AREA52 - DEBRIEFED With Chris Ramsay - UFOs Swarmed The Crash Site - Sedge Masters (Full Readthrough) | ep. 95

Episode Date: July 10, 2026

In 1998, UFO Magazine published a strange three-part series written by an apparent pseudonymous author named Greg Halifax. The articles followed a character called Sedge Masters, an intelligence operative recruited into a deeply classified UFO crash-retrieval program known as Zodiac.Across the series, Masters is briefed on alleged recovered craft, non-human bodies, reverse-engineering efforts and a specialized military recovery team whose members return from a mission with ninety minutes of missing time. He is brought in to interrogate the men, investigate what happened during the recovery and gradually descend into a compartmentalized world involving Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, underwater objects, recovered technology and decades of UFO secrecy.For this complete readthrough, I’m reading all three original installments published in:UFO Magazine — May/June 1998, Volume 13, Number 3Featuring “Deep Files Trans ‘X’ Communiqué: Letter to a UFO Recruit”UFO Magazine — September 1998, Volume 13, Number 5UFO Magazine — December 1998, Volume 13, Number 8The articles were presented as fictionalized and largely unverified. However, their significance changed after a leaked 1999 email revealed that physicist Hal Puthoff believed the stories may have been only slightly fictionalized versions of a real source’s experiences preparing records for the archives at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.Whether the Sedge Masters story is fiction, a composite of genuine intelligence accounts, or something deliberately placed between the two remains unknown. This is the complete original story, read exactly as it appeared across the three issues of UFO Magazine.

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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to a new time. another episode of the Area 52 podcast. My name is Chris Ramsey. And today we're going to be deep diving into three articles written in separate issues of UFO magazine in the late 1990s, 1998, by someone who goes by the pseudonym Greg Halifax, which sounds made up, by the way. These three articles helped shape UFO lore, especially involving crash retrieval and reverse engineering of alien tech as we know it today.

Researchers such as James Landoli, as well as Richard Dolan, have done their due diligence looking into whether or not this is true. And according to Richard Dolan, he claims that this is thinly veiled in fiction and that this might actually be real. They talk about a project of crash retrieval that goes by the name Zodiac. This is very interesting because this was also mentioned by Eric Davis in the end. end of the Wilson Davis memos. If you're not familiar with that, it's a whole other deep dive, which we'll eventually get into. But essentially, there are multiple corroborating anecdotal pieces

of evidence that lead us to believe that Zodiac might be a real crash retrieval project and some type of offshoot or pseudonym for the Majestic 12 or MJ12 secret group. Wild, wild stuff. So there are three articles here by Greg Halifax, who tells the story of the one and only sedge masters. Now, if you've been involved in UFO lore for quite some time, you may have heard the name Sedge Masters come up because it is a really gripping story. Now, according to one of the best researchers of our time, Richard Dolan, one of the goats, Greg Halifax is actually a pseudonym in the real person.

His name is Jeffrey Griffith, who is a corporate attorney who basically worked for some of these aeronautics companies. I think TRW was the one which eventually became Northrop Grummond. If you try reaching out to this guy, which many a researcher have tried already, you just get hung up on. But this guy might have witnessed

what he is going to talk about today. And that's kind of how people have pieced together those things throughout UFO lore. Now we're going to get a little bit more into detail about the separate witnesses, including Mary Elizabeth Ellis, Elliot, who is also named, all these names don't mean anything to you right now. And I understand that. So don't, don't leave, all right? This is interesting. I promise you. But before we get

into the deep stuff, quick word from our sponsors. This episode is sponsored by Plod, and this little credit card size recording device is the Plod Note Pro. See, the hardest part of making Area 52 isn't finding information. Surprisingly, it's remembering which information. actually matters. Because the best ideas don't always show up when you're sitting at a desk. And if you don't capture that moment right away, it's kind of ephemeral, transient. It just kind of evaporates. And that's why I started using the Plod Note Pro. You simply keep your finger on the button and it'll start recording. If there is a point in the conversation that I think is important, I just click this once and it'll highlight that small part for me later. And when you're done,

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Up to you a lot, a lot. lot to go through. George Knapp has talked about Zodiac. Eric Davis, Edgar Mitchell, Hal putoff, Jacques Valet. These are just some of the names that Zodiac has been, has been attached to. Very cool stuff. So, I have the original magazines here, part one, two, and three. And folks, I'm not going to butter it up. We're reading all three today, and we're getting through them. So without any further ado, let's get into it. Deep files, TransX Communique, letter to a UFO recruit by Greg Halifax.

Also, quick little aside, Richard Dolan also noticed that there weren't any editors mentions or notes. Normally, for these type of articles, you'll have some type of editor mention, and there wasn't any. So just a strange little thing. And throughout all these magazines, you normally would have that, but not for these particular articles in these issues. So just interesting.

What you're about to read is largely unverified. But that doesn't mean it's not true. It's the type of UFO information that would typically be deeply buried. Then, carefully studied and compartmentalized by a small faction within the intelligence community, as suits any sensitive black operation. As such, straightforward corroboration is difficult at best, but UFO magazine has the advantage of more than a decade's worth of collected bits of information and broad-based facts on which to construct some fair extrapolations.

Drawn from a range of sources, the following incident reflects upon one of the blackest of America's covert operations that deal directly with the U.S. UFO phenomenon. What an intro. I like this already. I like where this is going. They recruited him when he was fresh from a not too harrowing assignment in the Middle East. This was one area of the globe, at least, where the CIA had little trouble justifying its existence. Having some military background, Sedge Masters, wasn't too surprised when he was called back for another briefing about the new foreign technology assignment overseen from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. What he heard at the first briefing didn't exactly fire his professional instincts. The task sounded

less than challenging. He was assured that more information would be coming his way and that much of it would change his mind about the degree of intrigue his new assignment would hold. Clearances intact, masters arrived on the base in short order. He was issued a security badge and escorted by an airman to an unmarked building. Once inside, he was escorted by the airman. He was escorted by the airman. He into a room where his security badge was taken from him and a different one given to him in its place. A different airman with a uniform that Masters had not seen before, armed with an M-16 and a sidearm, escorted him into a private room. That man left, and in less than two minutes, another armed and uniformed man entered and said nothing. Masters was used to this routine. When the soldier had

positioned himself in front of the door, Masters turned around to a table on which lay a thick packet of papers. One more glance at the impassive soldier and Masters began to read. The letter on top carried a number on the first page, but no date or letterhead. Dear Mr. Masters, consider this a deeper introduction to your present assignment. As you were told in last week's special briefing, you were selected for the program less for your wide intelligence background and technical skills than for the results of your psychological profile, both the one you took when you first joined the agency and the one administered earlier this year,

necessarily limited to technical experts and professionals in only a handful of military, scientific, and medical disciplines. The program, nevertheless, cannot sacrifice its dependence on absolute secrecy. and the personality traits that go with that exceptionally crucial need. Can I just say this is really well written? I and my colleagues want to congratulate you on nearly half a lifetime of unwavering circumspection in regard to the restricted information to which you have been privy. From the long list of classified technology,

to the panoply of tradecraft which you have successfully and courageously practiced in many areas, areas of the globe. What you'll be doing with us should be regarded as a complete change, not only in your understanding of conventional tradecraft, but in the very attitudes and habits that you have come to accept as SOP in your work, standard operational protocol. Who am I? UAP Gerb now? All right. We're dealing with something that falls well outside the normal boundaries of classical espionage and counterespionage has practiced since the advent of World War II, and yet has always been included within the classified mission statements of the various agencies and military branches comprising the military community since before the formation

of the agency in 1947. Interesting. The program has been carried on since then, albeit without acknowledgement or broad dissemination within the community itself, for reasons which will be be obvious as you read the material below. It must be emphasized that a good deal of the information set forth below is of the highest significance to the national security and cannot be divulged, even to those of your associates and colleagues in the community in whom you repose implicit confidence without authorization being given to you too. We will discuss more about the established protocol for this in the day's head for now. Refer to the attention. Refer to the attached appendix A, in which you'll find details on the use and application of code words,

protocols of formal introductions and parameters of discussion derived therefrom. Any breaches of the condition or the protocol therein will be dealt with as a security crime, even if committed inadvertently with the severest consequences to you and any recipient of the information contained in the communication, regardless of whether the recipient solicited the information. That's pretty serious. During the years preceding World War II, informal contacts made by Americans touring in Europe tasked to do so by then-attorney William Donovan, who was later the head of the OSS in World War II, revealed that there had been a number of sightings of unusual aerial phenomena and craft over European skies, particularly in the vicinity of German military facilities.

It was considered of extreme importance by Donovan and his friend, President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the nature of these sightings be explored. It was assumed that they might be evidence of advanced weapons being developed by the Nazi government. Those gentlemen and other allied leaders likewise assumed that we would shortly be at war with Germany. At the time, little could be confirmed about the reports of unidentified. The persons offering the reports were not professional espionage agents, and in any case found it difficult to elicit much information, which could be of use in assessing the nature of the sightings.

Military intelligence made modest efforts to flesh out these ephemeral reports, but little information was developed. In retrospect, the most ominous of the reports... Whoa, that light just... I'll be right back. My name is Peter Parker, but I'm also... Spider-Man. This July, we're faced with a threat.

That can be anyone. The world may have forgotten Peter Parker. I'm just a neighbor. Friendly neighbor. But he hasn't forgotten them. Sometimes Spider-Man has to do the hard thing. That's my responsibility. Talk to Banner?

I didn't know you could get that big. Spider-Man, brand new day. In theaters, July 31st. This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales. Using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result?

Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at Accenture.com slash Spotify. Odd happenings sometimes occur in the offices of Area 52. But not to worry, folks. This will not veer us from our current destination. as we must proceed with this incredibly gripping and captivating text, I might add. This is a really good read so far. I'm very invested. Military intelligence made modest efforts to flesh out these ephemeral reports,

but little information was developed. In retrospect, the most ominous of the reports claimed that a down-saucer-like craft of indeterminate origin was recovered by Wehrmacht troops in the days immediately preceding Germany's invasion of Poland. The rush of events focused the attention of military and the OSS on the matters of more pressing concern. Although it had been resolved to look into these reports again at the war's conclusion, the need to follow up on these matters was underscored by the appearance of the so-called foo fighters. Not the band, although that would have been cool, with shadowed military aircraft of all combatants during the war in both the European and Pacific theaters.

Naturally, each side assumed that the devices were new weapons of the other side. See attached Appendix B for censored press reports and military intelligence reports pertaining to the foo fighter phenomenon and the apparently related phenomena, which were the subject of Project Twinkle referenced therein. Now, I also want to note that the latest tranche, by the way, hate that word, stupid word. Let's stop using it. I don't know. I'm not a fan of buzzwords. When people start saying like impunity, trunch, and like somehow indoctrinating it into our current zeitgeist so seamlessly,

I tend to, I don't know, push back, just like UAP, not a fan of that either. Stop giving me these sanitized terms. Aliens, UFOs, flying saucers. But the latest tranche, if you will. had within it some really interesting documents that went all the way back to 1947 and mentioned the foo fighters and the interactions of the pilots, multiple interactions. Also, interactions of other flying discs in 47 prior to Roswell during Kenneth Arnold's sort of sightings as well. So lots of interesting stuff in those drops, none of which were on video,

by the way. And that's not a shot across the bow. I think everyone is also aware that the videos were kind of nothing burgers. I covered the first batch in a video, but I just didn't think, you know, I was just, if I'd make one more video on those batches, it felt like engagement farming to me, and I just didn't, it didn't sit well with me. Where is that, by the way, this redacted file that they speak of somewhere else in here, I guess, regardless. Talks about food fighters, which are orbs that were.

circling the planes and following them in formation. At the conclusion of World War II, it became apparent that the German Nazi regime had been developing a number of advanced missile and aircraft designs, a few of which, such as the jet fighters and the flying wings, had been developed in parallel, though somewhat belatedly, in the United States and the United Kingdom. Nevertheless, it was clear that extensive technological intelligence gathering would be necessary to determine the full extent of German technological advances in these and other areas. A lot of spying going on.

