Good day everybody, this is Dave Vellante, we're here at Wikibon headquarters in beautiful Malibu or Massachusetts and we're here to talk flash. Flash is taking the storage world by storm. EMC started it all in 2008 when it landed a haymaker by incorporating enterprise flash drives into its symmetric system at the high end. Now we all have been in this industry, those of us who have been in this industry for a long time remember back in the 1980s there were solid state disks, this is different. We're talking about persistent flash now coming into play at prices that are incredibly affordable and we're very excited to have a number of guests today. We're going to start off with Mark Sorensen. Mark runs EMC's flash business unit. He's the senior vice president and general manager of that division. Mark thanks very much for coming on theCUBE. Great to be here Dave, how are you? Good thank you. Again, we've known each other for a long time and you're moving up the stack as it were, right? You did a lot of work in the archive and the backup space and really got EMC's business going there and now you're on to a new project. Yeah, in February of 2011, Pat Gelsinger came to me and asked me to form a new business unit called the Flash Business Unit.  Before this, I ran the engineering organizations for Clarion and Solera, which soon became the VNX engineering organization. So I was ready for a new gig after that, that was very successful and that's doing extraordinarily well. And so when he came up to me and said, you know, I want you to start a Flash Business Unit, I was taking it back a little bit because even how close I was to the Flash Business because we had done so much software automation around Flash and we were selling so much Flash in our storage arrays, I wasn't quite sure, is this really something that warranted a business unit? And of course, as I educated us myself and what we're trying to do and we'll describe perhaps this morning, clearly it is an important business for EMC. Yeah, so take us inside of EMC because we had Pat Gelsinger on the cube in May of this year and he candidly said, you know, we fell behind some of the other guys that were out there. We started it all in 2008 and we shouldn't let that happen and presumably that's why he went to you and said, okay, we really need to go for it. So take us inside of EMC and share with us how this all came about. Yeah, and I think you have to really bifurcate the Flash business in terms of how it's deployed. Well, we're clear leaders in Flash in the storage arrays. We started in 2008 as you just described, deploying Flash in Symmetrics and then surely thereafter in our VNX platforms, you know, went through all of the shakeouts of getting the performance and the quality and of course cost, which has continually gone down dealing with that angle and became pretty successful. What really took off is when we began to introduce software that help automate the leverage and use of Flash by placing the hottest data on Flash devices called their data on spinning disk. And so this was the introduction of Fast, fully automated storage tearing and then subsequent and that was in 2009, in 2010 we introduced FastCache and FastCache is basically providing an extension to your DRAM cache with a lower cost Flash based cache in the VNX platform. And those two software products that really allowed you to most effectively and efficiently use Flash, so no longer manually trying to guess what's the hottest data, what's the working set that you want in Flash. It automatically did that by understanding your I.O. workloads, understanding what's hot, what's not and moving that to the appropriate tier of storage. So if you look at Flash in the storage arrays, I mean clearly we are the leaders. In 2011 we shipped more than 25 petabytes of Flash far and away more than anyone in the industry and if you think about Fast, in 2012 we estimate we have over 1.3 exabytes under management Flash. So tremendous success in the storage array. And I think what Pat was referring to where we kind of maybe not took our eye off in the ball but fell behind a little bit was Flash in the server, okay. You've seen some startups like Fusion I.O. really getting out in front of that and leveraging Flash in the server to really provide extreme performance leveraging Flash and so this was one of the reasons why we formed the Flash Business Unit and why we recently announced our first product from this Business Unit, VF cache. So what is the Flash Business Unit? Talk about that a little bit. What are the products in there and sort of the scope? So the Flash Business Unit has multiple responsibilities. Number one is really for the overarching strategy of EMC's Flash, Flash Technologies and Business. We made at the forefront of working with our partners that provide Flash products and technologies and as you well know there's a tremendous amount of Flash vendors out there. We produce Flash centric products, the first of which is VF cache. And I know after me Danny and Barry will talk in great detail of VF cache. In short, it is leveraging PCI based Flash as a cache in front of EMC storage arrays effectively adding another tier of storage, a caching tier to our fast strategy. So if you look at our fast strategy, you've got in the storage array, you've got Flash for high performance, you've got fiber channel for your warm medium data and then you've got near line satter devices for cold data, great economics, great performance. We've now augmented and extended that by leveraging Flash in the server. So now you have an ultra high performance tier, a caching tier where you get the best performance that you could possibly get using Flash close to the CPU on the PCI bus, but all of the protection and intelligence that an EMC back end storage array with fast and other capabilities offer. So that's our first product. We are building other products as well, nothing that we're willing to share too publicly. I'll give you some hints. Yeah, show us a little leg here, come on. So a project which, well, you know, the codename for VF cache was lightning and as you well know, what follows lightning is thunder.  And so we do have a project called Thunder and it is, as you could call it to some degree the big brother of lightning, it's more shareable, it's more scalable. It deals with not only reads, but writes very high end, high performance for those applications that require the utmost in terms of low latency. And so that's kind of, again, you know, thunder follows lightning and we get a few other things up our sleeves. Mark, it was interesting to hear you when you were describing the initiative around, you know, VF and what we would call project lightning before the announcement. You talk a lot about software. Now, so your business unit develops new products as well as you have to leverage existing products like Fast within EMC, is that correct? It's correct. Okay. And so are you guys a P&L? We do have a profit and loss statement, that's right. We are measured as a business in terms of expense and revenue. Yeah, so the interesting thing about the strategy, if I understand it with your approach is you're, it's not a rip and replace. You're really trying to extend the IO stack, if you will, toward the server. You talked about that earlier. What happens to the existing storage infrastructure? What are you telling your customers, the Symmetrix customers, the VNX customers? If you look at those customers, right, certainly performance is a critical attribute of the need for storage and information management. Just as critical and to some degree more critical is availability, scalability, the reliability and disaster recoverability of your information. If you ask any corporation, what's their two most important assets? It's their information and it's their people. And so while performance is very important, performance means nothing if you don't have those other itties, if you will. Obviously, our customers want us to take their existing investments in VMAX and VNX and Icelon and to leverage new technologies to extend and integrate it into those highly reliable, well-proven environments. Environments that they've got a lot of investment in, whether it's training their storage administrators and managing it or customizing their applications to take advantage and leverage it, etc. So it's not a rip and replace, you know, it's an augmentation and extension of the existing environments and really leveraging the best of both the new technology as well as the dependability of our existing platforms, which frankly our customers have invested a lot of money in and it's been proven over many, many years. So do you see Flash becoming the home for all active data over time? Well, so I think there's a couple of things here, right? I think you will see Flash leveraged predominantly for any data that requires some sort of high performance. Now, where you cut that line in terms of is it active data? Is it hot data? To some degree, what we do is give customers the choice, okay? By using leveraging fast technology, you can kind of decide how much high performance infrastructure you want to place on for your environments. And then we know that if you, and we know this because we live this every day, is that, you know, data, not all data is