Sightings - Stardust Ranch: Arizona, 1996

Episode Date: February 17, 2025

When a quiet man purchases a sprawling ranch in the remote desert, the last thing he expects is to host unexpected visitors. But as he’s confronted by beings that bullets can’t stop, he must find ...new ways to fight back before losing everything he loves.  Sightings is a REVERB and QCODE Original. Find us on instagram @sightingspod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 You hear that? Ugh, paid. And... done. That's the sound of bills being paid on time. But with the BMO Eclipse Rise Visa Card, paying your bills could sound like this. Yes! Earn rewards for paying your bill in full and on time each month.
Starting point is 00:00:19 Rise to rewards with the BMO Eclipse Rise Visa Card. Terms and conditions apply. There's something seductive about the desert. Vast stretches of emptiness where a person might carve out their own paradise. But isolation cuts both ways. When the nearest neighbor is miles away, who will hear your screams? And when you realize your dream home came with uninvited guests, what choice do you have but to stand and fight?
Starting point is 00:00:56 Welcome to Sightings, the series that takes you inside the world's most mysterious supernatural events. Each week we bring you a thrilling story that puts you at the center of the action, followed by a discussion that dives into the accounts that inspired the story and our takes on them. I'm McCloud. And I'm Brian. And today we're heading to the Arizona desert where one rancher is about to encounter
Starting point is 00:01:18 just about every paranormal event under the sun. So prepare yourself for night visitors, strange lights, and one man who's desperate to defend his piece of paradise. Will he succeed? Find out on this episode of Sightings. Looking back, I should have listened to my wife. That's what keeps me up at night, knowing Joyce had sensed something was wrong from the very beginning.
Starting point is 00:02:09 But I was too caught up in my dream, this grand vision of wide open spaces, horses grazing in the distance, and a place to finally call my own. After spending my early years dodging trouble in the rougher parts of Chicago, then building a respectable career as a counselor in Phoenix, I thought I'd earned my slice of paradise. Instead, I bought myself a nightmare. But you probably need more to make sense of any of this, don't you? The name's John Edmonds, and I bought this place in 1996. I was burnt out from life in this city and needed something simpler, something real.
Starting point is 00:02:45 And though Joyce and I had only been married a few years, she understood my restlessness. So when I floated the idea of buying a ranch, she didn't shut it down. At least not at first. Our budget wasn't exactly rancher-sized, which meant the prime spots around Phoenix were well out of reach. But our realtor kept mentioning this place out in Rainbow Valley, Stardust Ranch, just beyond Buckeye. It's remote, he said, but that's what makes it such a steal. The first time we drove out to see it, I knew something was different. The landscape shifted from suburbs to pure desert, all rust-colored earth and scrubby vegetation beneath a relentless sun. By the time we turned onto the property, we might as well have been on Mars. Ten acres of isolation
Starting point is 00:03:29 surrounded by serene mountains. The house itself was a surprise. Modern construction, way bigger than we'd expected for the price. Five bedrooms, massive kitchen, even an in-ground pool out back. The kind of place that should have been way outside our means. There was a stable, too, big enough for 20 horses, just sitting there waiting for someone with vision to bring it back to life. I was already imagining the possibilities before we made it through the front door. A dog breeding operation, horse training, maybe even a retreat center where I could
Starting point is 00:04:03 counsel people in a more natural setting. But Joyce was quiet. Too quiet. I caught her staring at empty corners of rooms, rubbing her arms like she was cold despite the desert heat. When we got back in the car, she finally spoke up and told me something wasn't right about this place. And being me, I brushed it off, of course. The price was incredible, the location perfect for what we wanted, so I emptied our savings account and signed the papers as fast as I could and within a few weeks we were moving in. We pulled up the long driveway
Starting point is 00:04:36 in the U-Haul and I remember feeling like a conquering hero. I even struck a pose for Joyce who managed a tight smile from behind the wheel of our following car. Then we opened the front door and found every single piece of the previous owner's furniture still exactly where it was during our viewing weeks before. They hadn't bothered to move out at all. I was livid. Called the realtor right away, ready to tear him a new one. He seemed genuinely surprised, insisted he'd take care of it, told us to go kill some time in town,
Starting point is 00:05:09 so we did. Caught a movie, had lunch, tried to laugh it off as just one of those things that happens during a move. And when we came back that evening, the house was empty. I was impressed. The realtor had actually come through. Then I walked out back to survey my new property and found... well... everything. Every single piece of furniture, every appliance, the entire contents of the house, all stacked in the empty pool like it was a landfill. The realtor denied having anything to do with it and said it wasn't his problem anymore. We'd paid cash. It was our house now, our problem.
