So Supernatural - ALIEN: Frederick Valentich

Episode Date: October 14, 2020

On October 21, 1978, amateur pilot Frederick Valentich took off for a quick nighttime flight off Australia's southern shore. He was never seen again. But right before he disappeared, he radioed ground control to report he was being stalked by a UFO.

I cover a decent amount of missing persons cases on this show, and these are always the most frustrating stories because of all the things we just don't know. Like, when someone vanishes without a trace, that's pretty literal. We have to use our imagination to figure out what could have possibly happened. But that's what makes Frederick Valentich unique. He was a pilot who went missing in 1978, and he actually called ground control and narrated his own disappearance for six and a half minutes. But that's not even what makes him so famous.

His recording just might be the best evidence that aliens exist. This is Supernatural, and I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. This week, I'm talking about a pilot named Frederick Valentich. In 1978, he disappeared while flying off Australia's southern coast. And before he vanished, he described what sounded a lot like an alien abduction. We have all that and more coming up. Stay with us. In October of 1978, Frederick Valentich is a pilot in training, working on getting his commercial pilot's license. He's already logged like 150 hours of flying time, and he has a class four instrument rating, which basically means he has to make regular contact with ground control. Other than that, he's good to fly alone, which is what happens on the evening of October 21st.

Frederick goes to the Moorabbin Airport. He's planning on meeting up with some friends on King Island, which is a quick hour, maybe hour and a half flight off the southern shore of Australia. He even mentions to one of the airport personnel that he wants to pick up a crate of crayfish to bring home. And of course, the trip will get him more hours under his belt. Before he leaves, Frederick does the pre-flight check. He looks over his Cessna 182L airplane rental and confirms that everything's in good order. Then he grabs multiple life vests to bring with him, which isn't that unusual since Frederick's been known to give rides to his friends. By the time he takes off, it's about 6.19 p.m., so well before sunset this time of year.

And for most of the first hour, everything goes smoothly. Frederick makes his routine calls to ground control. The night is clear, the weather is beautiful, just your typical flight. But at 7.06 p.m., something weird happens. Frederick's soaring over Bass Strait, which is this stretch of water that separates Australia's southern coast from the island of Tasmania. And suddenly, he spots another aircraft. It's impossible to miss it because it literally zooms right above

his plane and out of sight. Now, this really spooks Frederick. Like, the other plane almost hit him, and in no way is this normal. So he immediately calls the Melbourne Flight Service, which is basically ground control, to ask if anyone else had filed flight plans in the area. So they check the records, and no, there shouldn't be anyone else out there. Of course, ground control wants to know what this other plane is. So they ask Frederick all these questions about how big it is and what it looks like. But the whole thing was so sudden, Frederick said he couldn't make out the details. All he remembers is that the bottom of this aircraft had four lights arranged in a rectangle.

He says they looked like landing lights. So Frederick's still on the line trying to figure out what just happened. But then he sees the other aircraft again, and it's heading right back towards him. It passes Frederick a second time, only this time it doesn't disappear. It immediately turns around and comes back, and then it does the same thing over again. It keeps swooping past Frederick over and over. He tells ground control that it feels like the other aircraft

is playing some kind of game with him. At this point, ground control is completely baffled. And it's not like they can really help Frederick. All they can do is gather information. So they ask Frederick again if he knows what kind of aircraft it is. And Frederick answers, It's not an aircraft. It is... And we don't know how that sentence ends because this huge burst of static drowns out whatever he was going to say. In fact, if you read the transcript of Frederick's call, there's a lot of sentences that get cut off

or don't seem to have been recorded. In any case, by this point, Frederick's probably thinking, like, I'm not flying all the way to King Island with this weird, aggressive thing following me. So he tells ground control that he's orbiting, basically just flying in circles until he can figure out what to do. And the other aircraft starts orbiting too. It's staying right above Frederick, matching his plane move for move. This creeps Frederick out even more. But the good news is

the other ship is just stationary enough that he can finally get a good look at it. He tells the Melbourne Flight Service that it's long and shiny, like it's made of metal. And now he can spot a fifth light, a green one. Frederick doesn't say where this light is on the aircraft, but either way, ground control is at a complete loss as to what it could be. So they literally ask him, what do you want to do? Frederick responds that he's going to keep going with his original plan. He wants to land on King Island. Now, keep in mind, this encounter hasn't gone on very long. It's 7.10 p.m., not quite five minutes since he first called the Melbourne flight service.