created equal. And not all data stays in terms of its importance and its use static over time, over time things age, they go out of, they become cold yet in many cases you need to keep those and retain that data for years and years and years. And so our strategy is really is to write infrastructure at both cost and performance. So we're not extremists, right? Some extremists will say all Flash for every single thing. And so that, well, it sounds interesting and at the end of the day, if you look at the economics and you really have to really look very carefully of the economics because there's lots of folks out there playing pretty fast and loose with the facts and they'll make claims that their new fangled storage arrays can be just as economically viable as spinning desk storage arrays. But when you look back on the covers, it requires extraordinary results and deduplication, meaning the average ratios of deduplication are not going to get you there. It requires lots and lots of funny things, unproven things on how they deal with RAID. They ignore the replacement factors, particularly if they're claiming they're going to use consumer MLC of pulling out discs and sticking back in as if it's almost a consumable, putting aside whether our customers actually want that and want that type of data center there. So there's a lot of fast and looseness with the facts. I think at the end of the day, spinning discs don't go away. Certainly not in yours and my lifetime. You just look at the numbers, flash costs, while they have come down tremendously. Since we introduced them in 2008, you never see a crossover point with hard discs. Hard discs doing a great job with density, right? And of course we see flash getting less expensive. We're seeing smaller lithographies but of course with those smaller lithographies comes issues. Issues with endurance and indeed issues with performance. So I think again, you know, we try to take a balanced approach, not an extremist approach that some of the startups are taking. And I think our customers who have depended on EMC in this logical, straightforward manner, really are embracing it. So you're basically saying that the customer decides, defines essentially what active data is and what goes on flash as a function of both performance and cost requirements, right? And the role of the sand maybe changes, maybe not, depending on what that economic and performance value equation is. I think you're seeing, excuse me, I think you're seeing data move closer to servers and servers moving closer to data. And so as we drop a PCIe flash card into a server controlling it through fast and other capabilities acting as that read cache in front of our storage arrays, we're getting closer to the server. And one of the reasons why we do that is because we get better performance, right? If I'm sitting on a flash, on a PCIe bus with my flash card and I'm serving up reads from there, I'm going to get the best performance I possibly could. It's kind of a physics thing, right? Yet on the back end, I mean, all the investment customers have with their SRDF deployments for disaster recovery and their data protection scenarios with data domain or Avama, all of that stuff is extraordinarily important. You just can't throw it out, right? It's just crazy to do so. So we try to give kind of a balanced approach and a more systemic system view versus just kind of a one-trick pony approach. So that leads me to my last question for you. Is EMC a systems company or a storage products company? I think we are a solutions company and we provide storage and information solutions across an increasingly broad spectrum of solving more and more problems and some of this obviously is a natural evolution and I think flash is really a natural evolution. Others are going into more adjacent markets like big data, which we've found to be very compelling and very interesting. So I would call us a solutions company. Certainly, our portfolio has got an extraordinarily broad, we're solving more and more problems that we haven't in our past and I think you'll see more of that over the coming years and months. Yeah, we didn't get into the big data thing. I want to do that with Dan and Barry, but I mean, you're really seeing new types of applications emerge and flash is enabling a lot of things. Absolutely, absolutely. And flash is certainly, when you think about scale out web applications, but also your bread and butter oracle databases, SQL databases, it's really dealing with both and flash certainly helps with the scale out applications that we're seeing in the 2.0 web environment. Exciting times, follow Mark Zorinzen, right? You're in the heart of the data protection business and that took off at EMC, the whole mid-range unified business taken off. You're now at the epicenter of what I think is the most exciting trend in storage and that's that intersection of software and flash-based architectures. And so congratulations on getting this off the ground and your new role at EMC. And thanks for coming inside the queue. Appreciate it. Thanks, everybody. Thanks for watching.


Can't you tell how ready I am for this episode knowing your it's gonna be the center focus your feels like a Twitch streamer.   I don't love her husband. I envy him. All right. Let's get to the show Don't worry Lloyd I didn't do anything. I'm not you she's not cheating Going on over there.  Oh, that's fine. At least she's not cheating I'd be fine if my wife was out killing somebody rather than cheating. That's completely fine with me What is he a magic eight ball? I mean he looks like a ball I'm home from murdering people.  Look at her man. I was never greeted when I was a kid. I came home My my dad just walked away. I was like hey daddy. He just walked away. No one said hi to me. What's his music? What is she Freddy Krueger?  I love this connection who made her cry The assassin decided me will wait in no Road this looks like my room man. What's this OST today? She doesn't want to be an assassin anymore Three to three of them now Finally we're seeing her at work.  This is what I've been waiting for This is the Halloween episode Period what kind of shot was that oh Yes, oh, I wish my heart was in her bag bro. Did she just deliver someone's head?   I thought it was a head in a bag.   You don't have to do anything.  Love her Yuri I missed it. What's he up to now? I wouldn't touch his hand Oh my god, yeah, man, you can't take her down. I'm sorry the same game of thrones Is that a cactus? Are they are they eating cactus juice? Remember when Ang did that in the avatar The Halloween episode you know how to use a knife.  I need to find a girl that knows how to use a knife She cut the board Okay, even if you sliced off the blonde bitch's hands off. It's okay. I forgive you I'm sure her husband would love it Oh, yes, yes executor. Oh Oh, Yori Yoro Yoru Yoro.    I'll eat anything that's from your hands.  No, no, no I'm not that crazy. Where am I better love it. Oh This show is genius when it's cut this episode is fun. I'm loving this vibe No He is sick, but I like him. I don't blame him even if I was her brother, right?    How far is that hold on? It's in no Stan. Yeah, which is spy family.  They're just cooking I Never thought cooking would be so entertaining Don't tell me it tastes like they're their childhood dish because that's where they're from.  She's not that bad. She helped You did something nice The talk soon you have a keikai kuneo hodoko so I'll start by attaching a bomb to his stomach Don't starve her. She's gonna start eating the dog food Bro, I need to go to Japan. I swear to God Boys like I'm headed for the hills. I'm heading to attack on Titan.  Why whenever I'm on a diet in an anime episode comes out with good food in it? I Can't stop moaning sound like I'm being dicked out No jokes This is so wholesome aesthetic and beautiful all put the one look at this picture.  Look how beautiful This is man. Why can't everyone's life be like this?  There's gonna be a different type of water. Oh My god, I love this daddy's back to work. Oh, I missed this dude I think just we haven't seen him since the last last part of the season.  She's bride in her name.  I would do the same thing to be honest. You can't trust his business nowadays You can't trust anybody. You can't trust these dudes. They're all dogs They're whispering Yeah, doesn't everyone else here this I don't know about this. He's aggressive.    Where's my pen? All right. It's about a favorite food. I'm going on a date next week All right, tabioka pizza Not men's go. Oh I'm gonna take this this this is exactly how hard dating exaggeration That's how hard it is to find love. It's actually hard. They dumbed it down in this version Disguise yourself as McBride No, that's weird. That's the weirdest shit ever But I would put on a dress for my friends to help them out. Trust me anything for your boys Anything for the boys. I'll bark. I'll get on all fours for you real men Yeah Literally got advice from the guy that has your That was the weirdest thing I've ever seen Did you forget everything Where's mine? Oh god, they left them home the starve. Oh, that's the next episode probably obstacle course He's lying Oh, bro, I drink out all those bottles in the back about just went through what he went through Oh, I've been there Damn, bro, what are you making him drink himself to death? Damn, oh we saw your drunk never gonna see boy drunk better not pull any moves on any woman out there Maybe he should then I can make my move I Hope it comes to a part in the show where they actually start loving each other. I hope this doesn't last until the end of the show Sad episode or I started off so sweet and wholesome now. I'm gonna cry We're back to school carry out the Griffin plan for full metal alchemist. Oh lady.  She did good so she gets a pass still I want to what you guys did get a episode Let me know down below in the comments me I'm just even more sad than I was I get more sad I buy every episode because I know my life is never gonna be like this Never it's never gonna be like this like that fan that picture of all four of them at the dinner table It's never gonna be like that and yeah, I'm gonna go cry myself in the corner. Bye


