It comes down to torches and pitchforks. In classic monster movies, when the villagers determine where the monster is currently residing, they set forth in a group organized solely by righteous anger. They then proceed to have fun storming the castle.
As is determined somewhere in the angry mob charter, villagers are required to take up torches and pitchforks for the nightly rampage. Oh sure, some nonconformists prefer shotguns, axes or even rakes, but the classics persist. The best examples of a torch-and-pitchfork wielding crowd has to be the 1931 film Frankenstein, but the beloved trope has shown up in a variety of great pop culture, including The Phantom of the Opera, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Far Side, and The Simpsons.
Now, I love me some angry mobs in entertainment; it’s fun to watch the fear-driven peasants juiced up on paranoia take to the streets for a little old fashion shouting and rioting – especially when they take to singing as in “The Mob Song” from the 1991 animated movie Beauty and the Beast or Jesus Christ Superstar. Plus, I frequently join in the angry mob national past times of football and baseball fandom, and even have an angry mob playset surrounding a Freddy Krueger action figure. So yeah, mobs rule.
Yet I’m less than enthused to see the current angry mobs convening in New York City over the proposed Muslim community center a few blocks away from Ground Zero. For that matter, I’m not a fan of rampaging villagers who rise up over healthcare, immigration, gay rights, elections or any cause. While it is a good thing the torches and pitchforks have been replaced by poster boards and megaphones - which just barely prevents the likelihood of violence – these protesters are simply vociferous medieval peasants. They are the “mobile vulgus,” the Latin root for mob meaning “the fickle crowd.”
There was a time when you’d gather around the campfire and everyone had a ghost story to tell. Now, thanks in large part to the reality-TV paranormal genre, it seems everyone has a story with accompanying video.
When Ghost Hunters premiered on the Syfy network in 2004 it popularized the notion anyone could pick up a video camera and possibly find evidence of the paranormal - and so they did. Along with the dozen other similar programs that dominate cable, seemingly thousands of amateur ghost busters and monster hunters launched Web sites and YouTube channels to show off their proof of the supernatural. And it would seem just as many set out to spoof or goof those serious-minded investigators with hoaxes.
That’s where former FBI agent Ben Hansen and his team (above and right) on Syfy’s new show Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files comes in. Premiering tonight at 10 EST, the show is a paranormal MythBusters; as opposed to other programs in the genre that looks into claims, this one switches it up slightly and essentially investigates the investigators.
Instead of seeking their own evidence or taking on clients, per se, Hansen’s crew of supposedly three years – which includes scientist Bill Murphy and journalist/Destination Truth alum Jael De Pardo along with an effects specialist, photography expert and stunt expert – explores video submissions and famous paranormal footage to determine which can be validated or debunked through experimentation.
For instance, in the first episode, the team tears through a few appetizer videos before selecting on two to investigate: The viral “ghost car” video from Georgia that shows a motorist evading police at “supernatural speeds” before phasing through a solid fence, and a collection of extraterrestrial lights over Phoenix, Az. The team travels to the spots where the events happened to interview eyewitnesses and recreate the video events.
In a recent interview, team leader Ben Hansen, scientist Bill Murphy and Executive Producer John Brenkus spoke about Paranormal Files (after the preview below):
Q: When did you know that you wanted to investigate ... was it when you were with the FBI or earlier in your life?
Ben Hansen: Okay, well I actually was about 10 years-old, my father got me kind of interested in this. We used to watch sci fi movies, we used to watch like The Thing and The Flyand those types of things late at night. And he got me interested in UFOs, he started bringing me books to read on it.
I wasn’t really aware at the time but he had a connection with his father, my grandfather. He worked actually at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, I don’t know if you know about that base, it’s where supposedly some of the wreckage from Roswell was sent.
Well my grandfather worked there as a civil engineer and throughout the years of talking with him he always kept his oath of secrecy that he made with the projects he was working on. But in so many words he let my father know that we’re not alone. So this kind of piqued an interest in my father and in turn he and I kind of bonded on this level where we became just tremendously interested in mostly UFOs.