This effort was both impelled and hampered by worsening relations between the Western Allies and the USSR. Initially played out in occupied Germany, where most of the investigative work was being pursued, with the beginning of the Cold War, virtually all access to German investigation sites in the Soviet zone of occupation was denied to Allied intelligence and military. personnel. And there the matter might have rested, but for the Project Twinkle phenomenon's occurrence and the sighting by private pilot Kenneth Arnold in the summer of 47, see Appendix B. There you go. Before there could be a full assessment of the implications of these events. In July 1947, two craft were recovered from the desert near Roswell Army Air Corps bomber base. One of the craft was a deltoid wing lifting body, which had suffered a rupture to the crew compartment.

and some impact distortion, but which was otherwise intact. The other craft had completely disintegrated either before or upon impact. Although there were working hypotheses that these craft were either one, secret Soviet surveillance craft designed to spy upon the many advanced technical and military facilities in that region, to the craft from some other dimension, the details of which were and remain unspecified by the proponents of this hypothesis. or three, craft from our own future exploring the past through an unknown temporal travel mechanism. Soon became clear that these craft were from some planet or solar system other than our own, as they were occupied by two kinds of beings, which clearly were not of earthly origin.

Now we're talking about Psalm 101. This is the standard Operation Man. of how to deal with Ebens or EBE's one and two, the different types of aliens, the crashes and whatnot. Shout out to Agent M for sending me this, by the way. You know who you are. Thank you for that. Appreciate it. Now, the deltoid craft is interesting.

Deltoid meaning shaped like a D. You just say that, but hey, they want to be fancy. you know, even looking at Kenneth Arnold's original depiction of the craft seems to be in that deltoid formation as well. The occupants of the deltoid craft were largely intact after the crash. When the special recovery team established for this purpose located the crash, two of the occupants of the deltoid craft were still alive, although one was badly injured and would later die upon being taken. into the Roswell Air Corps base. The other survivor was alive and remained so for almost 30 days after the crash.

It was able to walk and seemed to understand that it was a captive among intelligent beings like itself. All efforts at communication with the survivor were inconclusive and largely unsuccessful. So this goes against so many other tellings of, you know, the interaction with the being. Now, I don't know if this is one in the same or if there was like, you know, there was the later Kingman crash, I think, in 52 where another body might have been recovered, J. Rod or who knows what. But maybe, yeah, maybe this initial back and forth didn't yield anything. Now, if we look at the case of Matilda McElroy in the book written by Lawrence R. Spencer, an alien interview where allegedly this nurse was the only one able to communicate with as being. That lasted for weeks and weeks and weeks. And so one of these people or both is telling a lie. And I'd like to think Matilda McElroy isn't a real story. I'd like to think it is a real story, but I don't think it's a real story.

And I lean towards this being a little higher in conviction, but I'm pretty low conviction on both of these so far. But let's keep reading. And by the way, let me know, this would be an interesting experiment in the comments. Let me know how you feel currently on a conviction level, percentage, 10%, 5%, that this is legitimate, your feeling. And then after the video, because I'm currently 5, 10%, I want to see how high or low my conviction will fluctuate throughout the reading here. I'd be curious to know what that's like for you.

Three other occupants were dead when their crevary team found them. The general appearance of these creatures was reported in the recently published somewhat fanciful investigative books on the subject which have received a certain amount of popular acceptance and which resulted in the recent 50th anniversary celebration of this event. Popular attention to this event remains strong. The occupants of the second craft were not found for several more days as their bodies had been. ejected in what appeared to be safety pods similar in purpose to those later employed in such high-performance aircraft as the B-58 Hustler and XB-70 supersonic bombers. These creatures were longer in dimension than the ones of the deltoid craft and their bodies were dispersed over a much wider area due to the disintegration of the craft. All were dead when found, with their bodies

much deteriorated from prolonged exposure to the elements and some having been partially eaten by coyotes and other creatures. All of the latter of which were found dead near the alien corpses. Wild! So we had read about the bodies being eaten before. I know that's morbid and that's a terrible thought, but animals are animals and they do animal things. And obviously, you know, they're going to decay and,

The elements will take care of them. But to hear that the animals who ate the bodies then later died is incredibly troubling. But also makes sense. I mean, if they're bringing in foreign bacteria from God knows where, you know, look at the Varginia case where the gentleman, the soldier, who had carried the being, the being had then scratched his underarm apparently and the bacteria transferred into him, he was unsavable.

And so this kind of checks out. Analysis of the animal remains and the alien bodies led to the conclusion that the animals died from poisoning caused by ingestion of chemicals in the alien flesh. It appeared that the second group of aliens could not survive if exposed to the Earth's atmosphere the need to remove all evidence of the event

from the two crash sites, limited the amount of crash reconstruction, which could be accomplished by the recovery team, with the consequence that it has never been made clear what exactly caused the crash. Unfortunately, the large number of civilian and military personnel who witnessed physical evidence at the crash sites and back at the Roswell base created a significant security hazard, which was dealt with by intimidation and bribery of the witnesses to the extent that those means proved effective. Until unofficial investigators, journalists, writers, and others began renewing investigation

of the subject in the early 1980s, these techniques were largely successful in keeping the truth of the Roswell event from the public, as well as its ominous implications. Now, we know this to be true as well. Even someone like our friend James Fox had interviewed, I believe, some Roswell witnesses, and many more, there are some floating around on YouTube as well, and they also. say the same thing. They were intimidated by these sort of men that showed up and said, hey, it's a big desert out there. They'll never find your body. And yeah, those tactics, unfortunately, are probably still applied today. I'd like to see them try. I actually wouldn't.

I probably wet myself. All right, here we go. The autopsies on the bodies of the creatures showed that they were of very light to build, and clearly not from this planet. The simplicity of their brain structures and non-communication in the face of stalwart efforts by researchers led investigators at the time to conclude that they were not the original designers and builders of the craft involved in the same. the incident. Rather, it seemed that they were biological robots, designed and bred for the purpose of undertaking such dangerous missions as flying through the atmosphere of an alien world. The survivor finally died when its body accumulated toxic waste products from its metabolism. There were no apparent excretory system or sexual organs. Consistent with this biological robot hypothesis was the complete absence of any galley or food stores aboard the craft. Of course, possibility of there

being a mothership from which these craft came was also considered, and was the less likely possibility that these small craft could themselves attain transluminal speeds. The propulsion system of the craft of obvious priority interest to our group was interminant for long after its recovery, while still subject to the laws of physics, as we imperfectly understand them. The craft's workings went far beyond our technological grasp at the time. Unfamiliar, nearly magical technology was displayed. Devices that we now know as integrated circuits, fiber optics, super-tenacious fibers and metals, and an unfathomable power source and drive mechanism, as well as other technology, which it is not necessary to discuss in this document.

Perhaps Velcro or the sham wow. Yeah, we've heard that before. Fiber optics, specifically memory metal as well. Silicon chips, perhaps, microprocessors. Very interesting. The military implications of the presence of these craft in our atmosphere and the possibility that they may have established friendly communications with our Cold War enemies were obvious and unsettling.

By the way, can we just mention that our author seamlessly referred to these beings as smooth-brained, although the lack of excretory systems kind of matches up with the molecular biologist who talks about them secreting their waist, pooping through their skin in the more, you know, clinical term. But again, this is written in 1998. So could that later article that we read on Reddit be derived from cases or texts such as these?

That is a high possibility. And I do keep that in mind. The discovery of these craft led to an equally unsettling reexamination of the European intelligence reports referred to above, as well as the post-war investigation by General Jimmy Doolittle. That's a real name of the Ghost Rockets of Norway. See Appendix C attached, top secret report of General James Doolittle. The president was made aware of these developments in order the formation of a special group of prominent scientists, cabinet, military, and intelligence officers, the popular literature bandies about the name of Majestic 12 or MJ12 for this special secret task force formed by the president. Other names by which it has been identified in the public mind through disinformation programs are Project Saucer and Aquarius.

And this is probably referring to Richard Doty or William Moore and the sort of disinformation campaign that led people to, you know, that led people astray from the real information. While it is possible that anyone or more of these was the name of this, was the name of the, you know, that led people to stray from the real information. While it is possible that any one or more of these was the name of the group at one time, for most of its existence, the code name for the group and the extensive program which it spawned has been and still is Zodiac. Zodiac, zodiac, zodiac, zodiac. With each of its operational subdivisions known by the name of a different zodiacal sign, including Aquarius. So that's interesting. You know what else is interesting? That Aquarius and zodiac signs are constellations.

This is a new piece of information that has been brought forward. You know, Matthew Brown, whistleblower, had mentioned immaculate constellation being this sort of, I think, gathering, intelligence gathering platform that use all other intelligence gathering platforms. and sort of gathered all the UAP data into one neat bundle, and that was known as the Immaculate Constellation. But if you think about Zodiac, Aquarius, constellations, like there is a pattern here. Also, 12 zodiac signs? Majestic 12.

Folks, we are connecting the dots today. This is more than just a mere coincidence. Or maybe it's not. As the years passed, the operational involvement of high government officials in Zodiac wanted to a certain degree, especially with the conclusion of the Eisenhower administration, although most presidents were still kept informed of low-key overview facts as they came to light. However, it fell to the agency's supervisors of Zodiac to determine who else in the government

should have access to this very closely held and highly compartmentalized information to the point that, like the heads of the military intelligence before World War II, they sometimes decided not to share information with certain presidents, including Nixon and Ford. All other presidents were kept reasonably well informed, including Jimmy Carter, who went back on his pledge to reveal all the information the government had on UFOs once he was elected president. Whoa. As of the early 1980s, the agency exercised complete control over Zodiac. With the cooperation of the rest of the intelligence community and the military branches,

particularly the Air Force and the Navy from 1947 to the early 1980s. Zodiac recovered 11 other alien craft in various states of disrepair, from a diminutive single-seat flying wing to a rather large craft that had to be trucked into Wright Patterson by dead of night. I believe that's probably Aztec, by the way. Some craft were turned over to our government by friendly powers, most notably Denmark, which allowed the U.S. to retrieve a rather large disc that had submerged off the Danish coast. Occasionally, a live craft occupant was recovered as well. Come on.

The Danes, really? There are ongoing efforts to discover the technological secrets of the recovered craft and to reverse engineer them on their subsystems. But so far, these efforts have met with limited success. Materials technology and knowledge of physics of the builders of the craft still present considerable obstacles to matching their observed performance characteristics. Makes you wonder if we've gotten any further, and I bet we have, maybe only incrementally, but still, this is 1998, nearly 20 years later, a lot has changed. 30 years later, pardon me. Besides the technology, The beings found with these craft are central to the program's investigations. There seem to be at least four types of occupants.

The two described above, as well, as humanoids that appear to be almost human, and Nordic in appearance, and small, strong, hairy ones. Wait, what? I was expecting to hear about mantids. Somehow we're getting, uh, I don't know, small hairy ones. Okay. You've heard about these, though. These have come up in lore. Not Bigfoot, but like shaggy, small, hairy ones. Even, I believe it was Jeremy Weeks, who said, according to him, during his abduction, one was sort of leaving the room as he was entering the room. So very interesting. You don't hear much about these ones, though. Underrated aliens. Okay. There may be others, but there. These are all that have been recovered to date. It is possible that one or more of these types represent only a subtype of the others.

There is no evidence of telepathic communication abilities of these creatures, speculation in the popular literature notwithstanding. However, there is some sort of empathetic manipulation, thought control ability, as detailed below and in various attached appendices. Whoa. So they can manipulate your emotions. That is crazy, but they can't apparently, allegedly, perform any telepathic abilities. But wouldn't that feel the same?

That's interesting. Here we go. Someone's already claiming this is our year. Someone else said that last year, too. A round of Jameson, ginger, and lime arrives at a table. Smooth enough for kickoff, smooth enough for extra time. New friends pulling up a stool. Debates about whether that was a handball.