Stories and content in Weird Darkness can be disturbing for some listeners and is intended for mature audiences only. Parental discretion is strongly advised. Teals of dopplegangers go back hundreds of years and are some of the most unnerving and disturbing unexplained encounters on record. What's more, there are legends from multiple ancient civilizations and cultures around the world from thousands of years ago that also clearly speak of entities that we would recognize as a doppleganger in the modern world. The word itself, doppleganger, is of Germanic origin, meaning double walker, quite literally a body double. And, quite often, appearances of these other versions of oneself were important of bad things to come, with many believing them to be a sign of a person's impending death. While there are many tales and accounts of doppleganger encounters in the modern world, arguably some of the most intriguing comes to us from previous centuries, not least as they often involved well-known figures who would seemingly have had a lot to lose by making such rash claims, in some extreme circumstances, persecution from the Church. Perhaps one of the earliest recorded encounters with a doppleganger occurred in Paris in 1612 when a man claimed to have seen his wife. However, he knew this had to be impossible, as his wife was heavily pregnant and at home. However, the man would later discover that at the very moment he had seen her in Paris, his wife was giving birth. The baby, however, was stillborn. As we will see as we examine some of the most well-known and intriguing encounters of dopplegangers, they are often seen as a harbinger of tragic events to come. That would certainly be the case here. However, as we will also see, much like other strange phenomena, there are many crossovers to other bizarre phenomena such as astral projection and even alien abduction. Might we one day find that cases of dopplegangers are merely one part of the big paranormal picture that could very explain many of the world's mysteries to us? I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Welcome, Weirdos. This is Weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained. Coming up in this episode, we uncover the chilling case of Mercy Brown, a tale of tuberculosis, superstition and unearthing graves. The story takes us to a place between reality and myth and vampires. But first, for hundreds of years people have had chilling encounters with what would be described as their doubles. We're peeling back the veil between our world and the uncanny world of duplicates that haunt our imagination and very possibly our reality. We'll look at real-life cases of these spectral twins and explore the history and hauntings of dopplegangers. We begin there. If you're new here, welcome to the show. While you're listening, be sure to check out WeirdDarkness.com for merchandise, to visit sponsors you hear about during the show, sign up for my newsletter, enter contests, connect with me on social media. Plus, you can visit the Hope in the Darkness page if you're struggling with depression or dark thoughts. You can find all of that and more at WeirdDarkness.com.  Perhaps the best place to start when we look at dopplegangers would be with one of the most famous people seemingly associated with them, the one-time President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. And while some might say the following account was one of premonition as opposed to an experience with a doppleganger, it is still worth our time examining here. According to those who knew him, Lincoln was completely honest about his interest in the paranormal. However, one incident that occurred on the night of his first election is unquestionably strange in the extreme. Lincoln claimed that on the night in question, after being elected President for the first time, he took a moment to rest on his couch. As he did so, however, he happened to catch a glance of himself in the mirror. Only, there wasn't a single reflection looking back at him, but two. According to Lincoln, one of those faces was his own as he looked right then. The other, though, appeared decidedly older, paler and even ill-looking. Shocked by what he was seeing, he jumped off the couch and saw the second face disappear, at least temporarily. When he returned to the couch, thinking his mind must have been playing tricks on him, the face reappeared once more. This time, his wife, Mary, saw the second face also and was immediately terrified. She believed that the doppleganger was a vision of the future. She believed that her husband would be re-elected President again in four years' time, which he duly was, and that his second term would end in tragedy. As history tells us, not only was Lincoln elected for a second term, but he was assassinated at the end of this term on April 15, 1865 by John Wilkes Booth while attending a show at Ford's Theatre. It's also worthy of our time examining an apparent case of repeated doppleganger encounters that were spoken of by poet Percy Byers Shelley, the husband of Mary Shelley who authored Frankenstein. According to Mary and several other close friends, shortly before his death, he drowned in an accident at sea, Percy began to speak of incidents where he had seen and interacted with his own doppleganger. What's more, he would claim that his other self would always ask him the same question, how long do you expect to be content? He had no idea what this meant, but the encounters continued. What's more, many other people also saw Percy's doppleganger. One such friend, Jane Williams, claimed to have seen Percy walk past her window, something he often did. However, the route led to a dead end, and when he didn't walk back past a short time later, Williams went out to investigate. Realizing there was no one, she later learned that Percy was miles away at the time of the sighting. Without a doubt, one of the most intriguing encounters with dopplegangers is that of Emily Segui, a French woman who worked as a school teacher in modern-day Latvia. According to several reports, one day in 1845, while standing at the chalkboard in front of her students in the classroom, another version of her suddenly appeared for several moments right beside her, mimicking her every movement as she wrote on the board, although the doppleganger did not hold a piece of chalk and merely made matching motions. Other witnesses saw Segui's doppleganger in other locations around the school, with one sighting with multiple witnesses seeing her other version appear behind her while in the canteen eating lunch, once more mimicking her actions but without the cutlery. The strangeness continued for some time, with many reports coming from students and other staff members alike of seeing Segui in one part of the school while others placed her at a different location at the exact same time. One incident that stands out more than the others occurred in front of over 40 students. As the students sat in the classroom for their lesson, they had a clear view of these school gardens outside through the large windows and could clearly see Segui working in them. At one point during the lesson, the teacher had called to leave the room for several minutes. Only seconds after they left, Segui suddenly appeared in the room with the students. To their shock, however, they could all still clearly see her outside in the garden, going about her chores and gathering flowers as if nothing out of the ordinary was taking place. Then things turned even stranger and more unsettling. Several of the students left their seats and approached this other Segui. To their shock, when they got close to her, instead of bumping into the woman, they simply passed straight through her as if she wasn't even there. After several more moments, the doppelganger disappeared into thin air as if she was never there. One girl who would seemingly walked through the teacher later claimed that it felt as if a piece of material was being drawn over her. Some of the students would later speak to their teacher, telling her of seeing her doppelganger and if she remembered anything about it. Perhaps amazingly, she would respond that while she was in the garden, she happened to look through the windows and saw the teacher leave the room. At that point, she thought to herself that she would much rather be teaching than collecting flowers in the garden. It