Sightings - Look Up

Episode Date: September 14, 2026

We’re finally tackling the granddaddy of all UFO stories: ROSWELL! Story Music tracks used by kind permission of CO.AG Sightings is a REVERB and QCODE Original. Find us on instagram ⁠⁠⁠⁠��⁠@sightingspod⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Don't you wish you could just hit skip on the worst parts of your life? You know the same way you can skip an ad? I get it. I'm Siaia and I live in Ice Cove. I've made some questionable decisions that didn't end up the way I planned. And today, I'm still figuring it out. Somehow things usually get worse before they get better. Apparently, that's how I roll.

So bundle up and come along for the bumpy ride. Stream a new episode of North of North Tuesdays on CBC Gem. Something fell from the skies above a lonely New Mexico ranch. The military arrived, collected the wreckage, and gave one explanation, then another. And as the story kept changing, witnesses began to wonder what actually happened and what they might have actually seen with their own eyes. Because the greatest mystery of Roswell isn't what crashed to Earth, but why someone wanted the world to forget it ever happened.

Welcome to sightings. I'm MacLeod. And I'm Brian, and this month we are heading to Roswell, New Mexico. So put on those sunglasses and look up. Is it a weather balloon, an alien ship, or something else in the skies above Roswell? Find out on this episode of Sightings. This episode is brought to you by Quince. McLeod, I like to wear a lot of my clothes on repeat, partially because I'm lazy.

But also because I'm realizing that a lot of my favorites are from Quince. Of course they are, because Quince focuses on high-quality staples made with premium materials like organic cotton and marino wool. You'll want to wear them every day because they're so darn versatile and dependable. And best of all, everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. And Quince doesn't just make clothing. I love my kitchen pans from them and my clothes from them too. I've got some fall-colored pants. I don't know what the material is, but it is incredible.

And I am looking forward to wearing them once it finally starts to cool down. So, find your next fall favorites at Quince, because fall cannot come soon enough in this scorching world of ours. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com slash sightings. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com slash sightings. Okay. Yeah, I'm ready.

Do I not look like I'm ready? Good. Let's do this then. So, July, 1947, I was a major stationed at Roswell Army Airfield in New Mexico. Yeah, I know. You've heard of it. Anyway, I was the intelligence officer for the 509th bomb group, and once all the hoopla started, I found myself right smack in the middle of it.

I should be clear, though, I never said I saw an alien. No bodies, no little green men, none of that. I did, however, see wreckage, and no, it was no weather balloon. Thirty-one years I've dealt with that bull-crap lie, because what I saw sure as hell was no weather balloon. But, uh... I'm putting the cart before the horse, I sit, So back up.

For me, it started with a call from the Roswell Sheriff. Some rancher pulled into town with some kind of unusual material, he said, stuff that was scattered across his land northwest of town. He even said he thought it might have come from some kind of crash. But on the phone, I was thinking none of that sounded particularly out of place. We had aircraft operating all over New Mexico. Stuff I couldn't talk about then, plus regular stuff. weather balloons, for example.

But I was unaware of any of our equipment going down. Still, hardware sometimes ended up where it wasn't supposed to, and if it did, it was my job to find out why. So I went to Roswell. I met with the sheriff, and that rancher was there with some of the material right out in the open in the back of his truck. And as soon as I saw it, I knew something wasn't right. Not that it was a lot to look at, it was just a few scraps of metal or metallic material,

old, but it was thin, understand? And then there were a few rubbery pieces and a few other longer ones. At first glance, it looked almost like junk. But then the rancher told me to pick up a piece, and I did, and, uh, well, it was extraordinary. The lightest thing I've ever held. You could fold it, crumple it, and it would recover its shape. I guess the best way to put it is to say it looked like foil, but it sure as hell didn't behave like it. The bigger structural pieces were strange, too. They were also light, but impossibly strong. And then, of course, there were the markings. Now, people have made a great deal out of those markings over the years. Some say hieroglyphics, others say it's alien writing, all kinds of stuff. Me, I don't have a clue what they were,

and that's all I can tell you. But I can't describe them. Did you want me to describe them? Yeah? Okay. Well, uh, They were small, almost purplish in color, like a series of purple shapes running along the pieces. And no, they didn't look like military or like any other language I recognized, but it was my job to get to the bottom of it to find the ordinary explanation, I guess you could say. So first I thought it might be some kind of new balloon assembly, possibly from a classified program out of white sands I hadn't been read into, which of course was concerning because I was,

