Somewhere in the Skies - A Weekend with UFO Con Men

Episode Date: June 25, 2018

On episode 62 of SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES, we find Ryan and Jason McClellan of Rogue Planet, fresh off a busy weekend at two different conventions. They talk all about their recent experiences attending and speaking at both Alien Con and Denver Comic Con. We hear exclusive audio from several panels at both conventions, how the UFO topic was received at both, and they ask the tough question; Have UFOs truly gone mainstream in 2018? It was a jam-packed discussion about two jam-packed weekends with the UFO Con Men! Convention audio provided by CandiceHere, Only a Fine Day, and Rogue Planet TV Guest Bio: Jason McClellan is a UFO journalist and the producer/co-host of the web series Spacing Out! He is also the web content manager and staff writer for OpenMinds.tv, and a co-organizer and technical producer of the International UFO Congress. As a founding member of Open Minds, Jason served as a writer and editor for the now defunct Open Minds magazine. He has appeared on Syfy, NatGeo, and, most recently, he co-starred on H2’s Hangar 1: The UFO Files. He is the author of Only Weirdos See UFOs: An Introduction to the Public's Misperception of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena and Extraterrestrial Life. His work can be found at www.RoguePlanet.tv Patreon: www.patreon.com/somewhereskies Official Store: CLICK HERE Website: www.somewhereintheskies.com Order Ryan's Book by CLICKING HERE Twitter: @SomewhereSkies Instagram: @SomewhereSkiesPod Opening Theme Song, "Ephemeral Reign" by Per Kiilstofte Closing Song, "N.A.S.A" by Futurecop!  SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES is produced by Third Kind Productions, in association with eOne Entertainment  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

Hey y'all, Ryan Spreck here. As you all know, the Somewhere in the Sky's podcast is always free to consume. But it isn't free to create. That's why I've started the Somewhere in the Sky's Patreon campaign. On a monthly basis, you give what you think the show is worth. You'll be helping the show continue, grow, and to be something truly communal. And remember, there are rewards for each level of contribution, and the list is only grown. So please, help Somewhere in the Skies now by becoming a Patreon.

To contribute and to learn more, visit www. patreon.com backslash somewhere skies. Thank you for your support. And now on with the show. You know, many people have asked me, when do you think disclosure will happen? And many people expect an answer that, you know, maybe in two years or in five years or whatever, there will be a press conference. And, you know, I think that the more simple answer to that is disclosure is already happening and we are in the middle of it right now. This is Somewhere in the Skies with Ryan Sprague.

Hey guys, I am Ryan Sprague from Somewhere in the Skies. And I am Jason McClellan from Unknown. And we are doing a constravaganza today, a podcast crossover. We were both very busy this past. weekend, Jason, exhausted but busy and all for the better because we both attended conferences or conventions, I should say, all about UFOs and everything in between, brothers. So how was your weekend? First and foremost, where were you? Well, certainly exhausting. That's how these things go, especially when you're just in the middle of these big gatherings of people and running around

and trying to take it all in. It's exhausting. So it's many days after the fact. And I'm still sort of sort of recovering trying to get my energy back. But I was in Denver for Denver Comic-Con. For the past, I think, three or four years, I've been there as a guest. And it's just, it's a cool event, man. Yeah. And I remember when you guys did this. Was it last year? You were in Maureen? Yeah. Yeah. Last year we did a, did a UFO panel too. Yeah. It was so cool seeing finally, finally UFOs in a in a comic book convention. We'd been striving for this for years. and years and you guys finally made it happen. So I was really excited to see that happen last year. I'm so happy they asked you guys back to do this. And we're going to get into just exactly what you

guys talked about. But I wanted to sort of start it off with the convention I was at this past weekend because honestly, man, I'm more interested to hear about yours. Well, I saw all the photos you were posting and that everybody else was posting, man. That looked like a good time. It was a good time. And, you know, I kind of went into it expecting that more than anything, more than like a serious UFO convention. Oh, absolutely. You know, it's, it's in the name Alien Khan. So first and foremost, right there, you know, this isn't like, what are UFOs? Could they be alien? No, it's there are aliens and we fully embrace this stuff. So, yeah, this is Alien Khan. I believe they're in their second or third year now. This is in Pasadena, California. And, and, and, and,

And it's hosted by the ancient aliens television show, A&E Network, and Prometheus Entertainment, I believe they're called. They tried it last year, and holy hell, man, it just, it exploded. I think it was something like 10 to 15,000 people showed up last year. And this year, they went almost up to 25,000 people attended this. I believe it, yeah. Oh, my God. So, you know, I show up. I missed the first day, unfortunately, but I showed up the second day.

Saturday and, you know, signed in as a guest. I was speaking at the event and I show up and the line is wrapped around the block and people are waiting like two, three hours just to get in. So that tells you right here. This topic of aliens is definitely popular. It's definitely in the mainstream. And what the, this convention is trying to do now is get more UFO researchers involved, which I thought was really cool. So you did see a lot more of that this year other than just, you know, Georgios Euclos and people from ancient aliens or celebrities. You saw legitimate researchers. I mean, Nick Pope was there.

