Somewhere in the Skies - David Marler's Mission to Save UFO History

Episode Date: October 6, 2025

Ryan and Suzanne are joined by David Marler, Executive Director of the National UFO Historical Records Center (NUFOHRC), to uncover how the world’s largest repository of UFO/UAP documents and files came to be. Marler stressed why preserving decades of UFO history is more important now more than ever and how the archives are helping researchers, journalists, and even the United States Government gain access to information on UFOs and UAP. You'll also hear never-before-heard interview clips with Captain Gerry Irwin, a U.S. Army officer at the heart of one of the strangest UFO encounters in history, and Major Jesse Marcel Sr., the man forever linked to the infamous Roswell UFO crash. These rare voices, preserved through David’s tireless work of obtaining documents and audio files, shed new light on some of the most significant events in UFO history. Visit the National UFO Historical Records Center at: https://nufohrc.org/ 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] Email: [e-mail] YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SomewhereintheSkies 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 Proud member of SpectreVision Radio: https://www.spectrevision.com/podcasts Read Ryan’s articles at: https://medium.com/@ryan-sprague51 Opening Theme Song by Septembryo Copyright © 2025 Ryan Sprague. All rights reserved. #UFOs #UAP #DavidMarler #NUFOHRC #UFOHistory #Roswell #JesseMarcel #UFOFiles #Disclosure #SomewhereInTheSkies Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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there's a birthday girl searching for them right now. Your one-and-done look is about to pay for your next night out, or at least the right home. Your style can make you cash. Start selling on Deepop. where taste recognizes taste. Hey, what's going on, guys? Ryan Sprag here from Somewhere in the Sky's podcast,

and I'm coming straight off of flight. I am now back in Nova Scotia. That's right. I am in my second home of Nova Scotia, Canada, but I'm not hunting ghosts this time. I'm actually here as a attendee at the Shag Harbor UFO Expo, the incredible conference that I was honored to speak at last year. But this year, I'm just coming as an attendee.

I am joined by my incredible friend and colleague Paul Kimball. So we are living it up, Shag Harbor style. We're going to be hearing presentations from, of course, Chris Stiles, the preeminent Shag Harbor UFO researcher. Preston Dennett is here as well. So I can't wait to hear what he has to talk about. Mark Daytonio is here. He's going to be talking all about astronomy, UFOs, interstellar objects,

everything like that. And we have Darcy Weir premiering one of his UFO documentaries as well. So I am super excited and honored to be here yet again in Nova Scotia. But I'm also excited to bring you this interview this week with the one and only David Marler, the preeminent triangular UFO researcher and the curator, creator, creator, and executive director of the National UFO Historical Records Center. So of course, Suzanne and I talk to David all about the center, all about his book, triangular UFOs, an estimate of the situation. And there is audio in this interview that I guarantee you you have never heard before. The public has never heard before. Now, in his time of curating the center, David Marler has been given audio files, audio reels that have never been made public before. So you are going to hear some of the center. David Marler has been given audio files, audio reels that have never been made public before. So you are going to hear some of those for the very first time ever here on the summer in the sky's podcast, which includes an interview with Gary Irwin, the UFO witness who went missing for a few days. They thought he went AWOL when he was in the Air Force, but lo and behold, when they found him, he had this crazy UFO event that he reported.

And I always thought this was like urban legend. It was myth. But here we are, APRO, as an hour-long interview with Gary Irwin. You're going to hear clips from that in this episode. You're also going to hear clips from a 45-minute interview that took place between Lee Spiegel and Jesse Marcel, Sr. And, guys, there is stuff in this interview that you've never heard before. Things that will completely change your perception of what happened in Roswell in 1947. and what Jesse Marcel Sr. saw an experience that day when he was the first to arrive on site at the UFO crash debris site.

We also have interview between two radar operators, clips of them talking to one another about a UFO event that took place over Vandenberg Air Force Base. So, yeah, you are in for a treat with this interview with David Marler. I'm so honored that he allowed us to share these clips with you guys. Also, if you want to hear the unedited, uncensored, full interviews with both Gary Irwin and Jesse Marcel Sr., you can listen to those right now on Patreon. Just go to patreon.com slash somewhere skies. And yeah, you're going to hear the full hour-long interviews with both Gary Irwin and Jesse Marcel Senior.

Again, that's patreon.com slash somewhere skies. links are in the show notes as well for that. And I hope you enjoy this interview. I'm going to go down and watch Darcy Weir's brand new UFO documentary, and I will catch up with you guys next week on the podcast where we have another very exciting interview lined up for you guys as well. So enjoy. Be sure to rate and review the podcast on Spotify and Apple.

If you're watching on YouTube, hit that like, hit that subscribe. do all that YouTube stuff, we would certainly appreciate it. Every rating in review truly, truly helps the show continue and grow. So enjoy our interview with David Marler. And remember, keep your feet on the ground, but never stop searching somewhere in the skies. While our government's official position is not to speculate on this subject, we can choose to let our minds explore other possibilities to use our imaginations. for if we consider the astro scientists agree on one point

that the possibility of life elsewhere is not only quite probable some field is there without a doubt let us suppose them that these objects are real space vehicles extraterrestrial origin and not an illusion of the mind I'm Ryan Sprick and you are now somewhere in the skies welcome back to somewhere in the skies and a huge and warm welcome to past guest. It has been far too long since we'd had him on the show.

He has some very exciting developments. In fact, the National UFO Historical Reporting Center was not around the last time we spoke, David. So I'm so excited to talk about all of this. David Marler, welcome back to somewhere in the sky. No, thank you, Ryan. It's great to be back with you and continuing our ongoing conversation on the subject. Yes, and we have a lot to cover with you tonight, for sure. Some exciting developments going on in your world as well.

