Paranormal News Insider celebrates TEN YEARS!

The Show History

   I received an email from Daniel Bautz back on April 22, 2008 regarding appearing on his radio program titled the Grand Dark Conspiracy. I would be the first guest on this new podcast and I was kind of excited about that. We went back and forth with emails for a few days and finally recorded the show on the evening of April 29th. The episode went up with very little fanfare in early May and I began to help Dan add some content to his message board and we continued to talk about the paranormal and I passed on some suggestions for future guests.

 

2008 concept logo (top) and first working logo (bottom). Red
and green represented opposite ends of belief. In late 2017 blue
replaced the upper right swirl which expanded. Light blue stands
for the sky and dark blue for the oceans while green (land)
ties it all together (yes, thought went into the logo!).

His podcast was prerecorded and was only to be a monthly show to start off with. He had parapsychologist Loyd Auerbach on for June and his ratings began to slowly accumulate. He had another ghost-based guest, author John Kachuba, as his July guest and had emailed me about coming back on for August to help shift the show into a different direction with talking about UFOs and cryptozoology. During that interview we talked about the Georgia Bigfoot Hoax that was underway at the time as well as some other news. He wondered if I was interested in doing a monthly news segment and I jumped at the idea.

   The two-hour September podcast of the Grand Dark Conspiracy featured an interview with Stanton Friedman, campfire tales, and the debut of the Paranormal News Insider. Back then the Paranormal News Insider were a short five to ten-minute segment that I prerecorded and sent to Dan. Since the segment was on a monthly show I utilized the new Paranewsinsider.com website to essentially become a blog style format writing about some of the top stories broken down in the various segments which at the time included cryptozoology, UFO, ghost, and strange Earth. I changed strange Earth to other news some time in the second year of the show.

   The Grand Dark Conspiracy ran as a monthly show until August of 2010 when it went weekly beginning on August 30th. Shortly after I realized I did not have the time to keep up the website for Paranewsinsider.com and it transitioned into a static website, but this is when I began to track the conferences and conventions and added other things to continue to attract people to that aspect of the show. The Paranormal News Insider powered on finishing 2010 with 25 episodes and then rallied through 2011 with 52 episodes completing the entire year without missing a week. The show went on with 49 episodes in 2012 and then 43 in 2013. However, after the December 30, 2013 show the Grand Dark Conspiracy took a hiatus until August 5, 2014. The host show had bounced around a number of podcast hosts over the years including the Shark Radio Network and Fate Radio, but in 2014 a new opportunity arose that would take the show into a new direction.

2014 promo for the show going to AM radio

   Starting on August 5th, 2014, the show was broadcast through WQTT AM 1270 AM based in Marysville, Ohio. The station is just outside the state capitol of Ohio covering the Columbus metro area at night. Over the next ten months the Grand Dark Conspiracy was broadcast from 2-4 AM and worked its way into going five nights a week. The Thursday night show was subtitled “The Darkest Hours” for a couple of months until Dan decided that the name Grand Dark Conspiracy might need to be adjusted if the show were to grow into syndication. The Friday night show was co-hosted with demonologist Dave Considine and myself when I was able to join. Eventually Dan cut back the show to just one night a week, the Thursday night show (Friday), and rebranded the entire show The Darkest Hours Late Night.

   After the June 5, 2015 show there were some changes at the WQTT radio station and Dan opted to move on before the show was removed. This left the Paranormal News Insider without a home once again. I had toyed with the idea of taking the show out on its own a few times when I thought that Dan was going to stop broadcasting or at least between downtimes when the host show was silent and then return to his show as my flagship broadcast. I peddled the idea to a few existing podcasts and live radio shows but was turned down by them for a variety of reasons. Interestingly, a few that “decided to pass on the idea” suddenly came up with their own paranormal news segments that imitated my effort. It was then that I decided if I couldn’t join them I would then beat them. There was a chance that the GDC would come back as I had heard that it was to join another network in early July, but the show never appeared, and I never heard back from Dan on the idea.

