Sightings - Taken!

Episode Date: September 1, 2025

Mississippi, 1973: On a quiet night, two fishermen become catch of the day for visitors from another world. But as their story spreads, one is thrust into the spotlight—while the other finds himself... haunted by memories too terrifying to face. Sightings is a REVERB and QCODE Original. Find us on instagram @sightingspod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:47 There are moments in life when reality phrase When time slips and memory fails, most people brush it off, a dream, a glitch, nothing more. But what if the truth is far stranger? What if something reached into your life, took you, and let you forget? Welcome to sightings, the series that takes you inside the world's most mysterious supernatural events. Each episode brings you a thrilling story that puts you at the center of the action, followed by a discussion that dives into the accounts that inspired this story and our takes on them. I'm McLeod.
Starting point is 00:01:30 And I'm Brian and welcome back, everyone. QCode Plus listeners, we hope you enjoyed our bonus listener story just for you at the end of August. But McLeod, it is September now, which means it's almost October, which means it's almost spooky season. Which means why don't we just get it started? I feel like my spidey senses are already tingling. Uh, yeah. Well, we're going to get to some cool, uh, spooky stories as that approaches. But today, we've got a really cool alien abduction story. Today, we're heading to the Mississippi coastline, but don't keep your eyes on the water.
Starting point is 00:02:09 Watch the skies. Find out why. On this episode of sightings. All right, little red lights on, I reckon I'll just start talking. I got no real plan here, so, well, it's 1996. Does this thing record a date? Whatever. And it sure's truly, Calvin Parker. If you know that name, you probably already got your opinion. People always do, but this ain't for them.
Starting point is 00:03:05 This is for me to just get it out before it all slips away again, because something happened today. I know it's been years, but I think it happened again. I went fishing off Cat Island this morning, same as I've done for years, trying to just keep my mind straight. Most days out there, I catch a few fish, maybe drift a while, clear my head, but today, well, today wasn't like most days. I was floating, threw my line in early, sun barely up, and next thing I knew, the sun was low. The whole sky changed color. was packed full of fish that I don't remember catching.
Starting point is 00:03:50 And then there was that smell. Weird and antiseptic took me right back to 1973, right back to that night in Pascagoula when everything went to shit. And this time I remember details, more vivid, you know. So here goes. October 11th, 1973, I was 19, just started a new job in the shipyard. Charlie Hickson helped me get it.
Starting point is 00:04:19 He was a foreman there, and he was like family, more than family, actually, like the uncle you actually listened to. And man, damn, he could tell stories, Korean War, mostly, but he always had a way of making you believe the unbelievable. I remember it was hot that day, sticky hot. But Charlie thought it would be a good night for fishing, so he asked me along.
Starting point is 00:04:44 I wasn't really feeling it, but he insisted, so we drove out to the old shipyard round six and found ourselves a spot on the little pier. I don't think it was technically legal to fish there, but that never stopped Charlie. And he was right. It was a perfect night for fishing. Full moon, clear skies, barely a breeze. So we just sat there, lines drifting loose, talking on and off about nothing important. I think we were the only two on the whole river that night,
Starting point is 00:05:18 until, of course, we weren't. I was first to notice this blue light on the banks upstream, and my first thought was police, and I worried we'd get caught trespassing or something, but the problem with these lights were they weren't moving like they were on a cop car or nothing. Instead, they were floating, and then came this sound, this high-pitched,
Starting point is 00:05:44 electric wine, not loud, but heavy, like it was smack in the middle of my chest. Charlie heard it too, and he stood right up, and then I saw the thing for real. It was a craft of some kind, I don't know what else to call it, maybe 30 feet long, football-shaped and hovering just off the bank of the river. I looked at Charlie trying to ask him if he was seeing what I was seeing, but I couldn't speak, couldn't move. It was like someone had unplugged my brain from my body. And the craft stopped about 20 yards away,
Starting point is 00:06:21 just hanging there above the water. And then a section of it opened up, and this white light poured out and bore, oh, man, so bright. It hurt to look at, like a welder's torch, but even brighter, brighter than that. And then three figures emerged from that light. Now, I say figures because they looked kind, kind of human shaped, but not.
