in Paranormal Activity or The Last Exorcism or name whatever franchise you want to, they all tend to hit the same beats. So if I’m going for something that is intentionally derivative so that the film can be self-reflexive and point those things out, it’s okay then if it looks like it took a page from Doctor Who because it’s all fake, right?

1:06:14
CW: Well, exactly. It seems like it’s drawing on the same folklore and the same primal fear of something that only gets closer to you during a moment of biological necessity where you have to shut your eyes off.

ECM: I hate Doctor Who now.

1:06:29
CW: Oh, no, well, no, in the Doctor Who universe, these angels were like time-sucking vampires where they, you know, if they got close enough to you and touched you, they would take all of your temporal energy or something and send you back in time like 500 years. And what else can I remember about that? Anyway, there’s a lot of really out-of-this-world stuff, as Doctor Who tends to have. So the similarity between your project and the Doctor Who Weeping Angels is minimal at best, but it just had that little like reflexive like, ooh, ooh, it gets closer when you blink. Oh, that’s, oh yeah. And this is one of the reasonsI thought it was cool, honestly.

1:07:05
ECM: Well, I now consider them vampires who have retroactively sucked my creative ideas out of me.

1:07:14
BR: Damn you!

1:07:15
CW: Now, for listeners of Squaring the Strange, who are obviously, tend to be of a skeptical mindset, you’re not going to enjoy the film any less for having heard this whole discussion about it. If anything, it’ll keep you interested because, you know, that first five minutes I was like, oh, it’s a found footage thing by a guy trying to do a documentary, oh. And then immediately I was like, oh, it’s so much more than that. So knowing that will not make you, oh, I’ve had all these spoilers. I’m not going to enjoy the movie. Yes, you will absolutely enjoy the movie, probably more. And Erik, can you tell us where and when they can enjoy the movie?

1:07:49
ECM: We are wrapping up our distribution deal right now. I can’t say who is going to be releasing it, but I can say that the film will be released later this year. I’m hoping around Halloween. It’s gonna be DVD, Blu-ray, video on demand, all sorts of streaming services. So it’ll be out there, and I’ll be sure to let you both know when it’s gonna be online or in stores or whatever.

1:08:18
BR: Awesome, and is it still running at film festivals for those of us who are film festival fans?

1:08:23
ECM: It is, it is. We’ve done 10 or 11 so far this year. And I think we have a couple more coming up. I’d be honest, my brain is really frying from all of this. So it’s kind of it’s kind of hard to keep straight where I’m going next.

1:08:37
CW: All right. Well, let us let us know later on. You can email us the next upcoming few dates for film festivals, especially in and around Maryland. I’ve got Ellicott City Friends. I should definitely hip to this movie. And and we can get that on the Facebook page for you.

1:08:53
ECM: Totally, totally.

BR: Well this has been an awesome conversation. It’s really cool hearing the sort of the background to Butterfly Kisses and Peeping Tom and all the cryptozoological ghostly urban legendy aspects to it. So I’ve really enjoyed the conversation. So thanks for coming on. Thank you for having me. This has been a blast. I hope to do it again sometime.

1:09:12
ECM: Awesome.

1:09:13
We would like to thank our sponsor level patrons, Amy Freshour-Kelly and Dr. Angela Mattke. If you’re interested in becoming a sponsor or just throwing us a buck or two per episode, check out patreon.com forward slash squaring the strange every bit helps us keep the lights on here in strange studios and we could not keep bringing you content without the support of our generous friends. If you’re looking to provide moral support, head on over to iTunes and give us a 5-star review. Every positive review helps us move up the podcast charts.

1:09:47
PR: Thanks again, strangers. Hey, friends. Pascual here, just checking in. As you heard at the top of the episode, we experienced a loss in the family recently, and I had to step away from the podcast temporarily. So I’ll be back as soon as I can. Things are a little in the air right now and hard to pin down exactly when I’ll be able to consistently record, but never fear, I will be back. In the meantime, Ben and Celestia will be handling things as expertly as they always do. They’re going to be talking about Ben Franklin next week for our Independence Day episode. And don’t worry, it’s not about AmErikan independence, it’s the history of Ben Franklin and he had an interesting one. So until next week, we’ll see ya. Squaring the Strange is a production of Kronos Creative LLC. Copyright 2017. Theme music by Shriek Back.

1:10:45
Additional music by Memory, Guitard & Feathered, and Pasqual Romero.

1:10:49
Content producer, Celestia Ward. Content producer, Celestia Ward.

1:10:51
and the world.

Transcribed with Cockatoo