would appear that her thoughts became some kind of reality as she evidently appeared in front of the class only moments later. It appeared for the most part that Segui was completely unaware of this other version of herself. However, in a bizarre twist, it was noted that the teacher often appeared a little trance-like when the doppelganger was near as if it was somehow draining her of energy. Even stranger, when Segui spoke of the encounters, she claimed that some of the actions of the doppelganger while not mimicking her were acting out the thoughts in her mind. Regardless of what the truth of the matter was, the sightings continued for several years, causing unintentional fear among students, staff and the children's parents, who soon got to hear about the teacher who was seen in two places at once. Ultimately, with many parents becoming scared to send their children to the school, despite her exemplary record, Segui was asked to leave the school, which she duly did. Just under half a century later, another bizarre doppelganger encounter unfolded. On the 22nd of June, 1893, Vice Admiral George Tyron was on board the HMS Victoria, commanding naval exercises off the coast of Syria in the Mediterranean Sea, when he issued rather bizarre orders for the ships to turn toward each other. Following this, his ship crashed into the HMS Camperdown, which caused his own ship to sink beneath the waters. In total, 357 crew members lost their lives. It is claimed that Tyron's final words before he went down with his vessel were, It's all my fault. Rather bizarrely, however, at the same time as Tyron was sinking with his ship, sending him on his way to a watery grave, his wife was at home in London, entertaining friends while her husband was away at sea. Needless to say, all were surprised to see Tyron walk into the room and walk past them without uttering a word. He had, it was later stated, a solemn, sad look on his face, as if he was greatly troubled. He made his way to the other door in the room and opened it. However, before he could step through it, he simply vanished into thin air. Shortly after, Tyron's wife was notified of her husband's death. When she questioned when this naval tragedy had occurred, she realized it was at the same time that she and her guests had seen her husband walk through the room at their home. Was this a case of a doppelganger? Or might it have been the recently departed spirit of Tyron returning once more to his home before passing over to whatever awaited him on the other side? We might find that there is a closer connection between doppelganger appearances and the apparent ability to leave one's body than we might think. We'll return to this later. Just over a decade later in 1905, also in the United Kingdom, another extremely similar encounter is on record, one involving a British member of parliament that was reported on by several national newspapers. Just before Easter, when Sir Gilbert Parker prepared to begin a debate in the houses of parliament, however, when he missed his chance to be called, he began back to his seat. When he turned around, he noticed a fellow MP, Sir Frederick Carnet Roche, who was sitting in a seat that he would not normally occupy. And what's more, he had not expected to see Roche as he believed he was at home with a bad case of the flu. Regardless, he greeted Roche as he took his own seat. His fellow MP, however, didn't acknowledge the greeting and simply stared blankly ahead. Parker later told reporters that his friend's face was remarkably pallid and his expression steely and stony, even going as far as to say there he appeared grim and resentful. Parker turned around for a moment before turning back to Roche once more. However, to his amazement, he was now no longer there. In fact, he didn't appear to be in the room at all. When Parker left the debate, he went in search of Roche, but he was nowhere to be seen. He did, however, find other parliament members who had seen him briefly that morning, with one stating to have briefly spoken with him. Ultimately concerned, he might be gravely unwell, Parker went to Roche's home. Once there, he was informed that he had not left his bed all day as he had been far too ill. He was not surprised that people had witnessed him that afternoon. He claimed that he had desperately wanted to take part in the debate and that it was likely as he lay in his bed asleep, his spirit had snuck out to take a look at what was taking place. Essentially, whether he was being serious or flippant, Roche is describing astral projection. Whether that was the case or not, and despite his family's concerns that the encounter was a prediction of Roche's death, he made a full recovery and returned to work as normal. Undoubtedly, one of the strangest and thought-provoking cases of doppelgangers is that of the French writer Guy de Maupassant. What makes de Maupassant's claims stand out is that he appeared to have had experiences with his doppelganger during the last few years of his life as he was dying of syphilis, an encounter where this other version of himself seemingly dictated one of the final stories he wrote. According to what he told at the end of his life, this other version of himself would visit him every night, although he would describe it as a demon rather than a doppelganger. Not only would this entity, which obviously looked exactly like him, drink the water off his night table and generally help himself to anything else it pleased in his room, he began dictating a story to him that he was told he should publish. The story in question would eventually become the horla, and its subject matter, interestingly, gives the claims of how and why it was written. The story tells of a man who was slowly driven insane by a demonic spirit who appears to him at night and drains his energy and life force, seemingly using him as a host. Perhaps given that one of the symptoms and consequences of syphilis is insanity, it might be easy to explain this apparent interaction with a doppelganger was exactly that. The case, however, remains one of the most intriguing and thought-provoking doppelganger incidents on record. It is also interesting to note the subject matter of the story in question. Many researchers into such things as possession and even encounters with alleged reptile entities state these mysterious creatures do indeed use a person's energy to give themselves strength. What's more, many reptilian researchers state that these entities can appear in whatever form they desire. Incidentally, Dimoupassant spent the last year of his life in an insane asylum and died in 1893, six years after publishing the story that his doppelganger seemingly dictated to him. Perhaps also of interest, his mental health appeared to deteriorate rapidly following its publication. Another writer who had apparent encounters with doppelgangers was German, Johann Wolfgang von Geff. According to the story, von Geff was riding along a footpath one day, very much feeling low in terms of his mood. Then a short distance ahead, he could see a mysterious gentleman approaching him. Perhaps bizarrely, despite the distance between him and the stranger, von Geff claims to have seen him clearly in his mind's eye. And what's more, this person, although he was wearing the wrong clothes, it was clearly himself. After several moments, during which time von Geff claimed a feeling of serenity overcame him, the other version of himself simply disappeared. Despite the bizarre nature of the incident, the writer put it to the back of his mind. That was until eight years later when he found himself on the very same path once more. As he made his way down the footpath, he noticed the clothes he was wearing. At that point, the memories of seeing his other self came flooding back. He realized he was wearing the same clothes that his other self had been wearing eight years before. This might make us think that rather than seeing a doppelganger of himself, at least how a doppelganger is typically understood, he rather saw a vision of his future self. What is also interesting is that this is not the only time von Geff witnessed a doppelganger. According to the tale, the writer was walking down the street when he saw a friend of his on the other side of the road. What made von Geff pay attention to him was the fact that he was wearing his dressing gown. When von Geff arrived home, still a little perplexed as to what he had seen, he was more than a little surprised to find the same friend sitting in his chair, wearing the same dressing gown he had seemingly been wearing on the street only moments ago.  