The truth is out there... sometimes... maybe... well, Hine and Buckley just aren't sure. UFOs, UAPs, Flying Saucers, Alien Spacecraft, whatever you think they are, you don't know for sure - and if you think you do know for sure, it's a sure sign you don't.

What you do know for sure is that you are told a lot of different things about them by a lot of different people: abductees spinning stories of high strangeness, senators pressuring whistle-blowers for information in congress, devoutly religious authors telling tales of angels and demons, folklorists and scholars of comparative religion painting vivid pictures of ancient beings dressed up in the skin of Technicolor sci-fi nightmares... no-one agrees and everyone is out to prove that their interpretation is the right interpretation - but what does any of it actually mean?

In this episode Hine and Buckley don't analyse the verisimilitude of the stories of the veracity of the storytellers but instead examine the discourse around the phenomena or more accurately the discourse around the discourse around UFOs. The mechanisms with which people might think about this topic and the reasons that they may think in that way.

The conversation around UFOs is big business, a lot of people making a lot of money - but who are these people and what happens to that money? Where did it all start? Was it Peter Lavenda that stealthily laid the ground work over the last 50 years to shape the UFO movement as we know it today? Why would people lie about this stuff? Why should you believe some conspiracy theorist warning you of the terrible dangers of the existential crisis that UFOs pose anymore than you should trust some conspiracy theorist warning you of the terrible dangers of vaccines and their link to childhood autism?... and if the people who are trying to take control of the discourse are lying, overly-gullible or deluded, then is there really any truth out there at all? (recorded 23 April 2026)

Whitley Strieber - Wikipedia
UFOlogy - Wikipedia
2 Navy Airmen and an Object That 'Accelerated Like Nothing, I've Seen' - New York Times (Pay Wall)
Pentagon UFO Videos - Wikipedia
To the Stars
Peter Lavenda - Wikipedia
Sinister Forces by Peter Lavenda - Goodreads
Unholy Alliance: A History of Nazi Involvement with the Occult by Peter Lavenda - Goodreads
Tom DeLonge - Wikipedia
Jim Semivan - The Sol Foundation
Hal Puthoff - Wikipedia
Luis Elizondo - Wikipedia
The Necronomicon: A Study of Ancient Ritual Magic and Esoteric Grimoire Traditions by Simon - Goodreads
[HP Lovecraft - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._P._Lovecraft)
VYS0036 | Infinite Game - Vayse to Face with Joseph Matheny
Dead Names: The Dark History of the Necronomicon: The Untold Story of Lovecraft's Stolen Grimoire by Simon - Goodreads
Ong's Hat
Sekret Machines by Tom DeLonge and Peter Lavenda - Goodreads
Penny Royal Podcast
The Collins Elite/Final Events - Wikipedia
Aleister Crowley - Wikipedia
Helena Blavatsky - Wikipedia
Anton LaVey - Wikipedia
Brandon Sanderson - Wikipedia
Hellier - Youtube
Hyperstition - Wikipedia
ARG - Wikipedia
Kayfabe - Wikipedia
LARPing - Wikipedia
Andrew Collins
Synchronicity - Wikipedia
Cosmic Trigger - Wikipedia
Robert Anton Wilson - Wikipedia
Chapel Perilous - Wikipedia
JFK Assassination - Wikipedia
AP Strange
Steph Quick
Rob Reiner - Who Killed JFK? Podcast
Occam's Razor - Wikipedia
Capitalism - Wikipedia
MrBeast - Wikipedia
Extraterrestrial UFO hypothesis - Wikipedia
Psychosocial UFO hypothesis - Wikipedia
VYS0054 | You Can't Make An Omelette Without Breaking A Few Egregores - Vayse to Face with Joshua Cutchin
Joshua Cutchin
Demonic UFO hypothesis - Wikipedia
Buddhism - Wikipedia
The Diamond Sutra - Wikipedia
Mayahna
Buddhism and Quantum Mechanics by Michael Behrens - Sience and Non-Duality
Reality in Buddhism - Wikipedia
The Matrix
The Matrix Trailer - Youtube
UFO of God: The Extraordinary True Story of Chris Bledsoe by Chris Bledsoe
Diana Walsh Pasulka - Wikipedia
Steven M. Greer - Wikipedia
Meditation - Wikipedia
Flow State - Wikipedia
Mindfulness - Wikipedia
Elon Musk - Wikipedia
Jeff Bezos - Wikipedia
Count to a Billion (How I began to grasp the atrocity of Musk) by Susan Duerksen - The Jumping Off Place
Amazon Breaks Record For Lobbyist Spending Amid Anti-Union Drive by Jordan Zakarin - perfectunion.us
Predator - Wikipedia
Predator Trailer - Youtube
Saul Hudson (Slash)
Slash by Slash and Anthony Bozza - Goodreads
Philip K Dick - Wikipedia
John Nash - Wikipedia
A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar - Goodreads
A Beautiful Mind (Film) - Wikipedia
A Beautiful Mind Trailer - Youtube
Joan of Arc - Wikipedia
The Schizophrenia of Joan of Arc by Clifford Allen
Schizophrenia - Wikipedia
Temperal Lobe Epilepsy - Wikipedia
Focal Seizures - Epilepsy Action (British Epilepsy Association)
living with the rarest form of epilepsy - reddit
Is AI Really Just a Tool? It Could Be Altering How You See Reality by University of Exeter - Sci-tech Daily
Mirage Men - Wikipedia
Mirage Men: An Adventure into Paranoia, Espionage, Psychological Warfare, and UFOs by Mark Pilkington - Goodreads
Mirage Men Trailer - Youtube
VYS0020 | Messages of Deception - Vayse to Face with Mark Pilkington
False or misleading statements by Donald Trump - Wikipedia
L Ron Hubbard - Wikipedia
L. Ron Hubbard's 5 Most Impressive Lies (Besides Scientology) by Kristi Harrison - Cracked
Carlos Castaneda - Wikipedia
Laurens van der Post - Wikipedia
More myth than man by JDF Jones - The Guardian
The Trickster and the Paranormal by George P. Hansen
Voices for Vaccines - Website which helps de-bunk harmful misinformation about Vaccines
Autism, Vaccines and Immunization - Autism Today - debunking misinformation about the link between childhood autism and vaccines - spoilers: there isn't a link
VYSXXXX | The Real Vayse: Halloween 2024

