June 02, 2021

HBM148: Early Attempts at Summoning Dream Beings

June 02, 2021/ Jeff Emtman

As a teenager, HBM host Jeff Emtman fell asleep most nights listening to Coast To Coast AM, a long running talk show about the world’s weirdnesses. One of the guests stuck out though; one who spoke on his experiences with lucid dreaming. He’d learned how to conjure supernatural entities and converse with his subconscious.

Lucid dreams are dreams where the dreamer knows they’re asleep. Some sleepers become lucid completely at random, but lucid dream training can drastically increase the frequency of their occurrence.

Months ago, Jeff put out a call for dream prompts on social media. He asked if anyone had questions for an all-knowing being to be conjured in a forthcoming lucid dream. Some of the questions are heard in this episode.

While training for this episode, Jeff used two approaches to trigger lucid dreams. The first was an audio recorder by the bedside. Each morning, Jeff recorded his dreams (lucid or not). The second method was a series of “wakefulness checks” throughout each day, stopping at random times to test reality, and to make a determination on whether he’s currently awake or asleep. This tactic is useful as it may eventually trigger the same behaviour in a dream.

In this episode, Jeff attempts to lucid dream to answer listener questions, but finds the progress slower than he hoped.

Here Be Monsters is an independent podcast that is funded entirely by individual sponsors and donors. You can become a donor at patreon.com/HBMpodcast

Producer: Jeff Emtman
Music: The Black Spot, Phantom Fauna, and Serocell.

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Sleep With Me is a podcast that helps you fall asleep.
Host Drew Ackerman tells tangential stories, reads old catalogues, recaps old Charlie Brown specials and does other calming things all in pursuit of slowing your mind down and letting you drift off to sleep more peacefully.
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Jeff wearing his favorite Sleep With Me shirt. This shirt elicits compliments whenever its worn 🐏💖

April 29, 2020

HBM136: Jacob's Lost Biography

April 29, 2020/ Bethany Denton

In 2012, Jacob Lemanski started writing his autobiography a few words at a time when he signed his name on the digital card readers at the grocery store. He read somewhere that the credit card companies keep the signatures on file for seven years. He thought he might report his card stolen in 2019 so that some grunt at Mastercard would find the story of his life...or…more likely he thought it was a project destined to evaporate and never be seen by anyone.

His inspiration came from an email forward containing a certain Kurt Vonnegut quote about making art for the sake of making art—whether it’s singing in the shower or writing bad poems. Vonnegut argued that art is one way to make the soul grow.

Jacob considered turning this into a lifelong project. At the time that he and HBM producer Jeff Emtman first talked, he was four entries into the project. On this episode, Jeff checks back with Jacob about his grocery store autobiography.

Jacob is a retired ant farmer living in Boulder Colorado.

Also on this episode, voicemails from listeners, who share stories about their bodies, sounds from the world around them, and the things that make them feel guilty. Call us anytime (765) 374-5263

Producer: Jeff Emtman
Editor: Bethany Denton
Music: The Black Spot, August Friis

May 22, 2019

HBM119: An Episode of Pebbles and Twigs

May 22, 2019/ Jeff Emtman

The end of our seventh season draws near! Just one more episode until we hang up our podcasting hats for a few months. We don’t want you to miss us too much though, so on this episode, we’re tying up some loose ends, answering some questions, and sharing ways that you can stay connected with us even when our podcast feed is quieter.

Content Note:
Sexual references and bodily injury

Five ways to help us out this summer

HBM Summer Art Exchange. You like to make art? You like to get art? Exchange something with a fellow HBM listener. All you have to do is fill out this form. It’s free (well, except for postage).
Merch. Did you know that we have HBM shirts, stickers, art prints, books, sweatshirts? Already have those? Fear not, we’re working on a something new for next season.
The VOICE Hotline Dataset. In 2017, Jeff FOIA’d Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for the records of the calls made to their VOICE hotline. The (heavily redacted) spreadsheet contains 5,164 calls with many pieces of metadata for each call record.
Google Sheets Version. This is a version that we’ve cleaned up a tad, added some useful analysis to. You can view and comment collaboratively here.
CSV Version. This is a version that you can use offline in software like Excel and Tableau.
ICE FOIA LIbrary Version. This is straight from the source. Our FOIA is listed under Reports → VOICE Log: Apr. 2017- Oct. 2017
Super Secret Facebook Group. We have a top secret Facebook group. If you want to be a part of it, just find it. That’s the only test to get in.
Voicemail Line. Call us anytime. Tell us your stories or record strange sounds, or ask us questions. We love it when you call. Our number is (765) 374-5263.

More reporting about the VOICE Hotline on Splinter and the Arizona Republic.

Many thanks to the data scientist Ahnjili Zhuparris for the help with the VOICE dataset. She created a whole slew of data visualizations for us here.

Producer: Jeff Emtman
Editor: Jeff Emtman
Music: The Black Spot

*Country of Birth data from the VOICE FOIA dataset. Visualized by Ahnjili Zhuparris.*

April 11, 2018

HBM096: Are We Still Afraid?

April 11, 2018/ Bethany Denton

Here Be Monsters is almost 100 episodes old. It’s grown a lot since Jeff was a scared 22 year old learning audio editing in his basement. So as we approach the milestone, we take a look back, check in with some of our memorable guests, and take the chance to answer some listener questions while we’re at it.