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Elevate your savings with the Scotia high-interest savings account. Always earn high regular interest rates that grow the more you save and invest. Conditions apply. Visit scotiabank.com slash h-I-SA to learn more. Scotia Bank, you're richer than you think. Straight away, you know, all types of experiences have come out and said that the beings, when they look in their eyes, they're sort of flooded with endorphins and this feeling of calmness or everything's going to be okay or a feeling of familiarity with the beings. Like they know them and they know that they're, they don't mean any harm. Even Jake Barber when encountering one of these craft was kind of completely disarmed and brought to tears.

years from some emotional heightening. So that's interesting that they have that power to sort of manipulate us, perhaps only chemically in the brain to flood us with these, you know, good hormones. Details of the following incident should be carefully considered and recalled as they will be useful to you during the first phases of your assignment. As you progress, you'll be regularly debriefed and subsequently introduced to new phases, each of which may or may not have any direct relevance to what has gone before. As such, each anecdote like the following is to be utilized strictly for the discrete phase

which introduces unless you're instructed otherwise. Any deviation from this practice and attitude will be clearly evident and will result in your immediate termination. By the late 60s, Zodiac had been able to recruit members from an elite recovery team, 67 well-trained men were dispatched to the sites of crash landings and had by the 1970s perfected the tasks of completely and thoroughly documenting all actions and cleaning up any debris remaining after these incidents. The efficiency, trustworthiness, and expertise of these men

was and is unquestioned. Within the last 48 hours, the team was dispatched to a remote site in the Midwest where a craft and bodies were collected and ferried to the appropriate locations seemingly without incident. Wow. Okay. These men always comply with strict directions to document practically every single minute of these operations. They are debriefed immediately after each operation. This time, it's become clear to our debriefing teams at Wright-Patterson that the first members questioned could not account for an hour and a half's worth of time

spent at the site. The pattern of forgetfulness was exact with every team member debriefed so far. Debriefings were cut off for the day. Whoa, this is cool. I'm very heavily invested now. I love that the recovery team has now become experiencers. Missing time. Were they abducted?

I'm very interested now. You have been selected to be part of a newly forming debriefing team whose task will be correlation and analysis of these events. Clearly, the commonality of the gap in memory among the team members was induced somehow, either by some sort of localized phenomenon, having nothing to do with the recovered craft, or by contact with the downed craft. but these two options are tentatively rejected for lack of supporting evidence. We never encountered this phenomenon before. We fully appreciate that you have been introduced to this material on a rather short-term basis. Ordinarily, your introduction to this information would be more gradual. We have no time. We need to get to the bottom of this in short order.

We selected you for your unique experience in debriefing and interrogation. We kept some of the more senior team members on base for you to interview. Your assignment is to find out why even the most senior members of the team shared in this memory gap and to find out what happened during that hour and a half. You are to keep in mind that each of these team members is a highly valued person of unique abilities whose loyalty and patriotism is above reproach. Although you are to draw your own conclusions in your report, to me, you should be advised that the impression of those who've conducted the interview so far

is that the team members genuinely cannot recall what happened to them or what happened out there. Indeed, they were not even aware of the time gaps in their reports until they were advised of them by the debriefers. Your report is to be in writing and is to have one original and no copies. It is to be hand delivered by you to me. It is to bear the security stamps top secret, zodiac, and eyes only. You will let no one see a report but me, and you will not share its contents with those with whom you are working at Wright Patterson without my authorization. We cannot be certain of anything just yet, but need to collect as much data as possible in order to deal with this phenomenon in a manner consistent with national security.

I will require your report within 48 hours. at this time, please read this at least once more. It will not be made available to you again. Yours truly, Colonel David H. USAF. Masters read it through again. When he looked up, an Air Force captain had entered the room. Are you finished with the letter? He asked in a flat tone.

I'm done with it. Master sighed. For the first time in his professional career, heard his own voice waver with what sounded like nervousness. He handed the letter to the captain, who took it without comment, counting the pages. The captain took out a cigarette lighter and lit the corners of the pages,

gingerly dropping them into a red burn barrel, stirring the ashes with a metal rod. After the papers had been reduced to small wisps of white ash, the captain took another piece of paper out of his briefcase. signed it and presented it to the airman, who also signed it. The airman then presented it to Masters, who signed the sworn declaration of witnessing the destruction of the document. A writer-researcher for over 20 years, Greg Halifax lives in Southern California. This is the first in an occasional series of stories that, while presented to us from seemingly

trustworthy sources, are second or third-hand anecdotes and cannot be verified at this time they should be weighed as such. Folks, that is part one. We got to read part two now. We got to get on with it. That is very tantalizing. What do we make of this? What do we make of this?

20% max, 15 maybe. Conviction level raised by 5, maybe 10%. Raised maybe by 10, then dropped by 5 at the burning of the page, which I felt a little ceremonious and dramatic, especially stirring it with a little metal rod. I don't know. Maybe that's the way people do things in the military. If you've witnessed something like this in a burn barrel done in front of you in a secret room,

let me know. Just comment, I've seen it. Not going to raise my conviction any, but I'm curious. So this first one was from UFO magazine May, June 1998. It was volume 13 number three. And now we are in volume 13 number five, September 1998. Sedge Master's story part two, TransX, lost retrieval phase by Greg Halifax. Details on the deepest and blackest of clandest and UFO operations, such as they are.

stay safely beyond the reach of average citizens. While this inevitably frustrates us, it allows the secret keepers to do the job of collecting UFO intelligence that might best serve the military's agenda of maintaining at least an appearance of control. The saga of Sedgemasters, interrogation specialist, and jaded veteran of CIA covert ops, began in the last issue.

Masters was swiftly inducted into UFO program Zodiac after reading a special briefing on a bizarre UFO crash retrieval. That operation left the entire 67-man recovery team with over an hour of missing time. And Masters had been tasked to find what lies behind the collective memory lapse. What you're about to read is largely unverified. But that doesn't mean it's not true. Or in other words, folks, keep suspending your disbelief. Here we go.

The captain introduced himself and then requested that masters follow him to one of the debriefing rooms. They entered a spare room with a metallic table, neon lighting, and three metal chairs, two occupied. On the table sat a clipboard, a water pitcher, and three microphones wired to a Sony recording unit off to the side of the room. Seated in the first chair was a civilian wearing a polo shirt and cardigan. I promise you, I was nowhere near this. facility. He was slouched, leaning far over the table. His hair was longish, and he wore a beard. Okay. I feel like you ever see the movie Neverending Story, where you're like you're reading your own story? His name was Chris Ramsey. What the heck? No, okay, I just made that up. Psychologist, Master's

guessed correctly. Seated across from him was another man, tall, lean, with steely gray hair and steely eyes to match. He gave the initial appearance of being relaxed, but upon closer inspection, Masters could see that the man was still ready for action. He knew the look, having seen it many times before. The shrink and the tall fellow stood up and were introduced to Masters by the captain, who then withdrew. During the walk over to the debriefing room, the captain had explained that the civilian would conduct the first part of the interrogation, both to give Masters a feel for how debriefings were generally handed at Zodiac, and also to help orientating. master's as he picked up the thread of the debriefing. Masters was not entirely at home with this arrangement.

He had long ago become the master of his own show with the agency and was not used to being a spectator at a debriefing. But he inwardly acknowledged the wisdom of the approach. Moreover, he knew that he was still having difficulty in coming to terms with the letter from the colonel. He would need time to assess what was to be done and was so grateful that he would not have to begin. in the interrogation.

The tall man, with the steady, steely gaze, began his rendition of the events of the previous day, occasionally referring to his handwritten notes on the clipboard before him. He was the colonel in charge of the security detail. Masters thought it rather odd that a lieutenant colonel would personally command such a small detachment of men. As if picking up his thought, the colonel explained that the army had been tasked to establish a multi-layered security cordon around the crash area and that the recovery team was inserted by truck and helicopter from Wright Patterson. His men provided security around the immediate

crash site. After that, the operation went as usual, he said, describing how cordons, cordons, were set up in concentric rings around the craft. Radiation, gas, and biochemical readings were taken by men in multi-hazard suits. There were some radiation readings, but nothing dangerous. The craft was mostly intact, even though it had plainly come in hard. All of the alien occupants were said to be aboard. The physicians and biologists there pronounced that all alien occupants were dead. He went on. The recovery team docks were disappointed, but I was relieved, the colonel admitted. The heavy equipment operators went to work to extract the craft without causing it further damage. All in all, the colonel said, without any trace of irony that

masters could detect this was a routine recovery. The colonel had recovered other craft before without difficulty most of the time, and this particular operation went smoothly because the site was blessedly distant from population centers and air routes, he noted. There were no security intrusions whatsoever. The colonel steadily flipped through his notes on the clipboard and gave a detailed account of how security was established for the area and maintained throughout the recovery. But then it happened. The shirt. Rink noticed two, and cast masters a fleeting, sidlong glance. Up to this point, the colonel's rendition of events had been moment by moment, almost burlesquely

detailed in the minutiae of the challenges presented. Tasks performed and decisions made in the relatively mundane mission of establishing and maintaining security around an area that had already been secured by a much larger army cordon established beyond the horizon of the crash site. Then, without skipping a beat, the colonel jumped ahead to the point in time where the crane lifted the downcraft of the harness onto a low boy to be trucked back to the base,

covered by framing disguise and metal at metallic tarp. In effect, the colonel had abruptly skipped in an hour, an hour and a half of the process after reporting almost minute by minute what had occurred in the previous three hours. That's wild. Imagine someone telling you a story and then just like skipping ahead an hour and a half

and you're like, whoa, where'd you go? And they're like, what do you mean? His tone never varying. The colonel went back to describing the minutiae of establishing security for the convoy back to the base, use of helicopters, local police, army MPs, etc. The frustrated psychologist was about to interrupt the colonel to take him back over the gap when Masters tapped the shrink's right leg with his left hand, shooting him a glance, which told the shrink to let the colonel go on to the end of his story. Unimpeed. The colonel went on, as if giving an operational briefing, but in a tone appropriate for the intimate circumstances of the small audience in a small room. In another hour, his rendition complete, he finished off with the securing of the craft and the remains in a special receiving building on the base. He then saw to his men getting fed and reporting to the briefing area. The tape whirred on quietly. The shrink looked over at Masters. Colonel, may I see your notes? Masters asked. The colonel flashed an inquiring glance at the shrink,

who quickly nodded his approval. The colonel handed the clipboard of Masters who flipped through the pages. The notes were written in small block letters. The time was carefully noted in military 24-hour notation down the left margin of the graph paper pad. A very methodical guy, thought Masters, several pages back, he found the gap. There was no sense. space on the page to mark its place in the flow of events. The time margin notes simply skipped ahead an hour and a half from the beginnings of the excavation to the securing of the harness to lift the thing onto the low boy. Masters looked at the colonel who gazed back at him with the superficial appearance of openness in his eyes. Master knew that there was more. The colonel had

not been wholly successful in keeping the contempt he felt for agency spooks. out of his voice during the introductions, and in his eyes on two other occasions during the debrief. Masters made a mental note to leverage that attitude in his exploration of the gap. On the other hand, the captain had given Masters a quick rundown on the colonel's resume on the brisk walk over. He was one tough customer, one of those men that at the command structure called upon to take care of the rough stuff, a man much like Masters himself. this was not a guy to mess with lightly. Colonel, your notes appear to be very thorough. Thank you, sir.

The colonel responded flatly with the barest hint of a smile. You seem to have recorded every event in fine detail here in your notes, Masters continued, gesturing toward the colonel's clipboard on the table. Yes, sir, said the colonel. Now, without a smile. The colonel could sense it coming. even though he seemed to have no notion of what this CIA spook was getting at. What the hell, thought Masters here goes, and he spoke firmly.

Colonel, what happened back there? Ten pages back down at the bottom. The colonel looked at the page, then looked up at Masters. I'm sorry, sir, I don't follow you. Sir, there's over an hour gap in your notes right there on that page, and no such gap exists anywhere else in your notes. Why is that, Colonel? the colonel seemed perplexed by this information and quickly looked at his notes. He was clearly taken aback by the gap in the margin notes.

It was equally clear that he was searching his recollection of events for some explanation. For the first time, his professional demeanor slipped and a look of confusion crossed his face. Masters could see that the colonel had no clue as to why there was a gap. The colonel said nothing, just flipping the note pages back and forth. As if there was a page that had gotten stuck to the one above it. And he just stopped, looked at the psychologist, and then Masters. He stammered. I don't know, sir.