I got to see him do a really cool panel all about, you know, the recent Pentagon UFO program story and to the Stars Academy and disclosure. Well, what a difference a few months, mate. A few months ago, I think if you all had said, I'm going to AlienCon and I'm going to be hanging out with all the cast contributors from ancient aliens. A lot of family and friends and work colleagues would have said, oh, you don't believe that crazy stuff, do you? But in the last few months, we've seen a fundamental change in the way that subject has been handled. We've seen it appear on the front page of the New York Times. We've seen Nick, I don't care about politics.

This isn't a political issue. We've seen it on CNN, we've seen it on Fox. I was on Tucker Carlson tonight last week, talking about this Pentagon UFO program, the declassified Navy videos. So like I said, a few months ago, you would have been, oh, the people that kind of go to this kind of crazy stuff. Now, you are the people who are right.

Which was really cool. David Childress was there. I'm sure a lot of people remember him from ancient aliens. Stephen Bassett, our favorite person, favorite UFO lobbyist. UFO lobbyists. Yep. Dean Aliotto, the filmmaker, who was at the UFO Congress this past year. A newfound friend of mine, I shared a vendor table with him.

And everything in between, man. We had John Brandenburg, who's a plasma physicist. Seth Shawstack was there. Our favorite SETI debunker guy. So, yeah, it really ran the gamut. I had a great time. I got to see an ancient aliens panel with Giorgio and Eric von Danigan. Classic, classic chariots of the gods.

And that was really cool to see these two generations of ancient alien theorists, no matter what you believe in that entire prospect of UFOs or aliens of the ancient alien theory. It was cool to see those two together sort of hashing it out. So it was a great, great time. There are always new discoveries in archaeology. This is a never-ending process. As we grow over the planet, we always find new temples, we find new mysteries, we find new old writings which have not been published until today.

And this is the work we go on. And Jojo and I, we should wish it always these mysterious things and we should present them to the public in a honest way. You know, at the end of each of my speech in the country, I always say to the public, ladies and gentlemen, this is not what I do, is not the question of believe it or not. It has

nothing to do with religion. I will turn myself in a tomb if some idiots come out and make a kind of sect of what I'm doing. It's a question of knowing, not believing it. And what we do, we know things and we present things which we know they do exist.

Of course, there is still question mark behind. The facts to exist. The interpretation is something different. Look, a fact, for example, is the book of Encyclone. That fact exists. Everyone can read the book of Encyclot. But the interpretation between Georgia, I, and the theologians, the professor in theology, is completely different. Also, we use the same fact. So we use the fact like the Great Pyramid. The interpretation from archaeological side and our suggestions are completely different. But the facts are the same.

So we all start with facts and we ask questions and we have put the question mark at the end. We do not say you have to believe this. That's awesome, yeah. And I agree that I like what they did this year with the variety of guests and adding more people from, you know, more UFO researchers and more entertainment guests as well. You know, last year their first year, I thought it seemed like kind of a bizarre event because it really was just a like ancient, aliens convention and with some random like 70s and 80s TV stars I guess. You know, people I'd never heard of. And you're all, well, I see what they're going for.

They're trying to do like a Comic-Con type thing, but not really. So yeah, I questioned it last year. This year it just exploded and it looked like they did it right, man. And they do set it up, just like a Comic-Con. I mean, they've got like signings and photo ops and stuff like that with the celebrities. and how was the vendor room? The vendor room was insane. You could barely move in there.

It was shoulder to shoulder the whole time. That's crazy. What really surprised me, man, and what was really cool is this wasn't, you know, UFO people. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. It was people who were there because they love ancient aliens.

They love aliens in general. And they just love the whole aesthetic of that and the possibility of life elsewhere. So, I mean, you did. You had cosmobes. play everywhere. People dressed as aliens. People dressed as Georgiosuclos. I'm not getting you. That's amazing. And that's something that I, you know, I don't know why, but it didn't even cross my mind that there would be cosplay at that event. That is so rad. Everything. Everything you could think

of. And I mean, I sold out of books in the first day. And it's, again, it's because people were just there to consume, to find information, and to have a good time. So it far exceeded my expectations. Mary McDonnell was there from Battlestar Galactica. Awesome. She's always cool. She did an episode of her podcast where she brings on all women in sci-fi. So that was really cool. Oh, yeah.

She had Gates McFadden from Star Trek, right? Correct, Gates McFadden. They had a few other people. I think even Linda Moulin-How showed up for that to speak. So that was cool. The big draws, I will say, though, this year, besides Giorgio, obviously, were Mitch Pellege and David DuCovny from the X-Files. Yeah, that was a good time. The lines for that to get autographs and photos were insane. I mean, people waited five, six hours just to meet these guys. Could you

imagine? But they also did a panel, Mitch and David, about 25 years later of the X-Files. So that was cool. I got to sit on in that. I got some audio from that. So kicking off, it's been 25 years of the X-Files, 11 seasons, 218 episodes, should fans consider this the end of the road? I see we have 44 minutes to not answer your question. I have never had that before on a stage. I think I can do it. I'm going to count it down.