Starting point is 00:06:46 I guess they were five feet tall with rankly gray skin, like an elephant's. And where their faces would have been, there were just these weird slits. And as they glided closer to us, I saw they had arms. But instead of hands, they had these long, crab-like claws. And I wanted so badly to run, but again, I was frozen, you know?
Starting point is 00:07:11 my body just, it just wouldn't respond. And those things came right up to us, and one of those things reached out with its claw and touched my arm, and then everything went completely black. Like, not like sleep, but like, like something emptier. Like, I just stopped existing entirely.
Starting point is 00:07:33 Oh, shit, man, I need a Coke or something. Uh-oh, uh, I'll be right back. Okay, I'm back, and I know how all this sounds. Hell, I've been wrestling with it over 20 years now. But after everything went black, I came to standing on the riverbank with my arms out like I was trying to catch something. The craft was gone, but Charlie was there, and he ran up, grabbed my shoulders, and said, I'd been out cold the whole time.
Starting point is 00:08:03 Then he said, they took us. Those beings from the craft, they took us inside the ship. And though I couldn't seem to recall any of it, Charlie remembered everything. He said they'd floated us inside the ship and into separate rooms. He said his room had glowing walls and some kind of table and he wasn't able to move as some kind of silver device. He called it a floating eye, scanned him from head to toe. He couldn't move, couldn't scream and was terrified they were going to cut him.
Starting point is 00:08:39 open and probe his insides like something from a movie. But they hadn't hurt him. And after they scanned him, they simply floated him back out to the river bank and released him, he says. And when they dropped him back by the river, he'd heard a voice inside his head. We are peaceful. We mean you no harm. I didn't hear that voice. I didn't see that silver eye. I remembered nothing except the blue lights than standing there with mud on my boots. But as I sat on the riverbank, I had this nagging feeling there was more, like flashes of images that made no sense and sounds that seemed familiar but impossible to place. So we sat in Charlie's truck for a while sharing a bottle of whiskey.
Starting point is 00:09:31 He kept under the seat and trying to figure out what to do next. I mean, part of me just wanted to drive home and pretend none of this had happened. But Charlie, he wanted to report it. He said, if these things were taking people, the authorities needed to know about it. But, I mean, all I thought was who the hell would believe us? Next thing I knew, we were parked outside of pay phone with Charlie in there calling the Air Force. But this is funny. the woman on the other end actually laughed at him.
Starting point is 00:10:05 She told him the Air Force stopped investigating UFOs years ago when what's called Project Blue Book or some shit shut down. She said if we wanted to call anyone, we ought to call the police. So yeah, that's what Charlie did. Sheriff Diamond answered the phone himself, and to his credit, he didn't hang up on us. And after Charlie tried to explain what had happened, Diamond told us to come down to the station.
Starting point is 00:10:30 He said he couldn't promise he'd believe us, but he'd listen at the very least. When we got there, he sat us down in a windowless interview room and asked us to tell him everything from the beginning. So Charlie did most of the Tolkien, and when he finished, Diamond asked if I had anything to add, and, you know, I felt real silly. I mean, I'd seen the light and the creatures and all, and I know I'd seen it, but I still felt disconnected from everything, like I was watching it. all happened to someone else. So I didn't say much at all. And Diamond nodded and said he'd need to ask us some follow-up questions separately. He said he was going to step out for a few minutes to make
Starting point is 00:11:12 some calls, talk things over, and he suggested we might want to get our stories straight if we planned on sticking to them. And then he walked out. And Charlie and I just sat there in silence for a long time. Finally, Charlie asked if I thought we were doing the right thing, and I told him, I didn't know what the right thing was anymore. So we started going over details again, trying to make sense of the timeline, the lights, the beings, creatures, whatever. Charlie kept asking me if I remembered anything else, any detail that might help explain what had happened. And no, I mean, no, there wasn't. There wasn't. I mean, I mean, I was still getting these weird flashes, like the sound of wind chimes made of metal
Starting point is 00:12:02 or a quick view of a curved wall that seemed to breathe, if you can imagine such a thing. But, no, every time I tried to focus on them, they'd slip away like smoke or like those floaters in your eyes. I mean, I couldn't even be sure what really happened to me. and to be totally honest, right then, all I wanted was to get the hell out of that room and never look back. Shit. Well, so much for that. So Diamond came back to the room, of course, but this time he wasn't alone. This time, he had two deputies, and when they all sat down, they told us the room had been bugged.