But let's bring people back a little bit. Now, we always have new people getting interested in this topic, which is actually a big part of the work you're doing, is introducing UFOs to students and younger people. We have them. I get reached out to all the time by people in college, people in high school. It's so, so cool. So I'm going to let me.

let Suzanne start us off here as kind of the newer version of somewhere in the sky's 2.0 and let you kick it off, Suzanne. All right, great. David, thanks so much for coming on. And such a pleasure to finally get to see you in person. We're not really in person, but electronically in person. Yes. Yeah.

Well, I would love for you to start by painting a picture for our listeners of who you are and how you got started with UFOs. Yeah. I'll try to give you the Reader's Digest version of my origin story. So growing up in the 1970s, my father had an interest in Bigfoot, UFOs, Bermuda Triangle, all things paranormal, never to the degree of actually going out and investigating. But in the 70s, a lot of those topics were really popular. And as a young kid growing up in the 70s, I would hear these stories. In 1973, I was five years old, so people can do the math. I'm getting up there in age now.

And in 1973, there was a series of UFO sightings in a small area called Piedmont, Missouri, which is to the south of St. Louis, Missouri, which is the area I grew up around. And my father had relatives from there, and he actually grew up in a neighboring town called Millspring, Missouri. And his aunt and uncle had seen strange lights and objects, and people were reporting this. And it had garnered a lot of St. Louis media attention, newspaper, television news crews going down there. And I remember at the age of five years old hearing the term UFO for the first time related to this. And my father, my brothers and my older sister were piling in the Chevy with thermos of coffee and binoculars and making the two and a half hour drive down to Piedmont to look for UFOs. They did that at least three or four times, I think that's spring and summer, never saw anything themselves, but they would always come back with stories of talking to police officers, talking to teachers, talking to various people in the community that had seen unusual things.

That was kind of my initial introduction to the UFO subject at a very early age. And then fast forward in time, 1977, my sister and her husband had a close encounter with the UFO, literally like the scene from Richard Dreyfus and close encounters, not with things flying around in the car, but with the spotlight down around the vehicle illuminating the surrounding area. There was no wind, there was no noise. It wasn't a police helicopter. And as soon as the light went on, after a few seconds of panic, in the car, the light suddenly went out. They didn't talk about it. They drove home, never exchanged

one word, went upstairs, went to bed, pulled the covers up over their head, and only the next morning did they say, hey, what was that last night that we saw? Wow. That was an interesting experience. And then a year later in 1978, north of St. Louis, again, much like Piedmont, there was a series of UFO sightings, Calumetalations in an area called Ellsbury, Missouri. And That had garnered, again, a lot of St. Louis media attention. So I never had a siting of my own. I know some people have really dramatic origin stories. You know, I had a siting and that's what was a catalyst for my interest in the subject.

It was really just a successive series of events growing up. And then fast forward in time, 1990 heard about Mufon, the Mutual UFO Network and was shocked that, wow, there's actually groups and people that investigate, actively investigate. I'd like to do that. And so when I started this road 35 years ago, almost 36 years ago, I thought, well, if I'm going to investigate, I need to know what I'm talking about. So naively, and I look back on this, I was so naive at the time. I went to all the local library branches looking for UFO books to check out. There was little or no books on the subject at the local libraries.

So at that time, I thought, well, if I'm going to have a library of books, I guess I'm going to have to create my own. And by that I meant a little bookcase in my living room, nothing significant by any means. Now, of course, with the National UFO Historical Records Center, it's just kind of grown to epic proportions. And we're not only, you know, having our library, but we're collecting other people's collections and libraries and bringing it together. And I kind of joke, it's kind of like the laws of physics. The larger the mass, the greater the gravitational pull. And the more we gather, the more people start coming out of the woodwork saying, well, I have my uncle's paper. I have these documents that you might be interested in.

And it seems like the more that we build the archive, the more it attracts and the level of interest as well as new acquisitions. 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.

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And Ryan and I often talk about his witness accounts episodes very much like I feel about your archiving. There is going to come a point in time where I feel like these details are going to really matter. And so I view your work as so incredibly important. I know it's important now, but I think even in the future, as we learn more and get a more honest assessment from those in charge, I think it could really be a gym. I agree. And to your point, just to underscore what you just said, we have so many people scheduling appointments to come to the archives who acknowledge, up until 2017, I didn't give the subject any credence. So, you know, we kind of lovingly refer to these people as the 2017ers, the people that just got involved after the New York Times. article, but to your point, Suzanne, they're now coming in and if they truly want to learn what's going on, they have to do catch up as it relates to the history. And the thing I always like to

talk about, you know, when people hear about historical archive, a lot of people yawn and they think about dusty shelves and dusty books and papers, as I've stated to many individuals and groups that we've had conversations with in the last year specifically, these are not just historical documents. if we're dealing with a genuine phenomenon, all of these case files, and we have the largest collection of UFO case files in the history of the United States, assembled under one roof,

if we're dealing with a genuine phenomenon, these are not just historical anecdotes, these are not just historical case files, they're all potential data points in looking at characteristics, trends, patterns, and levels of activity as it relates to the UFO subject. So this is a vast data resource, if we're truly going to try to understand

what we're dealing with, with this UFO subject. I couldn't agree more. And I do think there will come a point in time when we are able to see the patterning of what they look like in the 40s, what they look like in the 50s, what my experience in the 60s showed me

very different from other things before and after. So I think the value is going to end up being tremendous. But I want to pop back to Mufon for a minute. You know, Mufon does such good hard work out there in the field and so uncredited so often. But I think that I recall, and correct me if I'm wrong, that you made your way to state director of Mufon and Illinois. Yes.