I've got a few more things to say. Wait a minute. That's 15 seconds of fuck if we know. Amen. It's the best answers that you guys are going to get. I mean, exactly. I know I felt a lot of feelings watching the season 11. finale. I felt a lot of feelings. I felt a lot of feelings. A barrage of feelings. Um, there's a lot of death,

a lot of reveals, a lot of surprises. What were your respective, uh, first impressions of of reading the script for the first time? The last episode, um, I, yeah, I thought, I thought it was really good. I was, I was, I was very happy with it. And it's funny because the thing at the end, you know, with, with, uh, Skinner under the car, I, I had said to Chris, we were in New York Comic-Con. I said, when Gillian had announced that she wasn't doing it anymore, I said, well, let's kill Skinner.

You said that? I did. I said, you were walking back, we were walking back from the thing back to the hotel. I've been saying that for years. I know you have, you bastard. And I said, I said to Chris, okay, well, Jillian says she's not coming back.

Let's have Skinner go out and a blaze of glory, doing something heroic and die. And he goes, oh, I don't think I want to do that. And then he started thinking about it, I guess, and then I went back, I immediately called him, I said, you know the thing about killing Skinner?

Maybe not. My feeling about the whole thing, and I don't think it'll be popular, but I feel like, you know, I understand the connection with the fans, and I want that, and I think it's a beautiful thing. But I also think that what we're making is a mystery. You know, we're making something

that we want to be surprising and to be enjoyed for the first time and the only time, the only first time you can get, not the only time, you can go back and watch it, whatever, but, you know, for not to know anything about it, not to be, and it's, to me, that's always my kind of push and pull with social media or behind-the-scenes stuff.

It's like, no, I want, I want people to be surprised when they see that stupid buck and blobfish. And I'm like, oh, the blobfish is trending on the bit of the, you know, so that's kind of my thing. So, you know, maybe I'm ornery. I don't know, but I like the magic. There's no mystery. And there's no mystery.

I like the magic of we're making this thing behind a curtain. You know, we're all working really hard to give you something that's going to be really entertaining and surprising. And now here it is. And now later we can talk about the blotfish or whatever. But that's kind of, it's old school, I guess, but forgive me. And we got to hear all about how season 11 was, what it was like the past 25 years

hopping into these characters again and possibly where the show might be heading next. So it was a really, really good time. And then I gave my talk. It was called A Human Approach to an Alien Phenomenon was the last event of the entire convention. So I wasn't even sure if anyone was going to show up. It was Father's Day.

And everyone was sort of winding down at this point. But I'm not kidding you, man. There's probably a solid four or 500 people who showed up and listened to me blab for over an hour and a half. That's awesome. It was great. I had tons of people come up to me after and tell me their UFO stories. You know, the talk was all about like the human side of it, kind of like the book.

And, you know, people who've had these experiences in their lives and how it impacts them. So it clearly impacted these people. And I stayed in the room after for like an hour, just chatting it up with people. So amazing, so much fun. And I know they're now expanding and doing one on the East Coast this November. in Baltimore. So maybe people see some familiar faces there in Baltimore in November.

We'll see. Yeah, that's cool, man. I mean, it's always ambitious when these organizers have a successful event and they decide to branch out like that and do two events, which you've got to give the other coast some love too. We are going to dive into the one I'm most excited about, and that was Denver

Comic-Con that you attended this weekend. So tell me all about Denver Comic-Con and how you sort of got, I guess, involved with this and how you got these panels on UFOs finally at a comic book convention. Sure. So Denver Comic-Con is pretty rad. I mean, they've got a good thing going there.

I mean, it's, you know, pretty much every city in the country has a Comic-Con now, and they vary widely in size. But Denver's done a really good job. They've only had there since 2012. And so this was their seventh year. But if I'm remembering correctly, I think even in their second year of having this event, they were already at like 100,000 people. Wow.

So very successful for them. It's put on by a nonprofit organization called Pop Culture Classroom. So the educational component is pretty important to them for their event. So several years ago, a friend of ours reached out to us, to me and our colleague, Morian Ellsbury, because he was a fan of the web series we were doing Spacing Out and everything we were doing at Open Minds. So he reached out and asked if we would be interested. and coming out to Denver Comic Con to be on some panels. So, you know, we jumped at that because we're big, big geeks, and we love that scene.

And, you know, like you, our big focus with a lot of what we do in UFO research and UFO journalism is targeting the general public. That audience that's not the typical UFO crowd because we want to introduce people to these topics, to the research that's been done. and kind of lay it out for people so they can get interested and start doing research on their own, you know, getting this new generation of researchers and people actively involved in UFO research. The perfect audience for us. So last year, we dove into UFOs and we did a panel on, I think we called it like Real Life X-Files. And when we were going to the room where the panel was going to be so we could get set up, We saw a huge line of people and we saw a room next to the ballroom we were going to be in filled with people like in in a line like going through all of the the crowd control barriers and stuff like zigzagging through and just filling this room. Well, what is going on?

