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Nov. 17, 2019 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
01:04:52
Edition 419 - Mark MacNicol

Glasgow writer/film-maker Mark MacNicol on the real-life experience and afterlife research behind his new movie "Dreaded Light"

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Across the UK, across continental North America, and around the world on the internet by webcast and by podcast, my name is Howard Hughes, and this is the Unexplained.
Well and truly, stuck in the middle of November here in the Northern Hemisphere, and you know what that means.
Well, actually, it means a lot of rain and a lot of grey skies at the moment.
But if you're down in the southern hemisphere, then your reality is completely different.
I know it's pretty warm down there, Australia, South Africa, places like that.
Nice to hear from you if you've emailed recently.
Don't forget, if you email me, please tell me who you are, whereabouts in the world you are, and how you use this show.
It'd be nice to hear from you, especially if you're not in the UK in a far-flung corner of the world, then it'd be really nice to know exactly where you are.
I'm trying to find out, actually, who the longest distance listener is, the furthest away.
I know that I've got listeners in Japan, New Zealand, and plenty in Australia.
But I want to find, you know, the furthest from London listening to this show, if we can do that.
And I know that I've got people like Shane in Sydney listening to both the radio show and the podcast.
Nice to have you there.
Don't forget, my website is theunexplained.tv, designed and created by Adam Cornwell from Creative Hotspot.
That is the place to go if you want to send me a message through there by following the link.
Or if you'd like to leave a donation for the show, which is pretty vital these days, we have to say, then you can do that.
And if you have made a donation for the show recently, thank you very much indeed.
You're helping us to keep going with all of this and maintain our plans, as they say.
Okay, no shout-outs specifically this time.
Just want to say hello to Linda before we get to the guest on this edition.
Linda says, love the show.
I appreciate the wide range of guests and the topics.
I enjoy your interviewing style.
Thank you, Linda.
Just wanted to give a shout-out in particular to the Matt Richtel episode, which was recent.
This was about the dangers of technology.
It was a really interesting conversation, and I enjoyed coming away with some of the great analogies for understanding my own technology habits.
Yeah, I think we all, really, if you listen to what Matt Richtel has to say, maybe we need to be giving it all a bit of thought.
I'm not sure, though, how practically in our lives we can reduce the use of technology, but by the sounds of what he had to say, we need to be thinking about it.
And that goes for me because I'm a complete technology addict, you know, always on my email.
If I wake up in the middle of the night, what am I doing?
I'm checking my phone just to see if anything has changed, which of course could probably wait until the morning.
But there's a sense of urgency about things now.
Craig in Northern Ireland, good to hear from you again, Craig.
Just watching the conspiracy series on Channel 5 TV in the UK.
I'd love to hear you looking into the subject of false flag attacks.
Well, we have addressed that from time to time, and it is something that we need to get back to.
The whole idea that conspiracy theorists, a lot of them put about, that claims that some attacks are not what they appear to be.
9-11 being a case in point that is claimed to this date.
And periodically in the middle of an interview, we'll get claims like that.
So maybe we need to do a specific show about people who talk about false flag attacks, what they are, and how they started, or at least how talk of them began.
Maybe an interesting thing.
I mean, one of the upsides, taking us back to technology here, of having the communication technology that we've got, Facebook and all the social media and everything else, is that everybody has a say.
These days, everybody, including me, has a voice.
And that means that somebody who has a theory that may not be based on the best fact has just as loud a voice as somebody else with a theory that is based on fact.
And you and me, as people consuming information online, we have to try and cut through the morass and try and come to a conclusion that that's the best you can do.
Now, that is something that has come with the new technology.
But I think it's all enhanced our free speech.
And it's done things like allow me to make this podcast and reach you directly rather than have to depend on radio companies and, you know, the radio broadcasting industry and having a career in it.
It's a very fickle thing.
It's, you know, here today, gone tomorrow.
It's changing all the time.
But when you have an outlet like this one, it means that you can reach people directly.
And that's the important thing about it.
So thank you very much for your emails.
Keep them coming.
This was not a shout-out edition, but we will do some soon.
So if you'd like a shout-out, mention it to me and we'll get it done, as they say.
Theunexplained.tv is the website.
Don't forget that is your one-stop shop for everything to do with this show.
And if you have any problems receiving the show, remember on the website, there is a link that will take you to webmaster Adam, and you can tell him, you know, if there's something going on that he needs to know about that maybe we haven't noticed here, or maybe we can sort out for you.
So go to the website, and it's the webmaster link there that you click on, and that will take you directly to Adam if you have any problems.
One thing I have been meaning to mention for months here, and I think I mentioned it once before, but it's still the same situation that I'm facing.
These shows used to be available on pure internet radios around the world.
Pure British company, pioneers of digital radios and radios that receive internet stations.
For a long time, we were on the podcast section of Pure Radios, and we still are, but the shows stop about 60 shows ago.
And I've been trying all year by contacting their press office and making phone calls, and so has Adam, to Pure, and we're getting nowhere.
The last time I spoke to somebody in the press office, they said they'd pass it on to somebody else.
Nothing happened.
So if you would like to hear these shows back on Pure Radios, I'm not sure what the situation is with them.
I know they had some situations with their podcast and internet radio live streaming software earlier this year, and everything stopped for a little while.
But if you want these shows to return to Pure Radios, please let them know, because I think Adam and I have done all we possibly can with that.
And I think we're probably having to give up on them for now, which is a pity, because I'm a proud owner of a couple of Pure Radios, you know, and I think they're really good.
But, you know, they're like nothing else, really.
There are competitors now, but I think they're among the best, certainly, of their type.
The guest on this edition of the show, this is a completely different sort of edition.