Starting point is 00:05:45 and said it wasn't his problem anymore, we'd paid cash, it was our house now, our problem. So it took weeks to clear that pool. The whole time I could feel Joyce watching me, that look in her eyes that said, I told you so, without her having to speak a word. But I wasn't about to let some weird furniture situation spook me off my dream property, so I settled in. We settled in. And soon enough the house was feeling comfortable. Homie even. But now that we were living there, I started to feel the isolation.
Starting point is 00:06:16 It's not something you think about when touring a place in broad daylight, but at night, you start to notice things, like how far you are from help if something went wrong, how many hiding spots there are on acres of scrubland, how the mountains grow ominous after dark. And though I've never been much for guns, I bought myself a.357 magnum, just to have something solid to hold onto during those long nights when Joyce was working late at her FBI office job in Phoenix. I told myself it was it was just common sense. Of course, I had no idea I'd be needing that gun and more because this house, this land...
Starting point is 00:07:00 Well, you'll see. Well, you'll see. A few weeks after moving in, I saw a man walking up our long dirt driveway like he owned the place. He wore what looked like an old military shirt with the sleeves torn off, and even from a distance I could see he was carrying something. As he got closer, I realized it was a machete, and not some decorative wall-hanger, either. This thing had seen use. So I pulled my magnum from my waistband and went out to meet him. We squared off halfway up the drive, like something out of an old Western. Up close, his eyes had that thousand-yard stare I recognized from my counseling days,
Starting point is 00:07:41 the kind that says someone's not quite anchored to reality. I asked if I could help him and he quietly replied, I live here. I followed his gaze towards a storage shed on the property, a shed that I knew had no sign of anyone ever living in it. So I told him I owned this place now and that whatever agreement he had with the previous owners no longer applied. He considered that for a moment, then said the most unexpected four words I've ever heard, I kill the monsters. And he delivered them with such matter of fact certainty that for a moment I actually believed him. But there was no way he was living on my land, and I told him so. And he fixed his empty eyes on me and said,
Starting point is 00:08:29 I'd regret that, then walked away without another word. So, yeah, that happened. And after that, the strangeness really started ramping up. First was trouble with the phone company. Three separate technicians refused to come out to hook up our landline, and I finally got a supervisor on the phone who hemmed and hawed before admitting that our address had a reputation. They wouldn't say what kind exactly, just that their contractors were...
Starting point is 00:09:00 afraid. Then we finally did get someone out, some local guy who'd lived in the area forever. He spent an hour and a half telling me about the property's history, about the illegal gambling operation that had operated here in the 80s, about the violence that had erupted one night, leaving bodies scattered across my front yard, about the previous owner who'd eaten his shotgun on his son's graduation day. He told me to get out while I still could, but I'd sunk everything I had into this place.
Starting point is 00:09:30 There was no getting out now. And of course, the next night I started to see... the lights. They appeared most nights after that, hovering in the distance. The Air Force range was just on the other side of the mountains, and at first I told myself that's all they were. Training exercises, fighter jets, maybe some flares. But these lights... they moved wrong. Like they were alive.