Starting point is 00:12:47 They'd heard everything we sat in here, and they said they did it because they needed to know if we were running some kind of con. some kind of act. But we didn't drop the act when we were alone because there was no act. And Diamond said what he heard was either the performance of a lifetime or the real deal. And he believed it was real.
Starting point is 00:13:11 And that should have made me feel relieved, I guess, but it didn't. Hell no. Instead, I felt this weight on my chest. I could barely breathe. Because if Diamond believed us, well, that meant this. This probably really happened. And I knew, right there, right then, there's no going back to normal.
Starting point is 00:13:32 I just knew it. And damn, it sucks to be right. This is an ad by BetterHelp. We've all done it before. We've turned to our barista, our barber, or a random stranger for life advice. And as much as I'm sure they'd love to hear about the UFO you saw last night, if you're looking for actual help with anything from relationships to depression to other clinical issues, they might not have the right answers. Instead, get guidance from a licensed
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Starting point is 00:14:41 Thanks BetterHelp for sponsoring this episode. Yeah, I need you to smoke. Anyway, where was I? Right. After that night at the station, things moved fast. I mean, too fast, if you ask me. We figured the sheriff might tell a few folks around town. Maybe a deputy would spill something at the bar,
Starting point is 00:15:12 but we never expected what came next. By morning, reporters were calling the shipyard, then the local radio station, than the national one. Charlie and I showed up for work thinking we could maybe just get on with it, but the foreman pulled us aside and asked us what the hell was going on
Starting point is 00:15:33 because suddenly we weren't two nobodies who went fishing. We were the Pascagoula abductees. I mean, Charlie, he loved the attention and was telling the story to anyone who'd listen. He even said he thought he'd been chosen. Me, I just wanted to hide under a rock and wait for it to all blow over. I mean, it didn't.
Starting point is 00:15:57 Of course it didn't. So soon this guy named Dr. Heinek even came down from some university up north, and apparently he was a big deal in UFO circles, even worked for the government or something. And he wanted to ask us some questions, and I hoped that would be the end of it. But then he started talking about hypnosis, about putting us under to see if we could remember more.
Starting point is 00:16:22 and just, oh, hell no. That's when I ran for the hills. Went back up to Laurel to see my folks and my girl, but all this nonsense, it followed me. People asked about it at the gas station, the diner, even folks I'd known my whole life, started looking at me sideways. I couldn't sleep, couldn't eat, just couldn't shake the feeling that there was more to all this than I remembered.
Starting point is 00:16:52 And even though I, even though I had to go back to work, I couldn't hack it. I was trying to weld a seam one day when I just couldn't breathe. And my hand started shaking so bad I had to put the torch down. And the next thing I knew, I was on the floor and somebody was calling an ambulance. The hospital said it was a panic attack, stress. The line in bed, staring at those ceiling tiles that reminded me of something I couldn't quite place. I knew better because I was remembering things
Starting point is 00:17:25 I guess you could call them dreams but they felt realer than being awake and even though I couldn't make out all the details I remember this warm golden light and voices that they weren't voices like thoughts that weren't mine sliding into my head
Starting point is 00:17:44 and I knew they were flashes what happened on that craft I didn't tell Charlie about it. I didn't tell anyone because them people would start asking questions I couldn't answer and they'd ask what else happened to me and I honest to God didn't want to know. After I got out of the hospital I made up my mind I needed to reset and to go somewhere nobody knew about what happened in Pascagoula. So I joined the Marines. The plan worked for a while at least. I kept my head down and almost convinced myself none of this had ever happened, but yeah, yeah, there's always a butt.