Yes. Yeah, I was the one that said, yeah, I'll do it, not knowing what I was putting myself into. And I know there's probably other state directors out there that were either past or current state directors. They're acknowledging the same thing. It's a lot of work, and you put a lot of time and money into that. but I didn't realize what I was getting myself into.

But yes, it was rewarding. I had a great team of state section directors, field investigators in the state of Illinois. And it was shortly after I took over as state director that we had that famous triangle case back in 2000. Hard to believe now we're coming up on the 26th anniversary of that case. But I was a very young investigator at the time, but we had all these police officers reporting this triangle.

And I still get a lot of people asking about information. on that case. When I was investigating it, when you're in the moment, you really don't appreciate it, but I didn't realize it would kind of go down as like one of the landmark cases in the history of the subject. And I've had a lot of interest, even today, like I said, and people wanting to know more about it or is there any additional information. But pretty much everything that I have is I put in my book, the first two chapters of my book. We're going to want to talk about your book, your great book. I wondered, other than that big triangle case when you were state director in Illinois's move on, was there sort of a smaller, less known case that was particularly interesting to you?

Yes, there's one, and I'm not sure if it's highlighted on the National UFO Reporting Center website, but in 1995, we called it the IDS of March siting. It was March 15th, 1995, you know, beware of the Iads of March. And we had multiple sightings in multiple states of a green fireball that was thought to be a meteor. And admittedly, I mean, you know, we always try to find a prosaic explanation of these UFO sightings. But once we started collecting reports and a number of reports from Missouri Highway Patrol, as well as local police officers on the Illinois side of the river or the Mississippi, in addition to numerous civilian witnesses and then connecting with other investigators and other

states. This object, whatever it was, was apparently making turns and course corrections as it was moving through the upper atmosphere. And I remember it was one of the first cases that introduced me to Peter Davenport, who only recently had taken over the reporting center, I think, within that year. And so that was an introduction to working with Peter Davenport, which I did for years after that, of course, and he's still a dear friend. But that was an interesting sighting because, again, many of these were police officers that I was interviewing. And then we also had a series of sightings in around Springfield, Missouri.

I helped with the local Mufine group there. We had, again, Missouri Highway Patrol officers describing lights and objects. And there's still a huge amount of activity, UFO activity, even today, but especially in the early to mid-1990s, there was a lot going on. around Springfield, Marshfield, and Northview, Missouri. And in fact, we even worked with Sheriff Wells. I always remember his name. And I have his business card still from like 1994, 95.

We went in and actually gave him a presentation on cattle mutilations because they were having a rash of cattle mutilations and UFO sightings. And it was great, the level of cooperation that I've had with law enforcement over the years because Sheriff Wells said, now you said you guys are out patrolling at night, keeping your eyes open. I said, we have infrared cameras, we have video cameras. We're trying to see what's causing these things. So he said, well, give me the make and model of your vehicles.

Give me your license plate numbers. And he goes, I'll let my men know that you guys are helping us, his term. And he goes, that way, they won't harass you if they see you on the side of a county road or anything. They know why you're there. So the level of cooperation I've had with local law enforcement over the years and the January 5th case as well with the police officers coming forward with their testimony has just been tremendous. I have utmost respect for law enforcement outside of UFOs, but my engagement and work with them in the UFO arena has been wonderful. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I've been visiting like David Marler out there speeding going 100 miles per hour. They pull them over and they're like, what are you doing? No, I've parted the UFO group. There's a UFO site that I've got to get to. Oh, go, go, go, go, go. Don't make me call Officer Wells because I'll do it. Yeah. Let him go. He's one of the UFO guys.

No kidding. No kidding. That would be a creative way to try to get out of a speeding ticket. Right, right. I don't think that's ever been done. It hasn't worked as far as we know. I might try that in the future, though, now that you say that. Wouldn't hurt.

It wouldn't hurt. Well, I love what you just said about local law enforcement, because if you have an eye towards a historical view of all the big, experiences, the sort of the national or international experiences, where big government gets hold of things before you can get access to interviews with the right people. It's a vastly different thing. I love that you had the opportunity on a local level to actually get substantive information from these officers. Absolutely. And Suzanne, it's funny. The one particular case, I had investigated a UFO siding with one of the officers. This was in Southern Illinois. And while I was in the

the police department, one of the other officers overheard. He goes, hey, he goes, I had a citing 15 years ago. So you go in to get one report and you come away with two or three reports. More. Right. Once, and I think you'll both agree and you've probably experienced this, once people know it's safe to talk about the subject, that you're not going to laugh, you're not going to ridicule the individual. It's amazing how that just creates fertile ground for discussion where people are now willing to come forward. In fact, we're partnering with the Rio Rancho Public Schools system who have provided our facilities for the public archives. And one of the administrators came up to me about four months ago. And he kind of sidled up to me. And he said, you know, I have to

tell you something. Since we've been engaged in this project with you, I have had at least six co-workers. People I've worked with for years that I've known for years come up to me and say, well, you know that my wife and I had a siting outside, you know, Tuchum Carey or outside of, you know, Ria Doso, New Mexico. He said, these are people I've known for years, but they're now all coming forward with their reports. I said, because now they feel it's safe. And he goes, he was just blown away. He goes, I just can't believe how many sightings are out there that go unreported. And I looked at him. I said, welcome to my world. I said,

this is what we deal with all the time. Right. Well, speaking of your world, tell us about your book, Triangular UFOs, an estimate of the situation. I would love to know what did you look forward to assess which of these experiences you were going to include. Yeah, that's, selection criteria is really important when you're writing a book on UFOs because we know there's crazy, credible, and all things in between. You know, well, the impetus for the book really was, you know, having investigated the January 5th case in 2000, I was sitting in the police departments and the police officers are tracing out what they had observed. and I'm interviewing them and they're answering me in terms describing flight characteristics, the dynamics of how the object operated. And both in their verbal testimony as well as their drawings that they were creating for me,

