Somewhere in the Skies - A Candid Conversation with Peter Robbins: Part One

Episode Date: April 13, 2025

On episode 404, it's Part 1 of a 2-part series with Ryan's mentor and UFO researcher, Peter Robbins. In part 1, they discuss Peter's childhood UFO encounter that set him on the path he's on today. We also hear about his time working as a research assistant for Budd Hopkins, the latest controversies and lawsuit in relation to the Linda Cortile Manhattan alien abduction incident, and Peter recounts his experiences and involvement in the historic 2013 Citizen Hearing on UFO Disclosure, which was the predecessor to the recent Congressional UFO hearings. Part 2 is already available to all Patreon and Apple Premium Subscribers! Please take a moment to rate and review us on Spotify and Apple. Book Ryan on CAMEO at: https://bit.ly/3kwz3DO Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/somewhereskies ByMeACoffee: http://www.buymeacoffee.com/UFxzyzHOaQ PayPal: [e-mail] Discord: https://discord.gg/NTkmuwyB4F Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ryansprague.bsky.social Twitter: https://twitter.com/SomewhereSkies Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/somewhereskiespod/ Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryansprague51 Order Ryan’s new book: https://a.co/d/4KNQnM4 Order Ryan’s older book: https://amzn.to/3PmydYC Store: http://tee.pub/lic/ULZAy7IY12U Read Ryan’s articles at: https://medium.com/@ryan-sprague51 Opening Theme Song by Septembryo Copyright © 2025 Ryan Sprague. All rights reserved Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/somewhere-in-the-skies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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GoogleFi Wireless is not subject to data traffic deprioritization during times of high network usage. No one goes to Hank's for his spreadsheets. They go for a darn good pizza. Lately, though, the shop's been quiet. So Hank decides to bring back the $1 slice. He asks Copilot in Microsoft Excel to look at his sales and costs. Help him see if he can afford it. Co-pilot shows Hank where the money's going

and which little extras make the dollar slice work. Now, Hank has a line out the door. Hank makes the pizza. Co-Pilot handles the spreadsheets. Learn more at M365, copilot.com, slash work. Hey guys, Ryan here. I had the amazing opportunity to catch up with my mentor in the UFO field, the one and only Peter Robbins. We planned on chatting for like 45 minutes and of course it turned into two hours. So I decided to break this into a two-parter for you guys.

This week in part one, we discuss his childhood UFO encounter that truly set him on the path he's on today. We also hear about his time working as a research. assistant for Bud Hopkins. We also talk about the latest controversies and lawsuit in relation to the Linda Cortille Manhattan alien abduction incident. And then we wrap things up with a conversation about Peter's involvement in the historic 2013 citizen hearing on disclosure. Next week in part two, we go deep into the falling out between Peter and his co-author of Left at East Gate, Larry Warren. And where Peter Robbins is today when it comes to the Rendersham Forest UFO incident, we then discuss his latest work studying NASA and JPL anomalous images.

And then Peter answers your listener questions. Part 2 is already available to Patreon and Apple Premium subscribers. Click the subscribe button at the top of your Apple feed to listen. Or join our Patreon for early access and tons of other benefits. But let's not waste any more time. Here's part one of our candid conversation with Peter Robbins. You are now somewhere in the skies with your host, Ryan Spray. Welcome everyone to a very special episode of Somewhere in the Skies.

And, you know, back in New York, we used to try to meet up what, Peter, maybe once a month, once every two months, whenever it was possible for you to come to New York City. we would go to the Westway diner, the Galaxy diner. We'd catch up on each other's lives, both in and outside of the UFO world. However, one of us decided to move across an ocean. So that's been close to impossible lately. But I just, I, I, I savor every moment I can to reconnect with you. And this is one of those times.

So we're going to talk about everything going on in your life now, both personally as a UFO researcher, where UFOs are now in 2025 and everything in between. But before we do that, welcome back, my friend. And how are you doing? How's everything going? Good enough. Life intercedes at every corner into your public self. But work progresses and the important things in life.

My family are well. I'm doing okay. I have a house to live in in a nice part of the United States and would rather be in New York City right now, but it was priced out of that place some years back. You and me both. You and me both. Yeah. Well, I have had the amazing opportunity to come to your house, spend a couple days with you.

We had incredible conversations. You cooked me some amazing food. I got to see all the awesome. some art you have throughout your house. So again, I think we made an episode while I was there. You guys can go listen to that in the archives. It was called Peter Robbins Unplugged, which I love that. We might have to play off of that for the title of this one, too.

But we're sort of going to just see where this conversation goes. Now, I have some bullet points of things that some of our listeners wanted to, are curious about your thoughts on certain things. some memories and things I have of work with you, as many of you may know, Peter is my mentor in the UFO field. And yeah, we're just going to see where this goes. It's going to be a very free range conversation, as it were. But one thing, and I can't believe this has never come up in my interviews with you,

one thing we've never talked about is your personal UFO sighting, which is crazy. I can't believe I've never actually asked you about that in public. So maybe that's a good place to start. You know, everyone sort of has that origin story, how they got involved in the topic and everything. And I know for you, much like myself, it did start with a personal UFO sighting. So maybe if you want to tell us a little about that,

like when did this happen? What presumably happened? And there's another interesting, I guess side quest to all of this, and that's your sister, Helen, when it comes to this. So I'll let you take it from there. Tell us about your UFO sighting and close encounter, if you don't mind. Well, it happened when I was 14 and my sister was just 12. I was born in New York City.