I remember seeing E.T. when I was younger and really becoming interested in the possibility of life on other planets. So to kind of go back, no, I was not, per se, investigating the subject in any professional or official sense when I was working with the Bureau or with any other agency. But I always kept it as kind of a hobby until I developed a group and we kind of got into the ghost hunting and other aspects of it.
Bill Murphy: I’m just going to comment quickly about what really attracted me to the show. First off I should state that Ben and I had been operating in the same circles for years ... and so when Ben and I met we developed a very quick rapport and we realized we’re on the same page but maybe taking it from different angles.
Ben’s formal experience has been in law enforcement. Myself, I’ve been involved in the paranormal for a couple of decades, it kind of goes way back with my family.
And with my family and growing up as a child with it was very skeptical. It was almost like I’m listening to the older folks talk about the tales and just about sort of skipped through it without necessarily putting a whole lot of weight into it. Until I got old enough to see that these things were kind of going on around us but I wasn’t satisfied with just hearing the tales nor was I satisfied with what I thought my own perceptions were.
I thought I needed to be able to validate these experiences through technology. And so I set about to begin the documentation process. So when Ben and I met and we spoke it was just like instant connection. And so I felt that this opportunity for me was a really good fit because I had been the skeptical believer, if you will.
... And sometimes that isn’t a popular position to take when you’re entrenched in the paranormal community. The community looks for gratification from evidence but is it the evidence of the paranormal? Is it misidentification? Is there an explanation that science more readily accepts? Well this show takes a look at all those things and all those possibilities and we come up with the best possible answer.
Q: What is the most convincing evidence that you’ve picked up off the show that viewers will not see. Also, have you had a moment where you or any of your team, has encountered something that really couldn’t be proven through evidence but you just had to believe it; you just bought into it even though you couldn’t support it?
Ben Hansen: That’s a good question. Two questions. Bill do you have something off the bat, I’ve got a few.
John Brenkus: Let me actually just jump in first ... I think that one of the first things is in the debut show you’ll see that we investigate some mysterious lights in Arizona and we genuinely - I was there on the shoot - we were all there on the shoot and genuinely we caught something that we simply can’t explain.
We all witnessed it and we were extraordinarily fortunate to capture it on tape and you know it’s one of those things that we caught that we can’t say for absolutely certain that it is something paranormal but it’s certainly something that’s unexplainable as of today.
I’m really excited to share it with the audience, that was definitely one of the highlights of the series so far.
Ben Hansen: And that’s really big for John to say that. John is actually one of the biggest skeptics ever. I could bring him a UFO on his lawn and he’d say it was fake.
Bill Murphy: You know, I have to agree with John. John, that was an amazing moment to have happen and it was ... to be there while it occurred, it’s one of things where you know can you believe your own eyes? Because seeing is supposed to be believing and in that case we had to believe our eyes. But what I’ve learned since then ... is that sometimes seeing is not believing.
Sometimes you can’t believe what you’re seeing and there’s an alternate explanation but in the case of what happened in Arizona, that was a truly phenomenal occurrence to have happen. And I’m glad it did, to that point it was early in the morning, we were all damp and cold and I think nobody was aware of the environment once our eyes were on the sky and we saw what we saw.
It was quite a sight for us.
Ben Hansen: Talk about something that maybe that you’ve seen not on the show, something the best evidence of something you’ve experienced that wasn’t on the show.
Bill Murphy: Yeah, that was one of the questions. Well something that has happened - and again, I think everybody here on the show is focused on looking for an explanation that you can personally accept easier as opposed to moving it into the category of being paranormal. But with that being said, I went to a location in Colorado where there were reports of some sort of - it wasn’t necessarily TK (telekinesis) what was happening there, it was people were being - reporting being touched and shoved by an unseen force. And I found that to be interesting because I kept hearing thing from a lot of people. So when I was there, I was going through the location and yeah, it’s a beautiful historic place.
Although I was enjoying the architecture, I walked through this area of the hall and it was like I had dozens of vibrating cell phones in every pocket. It felt like all the sudden everything vibrated on my body. And I stopped, I was like, "Hey, what was that?"
