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Episode 370
October 11, 2024

You Can Buy Haunted Dolls on eBay

From dead-and-undead-again crypto cycles to eBay’s paranormal side, we explore the range of the paranormal in this week’s installment of Spooky Commerce. Listen now!

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From dead-and-undead-again crypto cycles to eBay’s paranormal side, we explore the range of the paranormal in this week’s installment of Spooky Commerce. Listen now!

Crypt-O-Currency, Panic Buying and Paranormal Ducks

Key takeaways:

  • eCommerce giants like Pinduoduo (Temu’s parent company) are contributing to deflation in China by flooding the market with cheap goods.
  • Disaster alerts compete with the attention economy. In our daily flurry of push notifications, we might also be alerted of an impending natural disaster.
  • Despite repeated crashes, the cryptocurrency market continues to revive itself.
  • {00:03:55} "The visual language of a hurricane is lines at retail or empty shelves having been bought out. It’s part of the cultural act of a disaster... commerce is so disrupted in a moment of disaster." – Phillip
  • {00:19:10} "I don't know which is worse, this horrific porcelain doll I'm looking at called the 'Haunted Effanbee Doll' from the 1930s, or the fact that it's listed at $12,000." – Phillip
  • {00:27:20} “I am not clicking that link. Oh, it’s a duck? Okay, link me that one.” – Brian
  • {00:31:00} “There's a lot of stuff that's sold on the Internet that's actually really hard to validate whether it can do what it says that it does. And I bet there are reviews of this duck that make it sound like people had paranormal experiences with it… Individual experiences are what we use to validate whether something is trustworthy to purchase.” – Brian
  • {00:33:00} "Do the delivery drivers know they’re transporting haunted relics?" – Sarah

Associated Links:

  • Check out Future Commerce+ for exclusive content and save on merch and print
  • Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce world
  • Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce

Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

You Can Buy Haunted Dolls on eBay

Episode 370

Brian: [00:01:43] Hello, and welcome to Future Commerce yet again. I am your host, Brian.

Phillip: [00:01:50] Brian. Brian, 380 episodes. Are we just changing the intro? Is that what we're doing?

Brian: [00:01:54] We're mixing it up. I think we have to. We have to mix it up. You have to stay... You have to mix things up to stay with the times. You gotta.

Phillip: [00:02:03] That's true.

Brian: [00:02:03] Keep it fresh.

Phillip: [00:02:05] Yeah. Today, we have a lot in store for you. Of course, it's spooky season, Brian.

Brian: [00:02:11] Spooky.

Phillip: [00:02:12] In the month of October, Future Commerce becomes Phantom Cryptmmerc.

Brian: [00:02:18] Phantom Cryptmmerc? Is that like that goes to crypto past that you did there?

Phillip: [00:02:25] That's funny. Actually, that's the only thing scarier than Spooky Commerce is crypto. The word crypt is right in it. That's a good one, actually.

Brian: [00:02:32] {laughter} We put the crypt into crypto.

Phillip: [00:02:37] Yeah. Actually, that's what every single crypto person looks like to me. They're the crypto keeper. {spooky laugh}

Brian: [00:02:42] The crypto keeper. The crypto keeper.

Phillip: [00:02:45] The crypto keeper. So blinged out.

Brian: [00:02:47] All of the podcasts that are around crypto are just leaning in now. They're just, like, all in on the undead. We're coming back from the dead again, yet again.

Phillip: [00:02:59] So true.

Brian: [00:02:59] That's crypto in a nutshell. It's like it keeps dying, and then it keeps coming back to life. It's like every night. Every night.

Phillip: [00:03:06] That's the crypt keeper. That's what it is. Oh, that's spooky. We do have an episode installment, a segment installment of Spooky Commerce, which is coming back with producer Sarah at the end of this episode. So really excited for that. But as we record this, we are recording this and pretaping earlier in the week than when it comes out. When we are talking, we will be in Los Angeles for the VISIONS Summit, and I'm sure it's gonna be mind blowing.