   On September 8, 2015, the Paranormal News Insider made its debut on the CJ Mars Radio Network on Tuesday nights at 7 PM for a one-hour time slot.  During the next few months the network changed to WCJV Digital Broadcasting and had several great shows and hosts associated with it. However, just days after the April 17, 2018 show WCJV decided to cease operations immediately and after a year and a half and over 125 standalone shows it was once again without a home.

   I had toyed around with several ideas although I knew I wanted to continue to do a radio show. Of my several options one was to just produce it myself, another was to join another network, and other ideas included doing a completely different show with a focus on guests on another network and potentially doing the PNI on the side. I did a show in late May to address the issue that the show was homeless as well as cover some news. In July I decided that I should come to a conclusion and while I had many offers as well as other ideas I opted to join the Paranormal King Radio Network. The show launched with episode number 360 on July 17, 2018 live at 8 PM eastern.

On the Show

 

While the format has always been paranormal news as well as conferences and conventions various changes have happened over the years. The first 230 shows were prerecorded and contained music and sound effects as part of the experience of the short segment. Many of the GDC segments I did had musical themes and I had tried a variety of other things including the Paranormal Poll, a book of the week, and conduct an annual “Top Paranormal News Stories” of each year. Of course, I did other zany things including using different voices as a tool to “go back in time” with aspects of the paranormal. I created a character named Rex Ritter for the 1930s and 40s from voices I did for a rap album back in 2006 and a mellow guy named Burt Williams to talk about stories in the 1970s. There were also the Halloween specials that would at least have some scary sound effects or other segments from old television shows. One year I created a fake UFO watch where the episode was prerecorded but Dan cut out to me in the field. I used the noises that had been recorded during sky noise encounters and pretended as though I was involved in an alien attack. Granted, while the show was on the Grand Dark Conspiracy there were many times I would join Dan live in studio where once we did a live Ouija Board session and another we did a séance with guest Dr. Kimberly Rackley.

   As the show moved to a live format I could no longer run music and have sound effects to support the segment. At the same time, I have been able to dig deeper into these stories as well as reflect to similar stories or to educate the listener on what is really going on behind the scenes. While many view the show as just a recap of the paranormal news and therefore has a shelf life I feel it serves an important service to capture what is happening at the time and using it to reflect on to keep the history straight as well as to show how we continuously fall for the same things over and over. In another attempt to document the history I began doing the "Top Ten Paranormal News Stories" of every year since 2010.

   The types of stories I discuss are cyprtozoology, UFOs, ghosts and other paranormal themes, as well as space, physics, modern mysteries, as well as viral news topics. Generally everything revolves around the paranormal or unknown to some certain extent. I take my reporting seriously and do my best to be as accurate and transparent as possible as to where my information comes from

   I do my best to dig for the truth to these stories no matter where that takes me. Some say I’m skeptical, but with many of the stories I cover being about hoaxes and misinterpretations I stress that I’m just covering this news and trying to stay objective. It’s easy to believe but it’s also easy to dismiss outright, the focus for me is digging for the reality behind the story and letting it put together the truth for me.

The Basics of Researching Online Media

“If you throw something up without fact-checking it and you’re the first one to put it up, and you get millions and millions of views, and later it’s proved false, you still got those views." 
- Ryan Grim, the bureau chief in Washington for The Huffington Post