This is somebody who suggested himself as a guest.
He is a filmmaker in Scotland who is making a film that is based on some real-life paranormal research.
And, you know, sometimes when people email me like this, I get back to them and I say, Can you tell me more about this?
Because I'm not sure whether we'll be able to do a show about this.
I'm not sure whether there's enough to sustain a show.
So I got back to Mark McNichol.
I checked out his introductory video online and was impressed.
So you're going to hear Mark McNichol's story and details of the film that he's working on and also the extensive paranormal research that he did around that film.
So Mark McNichol coming soon.
Like I say, thank you very much for being part of my show.
If there's anything that you want me to do or change, then please let me know.
And I'd love to hear from you wherever in the world you are.
Right, I've talked enough.
Time to get to Glasgow, Scotland now.
And Mark McNichol.
Thank you for coming on my show, Mark.
Pleasure.
Thanks for the invitation, Howard.
Well, no, always a pleasure to hear a Scottish accent on here.
You know, I used to spend a certain amount of time in Glasgow doing training for a couple of radio stations there.
And I always found it, apart from being very cold at this time of year, I always used to find it a very warm and friendly place to go.
Yeah, well, I mean, I would agree, obviously, but, you know, I'm biased, so it's probably best to take the word of someone who isn't from Glasgow when it comes to that type of thing.
Well, no, from Liverpool, but there's Scottish blood in there.
My grandfather on my mother's side, and we're still trying to work out exactly where he was from.
He was Macreeth.
So there's Macreth in me.
Now, Macreith apparently is Glasgow and Belfast as well.
But I'm not actually, I'm going to have to do all the digging on that and find out which side of the pond he was on.
And maybe he was on both.
You would also expect that possibly the actual place Creeff would figure, you know, the fact that there's a place in Scotland called Creef.
Yep, yeah, yeah.
Well, I need to do some more research.
Anyway, enough about my grandfather.
Let's talk about you.
Now, you contacted me and just tell me, it's a question that I've never asked anybody before, I don't think, on this show.
Why did you contact me?
Because I, so for the purposes of the film that we're going to talk about, I had to do some research.
Well, I didn't have to do some research.
I chose to do some research.
Part of that, you know, part of that research involved me subscribing to a number of podcasts and YouTube channels of which yours was one.
Okay, right.
Well, that's fair enough.
You know, usually on the show, I say usually, it's not a hard and fast rule.
But quite often for me, when people suggest themselves as guests, sometimes it doesn't work because they don't know their subject well enough or, you know, there's just not enough material to sustain.
But I checked out your little introductory video and I thought, yeah, this guy's got something.
And what we're going to be talking about here is a lot of paranormal research that you did around this film that you're making, yeah?
Yes, yes.
Okay, and this has a very personal dimension for you.
So maybe we should get into that first.
Okay.
Yeah.
So do you want me to kind of just tell the story of the kind of inspiration for the film?
Yeah, absolutely.
The story that is so, I mean, it couldn't be more personal that actually got you to doing what you're doing.
Okay, so when I was a teenager, you know, so we're talking, you know, we're talking like 20, you know, over 20 years ago, my mum worked in a chip shop in Glasgow and a new member of staff started and he was a delivery driver and she did not know him.
You know, he was a complete stranger and they had never met before.
And he intimated to her that he was a psychic medium.
And he said that he had a message from her oldest.
And my mum said to him, well, that's not possible because Mark is my oldest and he's, you know, he's still with us.
So this person literally just came up to her at work and said, I've got a message from your eldest.
And at that time, your mother's reply has to be, well, nothing that a medium would be involved in because my eldest, that's you, is living at home right now, alive.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, you know, I think I can't remember if it was like the first shift they had met on, but it was one of his first shifts.
It wasn't their first conversation.
They'd had some small talk.
So it wasn't the first thing that he said to her.
But the point is, you know, she had only just met him, you know, as a colleague, and she did not know him.
He did not know her.
They were strangers to each other.
So that's the point that I'm trying to emphasise here.
He's an extraordinary thing to lay on your poor mother.
Don't you think so?
If the person didn't know her, your mother must be a very special person because a lot of people wouldn't know how to react.
Well, no, I think, I mean, I think from speaking to my mum, he kind of established in the first instance whether she was, you know, whether she was a believer or whether she was, at the very least, open-minded to the idea of spirit communication.
So I don't think, yeah, yeah, as is often the case with people with that, you know, with that gift, when it comes to, I think quite often they just won't engage if they feel that they have a message for someone who is a stranger to them.
I think quite often their general policy is just not to engage with people.
Or if they do, they would check in advance that the person was likely to be receptive to receiving a message type thing.
So he didn't just put it on her, so to speak.
He did actually check first that she would be okay with receiving a message from her eldest.
And when was this?
Was this 1990s, 1980s?
Yeah, so we're talking, I mean, I was a teenager, so we're talking the late 80s.
Okay.
Now, I know from my experience of Liverpool, which is my background, it's a lot like Glasgow.
There Was a lot of acceptance in the decades before that, and that's how I became interested in all of this and aware of it.
A lot of interest in these subjects there.
You know, people may not talk about them every day.
But, you know, quite often at home, people would have the tea leaves read.
My grandfather used to read teacups.
You know, my father's father used to read the teacups, which was quite rare.
People used to go to him.
And that was just seen as part of the landscape.
And I get the feeling that a lot of Glasgow was like that too.
Yeah.
I mean, my understanding is that the actual, you know, spiritualism as a religion was actually founded in Glasgow.
And, you know, we have a, we have a, I think it would be fair to say we probably have the biggest spiritualist community in the UK.