Although we should perhaps treat them with a pinch of salt, there are several royal figures who it was claimed had encounters with doppelgangers. Queen Elizabeth I, for example, claimed to have seen herself laying on her bed. What made the sighting even more unnerving was that she claimed she looked like a corpse. Needless to say, the sighting concerned the queen as well as those around her. Many people believed, and still do, that such a sighting is a prediction or premonition of a person's death. We might recall the experience of Abraham Lincoln we mentioned earlier. What is interesting is that Queen Elizabeth I did pass away a short time after the encounter. Whether she had foreseen her own death or whether the sighting became self-fulfilling due to her concern of what it meant remains open to debate. Around 200 years later, at the end of the 18th century in Russia, Catherine the Great seemingly had her own encounter with a doppelganger. According to most versions of the account, the Russian Empress was at home one night laying in bed when several of her servants burst into the room claiming to have seen her only moments ago in the throne room. Catherine got off the bed and made her way to the throne room, eager to see who this apparent intruder was. When she arrived, she was more than shocked to see herself sitting on the throne. The account states that Catherine immediately summoned her guards and ordered them to shoot at this apparent imposter. It isn't clear what happened next, whether this other version of Catherine was wounded or whether she simply disappeared. However, several months after the incident, Catherine passed away. Might there have been a connection to the strange events in the throne room and might the encounter have been similar in nature to those of Queen Elizabeth I and Abraham Lincoln? When Weird Darkness returns, our next doppelganger case will force us to examine whether there might be yet another dynamic to such encounters. ALEAN ABDUCTION Loneliness can be a real burden, and while you can always log on to social media or watch TV, sometimes you just want someone near you. I mean, what if you could be in your living room sitting right next to Michael Myers or sleeping in your bedroom with Freddy Krueger? Maybe watch a horrible B movie with Alvira right there next to you. Have dinner with Hannibal Lecter. Do some quilting or sewing with Pinhead watching over you the whole time. Maybe wash and groom your dog in the presence of the Wolfman. Bobbletopia is THE place to get your favorite horror characters as bobbleheads, and their Nika line of hyper-realistic horror action figures is incredible, like King Kong, the alien Xenomorph, Pennywise, Frankenstein's Monster, and more. And most every item is under 40 bucks. No need to be lonely any longer. Visit bobbletopia.com slash Weird Darkness and get 10% off your first order by using the promo code WeirdDarkness, that's bobbletopia.com slash Weird Darkness. See, you're feeling less lonely already. One of the most thought-provoking cases of a potential doppelganger incident is that of Maria de Jesus de Agreda. Not least as it just might be that it was in fact a case of transportation or even of alien abduction. According to most accounts, at some time around 1620, Maria de Jesus de Agreda in Spain told her superiors that she had been flown in a craft to a savage land and had converted one of the local tribes, the Humano, to Christianity. Even more amazing was her description of her journey home, which she claimed she had seen the earth and it was a spinning sphere below her. We should recall that nobody had seen the planet from the outside at that point in history, and her description is remarkably similar to how a person would see the earth if they did indeed travel into space. As we might imagine, her claims were considered heresy. In all of her notes and diaries were seized by the nuns and burned. They demanded that she retract her claims, something that she refused to do. However, two years later, the story took an intriguing twist when Father Alonso de Benavidez arrived in New Mexico on a mission to the New World. Intriguingly, he would come across a tribe of people who called themselves the Humano. Of more astonishment to him, these people were seemingly practicing Catholic Christianity, complete with crosses, rosaries and the celebration of mass. When he asked them how they had learned of such things, they responded that they had been visited by a lady in blue who brought with her divine articles and told them what they meant. Needless to say, not only was Alonso shocked, he was a little annoyed that he had been sent to do a job that had already been done. However, the mystery lady in blue remained a mystery for several years, until Alonso arrived back in Spain in 1630. He eventually heard wild ravings of Maria de Jesús de Agreda and how she had taught Christianity to tribal people in a savage land. He suspected this was the lady in blue and he immediately visited her, still incarcerated at the convent. Although she claimed she didn't know how she had left the convent, if she even had, she also knew that she had converted the people and had indeed left them several religious artifacts. In fact, one of these artifacts had been given to Alonso by the tribe before he left, a chalice. When he produced this in front of Mary and the other nuns, they were shocked to discover that it was a chalice that had gone missing almost a decade ago when Mary had first begun telling her seemingly crazy claims. Ultimately, the charges of heresy were dropped and she was released, now somewhat of a celebrity of her times and considered to be of divine origin. Was this a case of a doppelganger arriving in a faraway land? Or was Mary physically taken there by unknown entities? And if so, why? Perhaps the answer resides somewhere in between the two. That, however, is a discussion for another time. While we've studied doppelganger cases from history that are at least in their field of interest relatively well known, there are many examples to be found on the Internet from our contemporary era. And while we don't have time to examine all such accounts, we can briefly look at some of the best. Perhaps one of the most unsettling was submitted by a Reddit user, quite voice4846, who claimed that she often saw herself out of the corner of her eye. She would state that when she left her bedroom in the night in order to visit the bathroom, she could see herself standing in the mirror, motionless looking back at her, as if the other me is watching me leave. Despite the terror she felt during these encounters, she kept them to herself and did not speak of them to her husband. One afternoon, however, after taking a nap on her bed, she spoke with her husband who had been watching television in a chair nearby.  He called out to her to see if she was okay. However, when she did not answer, he turned in the chair to fully face her. To his surprise, there was no one standing there and she was laying in the bed as she had been before. At this point, she informed him of the girl in the mirror. Both agreed that something strange was taking place. They would agree that they should not even speak about it, as doing so would likely give this other person more energy and strength. It is certainly an interesting conclusion and one that others have arrived at also, and the encounter is without a doubt one of the most disturbing of recent times. A similar encounter was uploaded by another user using the name Geobite. They claimed that one Sunday morning the witness was watching television with their brother when a knock came at the door of the apartment where they lived. The witness got up from the sofa and made their way to the window, which looked out at their door and so consequently told them who was calling. When he saw it was his father, he immediately made his way to the door in order to answer it. However, before he could do so, his mother came rushing straight toward him, screaming to not open the door as he did not know who it was. He informed her that it was their father, which caused his mother to hurry to the peephole and look through, a look of horror appearing on her face. She told the witness to go to his bedroom with his brother. Then his mother went to wake his father, who had been in bed the whole time. When he saw the person outside, he too became a little panic stricken. He went to the door and called through the locked door asking who was there. No answer came, to which their father offered he would call the police. Through the window, the witness and his brother could clearly see the man who did indeed look exactly like their father, simply standing motionless in front of the door. By the time their father returned to the door with a metal bat and opened it, the figure simply disappeared. Without a doubt, one of the strangest and most unsettling modern-day doppleganger encounters came from Reddit user G4YF13R1, who claimed that one day when they were nine years old and were at home from school as they were sick, were watching television in the family living room. Suddenly, without saying a word, the witness' mother simply leaned into the room and stared at her. She did so for several moments, remaining silent and unnerving the witness to say the least. Although the witness couldn't explain why, they just knew that this thing, while looking completely identical to her, was not their mother and was merely pretending to be so. They further recalled that it appeared as though it had never felt a single emotion in its life. Then things turned even stranger and even more disturbing. The witness recalled that the entity began beckoning to them, urging her to follow her. The witness remained where they were and instead began to talk to her to see what response she would get. The other mother, though, simply ignored what her daughter was saying and continued beckoning her. At this point, the witness got up from where they were sitting and ran out