I could almost finish their sentences. I could almost finish the drawing before they had simply because when I got involved in 1990 in the subject, one of the most prevalent stories was, of course, the Belgian wave of UFO triangle sightings. and having known about those reports with the gendarmes, the police officers there that had reported it, and now sitting 10 years later in Southern Illinois, what they were drawing,

what they were verbally describing was eerily similar in nature. And so I came away once I had wrapped up the January 5th investigation, thinking to myself, there's clearly parallels between these sightings and the sightings in Southern Illinois, separated by thousands of miles, separated by a decades worth of time. And I was just beginning to really develop my personal library of material on the UFO subject. So again, naively, I thought I would just start this little project where, well, what other cases might exist?

Or are there other cases that are very similar to these landmark cases involving triangles? I just went down the rabbit hole and I'm still falling down that rabbit hole today. collecting the different reports and case files from various organizations, individuals, newspaper archives, news clipping collections that I've acquired. I found just a rich, diverse history of triangles that were, you know, a very small subset of the UFO subject in the 40s, 50s, 60s, and even going into the 70s. But it was a recurrent theme. And not just triangles, but to your point, Suzanne, as far as selection criteria,

in my book, I had lots of reports, as you can imagine, of people describing three points of light in the sky, moving together. Unless the individual stated the object that was affixed of the lights was blocking out the stars, or we could see an edge of something connecting. If people describe three points of light, they could be just that, three independent points of light moving in formation. I threw those out. I mean, and I had lots of those that could have been triangles, but, I think we need to be very careful not to read too much into these reports. And if the individual didn't describe it as an object, rather three lights, then that's how it's going to be categorized, three lights, just that. So I really try to focus on structured objects that have been reported.

For the most part, with rare exception, multiple witness. I think multiple witness cases definitely, you know, from an evidentiary standpoint, carry a a little bit more weight than just a solitary eyewitness that can't be corroborated or, you know, cross-reference with other testimony. Going into the military files, though, I will tell you, I was really intrigued to find cases involving not only visual sightings, but radar visual sightings of triangles. And again, raising that bar of credibility when you have objective measures that can help supplement the subjective visual sighting. And so looking at that, looking at the international scope of the sightings, and then even going back into the 19th century,

looking at early scientific journals like nature, Scientific American, there's vague references, and I say that honestly, because the further you go back in time, the sketchier the reporting is. As you can appreciate, something from Scientific American observed by a civilian, it's going to be written a certain way, as opposed to a military report from 1949, where they have altitude, they have Wenzelof data, they have all of this additional background information. But there was enough information to suggest that maybe these triangles predate, you know, the 1900s potentially.

Wow. Yeah, that's what surprised me most, Dave. I know I quoted you several times in a article I had written probably my most read article to date. And it was all about the black triangles. And what I wanted to show was that this wasn't a product of just the 90s mistaken stealth bomb tests. or things like that. Yeah. And it's still a theme that's out there that people promulgate, you know.

Oh, for sure. These didn't really show up until stealth technology. Yeah. And that was another reason I wrote the book is I was sitting on newspaper accounts, case files that predated by decades in some cases, stealth technology. And again, I can't emphasize it enough. And I know you're familiar with the book, not just people describing triangles in the 50s, but triangles sometimes moving with the flat side is the leading edge,

which we have reports of today. Triangles with the large globular lights at each point, which we have today, silent flight, extremely low altitude flight, all of these characteristics, you know, when you roll them together, you're either forced to conclude all these people are lying or hallucinating and making up the same story. Are there is substance to some of these reports? And the thing I like to emphasize also is we have to look back to the 40s, these 60s, if, hypothetically, you wanted to hoax a UFO report, you wanted to get a fast one on a UFO investigator, you're probably not going to come up with a triangle as the object you saw. You want to give them something that they're going to readily believe. You would say you saw a 30-foot silver disk with a little dome on top. That would fit the common narrative for the time. And so I thought it was interesting that you had this undercurrent of triangles being reported when orbs and lights and flying disks were being reported as well.

And what's interesting is in the last year, I've been contacted by agencies in DOD and DOJ that have expressed interest in my research on triangles. And in particular, these two agencies have told me separately, completely independent of one another, we are investigating some highly credible triangle reports that we can't resolve. Wow. And they also indicated, and we have your book and we're using that as a reference, which is interesting. because I wrote my book in 2012. I don't reread my book. And people will cite things in my book and I have to go look it up. I'm like, I don't remember writing it.

Oh, I did write that. I forgot about that case. But I suddenly had this epiphany one day after I had been contacted by these agencies. And I remembered it towards the end of the book under conclusions and recommendations, I had put, now mind you, this was 2012. I wrote this. And I think it's so strange because it's almost prophetic. This is five years before 2017, right, with this whole new appreciation for the subject.

I wrote it as an intelligence assessment. If I was an intelligence analyst, how would I write this for like a formal report? And in it, I stated at the very end, it is my sincere hope that this book will not only be read by the general public, but by key members of the military and intelligence community. And it truly, it was almost a second thought when I wrote that. I didn't have it in the original draft. And I put that in there. And now in 2025, I have official agencies contacting me stating we have some questions about triangles.