Certainly, you know, if you were to calculate per head of population.
So if you take the size of Glasgow as a city and the size of the spiritualist community, then, you know, I think it would be fair to say that Glasgow probably has the biggest spiritualist community in the UK.
I wonder why that is.
Bearing in mind, if we think that just like Liverpool, Glasgow is, and it's not as sharply divided, I don't think you can tell me whether it is, but it's not as sharply divided as it used to be.
But there is a religious division in Glasgow between people of the Catholic faith and people of the Church of Scotland.
And just the same in Liverpool.
We have the two religions existing side by side.
So with such powerful presences of the two churches there, the two biggest churches, I'm surprised that's the case, aren't you?
I suppose when you go back to, you know, when you go back to, you know, the early 1900s or whenever it was specifically that spiritualism was, you know, was founded, I would imagine it would be a different time.
And certainly back then, I mean, it's grown a lot since then, but when spiritualism was founded, I would, well, yeah, it's interesting.
I was going to say I would imagine it would be on a smaller scale than it is now, but to be honest, I think the opposite is the case because when you look at the building in central Glasgow, which was the first spiritualist church, it's a very impressive structure.
It's big, you know, it's a big building.
Architecturally, I think the architect is very significant in Glasgow.
I think it might have been Alexander the Greek Thompson, but it's a very imposing, very impressive building in the centre of Glasgow.
Now, the spiritualist church moved from that building, they sold that building to another religion and moved.
But certainly in that, I think early 1900s, I think spiritualist congregations were massive.
And as you say, I think it's interesting because, you know, Church of Scotland and Catholicism would have been the two major powerhouses in Glasgow at that time.
So the emergence of spiritualism as a religion and its popularity, I think it would be fair to say that although Glasgow has a big spiritualist community, it's a fraction of what it was back then.
Okay, and before we get back to your mother and her story, which is the kernel, the core of this, mediums in Glasgow, were they big?
I can remember my grandmother and my parents telling me about celebrated mediums who people would, they wouldn't necessarily go telling everybody about it, but they would go a few streets away and they would go and see the local medium.
It was a big thing.
And certainly in the sort of 50s, 60s, 70s, very much so.
Same in Glasgow?
Yeah, yeah.
Again, I think it would be fair to say that, you know, I mean, I'm rubbish with names, so I don't want to pull their names off the top of my head.
But many of the most significant evidential mediums in the UK either came from or worked in Glasgow.
Okay, back to your mother and her story.
A co-worker, as we would call him today, approaches your mother and says, got a message from your eldest.
What does your mother do?
So my mum says, no, that's not possible because Mark is my oldest and he's, you know, he's still very much, very much with us.
And her co-worker said, no, Angela is your oldest.
Now, what this stranger had no way of knowing, because not many of my mum's friends knew this.
But the year before I was born, my mum had a baby girl that didn't make it.
And she called the baby Angela.
Did you know about that?
I no, I don't think I did.
I think when my mum told me the story about this medium was the first time that I'd heard about, you know, the big sister that I never knew I had.
So practically, unless this other person was a detective, he couldn't possibly have known.
No, not many of her.
You know, I think she told me actually that none of her friends knew.
Either none of her friends knew or the vast majority of them didn't know.
And even family, extended family didn't know.
It was just obviously close family that knew.
It was such a traumatic experience.
My mum almost died.
She was in a coma for four days.
So did your poor mum want to be reminded of this by this man?
You know what?
I think it's one of those things where when you agree to take a message from a medium, then obviously there's an element of, you know, they have a responsibility.
You know, the vast majority of them take their skills very seriously and they have a responsibility in terms of how they, you know, how they go about, you know, passing messages on and what those messages are, etc.
And of course, looking at it from your mum's side, once you've committed to giving this person airtime, once you've heard the first part of it, you've got to hear the rest of it.
Exactly.
Exactly.
So what was the message from Angela?
So basically, well, first of all, in terms of the actual experience, my mum was in a coma for four days.
When she woke up, she was told that her baby, not only had her baby died, but the baby had been buried by my father and my grandparents, his parents.
And she, you know, she almost died.
She needed a blood transfusion.
She was in a bad way.
So the whole experience was very traumatic for her.
You know, those things always are, but terrible for your mother.
And when you say that the baby was buried in that way with those family members, you mean that they made the arrangements?
Yeah.
Yeah, but it was done before she woke up.
So not just the arrangements, but the actual burial was done before she woke up.
That's even more traumatic.
Yeah.
And the intro video that you've watched is from the grave where the baby was buried.
Yes, I had that impression.
And that will tell our listener where that is at the back end of this.
But it is very powerful when you tell that story.
Okay.
So that's the very sad backstory to this.
Yeah.
So, yeah.
Yeah.
So the actual message was, so I think, you know, looking back on it, I think there was a few, but the one that I remember was a message that was for me.
So, you know, the medium said, Angela wants you to tell Mark that he has a big sister in the spirit world.
She is his guardian angel, and she is always with him.
So that was, you know, that was obviously very powerful because I didn't even know that.
I thought, you know, I was a teenager and I thought I was the big brother.
I thought I was the oldest.
So it was a very powerful message to hear.
And did your mother automatically pass that message on to you?
Yes, she did.
She did.
Yeah, she did.
She sounds like a very special person.
Yeah.
You know, when I decided that I wanted to, you know, to produce a feature film using this as the inspiration, one of the first things that I did was ask her permission.
Because to be honest with you, there was part of me thought she would say no, with it being such a traumatic experience.
But she, yes, it was a traumatic experience.
But I think my mum's of the opinion that, see, people who lose babies, I think my mum's of the opinion that, herself included, it's not spoken of enough.