And I backed up, took a couple steps back and I felt it a second time but wasn’t as strong as the first time. And I had to sort of just not laugh but I shook my head in disbelief in going these reports have a validity. There is something here but what is it? As it turned out, there could be an explanation for what people described as being touched by an unseen force and it has its roots in hard science. It has its roots in the geology of a location and sometimes there are enough characteristics of a locale that when they come together they can cause a phenomena that can be perceived as being paranormal.
If you took an interdisciplinary approach to it and combined sciences, then you can come up with a rational explanation that can be considered paranormal because it’s hard to duplicate that and that is one of the requirements for something to move from theory to fact. Can you replicate it? Can you replicate this effect?
Paranormal phenomena isn’t always repeatable even in a lab and that’s what makes it confounding. Because you can’t deny the existence of these events but they don’t adhere to the protocols that are in place for something to move out of the theory range. But you have to look at people trend setting of this thing to happen. If something happens over and over and over, you know there’s a certain credibility that comes from the accumulation of witnesses.
And if you can sort of demonstrate how it can happen scientifically then voila, we’ve done our job from a science perspective.
For me, having the experience of an unseen force seeming to press against you, was quite astounding but it wasn’t what we thought it was. You weren’t being touched by an external force, it was a shape change to the skeleton and to the skull as a result of piezoelectric activities of the minerals in the location. So you feel your skin moving but it’s happening under the skin as opposed to on top of the skin.
Q: That still leaves the question of something that you just really had to believe even though you couldn’t back it up with any evidence or any science.
Ben Hansen: Let me give you an example of something well my two examples. The first one was when I was recently out of college, this is actually the very first time I tried doing an EVP session. I had seen there’s a local ghost hunter group that would play their clips on the radio and things, and you kind of take it with a grain of salt, just as everyone else who listens to these things. And you may even somewhat believe, but you just put it in the back of your minds because you get up and go to work the next day ... it doesn’t really change the impact of your life until you actually hear one of these things yourself.
I was in a memorial - a war memorial park with my sisters and a couple of friends - and we were kind of doing the Halloween thing and going there and doing some recordings. And we’re standing next to this war memorial and I’ve got two recorders going and I was telling my friend I really wish I could have brought them there before they had cleared out a lot of the trees because it looked a lot more spooky and I could have showed them something that would really scare them. Well nothing really happened during the whole investigation until I got home and played the set.
And this was one of the old analog recorders and I played it back and I didn’t even need to slow it down the first time; very clearly I heard the voice of either a small child or a woman. It sounded like it was whispering right against the microphone which really creeped me out because you’re thinking if this is like a person they would have to have been right at my hip.
That’s where the recorder was and it says, “Get brother.” I knew where the females were in the group and my sister was about 15 feet away; we went through every elimination, it couldn’t have been this person, couldn’t have been that person. It gave us the chills.
I played it back for my family over and over and I had to face the realization that quite possibly I had captured something that was not a living person ... there are many theories on to what EVPs are, but the phenomena is real in the same sense I’ve witnessed objects in the sky that - I myself am a licensed pilot, I love going to air shows and things - I’ve seen aircraft that have done things that conventional crafts do not do. And beyond that, I can’t say what it is but the phenomena is real.
So I think I forgot the original question!
Q: Just what would make you a believer even though you couldn’t back it up with evidence.
Ben Hansen: Not just in a paranormal sense, but there’s a lot of things like Bill was starting to say. You know there’s this dichotomy of seeing and believing. Can we believe everything that we see, and if we don’t see something does that mean we shouldn’t believe in it? So I think a lot of people, especially the viewing audience may never have had an experience of their own but there’s a lot of people who believe. And kind of, by proxy or vicariously, you’re able to see through the eyes of what these people are seeing and that’s the great thing about our show.
Many people would not be able to go out to the places we’ve been to. And by bringing them our experience through our eyes I think there is a way that you can believe without actually seeing yourself.
Q: So it’s the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence scenario then.