Starting point is 00:18:29 I got in a fight one night over something stupid. I don't even remember what. All I know was I snapped. The other guy was fine mostly, but they discharged me for being a pain in the ass, basically. When I got home, Charlie was waiting for me with his. his big grin on his face. He said he'd been having more experiences, more contact with those things that took us, said they kept giving him messages about the future of humanity.
Starting point is 00:18:58 And I couldn't even listen to him, not because I didn't believe it. Hell, I believed every word, but because if he was right, if these things were still out there, I mean, what did that mean for me? So I'm not proud of it, but I cut Charlie off.
Starting point is 00:19:14 I just, I changed my number, moved to a different county. No thank you. And for 20 years, I managed to convince myself I'd put it all behind me. But then came this morning at Cat Island. Twelve hours gone. Just like that.
Starting point is 00:19:31 And now all of a sudden, all those memories I'd repressed, came flooding back like a damn burst. Jesus, I want another smoke, but I need to finish this. I know I do. Damn it. I never wanted any of this, you know, any of this. this but I remember what happened to me inside that craft I wasn't unconscious like Charlie thought I was awake the whole time floating through these
Starting point is 00:20:00 corridors that bent and curved in horrible ways they took me to this room where everything seemed to glow from the inside and yeah they examined me but It wasn't like you'd think. Instead, they moved real gentle, like, I mean, their touch somehow both alien and, boy, I don't know how to say this without sounding crazy, but comforting, you know? Like it was your mama or something.
Starting point is 00:20:43 And when I was up there, they showed me things. images of earth from way up in space. Technologies, I can't even imagine. And then I was just back on their riverbank. I hadn't been out cold, and they hadn't wiped my memory. They'd just dulled it. And it took 23 years to get it back. So, uh, yeah.
Starting point is 00:21:14 It happened. Every bit of it. And I don't know, uh, now it's on the record or something. Jesus, I sound like some damn journalist. But, uh, I remember now. And I don't know what that means. Not yet. But I know they're still out there.
Starting point is 00:21:41 And next time I'll be ready to face whatever they want to show me. Sightings will be back just after this. Hey, skeptical geckos, I know you love exploring the unknown here on sightings, so I want to recommend another show I think you'd like, American Hysteria. American Hysteria is a history podcast that explores moral panics, urban legends, conspiracy theories, hoaxes, and crazes, and how fantastical thinking has shaped our culture from Puritans to the present. So think Poison Halloween candy, Phantom Clowns, Haunted Dolls, Mind Control, and Stranger Danger,
Starting point is 00:22:22 but also some cheeky ones like The Thong Crays and Skibbitty Toilet, which I think I need to look up. Point is, American Hysteria covers everything from the oddities of history to politics to pop culture, and I have loved every single episode I've heard. Sometimes horrifying, sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartfelt, American hysteria goes in depth to examine and how Americans have constructed the realities we share, and also the realities we don't. Subscribe to American Hysteria right now, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to sightings, everybody.
Starting point is 00:23:06 Oh, Brian, this one was good. I don't know why this particular abduction story kind of resonated with me and is sticking with me. I think it's just our guy, our narrator, it's just so personable and kind of intimate in a way. Yeah, I think this might be our first abduction story that we did in this kind of stripped back style. Right. You know, I remember like our Barney and Betty Hill episode where, which is similar in that, you know, two people theoretically got abducted and came back and started having memories and had that experience. I think what's really cool about this one, though, that we'll get into is Charlie and Calvin, you know, Calvin, Calvin, the guy you read and Charlie has.