Starting point is 00:09:58 Conscious. The predominant color was orange, but sometimes they'd shift through other hues, dancing across the sky in ways that defied any earthly explanation. Naturally, I called the base, and the official line was always the same. Just military drills. But I'd seen plenty of night training exercises, and this was something else entirely. Complicating matters was the fact that I started feeling different on the ranch. Angry, almost. The kind of anger I hadn't felt since my days growing up rough in Chicago. And though I tried hiding it from Joyce, it was eating me up inside. Even stranger, I noticed things disappearing around the house and the ranch. Small stuff at first like keys, but soon
Starting point is 00:10:45 everything from bills to tools and more started playing musical chairs when I wasn't looking. Then the temperature started dropping at random, pockets of cold air that would appear in rooms for no reason. The pressure would change too, like the moment before a storm. The horses would get spooked, the dogs would fight among themselves, and since Joyce didn't mention a whiff of experiencing anything strange herself, it took me a long time to accept that anything was wrong at all. And the moment I did, everything escalated. It was like whatever was there decided it didn't need to hide anymore. Plates would crash to the floor, the fridge would rock back and forth, it was like the whole house was trying to drive me insane. And then came the morning I lost my favorite Rottweiler.
Starting point is 00:11:31 I was seeing Joyce off to work, feeling normal enough, all things considered. But the moment I walked out to the kennels, I knew something was wrong. One of the crates had been opened. And there, not far from the kennel, I found... Well, uh, I still don't know how to describe it. The carcass was completely flat, like someone had run it over with a steamroller. But there was no blood, no gore, nothing scattered about. Just my favorite dog pressed paper thin into the desert floor. That's when I finally told Joyce everything.
Starting point is 00:12:11 All the strange happenings I'd been trying to protect her from. The lights, the moving objects, the oppressive presence that seemed to be growing stronger by the day. She listened quietly, then said what I knew she would. We needed to leave, cut our losses, sell to some other poor fool and get out of Dodge. And thinking back that would have been the smart play, obviously. But right then, something inside me snapped. Like a primal instinct that said running would make me a coward.
Starting point is 00:12:50 This was my home. I'd sunk everything I had into it. And whatever this thing was, whatever forces were trying to drive us out, they'd picked the wrong guy to mess with. So I wasn't going to run. I was going to fight. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. What do you want your 2025 story to be? It's a new year, new adventures, new challenges,
Starting point is 00:13:19 new sightings episodes. And even though we bring you some pretty incredible stories each week, the most important story of all is your own. Maybe you're ready for a plot twist, or maybe there's part of your story that you've been wanting to revise. So if you want to pick up the pen and become the author of your own life, there's no better partner than the therapists at BetterHelp. BetterHelp is fully online, making therapy affordable and convenient.
Starting point is 00:13:45 It has a diverse network of over 30,000 credentialed therapists with a whole range of specialties. And you can easily switch therapists anytime at no extra cost. So look, you don't have to have been abducted by aliens or terrorized by some creature to benefit from talking to someone. So write your story with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash sightings to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash sightings.
Starting point is 00:14:15 Thanks BetterHelp for sponsoring this episode. When you sit on your aeroplan points, it's like you're sitting on your next trip. Like a sunny getaway sitting on a terrace. But instead, you're sitting on your Aeroplan points. So the only place you're sitting is in your car coming back from work. Use your points and go from sipping on your leftover latte
Starting point is 00:14:40 to sipping on the local vintage. So stop sitting on your next trip and start enjoying your aeroplan points. With the Fizz loyalty program, you get rewarded just for having a mobile plan. You know, for texting and stuff. And if you're not getting rewards like extra data and dollars off with your mobile plan,
Starting point is 00:14:58 you're not with Fizz. Switch today. Conditions apply. Details at F phys.ca. I started buying guns. Lots of them. Because my flattened dog, that was just the beginning. Soon my horses started dying. Gutted with surgical precision and still no blood, never any blood. So I went from being a guy who thought a.357 was plenty for home defense to someone stockpiling assault rifles, the kind of firepower that would make the FBI nervous probably. But Joyce worked
Starting point is 00:15:40 for the FBI and frankly I didn't care who got nervous anymore. Something was killing my animals, terrorizing my home, and I was done playing defense. But it turns out guns weren't going to be enough, because one night, when I least expected it, I learned exactly what kind of enemy I was dealing with. Joyce and I had decided to treat ourselves to dinner at this nice Tex-Mex place in the city. She was taking forever to get ready, you know how it is, but then suddenly there she was, all dolled up in this stunning red dress. I remember thinking she'd gone a bit overboard for Tex-Mex, but who was I to judge?
