After decades of having close encounters of the inexplicable kind, Bryan Dattilo (Lucas,) is set to launch a podcast on the paranormal. Conspiracies, Inc., available on Spotify, Apple, YouTube and other platforms, delves into UFOs, aliens and abductions. “I think this is something everyone can relate to in some way,” says Dattilo. “If you ask people, ‘Have you ever had a ghost story?’ they’re like, ‘No, no.’ Then they’ll say, ‘Well, once this happened.’ Or, ‘Once we did see something in the sky, and we didn’t know what it was.’”
Dattilo’s had some interesting experiences of his own, dating back to his childhood. “I was in Fate magazine in 1987,” explains Dattilo, citing the story The Psychic Adventures in Beverly Hills. “We had this write-up about ghosts and paranormal stuff that would happen in this house I grew up in in Beverly Hills. My mom [Peggy Dattilo] was working for the National Enquirer and would have a lot of cool parties at our house. She’d have a lot of seances and past life regressions. I watched some of the cast of EIGHT IS ENOUGH get past life regressed in my living room once. So a lot of cool things happened when I was growing up.”
The Fate magazine article centered on a tragedy that occurred in 1982. The man who lived next door to the Dattilo family was murdered. “I had had a dream prior to that,” recalls the actor. “I told my mom if she walked out the front door, the guys who killed the man next door were going to see her, think she was a witness, take her, and kill her. I begged her not to go out the front door that week. So she used the back door. That weekend there was police tape next door. The guy was indeed killed. I had this premonition that came true. I described the van, how many people there were… Some of the things lined up.”
Dattilo’s most intriguing experience happened when he left his family home in 1993. He’d just gotten his job on DAYS OF OUR LIVES, was attending Santa Monica Junior College, and had moved to Culver City. “One night, I was trying to go to sleep,” he recounts. “I had this fish tank against the window. Through it, I saw these four figures of different heights standing there. They came through the window and fish tank into the room, where they became solid. They were really there, physically, and one of them guided me out of bed.” What happened next had long been a blur to Dattilo. However, in the first two episodes of Conspiracies, Inc., he allows himself to be hypnotized by Yvonne Smith, a leading alien abduction hypnotherapist, and recounts details about the encounter. “You can see how hard it is, emotionally, for me to go through it,” reveals Dattilo. “It made me uncomfortable, because it sounds so freakin’ nuts. But it’s something that happened and something that I’d been dying to understand. To go under hypnosis and it be verified as actually happening was worth every bit of sanity that I could hold onto.”
It was that encounter that made Dattilo want to tackle this podcast. “I wanted to understand it,” says the actor. “I’ve been reading books about this habitually since I was 12 or 13. I’ve done a lot of research on the paranormal, dimensional travel, life after death, aliens, other worlds… There’s the possibility that there’s so much out there, and the odds are that, yes, there are places that might have life and they might be advanced enough to reach us. I think it would help society, as a whole, to throw some light on some of this stuff that’s been ignored for so long, because there’s so much evidence [that it does exist].”
Throughout his decades of experiences and research, Dattilo has truly come to admire the people within the business of the paranormal; people that he’s now getting the chance to chat with on his podcast. “I got to interview Kathleen Marden, the niece of Betty and Barney Hill, who were part of one of the biggest alien abduction cases in 1961,” he says. “They were taken out of their car and remembered it under hypnosis. I’ve interviewed Rueben Uriarte, one of the heads at MUFON; Don Schmidt, who’s the head curator of the Roswell Museum; and David Shorter, a professor at UCLA who teaches a class called Ghosts, Psychics and Aliens. I’ve also spoken to Nick Pope, the host of ANCIENT ALIENS. He’s probably the one I was most starstruck over, because I’m a huge fan of his show.”
Another memorable guest on Conspiracies, Inc. is Dattilo’s mother, Peggy. “It was great interviewing her, because she’s my mom,” he delivers with a smile. “Plus she’s interviewed people for years as a reporter, and I’ve heard her do that.”
Dattilo’s goal is to speak to more and more notable figures in the paranormal field. “I want to highlight the most famous abduction cases,” he says. “I want to highlight the most famous UFO cases. I want to ask questions, and go over it with people. This such a passion of mine, and I want to share it.”
To hear the trailer for the podcast, which will launch on March 3, click here.