the intelligence officer. But still, it was possible. There are things above even my pay grade. After seeing what was in the truck, I went out with the sheriff and that rancher to his land, and that's when I realized with 100% certainty that this was no weather balloon. Because the debris was everywhere. Big and small pieces of it scattered over an enormous area, and if I didn't know better, I'd say something had broken apart in the sky over that ranch in the... and fell. But there was a pretty big problem, mainly that there was no engine, no fuselage, nothing to all that implied an airplane or anything like it. Oh, and there was no crater either, just debris everywhere. So we started collecting it, and at first I was still thinking it was

military, experimental, obviously, but the more I picked up, the more I began to doubt myself, because I knew military tech like balloons and whatnot. I'd been around all that for years. and that rancher must have had his fair share of experience with balloons going down on his land because he said he knew what balloons looked like and kept saying this wasn't one. And I heard him muttering under his breath wondering what the hell and why him. And I was starting to wonder why me. Because I didn't like uncertainty. I still don't.

Probably why I went into the military to begin with. And in intelligence, you learn to recognize patterns that obliterate uncertainty. You see enough weapons or photographs or classified projects, and you can file away almost anything. Except that is for that wreckage. We loaded up what we could into my truck, and I started back to base. And from that point forward, everything started moving quickly. Colonel Blanchard was informed, and then higher command. I was almost shunted aside as they decided to ship everything off to Fort Worth.

And somewhere amid all of that, the press got involved. I don't know how exactly, but the base issued a statement saying we'd recovered a flying disc. Which, well, that was a lot to say at the time. See, up until a few weeks earlier, the concept of a flying saucer was barely a thing. But there had been a bunch of other sightings of weird things in the skies leading up to that, and once our statement went out, the story exploded. Reporters from everywhere were calling. I mean, phones were ringing off the hook.

I'm just glad I didn't have to answer them. Instead, I was ordered to take the wreckage to Fort Worth, and I hope that maybe I'd finally get some answers there. Yeah, I know, right. Stupid me. But at the time, I wanted nothing more than for someone to take one glance at that material and tell me what I'd missed. Tell me what I was looking at. I wanted to be chastised for screwing this up. Because if I hadn't, well, that meant something fell from the sky in New Mexico and no one knew what it was.

Which was not a comforting thought, considering it was the atomic age and the sober. were watching our every move. And again, I'm not saying it's aliens. I'm just saying, you don't have to believe in Martians to understand why an unidentified crash near an Air Force base with atomic capability was frightening.

So, once I reached Fort Worth, I was led into General... Oh, what was? General Ramey's office. I showed him the wreckage, and he stared at it. Then he pulled me into another room, showed me a map of the Roswell.

area and started asking questions. Then we went back to his office and I noticed the wreckage was it was different. Pieces still looked metallic but it just looked like tin foil with rubber and wood mixed in, ordinary material that would look to almost anyone like a weather balloon or radar reflector. Except that's not what I brought into that office and that's what I keep coming back to all these years. That moment. Because before then, It was about finding the truth. After that, well, I remember staring at this new wreckage, this fake wreckage, trying to make sense of what happened, trying to find a normal explanation.

But then the photographers came in, and I was told to pose with the debris. So I did. You've probably seen the photograph. Me kneeling there, holding pieces of a radar target, and people point to that picture and say, well, that's what I recovered, but it wasn't. I... But I still posed with it. I followed orders.

Because you just don't stand in a general's office and demand explanations, or question the narrative, or ask why things have clearly advanced far above your pay grade. So I kept my mouth shut as they took those pictures. And I didn't say anything either when the story changed. No more flying disc. Now it was a weather balloon. Nothing unusual at all.