Starting point is 00:16:19 We had a nice chat in the car as I drove, then I dropped her at the door while I parked. By the time I got inside, the hostess had already seated her. So we got to ordering, talking, and after several minutes, she excused herself to the ladies' room. I took the opportunity to check my cell, one of those old flip phones, and realized I had four messages waiting, all from our home number. had four messages waiting, all from our home number. The first message started playing, and impossibly, it was Joyce. She was furious, demanding to know where I was, how I could leave without her.
Starting point is 00:16:56 I glanced toward the restrooms, then dialed our home number. And wouldn't you know it, Joyce, my actual wife, answered. She was at home, waiting for me to pick her up for dinner. I told her I'd be back in 45 minutes, then sat there, heart-pounding, waiting to see what would come back from that bathroom. And sure enough, this copycat Joyce returned and sat down across from me, perfect as could be. Except this time I really looked at her, really looked.
Starting point is 00:17:28 And whatever was wearing my wife's face must have sensed that I knew because its eyes, they went completely black. Not just the pupils, the entire eyes. I left without a word, just got up and walked out. That wasn't the last time we dealt with these doppelgangers either. They got both of us, eventually, perfect copies that could fool either Joyce or me, at least for a little while.
Starting point is 00:17:53 Of all the horrors we've faced here, that might be the worst, not being able to trust your own eyes when they tell you you're looking at someone you love. But the doppelgangers weren't the least of it, because eventually I started waking up to find Joyce floating. And I don't mean metaphorically, I mean literally levitating three feet above our bed. The first time I thought I was dreaming, I got up on my knees, called her name right in her ear. Nothing.
Starting point is 00:18:20 Finally, I had to grab her shoulders and physically pull her down until she woke up, unable to remember anything at all. This kept happening, and the whole thing soon got worse. I'd find her floating down hallways, through rooms. Then one night I couldn't wake her up at all. I watched, helpless, as some invisible force pulled her straight through the wall of our bedroom, through it, like it wasn't even there. So I ran outside to follow and saw that there was a massive metallic disk hanging over the
Starting point is 00:18:51 house and bathing her in this sickly blue-white light. She was floating toward it and I knew if I didn't act fast, I'd never see her again. So I grabbed an AK-47 and opened fire on the source of that light. The beam vanished instantly. Joyce dropped to the ground and this time, this time she remembered everything. Clearly whatever was tormenting us was getting bolder, more aggressive, like it was done playing games. And soon enough, they'd finally reveal themselves to me. And soon enough, they'd finally reveal themselves to me. I was lying in bed, not quite asleep, when I felt something cold and clammy stroke my
Starting point is 00:19:34 forearm. I kept a baseball bat behind the headboard, and I came up swinging and connected with something solid. There was this weird hissing sound, like a soccer ball being punctured. And when I hit the lights, there they were. Three of them. Gray-skinned, maybe four feet tall, with these huge bulbous black eyes, like insects. And before I could swing again, they literally phased out of existence. Just disappeared into thin air. But they came back, just disappeared into thin air.
Starting point is 00:20:04 But they came back. Again and again, as weeks wore on. And naturally I started shooting at them, but bullets just made them hiss and vanish. So clearly they couldn't be killed, at least not with guns. And every time I drove them off, they'd retaliate by killing another animal. I found my prize stallion gutted in the stable after one particularly nasty firefight. That's when I knew I needed something different, something they wouldn't expect. And fate, I suppose, delivered exactly what I needed. I was driving home one day, following this overloaded pickup truck when it hit a bump
Starting point is 00:20:41 and something flew off the back. The driver didn't notice and kept on going, so I stopped to clear the road, and there, lying in the dust, like it had been waiting for me, was a vintage samurai sword, still in its scabbard. I started keeping it under the bed. The baseball bat had worked once. Maybe razor sharp steel would work even better. And you know what? I started seeing them more clearly after that. Started understanding how they moved between worlds. They'd peek in first like someone looking around a shower curtain before fully materializing.