And we ask like one of the volunteers there and they're all yeah, they're waiting for the next panel. Oh man, this sucks because clearly they think that like David de Coveney or Julian Anderson is going to be here. think it's like an X-Files panel. Oh, man, this is embarrassing. But no, we went in, the room filled up, they turned people away because they didn't have enough room for all these people. It's interesting because in the past, oh, five, six, seven years, we've seen a flood of releases of UFO files from really all of our departments, from the CIA, the FBI, the Air Force, these guys of all independently investigated UFOs. And these files are available to the public. And the CIA, especially with the revival of the X-Files, tried to capitalize on it last year when they published

some of their X-Files and said, see what's in our real X-Files. If you want to read 80,000 pages of really boring texts, be my guest. Yeah. And the FBI has a digital reading room. They call it the vault, I think, where you can go and type in UFO and find their files too. Of course, you know, we have no idea if they've actually released all the UFO files, probably not, and certainly not good stuff. But how many of you saw just the last week about the UK Ministry of Defense's UFO files? Okay, so the MOD, the Ministry of Defense, actively investigated UFOs for a long period of time. They had something they called the Flying Saucer Working Party, and through that they developed the UFOs.

desk. They had something, a post called the UFO desk, where they had a team assigned to actively receive UFO reports and investigate those reports. And over the past several years, they've gone through a process, because of a spawned by a Freedom of Information request, they've released in batches their UFO files. The audience there was just so cool. They were really into it. They wanted to hear more. They asked so many questions. They were really. engaged and after the event we found out that that particular panel was the largest outside panel that they've ever had at Denver Comic-Con. So they saw that, you know, there's this hunger for that, that, the topic, you know, of paranormal,

of extraterrestrial, of UFOs. So when we were invited back this year, they wanted more of that. So we did two panels focused on that. One was UFOs in pop culture. And the other was government paranormal research. And we did the government paranormal research was the first panel we did. We did that on Friday. And that was me, Maureen, and Jeremy Corbell, investigative filmmaker Jeremy Corbell.

And Jeremy was a busy guy there too. Got him roped into all sorts of panels. And he also did a couple solo presentations on his upcoming films. he did one on his Bob Lazzar film and one on his Skinwalker Ranch film. When you try to study something like the Skinwalker Ranch, you've got to cast a really wide net, because ultimately this mystery went on what the hell it is. You know there's more to a story, and you're not allowed to talk about it. That's a human burden.

Yeah, I mean, it was frustrating in the beginning because Colum and Bob Bigelow would tell me these stories about what was going on the property, and I couldn't tell anyone. There's a lot to uncovering all of this, huh? It's overwhelming. This is stuff, material that's specific to the ranch. I've saved every scrap of paper ever since Dr. Column Kelleher and Bob Bigelow sort of brought me into the loop. Is there more to tell now? There's a lot more to tell.

This is 30 or 40 hours of material that the public has never seen before. Sort of like a veil of secrecy. We are being manipulated by some kind of an intelligence. The things that happen on the ranch are real. What we don't know is who is responsible and what the game plan. But he was on the government paranormal research panel with us too. And again, super packed room full of very engaged audience members. They were rad. After the panel, the table, like the stage was swarmed with people who just wanted to talk and, you know, ask us questions, tell stories, things like that. But at Denver Comic-Con, the schedule is so tight that as soon as the panel's over, they clear the room and they've got like five minutes to,

and start the next panel. So, you know, you don't want to be a dick to the next people giving their panel, eating into their time. That's not fair. So we just got to the point where we tell people, all right, we love to talk with you, but let's go out. We're going to be out in the hall, come and see us out there. And they did. People would come up and want to talk. So that was really cool.

The UFOs and pop culture panel, we had Jessica Chobot and Andrew Bowser from the Nerdist Podcast, bizarre states. And they were on with me and Maureen and moderated by geek culture icon Bonnie Burton, who writes for Playboy and CNET. She used to work for Lucasfilm. She's awesome and knows a lot about UFOs and pop culture. But that was a more lighthearted kind of fun panel talking about how UFOs, like alleged real UFO events have influenced Hollywood, how Hollywood has influenced. How Hollywood has influenced our perception of UFOs and extraterrestrials, and what role the government has played in influencing what Hollywood puts out. That's so cool.