everyone can go home I think I think I was maybe one of the only ones in the world that knew it was a lie as I said before it weren't no weather balloon on that ranch outside Roswell

if it was why replace it with another balloon and why not photograph the material I'd actually brought in and strangest of all why make it disappear like that huh I didn't ask those questions, of course, not then. I never officially. I just went back to Roswell and kept my mouth shut. Told myself, there was probably just some classified program behind it all,

some new surveillance technology or something Russian. E. And, you know, telling myself that worked for a while, but every now and then I think about that wreckage, the stuff I found on that ranch, how light the material was. You just can't understand unless you held it. yourself and those markings. I never saw anything like it ever again. So, uh, you know, it's been 31 years and I still don't know what I picked up on that ranch. And yeah, there's talk of aliens and

survivors and autopsies and more, but I, yeah, I don't know. I can't speak to any of that, just what I saw and held in my hand and the questions that lingered. And I'd like to think that maybe there's like a file somewhere with the answers, that it was ours all along, that it was someone else's or, or that it was from somewhere else entirely if you catch my drift. I'm not going to tell you I know for sure, because I don't. And I think that's the difference between me and most of the others who've attached them themselves to this whole thing. But I was there.

I held it. And, again, it was no weather balloon. And, yeah. So, anyway, you asked before. for why I'm talking now. And I don't know. Maybe it's just because I'm older or maybe because most of the others

high enough up to know what was happening or gone or getting there, so not likely to get much out of them. And, you know, I don't know, maybe those who hear this will conclude I'm an old intelligence officer and a crank whose intelligence and memory have gotten away from them and, you know, that's fine.

but I'll tell you, I remember that day with crystal clarity, standing on that ranch, holding something I couldn't explain. And for whatever reason, somewhere between Roswell and Fort Worth, someone made sure I never would. Sightings will be back just after this. Welcome back, everyone, McLeod. We finally did it. We finally did it. We lived up to our promise at the beginning of this whole thing. Yep, Roswell, Amityville, Loch Ness, and beyond.

That's right. And beyond. So. But, like, Brian, why, why no, like, bodies? No little alien bodies. No, no spaceships. No, like in men in black with, like, oh, that picture there, that was me, giving a flower to that giant alien man. What's his name?

Tommy Lee Jones. Well, I could have just shot for the fences, I guess, and dramatized it. pretty extravagantly. But I guess the fact is, like, there isn't that much actual evidence that there were bodies or a UFO. Really? So after, like, all this, it being, like, maybe the most famous, like, crash and cover-up, there's not actually, there's less in this, it seems, than in some of our other stories.

But what makes Roswell so interesting, the reason I wanted to do it this way is that the cover-up is so bizarre. Right. That if it indeed was just some kind of experimental butter balloon, the government made it way worse for themselves. Yeah, right. You know? Right. But the other reason I took this is like, the character that you read was a real guy.

Okay. His name was Jesse Marcell. He was a real intelligence officer who was involved with the investigation of this stuff that fell on this real rancher's land. That rancher's name was MacBrasel. This was in July of 1947. And he goes out, he investigates, and then he brings it back to Roswell. And then, for whatever reason, on July 8, 1947, the Roswell Army Airfield issued a press release announcing that they had recovered a flying disc. Which doesn't necessarily make sense because...

That wasn't part of the vernacular. Like, that wasn't part of the popular understanding. It really wasn't. Now, the thing that wasn't because I was kind of hewing to just this guy's perspective. but there are lots of stories of people seeing weird things in the skies above Roswell around that time. Okay. And flying saucers weren't really a thing until right around that time anyway. So to me, when they're like, oh, this was a flying saucer, it seems like a diversion tactic.

Well, like, oh, something actually important crashed. And we need to throw them off the scent or something. Right. Like maybe they were they were maybe like testing some really intense munitions or like bombs that they were like, oh, cool. Oh, crap, oh, crap, oh, crap. That could have been bad if we had basically decimated a ranch. Thankfully, we blew it up in the sky. But then, as we heard in the story, a day later, they take the wreckage to Fort Worth and the head honcho general there walked back that statement saying, no, no, no, it was just a weather balloon.

And then they had the character you read Marcel actually take a picture in front of this debris, which, which, was publicly released. Huh. So it's just very strange. But again, just to go back to what she talked about, like, before we dive in, I do want to be very clear that the story was basically Marcel's account. And most of that account was not made public until 1978. Oh, wow. So, and it did.

He came forward after many years. He came forward after 31 years. So a researcher contacted him, put a microphone in front of him, and he started talking. So I think the question that lingers here is how much of what he said is perhaps faulty or evolved memories. And it's important to also note that there is no, of course, there's no direct evidence saying that the debris that he brought to Fort Worth was swapped in that office before he came back. Right. So we're kind of operating on his word here. Gotcha.

