The ParaPod Mysteries - Series 2 Podcast Review

The first series of The ParaPod established comedian Barry Dodds as a gullible believer of all things ghost related, while his friend and co-host Ray Peacock was adamantly unconvinced by Barry's tails of hauntings. In this series the duo have taken to debating some of the greatest mysteries of all time.

Starting with The Loch Ness Monster, Barry and Ray have produced another ten episodes of the popular podcast, which tackles topics including the curse of the crying boy painting, Slender Man, Poveglia Island, spontaneous human combustion, and the UK's most famous UFO case, the Rendlesham Forest Incident.

After a few early defeats for Barry in the first few episodes when Ray easily debunked Barry's stories, Barry promised that he had an ace up his sleeve with the case of the Chupacabra, which he brought to episode three.

Again Barry was ripped apart by Ray, after this it was clear that Barry was into mysteries so much as ghosts. It felt like he was only bring topics to the show that he didn't mind being debunked. In one episode Barry actually stated that the world was a better and more interesting place before his mystery was explained.

There was some hilarious moments in the series when Barry ended up talking like a mad man. Towards the end of the series, Ray managed to easily convince Barry that the plural for "Bigfoot" was "Bigfi," without question Barry continued to refer to the mythical creatures as Bigfi for the rest of the episode.

In episode five while talking about the Mary Celeste, Barry mentions the ship that discovered the ghost ship floating at sea. Ray asked Barry what the ship was called, to which Barry replied, "I don't know that." Facetiously Ray said, "was that the name of this ship?" To which a confused Barry said, "no." His co-host then told him, "you'll have to say that then, just say Barry. So, what's the name of the ship?"

Barry obliged by talking about himself in the third person for a good chunk of the episode, "Barry doesn't know that." He said in order to remember to speak in this way, he had to pretend to be his mam. The joke continued in the next episode when Ray asked Barry if he'd like to spend a night on a haunted island, "Barry would love to go to the island for a party."

The first big breakthrough this series in correcting Barry's warped logic came in episode three when Barry was telling Ray about the Chupacabra, a mythical creature said to be spotted in Puerto Rico, where it supposedly attacks animals, especially goats. According to Barry, the Chupacabra kills the goats and sucks the blood from their corpses. The story involved Madeline Tolentino, although Barry wasn't sure "what her goat situation was." Madeline claimed that she found dead goats with three puncture holes in their neck and the bodies void of any blood.

Barry of course had a couple of explanations for this strange occurrence. First off he suggested that due to "all the lights in the sky" reported around that time, that the Chupacabra could be an alien's pet. Because aliens have pets just like we have dogs... of course.

His second theory is that the US Government and NASA created a monster to fight the Vietnamese during the war. A genetic hybrid, using the DNA of a dog, a cat, a lizard and a kangaroo which is injected into a kangaroo egg(?). Then some how, Barry doesn't know how, but some how the beast has escaped. When Ray challenged Barry's belief that the government could create a creature using DNA spicing, Barry's comeback... "how did they do Jurassic Park then?"

The breakthrough occurred when Ray informed Barry, using the power of facts, that when the goats were discovered dead the farmers just guessed that their bodies contained no blood. In most cases there were no checks done on the bodies and when they did check some of the goats, there was blood. Finally, Barry came to his first rational response "so why have they made this up?"

Ray also used his superior research to inform Barry that Madeline's description of the Chupacabra was an exact match to that of the alien in the movie, 'Species.' In fact Madeline believed that the plot of 'Species' was real and it was happening in Puerto Rico at the time.

Finally Barry accepted that the whole story of the Chupacabra was "probably bollocks" and made up by a crazy woman. It felt a little wrong laughing at the downfall of a broken man but if Barry had done the same research as Ray, this wouldn't have happened to him.

Another amazing and memorable bit of the series was when Barry brought a sausage roll related "mystery" to an episode. The episode turned out to be nothing more than a maths problem. The puzzle goes...

I want to be a sausage roll for 97p, but I have no money on me. So I borrow 50p from one person and 50p from another, which of course equals £1. I then go to a bakery and buy the sausage roll and get 3p change. Because the 3p doesn't split two-ways, I give a penny to each of those who leant me the money and I pocked a penny. So now I owe my friends 49p each, but 49 plus 49 equals 98p, so what's happened to the missing penny?

Barry roped Ray's wife Jo into this puzzle as he needed two people to try role play lending him the money in order to try to solve the mystery. Obviously Ray and Jo saw through this "mystery" straight away. There is no missing penny, the penny you pocketed becomes part of the 98p you owe your friends.

The discussion went on for far too long but it was really funny listening to Barry trying to get his head around it.

The second series of The ParaPod got off to a flying start when Barry, unbelievably, revealed that he thinks Derren Brown has an evil agenda but not just an evil agenda, Barry actually goes as far as to say that Derren Brown is "about as close as we've got to the Devil on Earth."

Of course Ray needed some clarification on this ridiculous claim so put Derren up against some well known historial figures who are also regarded as fairly evil but Barry disagrees. According to Barry, Derren is more evil than Fred West, Hitler and Genghis Khan because Derren "has powers" where as none of the aforementioned have powers. Barry challenged Ray to name anyone else with Derren's powers, Ray is quick to respond, "me. And you, believe it or not. Derren's powers are a brain and speech."

Barry goes on to say that "at the minute we're really lucky that he's on Channel 4, it's like someone's keeping an eye on him because if he wasn't, if he was just out there he could use those powers for evil."

This was followed up in episode three when Ray encouraged Barry to share with us what questions he'd ask a woman who is pregnant and is supposedly due to give birth to the Devil, judging by a dubious image captured in her ultrasound scan. After asking her if she'd used a ouija board recently, one of the questions Barry would ask her to establish whether this woman really was carrying a devil child was "have you ever been to see Derren Brown live?"

On this occasion Barry wouldn't go in to much more detail about Derren's involvement in this woman's situation as he said "we know he's listening" but Barry says he knows "he's done something" and that he doesn't trust him.

If you're reading this, hi Barry. I assume you just skipped to the last line.

If you've enjoyed this series of The ParaPod as much as I have then I urge you to donate. All content creators work hard to produce quality content and in the age of ad blockers, poor advertising revenue and a hugely saturated market it's vital that creators are rewarded for their work.

If you can afford to pay £15 to watch a 90 minute movie in the cinema, then you can afford to click here and chuck Ian and Barry a few quid for the 10 hours of brilliant entertainment they've given away for free over the last few months.