I have no idea why there are no notes for that period. Perhaps things were going smoothly that I had nothing to note down. Masters decided to press, but Colonel, the entire operation went smoothly. Yet you found every detail worthy of note before this point. what made this portion different. At this, the colonel's face went blank. After a moment, his expression brightened. We can check with my XO.

I'm sure that check can fill in this time period. He's a good man for detail. That's why I selected him for the team. We already checked with your XO, Colonel. The shrink broke in, his jaw tightening. His notes and his rendition of events have the same gap. The colonel was plainly nonplussed by this intelligence. Masters pressed on.

Colonel, forget about your notes for a minute. Do you recall what happened during that hour and a half or so? The colonel stared at the government issue, gray metal table surface, as if his notes of that period were written there. And after 45 long seconds, he said quietly, as if his answer were a surprise to himself. No.

Masters looked at the psychologist for a moment, then pushed his chair back from the table. Colonel, thank you. Wait a minute, is that it? Colonel barked, well, for the moment, said Masters. Let's sleep on it and we'll resume this in the morning. You and your men have a long day. Maybe everything will be more clear after everyone is more rested. Masters was able to dodge the colonel's impulse to argue, spinning about and leaving the room, dragging the diminutive shrink along with him. He pulled the shrink into the next unoccupied debriefing room and closed the door. Doctor, I want typewritten transcripts of each of the interviews with the recovery team.

Masters murmured, his voice slow and even, and I want them as soon as possible. Even if you have to keep everyone up all night, and even if you have to have brigadiers typing them. Can you do that? Master's asked making it clear that it was not a question. The doc took a small step back. Sure, I'll check with the captain. A lot of them are already being transcribed now. Masters warmed to his place of authority.

Please arrange to bring them to my quarters as they are completed, along with the tapes. A smaller man hesitated. Well, I'll need to check with the captain. Look, Doc, check with anyone you want. But get me the damn transcripts. And I'll take care of the captain. As it turned out, the captain was way ahead of them and had already made all of these remains. and more. It meant just as the letter had said. Every one of the team members drew a blank

when pressed about the missing time. After the 15th transcript, Masters turned off his light, rolled over, and tried to go to sleep, but sleep would not come. The accumulated knowledge of the past few days jammed into his mind. First, he learned that his government really believed that there were flying saucers and little green, gray men, and that they were covertly funding this rather elaborate program to run around at night surreptitiously collecting these things whenever they slipped to cog and crashed. Then, as if that were not enough, a bunch of hard-bitten cold warriors go out to hold the eggheads hands and keep away the riff-raff while the eggheads recover this saucer thing. And no one can remember what the hell happened. What's going on here?

worse still they all forgot the same hour and a half? What the holy hell is happening here? He finally drifted off to a fitful sleep just before dawn about 20 minutes before the airman knocked on his door to wake him. Masters decided that it was all fine and good for the military boys to demonstrate how wonderfully disciplined they were at dawn by being all starched and chipper. But he'd had it with all that long ago.

He politely but firmly informed the airman that there would be a change of plans and that he would be rising at noon, thank you. The airmen started to stammer out a protest, but something in Master's tone told the airman that this was probably not a good idea. At the crack of one, Masters blearily arose,

cleaned up and made his way to the captain's office escorted by the ubiquitous, overarmed airmen. You all right? Captain asked. Masters could not tell if he was being cute or if it was a sincere inquiry. Once he and the captain were alone, the captain made it clear that the inquiry was genuine. Look, it's quite a jolt to everyone the first time that they're introduced to this stuff.

On top of it, you get pushed into something that none of us had seen before. No one can blame you for feeling a little disoriented by all of this. The captain commiserated. Yeah, said Masters. So what's next? We start again. You get to start with the colonel. Wait a minute, Captain.

Master's interrupted. Why don't we cut to the chase here and break out the sodium pentothal and the other drugs? What about hypnosis? I mean, I've been at this for a while, and I can tell you that your colonel there is the kind of guy that if he thought he had something to tell us, he would already have told us. We're wasting our time here. But Masters could tell from the captain's reaction what the answer would be. The captain stiffened and said with pointedly measured words, Mr. Masters. Whenever the military types did not much care for someone, they would place uncommon emphasis on the first syllable of Mr. I think my teacher did that one.

Mr. Ramsey. These are our people and their loyalty is beyond question. We do not use truth serum on people like this, and we're not going to hypnotize them either. I don't know how they do things at the agency, but that's how we do it here, sir. Yeah, yeah, all honorable men, masters thought to himself out loud, he said, For your information, Captain, that's the way we handle it at the agency as well, he replied. But we need answers. And if we don't get them, we're going to have to do something other than shrug our shoulders and wonder what happened out there.

The captain seemed ready to take the matter to another level, but then he shrugged it off. Mr. Masters, once you've been in this area of intelligence for a while, you will probably become more accustomed to running up blind alleys. But you're right. We have to do something about the gap thing. but we also have to treat our people with respect and dignity, not like counter-intel agents from Russia. Very well, Captain, Master said impatiently. Let's go see if the colonel has had a sudden recollection of things past, shall we?

The strength of the colonel were already back in the grim little debriefing room. The colonel did not look quite the same this morning. He was pouring himself a glass of water, and as he did, Masters noted that his hands were shaking. His eyes were averted. What is this? Thought Masters? The shrink noted it, too. Masters could see. Tape on, Doc, Master said to the psychologist.

Yeah. Okay, Colonel. Did you get a good night's rest? The Colonel looked up at Masters with a bewildered, desperate look. The steely-eyed eagle of a man was nowhere in evidence. The Colonel started slowly. His voice, a hoarse, tremulous whisper. something happened this morning.

I remember now. It's all right to tell you now. It wasn't all right before. Momentarily taken aback, Master's queried. What do you mean by that? I don't know, really. I just know that I couldn't tell you yesterday. But now it's okay.

He blinked and repeated. It's okay now, that's all. Well, Colonel, who told you that it was okay, Masters probed. They did. The Colonel replied, looking as if he did not quite believe in himself. The aliens on the ship, said Colonel, clearly shaken by his own realization of what he was saying. Masters looked at the shrink. The dead things on the crash saucer?

No. The ones on the big ship that showed up as we were fitting the harness on the crashed one. Masters and the shrink shot each other a look and both said at once, What big ship that showed up? There was a ship, his voice trembled. A huge mother, 20 times larger than the one we were digging out. It just suddenly showed up overhead, took a position right above us, so low that we figured we thought that the Army boys at the outer point.

perimeter wouldn't be able to see it. What did it do? asked Masters, flipping a pen between his thumb and forefinger. Nothing, said the colonel. He just hovered up there, threatening us and trying to scare us off from the wreck. They didn't want us there. He closed his eyes and his face drawn. They didn't want us to take the craft or the bodies. How did you know that? Did they tell you that over a PA system or something? A look of amusement quickly gone. The colonel shivered, no, he said. Believe me, they did not need a PA system. It was real clear how they felt on the subject.

The colonel in the shrink again exchanged surprised glances. Masters ventured. Are we talking telepathy here, Colonel? He made no effort to hide the skepticism in his voice, but the colonel seemed not to notice, too busy, reliving the moment with the mothership overhead. No, not exactly, the colonel said slowly. It wasn't telepathy.

It was more just like being able to feel their hostility. We could feel that they did not want us there. We all understood that. We didn't even need to talk about it. But it wasn't verbal. It wasn't like we received a thought-out sentence or anything like that. We didn't need to. We got the point.

Empathy, whispered the psychologist, transfixed by the colonel's words. Masters took a deep breath. Okay, Colonel, what did you and your men do once you felt this hostility from the ship? He asked. I ordered the men to go weapons hot and wait to fire. on my command or at the first sign of an overt attack. He looked down to the floor for a few seconds. The order was superfluous, really.

All of us had already done that the minute the damn thing showed up. Was there any sign of hostility? No. It just hovered there, emanating hostility for the next hour and a half. We just held our ground ready to shoot it out of the sky at the first move it made, but didn't do anything. So what happened eventually? Masters asked his voice, softening.

The colonel squinted in frustration. Just flew straight up into the night, and that was it, he said. Guys went back to lifting the wreck onto the trailer, and that was that. I guess we were all a little too busy to bother with noting our procedures at that point. Slightest tinge of sarcasm and defensiveness entered his voice again. Why didn't you tell us this before? Master's pressed again. There was no way. I couldn't tell anyone. I couldn't even remember. But when I woke up this morning, I suddenly remembered it all and knew that it was okay with them to tell you about it now. Okay with them, Masters repeated slowly under his breath. There was a knock on the door and the captain ducked in. Excuse me, gentlemen, Colonel, Mr. Masters, Doc, could I see you outside for a minute, please?

My apologies, Colonel. But the Colonel seemed lost in thought and merely glanced up and waved the captain off. Masters and the psychologist followed the captain out in the hallway. The captain seemed very excited. I don't know what's happening in your room, but I would bet money that the colonel suddenly remembered a Mexican standoff with some big ship that showed up and tried to scare our guys off. Am I right? He looked expectantly from Masters to the psychologist. Our first 15 team members all said the same thing.

Can you believe it? The colonel said it too, didn't he? Now it was the shrink who was excited. Yes, yeah, that's right. It's as if the aliens turned on their memories of the incident. Little gray bastards of thought control and empathy projection, but you believe this shit? These gray critters get scarier at every turn. But masters could see that the shrink was actually thrilled.

They were making this discovery. At the same time, he noticed that the captain wasn't nearly as thrilled. The truth, as it were, had not. set him free. The thought occurred to him. How do we know that this version is the truth either, gentlemen? The captain and the doctor spun around to look at Masters. What do you mean? Captain asked in a rush. Remember what happened now? Yeah, Masters agreed slowly. Maybe, maybe not. These memories are now allowed by the aliens, the same aliens that would not let them even talk about it before. He turned to the shrink, Doc.

You know anything about hypnosis? The psychologist brightened. He saw what Masters was getting at. You're talking about screen memory, aren't you? Like the aliens only allowed the team to remember what they wanted them to remember, right? Yeah, something like that. Masters replied, You could see that this line of questioning was making the captain cross and uneasy.

Masters looked squarely at the captain. So, Doc, that would one go about punching through that screen memory to get to the truth? Well, it isn't clear that it can be done at all, the captain snorted. But if it can be done, it will be with either deep hypnosis or some sort of inhibition-reducing drug like sodium pentothal. Even then, it isn't certain that we can break through or we can even get to the truth if we do. Hypnosis is very unreliable, the doc injected. Also, if these alien guys are this good, they might be able to implant several layers of screen memories. It would be a craft shoot at best, he added, and shrank into silence.

Suddenly aware of the captain's discomfort with the whole discussion. The captain turned to Masters. I remind you again, Mr. Masters, he said. We do not put our people under hypnosis or drugs unless they are under suspicion of counterespionage, which is not applicable here. Moreover, you heard him. Hypnosis is unreliable. and even if we use drugs, we couldn't be sure of the results. Master's side.

Well, Captain, one thing's for damn sure. Your fine colonel, your quintessential man of action in there and his group of Class A battle studs did not just stand there, cocked and locked for an hour and a half without doing something or without something happening. Your colonel is also one meticulous mother who doesn't take a breath without documenting it. But for an hour and a half, he and all of our team didn't write one damn thing down on their clipboards.

Doesn't that make you just a little curious to know what really happened out there, Captain? Hell yes, I'm curious, the captain snapped, but not at the price of degrading these good people. Some of the best people that I or anyone else has ever worked with. He drew himself up and stared into Master's eyes. No, Mr. Masters, we are not going to do what you suggest besides. Their real memories will probably surface eventually, no matter what we do or don't do. Very well, Captain, Master said coldly. I just hope we have the time to find out what we need to know about this before these gray bastards have taken over the whole damn place.

What good will your people's dignity do for them then, Captain? That is about enough, Mr. Masters. The captain spat as if you were dressing down a new recruit. In any case, the decision is not up to me. The base commander will have to take care of this one. Masters looked out the window of the 727 as it lowered into Washington. There would be no hypnosis, no truth drugs. The base commander was unconvinced of Master's argument.