So he's not running out of fuel or anything, but Frederick just wants to get out of there. So he pulls out of his orbit and heads in the direction of King Island, at which point he announces that the strange ship has just vanished. Ground control doesn't know what to make of that. They ask him to repeat the message, and Frederick says it again. The ship is gone. For the next 45 seconds, it seems like this whole weird ordeal is over. But then, Frederick sees it approaching again. It's back to that weird game where it's darting back and forth above him. And now, Frederick says that his engines are sputtering out,

almost like the other aircraft is somehow interfering with his plane. Either way, he's not going to last much longer. Ground traffic control asks Frederick to explain where he's headed. If the worst happens, they want to be able to send rescue teams to his location in Bass Strait. And Frederick starts answering their questions, but he's got to be getting nervous because he says the engine is coughing, which probably means it's still sputtering and clacking like it's about to shut off. His last recorded words are, quote, that strange aircraft is hovering on top of me again.

It's hovering and it's not an aircraft, end quote. The moment Frederick finishes talking, he apparently disappears from ground control's radar, which might sound like Frederick's crashed, but he definitely didn't because his radio is still broadcasting. In fact, the line stays open for another 17 seconds, which means Frederick has to be holding down the button. He's intentionally broadcasting whatever's going on. So Melber knows the plane hasn't crashed into the water because they definitely hear that over the radio, but they can hear some weird sounds. First, there's the static that's been ongoing ever since Frederick called ground control. But underneath the crackles and pops, there's also this weird, almost like metallic clanging sound. That noise persists for

a few seconds before the line finally just goes dead. At this point, ground control has no idea whether Frederick is dead or alive. Like, for all they know, the plane could have crashed after the radio turned off, or it could still be up there. So they report a missing airplane, and they immediately dispatch search and rescue personnel to Bass Strait. But now, it's after sunset, too dark to really see anything. So after a few fruitless hours of searching, they call it off for the night. It's not until the next morning that they start looking for Frederick in earnest. And we're talking eight civilian planes and an Air Force reconnaissance craft. All together,

they cover 1,000 square miles, but they find nothing. And I should mention that Bass Strait is a super busy place. There's always tons of commercial planes and ships traveling back and forth between the Australian mainland, King Island, and Tasmania. The Federal Transport Department notifies all of them to be on the lookout for any sign of Frederick and his Cessna. But no one sees anything, which is especially weird since parts of the Cessna were actually designed to be buoyant. So even if Frederick's plane crashed to the bottom of the ocean, parts of its frame

should have floated back up to the surface. But instead, there's just no sign of wreckage or debris. So by all appearances, Frederick disappeared without a trace. Except that's not entirely true. Because before Frederick went down, several eyewitnesses claimed they actually saw him and he wasn't alone. Up next, the testimonies about Frederick's disappearance. Now back to the story.

It's the morning of October 22nd, 1978, and Frederick Valentich has been missing for about 12 hours. Search and rescue teams are scouring Bass Strait for any sign of his Cessna airplane, but so far, nothing. At one point, they spot a large oil puddle, but they run some tests and it doesn't match the jet fuel in Frederick's Cessna. Besides, there's no way a small airplane could leak that much. So they dismiss the puddle. It's not from Frederick's airplane. But it's super weird that this oil slick is the only thing search and rescue teams find. Like, if there was a crash, there should be some sort of debris. Naturally, all these wild theories start flying. I mean, the strange lights, the radio interference, the inexplicable disappearance. It sounds exactly like an alien abduction.

And when reporters catch wind of the story, that's exactly how they frame it. It's barely been a day and the Australian airwaves and newspaper stands are flooded with theories about UFOs and extraterrestrials. And you'd think that would drive off readers because the story's so out there, right? But people eat it up. By the morning of October 23rd, two days after Frederick went missing, his disappearance is an international front page headline. And as the search continues, some eyewitnesses come forward. One eyewitness account happened the evening after Frederick's disappearance. Australian's Department of Transportation gets a call from this guy. We don't know his real name, but their paperwork calls him P. Farr. Farr reports that he saw something in the sky at 6.55 p.m. on October 21st.

That's about 10 minutes before Frederick first called air traffic control. According to Farr, he was headed out of a Melbourne suburb called Mount Waverly, driving south toward Bass Strait when he sees something he describes as a scintillation. There's about 30 bright lights falling like rain, each with a brilliant exhaust trail. At first, Farr thinks it's a meteor shower. But when he hears about Frederick's disappearance, he thinks that maybe what he saw was something more otherworldly. And sure, that's a big leap to make. But for what it's worth, Farr doesn't seem like a UFO fanatic. In a formal report, he makes a point to say that he doesn't buy into stories about little green men. The official testimony says, quote,

he did not wish to create the opinion that he was a nut, end quote. Plus, Farr is not the only witness. On the night of Frederick's disappearance, another man named John Snow was with his family on their way to Barwin Heads, which is this like coastal town near Bass Strait. They're driving along at 11.45 p.m., about four hours after Frederick disappears, when Jon's son sees this greenish white light zoom across the sky. Now, to be fair, nobody sees anything except for this 11-year-old boy. But Jon still thinks this is credible enough to report it to authorities.