And we're reading your book. And it's surreal looking back on it when I wrote that, not knowing where we would be with the subject, you know, in this post-2017 environment. Leave it to the government to take that long to get their acting. But they're reading the book. So this is great. looking at the history, which I think is very important. You're doing the work for them. Yeah.

Well, and you even have- I just did a paycheck. Yeah, exactly. That's the important part. Always get the money up front. Yeah. Exactly. Especially from them.

It's so interesting you mention that because now it's bringing up these interviews that the former deputy director of Arrow had done recently, where he said, yeah, like we know what these are. we know what these are, it's those triangles that are mystifying us at Arrow. So that's really interesting. Yeah, my ears perked up when I heard that. I was really surprised. I was surprised in general just how candid the interviews were for being rather tight-lipped historically.

But the amount of information that he was throwing out there, I was really surprised by. But of course, that caught my attention. And I had people burning up my phone. Did you hear what Tim Phillips said? Did you hear what Tim Phillips said? I hadn't heard it. I had to then look it up after like three or four colleagues had like texted me. But yeah, it's surprising in some respects that he was talking about it publicly,

but not surprising in the sense that we know that these triangles are prevalent in the data, you know, today. And so if move on and civilian researchers are getting these reports, it's not surprising that officialdom are also looking at these reports. Yeah, even in a couple of the gentleman. Exactly. Exactly, Suzanne. Finally. Very good point. Ignoring this subject is not going to make it go away and it's not going to explain it. The only way is just by jumping in to the deep end and looking at the data and letting the data take us where we will. And this is something that frustrates me as a researcher. And again, I've been in this 36 years. So yes, I'm the old man saying, get off my lawn. Some of the younger people now in the subject. But there is such a prevalence right now. And it frustrates me. And this is just me being very candid with you and your audience, where everyone's focused on disclosure and pushing for disclosure.

And that's great and it's laudable. I don't think you're going to force any government to release information until they're ready to do so and until it's in their best interest to do so. So I don't, you know, shine unfavorably on people trying to do that. But I think what we need to do is focus in areas where we can make a difference. And that is by examining the decades worth of data that we have. You're waiting for the government to disclose what they know. Have you taken the time to look at what civilian researchers have collected? And to that end, the project that we're hopefully going to be starting here very soon,

we're trying to work with a couple of different third-party groups to get funding, significant funding for this. Because we have the facilities now, because we have a volunteer workforce, because we have a nightcap, APRO, which APRO is something we can talk about as well, Ryan. I know that that's happened since we spoke last as well. But we have NYCAP. We have APRO. We have Kufos. We have Dr. Heinex personal blue book files. We have a myriad of other individual researchers and collections, which we could go down the list. We have roughly 34 and five-d drawer file cabinets filled with historical case files. I mean, the sad, the question I get asked often is, how much?

many case files do you have? And the sad reality is, I can't tell you, we've never done an exhaustive inventory. But we're hoping in the next three months, two to three months to start from beginning to end, systematic, high resolution, full color digitization of the entire case file collection. The ultimate goal is, once they're all digitized, to upload that for access to the worldwide community. That'd be amazing. Incredible. Academics are now weighing in, as we know, into the subject. And a lot of these academics, they're making a name for themselves. But my question is, that's great you have a degree in physics or you have a degree in this, but what data are using? I mean, you can have a degree, but it doesn't do any good if you're not looking at data.

We have the largest collection of historical data in the United States. We want that to be available to these researchers, as well as the general public, as well as your audience members. Well, let's go there, Dave. I mean, let's, we've been teasing this for a while now, but the National UFO Historical Records Center. I'd love to know the story of how this came to be. Like you, I've been collecting these UFO books for decades. Absolutely. We know it started at your home.

I remember our last interview was in your home. Yes. When, oh, it was so cool to see all your stuff back there. And this would eventually evolve into the center. So can you tend to give us the backstory of how that all came to be? Absolutely. Well, as you can appreciate, you know, the collection, Ryan, as you know, grows and grows over time. And so I had received a number of collections. My friend Lou Ferris passed away about 10 years ago. And I acquired his historical collection. Mr. Bill Pitts was another researcher in Arkansas. He was looking to get rid of his collection. I acquired that collection. There was a researcher named David Shroff in St. Louis. I acquired his collection. I acquired his collection. I acquired his collection. collection, and the list goes on and on. A lot of names people would know. A lot of names people wouldn't

know. But I started acquiring all this material. In 2017, my wife and I decided to build onto our house to create a new addition to accommodate this growing collection. Shortly after that, and this was in 2020, I'm a board member for the Center for UFO Studies and their chief archivist, and they decided to transition their files out here so that I could start working on them. So we had the historic nightcap case files, CSI in New York, going back to the early 50s. We had Kufos files and of course, J. Allen Hinex original Project Blue Book files. Started working on those. And in fact, a follow up to my book, just to go back to the book for a moment,

I wrote the book based on the historical data I had at the time. When I got this incredible collection of like 15, 16 file cabinets filled of history that I'd never had a chance to go through system. one of the first things, no surprise to you and readers of my book, I want to go through these files looking specifically for triangles. And in fact, one of the other board members said, you're the first person to systematically go through those files with the express purpose of looking for triangles. And again, I found reports of three lights in the sky. I threw them out. It could be a triangle, but I can't, I don't want to read too much into it.