We lived there until I was seven, and Ellen was five. And then we moved out to Long Island to a plea. You don't realize these things at the time, but an idyllic village, about 30 miles east of Manhattan. So I grew up with the best of both worlds of life in small town America and 40 minutes away from Times Square. And grew up in the state park nearby and the museums of the city of New York

walks around the city. I had no interest in UFOs as a kid, except as they appeared in movies that I would sometimes see on a Saturday afternoon with my friends at the Fantasy Theater in Rockville Center, New York, of bad aliens coming to Earth and giving us a hard time in black and white, and enjoyed it very much. But I guess I intuited the adult general message that flying saucers are real in the movies. And that's pretty much the extent of it and had no reason to question it. Again, as a kid, my interests were myriad and different and maybe somewhat dated looking at it. Now, I was fascinated by the insect world coming from the city and not being familiar with this world of creatures.

I collected stamps, which kind of introduced me at a very young age to dreaming, about faraway places. This little piece of paper came from India, this one from China, this one from some other King or highly romanticized place. I built model airplanes and read adventure books. And one late morning, Helen and I were goofing around on the front lawn as kids do.

June, we think, early 1960s, long time. ago and I caught something out of my right peripheral vision and either said look or Helen. And as I did five silvery white disc-shaped objects came in from, I forget the actual direction, but from stage right and stopped over the neighbor's house across the street. It was completely unambiguous. There were, there you go. five disc-shaped objects. You'll note there are six in this painting. I'll explain that in a moment.

And they just hung there in the air. They were like holding a dinner plate at an angle at distance from your face. They were all elliptical. They were in a very precise formation again. And I would have to again say silvery white, but obviously metallic. And many years later, when we first discussed the story,

because that memory was locked up pretty tight for me for more than 14 years, although Helen never forgot it. That, how can I say, you've had this experience myriads of time in getting accounts from people. You're living your life, you're doing what you're doing, and you look up, and all of a sudden, there it is or there they are.

something you've never seen before. And your mind goes through a series of synapses. I call it the checklist reaction. You look up and you immediately go through the list of things that you are not looking at. Plains, kites, blimps, blunes, derigibles, strain-shaped clouds. I couldn't see them as anything but what they were. And yet at the same time I knew, in quotes, that such things didn't exist. this. The last desperate thought I had to try to make this sensible in conventional terms,

and I know the words, because I've heard them in my hypnotic regression, not a phrase I would use as an adult, but almost with desperation saying to myself, there must be some kind of secret government test plane. Some kind of secret government test plane. However, planes have tails, wings, jet engines or propellers, these were not those. And at a certain point, I'd really had it. My anxiety was that piqued. I've told the story many times and occasionally people say, wait a minute, you're saying that at this moment that you're seeing the most amazing thing in your life and you know you may never see it again, you go run into the house to tell your mom. Well, that's exactly what I did. Except I never quite got there.

Within two or three seconds of high speed running from that spot to the front door, everything changed. I felt within the course of a moment, I was running through melances. Everything slowed down. And in my mind, I was actually moving in slow motion. Of course, I was not. But I was enveloped in something that put me in a very different place. and as is often the case in accounts of experiencers or abductees or a witness, what you're feeling makes no sense at all.

In my case, it was all of a sudden the anxiety was gone, and I'm thinking... Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. fit for your ambition for citizens back i'm i'm in slow motion isn't this the most amazing thing that's ever happened to me no concerns just gosh isn't this interesting and falling in slow motion um because i had lost all motor coordination i um my last three thoughts before everything went black after going blue for a moment was um the ants said i up their civilization, the scoring on the sidewalk leading up to the front door. That's quite a

civilization. How beautiful my mother's hydrangea bushes looked that day. She was a great gardener. And that last, just crazy thought in context of what a beautiful day this is. Bang, I am out and down. A period of time passes. I come to. I immediately feel a sensation here. And in fact, I had again, been running and skidded my arm on the sidewalk and had quite a scrape. Now, adults don't think like this. I don't think girls ever think like this, maybe. But my first sensation again was something going on here and I saw a big scrape. And I thought, what a scab that's going to be. Red badge of courage. My sister was gone. I walked into it. I walked into it. the house, their UFOs were gone. Intuitively, I walked up the stairs. My two sisters shared a

bedroom at the top of the stairs, and I didn't even have to reach the top before seeing Helen with her back to me looking into the yard. And I walked downstairs and into the kitchen, and there was our mom making us lunch. I think it was grilled cheese sandwiches. It's so interesting how certain memories are so clear after long periods of time. And I stood in the doorway and I said, quote unquote, Helen and I just saw some things in the sky over the Parker's house that looked like flying saucers from the movies. Over the years, Ryan, you probably dealt with adult children

who reflecting back on a childhood experience where their parent didn't intercede. The parent was either turned off or frozen, so to say, but it could result in disruptive relationships as years went by. How come you didn't do anything? Or a parent looking back on their complete ineffectualness or helplessness to help their child as they're being taken or confronted. My mother made a decision, and years later when we discussed it, she didn't remember it. But it was very much the right decision.