In any case, that is not how we treat our people and so on. Masters sneered to himself and then knocked back his scotch on the rocks. On balance, he vastly preferred the Russians and the Iranians to this shit. Maybe it was time to retire, after all. but the agency had other ideas, as we would soon discover. All right, a writer researcher for over 20 years, Greg Halifax lives in Southern California. He has a number of good friends from the military industrial complex. You don't say, as part two.

Man, this story gets better and better. I'm enthralled. Sedge Master's character reads as a, I don't know, some like mid-Sexam. century gruff type, you know, hard-nosed, scotch on the rocks. I don't know. I like the cut of his jib. All right, here we go. Part three, the ballroom, the scooter, and the Christmas ornament.

I feel like we should play those organs. You know they did in the 1940s when there was like these radio shows during the war, like da-da-da-da. And it was like all live. Just me. I listen to some weird stuff when I'm alone. in the car. At any rate, they would have these live shows, you know, on air, and they would do all the sound effects in studio. None of it was pre-recorded. They had this, like, organ-type thing that would play. I digress. Let's get back to the story. Interrogation specialist and veteran

operatives. Sedgwick masters. Okay, we have a full name now. Sedgwick. No, not the name of Harry Potter's bird. He has been tasked with the uncovering, with uncovering the secrets behind UFO reports. CIA background, notwithstanding, there are just some secrets that stubbornly resist the probes of even the world's best investigative minds, forcing the most sensible and objective man to completely reevaluate his version of reality. After a sudden and perplexing briefing on the state of the UFO phenomenon, as the best intelligence pros know it, Masters, was hustled off to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. There, he sat in on the briefings of some men at the Air Force Base's top flight crash recovery team, all of whom had experienced over an hour of missing time during a sensitive recovery operation.

Still reeling psychologically, Masters is about to engage in another round of the patently weird. Sedge Masters had been back in Washington, D.C. for two weeks. Most of the time he had spent drinking in his townhouse in Fairfax. Small part of the time, he had spent reporting on what had occurred at Wright-Patterson. the entire UFO recovery team, losing its collective memory of the threatening appearance of a second, much larger UFO over the recovery site, and then the sudden, an explicable recollection of the events by all 67 members of the team. While he was at the base assigned specially by the agency to debrief the team's commander, he had argued in favor of using hypnosis and drugs to try to penetrate beyond what he suspects were screen memories of the event.

He had been overridden by the local commanders and his own supervisor within the agency had gone along with that determination. The first debriefing took place in a safe house in the countryside outside Fairfax. His boss, the colonel, took in Master's oral report impassively, asking no questions. Also, let's just like pause here a second.

The mass screen memory thing is extremely strange yet not completely unheard of. I think it was Mario Woods who had also told me a story that when he was a child, I think they went to church with his family.

Clear as day, discs appeared over the church. This might have been Mario Woods or this might have been Preston Dennett. I might be mistaken. In any case, everyone looked at it.

And then everyone, and forgot about it and just kind of went on about their day. And I think that for the most part, a lot of mass sightings behave this way. Even in, there's a documentary by James Fox, a very famous one called, I think, Out of the Blue, or I know what I saw. I think it's out of the blue. It's the Phoenix Lights. And there were these ladies sitting around having tea, enjoying a lovely afternoon. And above them lurks this looming ominous giant boomerang of a monolith, slow. making its way overhead and casting a shadow on their faces as they're drinking tea. And all of them stop to gaze at this low humming giant obelisk that's floating.

And as soon as it's out of sight, they all proceed to continue drinking tea, as if nothing happened. And so I don't know if that's an effect of, in that particular case, the technology aboard the craft or simply like, I'm going to give myself a screen memory because that, that was way too wild. But it seems, at least in this case, like they have the ability to do that. Also, I think that the original, the person who showed up originally to the crash site of Virginia in 1996 in Brazil, I think there was also something there that kind of made them forget about a bunch of stuff. But this isn't unheard of. Wild that they can just turn it off and then on.

Masters and the Colonel had worked together for some time in the variety of contexts. They were not chummy by any means. The Colonel had never left any doubt in Master's mind as to who was in charge, and that the Colonel was all business. The Colonel had made no effort to justify or explain why he had backed up the commanders at Wright-Patant overriding Master's position that the recovery team interrogation should have gone on, using whatever pharmaceutical or psychological means were available to get to the bottom of what had happened during the missing time. Masters was supposed to be in charge of the debriefing operation, but he had been outranked by an Air Force captain, a captain, for Christ sakes.

So he drank and waited to be summoned again. It was not just the issue of being undercut by his supervisor with the agency, whom he had come to trust. There was also the very fact there were UFOs at all. The government was recovering them and had been doing so for death. decades, and that there was a secret network within the government, Zodiac. It seemed to be able to skirt the chain of command with impunity, spend money earmarked for other projects, and generally do whatever it damn well pleased, all in the name of UFOs and their importance to national security. One of master's strengths had always been that while he was flexible and open-minded, he thought he had a firm grasp on the world in which he lived. He'd been alive for 49 years.

Two weeks ago, he discovered in the span of a day that he had understood nothing about this world. He was not real damn happy about this revelation. During Master's second meeting with him, the colonel had questioned him about personal reactions to the UFO revelations. It was clear that if Masters had too negative a take on what he'd learned, he would be terminated from UFO-related assignments,

or perhaps just terminated. The colonel had broken the usual protocols of introducing new recruits to Zodiac slowly, gradually to allow them time to adjust to the radically different paradigm. There was not time to do that in Master's case, the colonel said. He was ordered to report to Fort Belvoir for three days of psychological testing, and then he was told to sit tight, relax, and wait for further orders. When he went out jogging along the creek near his home, He had the distinct impression that he was being followed, but even he, with his experience in field operations, could not be sure.

Why were they following him, he thought? Dumb bastards think that I'm going to meet Woodward and Bernstein while running along in the woods? Or maybe they just want to see if I crack. Still, he couldn't be sure. His wife was out of town, as usual, on yet another sales junket on the West Coast. She had not expected him to be back so soon. Not that it would have made any difference. Although their marriage had started out happily enough, her life had become her work. His frequent prolonged absences on foreign assignments were now mirrored by her sales travels, conventions, and temporary postings all over the world, except here at home in Virginia.

She was supposed to be assigned to D.C., but had not spent three weeks there in the last eight months. He was very much alone, which up to now had been fine with him. He wished she were home. He needed someone to talk to. The colonel told him not to discuss the UFO matters with his wife. Everyone knew that was the rule. Everyone also knew that the rule was almost never observed, except by Masters. He had never shared with his wife what he did.

Up until now, he never wanted to. For some time, he had been missing their lost intimacy, their joyous partnership, a sweet conspiracy of their youth. But now, you realized for the first, time just how much they had lost as the chasm between them widened. It was for times like these that they were married, every bit as much as for their sense of shared beauty, cleverness, and wit when they were young. Thought about her increased drinking.

She was home and wondered if she shared his yearning for communion. If so, he wondered what had driven her to reach the same conclusions. After all, no one had told her that UFOs were real and that most of what she thought she knew was false. Or perhaps she had been told something very much like that by his shows of indifference. She thought of her marriage to him. It was a sort of fulfillment of her life's expectations. And it did not exactly turn out that way, did it?

He poured himself another drink. There were old friends he could call, but he knew that the lines were tapped. More to the point, he had not been good about keeping up his relationships outside the agency. His work was his life, and for the first time he regretted how isolated and depended upon the agency he had become. He therefore resented what he was thinking and feeling. This was the first time in his career that his supervisor had undercut him. This was the first time that he felt so out of the loop. Intelligence was always compartmentalized, always shared only on a need-to-know basis,

but this time he felt that he was like one of those. He was rats in a cyclat back in college. He felt that he was being played with. He had turned over in his mind night after night that this was some kind of weird test to set up were no UFOs. There were no little green men, gray men, whatever. It was all just some sort of perverted test. They were checking his stability or his confidence

in his own perception or something like that. He poured another drink. Well, he had had it with this bullshit. He would call the colonel and tell him that he'd put in his 25 years and he was taking early retirement. He looked over at the phone next to his chair and as if it were a venomous snake. Gingerly, tentatively, he extended his hand toward the phone. Screw it. He reached for the phone just as it rang.

Sedge, the colonel's voice, came over the phone. Or like a barked command in a question. Yes, sir, I'm here. Masters said, noting with irritation, the groggy slurred sound of his own voice. Said put that bottle away and get yourself cleaned up. We're sending a car around for you in 30 minutes to take you to the fort. I'll meet you there. Your wife's still out of town?

As if he didn't know, thought Masters. Yes, sir, she's still in San Francisco at the dealer's convention. I won't be back until Friday. Good. See you then. The receiver clicked twice, so the colonel hung up. master has dangled the receiver from its cord for five seconds without moving new assignment termination from zodiac or just plain old termination or with extreme prejudice oh for christ's sake just get your ass in the shower and get on with it he thought they wanted to do it they'd just come here and do it no need to summon you back to fort belvoir with that he slammed down the receiver and heaved himself awkwardly out of the chair weaving down the hall for the cold shower that he hoped would give him some semblance of alertness by the time he reached the fort.

After the usual security routine, with the changed badges and whatnot, Masters was admitted to a small conference room with a table and two chairs. The colonel was sitting at one of them with two briefing folders in front of him. Sit down, Sedge. Masters took the chair across from the colonel. The shower and the fresh air on the drive over had helped along with the court of ice water. He had gulped down right after the show. tower. Still, he was no mood for any more mind games. He, I'll get right to the point, Colonel began. You made quite the case for use of aggressive debriefing techniques where these UFO devices are involved. I was impressed, but there was more at stake in the situation in Ohio

than just getting the facts. That retrieval team is valuable to us. They've proven they're worth many times over. We cannot easily replace them, and what's more, we don't want to too. I know you didn't agree with me or the flyboys out at right pat, but you just have to suck it up on that one, Sedge. I know that you didn't like the way it was handled. So I'm going to give you another chance to test your theory. At least the hypnosis part, the colonel said. Gestering toward the folders in front of him, he pushed one of them towards Sedge. Read this while I get us some coffee, the colonel instructed. You got up and left the room, And as he left, an MP, military police, with an automatic weapon, entered the room and stood guard at Master's Back.

What do I think I'm going to do? Eat the file? The report in the folder was brief, followed by surveillance reports in standard no-contact security background checks. The subjects were two young graduate students in the Los Angeles area, Mike Castillon and Bob Ernest. That's interesting. Ernest had contacted a UFO organization in Colorado. and reported a series of odd events. Most of the information came from taps on the organization's phones, supplemented by undercover agents within the organization.

So we actually spend assets on these UFO wackos, Masters thought. In the first of these episodes, Ernest and Castillon had encountered a large U.S.O. underwater submerged object. Off the coast of Palos Verdes near Catalina Islands. Okay. This is interesting. We've heard of this place. Before their eyes, the U.S.O.

had then become a UFO flying right over their heads while they were driving around the peninsula and an open sports car on Palos Verde's Drive north. This was around midnight. We were going to visit some young woman who they knew lived on the other side of the peninsula. They first noticed the U.S.O, a large, brightly glowing mass

under the surface of the ocean, which was moving at high speeds directly toward the part of the peninsula on which they were driving. They lost sight of it as it approached the cliffs below them, but were startled as it broke the horizon and flew soundlessly over them toward the higher slopes to their right. My gosh. They followed the path of the UFO up the valley away from the water, and when they could drive no further up the increasingly rugged terrain, they climbed up the slope on foot. Suddenly they encountered a police officer whose uniform they described as strange. The officer told them that they were trespassing on private property

and that they would have to leave at once. The two students somewhat indignantly explained what they were doing and also opined that whoever owned the steep, overgrown slopes going up the cliffs, would probably not mind their presence, but the officer was unmoved and ordered them to leave again. One odd fact came out of the telephone interview. The officer's patrol car was seen by the students to be parked behind the officer on the steep slope, even though there were no roads, and they themselves had to abandon their car to climb up the steeply inclined and overgrown mountainside. They described the car as odd, but offered no specifics in the taped phone calls.

They followed the officers, orders, and left the area. The second incident took place two weeks later at almost the same location. When the young men were driving the same sports car on the same road to see the same young woman, this time a shiny, much smaller UFO was seen pacing their car's progress up the road, about 20 feet away from them and directly off to their side. And they pulled over to get a better look. It flew away into the night sky. They heard no sound from the object.