No, and it's from the people that I know who've been through that, and there aren't very many of them.
You know, it's a lonely thing.
It's a sad and a very lonely thing.
And those people need the maximum support that they can get.
But sometimes in previous generations, they didn't get it.
No.
I think, you know, and you could also say that I'll be getting it now.
Yes, I think you could.
And your mother had the double trauma of having all of those things happen.
And she wasn't aware of them until she was fit enough to, you know, understand what was going on, which I can't imagine what that's like.
So there you are.
You have a relayed message from your sister, who you haven't really known anything all that much about.
Did it change your life in any way?
No.
No, I don't think it did.
You know, as a teenager, looking back on it, you know, I have told that story hundreds of times to people, you know, just like chit-chat, friends, you know, old friends, new friends, people you meet.
This type of thing comes up in conversation.
And that's the story.
You know, that's my go-to story.
If anybody's telling stories about medium spirits, that was always my go-to story.
I would always say, oh, I've got a story for you.
I would tell them the story.
The reaction was always the same.
People were blown away, you know, to varying degrees.
You would get people saying, oh, the hair's on the back of my neck are standing up, etc.
Or, of course, you would always get one or two who would say that you were misremembering.
Yeah.
Well, no one said I was misremembering or it didn't happen in terms of, you know, no one kind of argued that my mum had actually received the message type thing.
Okay.
Well, it's nice to have accepting friends who, you know, will listen to what you have to say.
Were you aware?
This is an important question.
At any stage up to now, were you aware that your sister was around you?
Was there anything as you, once you got that message as a teenager, you started looking back and started thinking.
And then going forward, were you ever aware of anything around you?
I don't think I was.
I don't think I was.
I don't think it started until, you know, that idea of becoming open, you know, the idea of opening your mind to possibilities.
I think when I started doing the research for the feature film, I became open to the possibilities.
And then that was when things started to happen.
Well, isn't that interesting?
Because I can quite understand that you weren't aware of anything when you were younger and before you started doing the research for this.
But if you're anything like me, I would want to start probing.
I would want to start if she was, if there was a possibility that she was there and she was my big sister, not here, but somewhere else and looking after me, then I would want to do everything that I could to make contact.
And I guess that was you too.
Well, the interesting thing is that when I started the process, it was for the purposes of a project.
It wasn't for me personally.
But the funny thing is that the two kind of became interwoven with each other.
Because, you know, I, you know, I started after my mom gave me permission, I decided very early, very, I mean, I am a writer.
My background is novels, stage plays, film.
You know, I am a writer of fiction.
I am not a writer of documentaries.
So I had no desire to tell a documentary.
So it was always going to be a fictional story.
when i decided that the medium was going to be film um very early on in the process i decided i was going to do some things to put some distance between myself and my mum in the subject matter so um first of all i made the two two of the central characters a father and daughter rather rather than a mother and son.
So, it's a father and daughter.
And then, the second thing that I did was I flipped my mum.
And you know, our experience has never been a negative one when it comes to Angela.
So, I flipped it and I made the decision that I was going to tell a horror story to put distance.
So, a father and daughter in a kind of horror thriller scenario was about as far away from me and my mum in what has always been a kind of nice, comforting, positive thing.
That was about as far away as I could get from our experience.
But I had to write the script.
So, I had to write this fictional script about the father and daughter inspired by this story.
And it was going to be a horror-thriller genre.
So, I, you know, actually, I wrote a script while I was doing the research.
And the further I got into the research, I came to the conclusion that I was going to have to bin that script and I was going to have to start again.
Because what I realized.
Because the detail was wrong.
Yeah.
What I realized was I was writing the horror film that everybody watches.
You know, the evil spirit.
I was writing the horror film which had, you know, had that kind of evil, negative spirit that scares people.
So you were trying to rewrite The Exorcist, which so many people seem to do.
And you found through research that it wasn't really like that?
Well, the interesting thing is very early in the process, I kind of split my...
My background, you know, I came to this as a writer.
So I, you know, I started, you know, I started off with no knowledge.
And I kind of made the decision I was going to split my research into two areas.
On the one hand, I was going to have the paranormal.
And on the other hand, I was going to have spiritualism.
So it was almost like very early in the process, the research split into two.
So there was the, you know, I was attending as many paranormal investigations as I could get along to with, you know, with a variety of groups on the one hand.
And then on the other hand, I was going to spiritualist services and having private readings done.
I've never been, let's talk about the spirit.
You told me that the spiritualist church is very big in Glasgow.
I have never been.
I've passed spiritualist churches.
I have known many people and spoken to many people who've been part of them.
What is it like to go to a spiritualist service?
Well, my dad's dad was a pastor in the kind of evangelical movement.
And he was a pastor of a mission hall in Scotland.
So he was very, very much of that kind of Billy Graham ilk.
The message was fire and brimstone and repent ye sinners, that type of thing.
So I was brought up, whenever I visited my grandparents, I would go to his services.
And one thing that struck me was how similar the spiritualist service is to a Christian service.
I mean, it's almost identical.
The only bit that's different is at the end, what they call a platform medium will step forward and pass messages on to members of the congregation from spirit.
And the stories that I've heard through the work that I've done here, you know, sometimes those things can be, well, they can blow your socks off sometimes.
Sometimes, yeah.
It's just the same with private readings.
So when you were in the spiritualist church and the platform medium at the end of the service is there, and you are there for purposes of understanding and research, when you had readings, what sorts of things did they throw up?
I mean, were there any references to Angela, for example?
Well, so the very first spiritualist service that I attended, I was in the congregation, you know, I was observing how similar it was to a traditional Christian service with the prayer and the hymn, you know, the hymns and even the decor and the flowers and the benches.