Starting point is 00:23:43 friend, kind of had very different experiences after the abduction. I was wondering, because it's very interesting that, like, our guy here seems kind of maybe a little, like, tortured by it, a little, like, withholding of all of it, not trusting any of it. And, like, Charlie seems like he's having a ball. Like, he's just like, oh, my gosh, I got abducted by aliens, Ted. You got to hear about this. Yep, we'll go on to all that. And Charlie even had more experiences.
Starting point is 00:24:13 after the first one, far more than Calvin ended up having. But there's a lot of really cool stuff to dig in on this one, and that's why I wanted to bring this one to life. Can I ask, before we get really into it, what made you choose our fella over Charlie, the kind of more loquacious individual? I feel like so many of these kinds of stories are generally someone who is out to talk about it in a lot of cases,
Starting point is 00:24:38 and what was really compelling to me about Calvin. Calvin is the name of the... Calvin is the name of the guy that you read. Yeah, it doesn't pop up in the story because he's talking to a voice recorder. Right. But what was really cool to me was that he didn't want to talk about this. He kept it all bottled up, basically. And that inner turmoil, I guess, of not knowing what happened or maybe knowing what happened or being
Starting point is 00:24:58 afraid of it. I thought was really cool. And it just, it gave me a really compelling way to get into the story that was different than just, here's what happened to me and I'm just going to spill all my guts about it, you know? Yeah. Well, it works for me. So cool choice. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:25:10 I thought it was fun. And I thought you really brought, you brought in a way that I thought was really compelling and interesting. Oh, thank you. Yeah. But before, I guess we dive into the actual events and just recounting it all, I mean, what was in the story is what happened, basically. The only thing that I kind of played with a little bit was the idea of how much Calvin might have actually known or remembered. You know, in the story, it seemed like in 1996, he had his second encounter where he lost 12 hours of the day. and suddenly all the memories started rushing back to him.
Starting point is 00:25:44 Yeah. That could have happened. But what seems to be the case is that Calvin seemed to have remembered most of it, but unlike Charlie, just did not talk about it, period. Oh, so it wasn't that he forgot or suppressed it. It was just that he just didn't talk about it. That's what it seems to potentially be. But something must have happened in 1996 that, like, triggered it all for him in a really profound way
Starting point is 00:26:05 because he went from saying absolutely nothing about it to he wrote a book that came out eventually. and just suddenly started kind of evangelizing this idea of here's what happened to me and one encouraging people to come out and talk about it. But let's head down to Pascagoula, I guess, and kind of just recap a little bit here because there's a lot that happened here. You know, we got our two guys fishing on the Pascagoula River, and they see the UFO, the UFO opens up, these creatures come out, crab like arms. Which is interesting, though, like no eyes necessarily.
Starting point is 00:26:38 It just slits, like a face, no face. and just slits is how he described it. Yeah, and then they had the elephant skin. They just seem like very weird-looking aliens that are kind of unlike any other aliens that I think we've encountered in all of our abduction stories because mostly the abduction stories are all like the grays, you know? It's interesting now that I think about it,
Starting point is 00:26:57 the idea of claws on an alien because, you know, you imagine if they're here, there are more advanced civilization. What are they doing with claws? It does seem kind of silly, doesn't it? Yeah. Maybe they're just really good at mind control. Yeah, I guess. But then why did the claws form? Like, I don't know, maybe they are, like, little clone soldiers that are, like, genetically modified soldiers that, like, have been created by the higher-ups to fight their battles for them.
Starting point is 00:27:23 Well, once they're abducted in the ship, though, the aliens seem to kind of disappear into the background. Yeah. And, like, there's this machine that's kind of examining them and kind of, like, scanning them almost. You know, now that we're on the kind of, like, precipice of this AI revolution, potentially, we'll see how it all shakes out. It kind of makes me think, oh, well, of course, like, whatever these figures were probably aren't actually the main act. And that explains why once he goes in the ship, he doesn't see them anymore. It's because the ship is the intelligence. Hmm. Interesting.
