Seriously Mysterious - Missing Persons, Unsolved Murders & Historical True Crime · John Lordan - Respectful True Crime Content Creator, Advocate and Host

The Life and Death of Philip Taylor Kramer

·20 min·1 clip

By 1995, Kramer’s company was in bankruptcy, and his family says he became increasingly paranoid and sleepless.

The episode opens by placing Philip Taylor Kramer’s life against the late-1960s music world. It uses the era of Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, and Iron Butterfly to set the backdrop. From there, the episode follows Kramer into a stranger path. He is described as working on faster than light communication and other psychic phenomena with his father. The show explains the theory in plain terms: the human brain as an antenna for instant communication across vast distances. It also ties that idea to remote viewing, a psychic practice that was being tested by the U.S. military at the time, especially by Stanford Research Institute. The episode does not treat the concept as settled fact. Instead, it keeps asking whether Kramer was an eccentric genius chasing far out ideas or a real engineer on the edge of a breakthrough. That split matters because either version could have made him attractive to people who wanted his work. The narrative then jumps to 1995. By then, Total Multimedia had been reorganized under bankruptcy, and Kramer was working incredibly long hours to try to save it. He was also, according to his family, becoming more paranoid. He started talking about people who were bothering him, people who wanted what he was doing and had even threatened him. His father, Raymond, recalled a chilling warning that Phil had given to him: if I ever say I'm going to take my own life, don't you believe it. From there, the episode widens into a more careful question about stress, threat, and mental strain. It notes how extreme pressure can push the body into a constant alarm state. The result is a measured, uneasy portrait of a man whose life leaves more questions than answers.

As heard by us

A slow-burn portrait of a musician-engineer caught between rock history and unanswered questions.

Philip Taylor Kramer comes across as a musician-engineer pulled in two directions at once: the rock world around Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, and Iron Butterfly on one side, and his reported fascination with faster-than-light communication, psychic phenomena, and a machine that…

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

A 1968 rock-era story that keeps asking whether brilliance, pressure, or fear tipped the balance.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Seriously Mysterious - Missing Persons, Unsolved Murders & Historical True Crime