of the room as fast as they could. They ran into the yard, calling out for help. A moment later, the witness' real mother came rushing over from where she had been working in the yard to see what the matter was. Perhaps not surprisingly, she dismissed her daughter's claims as a strange dream that she had not fully awoken from. However, the witness was not quite so sure. One further Reddit user, Shutter Spook, claimed to have had two encounters with doppelgangers, both of which occurred at a fast food restaurant where the witness worked. They claimed that during one of their shifts, they and another staff member were asked to attend to and clean the restroom. However, before they could do so, the manager who would ask them to clean the restroom walked past them and into the restroom and locked the door. The two employees waited outside until their manager came out of the room, which she did after several minutes. She walked straight past the pair and around the corner. The witness chased after her in order to ask her a question, however, she seemingly vanished into thin air. When they discovered the manager in her office and told her of the strange encounter, she insisted that she had been in her office the entire time and did not left. On another occasion, the same witness was in the preparation area of the building with the same manager when one of the members of staff who was serving on the front counter suddenly entered the room. She walked past the pair without acknowledging them and went into the walk-in cooler. Thinking she was just going to cool off for a moment, the pair ignored her and went back to what they were doing. However, when she had not returned after several minutes, the manager asked the witness to go and check on her. To his astonishment, when he walked into the cooler, there was nobody inside and given that there was no other way out, both he and his manager were at a loss as to what they had seen. As they were contemplating the incident, the girl in question walked into the prep area, this time saying hello to them before heading into the cooler. At this point, the manager admitted they were rethinking the witness's previous claims. What is perhaps interesting about this particular sighting is that it would appear that the location is the crucial factor as much as the person themselves. Perhaps this suggests a connection to portals or interdimensional gateways. Perhaps not surprisingly, and as we have touched on as we have gone through these most mysterious cases, there are many superstitions surrounding doppelgangers. For example, we have already mentioned several times that many people believed to see your doppelganger was a sign of your imminent death. And as we have seen, at least in some cases, this turned out to be very accurate. It is also said if someone else sees your doppelganger, it could be a sign that you are about to become gravely ill, although not necessarily fatally so. There are other myths and legends that revolve around your doppelganger being quite literally an evil twin who will attempt to influence your thoughts and actions through lies and mental manipulation. What is more, belief in this type of doppelganger goes back thousands of years. A similar train of thought is that a doppelganger is a version of yourself that has lived in the past. And once more, these legends stretch back to antiquity, and at least in some cases, appear to be describing something very similar to deja vu, only in reverse. Essentially, people often claim to have seen a person arrive at a location several moments before they actually do, suggesting they had experienced their doppelganger. There are also other superstitions concerning doppelgangers that go back to antiquity. For example, according to ancient Egyptian legends, this spiritual double is known as ka and usually resides within the living person's body. However, when a person dies, should their body decay, this ka will die also as it has no host. This incidentally is why mummification was so important in ancient Egypt as it stopped the body from decaying and so ultimately gave the ka a body with which it could still exist. Of course, to some, perhaps particularly in the legends of the Native Americans, this other version, the doppelganger, was an evil twin and was ultimately a person's double from the underworld and not an entity to be trusted. It is also the belief of some Native American tribes that whatever the person is doing in the upper world, their twin will be doing the opposite in the underworld. Other cultures point to portraits and even photography, claiming that to capture a person in such a way is to attract a soul to such imagery and quite possibly produce the energy required to manifest a doppelganger. While this might sound strange to some, there are many accounts of alleged haunted paintings. Perhaps we might consider the feelings we sometimes get when looking at portrait paintings of the eyes watching you around the room. Maybe one of the most intriguing suspicions around doppelgangers, although it is much more a theory, is that they are proof of alternate universes, essentially another you from another dimension. It is perhaps clear then that there is much more to accounts of doppelgangers and what they might be than a hallucination or a trick of the mind. And it would appear, at least in part, that explanations for doppelganger incidents will reside as much in science as will the study of the paranormal, although you might argue that they are the same thing. For example, we might discover as mainstream scientists are already hinting at and increasingly louder that other dimensions do exist. And even more amazing is that these dimensions sometimes, if only very briefly, cross over into each other, perhaps resulting in doppelganger encounters. If such theories and suggestions were proven to be true, then not only do alternative universes exist, but alternative versions of ourselves. Or could there be some kind of connection between doppelganger activity and the ability of a person to leave one's body? Essentially, might such notions as astral projection be closer to cases of doppelgangers than we might think? We might recall how Emily Segui claimed that she often felt drained and trance-like when her doppelganger was seemingly visible and that it often appeared to physically act out the thoughts in her mind. With this in mind, might we consider that doppelgangers are some kind of astral projection that seems to occur while the subject is awake, something that they have no control over? Indeed, might we ask if doppelgangers are a person's soul? Indeed, while on the surface accounts of doppelgangers appear intriguing but largely not important, further study of such incidents could very well prove crucial to not only understanding the reality of our own universe, but of many other ones as well. Coming up, we uncover the chilling case of Mercy Brown, a tale of tuberculosis, superstition and unearthing graves. The story takes us to a place between reality and myth and vampires. Anywhere and anything can be haunted and many people from all walks of life experience strange things in surprising locations. As you will discover, the prettiest of places, the most innocent of places and the most unexpected places can still be filled with supernatural forces and pure demonic malevolence. Haunted places, churches, hospitals, forests, the workplace and more. Horrifying true tales of ghosts, demons, poltergeists and the paranormal. Come and be chilled by people's creepy experiences with the supernatural in ordinary everyday places. Warning, listening to this audiobook may increase nervousness. True Tales of Haunted Places by G. Michael Vasey, narrated by Weird Darkness host Darren Marlar. You're a free sample on the audiobook's page at WeirdDarkness.com. The case of Mercy Brown, referred to as the Mercy Brown Vampire Incident, is a tale of tragedy, superstition and ritual. What's more, it occurred on Rhode Island, which coincidentally or not was itself known at the time as the Vampire Capital of America. Whether this helped fuel those circumstances around the Mercy Brown incident, or whether such legends are a consequence of it, is open to question. What's more, there are several other tragic, grim but fascinating cases from this region and era, all with extremely similar backstories and consequences. Indeed, almost two centuries following the infamous Salem Witch Trials, residents of the upper northeast of the infant United States were in a similar frenzy over the apparent vampires returning from their graves. Rhode Island was perhaps the epicenter of that frenzy. Whether that is anything of significance is perhaps open to investigation, as is whether the accounts of such tragic people as Mercy Brown are a simple misdiagnosis by a largely medically ignorant populace that still placed too much credence in superstition and folklore or a purposeful glossing over of an account of something altogether stranger. Husband and wife George and Mary Brown would arrive in Rhode Island in the 1870s, buying a farm in the town of Exeter. They were a middle of the pack couple, certainly not poor or destitute, but not overly affluent or influential either. With them were their young children and for a time always well in the Brown household. However, beginning in the early 1880s, tragedy after tragedy would befall the Brown family. In 1883, Mary would become suddenly very ill, dying shortly after.  