And we'll get into the bodies and all that other stuff because all that started coming after this. Because what's kind of interesting by Roswell is after there was an initial flurry of interest, as they're like, oh, we found a flying saucer. And then, no, it's actually a weather balloon. And people were talking about it for a little while. Then, like, everyone stopped caring for over 30 years. Huh. Only in the 80s did Roswell really become a thing. Was it with, did it time up with this guy coming forward?

Yep. This guy came forward. He started talking. And then some researchers started really digging in on it. But two of the researchers, we've encountered these researchers. just before because they wrote the Philadelphia Experiment book. Yeah, with the disappearing destroyer

or something? Yep, the disappearing boat and the time travel and the people stuck in the bulkhead which a lot of people read as a work of fiction. But they wrote the kind of the definitive book on Roswell as well which you know, do we, and they're the ones who introduce the idea that, oh, there's bodies,

oh, this was absolutely a UFO, so on and so forth. That strikes me as dubious a little bit. It does. Now, Let me fill in some other gaps here, though. Like in the 80s, the Air Force came forward and identified the likely source of the wreckage as debris from something called Project Mogul. Okay. Which was a classified program using balloon arrays and listing equipment to detect Soviet nuclear experiments, which to me, that makes sense that they'd want to cover that up.

Right. So that they could still maybe utilize the methodology? But that doesn't square with the guy's description of that material. Right. how light it was, number one, which I can understand if it's some kind of like nylon or something for a balloon. But it had memory, though. So like when you would fold it up or unfold it, it would go back to its original shape. Yeah. And then there's also all that weird writing that he saw on it. Something's not quite adding up. And then, of course, things got even more complicated once we start talking about the bodies.

Which I feel like the bodies and like the little green men is what most people think about, right? When you think about Roswell? And I guess it crash to a certain extent. Yeah. But people tend to imagine like a full-on show. ship crashing. Yes. And I don't think there's any evidence ever that there was a ship. Yeah. But there are a lot of people who are like, oh, there were bodies. And what's interesting, though, is like bodies were not a thing until the 80s.

Hmm. However, in the early 90s, there was an account that came out from a guy who was a mortician in Roswell at that time in 1947. And he said that the base contacted him to ask about obtaining small hermetically sealed coffins. Interesting. Yeah. And a nurse later told him that she participated in autopsies of small inhuman beings. Okay. But again, like there's no direct evidence is all hearsay.

But it's pretty interesting. Right. And of course, all that happened after your guy was talking. So he would have known none of that at the time. Right. Also, in 1997, the Air Force released yet another contradictory report trying to account for the bodies. They said that what witnesses might have construed as bodies at the Roswell site were actually anthropomorphic test dummies that they use in aircraft. That's so weird because I'm like if the nurse, for example, was just like making it up, why address the bodies?

Like you just be like, there weren't any bodies? What is she talking about? Yeah, yeah, exactly. But critics of that Air Force explanation about test dummies have said that the dummies that the dummies that they're talking about were. We're not used until the 1950s. So the timeline doesn't even add up anyway. Right. So we go basically from, it is a flying saucer to know it was a weather balloon, to know it was this secret balloon array project used to listen to the Soviets, to know there were actually

also test dummies involved. And then we've got all these other people doing their own independent research or coming forward with their own stories of what they might have seen or not. Yeah, the fact that a lot of the body stuff, though, came up in the 90s, like a full 10 years after this guy talked and it's exploded into the like kind of popular imagination. It's always a little like, oh. Well, I wonder if the people start talking in 1990 or like 1989, because in 1989, unsolved mysteries did a whole story on Roswell.