Starting point is 00:21:19 And once they knew you could see them, they stopped trying to hide. Which is exactly what happened about twenty minutes ago. I was sitting right here in the living room when I felt that familiar pressure change in the air, so I glanced toward the sun room and saw one peeking in. And casual as can be, I walked to the bedroom, grabbed the sword, and waited, watching the sun room to see if they materialized again.
Starting point is 00:21:46 Soon three of them did. So I drew my blade, took a deep breath, and came at them from their blind side. I took one of their heads clean off. The other two vanished, of course. But here's the thing. The one I killed? It's still here. Clearly they can't dematerialize once they're dead.
Starting point is 00:22:11 So now I'm sitting here, staring at the body of an honest-to-God alien lying in my sunroom, head separated from its shoulders. And I'm not going to lie. I have no idea what happens next. Because they'll be back. They always come back. But now I know how to kill them. So bring it on. Sightings will be back just after this.
Starting point is 00:22:58 Welcome back, everybody. I hope you stuck with us through that very, very spooky story. That was pretty chilling and just all over the place. I'm guessing you made a lot of that up, Brian. I did not make anything up for that story, believe it or not. Oh, I kind of had this feeling you were going to say that. Wow. Oh, it's impressive that so much was happening on this one piece of land.
Starting point is 00:23:27 And I mean, like the story cut off in the middle of the action kind of, like did anything crazy happen after that? After he cut off an alien's head? More the same really. You know, he ended up cutting off 18 or 19 alien's heads, it sounds like. Whoa. More aliens, more weird encounters, more lights in the sky, portals, all sorts of stuff.
Starting point is 00:23:45 And since the point where he started killing aliens, he did start going public with his story, which we'll get into eventually. But I think the big take home here is that he owned this property with all this stuff happening for almost 25 years. Incredible. And of course, the big question on my mind is, why don't you run? I was thinking the same thing the entire time I was reading this book.
Starting point is 00:24:08 So let me just recap kind of everything that happened here. He and his wife moved in in 1996. Weird stuff started happening right off the bat, just like in the story, you know, that weird furniture situation where they move in, all the furniture's there, they leave for a few hours. It's all in the pool. Why someone would do that is beyond me. I know. I thought it was like a jerk move by the real estate agent or something. It just seems like a weird prank if nothing else or some kind of weird,
Starting point is 00:24:36 I guess the ghost or the aliens have a sense of humor. Yeah. Then we got our machete wielding visitor who shows up Right. And says, I kill the monsters. Surely he had to have had like an Australian accent. Like, I kill the monsters. I'm never gonna write something for you in Australia.
Starting point is 00:24:54 No, no, never do. But it just makes me think of like the guy from Jurassic Park who's like, like clever girl. Oh yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. Which could you imagine being this guy and having this stranger come up to you and say this to you? Like, what do you, what do you do with that? I want a story, I want you to retell this story,
Starting point is 00:25:11 but from the perspective of the Monster Hunter. Is he, is that like in, is he real? He's real, oh absolutely. Those are the exact words he said. You know, I live here, he implied that he lived in the shed. He said I killed the monsters, then he turned around, walked away and never came back. Okay. Then we, you know, we get the lights in the sky.
Starting point is 00:25:29 We get things disappearing. We got the animal mutilations, including the flattening of the dog, which was- Whoa, that was freaky. Yeah, and then doppelgangers, which came out of nowhere for me, but- That was also, I mean, I'm sorry. This is one of the most terrifying stories.