Ben Hansen: Correct. I think all discoveries, major discoveries started out with a phenomena that they couldn’t quite explain. Look at electricity and how it was discovered, well you saw the effects of it but did you actually see electricity - what it was doing? And so people started setting up controlled experiments to find out well how can we test that. And I think that’s where we’re at in the paranormal field a lot of times.
We believe it because we know something has happened, has affected one of our senses. Whether we’re able to capture it on film or audio or some other way to demonstrate it to somebody else may be another question.
Q: So what’s the challenge with the tools you have in the field to spot something that could be faked?
Bill Murphy: Okay, well one of the criteria that we have ... is a strong eyewitness. And so if there are multiple witnesses ... that makes for a really strong case because you’re talking about something that is not just a piece of video ... where they shot it but something that physically is there that other witnesses have come forth and said they’ve seen.
And there could be 911 calls or news reports or whatever it takes, reporting an object or a sighting or some sort of event that’s happened. Those are strong cases, so the video is bolstered by multiple eyewitnesses or if there are limited eyewitnesses then there’s a credibility you have to look at.
What are the motivations for this video being posted? And if we get there we really don’t pull any punches to try to replicate the video. So the challenges are something that I don’t think we’ve had stop us. Generally we try to stop at nothing once we’re there to demystify the video. I mean we stop at nothing. Really extreme stuff and it’s a lot of fun.
Ben Hansen: When we do come up against those cases that are very difficult, either they’re done very well in CG, we’re just not sure, that’s where I like to use my experience and focus on the poster or the witness who shot this video or provided this photo. For me, it’s a lot easier sometimes to find the signs of deception through the person themselves, and with my experience, I’ve conducted thousands of forensic interviews. On the show, it’s no exception. I like to isolate the witness and use the neutral questions and everything that I would do in a real criminal investigation and try to see if there’s deception there. More likely than not, when people are pinned down and asked if they faked something, most people are not good liars.
So I rely more on that. Bill usually heads up the clarification of images and things like that. I focus on the human aspect. When you finally encounter someone that is faking and you pin them down, I mean you kind of need these people to do your job, they make you sharper and they help put the truth out there.
Q: So are you kind of happy when you find the fakes? Are you happy when you encounter the people that are trying to pull off fake fraud because you need them? And have you examined other paranormal shows and looked at what they consider evidence? Have you made judgments based on that?
Ben Hansen: That’s a really good question ... I’ve seen on blogs, I’ve read people saying you guys should investigate this show or this show, kind of funny.
No, we’re not in the business of telling other people how to investigate or what to do. And as far as being happy about catching a hoaxer, I think sometimes the initial discussions I’ve had with people and the title of the show, sometimes they’re a little confused that we are just trying to evaluate hoaxes or not.
And that’s not the case. When we say fact or faked, faked could also be not that they purposely faked it but that it was a phenomena that is naturally occurring that they captured. In fact ... I’m not going to throw a percentage out there but there’s a great amount of cases we’ve gone out on where I find that the witness is very credible. Even from the start I’m not out trying to prove that they faked this video. Moreso, I’m trying to find out what it was they captured on video. Does that make sense?
So it’s not always was the video hoaxed or not, it’s was the situation a fake situation in that was it natural or other explanation or not.
But yes, if you do find someone who’s purposely gone out of their way to try to pull the wool over your eyes and you’re able to show them that it’s not real, it is kind of satisfying because I think in the professional community of people who really give their whole professional life to investigate the paranormal, it’s disheartening. It really detracts from the real work that’s going on when someone wastes someone else’s time doing this.
I love the fakes if people add a disclaimer: "Look what I was able to produce!" But that’s where the responsibility and accountability comes in so I think it is kind of fun to maybe catch someone every now and then if they really had that intention.
John Brenkus: I think when you see the structure of the show we have this situation room where we sit around and discuss clips. That’s really where you find a lot of the blatant fakes ... When we go out to investigate it we have the cooperation of everybody involved with that case from the people that shot the tape to the eye witnesses to everybody.
So I think that unearthing something that was intentionally faked is probably going to be the rarity because we have the cooperation of everybody involved with the case. It won’t rise to the level of being a case that we’re going to investigate if we can determine that it’s fake before we ever go out in the field.