Oh. And I think that kind of blasted it into even more public consciousness. Yeah. It's just kind of a mess of explanations and lies and memories that might be real or might not, you know. Yeah. Well, it's also kind of a cool story, you know, where you've got, you know, the crash in the desert and then, you know, the body's recovered and then an autopsy of some kind. It just all coalesced into what was a really neat thing. I can see why I capture the public consciousness. But what do you think might have been happening here? Do you think aliens

had anything to do with it at all? Um, I mean, there certainly isn't enough evidence of it, other than just kind of one guy saying the material was real strange. Mm-hmm. It doesn't quite, that's just not enough to hang your hat on, really. Yeah. I mean, like, I'm kind of more inclined to believe that the government was testing something in a brazenly irresponsible manner and or trying to, you know, cover up a cutting edge technology. But that, I feel like if it was a cutting edge technology in the 40s, would have come out by now. So I'm more inclined to say, like, they were doing something really irresponsible.

and endangering the lives of the United States citizens. And so just made a hash out of covering it up. Or it's just kind of unexplained. And they just sort of there was a, that the whole disc thing came about because of just a miscommunication. They couldn't be like, oh, we don't know what's going on. They had to be like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

We know what's going on because they didn't want people to lose faith in, you know, their intelligence and their... And this was right after World War II. Right. So I think people had a lot of confidence in the military at that time. And in their ineffective PR strategy, you know, did their cover-up essentially create like the exact conditions needed for like an alien conspiracy to take root, you know? Yeah. It's really fascinating.

I think the most fascinating thing, honestly, is like, to me is how little is behind this grand. daddy of like alien lore stories. And in some ways I'm like, well, I guess that makes sense because otherwise how does it get so big? How does it run rampant through our imaginations if there's like more compelling evidence? Because then you have to deal with that tricky evidence. Exactly. Well, that wraps up Roswell for right now at least. But we're going to take a quick break and be back with some listener stories right after this. This family is on the brink of civil war on September 18th. Mobland. The hit origin of series is back on Paramount Plus.

We are the Harrogans. Don't know than it? And Google us. From the underworld of Guy Ritchie. Do you want to step up the ladder? I won't come at dead. Starring Tom Hardy, Pierce Brosnan, and Helen Mirren. Do I have to do everything myself?

You want to want? I'll give you a more. Mobland. New season hits September 18th on Paramount Plus. All right, welcome back, everyone. McLeod. As you probably know, we've gotten a lot of email from parents who listen to the show with their kids.

Yeah. Which is really great. I love hearing that. Likewise. And that, you know, we're, we kind of are appealing to older audiences, younger audiences, everyone's finding something cool about these stories that have kind of captured our imaginations and the world's imaginations. Yeah. So that's a lot of fun.

But for our listener stories today, we've had a couple of those parents. These are two dads who actually send in stories of their own. Oh, cool. So, so the first comes from Jason, who said, this in his message. He said, my youngest son, who's 10, has been urging me to write you about my own experiences at the end of every episode. We've listened to all of them and love the listener's stories the most. Oh, awesome. So, well, thanks for sending us your story, Jason. And let's get some music going. I've always shared my love for ghost stories in the supernatural with all five of

my children, along with many of the experiences our family has had. My sister was visited by our great-grandfather one night and had the glass to prove it. My sister was always sick. Nothing serious, just always the first to catch a bug if one was going around. On many occasions, she'd wake herself up coughing through the night. It was typical that when she woke, she'd noticed the blueish light from our old floor model TV through the crack under her door and hear the murmur of the station being off the air. Most times she'd get up, go out to the family room, give our dad a shake, and he'd tuck her back in before turning off the TV and going to bed himself. That was most of the time. Other times, she'd get up to go tell our father to turn off the TV, open the door, and find it

wasn't even on. One particular night she woke up coughing, saw the light, heard the murmur, but before she could get up, her bedroom door opened. A male's shadow walked toward her bed, put his hand on her forehead like he was checking her temperature, walked back out of the room, and returned with a glass of grape juice. My sister drank the juice. He put his hand on her head again, told her to get some rest, and left. In the morning, I met my sister in the kitchen and she thanked me for the juice. I told her I had no idea what she was talking about. As I was insisting she was confused, our dad walked in. She thanked him. he denied it too she started telling him what happened all the color drained from his face he didn't say a word

just went into her room to retrieve the glass stopped pulled a photo album out of the hutch and brought it back to the kitchen sure enough the glass still had a ring of dried grape juice in it my dad opened the album to a photo it was our great-grandfather the man who'd built the two two-family house we shared with my dad's parents. My dad had spent most of his childhood sleeping in the room that was now my sisters. And when he was a sick kid, our great-grandfather used to bring him grape juice. Fast forward to when I bought my first house with my first ex-wife. Our daughter would have been turning six, our son three. It was an old house, remodeled, with two bedrooms upstairs for the kids, and one on the main level for my ex and me. Within the