So I looked again based on that selection criteria for cases that would complement what I wrote in the book, you know, structured vehicles demonstrating certain characteristics. I found at least 102 reports, which I later did a presentation in 2022 where I presented these new old historical cases that people hadn't heard about. What was intriguing and extremely validating, though, was, and again, I never had access to these case files before, had written my book years earlier, and going through the reports, the exact same characteristics that I created in my working profile were exemplified in these new reports I was coming across. So it was the best outside validation that what I wrote seems to have merit because here's another whole bolus of historical case files and those same characteristics

are being demonstrated. So we had those files and then in November of 2023, I was contacted by the gentleman that had the lost Afro files. And, of course, they had been locked away for 35 years. Myself, my colleagues, had been up many a night over the years saying, how can we get the files? Do you think we'll ever access the files? There were so many rumors circulating. The files deteriorated sitting in storage.

I had heard a rumor. Well, a Japanese conglomerate bought the APRO files are now in Japan. I had earned all kinds of stories. I mean, they're all of these just different rumors. out there. But the individuals that had the files when I acquired the nightcap Cufos files, I thought to myself, everyone over the decades, both organizations and individuals, have reached out to these people asking for something. That has not worked. And for whatever reason, they wish to continue to hold on to the files and not making them publicly available. I decided

I'd do a different take. I'm in New Mexico. They're in Arizona next door to me. I have now in 2020 the Nykap Kufos Heenik files. They have the APRO files. I thought, well, we're kind of in a small club unto ourself here, holding some of the incredible keystones of history with the UFO subject. So I reached out introducing myself, not knowing if they had ever heard of me or knew of me, and simply stated that you have the APRO files.

We have the NYCAP Kufos Heenik files. And this is what I said. If there's ever any information you would like from these files, please let me know, I would be happy to provide that. Everyone's asking for something I offered. And so I threw it out there and they responded. They said, yes, David, we're familiar with you and the work you're doing in the field. And we appreciate you're reaching out.

And let's definitely keep open lines of communication. And I left it at that. Fast forward in time about a year and a half, two years later, one of the two individuals unfortunately passed away from a battle with cancer. and the surviving individual shortly thereafter contacted me and stated, you expressed interest in the files. Could I get your phone number? I'd like to have a phone call with you.

And this was in November 2023. Had a great phone call. The individual expressed interest in donating the files to our organization. He had heard about the work we were doing and making it publicly available, not charging. You know, there's so many organizations and individuals that want to charge and monetize every aspect. We operate strictly on donations. And, you know, I've thought about monetizing because we need money to keep the operation afloat, but it just goes against my convictions that the information should belong to everyone regardless of income or socioeconomic status. And so the individual came out.

He said, I'd like to meet with you to get a read on you, just to understand we're on the same page as it relates to the subject. He came out. We spent a weekend together. I now consider him a very dear friend. We really connected on a personal level. And as he was leaving that weekend, he said, well, I knew you were the right person to donate these files to and the right organization. But now having met you, I am definitely wanting to get these files out. I would like to come out in three months or three weeks and personally deliver him. And three weeks later, he drove a U-Haul truck filled with, I believe it was 13, four-door file cabinets and 50 boxes of material. And later, he actually had to make a subsequent trip out, he found additional material.

Just tucked away in the back of the garage. It was like opening a time capsule. The file cabinets had masking tape down the front of them, and it had the date from 1985 when they were sealed. And I was opening these file cabinets for the first time and accessing this material. And I do want to mention this. I haven't mentioned this publicly because this just happened two weeks ago. I had desperately tried to reach out to Larry Lorenzen, who of course was Coral and Jim Lorenzen's son, the founders of APRO, to let him know, we now have your parents' legacy and we're making it available to the general public.

I couldn't find a valid email, phone number. I tried repeatedly, finally gave up. I recently did a podcast for an Arizona University program. And shortly thereafter, I got an email from Larry Lorenzen. He said, a friend of mine heard your podcast here in Arizona and said, hey, they're talking about your parents' work. So Larry reached out to me. My wife and I happened to have a scheduled trip out to the Phoenix area. And so I had a chance just two weeks ago, two weeks to today, where we actually went and had brunch with Larry Lorenzen. And we had some personal mementos. I had a beautiful, it was a large.

Valentine's Day card from Jim Lorenz into coral. And it was to my dear sweetheart and all of this. And I gave that to Larry and some other personal mementos that had no UFO relevance. And he started tearing up. And as we were parting, he said, you know, I appreciate these mementos. But he said, I have to tell you this, knowing you have these files, knowing you're making them available to the general public, which is what my parents wanted, this is healing a very old wound for me. And so it's just great to be in touch with Larry and his kids and eventually

having them one day come out to the archives to see how we're preserving his parents' legacy, because it was their life's work. Right. What a beautiful story. And again, you never know who's listening to this. We don't know who's listening to this right now. Absolutely. You never know. And that's what leads to the next files, the next, like promising young eophologist, And I always fail to mention this, Ryan, so I'm glad we're kind of ventured into this territory. We not only want to preserve the case files, the materials, which are vitally important to understanding what we're dealing with today with regard to the subject and learning new insights about the history. We can talk about some of the new insights we've gained in some of these cases

if we have time. But we want to also preserve the memory of the people who literally dedicated their lives. We feel a certain sense of responsibility. In fact, I haven't mention this publicly, one of the latest collections we secured was from Owensboro, Kentucky. A gentleman by the name of Mike Crystal spent decades recording every radio show, TV show, podcast, you name it, from an audiovisual standpoint, he captured it all. We're talking thousands of recordings. And I was contacted by Dwight Gaphart in Kentucky, Kentucky State, Mufant State Director, and John Street, who were two colleagues of mics.

and they had been sitting on his collection for about two or three years because unfortunately Mike had passed. And they said, we have all of this material. Would you be interested? And we're like, if you can ship it, we'll reimburse you for the postage. And so systematically, they sent boxes after boxes after boxes. We now have the entire collection. And just about two or three weeks ago, I had a great phone call with Mike's family. I spoke with his mother, his wife, his siblings. and they were just so happy that we're preserving his collection, but also his memory. And so we try to put pictures up of the researcher to commemorate and honor their memory. And so when people come in to learn about these collections, they can also learn about the individual who collected them. Yeah, it sort of paints the picture and gives you more context as to.

