Jeff Belanger will again appear on the Discovery networks series: Shock Docs. The Curse of Robert the Doll explores the history, haunt, and curse of an infamous doll named Robert from Key West, Florida. The Curse of Robert the Doll premieres September 30, 2022 at 8/9c on Trvl Channel and streaming on Discovery+. You can watch the trailer here:
My 13-year-old nephew, Henri, started eighth grade this week. He was initially bummed because none of his closest friends were in his cluster at school. When we asked him how his first day was, he said, “It’s full of NPCs!” I exploded into laughter because I knew exactly what he meant in every sense of the word. NPCs are Non-Player Characters. In games, it’s a character not controlled by any player. If you’re playing a video game where there are other humans depicted, those characters have pre-defined roles that don’t change. They may impact your game play, but they’re mainly background decoration to make the experience feel more real. If you’ve seen the 2021 movie Free Guy starring Ryan Reynolds, it’s about an NPC who becomes self-aware in a video game. I loved the movie, and it brought up great debates about what it means to be alive. I can recall plenty of NPCs in my school years. Shoot, I can think of NPCs in my life now: neighbors who live down the street, but I’ve never met them; people who work at the grocery store stocking shelves. If I’m being honest, I’m an NPC for plenty of people around me too. Yesterday I learned that someone died from my high school’s graduating class of 1992. A friend sent me a message with his obituary. What bothered me was that I recognized the name, but I couldn’t remember him. I read his obit, it mentioned no spouse or children. Just that he lived with his cat and leaves behind nieces and nephews. There were about 240 people in my graduating class. There was a time in my senior year that if you lined them all up, I bet I could go down the row and tell you each person’s name. Maybe there were a couple of kids I never interacted with, but I at least knew just about everyone’s name, NPC or not. I had my close circle of friends, but I was aware of almost everyone around me. I reached out to a couple of high school friends since yesterday to share this unremembered man’s obituary. Each had the same reaction: I remember the name… but not the person. He was clearly an NPC to each of us. But he must have mattered to someone, right? Two months ago, I heard about the death of another classmate. My last two memories of this guy were him punching a gay kid at a school dance who was just starting to come out to his classmates with a solo dance to a Madonna song (back then, high school kids coming out was far more rare than it is today), and him being rude to my wife who was taking tickets at one of our high school reunions. In short, I never liked that punk. But dammit, I do remember him. Reading the obituary from yesterday has left me feeling confused and sad in a way I haven’t experienced before. I don’t know why, but I need to know that this guy mattered to somebody. That he wasn’t an NPC to at least a few people. The obituary said he died after suffering through an illness for several months. That just leaves me with more questions, whether he died alone and slowly. Maybe I’m feeling regret that I never knew him, and now never can. That he drifted into such obscurity with me that he’s now literally gone. As I’ve gotten older, my circle of friends has shrunk considerably. We’re all busy with jobs, kids, and keeping our heads above our own water lines. But suddenly, faced with losing classmates, and watching other people near my own age die untimely deaths, I can’t help but start to think of my own mortality and legacy, and how I treat people in my world, whether NPC or not. Sometimes I strike up random conversations with cashiers, people in waiting areas, or anywhere else I may be stuck for a minute or two during a transaction. Why not connect a little bit? When I was a kid, I used to get embarrassed when I saw my grandfather do this. That guy would talk to anyone. I didn’t get it then. I’m glad I get it now—that the NPCs in our lives are someone else’s main character, and they deserve as much respect as anyone else. To the classmate I don’t remember, I’m truly sorry. And to the people he mattered to, you have my deepest condolences.