Starting point is 00:25:42 And it's so full of just a diversity of horrors. Absolutely, then levitation, the aliens, the chopping of the heads. The samurai sword, I mean. So as I was reading this book and writing the story, part of me is like, is the fact that there's so much stuff going on make the story less believable or more believable?
Starting point is 00:26:00 Because I feel like we've encountered this before where the weirder stuff gets, it seems like you have to be really clever to kind of weave it all together you know if it didn't actually happen like the samurai sword thing is like it's such an obscure thing either this guy just thought it was cool yeah or it actually happened this way which if that's the case right wow for me it's it's too much, I think, honestly. All due respect to this gentleman and what he claims happened.
Starting point is 00:26:33 For his sake, I hope he's making it up. And this is all about something else, because this is just like a funhouse of horrors. He's being tortured. He's being terrorized, his dog is flattened and exsanguinated. And I just, why don't you leave? It's the wife, especially when your wife
Starting point is 00:26:54 is doppelgängert on you, like, why don't you get out of there? And I guess to answer that, we kind of have to dig into the John himself, who was a very real person. He did pass away a few years ago though. So in having this discussion, you know, I want to be as respectful as possible.
Starting point is 00:27:09 Yeah, same. While still trying to kind of do an honest evaluation of his account, which, like I said, mainly comes from this book that he wrote that was published in 2019. So it's just a few years old. And he admits in the book that like, he didn't keep notes or a diary or a journal. I wish he had, you know, so all of his recollections are kind of best guesses. But he still goes
Starting point is 00:27:30 into detail on all of these, you know, discrete occurrences. But, you know, since so much was happening on that ranch, I'm sure it was hard to keep track of it all. You know? Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I did like just to kind of get a sense of who this guy was Like see if I could find a video of him talking and I found a video of him on YouTube I didn't watch it at length. I just kind of wanted to get a sense of his cadence and he seems like a pretty straightforward like no embellishments kind of delivery to a lot of this stuff, which which I was Surprised by he doesn't give off the guise of someone who's just making it up from whole cloth, necessarily. And I guess to answer your question as to why don't you leave,
Starting point is 00:28:10 which is what was going off in my head, alarm bells every five seconds, he was stubborn, and he wasn't gonna be driven off his land. He was gonna stay and fight. And in his book, he kind of chalks it all up to pride. He sunk nearly all of his life savings into this ranch, and he couldn't envision a situation where he, you know, he kind of chalks it all up to pride. He sunk nearly all of his life savings into this ranch, and he couldn't envision a situation where he retreated.
Starting point is 00:28:30 But he admits that deep down, he doesn't really know why he stays, and he kind of acknowledges that it's kind of crazy. He says, maybe I was addicted to how the ranch made me feel. It made him feel special, chosen, kind of entitled in a way. Yeah, I guess if suddenly you have a window to just about every single, like, occult phenomenon known to man, that would make you feel pretty special. Yeah, but even though he might have felt, you know, he could feel special as he wanted,
Starting point is 00:28:58 but I think about his wife. Right. Yes, I, you know, I really found myself thinking about her. Like Like I was interested by the fact that she didn't seem to know what was going on. Like he wasn't telling her for a while. As we saw in the story, you know, she was levitating. She was, she knew what was going on. She wrote the epilogue of the book that ended up getting published about this and seems to have been on board with all of this. Wow.
Starting point is 00:29:22 So you said that there was a bunch of other stuff in the book that's not in this story that was going on. Can you mention some of those things? Yeah. So there was a point where they all started getting kind of branded in the night, as in like cattle branding, basically. Gosh, just again, the horrors, everything in this is just so... Yeah. The weirdest thing that I wanted to put in the story, but I couldn't figure out a way to make it fit, was he was walking on his land one day and found this big area where the grass had stopped growing, and in the middle of it was this circle of shoes, like hundreds of shoes just sitting in the middle of the desert in a circle, all neatly aligned in pairs.
Starting point is 00:30:00 And then when he went to go grab a camera to videotape it, and then he spotted a UFO and fell unconscious. Uh, okay. So he was filming. Do we have that footage? I wanna believe that there's at least, that there's some physical evidence of these occurrences, like the alien body, like the head.