There are just too many cases out there that meet our criteria that we wouldn’t really waste our time going out into the field and investigating it if we already know that it’s fake. So the cases that wind up being the meat of the show are the ones that we feel are compelling footage with a credible eyewitness and something that is testable.
Bill Murphy: Many occasions evidence of paranormal activity is recorded by accident. Somebody is out there shooting the birthday party in the backyard for example and then something happens and the camera was rolling. They capture that, so those people, they’re looking for either validation of their material or they’re looking for an explanation. So there are many times, just as curious as we are ... it’s not like a lot of people that are out there just trying to fool the team.
I mean I’m sure the Internet is full of that but we do use that filtering process that John mentioned and those are kind of fun to look at but they’re easily dismissible.
Q: You’re not necessarily going to set out to investigate other shows, but on the flip side, are there either shows or investigators doing things you respect?
John Brenkus: Not just because it’s on Syfy, but Ghost Hunters does a great job of bringing a scientific approach to the ghost hunting world and really looking at it. And I think Syfy is doing a great job of covering this topic in a way that an intelligent audience can really enjoy. I think they’ve been very intelligent about not just pandering to an audience and saying, "Look, this must be a ghost." They really like to explore and get into it and I think that that whole group has done some really good work. And we’re really looking to build on the success that Syfy has had and take it to the next level.
Ben Hansen: For me, I just watched an excellent documentary last night, and it was on Syfy, but the one about inside the secret government warehouses. I think it was really well done. They got as far as I think they could in researching that. I like the work that George Knapp in Las Vegas has done breaking the Area 51 story and the Skinwalker Ranch - The book that he co-authored about Skinwalkers. I love reading those things because, especially in books, you have a lot more time to get in depths of the details and see their methodology and what they do.
I try to build on that and I would love to be able to - we’re kind of constrained in some senses. We can’t go out for months to a location and set up an experiment. But those pioneers of the field are those that I really try to follow and respect.
Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files airs Thursdays, 10 p.m., EST on Syfy.
I didn’t cry in “Toy Story 3.” The remainder of the audience in the movie theater was teary-eyed during the last 15 minutes of the film, but aside from a full bladder resulting from a jumbo soda, I was dry as a bone. And I didn’t care for Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy all that much, either.
But wait, don’t break out the pitchforks and torches just yet because I am not a monster. As it happens, I enjoyed “Toy Story 3,” but don’t consider it tear-inducing or all that “great.” And the first installment of Millennium, “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” was a compelling read (even if I think Larsson had some serious issues with women) but the follow-ups didn’t connect with me and I was left wanting.
Now, it would be easy to label me a pop-culture contrarian, the type of person who automatically dislikes whatever is popular or disagrees with consensus just to be different. Instead, I fear the exposure enjoyed by these things has left me not loving the universally beloved.
Frequently, when something is considered truly awesome by audiences and critics alike, chatter and media coverage reach a fever pitch until anyone who hasn’t seen/read/listened to the object of such attention is behind the times or considered a pop pariah.
Surprising as it is, I have friends who still haven’t seen “The Empire Strikes Back” or “The Godfather: Part II,” read “The Da Vinci Code” or any Harry Potter book, or ever watched an episode of “The Sopranos” or “Mad Men.” But more shocking still are the ones who just don’t like these sacrosanct entertainment entries.
For instance, post to your Facebook wall you don’t revere The Beatles, and that the Sergeant Pepper album is overrated or even just “meh.” Woo boy, just observe the angry mob that forms “Are you smoking crack?” “What’s wrong with you?” “You just didn’t give it a try.” “You just hate it because it’s popular.” Say something similarly dismissive to twi-hards in Hot Topic, and you won’t even make it to the food court before they take you out.
To not love the universally beloved is to segregate yourself from the masses because it is received as an invalidation of other people’s tastes – even if you add, “but it’s OK if you like it.” I know this because I’ve been wounded in the same way.