Brian: [00:03:35] We'll be partied out by the time...

Phillip: [00:03:37] There's no way we could have done this at any other time during this week. But we're also recording this as right now, we see a very concerning hurricane heading toward the Gulf Coast of Florida.

Brian: [00:03:52] Man.

Phillip: [00:03:52] Hopefully, by the time this hits, and it's in your podcast feed that we'll know kinda where stuff stands. But this is always a little harrowing, and, of course, a lot of people in Florida like to stick around and ride it out, if you will, hunker down. But we were talking actually, Brian, in the preshow about how much of the language, the cultural act of a hurricane and the visual language of a hurricane is lines at retail?

Brian: [00:04:24] Yeah. True.

Phillip: [00:04:25] Or empty shelves having been bought out?

Brian: [00:04:28] That's yeah. Any kind of disaster or end of the world type scenario, one of the signs of the time is the empty shelves. People desperate to get things out of stores, whether legally or illegally.

Phillip: [00:04:49] That's true too.

Brian: [00:04:50] Commerce is represented in those scenarios because commerce is such a part of our lives. It's so disrupted in a moment of disaster. We were also talking about how it's odd these days... Well, it used to be that when a disaster was about to hit you would get a warning on the TV and it would be in the news, and there'd be a lot of airtime would be given toward it.

Phillip: [00:05:26] With a hurricane, it's probably in the newspaper. These things move really slowly. You see them coming for, like, a really long time. {laughter}

Brian: [00:05:32] Right. But now it's just like alerts on your phone.

Phillip: [00:05:35] It's true.

Brian: [00:05:35] And you're probably getting more alerts about your fantasy football team than you are about the hurricane itself. And that's weird. That's spooky.

Phillip: [00:05:45] That is so true. Yeah. The attention economy around a hurricane is competing with the attention economy of those texts that you keep signing up for from all these, you know, Black Friday deals that are starting to pop up everywhere. "Sign up for your SMS alerts when we drop our sales and also do your hurricane prep on our website."

Brian: [00:06:10] Dark humor.

Phillip: [00:06:12] I was also saying to you how the incentive structures in order to try to prevent those really panic buying scenarios. Because that's what happens is people are either unprepared or they've waited too long to prepare. And so they compress all of that buying. All the preparedness. They're pulling all of that into a concentrated period of time. So, like, right now, today, I just left the grocery store, and it's just a frenzy. Lines up the aisles and out the door and getting out of the parking lot's nuts, and it's like that everywhere. So they try to incentivize people prepping earlier in the season by having a tax holiday.

Brian: [00:06:54] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:06:54] I don't know if they do something like this in in Seattle around back to school or anything like that. We do a lot of tax holidays in Florida.

Brian: [00:07:00] We don't have disasters at the level that you have them. It makes sense and a lot of sense, actually, because every year, there's gonna be some kind of major weather event in your area, in the southeast in general. And yeah, it's not quite like, we might get a windstorm, and prep for the winds windstorm, which is crazy, actually. It does get pretty gusty here. We've had winds come through not far from us over 60 miles an hour, which is not slow.

Phillip: [00:07:36] That's scary. Those are scary winds, I believe.

Brian: [00:07:40] The spooky winds. That's right.

Phillip: [00:07:42] Picks stuff up, throws it. Yeah. We hope everybody is okay. So it's a tough thing. We're not really sure where this is gonna go. So it's something we're watching and waiting for right now. It's even harder for me to be away from home when this is happening.

Brian: [00:08:00] Yeah. Your family.