And for all we know, this could have been the same aircraft with a green light that Frederick saw. But the wildest testimony actually comes from an anonymous farmer in Adelaide, more than 450 miles away from Bass Strait. He reports that he saw a flying saucer on the morning after Frederick went missing. So definitely enough time for an aircraft to travel that far. And the farmer claims that it was huge, close to 100 feet in diameter. He said it was just hovering over his property, and according to him, there was a Cessna airplane stuck to it. The farmer claims that he even wrote down the plane's registration number, and he won't come right out and say if the registration matches Frederick's, but he's otherwise confident that they're the same plane. Now, obviously, this sounds a little suspicious because for all we know,

Frederick's plane was disintegrating in the last few seconds of the recording, that part where the engine was coughing. Also, this guy didn't speak up until way after Frederick's story became a national news phenomenon. So it seems a lot more likely that it could be a hoax. But there is one more account and it's really hard to dismiss.

The same night Frederick went missing, a photographer named Roy Manifold and his son Jason were on this lookout over Bass Street. Roy wants to capture the sun setting into the water, and incidentally, his camera is pointed right at the spot where Frederick's supposed to go down later that night. At precisely the right moment, when the lighting is beautiful, Roy snaps a few photos. Then he walks over to his shed to take care of the film. While he's gone, Jason hears this sound overhead, kind of like an airplane, but when he looks around, he doesn't see anything. Jason doesn't

think much of it until all of a sudden the noise goes silent, like the engine dies. Jason doesn't say anything to his dad, but later they look at the developed photos and one of them stands out. The photo's pretty blurry, so it's hard to say what's going on, but there's definitely something in the upper right-hand corner. It's suspended in midair, and it's sort of tall and flat at the bottom, but rounded at the top. Like, if you've ever seen Star Wars, it kind of looks like R2-D2, so definitely nothing like an airplane. Looking at the picture, you can also clearly see that the sun's pretty low on the horizon. So this is right around the time Frederick first reported the other aircraft.

So for all we know, Roy could have photographed whatever it was that Frederick saw before he disappeared. Experts have looked at these photos and they all agree that they're real. Nobody tampered with them. So this could be further evidence of some sort of alien abduction. Plus, there are all these other accounts that aren't directly related to Frederick's disappearance, but that seem to corroborate. Like in the weeks surrounding Frederick's accident, people all over southern Australia report seeing strange lights in the sky, but nobody knows what they are. It's possible these lights belong to ordinary planes or helicopters or whatever.

I mean, for all we know, people could have heard Frederick's story and then it put them on edge. But some of these sightings were actually reported before Frederick's disappearance. And for people familiar with Bass Strait, the whole idea of an alien abduction actually isn't that far-fetched. This stretch of water is sometimes called the Bass Strait Triangle, after the Bermuda Triangle, because there are a ton of unexplained crashes and disappearances in the area. Officially, that's because Bass Strait is really heavily traveled. I mean,

it's the busiest water region in all of Australia. So you've got more planes and more ships than average. And even if a tiny percentage of them crash, well, that's still a lot. So it could all be a matter of statistics. Except some of these stories are just too weird to explain away. For example, almost exactly 44 years before Frederick's fatal flight, an airliner called the Miss Hobart disappeared over Bass Strait. It was October 19th, 1934, and locals said the night was otherwise quiet. They could hear a plane roaring overhead, and then suddenly it went dead silent. Now, there's no reason for Miss Hobart to just shut down mid-flight. It's a huge airliner with four engines.

So, you know, one shuts down, okay, it happens. Two, pretty unlikely, but you've still got two backups. But for all four engines to fail at once, there's just no way. Something made Miss Hobart die mid-flight. And according to some online rumors, the flight crew saw another ship in the air right before they vanished, and they asked ground control what was going on, just like Frederick did. And like Frederick Cessna, nobody ever found debris from the Miss Hobart. Only an oil slick floating in Bass Strait. Now, we can't even say for sure if the oil came from Miss Hobart. They didn't have the same testing equipment in 1934. So who knows? Maybe

this puddle came from an alien aircraft. Either way, locals are convinced that the region is a hotbed for UFO activity. One person in particular believes that Frederick was abducted, and that's his father, Guido Valentich. For years, Guido insists that extraterrestrials took his son and they'll bring him back someday safe and sound. And I sympathize with the guy. I mean, his son is gone and Guido doesn't have any closure. An alien abduction might be the most comforting story. But I should mention that Guido was also a UFO fanatic way before his son disappeared.

