Emily: You celebrated Darkness Radio's second birthday in January — for those who have yet to tune in, what is Darkness Radio and how did it all start?

Dave: Darkness Radio, we're a paranormal radio show that covers every aspect of the paranormal from ghosts to demons to UFOs, Bigfoot, Bermuda Triangle and beyond. We started two years ago at a small radio station in Minnesota. My co-host Tim knew a producer he worked for and said 'they're looking for some contents for a new station, do you have any show ideas?' — I said, "Well, why don't we do a paranormal show?" We put together a show and Jason Hawes was our first guest. Rosemary Ellen Guiley, John Zaffis [and] Annie Wilder all rounded out the first month for us. We were able to come at them with big names like that; they gave us a shot to do the show right away. So we put it out and we've been going strong ever since. We moved to two hours after about a month of being on the air for an hour a week. We moved to a two-hour time slot from 10 to midnight every Sunday night.

He is the father of Fortean phenomenon — all of those events that defy the natural order as it is currently understood. Rains of frogs, invasions of previously undocumented insects, chunks of wood or other matter that mysteriously fall from the sky... he documented everything, asking hard questions about what these events told us about the world in which he lived. He was Charles Fort, and his story is as intriguing as many of the events which he chronicled in his books.

Fort worked as a newspaper reporter in New York around the turn of the 20th century. Through this work, he became intrigued by stories of events that simply did not fit into the rational view that science applied to the world. Fort himself took a view of extreme skepticism toward the world. He didn't believe in anything, least of all what he perceived to be the flimsy attempts made by science to present a neat and rational view of the world. He had a particular dislike for science, and he seemed to take perverse pleasure in knocking modern scientists down a few pegs by unearthing stories that threw a monkey wrench into their theories on physics, biology and reality in general. For 27 years, he poured over newspapers and journal articles, compiling stories of things that did not fit. He had little structure to his collections of these articles and his overall purpose seems to have been merely to present visions of the impossible and, through these visions, call into question the methods by which modern individuals tried to order the world.

Andrew Calder appeared in an episode of "Paranormal State" titled "Devil in Syracuse." He and I recently spoke about his involvement with exorcisms.
Emily: How long have you been an Episcopal priest?

Andrew: I have been an Episcopal Priest for the past five years, before that I was a deacon within our order. I have been involved in paranormal cases for about the past 10 or so years.

Emily: What got you interested in demonology and the paranormal?

Andrew: I got involved in the paranormal like most people, wanting to know more about ghosts, hauntings and the like. While investigating cases, I came across a higher than average amount of people suffering from negative cases. And due to such, tried to find people to help them, but found there was not many folks, groups, people out there to provide any kind of legitimate help at that time. So began my journey with the negative and with God — which unfolded over the years.

Do children remember their past lives? This question occupied the life's work of Dr. Ian Stevenson, an insightful psychiatrist and founder of the University of Virginia's Department of Perceptual Studies (formerly the Department of Personality Studies).

Stevenson did not believe that only children can remember their past lives, but he felt that the most convincing proof could be found among children, particularly when they manifested knowledge that they could have no previous exposure to. Although there have been several very convincing cases of adults remembering their past lives (for example, the Bridey Murphy case), one of the problems with adult past-life memories is that skeptics can always argue that the memories are more related to a process called cryptoamnesia. In cryptoamnesia, a person learns something, such as details about a typical peasant's life in Ireland, and then forgets about learning the information. When they find that they know specific details about daily life in Medieval Ireland, they then mistakenly assume that this information is tied to a past life, rather than some documentary they happened to watch as a child.

Imagine what life would be like if you always saw double: this world and the spirit world. Everywhere you went, you saw ghosts of the dead walking among the living, and phantom scenes from the past superimposed upon the present.

That's what "reality" looks like to Karl Petry, a psychic whose fame is on the rise. Petry makes the "I see dead people" kid in Sixth Sense look like an amateur.