Jeff Belanger will again appear on the Discovery networks new series: Shock Docs. The Visitors reveals the horrors of alien abduction from best-selling author Whitley Strieber. The Visitors premieres September 5, 2022 at 9PM on Trvl Channel and streaming on Discovery+. You can watch the trailer here: “They are here,” said Whitley Strieber while under hypnosis to uncover why he was having horrible pain and dreams. These simple words set off an exploration of one of the most fascinating and frightening real stories of alien abduction ever recorded. The latest installment of the hit franchise from Travel Channel is SHOCK DOCS: THE VISITORS premiering on Monday, September 5 at 9pm ET/PT on Travel Channel and streaming on discovery+. In 1985, while spending Christmas at his family’s cabin, New York Times best-selling author Whitley Strieber had a terrifying encounter with “visitors” not of this world. He went on to tell his harrowing tale of abduction, experimentation and mind control in the book “Communion” (and later the film starring Christopher Walken), which depicted the alien he encountered on the cover. After Strieber’s story swept the globe, he received hundreds of thousands of letters from readers who had similar encounters, convincing Strieber that we are not alone. Little did Strieber know his journey into the unknown was far from over. Over the decades, rare interviews under hypnosis detail how beings subjected him to disturbing experiments, recurring encounters and visions from beyond the grave. Rare video shows a surgeon attempting to remove an alien device implanted behind Strieber’s ear. For the first time in nearly 40 years, Strieber agrees to return to the cabin and the stone circle that marks the spot of his first abduction, while investigative journalist Melissa Tittl and UFO researcher Jeff Belanger conduct a paranormal investigation. Could this property still be a portal to an alien world, or is there something about Strieber himself that remains a beacon to the visitors? Ultimately, Strieber and the team attempt to crack the mystery that still swirls today. Why are these entities visiting us? Do they come with a warning? And what does this world have to do with the next?
Season 3, Episode 10: In Case I am Found Dead, Blame it on No One But Me Lemp Mansion is one of St. Louis’s grandest homes, which housed generations of one of the city’s most prominent — and troubled — families. Among tragic accounts of untreated mental illness and untimely deaths are stories of underground passages, false claims to the family fortune, rumors of a generational curse, and even a child hidden away in the attic. Special guest: Jeff Belanger. You can hear the episode here:
Last night I gave a program at the Derby Public Library in Connecticut. Before we got started, the director, Scott, showed me around the 120-year-old building. When he brought me into their History Room, he gestured toward this large painting and my jaw dropped. “That looks like Leatherman!” I said. And sure enough, it is. I’ve covered the story of Leatherman in my New England Legends television series, on my Web site, and I’ve been to multiple Leatherman caves in Connecticut. But I had only ever seen grainy black and white photos of the vagabond. Never have I seen the Leatherman captured like this painting. The Leatherman was likely Jules Bourglay of Lyon, France. Jules had fallen in love with the wealthy daughter of a leather merchant. Her father at first objected to the match because Jules was poor, but then offered him a job in his leather business. Jules made a bad financial decision with the company that left them ruined. Disgraced and ashamed, around 1862, someone matching Jules’s description shows up in New England and started walking a loop between the Connecticut and Hudson Rivers. He’d walk about 10 miles per day, every day of the year in a 365-mile loop. He slept in caves or sometimes a generous person’s barn. The vagabond lived on handouts and sometimes did odd jobs. But he kept walking that loop until 1889 when he was found dead in Ossing, New York. This was painted by A.V. Durand in 1892. It’s breathtaking, and so fitting that this New England legend is still with us in such a tangible way. If you’d like to see it for yourself, stop by the Derby Public Library, 313 Elizabeth Street, Derby, Connecticut.