In fact, the entire Valentich family are big believers in extraterrestrials. Frederick's mother even claims she saw an alien ship about eight months before he vanished. This probably happened at their home in Avondale Heights, which is just northwest of Melbourne. Frederick's mom looks out the window one night and she sees this bright light. It's at least 10 times bigger than a star and it's hovering in the sky. She immediately calls Frederick over and they're watching together as the UFO zips out of sight. Now, Frederick was already into alien conspiracy theories. He likes to collect newspaper clippings

and he reads a lot of alien themed books., this guy even got special permission to view classified information about UFO sightings in Australia. But after this incident with his mom, Frederick's whole view on extraterrestrials changes. For whatever reason, he's now convinced that alien visitors weren't friendly, and he is really worried that they might come after him in the future, maybe even attack him. This thought bothers him so much that in the months leading up to his disappearance, Frederick keeps bringing it up to his dad. So finally, Guido tells him, you know what? If aliens do come after us, there's nothing we can do. So why even worry? If it happens, it happens. And maybe that's why Frederick doesn't panic when he calls air control on the night of October 21st. He knows he can't do anything.

He's just got to accept his fate. Obviously, that's just one way to interpret this information, and we'd have to believe his mom's story about the UFO sighting to begin with, but it does give us a clue into another possible explanation for his disappearance. Frederick might have faked it. Here's the gist. Frederick's so freaked out about aliens that he wants to run away. So he fakes a UFO sighting, flies off as far as his Cessna can carry him and starts a new life with a new identity. That might seem like something out of a soap opera, but remember this. Frederick told the people at the Moorabbin airport that he was meeting up with friends and wanted to pick up some crayfish.

But here's the thing. Nobody was waiting for him at the King Island airport when he was supposed to land. No friends, no crayfish, not even airport employees, because the airstrip was actually closed for the night. And you do not want to try landing on a dark runway. So if Frederick was really headed for King Island, he should have requested to keep the airstrip lit, but he didn't. Okay, so this all seems to add up to some kind of runaway plan. But Frederick actually loved his life.

He had a girlfriend, a good job, and he was one class away from getting his pilot's license. And usually when pilots disappear, there's someone around to say that they were depressed or even suicidal. But in Frederick's case, everyone insisted he was happy. Paranoid about UFOs, sure, but very tied to his job and family and friends. Even so, this explanation became a favorite among skeptics for years after Frederick went missing. Even Australia's Department of Transport's official report seemed to suggest it. But they had to change their conclusion on May 15th, 1983, five years after Frederick went missing.

Because on that day, a key piece of evidence proved that his disappearance was real. Up next, the clue that throws all of our theories into question. Now back to the story. In 1983, five years after Frederick went missing, a young man finds a clue that turns the entire mystery on its head. We don't know his name, but we do know this guy's father worked at an airport on Flinders Island just east of King Island in Bass Strait. So maybe this man has plans to meet up with his dad for lunch or something. In any case, he shows up early, has some time to kill, and decides to go for a walk along the beach. As he's strolling along, he spots something washed ashore. And it's not your usual seaweed or garbage. It looks kind of metallic, and it's covered in white paint, and it's about maybe 7 by 12 inches long.

The guy takes a closer look, and it's unmistakable. This piece of debris came from an airplane. He notifies the authorities, and sure enough, experts analyze the metal piece, and they conclude it's from a Cessna 182 aircraft. It's too damaged for investigators to make out the full serial number, but from what they can see, the equipment definitely could be from Frederick's plane. In other words, he didn't fake his death and skip the country. But it still leaves us with one big question. Why did Frederick's Cessna go down in the first place? Well, there is one rational explanation. See, Frederick wasn't a

great pilot. He actually had already failed his licensing test on three separate occasions before 1978. And even though Frederick was close to getting certified by the time of his disappearance, he still wasn't very experienced. His license only permitted him to pilot when the air was clear. Plus, this was his first time flying over water at night, so maybe he was out of his depth. It's also possible that he flipped the Cessna upside down without realizing it, which it might sound unlikely to you, but flying really messes with people's sense of direction. I mean, in the air, we can't always sense things like whether we're tilting to the side because that's almost never an issue

on the ground and we didn't evolve that ability. So sometimes pilots can flip over without even realizing it, especially if they're a rookie. So picture this. Frederick is flying upside down and when he looks what he thinks is up, which is really down, he sees his own plane reflected in the water of Bass Strait. That at least explains why he sees another aircraft mimicking his movements. Plus, Cessnas don't work correctly when they're upside down, so that could be why his engine stalled out. Now, I get it. This is still a stretch, and it doesn't explain the lights Frederick saw earlier in the flight. He said they kept passing him and then turning around and flying right at him. Obviously, a mirror image wouldn't do that.