Seeing double can be a bit disorienting at times, but Petry long ago learned how to accommodate his unusual ability. His own sixth sense opened in childhood, when he began seeing phantom scenes from the past. Like many young psychics, he soon learned that adults did not appreciate his uncanny knowledge, and so he kept quiet about his visions of the spirit world until well into adulthood.

I recently talked with Annie Wilder, author of House of Spirits and Whispers.

Emily: Your book, House of Spirits and Whispers, is an account of your experience living in a haunted Victorian home. What compelled you to write about your experiences?

Annie: I am a very lucky person — I was asked to write about it! Or, at least, I was asked to write a book. My friend Nancy Mostad was the acquisitions manager at Llewellyn and asked me to write a book on crystals. I told her I didn't know that much about crystals, but I could write a book about my haunted house. Nancy loved the idea and after submitting a proposal, I received a contract.

Wicca has been one of the fastest growing religions for decades. Born in England after World War II, it has spread around the globe. One of the key figures who helped to launch this religion is Raymond Buckland, often called "the Father of American Witchcraft."

Buckland, an Englishman, was the first major Witch to import Wicca to American shores. With Gypsy blood and a background in Spiritualism and esotericism, it was no surprise that he was drawn to the new Witchcraft — also called Wicca — that was revealed in England the 1950s by Goddess and the Horned God, the masculine aspect of deity (not the Devil), and embraced magical arts.

The new Witchcraft became the rage, and it popularity continued even after the ideas of Witchcraft as a "Old Religion" were laid to rest.

In the hallowed halls of the most Ivy of the Ivy Leagues, John Mack, MD, uses his knowledge and credentials to research that most spurned of research areas: UFO visitation.

A professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and founder of the Center for Psychology and Social Change and the John E. Mack Institute, Mack has authored a number of books including Passport to the Cosmos: Human Transformation and Alien Encounters. His early research focused on dreams and nightmares, teen suicide, the psychological basis of the Cold War, ecological crises, and the nuclear arms race. But in 1992, Mack helped lead the Abduction Study Conference at MIT, a major scientific meeting on aliens and alien meetings. In 1993 he made his new research focus formal by founding the Program for Extraordinary Experience Research (PEER).

Recently I spoke with New Jersey psychic Nancy Orlen Weber. She has worked closely with law enforcement on unsolved murder cases since 1980 and has utilized her abilities to help bring closure to many of these cases. Weber is also an ordained minister, a published author, songwriter and poet.

Emily: When did you first discover your intuitive abilities?

Nancy: I think it was more the response I received from my family that told me that it was not the normal. The intuitive abilities were always there and they were strong. I can remember in my array of instances knowing things and as soon as I could bring words together, speaking about what I knew and having it verified. Also having my family very upset by it. Over the years — and it took quite a few years — I discovered it was a tool that I could use for better purposes rather than scare my family with it. I didn't have control over it when I was young nor did I understand it was anything I could control. I did not know that it was a separate thing from others. The only way I knew it was different at all was my family wasn't thrilled.

In 1986, Father Gabriel Amorth, a priest for over 30 years, became an official exorcist. Since then, he claims to have performed over 50,000 exorcisms and to speak (and wrestle) with the Devil everyday. He founded the International Association of Exorcists, and is honorary president for life.

Amorth had never thought much of exorcism before 1986, when he was assigned to assist the famous exorcist of Rome, Father Candido. Amorth says from that point on, he realized how much work must be done, how few exorcists there were to do it, and how he must dedicate his life entirely to exorcism. He learned how to differentiate between physical or mental illness and genuine possession, and he found out quickly that no two cases were ever the same. During his tenure as an exorcist, Amorth authored two books on the subject, which do include references to official Roman Catholic beliefs on demonology, but mostly deal with his own experiences.

Lord Byron rocketed to fame with the publication of his autobiographical poem, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage in 1812. He became an instant sensation in his native England, but his skills as a poet only played a part in his fame. Put very simply, Byron was a mysterious figure, and his beliefs and actions both fascinated and repulsed many of his admirers. Born with a clubbed foot, he often played up the notion that the Devil shared the same deformity. In his writings, he variously indentified himself with Lucifer, Cain and the Faust figure. At his haunted ancestral home of Newstead Abbey, he was rumored to run Black Masses. Although there is no proof that Byron practiced Satanism in any serious way, we do know that he had an old skull crafted into a chalice so he could drink wine from this grisly cup.