Often parents feel the need. coming from their own anxiety to reassure the child of, oh, honey, you just thought it looked like that. We all understand that impulse, but it's very insulting for the individual to be saying, you're calling me a liar or is, anyway, my mother just looked at me. And I remember thinking, Ryan, this is the way grown-ups look at each other.

And in not doing anything, it was kind of a gift. She didn't give me anything to belabor. I almost immediately after lunch took my bike and went to the village library. At the time, most libraries had fairly substantial sections on UFOs. And I took two books off the shelf that had UFO on the spine, got them home, went into my room, closed the door. The first one was somebody talking about their trip to Mars. This was exactly what I did not want.

I needed a nice conventional boring explanation for what I had seen. The other one, interestingly, I remember the book because the cover is so iconic, Flying Saucers Have Landed by George Ademsky and Desmond Leslie. I didn't even want them in the house, and if it hadn't been so late in the day, I would have brought them right back to the library, which I did the next day. However, 14 plus years later, when Helen and I first discussed this, as I'll get to in a moment, moment, one of the questions I asked her was, is there anything else you can think of to help me substantiate our shared memory here? And she thought about her for a moment and said, yes, that evening, I went into your room. You weren't there, but I saw there were two books on your desk.

And they were UFO books. And that's just the random memory. Anyway, Helen came to me later that afternoon and said, do you want to talk about this? And I said, no. And as she pointed out, many years later, you're my brother, I love you, I respect you. One day led to the next week, led to the next year, and here we are. But it's true, within a matter of weeks, I had done something I consider logically impossible, and yet it's very much a part of the human condition. You repress a memory. sadly, repressed memories are far more often about violence or sexual abuse or other sadly conventional subjects. But years passed without this thing shaking loose. And there was one

incident really in the Halcyon Day of the 60s on my very first LSD trip where that memory broke through in a very distorted way. And I did some watercolors around my memories. Several years later, I came upon those watercolors in a portfolio. And my reaction was not just shock, but anger. I told myself consciously, this is a very bad art. Look at this execution. If I get hit by a bus tomorrow, I don't want anybody finding this in my portfolio. And I destroyed them. and I forgot about it again. And more years passed. It wasn't until I was in my late 20s and very much on my way to the career I had dreamt of having for since I was a kid, being a studio artist in New York City, that that memory resurfaced.

I can give you the reasons I think it came back when it did. I guess the most important one is that I was ready to deal with it. And that afternoon, within a matter of a minute or two, going through drawings quite by chance I was looking at as a kid, I had done as a kid, this memory came roaring back into my mind like a freight train on a tape loop. And I knew I must be having some kind of mental episode because logically you're telling yourself, how could I have ever forgotten? the most unforgettable thing of my life. And it really upset me very much for some minutes, and I had to calm myself down and say, you have a witness.

And with that, thinking through how best to approach my sister, we only have one chance to make a first inquiry. And I thought it out enough, thankfully, that by the time I called her and found out was a good time to talk, that I simply told her I had a memory come back from childhood, but that I felt if I told her what it was, she'd say yes or no, and I would not know for sure. So let me set the scene. And I started to talk about the weather that morning, where we were and we were and she cut me off mid-sentence and said, stop. I know what you're talking about.

and very quickly we established that she had the same memory I did. However, she wasn't sure whether it was five or six craft, to lack of a better term. And immediately upon getting off the phone with her, I did a very simple drawing of what I knew I hadn't seen, which was six. and then help myself to calm down by spending probably several hours with the paintbrush, just putting in white brushstrokes. The sky was blue, but it was just a meditative process to calm myself down. And the very next day, she came down to my studio. Helen lived in the East Village at the time I was down in East Chinatown,

and I walked her over to a work table and held my hand over that, one on the lower right. It was oil paint, so I didn't touch it, and she looked at it, and then I took my hand away, and she said, you're right, it was five, because it wasn't a check mark. It was a V. However, after talking on the phone and her confirming my memory, I had what I can only call a very split moment of, oh, my God, it really happened, and oh, my God, it really happened. one would think that would have been enough to alter my life and set me off on the course that resulted in my talking to you right now years later but no I don't think so I think had it been just that I would have been one of those millions of people out there who had a UFO sighting

who had a witness who knew that we weren't alone and gone on with my life with just an extra sense of wonder. Of course, we can't know for sure how we would have reacted to any situation, but what she said to me after we established the reality of our sighting was either there's more and you're not going to like, I don't know if you're going to like it, there's more, I don't know how I'm going to feel about it, I forget the exact wording. But she then told me clear, fragmented, unforgotten memories of what you and I would now describe as archetypical moments from a classic gray-type UFO abduction. And I had never heard anything like this before in my life. The Betty and Barney Kill case was out there, not of interest to me, although I think I became aware of it when the story broke in the mid-60s with the public.

application in Life magazine, their 1961 event. And Helen said, you know, we were standing there, about six feet away from each other. And at a certain point, you kind of peeled off. I saw you disappear in my right peripheral vision. I intuitively knew you were going to house to tell mom. But then within two or three seconds, something happened that changed everything.