I mean, that idea of like this hyper-reality of like which which came first, you know, the chicken or the egg with Hollywood and UFOs, that's always really intrigued me most. And it's funny you mentioned that because Dean Aliotto, the filmmaker, did a couple panels at Arcon. and roped Alejandro Rojas and myself up there to get up there and talk about that very topic as well, Hollywood and UFOs. And what I found most interesting, I don't know if it was the same with the audience at yours, was that when we were telling them about these, you know, intrinsically linked things between, you know, the Roswell case and the flying saucer film that came, you know, months after it. Or you look at like the day the earth stood still, the CIA being directly involved with that film. or like all the way up to close encounters, ET and even Independence Day, like the people from Area 51 having to say in that movie, people were astounded and had no idea. And again, what I think is interesting is these are not UFO people, quote unquote, so they don't know all these stories that we embed ourselves in on a daily basis.

So their minds were like blown at these things we were telling them. Was it the same at your event? Absolutely. I mean, you certainly have, you know, some audience members who are familiar with some of these things. And, you know, you can tell by the questions they ask. But for the most part, you know, a lot of these people are hearing this stuff for the very first time. You know, even people who were, when we started talking about some of the most recent government UFO studies, people had sort of remembered seeing it in the news, but they didn't know any sort of details about it. and, you know, still didn't know that Harry Reid was involved or that this was even something that was confirmed. You know, they thought it was just another, you know, silly story or something. But we'd get totally unrelated questions to things that we'd been talking about. I mean, we didn't mention the Phoenix Lights at all or particular sightings, but, you know, we'd get questions about, you know, what we thought of the Phoenix Lights and things like that. So it was really cool.

That's awesome. Now, I have to ask you about the government and UFO panel. Did this focus more on the, you know, the current stuff, the penins. Nikon program and Skinwalker and all that? Or did Jeremy and you guys, did you sort of trace it back as well? So being that I had Jeremy on the panel, I wanted to focus a lot on the current stuff. Okay. You know, certainly.

And with him there to talk about his Skinwalker film, that was perfect. We wanted to spend, you know, about half of our time talking about Skinwalker. But we let it off. And, you know, the government's been involved in so many, quote unquote, paranormal. studies that, you know, you could talk for days about that. But we had our limited time or 50 minutes or whatever it was. So we had to pick and choose and just kind of do a brief overview. But I decided to start with like MK Ultra and talk about, you know, like mind control and remote viewing and stuff like that. And we moved into the UFOs because we really wanted to focus on UFOs because I love talking about

UFO. So, you know, we certainly started talking about sign and grudge and blue book, kind of glossed over things like the Condon Committee and Robertson panel. But that led us into current day, or at least officially recent UFO studies, so ATIP and the and the like. So that was our sort of blueprint for the panel. And it mostly stuck to that. But yeah, I wanted to primarily spend the time on Skinwalker because that is like the hodgepodge of everything. that was researched by the government. So, and that blew people's minds. That's really cool.

And the entire group, you actually got to go visit the Stanley Hotel, which people may recognize from The Shining, terrifying. I spoke to a paranormal investigator who spent like three years investigating that place. And I can't even imagine what that was like. So what was it like going to like one of the most haunted places ever with these people? And what did they think about all of that? I'm interested to know what the hosts of Bizarre states, what they think about all this UFO stuff. Well, they're certainly super into it.

You know, they focus a lot of their podcast on it. And, you know, I've interviewed Jessica Chobot before on spacing out. And, you know, she's had at least one UFO experience before. So, I mean, she's all about it, all about the strange. But, you know, she approaches it like I think a lot of people do. And that is, and perhaps myself. included, but, you know, they look into these things because they're just fascinated by the unknown, by unexplained things. And they like, like that journey of just like looking into it

and following it and seeing where it goes. They were certainly there longer than we were because they went up in the morning. And I don't think they had a good experience. Their most recent episode of Bizarre States, they pretty much complained about their entire trip. So you can, you can hear about it from them. All right, well, let's shift gears into the Stanley Hotel Because we finally got to go down there, everybody. And it was interesting. All right, you ready? Go ahead.

Light them up. Well, here's the only thing. We are experienced with them just in the communication that we've had in trying to film there. They've said time and time again, we're trying to move away from the supernatural history of this place or capitalizing too much on that angle for tourism. Then you get there. And it's just fucking ghost shit, ghost shit, ghost shit, ghost shit, ghost shit. They're not moving away from it. So what the fuck were they talking about?

Oh, yeah. Their drinks are named after the fucking red rum from the shining. Their gift shop is full of ghost books and paranormal shit. The thing when we walked in was there's a giant seance happening tonight. Like, I don't get what they've been feeding us for, you know, over a year when you get there. And they're like, jockey gist? We got gays? Yeah, I mean, the funny thing is I was so amped to go up there.

And we went right after being at Comic Con all week. weekend. So we were dead. Absolutely dead. We like roll into this haunted hotel and we're all, where's the bed? I want to sleep. Yeah, no, it wasn't the ideal situation for ghost hunting. And we missed the, they do, they do ghost tours there too. And we missed the ghost tour because we were too late getting up there. So we just kind of walked around and stuff. And I was too, too tired to, you really be perceptive enough to see anything out of the ordinary or sense anything. So I had no experiences at the Stanley. But, yeah, they're great stories.