Byron was someone who knew how to play to his fame, and he had fun building upon his natural aura of mystery. But, from at least a few reports, it is possible that there was more to Byron's involvement with the supernatural than just show. A report by the distinguished person of Sir James Peel suggests that Byron possessed the power of bilocation. In 1810, Peel met Byron on the street and held a brief conversation with the poet. At the time, however, Byron was nowhere near England. His physical body lay in Patras, Greece, desperately ill with a fever. Did the fever enable Byron somehow to astrally project? If so, he was able to produce such a solid phantom that Peel mistook it for the real thing.

The Amazing Kreskin is not a psychic. No, Kreskin bills himself as a mentalist, or a person able to perform seemingly psychic feats without the use of psychic powers. According to Kreskin, he can receive mental signals from his subjects, or send signals of his own to get people to choose the right card or the right word in a passage from a book.

The Amazing Kreskin had his own show on Canadian television in the 1970s, and has logged many appearances on the "Mike Douglas Show," the "Merv Griffin Show" and "The Tonight Show." Kreskin performs several hundred live shows per year, and occasionally spends his New Year's Day giving predictions for the coming year.

What would you do if you met Death? Artist Leilah Wendell would embrace him like an old friend. She claims to have met the personification of Death — both spiritually and physically — and through her art and her writing, she professes her devotion to this often misunderstood entity. Wendell is the founder of the Azrael Project, an organization devoted to the study of the personification of Death in the figure of the angel Azrael. In the '90s, the Azrael Project involved a physical newsletter in addition to the House of Death, a combination art gallery an museum devoted to Azrael, located in New Orleans. As the times and technology have changed, Wendell moved her tribute to Death onto the Internet as well.

Wendell has had experiences with Azrael since childhood, and she has made it her life's work to chronicle her relationship with this entity. She tells his story in her underground classic, Our Name is Melancholy, and she founded The Azrael Project to seek out stories from others who feel that their lives have been touched by this solemn and sometimes forbidding being.

Wendell, a talented artist who also runs the Westgate Gallery, does not see Death as evil or even frightening. From her paintings, it is clear that she finds Azrael to be a romantic figure. Her writings typify him as a gentle being who comes to release us of our burdens, and whose gifts include the cessation of pain. Some may find Wendell's fascination unsettling, and a few have accused her of bordering upon necrophilia in her portrayals of Azrael, but since the '90s, her work has attracted a core of very devoted fans. She herself has been unflagging in her dedication to Azrael, and she has collected a massive amount of material documenting individual sightings of what certainly seems to be the very personification of Death.

She's no Jennifer Love Hewitt, but she does talk to dead people. Meet Mary Ann Winkowski, the real-life inspiration for television's "The Ghost Whisperer." Residing in northeast Ohio, Mary Ann has been a ghost-buster for hire for going on 20 years. She has been called in to resolve many hauntings, and she is frequently called to attend funerals so that she can use her special talents to help dead loved ones move on.

Mary Ann believes that earthbound spirits have simply lost their way, and she uses her powers to communicate with the dead to send them into the light. Working as a consultant for "The Ghost Whisperer," Mary Ann continues to de-haunt houses. She recounts some of her more gripping experiences in her new book, When Ghosts Speak.

He was mysterious but powerful, and he helped to define a generation that explored psychedelics and mysticism. A decade after his death, little is still known about Carlos Castaneda — and whether or not he told the truth about his adventures with Mexican Yaqui sorcerers and shamans.

Castaneda's books became international bestsellers, a success that would have propelled most authors into a global limelight. But Castaneda deliberately kept himself in the shadows. He gave false information about himself in interviews, and even dropped completely out of sight for years.

Even his death is shrouded in mystery. He is said to have died of liver cancer, on April 27, 1998. There was no funeral, and he was cremated.