I recently returned from Sage Paracon in the United Kingdom. First, what a great time had by all! The event was held at the haunted Coombe Abbey in Coventry. The oldest part of this building dates back to 1150. (1150 bears repeating!) 1150! To borrow a British phrase, “Blimey, that’s old!” Back then, this was the largest and most influential monastery in Warwickshire. The monks oversaw the golden age of British wool production. Between 1200 and 1320, sheep farming was the region’s main occupation. Wool left here by the ton. Considering the monks were the spiritual leaders for the region, this made them powerful and wealthy… and also a threat. Historically speaking, monarchs despise competition when it comes to who is in charge. In 1345, an abbot named Geoffrey was sent to Coombe Abbey by King Edward III, to oversee the Abbey and to ensure the King gets his due. As you can imagine, when the King tries to meddle with your operation by inserting his own rat, it’s not taken kindly. We’ll never know what impropriety Geoffrey may have discovered at Coombe Abbey because he was murdered right there in the Cloister. His assailant was never discovered. In short: no one saw nuthin’. Business as usual continues for almost a century, until along comes King Henry VIII who dissolves the monasteries in 1539, shutting down Coombe Abbey as well as the other abbies in England. The King then sold those lands and abbies to his wealthy friends to help him establish a wealthy ruling class who collected taxes from their working class people, sending a generous portion up to the crown, making him more wealthy and powerful. King Henry VIII didn’t like competition from the Catholic church, plus, they wouldn’t allow him to divorce his first wife (or second, or third, or fourth, or fifth, or sixth…) which led to an awful lot of bloodshed when he needed them out of the way. Still, the King understood people were used to serving a theocracy, so he established the Church of England and declared himself the head of it. Problem solved. Easy, right? Time passes, as it does, and England continues its struggle with a monarchy and ruling class, a parliament meant to represent everyone in the country, but often falling short of the common-person’s expectations, and by 1605 a group of radicals decide it’s time for drastic action. Princess Elizabeth, daughter of James I, was living at Coombe Abbey at the time obtaining her education, when Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Treason and Plot came knocking. Not knocking… so much as attempting to kidnap the princess at gunpoint. It didn’t work. Guy Fawkes tried to blow up parliament, which also failed, and now everyone in England remembers the fifth of November with bonfires and fireworks. Today, Coombe Abbey is a haunted hotel. Sure, there’s 900 years of history here, so putting a name on a cold spot or strange knock is tricky. Yet, a common sighting is that of a ghostly monk lurking in corners and the shadows. Near the lobby, a tomb sits with Abbot Geoffrey’s story written on a placard in front. And we got to sleep and dine there among the history, the abbots, the treasonists, and of course the ghosts. It’s why we do this whole ghost-hunting thing, isn’t it? We see the present in the past. Struggles between the common people and the ruling class. Seeing the pitfalls of a theocracy. And hoping these ghosts hold some answer to fixing our own future.
Jeff Belanger appears on Season 2 of the Fright Club series starring Jack Osbourne and the Ghost Brothers – Dalen Spratt, Marcus Harvey and Juwan Mass. The series is airing now on Discovery+.
Olivia D’Abo from TV’s “The Wonder Years” and movie “Conan the Destroyer” – Live in the Monstrosity Studio! Actress Olivia D’Abo stops in for a live in studio visit on this episode of “Monstrosity with David Race”. A perfect balance of fascinating interview and hilarity ensue. Then David Race and Olivia D’Abo are joined by TV host and ghost researcher Jeff Belanger. You can listen to the interview here:
The June 2022 edition of Podcast Magazine named Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger’s New England Legends #2 on their list of Top 50 Dads Who Podcast. The five-page article and interview can be read in their online edition here.
From host Lisa David Olson of the Stranger Connections Podcast: Jeff Belanger – legend tripper, adventurer, host of New England Legends (he is HILARIOUS, too) Jeff Belanger is brave, funny as all-get-out and also has some solid life advice, even for his own banker. CBS Sunday Morning says he is a “rock star in the ghost world.” Join in one of the funniest conversations you’ll hear this week (maybe this month). History, belief and folklore combine to create legends that challenge what we know about how the universe works. Are legends more than stories? Can we learn about our selves while exploring the unexplained? You can listen to the episode below: Listen to “Jeff Belanger – legend tripper, adventurer, host of New England Legends (he is HILARIOUS, too)” on Spreaker.