Phillip: [00:08:01] It's gonna be a tough, a tough tough, tough thing. If we were right in the path of the thing... I'm further south. If we were right in the path as it stands right now, I don't know. I might have to call in my Co-Founder to emcee and do a multiplayer brand talk. That would be scary. I think we'll know in the next 24 hours where this is heading. Anyway... Love to everybody out there who's listening, especially our friend, long-time listener of the show, Benjamin Gordon, who's been a supporter of all these years. Already went through one really tough hurricane this season. So hearts out to you and your family Ben. Okay. Hard left from there. Another interesting tidbit, there was a piece of news recently, today in The New York Times talking about the economic woes in China continue. Pinduoduo, the parent company of Tmoo is in this article sort of pinned or positioned as one of the many drivers in ecommerce that are causing a deflationary effect on the currency. And a lot of this comes down to, hey, cheap cheap cheap cheap cheap items tend to wind up devaluing everything else.

Brian: [00:09:28] Right. What about all of the expensive stuff that gets made in China? Honestly.

Phillip: [00:09:34] Yeah. Everything seems to be positioned as being incredibly inexpensive, and I think that, you know, has a psychological effect. Aside from the article, there was some discourse this week, Brian. I wanted to bring it up to you. There was some debate around you can't buy a good sweater anymore for less than, you know, x number of dollars. Like, it's just impossible to find a good sweater for cheap. And a lot of the conversation, especially with a friend of the pod, Danielle Vermeer, who is a specialist and an expert in recommerce and in vintage goods and thrifting and resale marketplaces. And her perspective was, well, not only can you buy, like, 100% wool incredible sweaters for really inexpensive on all of those aforementioned channels. But beyond that, how many of these things do you realistically need to own? You could just buy one.

Brian: [00:10:28] Right.

Phillip: [00:10:28] Really high quality one for, you know, a 100, a 150, $200, and it's forever. But that's not...

Brian: [00:10:35] I mean...

Phillip: [00:10:36] That's not the consumer society. Right? That's not.

Brian: [00:10:38] Truth be told, you can get it for less than that. So I think people just don't know how to buy wool goods. I think it's part of the problem because you can get it...

Phillip: [00:10:50] How do you buy wool goods, Brian?

Brian: [00:10:51] Pendleton. Pendleton.

Phillip: [00:10:53] You just go direct to the manufacturer?

Brian: [00:10:55] No. I mean no. No. I mean, it's they are a brand. It's not like you're going out to a farm to get a Pendleton. It's a normal brand. It's been around for... A very storied brand. I think I've got a wool fisherman sweater that I got from Pendleton at I think it was, like, 75, and it's a nice, warm, wool sweater that I'm gonna wear for many, many, many, many, many, many years. I mean, I keep clothes for a long time, though. So it, you know, maybe that's it. I wear my clothes. I don't throw them away very quickly.

Phillip: [00:11:43] Maybe a part of the issue here is clothing being so identifiably on trend and people not buying sort of basics or classics, things that are staples in your wardrobe that you keep for a long time that you can just keep wearing without feeling like, oh, I can't wear my Princess Diana licensed, you know, black wool sheep sweater from Rowing Blazers again. People will recognize it. {laughter}

Brian: [00:12:11] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, yeah, the on trend nature of certain things. They might be really high quality items, but you still can't keep wearing them. I think there's some truth to that too for sure. And that leads to, I don't necessarily wanna call it overconsumption actually because sometimes I think...

Phillip: [00:12:32] It can be conspicuous consumption.

Brian: [00:12:33] For sure. And it can be overconsumption. I think overconsumption definitely happens in that scenario often, but it just depends on who you are as a person, and I guess how long you expect to wear something. Actually, there are probably some people that would come back at me and say, "Well, actually, Pendleton's not that high quality of a sweater." That's probably true. If you went to L. L. Bean or Pendleton or some of these companies, there's a lot of stuff that's not made as well as it used to be made even at these main brands. I have so far found my Pendleton sweater to be very, very good. But, again, I wear stuff a long time and maybe longer than I should wear it.

Phillip: [00:13:32] I think we could see a very real effect, a very similar real effect in the United States, you know, depending on the economic... If we were to be in an economic scenario where we're starting to limit and impose steeper tariffs on ecommerce orders from China, Chinese marketplaces, having a similar... If we were to enact the language of commerce as it comes to exerting our control in global hegemonies and economic superpowers, then I think we would have a very similar effect here because we'd have to consume less, which I think by that nature becomes deflationary as well.