And it's a rad place. I mean, it's super old. It has, you know, all that atmosphere that you want, you know, super old, super cool looking. But, you know, nothing that would remind you of The Shining because they didn't actually film The Shining there just was the inspiration for Stephen King to write the Shining. So if you go into it expecting that, you're going to be disappointed. But, no, it's still a rad old hotel that's super haunted. Yeah, yeah, that's so cool.

I hope to get there someday in the near future. Yeah, yeah, I mean, we definitely need to do some ghost hunting anyway. Yes. I love ghost hunting. You know, ghost hunting's fun. I mean, I love skywatching too, but sky watching, you know, you just stare at the sky. Where's ghost hunting? You've got some cool toys to play with, so that's fun.

And, yeah, I recently got a full-spectrum camera, so I wanted to try that out, but I didn't actually get to bust it out and do anything with it. But that'll happen sometime. But, no, I mean, I've had some fun experiences, ghost on things. Same here, man. Again, I think it's just opening up your mind to other things. We get so entrenched in the UFO stuff all the time that we've got to remember there's other weird stuff out there. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. And I'm all about it, man. I love the weird. Yeah. Well, what I thought was really cool, at least at my event, you know, they sort of pack all the talent people into like rooms for breakfast, lunch and dinner. And I actually got to talk with several of the people. I did not record them, unfortunately.

I didn't have the equipment at the time to do it. But, you know, I was, I had breakfast with Mitch Pellegey, Skinner from the X-Files. Yeah, right. And, you know, he, he asked me what I did. And he was super interested. And he, you know, he's just shaking his head. He's like, wow. He's like, you know, we do this on TV.

But to know there's actual people out there doing this. stuff, like investigating UFOs and that people have actually seen stuff. He's like, that's really amazing to me. So I asked him, I'm like, do you believe any of it? He's like, no, none of it. But it's still really cool knowing that people are out there pursuing a truth that they're searching for. So that really invigorated me that even these people who, you know, clearly are actors and just doing their job, they respect the fandom first and foremost that made them who they are. But they also respect the people that kind of their their characters are based around in a very broad sense. But I thought that was really cool as well.

Something that, you know, really got me excited to hear was I think this was in our UFOs and pop culture panel. There were a couple of teenage girls in the audience and they asked a question. But I'm trying to remember what it was. It was something along the lines of like, no, I think we'd ask people about like, you know, the ridicule factor. We'd mentioned something about the stigma surrounding the UFO topic. And these girls, you know, these teenage girls were saying that like younger people, you know, it's not a big deal to them. They just like are happy to accept it. I thought that is so, that's so rat. I love the

younger mindset, you know, and we got questions of course about like what would confirmation of extraterrestrial life did religion and, you know, all the stuff that we're used to hearing. But it was, it was really cool when we were talking about just people being able to accept it or whatever and these girls are all yeah yeah we kind of already do like people our age it's not not a big deal we're all yay go young people yes that's a good point man the younger generation they're like they they're they're ready they're ready for this stuff and it's it's almost a given to them i mean look at like what happened on mars what last week the discoveries of the organics and the phosphorus and like we're inching closer and closer to either finding ancient life on another planet or possible, you know,

current microbial life. So again, you know, it's not these little gray men that some of the the people on our planet believe are visiting us, but it's a step in the right direction. And at the end of the day, like, that's all we want is the truth to get sort of X-files about it. We just want the truth, no matter what that truth might be. I think it was on our government paranormal research panel. Jeremy asked the audience. He just said, would you guys freak out if you found out that aliens are real? And everybody's all, no. He's all, are you ready for the truth? They're all, yeah. We're like way into it. No, bring on, bring on aliens. Woo, bring them out on stage. Yep. Well, that's good, because look,

who we have here. Right, right. Governor Fife Simington style. Yeah, Paula Simington. Yeah. I actually, I also spoke, I want to get your thoughts on this before we sort of wrap things up, Jason. the whole ancient alien theory. Now, I went into this event being like, oh, God. Like, I don't watch ancient aliens. I'm not really a big proponent of this idea. You know, they're in what? Season of 53 of this thing right now.

Yeah, I think it's 53. Yeah. So I kind of had that sour stench in my mouth going into it. So when I got there, I realized, oh, okay, so this isn't just about ancient aliens. It's cool. Check one off the list. This is okay. And then I actually, when I was signing in, I met up with a guy named Rami Romani, who is an Egyptologist and a documentarian on ancient aliens.

Really cool, young dude, super energetic. And I asked him straight up, I'm like, so what is it about this show that you think really appeals to people and has made it last so long? And he said, it's the idea of, you know, sort of throwing out everything you've ever been taught or been. forced to think about and rethink it, reshape it, and remold it. And I was like, okay, I'm totally down for that. That's cool. And then I asked him, like, do you believe that aliens built the pyramids or did this or did that?