She said something to the In fact, I was 12 years old, but I wasn't stupid. I know you can't see a beam of light during the day. You can see, you know, the light on the wall if you're shining a strong flashlight outside, but you don't see the beam. The only exception to that would be, say, at night when there's a fog or it's very misty, and you've got a zillion little droplets of water. That would be a beam is catching on.

She said, but within two or three seconds of you peeling out, I saw a beam of light shoot out of one of the bottom of these things, and I turned around to see you in the light. And then the light went off and you went down and I went up. I said, what do you mean? You went up. She said, I rose off the ground and just started to rise in the sky. What were you feeling? Wonder, interest. I knew logically that if whatever was happening stopped,

I would fall and duck. But I was too caught up in looking down and seeing you lying by the front door, looking at the roof of our house for the only time in my life, and then looking up and seeing the bottoms of these things getting closer and closer and feeling my hair blowing the wind. Well, of course, I'm completely enwrapped in this story. And it's the first 10 seconds or so I've been struggling with the idea that My sister is insane.

Oh wait, 10 seconds ago it was okay to have five flying saucers over the Parker's house, close enough to see the windows. Listen to what your sister's saying. And the next description was being walked through a curved metal hallway. By a bunch of beings, we would now call grays, but the term was still, I don't know, 10 or 15 years before it was entered the language. And one tall one, then being on the table and being examined. And the things that she was being told in her head,

absolutely archetypical of things I've heard dozens and dozens of time, sometimes word for word. And people use that phrase, my life changed overnight. Well, mine changed in the course of a matter of seconds in that call. and very much I have to say consciously against my will. I had no desire to enter into this area of study, but was kind of dragged in with an obsession of what happened to my sister. And I continued to paint.

I continue to teach painting, show my work, but everything changed for me. my desire to prioritize being a career artist in lower Manhattan and establish myself that way. And it took a mortal hit in a way. I was still playing at it, but it's the kind of thing you've got to live 100%. And something more important had come up and I resented it. And it's funny to think back now that about 15 years after that, early 90s with the beginning of the show, The X-Files, Helen and I watched it together. And it's a great pilot.

Anybody might want to re-watch it because it establishes everything we're going to see over the next 10 years. If you remember, one of the key plot points is Mulder's sister was taken. and this has caused him to become obsessed for the rest of his life. His sister wasn't returned. Mine was. And I ultimately, I needed to go into therapy. It's so different than it was now. I knew no one who was interested in this subject.

I didn't know there were UFO conferences or organizations. I guess I knew there were UFO books and I'd see magazines on the stands. but the only newspaper that ever covered it that I was aware of was the National Inquirer, which at the time was a very sensationalistic tabloid, now seems pretty tame by comparison. We also now know that amid the sensationalism, their coverage of UFO cases was often very accurate. And I also felt my sister and I were sane, but I wasn't sure about any other adult in the world. if you're a middle-aged person and you're focused on the subject of UFOs, you've got to screw loose. I had no interest in meeting any of these people.

And I built my circle of colleagues slowly. I was very lucky to have several wonderful mentors before I connected with Bud Hopkins at the beginning of his UFO-related career. And things went forward from there. I guess that's the long answer to your short question. question. No, not at all. I'm so happy we finally got to hear the story because, you know, it would ultimately, like you said, lead you on this path that you did not see your life going. And I can empathize with that so much, Peter. I mean, you know, I've told you this story many times. I was a baseball player. I thought I was going to go pro. That's all I ever wanted to think about, talk about. And then I caught the acting bug. I got into theater and then that took over. But this whole UFO thing was just always there in the back of my mind and it kept wanting to come to the front of my mind. So I understand that like that almost wanting to keep it down and keep it in the back of the mind instead.

But I mean, we have some images here if you're watching this on YouTube guys. This is Peter and your sister. you know, what age would you say you both were here? Helen was probably about 30, me, two years older, thereabouts. These were just some fun shots we took at the end of a photo shoot for the cover of a single that she was putting out. And it was on the roof of the photographer's building, a wonderful old building. looking north to Madison Square Park, just right on 23rd Street there.

And so the buildings you see in the background that look very, Fritz-Lang German Expressionist is the New York Life buildings, you know, on the east side of the park that are just so, again, like a German expressionist stage said. Right. And let me see. Yep, we have more images here too. Now, for many who may not know, your sister, you would ultimately become a painter and work in the art industry as well. And Helen became a musician. Can you tell us a little about her time with music? As a kid, she studied piano, but really wasn't a musical kid per se. I was the one who joined all the high school singing groups and did the school musicals,

that kind of thing. But about the time that we connected on this memory, she was a very serious, aspiring poet. And her boyfriend at the time was the drummer for an up-and-coming band. and as some of the other band members had done, he asked her if she would give him some of the poems that she had written, he would put them to music and submit them for the next album. The keyboard player, wonderful keyboard is no longer with us, Alan Neneer, asked his girlfriend as well to submit some. The group was the Blue Oyster Cull. The album was Agents of Fortune, which had Don't Fear the Reaper, probably their biggest hit, and songs by Helen and Patty Smith. And the album went gold, then platinum.