Brian: [00:14:27] Would we, though? I mean I do agree with you, and it's interesting. Maybe this is all part of Gina Raimondo's moves in the battle that is commerce, commerce is at the forefront of global interactions and trying to control situations. And so maybe you're onto something here. And, also, maybe that's a faster way to slow inflation.

Phillip: [00:15:02] Yeah, we want a little bit of deflation. I don't think we want the...

Brian: [00:15:06] Not the Chinese level.

Phillip: [00:15:08] ...five, seven, 10%. Yeah. China's level of deflation, I think, becomes really concerning. Anyway, really interesting stories coming out there in the last week. We're in this lull period. Right? We have VISIONS content coming down the pike. We have got a new season of Step by Step on order with our friends over at Triple Whale and Meta. So we have a lot of stuff in store for you, our listeners. Thank you for hanging in with us the last 370 episodes. Can you believe that?

Brian: [00:15:39] It's more. It's more if you include the bonus and...

Phillip: [00:15:42] If you count it all...

Brian: [00:15:42] ...all the extra Step by Steps. Yeah.

Phillip: [00:15:44] You count it all... The bonus content over the years, but...

Brian: [00:15:47] 500.

Phillip: [00:15:47] I just wanna remind you, you can support this show. And the easiest way to do that is dropping us a review. Five stars on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, that'll go a long way. But if you want to help financially support the work of Future Commerce and you want to do so with no ads...

Brian: [00:16:07] Second easiest way...

Phillip: [00:16:08] You can join Future Commerce Plus, and it's your gateway to so much bonus content, ad free listening, and also, you get access to our LLM. What more could you want? There's so so much more, and you save on merchant print. So many things there, inclusive invites. Get it all in one membership. FutureCommerce.com/Plus. Archetypes, our 2023 journal, our 2024 journal this year, Muses, which is almost sold out. Brian's showing it off on the YouTube. But you know what? You're not gonna have, unfortunately, for everybody. You won't have the ads that you're about to hear, before we get to our installment of Spooky Commerce. Thanks for listening. Stick around after the break.

Announcer: [00:16:55] The time has come for Spooky Commerce.

Phillip: [00:17:02] It's time once again for a segment through the month of October. We're doing Spooky Commerce in here with us once again, producer Sarah, Sarah Roulette, joining us from the cryptid filled woods of Northern California. And what am I doing?

Brian: [00:17:19] Do you guys wanna know a really interesting spooky story from the Pacific Northwest?

Phillip: [00:17:24] Why don't you do that? Why don't you set us up this time, Brian?

Brian: [00:17:27] No. No. No. I'm not gonna get set us up. I'm not setting us up. I'm just telling you a personal spooky story.

Sarah: [00:17:32] I want to hear it.

Brian: [00:17:33] Okay. You know how one of my dog's names is Scruffy?

Phillip: [00:17:38] Oh, god. I've heard this story. Go on. Yep.

Brian: [00:17:41] Well, what we didn't know when we named him Scruffy, and we found out later was that his dad's name was actually Duffy. Totally random. Spooky spooky action going on there.

Sarah: [00:17:57] {laughter} That's not spooky.

Brian: [00:17:59] And no. I mean, we didn't know.

Sarah: [00:18:01] Super cute.

Brian: [00:18:02] We named it Scruffy, and his dad's name... So we call him Scruffy Duffy Do. There's the tie in. So spooky moments with Scruffy Duffy Do.

Phillip: [00:18:11] I don't know about you, Sarah. I have chills all over.

Brian: [00:18:15] It's so creepy.

Phillip: [00:18:16] I don't think I'm gonna be able to shake that feeling, Brian, about Scruffy Duffy Do.

Brian: [00:18:21] Wow. Scruffy Duffy Do, where are you?

Sarah: [00:18:26] If Scruffy is spooky to you, then this segment is going to be a lot.