But there's a possible explanation for that, too. A former pilot named James McGahey and a paranormal investigator, Joe Nickel, co-authored a piece on Frederick's disappearance for the Skeptical Inquirer. In it, they theorized that Frederick saw some unusually bright planets and stars arranged in a rectangle, specifically Venus, Mars, Mercury, and Antares, and they think Frederick mistook their reflections as aircraft lights. Now, planets don't swoop over other airplanes the way Frederick described, but it could have looked like these planets and stars were doing that. I mean, it's like when you're driving through a tunnel. It feels like the tunnel is rushing toward you, even though it's totally still. I know it's hard to believe Frederick would have been that disoriented, but McGehee and Nickel make one more important point. They think Frederick saw what he

wanted to see. In fact, they think he was actually searching for UFOs. Like we said before, Frederick was an alien fanatic and he already thought he'd seen one spaceship. So maybe he took off that night specifically to look for aliens, which would actually explain why he lied about going to King Island to meet friends or to pick up crayfish. If he mentioned that he was going on an alien hunt, airport personnel would think he was joking. In any case, Frederick is desperate to see some kind of flying saucer. He sees a few planets, gets excited, and loses control of his plane. At least, that's the story according to McGehee and Nicol.

But there are still a few problems with this explanation. For one, Frederick went down at 7.12 p.m. That's six minutes before sunset. And sure, Antares is one of the 20 brightest stars in the night sky, but it wasn't even night yet. And Mercury usually isn't visible until about an hour after dark. So I guess he could have mistaken planets and stars for UFO lights, but honestly, it doesn't seem likely. Besides, there's one other huge reason this may not have been an ordinary accident. And that's the way the Australian government handled the investigation.

A few times now, I've referenced the transcripts of Frederick's final radio broadcast. Australia's Department of Transport actually didn't want to release those transcripts after the accident, but eventually the public pressure is too intense and they give in. Still, they never released the original audio tapes, so we just have to basically take the department's word that the words on paper match the recording. And UFO expert and author Richard Haynes claims it is definitely not a match. According to Haynes, he got a leaked copy of the audio recording, and the original audio tape is six and a half minutes, just like the transcript says.

But the recording itself has time codes that cover a little over 12 minutes. In other words, someone cut about five minutes from the tape, then publicly released the transcript. There's even been confirmation from several Australian officials saying that certain parts of Frederick's call were censored. These officials were pretty vague about why, but one article in Melbourne Sun says the recording was edited, quote, in the interest of national security, end quote. So I don't know about you, but I can't think of a single reason that a private plane crash would be a national security issue. And this isn't even the only time the Australian government has been evasive about Frederick's case.

Like in 2004, a UFO researcher named Keith Basterfield requests access to the official files related to the crash investigation. But Australian officials tell him that they can't grant that because allegedly those files don't exist. They say they lost them. But later, Keith does some digging and he finds the files in the National Archives. Now, Keith doesn't actually think this is evidence of a cover-up. After all, if the government didn't

want the investigation file to be found, it wouldn't just be sitting in the archives. He thinks it was just misplaced. Still, a so-called missing file fits a pattern, along with the edited tape and the alleged national security issue. It all feels like the Australian government has something to hide in regards to Frederick's death. And the possibility that they would be covering up the death of an ordinary pilot definitely lends itself to the possibility of a UFO. Which if you think about it is really crazy. Like for all we know we literally have an audio recording of a real alien abduction. That could be huge and the government could be the

ones planting stories about Frederick skipping the country or the upside down Cessna. But that's the thing about Frederick's case. Everyone has a theory and none of them totally add up. It's like putting together a puzzle when you're missing half the pieces. You don't quite know what you're looking at. Maybe that's why Frederick's disappearance is so popular among paranormal enthusiasts. You can read whatever you want into it because there's not enough hard evidence to contradict anything. It's the ultimate unsolved and unsolvable mystery. Thanks for listening. I'll be back next week with another episode. To hear more stories hosted by me,

check out Crime Junkie and all AudioChuck originals.