Starting point is 00:27:53 Like, the technology, it's all kind of weave together. Because those aliens never show up again. Right. So they go to the police, and the police do this little clever thing where they leave them alone for a while to record them in secret. Yeah, that was. Is that legal? I don't know, but they did it. There you go.
Starting point is 00:28:08 And they're like, okay, we believe you. now. And after that, the story kind of blew up, mainly because Charlie just wouldn't shut up about it. Charlie. He talked to journalists. He talked about how he felt that he was chosen by fate or God or the aliens for something. He didn't know what, but like he even went on the tonight show with Johnny Carson. Oh, wow. Yeah. Calvin, meanwhile, was like, no, thank you. Right. You know, he went in the military. He bounced around for a while, all this stuff. But Charlie just kept having more encounters like less than a year after the first one. He was on a farm. He saw the same spaceship. He heard the voice in his head. You have endured. You have been chosen. There is no need
Starting point is 00:28:50 to fear we will communicate again. Yeah, it's funny. It's like if the story was only centered on Charlie, I'd be less inclined to pay it any mind. Uh-huh. Sounds like he's milking it and it sounds very convenient that once he gets famous, he just, oh yeah, they keep talking to me. Especially because a month after that, without even seeing a spacecraft, a message is just beamed into his brain. And it's a mission, you know. And the mission is, you must tell the world we mean no harm. Your world needs help. We will help in the future before it's too late. If I had the skeptical gecko, our friend Calvin, the one who I narrate its point of view, it would be that kind of like, after years and years have been like, oh, come on, man.
Starting point is 00:29:32 He like sort of felt like, ah, maybe I missed the gravy train and that was a mistake. And I should have capitalized on this. Ah, that's a valid, valid thought. We'll have to dig into that a little bit more when we get to the end of the theories and stuff. Yeah. We'll get to the kind of the believability factor of all of this in a bit. But Charlie did have one more encounter, the last encounter he'd have, but he was with
Starting point is 00:29:53 eight other family members in a car. They were chased by the spacecraft. He heard another voice that said, oh, wait, this isn't actually the right time for this. We'll catch you later. Is it Tuesday? I thought it was Wednesday. I'm sorry. Maybe because he was with family members or something.
Starting point is 00:30:14 But they're like, we'll try again later. And then they never did. He never heard from them again. Did the family corroborate this event? They have, yes. They have. But yeah, that was the last time Charlie heard from them. But up until Charlie died in 2011, he was telling anyone who would listen about what was going on.
Starting point is 00:30:30 Did they ever give more specifics these aliens about, like, what they were trying to? We mean you no harm. We're here to help you? Like... Nope. They only communicated him in those vague ways and said, you know, we're going to save you or something. Which to me is a little fishy that like that strikes me as like a well, maybe Charlie couldn't think of like a good thing that would actually save the world because that's kind of a tough nut to crack. So he just left it in vagaries. It does feel a little bit like a little bit of a messiah complex happening. But my point is kind of like, then there's Calvin on the other hand. Then there's Calvin, yeah. And he didn't have any other experiences beyond that first one with Charlie until 1996 when he was out on his boat early in the morning having not caught any fish. The next thing he knows, he's sitting on the boat again. It's the late afternoon. His fish thing is full. He has no idea what happened to him. And I don't know if that started triggering memories or something, but it seems to have incited some kind of a change in him to some extent. Like I said in 2018, he published a book.
Starting point is 00:31:33 Could he just been, I'm going to ride the gravy train? I don't know. He's passed away as well. Okay. But he admitted in his book that he'd been lying the whole time. He remembered what happened the night of the abduction and encountered pretty much what Charlie did, you know, was scanned by the weird silver eye thing and then just let back out. No real mention of voices, though, that I recall. Okay.