Phillip: [00:18:31] Oh.

Sarah: [00:18:33] Did you know that there is a category of items on eBay titled psychic and paranormal where you can purchase allegedly haunted dolls, amulets, coins, vessels...

Brian: [00:18:47] Nope.

Sarah: [00:18:48] Ouija boards.

Phillip: [00:18:49] I'm out.

Sarah: [00:18:50] All of that stuff.

Brian: [00:18:51] Nope.

Phillip: [00:18:51] Nope. Nope. I did not know that, and I wish I could forget it. Thank you.

Brian: [00:19:00] Ugh

Sarah: [00:19:00] You're going to love this, but I'm dropping you a link.

Brian: [00:19:03] I don't wanna look at this. I don't need this in my life.

Phillip: [00:19:04] {terrified outburst} Oh my gosh.

Brian: [00:19:08] No. I'm not clicking.

Phillip: [00:19:10] Okay. Hold on. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait.

Brian: [00:19:13] I'm done. I'm not clicking.

Phillip: [00:19:13] Okay. Well, first of all, I don't know which is worse. This horrific porcelain looking doll that I'm looking at right now called The Haunted F&B doll, mid 1930s, or the fact that it is right now listed at $12,000.

Brian: [00:19:33] That's everything on eBay, though. Everything on eBay is listed at $12,000. It's like old Corelle plate? $12,000. Old Beanie Baby with a slight mistake on the tag? $12,000. Literally everything, you can find any object in the world that has some variant of it that's listed for $12,000 on eBay.

Phillip: [00:19:57] I appreciate that, but this one says that it's a no BS haunted item.

Sarah: [00:20:01] Yeah, Brian.

Phillip: [00:20:02] So, Sarah, tell us why we shouldn't be afraid.

Brian: [00:20:05] This is why I'm not clicking.

Phillip: [00:20:05] Save yourself.

Sarah: [00:20:54] We should be afraid because there are so many of these on eBay. There is a whole market that I've discovered through my Spooky Commerce research, and now I'm making you suffer through it with me. There's a whole market for haunted items. And you're right. The price, it ranges a lot. I've seen things going for $20, obviously, $12,000. I think it depends on the level of haunted it is.

Brian: [00:21:18] Haunting level. There's a Hant o Meter.

Sarah: [00:21:23] {laughter} This is like it's kind of freaking me out. And they all look, like, super beat up, super the conjuring, Annabelle, all those... Yeah.

Phillip: [00:21:33] Can I read some of this description here?

Sarah: [00:21:36] Please do.

Phillip: [00:21:37] I feel like this needs some dramatic music behind it.

Brian: [00:21:41] I'm still not clicking.

Phillip: [00:21:41] I think honestly, you might need to click because the not knowing might be worse than just seeing it and getting it over with. Item description from the seller. "This is a no BS haunted doll listing. I see a lot of dolls here that people destroy and then claim are haunted. First of all, are they telling on themselves? Second of all, I will give you my story, and you can choose to believe it or not believe. This is Esther." You know what? I don't like that. I don't like that.

Brian: [00:22:14] Nope. No.

Phillip: [00:22:16] "I acquired her in 2023 when I brought her home, and I put her in my bedroom on a shelf. My dog refused to come in the room since then even after I removed Esther and put her into my car. This was the start." First of all, Sarah, is this the kind of doll that you would put on your shelf?

Sarah: [00:22:34] Not in a million years. You could not pay me $12,000 to get near this doll.

Brian: [00:22:40] It sounds like this person may have already been haunted. To put a doll of this caliber and style on your shelf requires a certain level of pre haunting to even attempt this.

Sarah: [00:22:56] You've been haunted.

Brian: [00:22:57] Pre haunted.

Phillip: [00:22:58] Pre haunted. But then Esther was moved to the car, and then the house started having odd wiring issues. And then an electrician came and said they were baffled and asked if the house was haunted. And now the only way that Esther can be rid of this property is with an exchange of $12,000.

