The Truth Is In Here – Page 8

Boneyards EVP Log – 9/8/13

The situation: I turned on the P-SB7 toward the end of my show as planned and aimed the video recorder at it, said a few introductory remarks and then walked away to the other end of the room where at Ouija board session was already in progress with 3 audience members. Most of the audience was gathered round the board but a few lingered by the spirit box to see if they heard anything. Except for when I’m directly addressing the box there’s no reason to assume these voices are speaking only to me. These messages could have been meant for any of us gathered in the room, or it could be the spirits talking to each other.

BONEYARDS is back from the dead to rock your underworld. Four new post-Fringe shows in October just in time for Halloween. 10/17/13, 10/20, 11/2 and 11/3. Only 20 seats per show, get ‘em before they’re gone.

“I almost cried,” said one spirit about my opening show. Then there was the one who told me to “go to hell.”

The situation: I turned on the P-SB7 AM-FM scanner, aka Frank’s box or spirit box, toward the end of my show as planned and aimed the video recorder at it, said a few introductory remarks and then walked away to the other end of the room where a Ouija board session was already in progress with audience members. Most of the audience was gathered round the board but a few lingered by the spirit box to see if they heard anything. Except for when I’m directly addressing the box there’s no reason to assume these voices are speaking only to me. These messages could have been meant for any of us gathered in the room, or it could be the spirits talking to each other. As with the prior session in this space I detect at least 11 voices. And they are of a mixed mind. There’s the “no/lies/go to hell/ain’t got time for it” faction who wants me to go away and then there’s the “pull up a chair/don’t you go/love…kisses/talk to me/hi it’s me/I almost cried” fan base.

Meanwhile the simultaneous Ouija session was dull as the spirits seemed reluctant to speak with us (not always the case; check out the Ouija fireworks from the next night’s show). They made their presence known…there were at least 3 of them. One had initials DTS and Continue reading “Boneyards EVP Log – 9/8/13″

BONEYARDS City Paper Preview

Blood, guts and experimental theater

by Shaun Brady, 09/05/2013

“… Maybe it’s the darker sensibility of an audience primed for avant-garde theater, but Fringe is second only to Halloween in terms of people being ready to buckle down and open their minds to horrific subject matter … Jeffrey Stanley had little need to seek out horror films or literature as a child: He grew up next door to a funeral home in rural Virginia. ‘My bedroom window looked directly into their embalming room and they never closed the curtain,’ Stanley recalls. ‘So at night I’d go up there and watch, and I could see the body laid out on the slab. For whatever reason it never scared me; I thought it was fascinating.’

That’s one story Stanley will recount in Boneyards (Sept.8-17, Shivtei Yeshuron-Ezras Israel), the one-man semi-sequel to his 2011 Fringe hit Beautiful Zion: A Book of the Dead. The show takes place in the basement of a century-old storefront synagogue and, for its final performance, at Laurel Hill Cemetery … As in Beautiful Zion, Stanley will conclude with a Ouija board séance, a habit he began at a teenage New Year’s Eve party. ‘We were sitting around the kitchen table in the dark and crazy things started happening. We’re all convinced that by the end of the night we spoke to Jimi Hendrix, he possessed my friend’s kitten and made it pluck his guitar strings.’

Stanley insists that his obsession, like so much horror fiction, has a cathartic side. ‘As dark and macabre and creepy as it is, I hope it’s ultimately life-affirming. In the end it’s about loving life and taking away some of the fear of death that we have in our culture.'” full story at citypaper.net>>

IMG_2813-001 — Jeffrey Stanley, Boneyards rehearsal 9/3/13

And don’t forget to watch and listen to this historic first: a casting call for the dead. The first round of open auditions for the spirit world was held in the 1895 coal cellar using the famed P-SB7 AM/FM scanner for listening to EVPs. Here are the results. No tricks, no jokes. The transcript is also included along with a few afterthoughts but watch the video first.

An Historic First: Auditions for the Dead

The first round of open auditions for the spirit world were held earlier today on the BONEYARDS set using the famed P-SB7 AM/FM scanner for listening to EVPs. Here are the results. No tricks, no jokes, same as before. All EVPs have been slowed down to half speed and had the volume bumped up a notch to improve audibility. The raw video is 5 minutes. I’ve cut it down here to less than 4 minutes. Transcript also included below along with a few afterthoughts.

The first round of open auditions for the spirit world was held earlier today on the BONEYARDS set using the famed P-SB7 AM/FM scanner,aka Frank’s box or spirit box, for listening to EVPs. I was all alone in the coal cellar of this 3-story 1895 building in South Philly that started out as a store before becoming an Orthodox synagogue in 1909. Here are the results. No tricks, no jokes, same as before. All EVPs have been slowed down to half speed and had the volume bumped up a notch to improve audibility. The raw video is 5 minutes. I’ve cut it down here to less than 4 minutes. Transcript is also included below along with a few afterthoughts but watch the video first. Continue reading “An Historic First: Auditions for the Dead”

Break On Through to the Other Side

Dead people! Real live dead people! My very first EVP recordings. Read on.

In preparation for my upcoming Philly Fringe show BONEYARDS, in which I will most definitely use my antique ouija board as I have done in the past, I’ve been considering kicking things into the 21st century by making use of a Frank’s box, or spirit box, during the show. So a month ago I bought the popular P-SB7 and have had nothing but dead air every time I’ve tried it. I was about to send it back.

REPOST – MY FIRST EVP SESSION IN 2013.

sadhupromo — Jeffrey Stanley, Boneyards rehearsal 8/27/13.

Dead people, y’all. Real live dead people strumming guitars and singing. No jokes, no tricks, video below.

In preparation for my upcoming Philly Fringe show BONEYARDS, in which I will most definitely use my antique ouija board as I have done in the past, I’ve been considering kicking things into the 21st century by making use of a Frank’s box, or spirit box, during the show to listen to EVPs (electronic voice phenomena). So a month ago I bought the popular P-SB7 and have had nothing but dead air every time I’ve tried it. I was about to send it back.

Then this past weekend while vacationing in a literal Cabin in the Woods I had a major Breakthrough while relaxing out on the deck. I spent a lot of time saying to the Frank’s box, “Okay Raudive voices, prove you’re intelligent. What’s 2 + 3?” I asked that over and over but just kept getting static. Finally when I was bored enough and just about to shut it off in frustration it shouted, “Five!” clear as a bell. Admittedly rattled I quickly shut it off.

I spent an hour rehearsing my show outdoors right there next to it on the deck and then turned it on again. It immediately said, “Jeffrey?” That got my attention. I sat down and started chatting.

Still in skeptic analytical mode, I stared at my acoustic guitar propped up in the corner and asked, Continue reading “Break On Through to the Other Side”

My Way or the Yahweh

On Faith

A Jewish-Hindu connection

Talk about a crazy commute. After a spiritual encounter, a stranger and I spent the next 90 minutes discussing the nature of the universe.

Jeffrey Stanley, 7/23/13

Not so long ago after nearly 25 years as a hidebound New Yorker I moved to Philadelphia for my wife Pia’s career needs, inadvertently becoming part of a popular regional migration known to urban statisticians as the 6th borough phenomenon. She’s Indian-American and we’re raising our child in a bilingual home. I’m a writer and professor. She’s a scientist by day and an Indian classical dance professional by night. Religiously we are at best agnostic but culturally we are Hindus, and will identify ourselves as such when pressed, like on the hospital intake form the first time we took our baby in for a routine doctor’s visit.

This identification sits well with me. Despite growing up Nazarene in the Bible Belt I had long ago developed an affinity for Hindu philosophy—ever since I’d come across a used copy of the Bhagavad Gita at a flea market in high school and realized how similar it was to the New Testament. I still remember the perplexed look on my Sunday school teacher’s face the morning I brought the Gita to church. I had marked the sections that reminded me of Christ’s words in the Sermon on the Mount with an orange highlighter and asked him why Hindus were all going to Hell and we Christians weren’t. Suffice it say I quit going to church not long after that. Christianity just wasn’t speaking to me. When I met my wife-to-be years later while canoeing in Brooklyn’s fetid Gowanus Canal I fell in easily with her cultural worldview. We were a match made in moksha.

Imagine my surprise when, on a recent Friday afternoon while returning to Philly on a crowded New Jersey Transit train out of Manhattan’s Penn Station I came face to face with the power of YHWH. I have regular writing and teaching obligations in New York City so I typically commute between the two cities once or twice a week. The pre-rush hour train was unusually packed and it was running local but that was fine with me. In fact I had chosen the local on purpose, adding an hour to my travel time to get as much work done on the typically placid ride as possible before reaching home and hurlyburly.

Still awaiting departure from Penn I sat alone next to the window of my three-seater bench, opened my netbook, and sank into writing comments on my university students’ movie scenes. This was my Screenwriting II class and the scripts weren’t half bad. I had barely made a dent in my work when a rocker in a long-sleeved T-shirt, jeans and two black triangular ear studs plopped down next to me. I felt mildly annoyed by the disruption as he took off his coat and tossed it on the overhead rack along with his bag, and I was relieved when he settled into his seat, took out a paperback and began to read. Hallelujah, he’d be quiet like me instead of yammering away or playing videogames on a so-called smartphone. I continued my work in peace but couldn’t help noticing that he was reading a book on Hinduism. Another time I might have struck up a conversation but I had a lot of work ahead so I kept my nose to the netbook.

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