first month, our son started waking up screaming that a man was in his room. I'd turn on the lights, check the closet, look under the bed, reassure him it was just a dream. It happened two or three times a week. He didn't think much of it. He was three, and his mom and I were nearing the end of our relationship, so we figured he was picking up on the tension and having night terrors. We assumed that right up until we didn't. My ex and I had asked my parents to watch the kids overnight, so we could talk things through. Around 3 a.m., I felt her nudge me in bed. I opened my eyes and saw a silhouette standing in our bedroom doorway. I must have jolted because she whispered, You see that too, right? I jumped out of bed, and it was gone. We split shortly after. I ended up

with the house and custody of the kids. There were always small, creepy things, voices when no one was around, banging upstairs while we were all downstairs. Once we moved out, both kids finally opened up about the man. My son said he'd exit my daughter's closet, crossed her room into the hallway, and come into his room. The strange part is, my son still sees him from time to time, in a room, in the yard, on the side of the road, once even in the back seat of the car. It doesn't bother him anymore. Now he takes it as a sign that something's about to change. Wow.

Like a guiding presence. Kind of, yeah. To just like be like, hey, your life's about to change. You're safe. I love you. It'll be okay. But also I'm a ghost and boo. I do wonder if the, because this is almost two stories.

We've got the story with a sister. and the great-grandfather bringing her juice. Yeah. And then this other presence happening in the new house that they'd moved into. Yeah, which I just assumed it was, I don't know, I put them together. I assumed it was just like great-granddad just kind of keeping track of the... Yeah, and I wonder if that's the case. What was really interesting to me about the Jews story was that there was evidence.

Right, yeah. We had a glass of juice. And the fact that he was like, my granddad, their great-granddad, like, used to do that for me when I was sick. What would have been really interesting is if there had been no grape juice in the house. Yes. That would have been. Then she was drinking ghost juice. Ghost juice.

Trademark that right now. Ghost juice. Brought tea by sighting. Yeah. So that was cool because a lot of times you just have like an eerie feeling that you saw something. But in this case, there was the glass to prove it, like you said. Well, Jason, thank you so much for sending that in. I hope your kids get a kick out of hearing your story on the show.

That's so cool. Next up, though, we've got a story from Patrick from Minnesota, and with his story, he wrote, I started listening to the podcast with my 13-year-old boy going to hockey practices. I would pick up another kid too on the way, and he fall in love with it as well. I started to have to wait until he was in the car to listen. We burned through all of them quick because all the hockey practices. But he still brings it up and asks if there are new ones every time he's in the car. Aw. Yeah.

Now I started to relisten with my nine-year-old, and he can't get enough. of them. That's so great. I find him looking up different places in these stories on his iPad. Oh, cool. As like a gateway to doing some research and more about it. That's really cool. Love that. Oh, thanks for that note, Patrick. Yeah. So let's get our music going again so we can hear Patrick's story. All right. When I was a kid, I always had this strange feeling that something was in our house. The thing that made it even stranger was that my grandmother had lived with us for a long time before she passed away. She stayed in our home until her health declined and she eventually had to go into hospice care. After she was gone, I could never shake the feeling that she was still there.

Not long after she passed, something started happening that I could never explain. Every day before school, I would make sure the lights were off before leaving the house. I was particular about it. But when I came home from school, the light at the top of the stairs would often be on. The weird part was that I was the first one home every day. No one should have been there. At first it bothered me. Then I started thinking about my grandma.

Before she got sick, she would often come down those stairs when I got home from school and greet me. After a while, instead of being scared, I started seeing the light as her way of saying hello. Then came the day that changed everything. One afternoon, right after school, I was downstairs in our finished basement playing 007 on Nintendo with my friend. We were the only two people in the house. Off to the side of the basement was a laundry room and next to it sat an old refrigerator. While we were playing, something caught my eye.

Did you see that? I asked. What? my friend replied. I paused the game. I thought I saw a shadow. As soon as the game froze, we both turned and looked toward the laundry room. What happened next still sticks with me to this day. Projected against the wall was the silhouette of a person. Not a vague shape, not a trick of the light.

A clear silhouette. We watched as it moved across the wall. Then it came back. Then a third time. Neither of us said much. We just stared. We both knew exactly what we had seen. There was no one else in the house.