Brian: [00:23:18] Oh, commerce...

Sarah: [00:23:19] No. Did you say that?

Phillip: [00:23:21] No. I'm just saying. {laughter}

Brian: [00:23:22] I love it. I got it. That would have been funny.

Phillip: [00:23:25] I added a little editorial voice at the end. Sorry.

Brian: [00:23:28] I like that. I do like the idea of the exchange of a haunt coming at a transactional price. That's like the devil.

Phillip: [00:23:39] It's true.

Brian: [00:23:39] You know, buying your soul. Selling your soul to the devil. There's a transactional element to haunting.

Phillip: [00:23:46] I'll leave it at this. "There is a sensation on occasion of the sense of someone behind me, feeling watched, feeling like someone is in the room. I try not to think about Esther being in my room. I live alone." So I don't know about you. I mean, someone's gonna buy Esther, I think.

Sarah: [00:24:08] I think someone is going to buy Esther.

Phillip: [00:24:10] Fine. You could lowball. You could lowball.

Brian: [00:24:12] I'm good at lowballing. That's true. If we wanted Esther, I could probably come in with, like, a $50 offer, and they'd be like, "Yep. Done. You take the haunt." {laughter}.

Phillip: [00:24:23] {laughter} It's, like, definitely a monkey's paw scenario.

Brian: [00:24:25] This is the funniest thing of all. It's like somebody actually wants this. Somebody out there is like, "Yeah. I totally wanna get haunted. I will buy that. I wanna buy a haunt. They could buy a spiritual experience, a negative spiritual experience for $12,000."

Phillip: [00:25:59] Sarah, what other kinds of items are available in the paranormal section on eBay?

Sarah: [00:27:14] One of my favorites that I came across was a porcelain duck that is supposedly a vessel for a spirit.

Brian: [00:27:23] Okay. Link me to that one. {laughter}

Sarah: [00:27:26] No. I was gonna say, have you not opened the doll link yet?

Brian: [00:27:30] No. I said I wasn't going to, and I'm not going to. First of all, I don't want that in my algo. No wonder we are having Spooky October. You're like, "We should do one segment one time," and then...

Phillip: [00:27:41] Now it's 4 segments.

Brian: [00:27:43] You got fed... It's gonna be 12 segments a month or however many...

Phillip: [00:27:50] Yeah, it's a trial run for a whole... Wow. There's a haunted genie lamp.

Brian: [00:27:55] No. There's a haunting of our computers by the algorithm is what there is.

Sarah: [00:28:00] Okay. Here, Brian, this is the link to the haunted duck.

Brian: [00:28:03] Alright. I'll click on the duck. I'll click on the duck.

Phillip: [00:28:06] I couldn't have told you before you sent me this link what a haunted duck might look like. But now that I'm looking at it, that is the most haunted looking duck I've ever seen.

Sarah: [00:28:15] Right? There's just something about it. I don't know.

Phillip: [00:28:20] I mean, the something about it is that it has the devil in it. That's the something. What is the deal?

Brian: [00:28:26] It's a creepy looking duck.

Sarah: [00:28:28] It's menacing.

Phillip: [00:28:29] Mister Quackers. {laughter} That's what it says. It's a haunted vessel relic, paranormal investigation. That's the SEO part of the title, Mister Quackers.

Sarah: [00:28:42] I'm reading the description. Can I read some of those?

Phillip: [00:28:45] Yeah. Please.

Brian: [00:28:46] Go ahead.

Sarah: [00:28:46] Okay. "A college student bought a vintage..." Oh, it's a rubber duck. It's not porcelain. That's, like, worse. Okay. "Bought a vintage rubber duck, Mister Quackers, at a thrift store. She thought it was a quirky addition to her bathroom, but strange things started happening. Her roommates would find the duck in odd places, and some even reported seeing it grin at them."

Phillip: [00:29:09] It's grinning at me right now.