The third sighting involved only Castillon, who had a UFO hovering over his sports cars he drove through Wilmington on Pacific Coast Highway on a Saturday morning. The thing hung over him for about 20 minutes, then just flew away. Again, the object emitted no noise that Castillon could detect. Traffic was so light during all of these incidents that there were no other witnesses known to Ernest and Castillon. I keep saying Castion, but the French and, you know, me cannot help but pronounce it that way. The fourth incident, okay, super experiencers here, was the focus of the report.

Interesting. Ernest and Castillon had met some fellow at a friend's party who shared with Ernest and interest in very avant-garde music. Strangely, neither Castion nor Ernest could recall the fellow's name. Ernest was more friendly toward this fellow than Castillon, the last. latter considered the fellow a little strange and did not care for his taste in music. A few days after the party, Ernest called the fellow, who invited them to visit him at his house on Daple Gray Lane in Rolling Hills Estate, a small, exclusive community on the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

They took him up on his invitation one night later that week. The strange fellow's home was heated too much for their liking, and after Castillon grew tired of humoring Ernest's interest in the guy's strange recordings, he finally persuaded Ernest that they needed to be going. Masters noted that when Ernest was pressed by the telephone interviewer to provide details of what happened in the home, he was rather vague. Other than the excessive warmth and the music, all that he could remember of the evening was that he and Cassillon had taken off their jackets and outer shirts because of the heat, leaving them with only their t-shirts and jeans on. It was almost exactly midnight when they left.

As they went down the porch steps to the short walkway to the street, they both saw a bright, glowing red ball a little larger than a basketball resting on the front lawn. Oddly, there was no mention of their host noticing the ball or even staying with them as they walked toward it to check it out. They stood there looking at the ball for what seemed like a moment and then got into Ernest's car, the Volkswagen. It was then that Ernest noticed that the clock in the Volkswagen showed the time as 3 a.m. He mentioned this was surprised, to Castillo.

Their watches confirmed the time. Somehow, they had lost three hours looking at a red ball. There was a fifth episode. Okay, come on. occurred in New Orleans during Mardi Gras a few months after the red ball incident. According to Ernest, they were saying at a hotel when there was a loud bang and a flash outside, followed by a large gray coming right through their locked door startlingly fast. It loomed over them for a few seconds while they were paralyzed and then just withdrew through the same door

just as swiftly. Whoa, that's wild. Gray's running very rapidly through solid objects is very common. We hear about this quite very, I wouldn't say very common. That's misappropriating this situation. It is among experiencers frequently noted, definitely not very common if you're seeing something like that. It is not normal. But Eric Nance Steele, who's here in the podcast, that was his first experience with multiple grayes sort of zipping out of the room and through the wall.

But you hear about this quite often enough among experiencer stories. The transcripts of the telephone interviews were always with Ernest, not Castillon. Ernest told the interviewer that Castion was not particularly interested in these odd events, even though he acknowledged their strangeness. Ernest, on the other hand, had apparently become a UFO enthusiast as a consequence of these encounters. Ah, okay. So that's a bit of a red flag for me. The guy who has five sightings, who's eager to talk about them.

But then again, As we know, if you start looking at the phenomenon, the phenomenon seems to start looking at you. So what are we seeing here? Are we seeing some type of feedback loop? Are we seeing confirmation bias? Or is he kind of attracting something now at this point? He found out about the UFO organization and wanted Castione himself to be hypnotized to try and find out what happened during the missing three hours. As it turned out, the hypnototherapist won Dr. Beth Culp, who donated her services to the organization, was an agency asset. But she had done work for the agency for the past 15 years and had been working on UFO-related incidents off and on for the last 11 years. They've infiltrated psychologists.

I don't like that. She arranged to interview the two students in the next two days. And Masters was to go along as a representative of the UFO enthusiast organization to observe hypnotherapy regression sessions. Sneaky. See? when people mention, you know, and this is not a slight to move on, but I mean, these organizations have to be, they must be infiltrated. Otherwise, you'd just be leaving that on the table, right? You would need to have a foot in there. So crazy. Where do you turn then if you have an experience,

right? Who can you trust? Masters noted with disappointment that no chemical injections were discussed with the young men, although he sensed from the report that Castillon would not be aminable to such a procedure, as it had taken some salesmanship on earnest part just to get him to go along with hypnosis. The colonel re-entered the room as the MP left. He sat down the coffees on the table. I left yours black, he said. Well, said the colonel, here's your chance to see if hypnosis can bring back those memories. You say are being masked by aliens. How do we know the red balls from aliens? Master's ass, sipping his coffee. The colonel smiled. Well, they aren't ours. sedge, if that's what you're getting at. How do you know that, sir? How do you know that there

isn't a compartment apart from yours where someone knows that we design these things to control people or for some other agenda? Good question. The colonel seemed amused by this despite his usual stern manner. Trust me on this, sedge. They're not ours. Indeed, they're not anyone else's. They are something of a mystery, really. That's why you're going out to Los Angeles. Try and find out what these damn things are. Colonel, you spoke of a ball as if it were more than one. The report only spoke about one, as I recall. Very good, Sedge.

After you cover this hypno-debrief, I want you to swing by right pat again and tell your friend the captain what you learned. You may have more information for you on this. Then come back to D.C. and we'll talk. Have a good trip, Sedge. And keep it professional while you're on the mission, all right? Masters was sorely tempted to tell the colonel to take his assignment and shove it, along with his advice on drinking, but he just barely managed to hold his tongue.

He maintained a sullen silence on the drive back to Fairfax despite the best efforts of the outgoing seaman driver. Christ, graduate students, red balls, UFO nuts, and hypnotists, he thought. Not to mention conducting a domestic operation within the borders of the United States in violation. of the National Security Act of 1947. This were a test. He had no idea where it was going. And he refers to that act because you are not allowed to

spy on your own people. You're not allowed to sigh up your own people. These are all things to protect the American people. But alas, these agencies have broken this promise many a times. By the time his plane leveled off from his climb out from Dulles, Masters, had already ordered two scotches from the middle-aged flight attendant. Here's to you, Colonel, and your goddamn UFOs, redballs, and Dr. Culp, the therapist,

he thought as he knocked back the first shot of J&B. By the time his plane descended into the brown sludge that L.A. called a sky. He was pleasantly buzzed and erroneously, thought that he was ready for his rendezvous with Dr. Culp. They were to meet two hours before Ernest and Castion were expected to arrive at a hotel, and Redondo, overlooking the beach and King Harbor. Culp had a suite at the hotel. Masters knocked on the sweet door and heard someone unlocking the multiple locks after checking the spy hole.

He was not quite ready for Dr. Culp as it turned out. She was almost as tall as Masters himself, 5-11, Master's guest, with long, blonde hair, beautiful, large, clear blue eyes. Her dossier said that she was 48 years old, but she looked at least 15 years younger. She was very pretty, slim, and had a dazzling smile. Masters was a cool customer in a crisis, but he could feel his voice sounding a little off-key as he introduced himself to the striking therapist. She was very much in possession of the moment

and seemed to take delight in the effect she had on him. Even though she had become used to this sort of thing over the years, Masters was irritated with himself for being so taken aback by her. She asked him if he would like a drink. He thought, More like it, cult poured Masters a Coke over ice. She poured herself a Perrier with lime. So that's how it is, he thought.

Little Miss Prim. I understand that the colonel has already gone over the protocol for these interviews, Mr. Masters. Yes, we'll put each of them under individually and ask them a battery of questions aimed at figuring out what happened during the three hours that they thought they were looking at the ball. We're instructed not to talk with each other about the incident, but given the passage of time, you know, that they did, right? Right. We do the best we can to filter out the corrupted recollections. As you know, hypnosis is not perfect, but beats sitting around scratching her heads wondering what happened.

I agree with you on that, said Masters. He also noted that these were the same words that he had used in arguing with the captain at Wright-Patterson about using hypnosis to debrief the recovery team. She must have been given a more thorough briefing than I was told, Masters thought. You've done this before, Culpe asked. Yes, but under much different circumstances. Master did not elaborate, even though it was clear from Colp's expectant gaze, that she expected him to do so. When it became clear that he had nothing more to say, she crisply instructed.

In this instance, I will do all of the talking. If you have any questions, you will write them down and pass them to me. Please do not make any sudden movements or noises while the session is in progress. Do you have any questions? only one. Do you have any real drinks in that refrigerator? Classic sedg. Classic Sedg.

If by real you mean alcoholic. Yes, they do. The colonel was quite specific that you are not to have any during this assignment. I see. If I were to disregard that instruction. I don't know why Sedgwick is turning into John Marston from Red Dead Redemption, but it's where I'm going with it. Then I'd be forced to stop you and put your lack of cooperation in my report.

She looked at him levely. As if to say, even though I look like a willowy woman, I can deal with you physically, if the need be. He believed that she would really try, too. All right. Strong woman. Okay, Dr. Culp. He smiled. It looks as if I am your prisoner for the time being.

Good, she said. Let's rearrange the furniture to make it more complex. comfortable and get ready for our guests. One other thing, doctor, said Masters. Why did you rule out sodium pentothal or some other psychoactive drug? I didn't rule it out. Our subjects did. Mike Castillon was not at all enthused about doing this.

The only way he would agree was if only hypnosis were used. Besides, we often find that hypnosis gets better results with hidden memories than drugs. As you know from your background, drugs are more useful when there is a subjective inhibition making the subject less than forthcoming. How do you know that isn't indicated here, he asked, picking up the coffee table? Because it isn't that these subjects don't want to talk about it. They just don't remember lifting her end of the table. How can you be sure of that, he asked, thinking of the recovery team's statements that they

were later allowed to tell different versions of the events. She caught his eye and asked, just what are you thinking of in asking that oops master's thought oh nothing damn he thought she isn't cleared for that culp set down the table and drew herself up to her full six foot one in low heels setting her clear light blue eyes right into line with masters mr masters if we are going to work together effectively on this assignment you are going to have to be frank with me now Why do you think that these subjects might be holding back during this interview? If I am to discharge my duties during these interviews, I need to have all the information you have that you can share with me. Do I make myself clear?

Yes, ma'am, you do. Oh, fabulously, Master's thought. I can't go into details, Ms. Culp, but it is possible that these phenomena involve making the subject. so obey a command not to talk about what they underwent during the missing time sequence, as opposed to not remembering what happened. That's why I asked about the drugs. But if it's to be hypnosis, then so be it. I was just curious as to what your thoughts were on the subject, that's all.

Seems like our sedge has met his match. Now, it is to be noted, by the way. I just want to take a quick little pause. This reads as a really good book, not as a real detailed account. The details are too specific. This is obviously interpreted into a story. But what I find interesting is that something this interpretive made its way into UFO magazine and there was no note by the editor. This is kind of just very strange. It is like a fictional story, but much like perhaps secret machines or many other books, perhaps even Cryptos Conundrum, all these books that might hide truth within fiction. Culp's seem to relax a bit. Well, it's true that in some of the purported abductions with which we've dealt, the subjects

sometimes say that they've been instructed not to talk about all or part of their experience. In fact, they become quite agitated if pressed on the subject. even while under deep hypnosis. So how successful have you been when you try to break through this instruction, he asked? It's hard to say. Sometimes they don't budge. Other times they tell us more detailed stories behind the so-called screen memory. But still, I get the feeling that we're just getting the next screen memory and not what really happened. You may be right about the drugs, but we can't make citizens accept them against their will.

Oh, yeah, of course, said Masters. while thinking, the hell we can't. There was a knock at the door. Two good-looking young men stood at the door, smiling and filled with the quiet cockiness of men in their prime. Both of the young men were a little surprised by the statuesque Dr. Culp. But they quickly recovered.

Their spirits much improved by her obvious charms, notwithstanding Master's brooding presence, and less than enthused greeting. Culp explained the procedure, escorted Castillon, to the far bedroom, turned on the TV in his room, Got him a drink, and came back to the other bedroom to start with earnest. Masters noted that both of these fellows seemed normal enough.