No one could have been down there. I remember looking at my friend and asking, What do we do? Being two dumb 13-year-olds, we looked at each other, shrugged, unpaused the game, and kept playing. What else were we supposed to do? If it was a ghost, it was a ghost. Life went on. But the strange experiences didn't stop.

A while later, I was getting ready to bring my Nintendo. to a friend's sleepover. The basement was dark, and I walked downstairs without thinking much about it. I got to the TV stand and was just reaching for the old light switch so I could see behind the television. Before my hand touched it, the light clicked on by itself. It was one of those old mechanical switches that made a loud click when you turned it on. I just stood there for a second. Then I said, thank you. I unplugged in. Nintendo, and when I left, I turned the light back off. For the next two years, my friends would occasionally tell me they thought they saw someone moving around inside my house. They would walk

up and knock on the door because they assumed I was home. But nobody would answer, because nobody was there. Every single time, they described seeing a figure moving through the house. Part of me always wondered if they were seeing my grandmother. Eventually, we moved out of that house, and, it was a into another house right behind it. Over the years, I've thought about going back and asking the people who bought it if they ever experienced anything strange, but I never had the courage to ask. Even now, decades later, the memory that stays with me isn't the lights turning on by themselves. It's that afternoon in the basement, two kids, an empty house, and a silhouette walking across a wall three separate times. Clear as day. Because whatever it was, we both. We both. We both. We both. We're

saw it and that's the part that still haunts me. Ooh. It has a lot of similarities in a weird way to the first story where you've got, you know, the, the deceased family member. Yeah. Kind of hanging out. I feel like that's really common. Yeah. I like the idea of like family sticking around to like keep track of likely just to keep making sure everyone's okay. Unless you've got a family member with a wicked sense of humor that just wants to tear. terrorize you. Sure, sure. I'm trying to put myself in the headspace of, you know, being that kid at 13 with his friend and seeing. Yeah. And I feel like, I'm not going back to Patrick's house. Yeah. Because it's sleepovers around that age. You know, everything's kind of amped up anyway. Even though he has the Nintendo 64, I'm not doing it. Yep. Yep. And then I feel like you could write off kind of the lights, which is turning on and off or something like that. But, you know, it sounds like all, all the things. And you've got the friends. And you've got the friends. And you've got the friends. And you're not. And you know, you know, it sounds like all the things. And then you've got the friends. And you've got the friends. And you've got the. And

seeing people inside the house that aren't there and coming and, you know, knocking on the door when no one's there. But it's interesting, you know, like, we've, we've had, we've done certain stories about, like, entities that follow. I feel like those tend to be, like, not so nice entities, the ones that follow people. And so, you know, these seem to be tied to the space. I thought that was really interesting where he was, like, we left. And it seems like the hauntings left when they left, or, like, they didn't go with the space. He didn't follow. He didn't follow.

But in the first story, it is unclear whether or not it's the same. Oh, right. That's right, because they do move. Yeah, so maybe nice ghosts move to. Maybe. It's the bad ones that leech onto you kind of latch on and start leaching your spiritual, psychic energy or whatever. Well, I'm glad that Patrick didn't have one of those. No, exactly.

It seems neither did Jason. So it's nice to have some nice ghost stories once in a while, even though I'm sure they were scary at the time. Yeah. Yeah, and I like that it's like. These guys talked about listening to the show with their family and their ghost stories are kind of about family. It's a really nice theme. Yeah, good old, wholesome entertainment, huh? Spooky.

It's still spooky. It's like, I don't care if it's grandma. It's still spooky. Yep. Well, that's actually, speaking of spooky. Spooky season's coming up. We have our October episode coming next month, McLeod, and it is going to be a scary one. Okay.

Your favorite. I'm ready. I'm ready. I've built up my armor over the years. Yes. And listeners, I hope you guys are ready too. But we will see you back next month for our big spooky season episode. Awesome.

All right. See you then. Same time, same place, right here on sightings. Bye. Bye. Sightings is hosted by McLeod Andrews and Brian Sigley. Produced by Brian Sigley, Chase Kinzer, and McLeod Andrews.

Series music by Mitch Bain. Mixing and mastering by Pat Kicklighter. Artwork by Nuno Sarnadas. Sightings is presented by Reverb and Q Code. If you like the show, be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform.