Ghosts Explained: An Objective Look At The Paranormal w/ J. Allan Danelek

Tim Dennis (0:29)

Hello, everyone. Welcome in to the Best In Paranormal Podcasting. This is Darkness Radio. I'm your host, Tim Dennis. Great show today, folks. Looking forward to it. We have an old friend with us today who I haven't talked to quite some time, and I guess I'm lax for that. He has a brand new project out there, which I'm excited to talk to you about today.

The project, which is out from Llewellyn Press and is called Ghosts Explained, An Objective Look At The Paranormal, is a really good book, which I think really you guys should pick up whether you're a novice ghost hunter, whether you are an experienced ghost hunter, or whether you're someone who's just kind of on the fringe and you've never investigated before in your life and you kind of want to get a good background on paranormal investigating in general. My guest today is J. Allan Danelek, and like I said, we haven't talked to him quite some time, so I'm really looking forward to this particular conversation with him today. Let me tell you a little bit about Jeff before we jump into things. Jeff is a native Minnesotan, and I give him points for that right off the bat.

Who's currently residing in Colorado. Jeff Allan Danelek has been working as a graphic artist and technical illustrator since leaving the Navy in 1984 He is regularly featured at seminars and conferences around the country, speaking on the topics of ghosts, reincarnation and UFOs. He's been published in Fate magazine and has been a frequent guest on Coast to Coast AM with George Norrie and The X Zone with Rob McConnell. He's also been a guest on Dreamland with Whitley Strieber, The Hilly Rose Show, Erskine Overnight and many other popular podcasts. His books include Ghosts Explained, Atlantis, Lessons From A Prehistoric Civilization and UFOs The Great Debate. Jeff also is a novelist and instructor at Colorado Free University. And let's welcome him back to the program. Allan Danelek. Hi, Jeff. How are you?

J. Allan Danelek (2:16)

Hey, Tim. Doing great, buddy.

Tim Dennis (2:19)

Excellent. Excellent. Boy, you're a sight for sore eyes. I haven't, I, you know, I can't remember how long it's been since we've spoken, but I got to tell you, you look wonderful.

J. Allan Danelek (2:29)

Well, were you in the Queen Mary back in 2007?

Tim Dennis (2:33)

Yes. Yeah.

J. Allan Danelek (2:34)

That's the last time I think we saw each other, buddy.

Tim Dennis (2:36)

Boy, that, holy cow. That's, that's almost 19 years.

J. Allan Danelek (2:41)

I know. Time flies when you're not really doing much.

Tim Dennis (2:44)

Oh, my gosh. Wow. I mean, I've, I've lost a little weight. I've gained a lot of gray. I've hmm. I think I've one leg has become kind of lame. I mean, there's a lot that's gone on, Jeff, but we won't, you know, bore people with that here. But we will talk about the book.

I mean, even maybe even the way we look at the paranormal might have changed a little bit, too.

I remember sitting in on quite a few of your UFO talks, which were fascinating, but we'll talk about that another time. But there's a lot of, you've had a lot of fascinating talks that you did at Darkness Radio events that I enjoyed quite a bit.

J. Allan Danelek (3:31)

Yeah, I get into quite a few different subjects in this area.

I don't want to be just like the ghost guy or the UFO guy. I like to kind of keep my fingers on a lot of different subjects and just kind of, it's just all interesting to me.

Tim Dennis (3:47)

Yeah, it is. It's all quite fascinating. Let me ask you this, Jeff, as we start things off.

With Llewellyn, and this might be a new partnership for you, but, or maybe it's not. I could be projecting here, but why this book, why Ghosts Explained and why now? It seems like the atmosphere or the landscape is changing a little bit with Paranormal Investigation, but it seems like you've issued this book with new eyes. Is that fair to say?

J. Allan Danelek (4:15)

Right, yeah, this was a rework of my original book I had with them called Case for Ghosts, which sold pretty well, did pretty well back in 2004, 2005

And I contacted Llewellyn about a year ago and I said, are you interested in revamping any of my old books? And they they bet on it. And she said, yeah, we could do a rework of Case for Ghosts.

So I took it and what you have is a book that's probably 60% of the original and 40% of new or updated information. And I just think it's always fun to be able to take something you've done in the past. And you always think, gosh, if I had to do it over again, what would I do differently? And I actually had a chance to do it over again. So I was able to fix, I think, some of the writing. I think I smoothed it out a little bit, made it a little bit more informal. And I think it works.