Credit: lculig/Shutterstock

We’ve all read a story that is shocking, unbelievable, or just too good to be true. Some people may take the time to actually read the story before forming an opinion, others may judge on the headline either for or against the validity of the story based on their beliefs or perspective, and others may simply share or recirculate the story without reading it with the hopes that someone else can get to the bottom of it. Then there are those that merely believe anything and everything they read without thought. I mention this last group apart from the others since this gullible group is generally the target to those who intend to fool based on their agenda, beliefs, or just for the thrill of creating viral confusion or gaining their fifteen minutes of fame through a hoax. Gullibility does not imply someone is stupid, it merely means some people do not take or have the time to dig into certain headlines and others may just not know how to do it. To many these stories really are not worth the time to dig into and passing it along and looking back later for the solution is much easier. In some cases I just don’t think people care whether a story is valid or not anyway, it’s just getting “mind blown” that is the experience; the truth is boring to some. For others many stories support their beliefs or agenda and they will pass it off as fact since they have little reason or desire to verify it. Others may be quick to dismiss stories based on the same beliefs, again without verification. Technology is the carrier of these memes and it also the method in which to provide the antidote on a case by case basis. I come from a time before the World Wide Web of endless information when one had to search through books to find answers and in the case of the Internet you had to know what door to look through to find answers without a web browser, Google, or any way to simply enter a search cue into the system. Even before web browsers and the World Wide Web there were many emails circulated as hoaxes so this is not a new sensation although the large use of social media and the Internet has made this a growing problem. The leading social media platform, Facebook, has attempted to hinder the spread of hoaxes, but to little avail. 

There are many ways to look for the truth in a story, but the easiest way is to spot the misinformation. To spot the things that the story relies on as fact and expose it as a lie is the best method of dismantling a story quickly. However, there are some cases in which facts must merely be looked for elsewhere from more reliable means. An example would be in the case of a famous person dying, do not rely on fan sites for the information instead look toward an official channel of a band’s website or their agent for an official release.

I deal with identifying the validity of stories each and every day as I gather information for my weekly show, the Paranormal News Insider. I pride myself on searching for answers instead of merely regurgitating what appears in print on other sites. While I use many methods to search for the truth within information I have a fairly reliable method that has become a habit of use that I use when reading any type of story. This is what I call my basic “outside in” approach. With this approach I look at the top and bottom and move my way in to the core of the story to look for details of a hoax or misinformation. Once key details are established I can begin searching other resources outside of this page for more details to either confirm or deny this story, yet this also comes with pitfalls. Some stories have aspects of these that need to be researched to get a better feel of whether the story was created or shared by a credible source. Establishing the source is critical in determining the validity of a story.

With any story a headline can be deceiving. Many of us have become reliant upon a headline to provide us as much information as possible to understand a story without actually having to read it. If you have an interest in a story or intend to share the information it would behoove you to actually take time to read the entire story for content. There are many clues within the body of a story that can help you decide whether there is enough credibility in the story to pass it on. Again, headlines can be deceiving and the content of the story may have a different version of what you might actually think is there based on the deception.

Researching general stories found online:

The first step in determining the validity of any story is to first take the time to read it. A simple way of getting to the truth is to see if there is already someone who has done research on a story is to merely search for it. Use the keywords of a story and then enter “hoax” or other words that you think of that your gut is telling you about the story. Websites like Snopes.com, Hoax-slayer.com, urbanlegends.about.com, truthorfiction.com, and many others provide a resource of sanity about many of the hoaxes on the Internet.  Granted, one rule I always live by; NEVER RELY ON ONE RESOURCE FOR THE TRUTH!

Many people question the reliability of the leader of these sites; Snopes. This website is edited by a husband and wife team and while there may be mistakes all of the information gathered for a story is given out so the research behind every claim is there for the world to see. They have been judged by a number of other sites to be as accurate as you will find onthe subjects and the accuracy outweighs the minimal mistakes. The same holds true for another valued, yet many times questioned, resource; Wikipedia. This resource of information has received a bad rap from many people since it is an open-source where anyone can edit and update information. However, Wikipedia is watched closely for updates and requires legitimate resources for major changes or additions. Many have never questioned the validity of Encyclopedia Britannica, but Wikipedia has been found to be just as reliable mostly due to the diligent eyes on its content.

My “outside in” approach to validating online media:    

1. Consider the source

•  Is this a legitimate website? Is the URL spelled correctly? No? It may be a mirror site (or spoof site) and is created to fool you into thinking it is a credible source. Is this a parody website? (onion.com type).  Is this from a website where regular people contribute in blog style? This is by far the most common type of website hoax where stories are spread via misinformation and will take the longest to unravel at times since the story is written by the author’s opinion and web of lies and misinformation. A list of these sites would be in the hundreds (see a small list below before the resources) and includes sites like beforeitsnews.com, many government, conspiracy, and UFO sites that are merely fronts for people’s thoughts, ideas, opinions, fears, and agendas.