It was all very, very similar.
And then the platform medium stepped forward.
I can't remember if it was the first message because they normally open in prayer, maybe say a few words, and then each of them has their own styles, but ultimately they move into passing messages on.
And I don't think I was the first, but I was certainly one of the early points, the medium pointed in my direction.
And she kind of pointed to me, and there was a chap sitting directly behind me, and she pointed at us both.
And she said, which one of you is the writer?
So you can imagine what I was thinking.
I was freaking out.
Well, that's pretty specific, isn't it?
Yeah, it's pretty specific.
Which one of you is the writer?
So the chap behind me must have shook his head.
So it had to be you.
I put my hand up and I said, that's me.
Okay.
It may have been the luckiest of lucky guesses, but I don't know, you know, statistically, I couldn't work that one out.
That was pretty, as we say, pretty specific.
Yeah.
And then, you know, as is often the case with readings, regardless of whether it's from a, you know, from a stage or a private reading, you're not going to get, you know, you're not going to get like bullseyes.
You know, every piece of information that comes is not going to be a bullseye.
So the next, that's not me making excuses for mediums.
That's just state of fact, you know.
but you went into this presumably dispassionately, impartially, and willing to believe either there was something in it or there wasn't.
You didn't go into this as somebody who, you know, in spite of the fact that your mother had that experience and that must have been very profound.
You went into this as somebody who's a writer and a journalist in that way.
Presumably, you went into it with a balanced view.
Actually, I think it would be fair to say I probably went in quite closed in the sense that I was looking, you were going to have to impress me.
You know, the attitude that I went in with was probably I wanted, I wasn't 50-50.
If it was 50-50, I probably came down maybe 40-60 on the side of not believing.
So I was probably 60% of me was not believing and 40% of me was believing.
But you had been told by somebody years before, your mother had been told that your sister was constantly with you.
Now, I would have thought, although what do I know, I would have thought that one of these mediums might have been able to detect that.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, we're talking about the very first spiritualist service that I walked into.
But since then, I have been on private, I have been on private readings, and the name Angela has came up.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The name Angela has came up in private readings, but it did not come up.
So that very first spiritualist service that I walked into, the medium, you know, she said, which one of you is a writer?
And then she mentioned a few potential family members that were around.
And she said, I'm getting a message from Spirit to pass to you to tell you to get a move on with this project that you're working on.
You know?
That's pretty specific, too.
Yeah.
And how far into the project were you then?
I mean, you were just at the beginning with it.
Yeah, well, I mean, at that point, I thought I had a script.
Yeah.
Well, you had a false start, didn't you?
You decided to go back to the beginning.
Yeah, basically what it boiled down to was like every spiritualist that I spoke to had a major downer on the way that spiritualism was being portrayed in films.
Because, you know, their experience of spirit was always positive.
It was always a, you know, it was always a, you know, a loving, the exchange between mediums and spirit and the exchange between mediums and the sitters, it was always a very positive, nourishing, loving experience.
So this constant portrayal of spirit in evil, demonic forms was something that ultimately just turned spiritualists away from film.
So, you know, everybody I spoke to said that, I mean, literally, if I asked them, can you think of any film in the horror thriller space that has accurately handled the subject matter?
The answer was always no.
Right, so they didn't feel, as part of your research going to spiritualist churches and meeting people at them, they didn't feel that they were getting a fair deal, fair representation.
To the extent where it was having an impact on my research, because I think it would be fair to say that there were some people who wouldn't speak to me on the basis that they thought I was going to do the same thing.
And how did you reassure them that you weren't?
Well, you know, there's not a lot you can do, really, is there?
You know, people are going to have to take, people are going to have to trust me.
I mean, I would tell them the Angela story.
See, the fact that my mum obviously went through what she went through, and I got a message from Angela.
The fact that I had that personal connection with the subject matter, I tried to stress to them, you know, that I would not be insensitive or, you know, unauthentic in terms of my handling of the subject matter.
So it meant, and I understand this as, you know, somebody who's been a journalist for all of my life, that you had to, to an extent when doing this one, you had to lay your cards on the table and be honest with them.
Yes.
And at those spiritualist church sessions that you went to, and you didn't tell me how many you went to, but was there anything that you felt was sort of revelatory that happened there?
Well, I think that, I mean, for me, the very first meeting that I went to when the medium, her name is Jennifer Phillips.
Jennifer Phillips, who I had never met before that day.
I since went on to have some conversations with her, and she was helpful in terms of my research.
But I had never met Jennifer before that day, so that was a smack in the face for me.
And then I went into my research mode in terms of private readings, et cetera, and very quickly started to get very specific information and messages during the...
In fact, in the feature film, there's like three central characters, father, daughter, and spiritualist medium.
The readings in the film are lifted from transcripts from my readings.
So, you know, the reading, her, her lines in the film during the readings are not made up by me.
They're from actual readings.
So, you know, very early on in the process, it became, what can I tell you here?
I went from a 60-40 to a 99-1.
Boy, that's what do they call it?
That's a Damascene conversion, isn't it?
Yeah, I mean, like, you know, and then the research that I've done since then, you know, the books that I've read, people like, I think you had Leslie Keenan.
Yes.
Yeah.
So if you read her book as an example, the academic and scientific evidence for this phenomenon in terms of spirit communication, what I often tell people is that it's not up for debate.
You know, we're not having a debate here as to whether or not this phenomena exists.
That is not in question.
The scientific and academic community, we're now in a place where that is, you know, they are satisfied that it is proven that the phenomena exists.
The only thing that's up for debate is these people, these mediums who do this work, is it generated from them psychically?