Absolutely. Yeah, the decades that people have sacrificed to this. It's insane. It's insane when you think about the amount of hours. And the money that I always love when people say, oh, you're in the UFO subject. You're making money. For the serious people doing this, as you know, Ryan, we don't make money. If you had alleged to, we're definitely. We're in the red. Yeah. We put the money in. But again, the people that are making money, in my opinion, for the most part, I hate to paint with. the broad brush are the ones that are that are entering into this subject to make money. The people that are doing this for the right reasons aren't making money because that's not our priority. Right.

Research has never been a big moneymaker and for a career. Sensationalism sells. There's journalists and pseudojournalists out there that'll feed you what you want to hear. But we're not here to tell you what you want to hear. We're here to provide the history and let the history speak for itself. Let the data take you where it will. I had the opportunity just last evening just last night to speak to the Rio Rancho Astronomical Society. It was their annual fundraising event, and they asked me to be their keynote speaker, and I was very happy to present to them.

And it was funny, prior to that my lecture, some of the astronomers were coming up. And you can imagine it was a wide cross section of people coming up and with opinions. And one individual came up. He goes, yeah, he goes, UFOs. I'm really skeptical. You know, I don't believe in UFOs. and I looked at him and I just didn't even blink an eye. I said, we don't care what you believe.

That's exactly what. He was kind of taken aback. I said belief is relegated to religion. I said, if we're going to scientifically understand what we're trying to deal with with regard to the UFO subject, we have to be data driven. Belief is irrelevant. David, I'm going to send you one of my husband's favorite t-shirts, which says science doesn't care what you believe. I love that line.

I love that line. But ironically enough, after I had had that interaction with that, that gentleman, I was then talking to a colleague of his that also is part of the same group. And he pulls me aside. He goes, look, the scale of the universe, the dynamic aspect of the universe we live in, he goes, I think it's naive to assume that there's not something visiting us. So here's, you know, two astronomers from the same astronomical group with divergent opinions. But again, it doesn't matter what I believe. It doesn't matter what they believe. What does the data reflect? And that's what we have to have as a data-driven approach.

And again, I kind of, you know, don't like where we're at with the field with journalists and pseudojournalists just sensationalizing the topic and, you know, making claims that they can't back up, you know, unknown sources, which I can't divulge. So you can't tell me your sources. You can't tell me where you're deriving this information. What you are basically saying, and let's just cut to the chase, you're asking me to believe what you're saying at face value. Trust me. On faith, just believe what I'm telling you. And I'm not someone that just believes on faith. I need to have facts.

I need to have corroborating information. But again, sensationalism sells, you know, the more sensational it is. But I think some people are waking up, you know, some of these talking heads, and I won't mention names. I think your audience knows some of the people I might be referencing. They have thrown so many sensational things out there or made predictions. In 72 hours, this is going to happen. Or there's going to be a bombshell revelation.

People are getting desensitized to these sensationalists. They're starting to wake up that you told us that last year. You told us that the year before. Nothing happens. It's like the Christian evangelist saying the second coming is going to happen on this date. And when it doesn't happen, oh, you know, Jesus was busy, but we're going to push it back six months. You know, they just continue to tease these audiences by dangling carrots. And ultimately, they never deliver because all of these people promising these things, what have they delivered?

How much more do you know today than you knew years ago with these people teasing you and tantalizing you with disclosure or with this or with that? And again, my attitude is don't go after the dangling carrot. Come and access the archives. Come and access the materials that you can touch, you can read, you can make notes, you can find correlations. I mentioned some of the insights that we're gathering. And I don't think I answered your question about how we developed the National UFO Historical Records Center. so I'll get back to that. I'll address that, and then I'll tell you about one of the things that we had happened.

So we were collecting all of these collections, myself and my colleagues, Barry Greenwood outside of Boston, Jan Aldridge in Connecticut, who, by the way, just moved here a few days ago. He's now going to live the rest of his life, working at the archives here in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, and he brought 180 boxes of his collection out, which were in the process of sorting. But we all had our respective collection,

And it was in 2020 that Barry Greenwood and Jan Aldridge came here to do work in the new edition that we had with the collection that we had. And we were all working. And I got an email from a gentleman I never heard of before. He said he was from New York and he got involved in 2017 with the UFO subject. And he said, I'm going to be in New Mexico. I heard about your podcasts, your interviews, the research you've done. I would love to come and see the archive. So I invited the gentleman to come and join us.

And again, the people that you meet, he's a dear friend now. And he was really the one that saw the work that we were doing because Barry and Jan were with me. He saw the vast amount of history we had. And he was the one that said, why don't you develop this? Why don't you codify the work that you're doing and create an organization with a name with brand recognition? And I thought to myself, well, yeah, that would probably be. a better way to sell the vision because we were really at that time trying to find larger space, public space for the archive. So it was out of that conversation that we developed the National UFO

Historical Record Center, 501C3 nonprofit organization. And it was then once we had received our 501C3 status that they started working with city, county politicians, working with the Chamber of Commerce, working with the mayor of Rio Rancho. And it ultimately led me to the public school system that said, had these classrooms that we're not using, these buildings, and they worked with us to get those renovated, to get security measures put in place. And we're going to have our open house to the community on Saturday, October 18th, now that all of the landscaping and the parking lot have been redone, security cameras installed alarm systems. We actually have bulletproof glass on all of our buildings. I mean, the school system took, you know, spared no expense in ensuring we had decent

security for this collection. The Somewhere in the Sky's podcast is free to listen to every week. But if you would like to help support the show, we have a very active Patreon page where you give what you think the show is worth. In return, you'll get early access to the main show, bonus episodes, and priority to ask our guests your listener questions. Your support truly makes the show continue and grow. So to learn more and to join, visit patreon.com. Somewhere Scouts. 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 co-pilot 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, Hanks has a line out the door.