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We got one! Before there was Hellier, before there was Twin Peaks there was Ghostbusters. In this special Halloween episode Hine and Buckley take a deep dive into this cherished classic - the movie that launched a thousand ghost hunting expeditions and at least one podcast about weird stuff. At the remove of 38 years and examined through the lens of Vayse, is Ghostbusters a beloved and harmless comedy blockbuster, a Lovecraftian cautionary tale, or a technicolour Reaganite super-dream? See you on the other side. Recorded 26 October 2022.

(Warning: Throughout this episode we operate on an all spoiler no explainer basis. But if you haven't seen Ghostbusters, perhaps it's time to carefully examine your life choices...?)

The Texts

Ghostbusters
Ghostbusters II
Ghostbusters: Afterlife

Music Discussed we talk a lot about the music in Ghostbusters in this episode - here are some choice cuts:

Ghostbusters by Ray Parker Jr (...?)
I want a New Drug by Huey Lewis and the News
Elmer Bernstein's fantastic score
Magic by Mick Smiley (and as a special treat the very 80s MTV Video)
Savin’ The Day by the Alessi Brothers
In The Name of Love by The Thompson Twins
Vayse Soundtrack by Polypores

Other References

Ghostbusters: The Ultimate Visual History by Daniel Wallace
Ghostbusters: The Inside Story by Matt McAllister
Spook Central
Ghostbusters Fandom Wiki
Ghostbusters.net
Ghostbusters.net on Twitter
Welsh Ghostbusters on Twitter - Seemingly random but a really great account
Necronomicon by Simon
Close up of the doors to the temple of Gozer
The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories - a fantastic Lovecraft "Greatest Hits".
The Exorcist
The Evil Dead
The Magical Revival by Kenneth Grant - probably the place to start with Grant. Discusses the idea that Lovecraft was, in fact, a psychic and that the Cthulhu mythos was a revelation.
The Real Ghostbusters – The Collect Call of Cthulhu
VYS0004 | The Uncanny Vallée and the Unreal Keel - The Ultraterrestrial Hypothesis Pt.1 and VYS0005 | UFOnauts and Inverted Crosses - The Ultraterrestrial Hypothesis Pt.2 - Our episodes on the Ultraterrestrial Hypothesis
Trinity: The Best-Kept Secret by Jacques Vallée and Paola Leopizzi Harris - Our neoliberal overlords at Amazon seem to be by far the cheapest place to get this book at present.
Speaking of Neoliberal overlords, the New Economic Foundation did a great series of podcasts about neoliberalism which Hine borrowed from heartily to fuel the frenzied final third of this episode.
Life After Death: Eighteen Years on Death Row by Damien Echols - eye opening account of his time on death row following his wrongful and how Magic and love saved his life.
Making Ghostbusters by Don Shay - unfortunately long out of print and now ridiculously expensive.
A Convenient Parallel Dimension: How Ghostbusters Slimed Us Forever by Jr. Greene James

Support Vayse