Starting point is 00:31:53 So let's dig in to whether there's anything to corroborate this experience or if it's just sort of according to them, this is what happened. Well, it's worth saying that both allegedly passed sobriety tests the night of the abduction, so they weren't drunk and made this up. Okay. It is worth saying there are discrepancies in their stories over the years. Okay. In 1975, Charlie told the Washington Post that the spaceship was 30 feet long, it had a dome on top. Then in 2019, granted, this was 40 years later, Calvin told a newspaper that it was 80 feet long and shaped like a football. Different size, but I'll give them over the years, like, and also, like, you're both estimating perspective comes into play.
Starting point is 00:32:38 And a football compared to a saucer with a dome is still a fairly similar shape. It should be said, though, that when Calvin released his book, I guess, I don't know if he was doing press or what, but he did encourage people that, like, if you have anything, if you saw anything weird around that and come forward with it, you know, come forward with the truth. And people did. One woman came forward in 2019, I think, and said that she saw a UFO flying over Pascagoula in December 1973. Two more witnesses came forward and said that they were on the Pascagoula River the same night that this happened allegedly, and they saw a blue light flying over the river. Which is interesting to me. You know, why didn't they say anything earlier is a question. Also, to be able to like kind of like date it so precisely.
Starting point is 00:33:28 to be like, oh, yes, in December of 1976 or what have you, I saw a blue light. Mm-hmm. Yeah, 50 years later to come up with that. I mean, I guess, like, what I can buy that maybe it's like in the moment, you're like, huh, that's weird. And you don't, but you're like, well, it doesn't look weird enough. It doesn't look clearly enough like a UFO that you're just like, well, I don't know. The world's big and weird. And you don't say anything about it. And then this guy comes out with the story. And you're like, oh, well, you know, there was this thing. Valid. So before we go into theories, like just what's your read on this whole thing? That's kind of the overview of what's happened. I'm dubious at the end of the day. I just think there's too many plausible explanations, not least of which is that all we really have to go on is their word. I like this Calvin guy and he strikes me as a credible witness or at least that he believes what he's saying.
Starting point is 00:34:24 Yeah, I want to believe these guys, though. I want to, like, it's a lot to make something up like this. It's like Valiant Thor. Like, it's like, I want to believe in the idea of like benevolent aliens that just want to help us and advance us along. So I guess we've kind of covered one theory, which is I, at the skeptical get-go approach of it, which is that it was just made up by Charlie, perhaps. And I wonder even if Charlie could have been the driving force behind all this. And Calvin being the much younger, the reluctant along for the ride. kind of person, it has been
Starting point is 00:34:56 positive that they had something like a shared psychotic disorder is what it's called. It's called Vali Adieu, which is French as the New Joker Movie. It's French for the new Joker movie. But it's a mental illness that causes two people to suffer the same delusions
Starting point is 00:35:13 at the same time. How that works, I don't know. But it does say that the person with the dominant personality drives the belief structure and the more passive person kind of gets sucked into it. Sounds very similar. That's the Pascagulobduction.
Starting point is 00:35:27 Listeners, we'd love to hear if you have any thoughts on this one. As always, find us on Instagram at SightingsPod or look us up on Spotify. Leave us a comment there. We love reading those and responding to those. Brian, I really enjoyed this one, and I enjoyed the discussion as well. Where are you whisking us off to in two weeks? We are heading to the Pacific Northwest. Uh-oh, do I smell a smelly Bigfoot story coming?
Starting point is 00:35:53 Oh, they do smell terrible, apparently. But all I'm going to say about this one is that we are heading to Washington State, and we are going to have to fight for our lives to survive this story. I can't wait, and I hope you can't either, listeners, so see you all in two weeks. Bye. Sightings is hosted by McLeod Andrews and Brian Sigley. Produced by Brian Sigley, Chase Kinzer, and McLeod Andrews. Written by Brian Sigley.
Starting point is 00:36:23 Series music by Mitch Bain, mixing and mastering by Pat Kiklater of Sundial Media, artwork by Nuno Sarnadas. 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. And if you know other supernatural fans, tell them about us. We'd really appreciate it.

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