A few years back I was dating a girl and things were progressing quite swimmingly – until I showed her a favorite movie of mine at the time, “Kicking and Screaming.” Not to be confused with the abysmal Will Ferrell soccer-dad flick from 2005, this “Kicking and Screaming” came out a decade earlier, and was the first film written and directed by Noah Baumbach. The film about twentysomething slackers caught between college and the real world spoke to me, and I was excited to share it with the new girl.
And she hated it.
The girl hated a movie I really loved at the time, but she didn’t hate me. It was fine by her I enjoyed it, but it just wasn’t her thing. She didn’t have an issue with a majority of my other tastes, and even found it somewhat charming I had a Green Lantern power ring replica - that’s more than most guys can reasonably expect from a girl. Still, her take on “Kicking and Screaming” gnawed at me. I was younger and way stupid, but it felt like a personal slight. We stopped dating for many, many reasons, but was her snub of that movie always in the back of my head? You betcha.
Of course it was wrong on my part to feel that way since. I felt her rejection was invalidating my tastes, but by essentially requiring her to love the same thing, I was precisely doing the same to her.
Besides, it’s more fun to debate quality and excellence when we don’t all agree.
Do sardines in a can have an expectation of privacy? Moreover, do they try to imagine they’re the only sardine in the can? These are the questions I pondered repeatedly on a three and a half hour flight this last weekend whilst I was shoehorned in a middle seat in coach.
Positioned in an awkward, contorted physical arrangement that would make Mr. Fantastic cramp up, I cracked open my laptop – with the screen positioned at the maximum 45 degrees possible in the tight space – and began catching up with “Breaking Bad.” Over the course of 58 minutes, there were two very active, but under the covers, “motion of the ocean” sexual activities and enough shots of actor Bryan Cranston’s butt to last me several miserable lifetimes. And I just didn’t care who else had to see it.
Nothing in the “Breaking Bad” episode went beyond a PG-13 rating and my seatmates were both adults. And for a moment I even felt a little embarrassed, and had I any space to twist the screen away, I may have. But in the middle seat? Not so much.
The middle seat on a long flight is purgatory bordering on hell. The most diminutive person is a behemoth in the middle seat and comfort is an alien concept. Even with quiet, affable seatmates flanking each side, every movement is a challenge and elbows are thrown.
The middle seat is many things. In addition to being a boon to the chiropractic industry, it’s an extreme exercise in optimism since it makes you hate life, but also motivates you to consider the bright side that the plane remains in the air. What the middle seat is not is private - and as much as passengers try, the flying sardine can with recycled airflow offers no expectation of privacy.
When flying, entertaining oneself and distracting the mind is a survival tactic of endurance, so how much should surrounding passengers affect our onboard pop culture consumption? I say not much.
Aside from the fact that when you’re traveling and watching a movie, you may not know what to expect (until someone launches a Flying Friendly Flicks Web site that details which movies are airplane safe – or when to fast forward while on the plane).
I still keenly remember watching “The Cooler” on another flight that when Maria Bello got unexpectedly naked - followed up by William H. Macy in an interminable full-frontal shot – I scrambled like a caught teenager watching late night Cinemax (or even the old USA Network “Up All Night”) to turn off the video. But I doubt the little blue-haired lady sitting next to me would have even noticed – much – as long as I didn’t try to yack her ear off or take up more than my allowable amount of armrest space.
Nearly anything that occupies passengers and makes a flight go by faster is fair game. Certainly there are limits. It always amuses me that newsstands in terminals sell hardcore nudie mags since I’m fairly certain only the most pathological pervert would be browsing the material on a plane. Additionally, something along the lines of “Saw” (or even “Sex and the City 2”) is too tasteless for public consumption. But the allowable limits should be broad especially if it means traveling on a quiet flight where everyone slips into a personal world.
But successful traveling really requires a high functioning ability to tune out the rest of the world. Winking other humans out of existence makes the process somewhat smoother when at security checkpoints or in baggage claim madness. Once on the plane, when cramped into confined spaces small enough to draw the attention of the ASPCA, slipping into a solitary mental headspace where no other people exist is essential.
