On this podcast, we explore fantastical thinking, moral panics, conspiracy theories, and urban legends, examine the forces that shape our culture, and tell the stories that create the realities we share, and sometimes the realities

we don't.

I'm your host, Chelsea Weber Smith, and this is American hysteria.

Yes, he believes that beings from other planets have been intimate with him.

I don't think it's going to yield its secrets to the frameworks of proof.

Could have several visits a day, I think this straining credulity.

You are deeper and deeper asleep.

You will remember everything, and you will tell me everything.

I... Remember everything? And you will tell me everything. I almost remember.

You can remember. My friend Johnny and I spent a lot of time together in our childhoods, lying out on a blanket in the yard,

staring up at the rural suburban night sky. We were discerning investigators of this darkness, who through practice could tell the quick miracle of a shooting star from the slow, steady

motion of a satellite on its programmed path, fading in and out of view. Of course we believed

in UFOs, in aliens. We were weird kids who went looking for ghosts and sometimes found them,

who studied things like druidism and held haphazard pop seances,

inspired by teen movies, who desperately hoped to encounter the unknown, any and every form.

My whole life was a long study in the paranormal, the supernatural,

the spiritual, and obviously it still is, but up until a few years ago, I approached it all with

far less skepticism and a far more open heart.

I was a believer, to be sure.

But a believer in what?

I don't think I could have told you.

A believer in something more than what the material world has to offer.

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