Are they picking up some kind of imprint from our brains psychically themselves?
Or is it coming from another space?
Or is it coming from the spirit that has continued after physical death?
And how can you, I mean, look, I don't think we can, there's no way that we can prove any of that at the moment.
All we can talk about either you or me is our own anecdotal experiences.
And I've had some, and you're going to see mediums for private sessions.
You've had others, which I'd like to hear about.
I have to say, in my life, I've had periods where I've gone medium shopping sometimes.
You know, times in my life where I've sort of wanted answers and that sort of thing.
I've gone around mediums.
And I have to say, apart from one or two, the experiences that I've had have been pretty unimpressive.
But maybe I've found the wrong people.
Who knows?
But I have found one or two who've been absolutely stunning in the things that they've said.
I think that there's a couple of things you've touched on there.
The first thing that you mentioned was proof.
Now, my personal feeling on this is that the words evidence and proof mean two different things.
And everything that we can talk, we can talk about evidence, but we can't talk about proof.
And I don't think we're ever going to be able to talk about proof because of what that word means.
And if you look at our judicial system as an example, and the fact that in some cases, you know, in fact, I think probably most cases, you have juries that disagree on proof.
So proof is subjective.
But what we have is we have evidence.
You know, we have evidence that has been analyzed by the scientific and academic communities.
Now, moving into the spiritual realm, and obviously as someone who was brought up in a Christian environment, my feeling, and then I in later life went on to study and be influenced by Buddhism,
my feeling is that there will never be proof because to do so removes the individual component of that relationship that we have with a divine power.
So in other words, there's evidence.
You may get evidence.
And what you make of that evidence is personal to you.
That's your personal journey.
I totally get that.
I think the Buddha's last words were, we must each seek our own salvation diligently.
Now, for me, if you go looking for the evidence, what you are going to find, well, it's going to, what you find is going to be reflected in the amount of time that you invest in your journey.
Now, for people who are interested in a spiritual journey, you could make the argument that there's no other journey that's more important than that one, and that should be reflected in the amount of time that they put into it.
But when it comes to mediums, I mean, there is organizations out there, scientific, academic organizations that test, score, and register mediums.
And to get their registration, you have to be one of the mediums who scores a certain number over various reasons.
Well, I did recently speak with Professor Chris French from Goldsmiths University, and they had done research with mediums.
And I think I'm being fair to Chris when I say that the research did not really show up that the mediums were particularly accurate in the things that they said, and there was a lot of great generality about the things they said.
But, you know, that's one piece of research and one researcher who is quite respected in this country.
Back to your research, though, going for private readings.
You know, I told you that in my experience, my experience has been pretty hit and miss.
So what was yours?
You know, what were the good ones?
What were the bad ones?
Well, I think overall I had in the region of 20-ish private readings.
And it kind of split quite neatly into thirds.
So, you know, in the region of six of them were not fantastic in terms of accuracy.
Probably another six were definitely getting warmer and could apply to me or my deceased friends and family.
And then in the region of six were bullseyes.
And of those six, there was probably maybe three that were just, you know, left me stunned in terms of not only the accuracy of the information and as regards names and dates and information that only, you know, only that person that they were talking about could know, but even information about what's going on in my home and in my personal life.
And can you share some of the things that in those ones that were particularly accurate, that were not cold, but were red hot, what sorts of things did they tell you and how did they tell you those things?
So off the top of my head, there was one told me that my father and my Grandfather were in the same grave and also got their names Duncan and James.
And you were not asked questions that prompted that.
In other words, they weren't cold reading you.
No, no, every reading I had done I booked under a false name.
Really?
Okay.
Yeah.
Now, I should also mention that, see, when it comes to finding mediums, this is another interesting thing because, I mean, I could say I'm a medium and I could set up social media accounts and start giving people readings.
There's nothing to stop me.
And that's part of the problem with it because I don't doubt that there are some people who have something, even though it can't be proved by science.
They've got something going for them.
But there are also an awful lot of deluded people who think that they have something and really don't.
And then others who pass themselves off as mediums.
That's always a danger.
Yeah.
I mean, for me, they fall into the categories.
Some people are genuinely out to do it for purely financial gain and they have no gift.
Some people are well-intentioned.
They're coming from a place of, you know, trying to be helpful.
But ultimately, they are deluded and they also have no gift.
Other people have a gift, but that day, when you spoke to them, they didn't score.
Because I am not an expert, but even I understand that communicating between different dimensions, whatever that looks like, it's not like picking up the phone or sending an email.
So I do believe that just because I don't get a great reading from someone, I don't think that makes them a rubbish medium.
I think that it just means that on that day, it didn't happen for whatever reason.
You know, I can certainly relate to that.
Mind you, I have met a few who've been absolutely terrible and I've been to see them a couple of times and they've been terrible a couple of times.
But that's my story and not yours.
So you said that one of them got your grandfather and father's grave and got the names right.
Anything else that stood out for you?
Well, I mean, Angela's name came up.
You know, Angela's name came up a couple of times just in terms of what had happened and the message that came to my mum and talking about how pleased she was that I was working on the project that I was working on, but not specifically mentioning it as being a film.
And also, I've got a six-month-old baby, and shortly after he came home from hospital, there was the first time we saw a butterfly next to the baby.
And it was, the baby was on the couch, and the butterfly was on the couch next to the baby.
Now that butterfly, and then a couple of weeks later, I had a reading done, and that butterfly came up in the reading.
The medium made reference to the butterfly in the living room.
And this was something that had piqued your interest when it happened.
And it also came up in the reading.
Well, to be honest, look, when I saw a butterfly next to my son, I didn't really give it a second thought.