While things settled down for a time in 1891, George's remaining daughter, Mercy, and his son Edwin, both became seriously ill.  The local doctor would inform George and indeed the increasingly talkative locals that consumption was responsible for the deaths of his wife and children, as well as Edwin's illness. This is better known today as tuberculosis and was at the time sweeping great parts of the United States. In fact, many hospitals and asylums were overrun with patients suffering from the usually fatal disease. However, the townsfolk, for reasons never fully explained, put forward the notion that someone in the Brown family was leaving the grave and infecting the remaining members of the family. And what's more, it was only a matter of time before these undead entities would turn their attention to others in Exeter and the surrounding Rhode Island area. Essentially, according to the local residents, one of the recently deceased Browns was of Empire and the next victim would be Edwin. With this in mind, George Brown would eventually give permission for the dead members of his family, his wife and his two daughters, to be exhumed from their graves. On the 17th of March, 1892, on a particularly cold afternoon in Chestnut Hill Cemetery in Exeter, in the presence of several residents, the local doctor and a journalist from the local newspaper, the exclamation began. Upon investigating the graves of his wife Mary and his daughter of the same name, there was nothing untoward discovered. The doctor would confirm each to be in the state of decomposition that they should have been. However, as they opened the grave of Mercy Brown, a sudden gasp and a collective stepping back from the coffin occurred. Despite her burial several months previously, she appeared almost merely asleep. Furthermore, her hair was in remarkably good condition and her nails long. When one of the men used his spade to prod at the young girl's body, flesh blood emerged from her mouth. Another gasp rippled through the gathered crowd before a flurry of activity. The deceased's girl's heart was removed and burnt on a rock at the graveside. Even more bizarre, the ashes of the heart were put into medicine intended for Edwin. However, the young boy also died in May, 1892. As an interesting side note to the dark and desperate affair, when Bram Stoker, author of the 1897 classic Dracula, died, there were several notes and newspaper clippings of the Mercy Brown case eventually discovered in his papers. At a time at the end of the 19th century, when information traveled much less distance and at a much slower pace, it is a good demonstration of the reach and depth of belief in the Mercy Brown case. To most people, the Mercy Brown Vampire incident is a case of local superstition running amok in the absence of scientific and medical knowledge. Indeed, we know today, for example, that both hair and fingernails appear to continue to grow for several months following death due to the skin dehydrating and peeling back. However, such legends persist. A very similar account, for example, is that of Nelly Vaughn, whose death was actually three years prior to Mercy Brown's, interestingly or not, also at the age of 19. Not only is her grave apparently cursed, many people claim to have seen the spirit of the young girl over the decades since. Furthermore, there is an extremely intriguing inscription on Nelly's tombstone. It reads, I am waiting and watching you. Perhaps even more bizarre is the experiments by a local university professor. He would claim, despite several attempts to do so that no vegetation or lichen would grow on or near Nelly's grave. By far the strangest claims concerning Nelly Vaughn are those made by Marlene Chatfield. She would claim she and her husband were in the cemetery near Nelly's grave one evening. Suddenly, out of nowhere, and despite being the only ones there, a female voice said, I am perfectly pleasant.  That wasn't Chatfield's only experience, however. On another occasion, she would visit the cemetery with an interested researcher from a local historical society. They were there to take pictures for research. When they reached Nelly's grave, the young woman went into a strange trance. She would repeat the phrase, Nelly is not of vampire over and over for around a minute. Furthermore, the pictures of Nelly's grave were mysteriously reversed upon processing. There are several other prominent vampire cases on record in the upper northeast area of the United States, and throughout the 1800s, a vampire panic similar to the claims of witches that gripped the area several centuries earlier was extremely prevalent in the region. Some cases, however, stretch right the way back to the late 1700s. The case of Sarah Tillinghast, for example, is particularly interesting, who once again, strangely, was 19 years old at the time of her tragic death. She would often roam around the graveyards of Rhode Island, particularly those of fallen revolutionary soldiers. She would read books of poetry for hours in these otherwise morose places. On one particular evening, after returning home from one of her typical days out, she suddenly became very ill. Her fever was extremely high, and she would deteriorate quickly. Within several weeks, she died. This, though, was only the start of the tragedy for the Tillinghast family. Several weeks following the death of Sarah, her brother James would awaken one morning, looking extremely ill and with a strange tale to tell. He claimed he was cold and was physically shivering, and there was a weight on his chest. Furthermore, Sarah had visited him during the night, sitting at the end of his bed, thinking their son was simply grieving for his sister, his parents paid it little attention. Several weeks later, though, he, too, was dead. When two more of the Tillinghast children claimed to have seen Sarah on their beds in the night, with each also dying suddenly shortly after, the Tillinghasts themselves began to suspect their daughter was returning from the grave, and what's more, she was taking the lives of the surviving family members. It wasn't long before rumors and half-truths were circulating around the village. These rumors increased even more when more of the Tillinghast children died, all stating that Sarah was visiting them during the night.  Shortly after, her husband, Snuffy Tillinghast, finally decided to address the bizarre situation head-on. He would go up to Sarah's grave with a farm hand, Caleb with him, for assistance early one morning. Shortly after arriving, they began to dig and pull up his daughter's casket. Then they opened the lid. Both stared, shocked and aghast at what lay before them. Despite her death being over 18 months previously, she looked as though she was still alive. There was absolutely no decomposition whatsoever. In a similar manner to the account of Mercy Brown, almost a century later, Snuffy proceeded to cut out the heart of his daughter. According to the legend, when he did so, it gushed with blood. He would then set it alight and reduced it to nothing more than ashes. Remarkably, his wife recovered almost instantly from her illness. Furthermore, there were no more sudden deaths nor sightings of his seemingly cursed daughter. Tuberculosis is the most likely cause of death for the vampires of Rhode Island during the late 1700s and 1800s. The vampire's reach, though at times deadly, continues today, if indirectly. In September 2011, for example, two teenage girls would die in a car crash. They were journeying from a visit to the grave of Mercy Brown and ventured down a lonely road. The cause of the crash is unknown, other than the car swerved and then rolled over. Thanks for listening! If you like the show, please share it with someone you know who loves the paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters or unsolved mysteries like you do. You can email me anytime with your questions or comments at darren at WeirdDarkness.com. Darren is D-A-R-R-E-N. WeirdDarkness.com is also where you can find information on any of the sponsors you heard about during the show. Find all of my social media, listen to audiobooks I've narrated, sign up for the email newsletter, find other podcasts that I host, including Church of the Undead, visit the store for Weird Darkness merchandise and more. WeirdDarkness.com is also where you can find the Hope in the Darkness page if you or someone you know is struggling with depression or dark thoughts. Also on the website, if you have a true paranormal or creepy tale to tell, you can click on Tell Your Story. You can find all of that and more at WeirdDarkness.com. All stories on Weird Darkness are purported to be true unless stated otherwise, and you can find links to the stories or the authors in the show notes. The Vampire, Mercy Brown and Your Other Self Disturbing Accounts of Real Doppelgangers was written by Marcus Louth for UFO Insight. Weird Darkness is a registered trademark. Copyright, Weird Darkness. And now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. 