And, you know, he straight up told me. He's like, I'm an Egyptologist. Like, I've been studying this my entire life. He said, no, I do not believe aliens built the pyramids in Egypt. He said, what we try to convey on the show and what a lot of people misrepresented as is that it's possible that there was some sort of intervention, maybe at one point in time, maybe in many, that some sort of intelligence from some other place, maybe planet, maybe universe, maybe dimension, whatever, spoke to the Egyptians and sort of, you know, nudge them along or gave them

visions or gave them messages about how to do these things. So, you know, I really respected that. It wasn't aliens came and built the pyramids, forgetting about the vast history and knowledge of the Egyptians being not able to do that themselves. So I thought that actually really, I learned something my first day there about the whole ancient alien theory that kind of changed my mind about it. That, yeah, maybe it is possible that they had visions. We hear about this in every culture leading up to their technological renaissance, as it were. So I found that pretty interesting. What are your thoughts on the whole ancient alien thing? I've never really asked you that.

Well, certainly when it comes to the show, when it first started, I gave it a shot because I love history and I love aliens. So, you know, I thought this is perfect. And I love the historical aspect to the show. But, you know, if they really did stick to posing possibilities, that would be just fine. But that's not really what happens. And they do it in creative ways. but several of the contributors, you know, phrase things as saying, like, there couldn't be any other way except extraterrestrials did this. So, you know, I think a lot of people gravitate toward it because it's providing answers, you know, and I think that's dangerous because we don't have the answers to give people.

These are possibilities, but people are, you know, blindly listening to what these people are telling them on TV because these are experts and they're showing all these cool historical photos. and things and presenting it in a way that this absolutely happened this way with extraterrestrials. So I don't like that. And I think, you know, it's done a little bit of damage in terms of the public's perception of UFOs and extraterrestrials. Because this show in the general public is viewed as this, you know, it's a silly meme. It really is. Like everything in every legitimate UFO story that comes out, anything about extraterrestrial life or the possibility of life on other planets, you know, we always see the Giorgio meme. We always see it's aliens. You know, so I don't really like that the show has done that or that that is the representation in pop culture for UFOs and extraterrestrials.

I agree. I agree with you so much. And, you know, Dean and I struggled when we were at this event, you know, when we were at this event, you know, when we were. we're in the vendor rooms, you know, because, you know, we're trying to make our money back on traveling there. Absolutely. And, you know, we wrote books for a reason, you know, get information out, but also, you know, make a little, little cash on the side to help us fund our further research. We're not millionaires by any sense of the word when we do these things. But again, like, people were rabid buying stuff left and right, left and right.

And we just looked at each other at one point and we're like, you know the only reason that we're doing so well here is because of Georgia's super. That's right. And we both admitted it. We're like, yeah. These people came to have an experience to think, but they also came to see this now iconic celebrity from television. Absolutely. Absolutely. And you know what? If we can sort of sort of use that to our advantage to get people interested in what we're talking about, why not? So it's tough. It's a struggle. The whole cult of celebrity in and out of the UFO field is, you know, always been a struggle as well. But at the end of the day, It was a lot of fun. That's kind of how I was looking at our event is it was fun. Was it insightful and informational? Yeah, yeah, it was every now and again. But overall, it was just a good, good time and got a lot of weirdos together to just celebrate aliens.

That's awesome, man. And yeah, you have to look at it like that. You know, it's just like the annual Roswell Festival or the McMinville Festival. Like, those are not to be confused with serious research gatherings. They're just fun times. There are places for people to celebrate the weird and, you know, embrace their weirdness and be around people who like the things they like. And, you know, Denver Comic-Con and AlienCon, those bring in the fandom element, too,

you know, where you get to hang out and see and take photos with people you've seen on TV. So I dig it. I dig it too, man. And I mean, the last thing I'm sort of going to say to wrap up my con was we had a during a panel that I mentioned earlier with Dean Aliotto Alejandro Rojas and myself talking about Hollywood and UFOs. We did a Q&A after. A couple people asked questions about certain movies. And then I'm not kidding you, this kid, he had to be no older than like 10, 12 maybe. He gets up to the mic and he says, hello, gentlemen. My question for you is, what? What president do you think has been most interested in UFOs? Because I remember seeing Bill Clinton talking about this topic when he was president. And also Hillary meeting with Rockefeller and talking about this as well. And we all, we were stunned. Dang.

This kid could barely reach the microphone. They had to bring it down to him. And he was able to like pull up this pretty obscure kind of reference to presidents and UFOs. Nice. Oh my God. Like the audience started laughing. when he asked the question, but we were all like, holy shit. Yeah, yeah.

Let's tell him, like, what we know about it. Yeah, that kid knows his shit. Yeah, Al-Ahajah went into the whole story, and the kid took it in, and he just goes, thank you, and walked away. And that, like, that was it for me, man. If the con had ended there, I would have been like, oh, my God, a 10 to 12-year-old is inquiring about presidents and UFOs. Like, if I'd been doing that at age 10, I can't even imagine.