It's just a butterfly.
It's just a beautiful thing to see, yeah.
Actually, I put it out the house.
Did you?
Okay.
You know, I don't know.
I mean, I don't know the protocol when it comes to butterflies, but I thought, is it an insect?
Does it carry disease?
Not sure.
I'll put it out of the house.
Well, no, I mean, you quite understand the concerns of a parent.
Okay, but it came up in the reading, which is interesting.
Not only did that butterfly come up in the reading, but, and I don't know if it's the same butterfly, but since then, the butterfly keep, I mean, I've put it out of the house two or three times and it keeps turning up in the house.
Oh, boy.
Now, that is interesting.
I mean, there could be coincidence, but it's starting to look like something else, maybe, to those who would see it that way, I guess.
Okay.
The medium who mentioned the butterfly told me it was my brother and told me every time I see the butterfly, I have to think of my younger brother who has passed away.
Boy.
You know what I mean?
Yep.
You know, that's food for thought.
You also went on that there were three strands, as you say, to your research.
The spiritualist churches, the individual consultations with mediums, and also going out on paranormal investigations.
Now, sometimes those things are groups of amateurs who've been watching Scooby-Doo a lot, and sometimes they're very serious things.
Which did you go on?
So my exposure was to the Scooby-Doo variety.
Oh, okay.
And was the...
No, you know what?
I went on as many as I could find locally.
And listen, you know, I mean, it was just the complete opposite.
See, people who go to spiritualist churches and are on a spirit.
I mean, spiritualism is a bona fide religion in its own right.
You know, they have the Spiritualist National Union has in the region of 300 or 400 churches in the UK.
It's a serious organization with, you know, many members who are obviously on their spiritual journey.
Now, on the flip side, the people who I met in the paranormal community, they were not on a spiritual journey.
Now this sounds as if I'm coming across as being disparaging or negative.
I'm not...
There are many, many people like that.
But, you know, as I say, there are loads and loads of groups starting up all the time of people who are just doing it for a bit of fun.
Yeah.
No, I mean, the people who I went along to investigations with, some of them I went with groups and some of them were open to the public.
And they were very serious in terms of clearly they've invested a lot of resources, a lot of time and a lot of money into equipment, etc.
So I don't want to say they're not serious.
They are Serious, but they are not on a spiritual journey.
Well, I guess that, I mean, you know, it's a free country.
I guess that's okay.
Did they get any results that you could quantify, or did some of these people just kind of convince themselves that maybe the temperature went down because a ghost made it go down?
Well, I think, you know, the audio and visuals that I was being shown to represent evidence, in my opinion, did not represent evidence.
And I would go as far as to say that when, you know, even the nature of it, the nature of actually going on one of these things, I found myself, even going into it as someone who was impartial, doing it for the purposes of research, I found myself at periods almost having to have a word with myself because I was scaring myself.
Really?
Because these things are quite scary.
And for some reason, they're always done at night.
Okay, and what sorts of places, what sorts of venues did you go to?
I mean, did you go to a graveyard, a disused hospital?
Where did you go?
It was mostly old buildings.
So it was mostly buildings that, you know, like a hotel, a castle, you know, a disused swimming pool, those types of places.
Nothing appeared, as far as you're aware.
Well, nothing other than me giving myself a scare.
You know, I mean, I was being shown audio-visual stuff that, in my opinion, did not represent evidence.
And I was, you know, like in a basement and it's pitch black.
And I thought I felt something in the back of my neck.
But I think quite a lot of this is just the nature of it's the nature.
I think it's one of the reasons why the horror genre is the most popular genre.
It's the only genre that has its own dedicated film festivals.
The demand is massive.
It's the oldest genre.
You know, when we were in caves, you know, roundabout campfires, we were scaring ourselves before we were making each other laugh.
That's true.
And, you know, people love to hear a ghost story and they love to hear a story that has some kind of backbone to it.
I don't know whether you know Tricia Robertson, great Scottish investigator.
I'm familiar with her work, yes.
I know Trisha's got a couple of books out that have the most remarkable stories.
There was one story about a pilot who went to an airport.
I think it was Prestwick.
It may have been Glasgow Airport, so forgive me if I've got that wrong.
And the guy walks through the door and sees somebody who he knows and has a strange conversation with him, only to discover that that person had died a couple of days before.
And in fact, as he was in the airport, this is the pilot who had the experience, the body of his friend or his colleague, the body was being transported through there to be flown to another part of Scotland for the funeral.
So those things are very hard to explain in many ways.
And those sorts of stories are the ones that people love to hear.
And Trisha is an interesting one because I think Tricia and her former colleague Archie Roy, they are, I mean, they are academics, they're professors.
So they, you know, they're coming at this from an academic perspective and their research, you know, their research shows that there is clearly something, you know, there's clearly something there.
In terms of their investigations, there's something, you know, there's something going on in a lot of the cases.
But I think the horror thing is interesting because it feeds into the reasons why spiritualists have such a downer on film is because when you think about it, it's very difficult for me to scare.
If you're in the audience, it's very difficult for me to scare you with a friendly ghost.
Yeah, it's gone.
You know, equally, only recently I spoke to somebody who works as an exorcist in the US, and he told me the most horrendous cases he tells me, he claims, of demonic possession, things that actually almost beat him up.
Those are extraordinary things.
So there are scary things happening, I think.
Now, what is the cause of those scary things, whether it's external spirits, whether it's people psyching themselves into a situation, or whether it's some kind of condition that as human beings, we have abilities to create, like poltergeist activity that we don't quite understand.
I don't know.
But there you are in Glasgow.
You did all of that research.