And the next thing my sister knew, she had regular income as a writer coming in, enough that she could put together a band, which was her real dream, and start to sing and perform just at that moment in pop music history when this movement that had begun really in 1975 in England made its way to America in great part via a very wonderfully sleazy small hole-in-the-wall club on the Bowery called CBGB's. And she was a part of that very first wave of punk. I saw her open for different points. Blondie and Iggy and the Ramones and the Talking Heads,

all in this tiny venue, you know, hold less than 200 people, fire regs, and became not a part of that scene, but Helen's brother and got to observe this manifestation of pop culture up close and personal and enjoyed a great deal of it very much. Right, right, which is so cool. Again, you know, CBGVs play such a pivotal role in the entire punk music scene and movement. And the fact that she performed there just still astounds me to this day.

Now, to play off of that a little bit, Peter. Now, at this point in your career, in Helen's career, like you guys, has sort of gone your separate ways. You would intertwine every now and again in terms of a common interest in the arts. But what about the UFOs? Like what was going on? If you could paint that picture for me,

Helen's now doing music. You're in the arts scene. But when did UFOs come back into this really? And was this something that Helen would talk about or be vocal about in her music career? and with you, vice versa. Yeah. That initial conversation broke everything wide open.

And it happened at a moment when, again, her career was in transition going from a poet or in a sense, lyricist to a performer. And her act was extremely physical, so much so that she suffered a number of stage injuries over the years. She jumped into the audience hoping somebody would catch her years before somebody invented mosh pits. But she got very involved in physical culture and taking very good care of herself and ultimately became a ranking female bodybuilder. But embrace that career and her UFO related experience

very publicly. Helen was certainly not concerned about getting a, a job in some bureaucracy. She was an artist and lived her life like that and was very open about her experience with anybody that was interested in hearing about it. She talked about it at times in the music business press. It came up in lyrics of certain songs, produced and not. One particular album illustration on the back. And again in music business interviews, in fact, She was still very public about it, even up to a few weeks before she died in an interview that she did in 1999 or 2000.

And really could have cared less what anybody thought about what she said had happened to her. She had a very healthy attitude about that. And like me, felt part of her role from that point on was to help educate people and to what was going on. Okay, so how about you? Like when did your, I mean, obviously I'm leading up to you meeting Bud Hopkins, who would eventually become, you know, sort of your mentor in the field of uphology and more specifically the alien abduction phenomenon. How did that all come about? And is this when all of your UFO work started to sort of take over?

Yeah. Well, again, immediately after this conversation, I continued to be a visual artist. But I started to, rather than continue to build my art book collection at used bookstores, I started to look for used UFO books and started to build a library. it. I would occasionally pick up kind of a pulp magazine on the stands. I now know some of them were published by somebody who went on to become a very dear friend who's no longer with us, Timothy Green Beckley, who did an outstanding interview years ago, obviously before he died with me about Helen, that's in whatever issue, a back issue of UFO magazine. I had a great deal

of trouble making my peace with this in that I couldn't believe that I lived in a world where everybody didn't know this. And you want to, well, in my case, I realized I needed help at one point. Some months into this, I was walking east on 23rd Street to teach my night school class at the School of Visual Arts. And I, I almost stepped out into traffic, visualizing the movie actor, Kevin McCarthy at the end of the invasion of the body snatchers, a wonderful classic 1956 movie,

standing in the middle of a freeway screaming at people, they're here, they're here already, you're next, you're next. And then flashback to the police station where he's been telling the story since the beginning of the movie. I learned that, And there was a psychotherapist still alive and practicing in New York and New Jersey,

who happened to have been the first assistant of Dr. Wilhelm Reich for the last 11 years of Reich's life. And I have been reading Reich's work since I was a teenager, embraced it wholeheartedly intellectually. But Reich's international reputation was taken down in part because he wrote about his research around UFOs and taking them very seriously, his protege Dr. Baker did as well, and he took me on as a patient and helped me to normalize my attitude about this.

Now you've only to go on the internet to find out that you're not alone and to connect with people or, you know, join in dialogues or organizations or he really helped me stabilize myself in understanding that I wasn't crazy, neither was my sister. This is real. These things happen. And it's important work. And perhaps it's something I might choose to do seriously because there was a need for it. And that I might, you know, be a person who qualified for the work. unusual relationship in that sense between a therapist and patient. But it helped me tremendously. I would say it was about a year less or less that this obsession had been running me.