2. Consider the resource

•  The single most important thing after determining the validity of the website that the story appears on is finding the original source of the story. Any good media story that is merely copied and pasted will provide a link to the original source of the story at the bottom or sometimes the top of their posting. If there is a link open this one in a new tab and begin to evaluate it to determine the time/date is actually earlier than the one you originally opened. If this source appears to be an earlier version this is where you continue your research on the story beginning with determining if this is a legitimate source as well as if this story has a resource listed at the top or bottom of the story. The caveat with this is that there are some sites that back dates stories (such as celebrity death hoaxes) to confuse people. Continue to chase these sources until you reach the bottom of the rabbit hole. Unfortunately, many online media outlets do not take the time to fact check and are merely concerned with website traffic. Getting you to click on their website puts money in their pockets based on advertisers, so they honestly care little about the facts up front.
• Go local. You can also search for and look at other sources local to where the story purportedly took place. During the Jerusalem UFO sightings that seemed extremely credible I was not able to find any mention of the sightings in any local or regional online sources in the area and have found the same in many other hoaxes. However, during recent unexplained noises in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, the best updates were available from the local newspapers which printed updates which were then copied by the regional news channel websites. Go to Google and search for the city where the story takes place and use words like “newspaper” or “news” and you should be able to find local sources. Granted, searching for phrases of meaning with the story can help speed up the process by bringing up the multitude of copies of the story and will allow you to see where they are coming from to aid in the search for the original source.
• If the story does not list a source for the story then the content must be put into question as well as the person behind the post.  This is a positive indication that the person may have made this story up or has copied other information and created a version of a story about something else. Don’t be afraid to email someone associated with the site to find the source of their content; their answer or lack thereof will guide you to your answer. In some cases, such as a UFO, ghost, or cryptid news site the story may have been submitted to them. The question is then; did they evaluate, research, or investigate this story or merely put it up on the website as quickly as possible? Hoaxers and attention seekers will find sites like these to get their “stories” out in public quickly.

3. Consider the content

• Is the story filled with frequent misspellings, run on sentences, or is the structure of the story all over the place? Granted, punctuation is not something many in the media worry about these days as they rely on spell check and many times the comments section will point out issues which they will silently correct.
• Does the content seem to merely support and idea, opinion, or agenda more than actually reporting an event or story about something or someone? If so, this website is obviously peddling an agenda and not a legitimate story. I recommend using key terms in the article to be highlighted, right clicked, and searched for current information beyond this story and those that have copied that information until an actual source can be found if you have not done so already.

4. Consider the evidence

• They say a picture is worth a thousand words and articles can live and die with them. While sadly it has become common practice for many news agencies to alter photographs in order to focus on certain things others will immediately fire you for such an act. Photographs have been edited long before digital methods such as Photoshop came along and most of us take edited photographs for granted as they appear on nearly every single magazine on the newsstands.
• Many images are altered to provide visual evidence to support the story. If a story is reliant upon an image you can take simple steps to search for an original unaltered image if one exists. There are two methods; Google image search and TinEye that search the Internet for photographs that have been placed on the web and have been crawled and recorded on search engines. Both of these resources have plugins that will allow you to right click on the image and search from the prompt (see resources below). You will have to scroll through examples of these photographs and see if you can find other versions of this photograph that indicate that the one in the story has been tampered with.
• There are limitations to mere image searching. For starters, if the person is using a photograph that has not been crawled and is not preexisting on the Internet you will obviously not find the original. Also, if an image is altered significantly it may not show up in simple image searches. You can combat this by cropping the image or altering the image eliminating an area you feel is put in digitally using simple methods such as using paint on Windows-based computers. After retouching you can upload it to TinEye to see if the alterations helped the search. Another reason for images not being found is if they are screen captures of videos. On more than one occasion I have traced an altered photograph to a video. In Google you can search for topics by category and if I hit a dead end with pictures I may try to search for relevant videos on the specific topic of the photograph to see if there is a video with the image.
• Be mindful that just because you are unable to find an altered image does not mean the photograph in the story is legitimate. There are many other ways to determine the validity of photographs such as using InfranView and other software to find image inconsistencies created from digital manipulation to looking at the metadata, but I’ll save that for a more in-depth look at uncovering the truth.