So next time the guy sitting next to fires up a video that happens to feature the saggy white posterior of an incredibly gifted actor, just close your eyes and pretend you’re the only sardine in the can.
Dan Aykroyd looks like a cop in a crowd of Ghost Busters, Blues Brothers and Blues sisters. The shades are reminiscent of the erstwhile Elwood, but the black button-up shirt with insignia above the breast pocket and black University of Maryland Police ball cap reminds one of a police officer, secret service or DEA agent arriving to survey a scene. It makes it somewhat fitting, then, when the celebrity’s first actions at the Joe Canal’s Discount Liquor Outlet in Iselin, NJ, in late March include shuffling off overzealous press photographers in an officious “show’s over” manner and getting a snaking line of bedecked fans moving for an afternoon of photos, autographs, meet-and-greets - and skull signings.
Despite Aykroyd’s physical similarities to a police officer – a comparison he’d likely appreciate considering his longstanding fascination and relationship with law enforcement agencies in the United States and his native Canada – the skulls he’s signing aren’t human bones that hold forensic clues, but are instead connected to legend, made of glass and contain quadruple-distilled, triple-filtered, additive-free Crystal Head Vodka.
But aside from being just another premium vodka that retails for about $50 and happens to come in a wicked cool glass bottle, CHV - as Dan Aykroyd tells it in between each Sharpie marker signature applied to fans’ alcoholic acquisition - is inspired by the crystal skull myth popularized in the last “Indiana Jones” flick and is the imbibable incarnation of his work as an entertainer and lifelong association with the paranormal and mysticism.
“All my life I’ve been giving people recordings, radio shows, television broadcasts, sketch comedy, film,” he says. “Now I’m actually making something that I can put in their mouths - a tangible, tactile experience.”
Launched in Southern California in 2008 (with a viral video some were convinced was an elaborate joke) before rolled out to other regions throughout 2009, the CHV “experience” is the latest endeavor of a man who has created, written and performed as several iconic comedic characters from the past 35 years. Since graduating from Chicago’s Second City improv comedy troupe and joining Saturday Night Live as an original repertory member in 1975, the lines Dan Aykroyd has penned or spoken could alone fill a sizable volume of pop-culture quotable quotes – and no true fan of ’80s movies could call his DVD collection complete without at least owning The Blues Brothers, Trading Places and Ghost Busters. And under the auspices of his cool man-in-black alias Elwood Blues, Aykroyd created the House of Blues restaurant and concert hall chain, and educated newcomers to the music genre through his House of Blues Radio Hour.
But Aykroyd is also well known as a Spiritualist and paranormal pop culture icon who holds the belief that spirits and ghosts communicate with the living - a family tradition covered in his father Peter’s book, A History of Ghosts, for which he wrote the forward – and has extensive knowledge on UFOs. His openness on such paranormal topics makes it all the more engaging when he describes the pure Newfoundland deep aquifer vodka filtered through Herkimer Diamonds, polished crystals that are supposed to emit positive energy.
The positive energy is a recurring theme with the crystal skulls legend, which involves 13 ancient, quartz rock human skull carvings that supposedly possess mystical properties that, if brought together, will usher in a new era, or cause the end of the world – possibly all happening on Dec. 21, 2012, which of course marks the grand finale of the Mayan calendar. The British Museum and Smithsonian, both of which possess a skull, determined the objects aren’t as old as the tales suggests, but Aykroyd isn’t as easily convinced; he claims other cultures believed the heads were “from another star, a gift from above.”
“There are some who are skeptics and say that they’re all fakes. That’s what the Smithsonian said,” says Aykroyd. “But I can’t quite believe that because the Navajo spoke of them, the Aztec spoke of them, the Maya spoke of them. And they spoke of them as a very integral part of the tribe’s responsibility.”
, To Kill a Mockingbird
, The Far Side
, and The Simpsons
.
or Jesus Christ Superstar
. Plus, I frequently join in the angry mob national past times of football and baseball fandom, and even have an angry mob playset surrounding a Freddy Krueger action figure. So yeah, mobs rule.