And I walked by a little news kiosk in Midtown. And there was, you know, all the publications, including the now defunct village voice, a long time weekly, usually more devoted to, political issues. I don't think they had ever covered the subject of UFOs, but there it was. And one of the headlines on the front page was quote unquote, sane man sees UFO. Well, you know I bought that and brought it home and read it cover to cover. Well, beginning to end. And I'll tell you what, it was the best single UFO report, case history, documented, and particularly, well-written. And I was sold. The author was a man named Bud Hopkins. The New York City art world,

if you're in it, is kind of small and incestuous. And I knew there was a late period abstract expressionist by that name, last first name, two D's, B-U-D-D. And I thought, could it be the same person? There's only one way to deal with it back then. You went to a phone booth. You crack that big old New York City phone book, 10 pounds of it. And there was only one Bud Hopkins and I cold called him. Introduced myself as a fellow painter, instructor at the School of Visual Arts who had developed a serious interest in UFOs, had a sighting as a kid whose sister may have been taken. Now this was six years before Bud published his first book and just at the time that he was becoming interested in the subject via this first case that he had done with a gentleman on worked at a store on on west 16th street where he lived

you know that there are times in your life that um everything is changing but you don't realize it at that moment you can look back and see that trajectory went that way instead of that way and um his first question to me on the phone was tell me about your artwork that didn't go well at all But again, was established in a certain tradition and style. I came out of minimalist, conceptualist school, so to say, at a time when this was dominated in galleries. But he was interested in Helen's experience and invited me over to chat a few days later. And we sat at his kitchen table, had a cup of coffee, and talked about art and life and UFOs and life in New York. And I think now, how could I have known how many hundreds of cups of coffee I would have at that table over the next 35 years?

And a substantial number of shots of scotch. And we began a friendship. From that point on, for some years, we saw each other probably every few months. And I had been working occasionally as his studio assistant, something I had done for a number of artists over the years. kind of transitioned into starting to respond to letters and filing and office work basically. And things progressed from there. And we began our long association. Interesting. So, okay, to sort of, I guess, piggyback off of that, this might be a good time to, I guess, approach one of the more famous cases. that but investigated, you know, a very popular book had been written about it, articles,

a documentary series recently released, very controversial, which I'm sure we will touch on. And that was the Linda Cortiel slash Napolitano case. Now, I know this was a case that you personally were involved with as well, Peter. And, you know, we've done episodes on it in the past. I've written about the case. It's one of those ones that you revisit time and time again in the field. And a lot of people either, you know, they're all in or they reject it outright. And like many, myself included, I'm somewhere in between.

I simply was not there when it happened, nor when the investigation happened. But you were there when all of this was happening. So maybe right now would be a good time to talk about that. And if you wouldn't mind, could you tell us a little about the Linda case and maybe your personal involvement? And what's going on with all of this right now? I know that's a lot to unpack. But yeah, if you wouldn't mind. Yeah.

I think it was in April of 1989. Bud received a letter from a woman who lived downtown, Lower East Side, in a building very close to Pier 17 and the Brooklyn Bridge. In fact, from Linda and Steve's living room, you could look out one window and see the Brooklyn Bridge and look out the other window and see the Trade Center. This is kind of poignant. And the letter had all the bells and whistles that one looks for. It was written out carefully in Longhand, a woman describing certain feelings and experiences. But it wasn't until toward the end of the year around Thanksgiving that she came in for the first time. And Bud met her.

I met her shortly after. Italian American, two young sons. husband who worked in good part for the newspapers downtown, loading, unloading, and she had had an experience of being taken, key experience of her experiences at about two in the morning from her bedroom, floated through plate glass window in her night clothes, I think 11 stories up, into a well-aluminated, disc-shaped object hanging over her building. Now, this is two in the morning, and some people would just simply dismiss the story there, but this is New York City. Many people were up. Many people observed it. Over time, I think 23

separate individuals wrote letters to Bud describing what they had seen from their point of view, many of them with drawings of what they had seen, and Bud researched this case for five years, and I was as assistant all through that time. The thing that caused it to be more controversial than the outrageous controversy of that allegation I've just stated is that there was a VIP downtown, for one reason or another, a distinguished diplomat with two members of his security service, who happened to be the Secretary General of the United Nations, whether he was downtown on some kind of trist or meeting of some sort, we don't know. but he was there and he was taken with her.

This still sets off a sense of outrage for some people like, please give me a break. But for anyone, as I speak, who is even now questioning what I'm saying, you need to read the book. Almost every detractor, almost every attack on the case has come from someone who, would say it's kind of contemptuous to attack an account like this without taking the time to read this five-year piece of research and study and take in all of the actual physical evidence that could be presented in a court of law the book was published in 1996 and um you know and

It got some traction, so to say. It didn't do tremendously well, as most UFO books end up in the States. But the case has stayed controversial in part because it just sounds so damn outrageous. And because, again, and I have to underscore this, almost all of the attackers or detractors or debunkers certainly, skeptics to some degree, have not read the study. And again, that's somewhat insulting. The rationale there is, why should I even bother? This is obviously such nonsense, but it isn't. And I would have to say in the several hundred UFO-related events and incidents

that I have looked into on my own over the past decades, or with Bud or with other researchers, this is the case, the case for me that will not go away. In detracting from it also, one takes attention away from what Bud maintained, and I certainly agree with, one of the most important regular news stories of the 20th century. It wouldn't surprise me to learn if we could learn such things that there have been other well-known, politically connected individuals who have gone through UFO abduction. The odds are overwhelming just as a demographic that that's been the case. This happens to be the Politico, so to say, that we know went through it, and that Bud actually made. met with and Linda certainly met with on occasions. Linda's son, now grown up of course.