1 Corinthians 13 verses 1-7 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I'm a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 2 And a final thought. Sometimes bad luck hits you like in an ancient Greek tragedy and it's not your own making. When you have a plane crash, it's not your fault. Werner Herzog. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness. Hey, Weirdos. I'm really excited to let you know that I am stepping into the Marvel universe as the voice of J. Jonah Jameson in a new animated film coming in 2024 called Spider-Man Turning Point. That's right.  And not only am I a voice actor for this film, I'm also an executive producer because I believe in it. We even have a celebrity voice actor in the cast. Mike Vaughn was the voice of Ghostface in the screen TV show while he's voicing Harry Osborn. If you'd like to see some of the slick animation, the storyboards, character concepts, the first teaser trailer for the film and more, visit WeirdDarkness.com slash Spider-Man. We even have an original musical score. In fact, you're hearing Green Goblin's theme behind me right now. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash Spider-Man. When you visit there, you'll also have an opportunity to get involved if you'd like, getting your name in the credits, getting a social media shout out from the Spider-Man Turning Point production, get an animated thank you from Spider-Man himself just for you and more. I cannot wait to bring my J. Jonah Jameson to you in 2024. Learn more about our upcoming animated film, Spider-Man Turning Point, at WeirdDarkness.com slash Spider-Man. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash Spider-Man. Not yet. Have you ever noticed that in just about every post-apocalyptic TV show or movie, the electrical grid is gone? No power at all. Anywhere. No places to plug in a radio to get news and you can forget about charging your mobile devices or relaxing in an air conditioned house or apartment. We rely on electrical power. Did you know that the power grid we are currently surviving off of was designed in the 1800s? It's so fragile that in 2003 a tree branch hit a power line in Ohio and it shut down 21 power plants and close to 100 people died because of it. And it's not just natural disasters. In January, a power station in North Carolina was damaged by gunfire, marking the third time it happened. The terrifying truth is that our national security experts are warning us that our aging power grid is now more vulnerable than ever and these attacks just raise a new level of threat. Those post-apocalyptic TV and film scenarios could easily turn from fiction to fact. Imagine a blackout lasting not days, but weeks or even months. Your life would be frozen in time at the moment the power fails. Lights all over the country would go out, throwing people into total darkness. That's why having your own personal source of solar power is more important than ever. With the Patriot Power Generator, you get a solar generator that doesn't install into your house because it's portable. You can take it with you wherever you go, even use it indoors, and it's powerful enough for your phones, medical devices, even your refrigerator. Right now you can go to 4patriots.com, that's the number 4, patriots.com and use the code WEIRD to get 10% of your first purchase on anything on the website, including the life-saving Patriot Power Generator. You'll also get their famous guarantee for an entire year after your order, plus free shipping on orders over $97. And the reason I approached 4patriots to be a sponsor? A portion of every sale is donated to charities to support our veterans and their families. Prepare for the future. Go to 4patriots.com today and use the code WEIRD to get 10% off. That's the number 4, patriots.com, promo code WEIRD and ensure you will survive the future.


Before we discuss further and nuances of the positive psychology, it is warranted to distinguish the two very common terms used in the general conversations about positive psychology and conversations about well-being. These two terms are hedonic in idiomatic happiness. These terms were given by Aristotle, very, very popular categories. A hedonism in the general parlance is understood to be pleasure seeking, a life occupied by the search of pleasure. So, there is a inherent subjective satisfaction involved in the pleasure and this is mostly about avoiding plain and seeking pleasure. Another aspect of happiness is eudaimonia. Aristotle explains and it is understood in general parlance as happiness that arises from good work. It is more objectivist in nature, means it is relevant at the social level, people can objectively look at the eudaimonia. It is about the objective way of looking happiness and this is the function of virtues. Eudaimonia and hedonism are the two types of lives or two directions of pursuits of happiness and implicitly and sometime explicitly it is understood that eudaimonia is preferable over hedonism. This distinction is now being questioned and Casterden and Biswas Diner and Laura King, they have written extensively about it. There is a special issue and there is a response to the response of their articles as well. What it summarizes is that there is a good evidence that eudaimonic and hedonic aspect of well-being actually can operate in tandem. So, there is no hard and sharp categorization of the two aspects of happiness. It can be understood by few examples and these examples are given by these authors. Flow, intrinsic motivation, self-esteem, belongingness, feeling of competency, all these experiences are replete with the personal joy. They are replete with the sense of pleasure. They are replete with urge for people to keep looking at that and people look at these things as the matter of self-satisfaction, not societal welfare. For the flow or for the intrinsic motivation is more like an outcome rather than the main objective of pursuit. So, in this situation, we cannot distinguish hedonism and eudaimonia. Secondly, eudaimonic pursuit sometime related to negative feelings as well. They might be result of the negative feelings as well. You take up the social responsibility. You do not get the expected outcome or expected response. You may feel dejected. Then still some people go through this experience and still continue with that. There is not much happiness per se, but there is a pursuance of these objectives, these pursuits and that happens along with the negative feelings. So, eudaimonic pursuits may not necessarily result into happiness. So, we call eudaimonia as happiness, but there might not be many signs of virtues which are associated strongly with eudaimonia. Then there is another objection and another situation which can explain why there cannot be a person who is purely looking at hedonism. So, as there is no guaranteed happiness and eudaimonia, hedonism is also not something which people will always pursue and that can be understood with the thought experiment suggested by Robert Nozick that this is the famous thought experiment where he asked people to imagine you are in a machine which gives you perpetual joy, experience of joy continuously for the whole life.  Can even with that machine people would like to spend their lifetime? Answer is no. Nobody would like to have that kind of machine which can instigate some brain cells, some neurons in the head which can give the sense of perpetual joy and people would actually like to live and engage in the real life, in the huzzle-buzzle of the real life, struggle of that real life and then seek pleasure. So, nobody is purely pursuing the hedonistic objectives, eudaimonia may not necessarily result into happiness, may not result, may not be reflected into happiness and in many many situations eudaimonia and hedonism are difficult to distinguish. So, we are also not following this classification in this course. At this stage it is also important to articulate what positive psychology is not. So, it is not just absence of negative, rather in time of adversaries and challenges in life which we may sometime term as negative, positive psychology as a discipline leads to self-development. So, it is not only about goody-goody things, it is as much about the pleasant experience as it is about adversaries and challenges in life. It is not just the branch of medicine concerned with illness or health. In the famous paper American Psychologist 2001, Salishman and Chikandmihi explained that because of certain developments right after World War II psychology became subservient or subfield of the health management and health care departments. So, their natural objective was to treat the illness, but now things have moved a great deal and positive psychology is not only about health and illness. It is about work, about education, about insights, about love, personal growth, sports, play and all walks of life. Positive psychology does not rely on wishful thinking. It is neither based on faith or self-deception, fads or hand waving. It is a scientific process, it is a scientific field. It tries to adapt what is best in the scientific method to understand the unique problem that human behavior presents to those who wish to understand it in all its complexities. Positive psychology aims to expand not replace psychology's understanding of human behavior. So, these are some of the caveats which were important to be articulated at this stage.