I spoke with Colonel Frank Alessi, former UFO investigator assigned to Provost Marshall USAF special weapons command, Kirtland Air Force Base, Albuquerque, New Mexico. Alessi retired from the Maryland military department in 2000.

Emily: How were you involved with UFO investigation in the military?

Alessi: A private pilot by the name of Kenneth Arnold in 1947, flying along a mountain range in the western US, spotted these objects that were maneuvering around the sky. They were not aircraft; he said they looked like a saucer placed on top of a saucer. Some gentleman in the news media gave it the name "flying saucer." That's where that term came from. Well, the Air Force looked into this, since they're the air sovereign of our country and our air space was being violated by whatever these objects were or are. They started Project Sign. The investigating personnel of Project Sign came to a conclusion that the objects were real solid objects under apparently intelligent control, equal to or superior to our own knowledge. The chief of staff of the Air Force said, 'hogwash, I don't want to hear that,' and disbanded Project Sign. They reformed it as Project Grudge — that was also to delve into the nature and extent of UFOs.

Graham Hancock is an extremely popular writer and journalist providing controversial solutions to ancient mysteries. He examines ancient myths, astronomical and astrological data from the past, and the existence of a "mother culture," the origin of all ancient historical civilizations. His books, including The Sign and the Seal, Fingerprints of the Gods and Heaven's Mirror, have sold more than 5 million copies worldwide and have been translated into 27 languages.

Hancock is especially known for his work with the "Orion Correlation Theory," first described by Robert Bauval. The theory contends the three main pyramids on the Giza plateau in Egypt, built in 10,500 BC, are located by design in spots correlated with the relative positions, from many thousands of years earlier, of the three stars making up Orion's Belt. Furthermore, the design and placement of the Sphinx, the Giza pyramids and the Nile River are an accurate reflection of the Leo, Orion and Milky Way constellations from that earlier time.

As far as Charles Fort was concerned, he was just going to the library to do research. When he began collecting newspaper clippings, stories, and other evidence of unexplained phenomenon, he had no idea that he'd eventually become known as the father of modern paranormalism.

Fort spent much of his adult life in libraries in New York and London, taking notes and gathering clippings on anomalous occurrences around the world. He was interested in alien abductions, psychics, spontaneous combustion and anything else that science couldn't explain. He took these findings and condensed them into four books over the course of his lifetime: Book of the Damned, New Lands, Lo! and Wild Talents. It was Fort's opinion that scientists often formulated theories and explanations based on their own personal biases instead of looking at the facts at hand. Fort collected evidence of the paranormal in an attempt to prove that unexplained phenomena did in fact exist, despite scientists' assertions to the contrary.

In praise of Charles Fort's expansive paranormal research, his friend Tiffany Thayer started the Fortean Society in 1931 to promote his work. After Thayer's death, the International Fortean Organization was established, and the Fortean Times was founded. These organizations base their work on Fort's theory that, "The fate of all explanation is to close one door only to have another fly wide open."

This Christmas I received a really great gift from my sister-in-law. A rudraksha seed on a black rope necklace. These seeds, which are believed by Hindus to have come from the tears of Lord Shiva, supposedly contain mystical and healing properties. They have been worn on malas (comparable to a rosary) by Hindu saints for thousands of years. My particular seed was blessed twice by "the hugging saint" Amma. My sister-in-law told me the story of Amma and I was moved.

Mata Amritanandamayi, otherwise known as Amma, was born a Hindu in India but does not support any one religion now. Regardless, people all over the world regard her a living goddess. Her religion, according to her, is love. This woman truly lives a divine life. Amma, which means "mother", hugs thousands of people per day — every day — and has been doing this for the past 30 years. My sister-in-law hugged Amma in San Diego and said the experience was "indescribable." People travel across the globe just to stand in line, usually for hours, to receive a hug from Amma. Once she is seated on her two cushions in lotus posture around 9 a.m., she will not leave until every single person waiting to see her has been hugged, taking only one break at 5 p.m. for two hours. She resumes hugging at 7 p.m. and does not stop until around 4 a.m. or until everyone is seen. If that isn't divinity then I don't know what is.