They did not give the appearance of being countercultural or science geeks. The stories told by these two men were virtually identical on every point, particularly the most important point, that they lost three hours of time that night on Daple-Gray Lane. The stories did not change under hypnosis, except that they now said that they were remembered spending the three hours just standing on the walkway, staring at the glowing red ball until it floated up into the night sky. No amount of probing by the resourceful Dr. Culp ever penetrated behind this story. No alien ships, no medical exams, no short or tall grays, nothing. Just standing there for three hours and then leaving, neither man showed any discomfort when pressed.

It just had nothing more to say. Masters wanted to inject both of them with drugs but knew that Culp would not go for it. One thing that both Dr. Culp and Masters noticed was that while Ernest was understandably interested in what had happened, Castillon seemed almost weirdly detached from and disinterested in the Red Ball experience and the other incidents that he described. He said that he had other concerns with graduate school as pending marriage to his fiancé and financial pressures. He also said that he simply did not have time for UFOs. Castillon regarded Ernest's interest with bemusement. Even so, both Culp and Masters thought that Castellon's outlook was a little too detached, as if he had been conditioned to disregard the experience and not to look into it further.

After saying goodbye to the two young men, Masters suggested that Dr. Culp and he debriefed over dinner at the chart house overlooking the water. Culp declined, stating that they should do their work. without distractions in the most efficient manner possible, as she had a plane to catch. They were in general agreement as to their impressions of the men's story. The two men seemed to be sincere. They had nothing to gain by making up the story. Indeed, Gassillon was uncomfortable with the time that he gave to this exercise,

being anxious to get back to his normal pursuits. There's one more thing to do before we leave this mud hole of a town, Master said. We should drive by the house of Dapelgray, see what there is to see. No need, said Culp, and she was repacking her briefcase. Why not? Don't you think that there's something to be gained from going back to the scene? Sure. But not for me doing so.

I was raised in Palos Verdes. In fact, I went to Daplegre Elementary School. I've seen Daplegray Lane dozens of times. There's nothing about the street to suggest anything out of the ordinary, except... And she hesitated. Except what, Dr. Culp? Master's asked. Oh, nothing.

It's nothing, really. She waved her hand dismissively and went back to her. hacking. Humor me, Beth, master said, moving around the table to face her. Well, there was a report which came into the UFO Center in Denver several years ago, which we just finished investigating, but it was so off the wall that I'm sure it has nothing to do with our boys in their red ball. Enough with the coyness, doctor. Give what supposedly happened. Oh, it was kind of like one of those terrible low-budget science fiction movies from the 50s. In fact, that's what we thought inspired this little story. However, there are certain similarities to these interviews.

That settles it, thought Master's grabbing her hand. Come on, you can tell me the story on the way. Once they were in the car, Kulp resumed her story. It happened seven years ago in August of 1971. There were these two young guys around the same ages as Cassio and Ernest. Their names were John Hodges and Peter Rodriguez. They were visiting a mutual friend on Dapel Grey Lane at 2 a.m. They left their friend's house and got into Hodges' car. They then saw two large brains in the middle of the road ahead of them, each about as high as a man's waist when standing,

and each apparently alive. Hodges drove around the brains and took Rodriguez back to his apartment below Palos Verdes. Masters interrupted her. Wait a minute. Hodges sees two giant living brains in the middle of the road in front of him and he just drives around them just like that. Culp laughed. I told you that it didn't make any sense, and he said that they were afraid of them and felt getting away was the most important thing to do at the time. Masters remained incredulous.

So did they call the cops about this? Culp laughed louder. Well, no, of course not. If they did that, then their story would begin to make sense. Masters shot her a look of intense skepticism. She seemed amused at his frustration in dealing with what he clearly regarded as nonsense. Okay, she said, the story wouldn't make sense in any event, but the point is that it was weird that they didn't call the cops, honked their horns, go bang on the friend's door or a neighbor's door. Instead, they just try to get home without any effort to report it to anyone.

And it somehow takes Hodges two hours to get home, even though he lives nearby. The 226 Chevrolet Tracks is the stylish SUV for those on the move. And with the standard Chevy safety assist package, you have the backup to handle every turn with confidence. The 2026 tracks. Start your build at Chevrolet.ca. Whether life serves you an ace or an unexpected backhand, the high-protein yogurt, Oikos Pro, is there to feed your strength and help you turn every challenge into a smash.

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by one of my colleagues and he remembered a much different story to explain the two-hour gap. He said that he encountered the brains again outside of his apartment, whereupon he was projected out of his car and into an equipment-filled room where he was confronted by humanoids

who warn him of dangers of nuclear war. Hodges was abducted a second time under similar circumstances and was given a brain implant that he was told by the humanoids would increase his quote-unquote psychic awareness. They also told him that humankind is the product of millions of years of scientific experimentation. By now, Masters was chuckling to himself. Culp herself smiled with a hint of embarrassment.

What? she said, pretending not to know why he would be laughing about the kidnapping brains of Dapel Grey Lane? Beth. It sounds like bad drugs to me, not bad brains. He said, between bursts of laughter. She started laughing, too. Well, I tried to avoid telling you about it. I know it sounds like a stupid old movie,

Donovan's brain or something. I think that we ought to add blood tests to these interviews. Master said not laughing is hard now. These things have to be hallucinations. Culp stopped laughing at that. Sedgwick, this is no hallucination. I'm not standing tall for the brain story, but it is clear to me that these two young men that we met today

really believe that what they saw was what they saw. And they only had one beer apiece when they visited that fellow. Do we check the address where they saw the ball? He asked. Yes, the problem is that it was being leased to the guy with the weird music. He moved out, tracing him went nowhere. The intriguing question is whether he is the same guy who was visited by Hodges and Rodriguez six years earlier. Unfortunately, we lost contact with Hodges and Rodriguez before we knew about Castillo and Ernest, so we've been unable to check.

We're working on it. They were proceeding west on Palos Verde's Drive, the street that encircled the entire Palos Verde's Peninsula. After they passed the reservoir above San Pedro, the quality of the drive changed. With the road narrowing and the trees becoming much more dense, young girls were riding horses alongside. of the road, their dogs bounding along ahead. It was a beautiful place, an island of rural tranquility above the brown suburban sea of L.A. Purchased and maintained with money, lots of money.

It was not Virginia. But it reminded masters of his home state, the horses and the rural piece. Soon they came upon the sign for Dapple Gray Lane. They turned right and followed the short road up and down a couple of hilly rises and dips. It ended in a cul-de-sac. with no curbs at the side of the road.

Most of the lane was shaded with the 40-year-old trees, which lined it on both sides. There were ranch homes spaced out at some distance from one another on both sides. Masters could see the stables and tennis courts in the backyards. It was quiet, comfortable, and seemed utterly unlikely to be the venue for alien probes and giant disembodied brains. By the way, pause here.

didn't the Immaculate Constellation document also mentioned floating brains by the way? I believe it did. Shoutouts to those who's made that connection already, but that is, yes, I remember reading that. That is disturbing, to say the least. Now, again, are the reports of floating brains made up as some passage material inserted into the bowels of the agency? by the very same people who wrote this article, or have multiple people witnessed giant floating brains for real? Give me the grays.

Give me the mantids, actually. I'll take mantids over floating brains. I guess the ninja turtles weren't so far off with crang after all. Which house was it, he wondered. That was the temporary abode of this alleged alien agent. No house looked more likely than another. They all seemed quintessentially domestic and stuble. serene. They would run all of the records, but he already knew that they would find nothing.

Which house was it? Masters asked. That one over there, on the northwest side of the street, she replied. You could see that it was yet another of the ranch-style homes, perhaps a little more in need of maintenance than its neighbors, but otherwise serenely normal by all appearances. He brought their car to a halt and jumped out to look around. There appeared to be no one home. The windows were shuttered from the inside. He pulled himself up on the backyard fence. Nothing unusual there. What the hell had happened here?

He walked back to the front yard and looked at the faded lawn next to the front of the walkway. The place where the ball had been seen. There was no sign on the grass of anything out of the ordinary, except for small patches where lab samples had been taken. Culp told him the lab test of the soil and grass revealed nothing unusual. See, said Culp, breaking through his reverie. There is nothing here, now that you've made me miss my plane to Vancouver. Sorry, but I thought we had to see it for ourselves,

and I figured I'd better take a former native with me in case I needed an interpreter for the brains. She laughed. I've been gone for years, and most of the people who I knew here were a little short of brains, frankly. In any case, we've seen it. Now, can we go to the airport? Just an hour. after landing at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio.

Masters gave his report in writing and orally to the Air Force captain, with whom he had the cordial disagreement three weeks earlier. The captain made no comment until Masters completed his presentation. The captain then said, Don't be too disappointed that you couldn't come up with much out there. Mr. Masters, we've had quite a few of these reports, and so far they've let us nowhere. Masters was a little surprised by this, although by now his capacity for surprise had been somewhat diminished.

You've had more of these? The captain rose from his desk. Let me show you something. Please come with me. He directed Masters down the hall from his office until they came to an unmarked door that looked like a broom closet. He unlocked it, turned on the lights, and escorted Masters into a very large file room, which contained rows of filing cabinets. There are over two million files in this room documenting an equal number of separate reports involving facts similar to your red ball story. Sometimes the balls are white, green, yellow, blue, or orange.

But the basic outline of the story, you were told, is repeated millions of times in these files, which we've been compiling since 1945. The wise guys around here refer to this place as the ballroom. A little play on words. The captain chuckled Wannley. Wannley? Wannley? Two million since 1945. Have all these been investigated? Masters asked, impressed by what he was told.

No way that we could devote the resources to such an effort. In fact, your interview of Castillo and Ernest was more effort than we usually go to from your ball incidents. We dug deeper into their case because of all the other sightings that they'd experienced in addition to the red ball business. There are just too many of these ball stories to follow up on. We don't even put these on the computer. We'd just convert the reports to our format and put them in here, on the off chance that they turn out to be more significant than we think they are. Masters could feel his frustration with the captain's way of doing things, rising once again. Only this time, he'd only been on the base for an hour.

Last time it took two whole days. And just how significant do you folks think that they are? He asked, trying to give no hint of his feelings. Near as we can figure from the stories in these files, the balls are some sort of scanning. device. And could be that when Castillo and Ernest said they just stood there for three hours, they did just that, while this red ball scanned them for data. Yeah, Master said, without conviction. Could be. Besides, the captain added, we had bigger concerns to occupy our resources. Such as? Masters asked. I'm glad you asked that. Come with me. The colonel instructed us to show you

something that we recovered several years ago, one which has recently presented us with somewhat of a unique problem. Lead the way, said Masters, still thinking about over two million ball incidences and wondering what next. They were met by an AP who drove them in a Jeep, out to one of the hangars, somewhat removed from the flight line. The hangar was guarded, but unmarked. The captain saluted the guard, and they enter the hangar, going through the usual security routine and changing their security badges before going further into the hangar. When they went through the second setup doors, Masters saw a lot of men and women in unbuttoned white coats standing around some sort of drone aircraft, which was connected by cables and wires,

to racks of test equipment and computers attended by prototypical, quote-unquote, nerds, whose unkempt hair appeared in stark contrast to their crisp white coats. No one seemed to notice when they first walked in. Everyone seemed intent upon a test that was being run. As they drew closer to the group, Masters realized that what he had thought was a drone was actually built as a piloted craft. It was a cockpit with a seamless clear canopy, but there was something wrong, something not quite right. The captain looked a little smug as he led Masters to the craft. At first, Masters told himself that he would not bite.

He would wait to be told, but he couldn't stand it any longer. There was something so odd about the little flying wing model. Captain, what is this thing? Who flies it? Cockpit's so small. It wouldn't have to be a seven-year-old, and what's that humming sound? Masters asked. Do you notice anything else odd about it, Mr. Masters?

The captain asked, obviously enjoying them. Well, yeah. Where are the engines? There's, there are no props and no jets, no Elrons. The shape of the wings is not right for a plane. It's just a wing. There's no fuselage, no tail. And what is that humming sound? Quite right, Mr. Masters. This is a recovered craft, which we picked up in a field in the Midwest around 1972. It's a sort of single-seater flying wing craft superficially similar to the flying wing prototypes developed by the Germans and us during World War II. The captain went on while leading masters over to a table with a coffee urn and coffee cups. We kind of lucked out on this one. We didn't see it on radar or anything like that.