What conclusions did you come out with that fed into the work of fiction that you're now producing?
So I suppose, like, obviously it's just my opinion, you know, based on my research, based on my personal experiences.
All of the work that I've done, attended spiritualist churches, the private readings, the numerous interviews, everything that I've done.
I've seen nothing evil or negative coming out of spirit.
And everyone that I speak to basically says that no one disputes the fact that evil exists in this world.
But after physical death, whatever way the universe is constructed, the evil goes somewhere and it is not physically able to come back.
So the only spirit that can come back to communicate is a spirit that has positive or loving intentions.
And that is what I have taken from my journey, from my experience.
And the end product, in terms of the feature film that people will get the opportunity to see, not everybody will like it, as is the case with most films.
But my intention is that no spiritualists will be Able to say that it is not authentic in terms of its handling of the subject matter.
Because you've done the research that goes with it.
And the film is called Dreaded Light, isn't it?
Yes.
Okay.
And can you give me, I don't want you to give it all away.
It's in production still, yes?
Yeah.
Okay.
And just, you know, it's only fair that I ask you this so you can tell me.
Just give me a quick run through in a couple of minutes what the plot of this is and how that research feeds into it.
So we have a kind of central character who has a father recently widowed, and it's just him and his teenage daughter who are left.
And the father is a night shift taxi driver, and he encounters a spiritualist medium who has a message for him.
And then he initially is reluctant.
He's not open.
He's closed to the possibility of this being something that exists.
But he's having problems with his teenage daughter.
Since her mother died, she has developed a phobia of daylight.
She doesn't leave the house during the day.
She keeps the shutters closed.
Hence the title Dreaded Light.
Correct.
Yes.
So he's having problems with his teenage daughter and he asks the spiritualist medium for help to try and get to the bottom of what's going on.
And I can't tell you what it is that's going on because that would be a spoiler.
But my hope is that people will be scared in an authentic fashion.
So what's to, I mean, you've hooked me on it.
I'll certainly watch it when it's made.
But what stage are you at now then with the production?
So we are in pre-production.
We're scheduled to shoot in January.
And I'm pretty sure it will be out there at film festivals and available for view and certainly hopefully by the end of next year.
So you've scripted, you've casted, you're ready to rock and roll.
But you're looking for funding, I think, aren't you?
Yeah, yeah.
We've got some private investment and we are also crowdfunding.
So there's some crowdfunder packages on the website that people can have a look at.
Right.
Well, I have to wish you all the best with it.
I can't wait to see it.
I'm sure it will come together.
And, you know, what about the actors in this?
How did you find them?
Yeah, so we, I mean, we got the lead guy we got, he's a guy called Adam Robertson.
Adam has, you know, he's been around for, he's been around for 20 years.
He's got, you know, he's got a great pedigree, both screen and theatre.
I produced a stage play at the Edinburgh Fringe, which Adam was in.
So I've worked with him a couple of times in the past.
So he's playing the dad.
And we've got on the cinematography side of things, a guy called David Liddell, who is a leading cinematographer in Scotland.
Was he involved in that little promotion video on your website?
No, that was a chap called Gareth Malone.
Okay, no, what sold me and the reason we're doing this interview was that was so good.
I thought that was so well produced.
Yeah.
Well, hopefully Gareth will listen to this.
I'll send him a link and I'm sure he'll be pleased to hear your feedback.
No, I mean, it was, you know, that's why I was fascinated by this project.
Okay, anything else you want to tell me?
Well, no, just the website, really.
I mean, the first thing people should do is have a look at the intro video.
It's on www.markmacnickel.com, M-E-R-K, M-A-C-N-I-C-O-L.com.
Have a look at the intro video.
Have a look at the crowdfund packages.
If it's your cup of tea, support us, you know, you can join us on the journey and have a look at the end product.
And then, you know what?
See, at the end of it, my hope is that obviously we want to scare people, we want to entertain people, but see if some people, after watching the film, decide that they are going to go on a bit of a spiritual journey themselves.
Because one thing I have been struck by during my research is, you know, since I started this process, I speak to everyone about do they believe in the continuation of spirit after physical death?
Are they a yes?
Are they a no?
Are they a maybe?
And what I've been struck by is the number of people who are very close to the possibility.
They say no.
They say they think it's a lot of rubbish, people taking advantage when people are at their most vulnerable, etc.
But when I ask them what they've done in terms of research to come to that conclusion, the answer nine times out of ten is zero.
They've done zero research.
And that just doesn't make sense.
And you've done the research.
And I should have asked you, this is all set in Glasgow.
Set in Glasgow, yeah.
Great.
Well, I can't think of a better place to do it.
Mark, I'm pleased we had this conversation and I'm pleased you got in touch.
Thank you very much.
If there's anything else that I can do, you know, when it's out, let me know.
And, you know, we'll see if I can rack my brains and use some context to get publicity for it.
But, you know, congratulations on doing the research and it's been a pleasure speaking with you.
Thanks for having me out.
You've been hearing Mark McNichol, your thoughts about him and his project and his research.
Welcome.
You can tell him.
If you want to go to his website, check him out online.
Or if you want to go to my website, theunexplained.tv and tell me.
Equally, both valid.
Any thoughts about the show, guest suggestions, anything that you want to hear?
You know what to do.
Go to my website, follow the link, and you can do that from there.
And if you can make a donation to the show, by the way, as we come to the end of this year, that will be, as they say, fabulous.
More great guests in the pipeline here at The Unexplained, so until next we meet.
My name is Howard Hughes.
I am in London.
This has been The Unexplained Online.
And please, whatever you do, stay safe, stay calm, and above all, please stay in touch.
Thank you very much.
Take care.
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