More recently, the story of Witness allegedly was the subject of a Netflix three-part miniseries. What I can say about that is limited because of a legal action that I personally initiated that now is in New York State Supreme Court, waiting upon the court to assign us a evidentiary hearing, at which point the defendants and their attorneys will have to decide whether or not we have a case, and one that we would win, in which case they settle, or whether or not they want to take us to court,

in which case we are prepared to go and continuing to prepare. Anyway, what happened there is it's so tawdry and so kind of cheap. It sounds like an exaggeration in itself. Bud had been married to a woman named Carol Ramey, an aspiring documentary filmmaker. When that relationship fell apart and they divorced, Carol made it very clear to everyone she knew that she was going to find a way to destroy her ex-husband and this particular case and the credibility of this particular witness. And in fact, she died doing just that, but not before securing a partnership with a filmmaking team in London who approached Linda through a major production company with the understanding that that production company was going to, to make this documentary, Linda relied on me

to help her come to an informed decision. And I fully researched this company, and they're sensational. Absolutely outstanding, first-rate documentaries, tackling controversial subjects respectfully and well-informed. But they simply handed us over to these contractors, as though we were going to be working for them, and in fact, didn't realize from many months that we were not working for them.

Ultimately, what happened was the central fact that the production was determined by was under the leadership, so to say, of Bud's ex-wife was kept from us. It was the ultimate lie by omission. They knew that if we were aware of that, even in the smallest way, neither one of us would have participated. And so that lie was maintained. Neither one of us had any idea that was the case, and both of us in good faith felt and understood fully that we were working on a documentary about this book and Linda's case, and it wasn't until we had our private screenings,

mine in England in mid-September, that we realized that we had been completely had, and that we had participated in a reality TV show, pitting Linda against Carol with the fake understanding that Carol had been there throughout this whole process. If you watch the series, and you should, it's a masterwork in deception. It is written in such a manner that you understand that Carol is there from 1989 now on, right through 95, and assessing the witnesses and supportive and then seeing the problems and then questions, questioning her husband's involvement and Linda's ethics.

And in fact, she didn't even meet Bud until 1995 when the book was complete. And she got her revenge after she died. She died in 23. And I could go on. I'm not going to because again, this is a case in process. But it was actually the most disruptive, depressing, completely unpleasant experience I have ever had my professional life. And I include problems around Leftity's Gate, a book about the Rendlesham Forest incident that had come years earlier. It really threw me into a state of despair and betraying. that we had been so misled and essentially what are you going to do about it this thing is coming out on Netflix in six weeks you're a bug on the wall we're a big

production company you lose and I lived with that for some days until that terrible depression mutated and became rage and I did something I never thought I would do which was find the right attorneys raise the needed funds and get this case going And we'll see what happens further down the line. You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save?

Enough. Enough to get lost. Or you could book a stay with Hilton. Welcome to your ocean front room. Just steps from the water. The Hilton sale is on now. Book on Hilton.com or the Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected.

When you want savings, not surprises. It matters where you stay. Hilton, for the stay. You know, I've been a part of these media projects, Peter, where your words are completely misconstrued. The intentions of the filmmakers are not what you were told they were going to be from the start. So I completely empathize with. you on how you could go in thinking this is going to be one thing and then the final product turns out to be something entirely different. It happens all the time. And it's sad. It's disgusting. And unfortunately, it's the way that a lot of the entertainment industry works. This was clearly nothing but an exercise in entertainment. It seems to be.

like to me of pitting these two women together against one another, excuse me, and having bud somewhere in the middle of all of that. It did reek to me of like a soap opera almost. So again, I understand the anger, the rage that you must have felt and why it would depress you in such a way, especially knowing your mentor and how hard he worked on this case. for so long, knowing the primary witness as well. And I don't envy you. And I hate as someone who is, you are my mentor. I don't envy the position you were put in with all of that. So I'm sorry. I'm sorry that you had to go through that, that Linda has to go through that. And that Bud's reputation is, you know, played out in the way it is with this certain series.

So that's all I have to say about it. If there's any other, anything else you want to cover in terms of this case, the floor is yours. Otherwise, I'm happy to move on. Yeah, I guess we can return to this after it resolves itself one way or the other in New York State Supreme Court. Yes, yes. And of course, you know, wishing you all the best with that.

I know that's not easy as someone who has dealt with the lawsuits in the past, in the present, and hopefully not in the future. Again, I know what that's like. Well, I want to move to a more positive thing, which was a event that you were a part of, which a lot of people probably now getting into the UFO research world, may not be familiar with. They are familiar now with things like the congressional UFO hearings,

the name David Grush, the name Luis Elizondo, the fact that we've now had two congressional UFO hearings in the past two years on the topic of UFOs. However, something happened that you were a part of that was kind of a predecessor to a lot of this.