Sarah: [00:29:12] Oh my gosh. Okay. Terrifying occurrences. She was no... It would stare at her with cold dead eyes. She would hear eerie quacks in the night. {laughter}

Brian: [00:29:27] What does an eerie quack sound like? I wonder. {imitating what an eerie quack may sound like - whisper quacks}

Phillip: [00:29:35] {laughter} Please stop. Don't do that. I prefer that you never do that. Although, we should make that a ringtone. I feel like that could be a Future Commerce ringtone... The eerie Brian Lange quack. That's really funny.

Sarah: [00:29:49] Wow.

Brian: [00:29:49] Funnily enough, like, sexy quack and eerie quack sound similar.

Phillip: [00:29:54] They are adjacent.

Brian: [00:29:56] They're adjacent. That's a horseshoe moment.

Phillip: [00:30:00] I mean, did you ever watch the movie Howard the Duck, Brian? You ever see that?

Brian: [00:30:05] No.

Phillip: [00:30:05] There was some sexy quacking in that movie. I saw that movie way too young. That movie should not have... That was a big mistake on my parents' part. I would not say spooky.

Brian: [00:30:17] Were you like seven?

Phillip: [00:30:18] It's spooky that they didn't give that an R rating. That should have been an R rated movie.

Brian: [00:30:22] Does have an R rating.

Phillip: [00:30:24] I don't know. I don't think so.

Brian: [00:30:25] Let me see. {searches} "Howard the Duck rating." Nope. It's PG.

Phillip: [00:30:32] Yeah. When you're thinking about paranormal items, so there is kind of a disclaimer on a lot of these, Sarah.

Sarah: [00:30:46] There's a lot of...

Phillip: [00:30:47] Like, "We all know that this isn't real..." kind of a thing...

Sarah: [00:30:50] Yeah. Yeah. Like, "There's no way to scientifically prove," or "Obviously, I can't prove to you. You're just gonna have to trust. Send me $1200."

Brian: [00:31:00] That sounds like a Gwyneth Paltrow site.

Phillip: [00:31:04] Wow. Oh, it's Gooooop {spooky emphasis}. {laughter} Sarah literally rolled her eyes at me. That's all I know it was money.

Brian: [00:31:17] I think there's an okay commerce tie-in here. There's a lot of stuff that's sold on the Internet that's actually, like, really hard to validate whether it can do what it says that it does. And I bet there are reviews of this duck that make it sound like people had paranormal experiences with it or the dollar or whatever. And so individual experiences are what we use to help validate whether something is trustworthy to purchase. And yet with some things, the value is actually not quantifiable by a metric that everyone can agree upon.

Phillip: [00:32:03] I'm really mad at you right now because I think you're onto something, and it's making me angry, actually. There might be an unexamined placebo effect around ratings and reviews making you happy with something that otherwise doesn't actually do that.

Brian: [00:32:28] Right. It doesn't necessarily do it, or maybe it does for certain people, but not for others.

Phillip: [00:32:35] Right. That's how the placebo effect works. Could this literally be haunted if you believed it hard enough? That's the thing.

Brian: [00:32:45] Is it haunted to you? Maybe if it's haunted for some people, but not for others, actually.

Phillip: [00:32:51] Sarah, last word on haunted items... Return policies. What do we got?

Sarah: [00:32:57] My last thought is, do the delivery drivers know that they are transporting haunted relics? I'm just curious. What's the process?

Brian: [00:33:06] They did talk about that. Actually, that's in the description. They talk about how they had to raise... "Please understand I have had to increase my shipping fees to include better packaging. I had one of my vessel dolls break in shipping. Her face was shattered, and it made me absolutely sick."

Phillip: [00:33:24] Wow.

Sarah: [00:33:25] Oh no. There's a haunted UPS truck.

Phillip: [00:33:27] That's true. Yeah. {laughter}.

Sarah: [00:33:29] Somewhere.

Phillip: [00:33:30] Thank you, Sarah. Thank you for just haunting me with new information that I can no longer forget.

Sarah: [00:33:37] Anytime. Happy to do it.

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