So that kind of culminated the whole event for me is the future of uphology looks bright. Even amongst the celebrity with all of this ancient alien stuff, there are young minds out there looking into this topic. And we can only hope that they continue to do it. So that's kind of my wrap up for mine. How about you? Well, I just love seeing the interest. You know, I mean, you and I know the interest is there. Most people, you know, are interested in this topic.

and most people have some sort of personal connection to it too. But I love seeing that the stigma is slowly going away. People love to celebrate, you know, whatever weirdness they have. And that's what Comic-Con are really known for. They're just like this celebration of being who you are and what you like, you know, not being ashamed to say, I love my little pony or whatever you like, you know. So when you bring UFOs into that same. type of crowd or same type of environment, people get to celebrate their love of UFOs,

the love of extraterrestrials, and their curiosity for those topics. So it's why I really love Denver Comic Con and love supporting it, because they've just been so receptive to it. They identify that that desire, that hunger for, you know, more information about these topics is there. So they want to fill it. And I'm happy to do it as long as I continue to be invited. and I want to bring it to other locations as well. So that's my plan, man. I mean, I really hope to do more of these panels at different conventions around the country.

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Service is not available in all areas. I have no doubt that's going to happen with a successive Denver Comic-Con, with a success of AlienCon. I think this topic, like you said, is only becoming more mainstream with what Tom DeLong is doing and everything in between. I think we really do live in a new era of not disclosed. but the UFO topic becoming legitimate and worth studying more now than ever in a world where, you know, we're scared. We're uncertain about whatever comes next, especially in America. So if we can look to that other for hope, that's all we can truly ask for. Now, I have to ask you before we go, Jason, what comes next?

I know you've got some trips coming up, euphological in some sense. What can we expect from you and rogue planet in the near future? Oh, we're going to be having some fun. Roswell. Yes. Roswell. I'm super excited for Roswell. I mean, I say that.

I've been there a couple times now, and Roswell is kind of a depressing place. It is. It is. It is. And it's kind of a pain in the ass to get to. But that being said, I mean, it's Roswell. You know, you've got to go. And the festival is crazy and fun and a lot of familiar faces there.

So it's good to go and experience the annual celebration there. But, yeah, I'm going to be doing some interviews and some stuff for some upcoming things from Rogue Planet. So there's going to be a lot of social media happening during that trip. Awesome. I cannot wait to see and hear all of that. And Jason, man, I'm so happy we got to sit down debrief after our very eventful but exhausting events this past week. I wouldn't have it any other way. Hell yeah, man.

It sounds like yours was a blast. I know mine was a blast. So, you know, they just happened to be on the same weekend. I know. It's a bummer, but we got to cover all the bases, right? Exactly, exactly. And there's only more to come. That's right.

That's right. All right. That is it for this week's episode. Again, my thanks goes out to Jason McClellan for coming on and talking all about his experiences at Denver Comic-Con. If you know of any conventions coming to your hometown where you think a UFO panel might be of interest, please reach out to Jason and I. and we'd love to talk to you more in depth about bringing Rogue Planet and Somewhere in the Skies to your hometown convention. To learn more about what Jason and Maureen are up to at Rogue Planet and to contact them personally, visitrogPlanet.tv. If you have a few moments, please consider subscribing, rating, and reviewing Somewhere in the Skies on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you may listen from.

It helps the show gain new listeners, and only then can we start to ask new questions. We're on Twitter at SomewhereSkies and on Instagram at SomewhereSkies pod. If you haven't had a chance to check out the Somewhere in the Sky's store, now is the time. We have an all-new exclusive t-shirt featuring the godfather of Uphology, J. Ellen Heineck. Want to represent the OG uphologist in style? This and many other designs are available at tpublic.com. Just search for Summer in the Skies. Again, that's teepublic.com.

Last but not least, all past episodes, articles, news, and contact information can be found at the official website, somewhere in the skies.com. Thank you, as always, for listening, and I hope you'll join me here next week for our third installment of witness accounts, where you'll hear directly from those who've experienced firsthand the UFO phenomenon in the most strange, scary, beautiful, and most human of ways. That's witness accounts, volume three, next Monday. Until then, remember, keep your feet on the ground, but never stop searching. Somewhere in the skies. Somewhere in the skies is produced by Third Kind Productions in association with the Entertainment One podcast network. To learn more, visit Entertainment Onepodcast.com. This is Angelica Norton, and this is Amber Moreno. I produce and I host a podcast called Chaddy Crabties. I chat with our crafty friends about what drives them to make, perform, and create.

It's not about perfection. No. It's about expression. We invite you to peer into the lives of our guest's creative processes and inspirations. We hope to excite those who assume they're not creative and support those who may have forgotten that they are. Honestly, I just want to celebrate and absorb their creative energy to try new things. So it won't sound so daunting for me to, oh, so a swimsuit. Tell a story on stage in front of me.

strangers or get back into painting. So find us at chattycrafties.com for a new episode every Wednesday. Thanks for listening. Now go make some art.