Starting point is 00:30:17 He cut off its head. Where's its head? Yeah. I guess all I can say here is, as with a lot of the accounts we discuss on this show, proof seems as a convenient way of disappearing. Right. Well, it's like thinking of Cisco Grove, like with contacting the government.
Starting point is 00:30:34 That seems to be kind of like the wrong move and a sure way to make things disappear. He was like, I've got this piece of metal that I got from his body here, Air Force, and then it disappears. Yeah. Yeah. In this case, he doesn't seem to have given the alien body to the government. He ended up connecting with this doctor named Levengood, who asked him to FedEx the body parts. Okay.
Starting point is 00:30:55 So he did. And Levengood did his analysis and said he'd never seen anything like it. You know, the skin, he said, looked like segmented grass instead of like animal flesh or something. I don't really know seen anything like it. The skin, he said, looked like segmented grass instead of like animal flesh or something. I don't really know how to describe it. I didn't say, he said it looked like segmented grass.
Starting point is 00:31:11 The doctor ultimately said that this was, quote, the smoking gun. This is proof of alien life visiting Earth. And then Levengood seemed to have passed away, but the body parts and the DNA and all that stuff from the head, at least the first head He chopped off seems to have vanished Question in my head though is what happened to the rest of the bodies? Yeah, you know or the heads that he chopped off because he did 18 or 19 of them or just like what at what point?
Starting point is 00:31:35 Do you not just go like hey New York Times? I have a alien body come like come look at my assortment of 18 alien bodies Exactly exactly. He does talk about he put the first one in the freezer Like, come look at my assortment of 18 alien bodies. Exactly. Exactly. He does talk about he put the first one in the freezer. I don't know why he didn't start collecting the rest and just hand them over to somebody. To be fair, though, you know, he did post on a lot of message boards.
Starting point is 00:31:53 He went on, you know, the paranormal world of chat shows and things like that. He posted photos of, like, the weird brand marks on his body and a samurai sword with blood on it. Right. Seems a little convenient, though, that he didn't actually and a samurai sword with blood on it. Right. Seems a little convenient though that he didn't actually take a picture of the aliens.
Starting point is 00:32:08 Yeah. But ultimately he seems to become a pretty prominent fixture on, you know, the UFO circuit out there. It seems to fit for me a little bit of a psychological profile of like you dip your toe in, you get some attention. It kind of feels good, especially talks about how lonesome it is out on that ranch. You become part of a community.
Starting point is 00:32:24 People start paying attention to you. People start listening to you. It feels good to have that sort of like status within a community. And also like maybe you do start getting fees for speaking at conventions and things like this. He doesn't seem to have tried to make a profit on it until about 2017 when here it comes.
Starting point is 00:32:42 He tried to sell the ranch for $5 million. Wow. Which is a lot for apparently a piece of land in the middle of nowhere. Yes, exactly. Doesn't sound like he sold the house though. After he passed away, it looks like the house went into foreclosure or something. I don't know how that all works, but it ended up getting acquired by someone for like less than a million dollars. So there was a definite inflation in value going on that doesn't look
Starting point is 00:33:05 like it necessarily paid off for John. Yeah. But whether it paid off or not does not negate someone trying to cash in. Yeah. Well, his earnestness, I think, is a checkmark in the Believer Beaver Camp for me. You know, he does, like you said in the video you saw, he seems to truly believe all of this. He seems very earnest about it. And if it is all made up, then he's doing a very good job making it sound authentic and honest.
Starting point is 00:33:30 That said, you know, there was a bunch of stuff that kind of raised an eyebrow for me as I was reading the book. It's full of movie references that makes me believe that he was pretty well-versed in popular culture and could have been cribbing some of these things. You know? Making a collage sort of.