And that was the, citizen hearing on disclosure. I would love if we could revisit that for a little bit, your involvement with that. And how it all came to be. Could you sort of paint that picture for us? Sure. Okay. It was a remarkable event, and it came to be because of one single person, the indefatigable Stephen Bassett, really is remarkable. Steve was able to secure a grant, a gift from a gentleman in Canada who supported disclosure to such a degree that the very substantial amount that he donated allowed Steve to create an event at the National Press Club in Washington that lasted, as I recall, five days. He was given a large enough grant that he had the

budget to fly in something like 40 different witnesses from around the world. Fighter pilots, government officials, whistleblowers, different scholars. He had looked to have active congressional representatives take part in this and had set aside funds to pay each one of them legally, you know, above board, just as something they could take part in. a very serious amount of money. No senator or congressional representative was interested in doing so, our understanding being the potential ridicule factor.

It had also been created for a time that Congress was not in session, so people could attend, no one did, and he did the next best thing. He hired half a dozen or so former congressional representatives and one retired senator, brought in a moderator and essentially created a congressional hearing in form and content without the participation of Congress. It was so impressive. And I was honored to be able to speak on on two particular subjects. Certainly one of the most important being the ridicule factor in UFO studies and how it had accompanied the subject and done tremendous damage since 1947. It was historic, I think, in chatting with the congressional representatives and the

late senator from Alaska, lovely man, I forget his name. It almost worked out that those who came in with an attitude of, this is nonsense, but I'm going to do this anyway and should be interesting. coming out rather spun around and realizing that there was a tremendous amount of evidence to secure the reality of the UFO phenomena in any number of ways. And some who went in secretly wanting to take the subject seriously, coming out very much so. It was a first-rate event and And Bravo to Steve Bassett for making it a reality. The National Press Club has been used since and before for other UFO related venues.

Robert Salas, one of our most esteemed military witnesses, has had several events there that he is organized on his own. And one can hope that it will help to continue to inspire some of the activity going on in the House of Representatives now. And, you know, I'm trying to remember exactly what year this happened, Peter. 2013, I think. Yes, I believe you're right in doing my research. I was watching some videos earlier from some of the testimonies.

And we have to remember, 2013, this was pre-New York Times article, pre-Louis Elizondo coming forward and all of that. So, I mean, these former representatives were putting a lot on the line doing this thing. Now, again, I know they were there by invitation and everything and whatnot. But this was a historic moment in uphology. And I just remember getting chills watching this play out. And then eventually we would get official. congressional hearings many years later where those goosebumps and chills came back.

But I do think it's very important to stress how pivotal a moment this was in UFO history. And I can only imagine what it was like sitting in that chair. What was that like? What was that moment like to be sitting there and seeing these representatives, being around all of your colleagues and all of these people watching? I can only imagine. I think we all took it as seriously as we possibly could. We all had to, before we testified, we had to swear that we would tell the truth. And in that sense, it was very much like a court of law.

I'm remembering now two witnesses who spoke together. They were both active fighter pilots for, say, Brazil or Columbia, definitely a South American country. And they were there at the behest of their government to talk about not just the openness that their government had toward the subject of some UFOs being machines of advanced technology from parts unknown, et cetera, but described being scrambled, observing.

And most poignant was at one point, whoever their CEO or immediately over, officer over them, says tomorrow, you both will go to such and such a high school where they are having an assembly and you will answer their questions about the UFO phenomenon. And I thought, boy, you know, we think of ourselves, thought of ourselves here in the United States as, you know, somewhat cutting edge on this, although we are where the cover up began and where it is still centered. But all of the witnesses brought their own experiences, including a representative from mainland China, who was very articulate about what was going on there in terms of UFO studies. It was exciting.

It was historic, and I was very proud to be a part of it. But you know, that moment where you raise your hand and you swear to tell the truth before essentially essentially congressional representatives who have some very sharp questions for you. You respect the moment for what it is. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah.

Oh, man. I love revisiting that. It just, again, it was a springboard for so much that would eventually come in this field of study and the officialdom behind it. Amazing. Amazing. So one of the topics, Peter, that was discussed. at the citizen UFO hearing was, of course, Rendersham,

the Rendersham Forest incident, which you are quite familiar with, obviously. And you are not one to shy away from controversy, you know, whether it's the individual witnesses involved in this case or the researchers who've investigated it, a lot of people land on all different sides with it. but you are one of those people who wrote what I consider one of the most well-documented books on this case. However, your co-author has been put under intense scrutiny for his involvement in this case. And I'd love to approach that, if that's okay with you. A lot of our listeners and viewers know about the controversy.

behind Larry Warren. But for those who may not be familiar with what the issue is with this witness that you decided to co-author this book with, I just wanted to sort of give you the time to maybe unpack that for us. What happened, what the issue was, and where you are now with all of that. Whatever bike you're looking for from mountain to road, either pedal powered or electric, We've got what you want ready for super fast delivery. Quality gear at prices you won't find in your average bike shop.

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