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We Can Be Weirdos

Café del Weirdo: Chasing The Dark with Ben Machell

We Can Be Weirdos

Global

Religion & Spirituality, Society & Culture, Philosophy, Spirituality

4.9793 Ratings

🗓️ 28 November 2025

⏱️ 44 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Ben Machell is a journalist-turned-literary explorer of the uncanny. After writing 'The Unusual Suspect' a true-crime story about a modern Robin Hood-style bank robber, he’s returned with 'Chasing the Dark: Encounters With The Supernatural.' The new book is a complete history of psychic and paranormal phenomena.

Through forgotten case files, firsthand accounts, and long-buried investigations, Ben explores ghostly encounters, psychic mysteries, and the people who devoted their entire lives to chasing proof of the impossible.

Host: Dan Schreiber

Guest: Ben Machell

Producer: Cassie Merritt

Senior Producer: Ben Tulloh

Head of Podcasts: Al Riddell

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

5am.

0:03.6

You wake up with a jolt,

0:05.5

after a nightmare that your business was hit by a fraud attack in the night.

0:09.4

This is the moment you choose to relax,

0:11.8

knowing that Barclay card payments is helping to prevent fraud 24-7.

0:16.3

So you can go back to counting sheep, not pounds.

0:21.4

That's how we're protecting your business.

0:24.1

Barclay card payments.

0:26.1

Terms and conditions apply.

0:27.1

See barclaycard.com.ukh forward slash business for details.

0:32.1

This is a global player original podcast.

1:03.5

Yeah. Global Player Original Podcast Hey Weirdo. I'm just sitting here in this stunning imaginary restaurant, just waiting for my guests to arrive. I'm meeting up today with a writer

1:08.3

who's written a really impressive book about the world of the

1:11.2

supernatural it's called Chasing the Dark Encounters with the Supernatural by ben

1:17.1

machel and uh it's a book that a lot of people have been talking about a lot of people

1:22.9

have been telling me i've got to read it's basically the story of an investigator who's called Tony Cornell,

1:29.8

but he joins an institution, which is known as the Society for Psychical Research, and I hadn't

1:35.7

really known much about them. I mean, basically, you might have heard me over the years

1:39.6

complaining about the fact that conspiracy theorists have never set up, as far as I can tell, some major institution

1:46.0

to prove their conspiracies as one. So it's like this one national body.

1:50.0

And that's kind of what this is, but for the world of paranormality, because they're neither skeptics nor believers.

1:56.0

And I'm shocked that I'm not a member of their institution. I feel like the Batshit list is basically doing a job

...

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