Starting point is 00:33:46 Yeah. And even though he seemed pretty level-headed for, I guess, about 80 to 85% of the book, at the very end, the narrative kind of goes right off the deep end, you know, in terms of going into weird conspiracy theories and accounts that do not seem believable in the least. I mean, he goes into Pizzagate, which has nothing to do with aliens, but he goes there. And at some point, I guess 10 years ago or something, he ended up meeting this woman. She seemed to have the ability
Starting point is 00:34:14 to open a portal on his property. And out of this portal walked a couple aliens, not the gray aliens that he killed. One was apparently an Andromedan, I don't know what that means. And the other was like a reptilian creature. And they all started talking to him and told him this whole story about how humanity has been planted here by aliens, and they're kind of just doing this and all, plant us all over
Starting point is 00:34:34 the place and watching what happens. And that Atlantis was the pinnacle of humanity, and then they started over basically. So it gets pretty in the weeds. And they don't explain to him the horror show. He's not like, why'd you all kill my dog? You know, I admittedly, I might've started glossing over some of the book at that point because I'm like, what is happening here? You know? Right. It's a lot to take in. I feel like we've been kind of skeptical gecko-ing this quite a bit. Is there a believer beaver
Starting point is 00:35:03 case to be made though? Well, I don't know if I am the believer beaver, but if Is there a believer beaver case to be made though? Well, I don't know if I am the believer beaver, but if there was a believer beaver case for it, I would say just watching the guy talk, he's very affable, very, he seems like a nice guy and he seems, he doesn't seem to be really pushing it, he seems straightforward and bewildered by it.
Starting point is 00:35:24 He's believable to listen to and to watch. I want to believe some elements of this. And the thing that pushes me in that direction is the fact that he didn't do like a well-made, concise, clear point A to point B to point C to point D narrative, which is what I feel like some of them would do if they were making it up. Yeah, I just, I really bump hard on just the kind of, like, nightmare aspect of it all when it comes to aliens.
Starting point is 00:35:53 Based on what we know and what we have and based on the accounts he's given, I think we're kind of more than a lot of the episodes we've been doing lately kind of coming down on the skeptical gecko a little bit more on this one. Yeah, which on one hand, like, makes me feel better because I'd rather not believe this. LAUGHING
Starting point is 00:36:11 Although, if it is true and he did chop off a bunch of aliens' heads with a samurai sword... Dude is awesome. LAUGHING Or maybe poor aliens. I don't know. We don't know what they were after. Maybe they were just like, hey, sorry, just like, we were trying to talk to the dog
Starting point is 00:36:26 and like, you know, we're like multi-dimensional beings and he ended up getting flattened and we were like, oh shoot. And we were just trying to like pet the horses and. And. But like always, we do have to say, listeners, if you have been to Stardust Ranch or if you know anything or want to point us towards some
Starting point is 00:36:46 video or something that we might have missed, hit us up on Instagram at SightingsPod, or drop us a line on Spotify. But McCloud, I'm just going to say your line for you. I love it. Where are we going next week? It's listener story week. So I'm excited to go a bunch of new places. We've gotten so many more amazing stories from people that we are excited to bring to life for you. McLeod, I know you were kind of a... I'm a wuss.
Starting point is 00:37:13 Not... You didn't want to say I'm a wuss. You know, like, does anybody have a nice friendly visit from like the ghost of their great-great-grandfather? Like, that sounds lovely to me. Send us that story. Yeah. So we look forward to diving into all those stories next week. Same time, same place, here on Sightings. Thanks, everybody.
Starting point is 00:37:35 Sightings is hosted by McLeod, Anders, and Brian Sigley. Produced by Brian Sigley, Chase Kinzer, and McLeod, Anders. Written by Brian Sigley. Story music by Jack Staten. Series music by Mitch Bain. Mixing and mastering by Pat Kickleiter of Sundial Media. Artwork by Nuno Cernados. For a list of this episode's sources, check out our website at sightingspodcast.com. Sightings is presented by Reverb and Q-Code. If you like the show, be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform so you're first to hear new episodes every week. And if you know other
Starting point is 00:38:08 Supernatural fans, tell them about us. We'd really appreciate it.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.