5. Consider the comments

• One highly overlooked method of finding the truth is based on those commenting on the story. Granted, reading through comments on stories that rely on belief tend to be full of opinions and arguments, but occasionally there will be a crusader of research (such as myself) that will jump in and provide useful information that can dispel these stories. I usually will peruse the comments section of the viral post as well as the original source to seek out clues or information that can help me unravel as hoax.

I will cover YouTube and other videos in a separate blog post in the future.

Sites to question or avoid based on who is able to publish on these sites, their agenda, or other questionable reasons:

• Beforeitsnews.com, NaturalNews.com, InfoWars.com, DailyCurrant.com, NationalReport.net, WorldNewsDailyReport.com, AmericanNews.com, Celebtricity.com, Huzlers.com, DoctorOz.com, TheNewsNerd.com, News-hound.org, NewsWatch33.com, TheRacketReport.com, WeeklyWorldNews.com, Demyx.com, Empirenews.net, MediaFletcher.com, EmpireSports.co, Disclose.tv, FoodBabe.com, Chopra.com, ChristianAnswers.net, Heartland.org, TheLapine.ca, MediaMass.net, Newslo.com, NewsBuzzDaily.com, EmpireNews.net, TheOnion.com, The DailyMash.co.uk, Rumormillnews.com, Whatreallyhappened.com, Drudgereport.com, blacklistednews.com, rense.com, inquisitor.com, examiner.com, even huffingtonpost.com. This is by no means a complete list!

Resources and further reading:

• TinEye: Reverse image search, the ultimate resource for discovering other sources of pictures by entering URL or uploading directly to system. TinEye has a plug in that allows for right click usage on multiple browser platforms; chrome, firefox, IE, safari, and opera.
• Google Image Search Chrome Plugin: While you can search and advance search images by going to Google.com you can use this plugin by right clicking over an image the same way as TinEye.
• Snopes: The leader in truth finding.
• Hoax Slayer: Another leader in the truth.
• Urban Legends at About.com: Hosted by David Emery.
• Truth or Fiction: A non-partisan site geared toward uncovering recent urban legends and hoax stories.
• Better Read That Again: Web Hoaxes and Misinformation
• The Complete Guide to Evaluating Online Resources: From Hosting Facts.com.
• Evaluating Internet Resources: From Teacher Tap. 
• Lies, Damn Lies and Viral Content: How News Websites Spread(and Debunk) Online Rumors, Unverified Claims and Misinformation.
• How to Spot Lies, Hoaxes and Misinformation Online
• The Observers’ guide to verifying photos and videos on social media networks.
• You're not going to read this: But you'll probably share it anyway: A study of how stories are read, or not read, and shared on social media.
• Facebook Is Cracking Down on Viral Hoaxes. Really. A look at how Facebook has attempted to slow the problem.
• Don't Be Fooled! A Guide to Fake News Websites: From David Emery of About.com
• Posing Questions of Photographic Ethics.
• Photojournalism Behind the Scenes: An excellent view of how photographers influence events.
• What Happens When Photoshop Goes Too Far.
• National Press Photographers Association Code of Ethics.
• DHMO.org: Dihydrogen monoxide research division: A parody website that shows how people will sometimes believe anything!
• Save the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus: Another parody website that is not viral, but would certainly confuse a lot of people.
• Museum of hoaxes: A nice collection of stories across the ages.
• Fake websites or spoof websites. Examples of false sites to aid in evaluating internet resources.
• Small list of hoax sites for educating people: Many of these are old or no longer working, but are some of the best created!
• Top Internet hoaxes: A short list of some of the best hoaxes over the years.