There were three good old boys who were out hunting one fine fall day in 1972 to the west of here. Their dogs ran across this small gray who had died in the woods. These old fellows had backtracked down the trail of the gray once they got over their shock the appearance of the alien. About a mile back up this trail, there was this plane, sitting in a field, just as pretty as you please. There was no crash,

the alien had made a perfect landing, as far as we can tell. But something went wrong for him. He was dead, these old boys being the good patriotic members of the World War II generation, that they were, high-tailed it back to their truck,

and got to a telephone to call the Air Force. We rounded them up, retrieved the body and the plane and scared the hell out of the hunters while still appealing to their patriotism. One really nice thing about the World War II generation is that they know the value of national security and don't put up much of a fight about keeping these things secret. I got to say, I agree with that. You know, during the Manhattan Project, a lot of people say, how would you keep this UFO thing under a tarp for so long? And there were 130,000 people that we know of that were involved with the Manhattan Project in many different sort of compartmentalized

factions. And so a lot of them didn't know what they were working on. They just knew it was top secret. But after the war, like directly after and during, while you were working on the Manhattan Project, building nuclear arms, you could consider yourself a hero. You helped stop the war. it was your duty to protect your country and to keep those secrets. And so patriotism was very real. I mean, it's the one thing that I think some people overlook with the secrecy business is that when true national security is at risk, a lot of people are willing to keep a secret to their grave.

And they've demonstrated that in World War II. And I think just like he said, the generation that comes out of World War II probably still had that pride in them. And so that's probably the one strongest thing keeping this thing under wraps other than the threats and reprisals and everything else. But he makes a good point. So I take it this is the same kind of small gray that we recovered from Roswell mentioned Ventured Masters. Yeah, that's right. said the captain, for all we know, that little guy was bred just to deliver this little plane to us. The way it's scaled down, some of the engineers have taken to calling it the scooter.

Kind of cute, because of the small scale of the thing and all. Yeah, cute, said Masters. So what do they use it for? We have no idea, said the captain. We speculate that it's just some sort of small shuttle craft for one creature to come down and gather samples or whatever. but we may be guilty of anthropomorphism. For all we know, this thing may be capable of intergalactic travel. It doesn't seem likely, but then neither does the entire situation, if you know what I mean.

Yeah, says Masters. I know what you mean. So do you know how it works? After having it for six years? Well, not exactly, the captain said. We're still trying to figure out the basics, like how to turn it off. What? said Masters. You mean that humming sound?

is coming from that thing? I thought that you guys didn't know how to run it. We don't, said the captain a little sheepishly. One of our researchers just got a little frustrated at having an intact craft without being able to turn anything on after years of tests and experiments. So he just abandoned the protocol one day and started punching touch screens and proximity switches on the thing without even taking notes and suddenly it sprang to life. The instruments came on, the thing started making that humming sound, and it all.

obviously was and is ready for action. So what's the problem? Just have the guy reverse his steps and the thing should shut off, right? Asked Masters. Yeah, Captain said. That might work, but the guy who got it going was so surprised when it powered up that he forgot the sequence of what he did. We can't duplicate it, and even if we could, we have no assurance that reversing the command steps would reverse the current result. They may not think as we do and may not wire things the same way.

Has anybody tried to switch anything differently since the thing fired up? Uh, no, look around you, Mr. Masters. We are in a building. Suppose one of the geniuses punches the wrong button, and this thing decides to go translucent right through the wall. What if it runs out of fuel? Masters asked. Again, we don't know.

It's been humming for over a year and a half without running down so far. Since we don't know how they generate the power for it in the first place, it is difficult to determine what to throw out the problem, but we're working on it, and we'll solve it someday. As everything that you recovered been along the lines of the scooter, Masters asked, his curiosity peaked? Not at all. Let's go back to the Jeep and I'll show you another one.

We are supposed to show you in connection with your next assignment. Masters took one last look at the scooter with its lithe, otherworldly lines, and walked out to the Jeep. The AP drove them to a different hangar further down the flight line. This one was also guarded, although it now occurred to Masters that none of these hangars were as heavily guarded as he would have expected under the circumstances. He mentioned this to the captain, who replied, We're just taking a page out of yearbook, Mr. Masters. If you want to protect something really well, you don't telegraph it to the world where it is by placing a heavy security force around it.

Besides, there are people right on this base who are way too curious about what goes on here. The best disguise is no disguise at all. Not sure I agree with that, but I understand the sentiment. Once again, they exchanged their security badges inside for special Zodiac clearance badges. Masters was then escorted into a large enclosure of the hangar. He involuntarily inhaled and held his breath at what he saw, a large ovoid disc, which had to to be over 50 feet wide and 23 feet tall at the widest point. It looked like one of those opaque glass ornaments his parents used to hang on the Christmas tree

when he was a kid. There were service scaffoldings and ramps all around it, with about 55 people working on it and cables and hoses snaking away from the craft. Ah, hours are theirs, Masters asked. There's, if you mean the aliens, the captain said. Master said nothing, but kept walking slowly up to the craft, keeping an eye on it to be sure that it was not a dream or that it would not just fly away despite the closed-hanger doors.

One look at the thing, and it seemed clear that his question was rhetorical. He felt that he knew from its very appearance, even as glimpsed through the scaffolding, no human had ever designed this vehicle. There was just something about the proportions, the angles, the material, the whole thinking that had gone into it, which was not familiar, not human. Masters walked up to it very slowly, craning his neck up to follow the upward curvature of the ship's hull.

May I touch it? he asked. Sure, said the captain. This one was recovered a few years ago off the coast of Denmark, where it had sunk in relatively shallow water. The Danish government cooperated with us in retrieving me. the thing and getting it out of the country without a big to-do. Getting it into the base was a bit of a nightmare. We had to truck it through the city on a low boy in the dead of night,

covered with a tarp and flanked by plenty of security. It was pretty tense, I can tell you. While the captain prattled on about the difficulty of housing the ship and the problems they were having trying to decipher its complex systems, Masters extended his hand toward the ship's hull. He touched it. It was cool and smooth to the touch, like a piece of fine sculpture or porcelain. As the captain spoke, Masters ran his fingertips up and down the hall,

gradually placing his whole palm on the surface, rubbing it back and forth. As if he were wiping down a horse after a hard ride. Maybe go inside, Masters asked. The captain was shot a look by a general who had just approached with an earshot as this question was asked. Not today, sir. We are performing some tests utilizing super cool, and it's not a very healthy place to be right now.

Mr. Masters, the General smiled, extending his hand and shaking it. It is a pleasure to meet with you. Introductions were made all around. I'm sorry that we cannot accommodate you on going inside the spacecraft, but I'm sure that you find even the outside very impressive. That would be putting it mildly, General,

replied Masters. Well, maybe. me next time when you visit us again the general said why don't you and the captain join me over at the o club for a drink i was just heading there myself general i'd really like to get a look inside the ship before i report to washington and i masters hesitated on account of the look he received from the captain masters knew it was poor etiquette to refuse the general's invitation the general cut him off oh you'll get your chance to see it but not right now as a captain explained to you Let's take my car and you can tell us what you found out about these damn red balls that are cropping up all over the place.

The captain mentioned to me that you were looking into it out in California. As he was speaking, the general shepherded Masters, the captain, and everyone else with an earshot, toward a side door of the hangar where his car and driver were waiting. It was clear to Masters that this general was not used to taking no for an answer. With resignation, he exited the hangar. after one last look at the saucer. Back at Fort Belvoir, Masters had just finished his report to the colonel. Well, so much for hypnosis, the colonel observed.

Not necessarily, sir, Master said. We really need to try harder and longer on this thing. Also use drugs on the tougher cases. He really wants to drug these people. This guy's a bit of a shaman. The colonel's face showed some irritation with Masters' tend to. necessity, although he had come to expect it by now. Sedge, we're going to have to put your screen memory hobby on hold for the time being.

I want you to report to the office of the Admiral Keating this afternoon. Keating's people stumbled on something up in the Arctic Ocean. I want you to be on the debriefing. You'll be going to Connecticut, so you better pack some warm clothes. May I ask what this trip is about, sir? Sure, you can ask. For now, let's just say that it relates to what those young fellows in California, told you about the U.S.O. off of Palos Verdes,

and that large craft we pulled out of the waters, the coast of Denmark. But it will be Admiral Keating, who gives you the briefing. Meet with him and no one else when you get to the puzzle palace. And report to me personally when you get back from Connecticut. His masters drove to Fairfax to pack for his next assignment. He wondered where this was all going. And after all, he had never actually seen. seen a UFO in flight, never seen an alien, never received any objective confirmation of their

existence. While the ships he'd been allowed to see were initially impressive, now that he was more distant from the event, he was confident that George Lucas or Steven Spielberg's prop men could do as well. He shook his head at what he'd gotten himself into and drove down the highway to prepare for his next excursion into the wilderness of mirrors that his work had been become. And that is the end of the third installation of Sed Masters, Sedge Masters Adventures. I would be the first person to help make this into a Hollywood movie. I think this is such a fantastic script. I'm eager to know where this goes, but unfortunately the story ends there and the trail goes somewhat cold. Now, I mentioned at the top of this episode, Jeffrey Griffith,

attorney at law, corporate attorney who had worked for these aeronautical sort of military installations or contractors previously, had been pinpointed as Greg Halifax, and that Mary Elizabeth Elliott, who was also mentioned in the Wilson-Davis. memos, which I think we'll eventually cover here as well. You know, Rear Admiral Wilson met with Eric Davis, who was then part of, I believe, ATIP, Ossap, or NIDS or all three. Basically, this supergroup of scientists studying the phenomenon, even how put-off was a part of this group and how was the one who expressed his interest in this particular case via email. So on an email thread, Howe is seen asking the question, hey, what do we think about Zodiac and this sedge master's character?

Obviously, this reads as fiction, but makes, I mean, it makes for a really compelling story. It connects a lot of dots, even where he's off to in the Arctic, something moving in the ocean, a USO. You know, we've read through the 4chan whistleblowers account of observing something similar, but this sort of large mobile construction unit in the Atlantic and the Bahamas. They even talk about the Catalina's having, you know, USOs. And there's some really interesting connections to be made in here. But also, it begs the question. Are all modern UFO lore pieces and LARPs just,

a product of these three articles. Is everything derived from this? And is this somehow the CIA or these agencies way of infiltrating the UFO community and disseminating false information so that we take it and run with it? Are we sedge masters in this particular case after being shown pictures?

and testimony from congressional hearings and all this stuff, we've not seen the bodies. We've not seen the craft flying. Is this some grand sci-op scheme? Or is this truth? Or is it fiction? Who knows? My conviction level isn't that much higher.

I would say still 15 or 20 percent maybe. But I'm willing. to have it grow and fluctuate upwards. It does make a lot of connections, but it also predates a lot of the later. You know, it comes after Psalm 1, the whole Majestic 12, Stanton Friedman release, but it comes before a lot of the modern LARPs on Reddit,

4chan, etc. So, I don't know, it's just interesting to me. I'd be really curious to hear your thoughts as well. This was a lengthy one. This was a very long read-through, the longest read-through we've ever done on one episode. I hope you guys enjoy it. I am gearing up to potentially read through a book very soon. And I want to tackle a book with the audience entirely.

That is a tentative project that I would like to do. I think that that would be very fun. And perhaps we could all sort of read it together in one giant internet collective book club. Let me know if you think that that's something you'd want to partake in or even just sit back and listen to me read out loud. I'd be curious to know your thoughts. Folks, thank you so much for joining me today. Don't forget to check out area 52.com.

We've got these beautiful flying saucer diner mugs, t-shirts and what have you. All sorts of merch available there. Check out the membership. If you want to become an intern here at Area 52, you can do so on YouTube. Keep it right here. Or head over to a merch available. Patreon.com slash area 52 investigations and you'll have access to early episodes. So they come out usually a day early for members, weekly behind the scenes, vlogs, and top secret access to

the discourse. We have a whole top secret section where you have movie nights, we have another book club there, all sorts of fun things going on. Folks, thank you once again for joining me and we'll see on the next one. Peace and love.