Hank makes the pizza. Co-Pilot handles the spreadsheets. Learn more at M-365. In the process of having Jan here in 2020, he was going through a box that had collected miscellaneous documents over the years at Kufos Center for UFO Studies. And there was Heinek Blue Book files in there mixed in with just letters, correspondence, mixed in with just letters or notes that we didn't even know what they were referencing, just little trash pieces of paper with like a phone number or something written on it.

Jan is behind me. I'm trying to characterize this so the audience can kind of follow along. I'm sitting at my audio visual station. My back is to Jan and Jan's going through this box behind me at this table. And I'm digitizing these old reel to reels from the 1950s and 60s. And I hear Jan make the comment, this is interesting. And for Jan to say that after decades in the field, not much catches his attention. He's pretty desensitized.

And I just took my headphones off. I didn't even turn around. I said, what do you have? And he goes, these are original log sheets from Bandenberg Air Force Base. and I kind of froze. And I said, what year? And I believe, based on memory, it was 1967. And he said, 1967.

And I froze again. And I said, what month? He said, October. And then I turned around. I looked at him like this. I said, what date? And he kind of looked kind of like scared. And he said October 4th, 1967.

And I looked at him and I said, 20 minutes ago. I just finished a reel-to-reel that I digitized. It was original recordings of radar operators at Van dernberg Air Force Base October 4th, 1967. We had the reel-to-reel of the radar operators communicating with each other by telephone, and he found the original log sheets. System 1 has a target at 195.5.5.8 degrees.

We got to a range is, about nine miles. I mean we only have one at this time. That's this Pyrnac I ever saw. Seen another one pop in up. Two targets at this time. We show three targets. Edmunds now passing 287. Time holds four. We have them right now at 240 degrees. Park this one. TNC, one track this. This is moon-like son of gun. This is we just split again. Again. Again, this thing is really moving in asthma.

One TNC, would you look at seven miles? That just before just kept on splitting. About four or five times. Asmuth holds two targets at this 247. Should have seen this other thing we had picked up just before we picked up this thing. I'd never seen anything like that on its radar. Things start coming in, changing asthma rapidly, and it just kept splitting on a scope. Now, I always say the data is only good as the provenance that you can establish.

Not only did we have the log sheets, and it was on Marietta Aircraft, Martin Marietta Aircraft letterhead, which was blacked out, but you could hold it up and read it. We also had a letter from Ida Bell Epperson with the NICAP LA subcommittee from the 1960s stating here is the information that I received regarding these sightings. and here is the individual that provided the log sheets. And we had the entire resume of an engineer that worked at Martin Marietta aircraft at Bannonberg. So we had the complete provenance of where this information originated from. Another example that I'll share with you, which I shared last night to the audience, the Astronomical Society, we all hear about Socorro, New Mexico. And, you know, I know Lonnie Zamora's daughter living here in New Mexico.

We both work for the same employer, actually, which is kind of an interesting little synchronicity. But in talking about Socorro, there was also another citing and purported landing of a very similar object, 36 hours later, in a rural community called La Madera, New Mexico. Now, we have the original newspapers, we have the original case files on Socorro that references La Madera. But if you go to the Blue Book file, they only have two half pages dedicated to La Madira. And the upshot of it is that the witness was drunk.

And the landing site that was burned was just a trash fire dump. And so that's all we've had to go on for years. And I always felt that that was one of those things that should have been further investigated. We should understand more about that. It seemed like information was sorely lacking based on what the Air Force provided. Going through the APRO files, I was going through looking at Socorro and then I stumbled upon a LaMadira case file. In the case file, and I've incorporated this into my lectures, we have. have original letters from the New Mexico State Police, the original envelopes postmark

1964, and we have color photographs that the police took of the landing site. They also, we have drawn sketch showing you the details of the landing site in question with numbers corresponding to numbers on the photo, and they literally walked around the entire site and snapped pictures so you know where the photo was taken in relation to the area. The other important thing to note is the police officers, it was Martin V. Hill, Captain Martin V. Hill of the New Mexico State Police, who later became in charge of the New Mexico State Police years later, and Officer David Kingsbury, we have all of their original correspondence to Jim and Coral Lorenzen at APRO with the photos, with the diagrams. And they stated

that they deemed the witness credible, that, you know, the case seemed credible. They took the time and expense to document the landing site to take color photos, which they provided to APRO, which we now have. Interestingly enough, nowhere do they in any way disparage the character of the witness. Yet the Air Force, who showed up days after the New Mexico State Police, basically summarily state, well, the witness was drunk and it was a trash fire dump, you know, a trash a dump fire. These officers would have noted that we think the witness was incredible or the witness was drunk.

They made no indication of that. So it's just one of many examples. We're now getting a whole new level of insight, detail, but a different perspective now as it relates to some of these cases. That is so important that you can, like, not reopen a case, but everyone seems to have a small piece of the puzzle to these. to these cases. And when you can start putting it together and getting that fuller picture, there you go. And that's what Barry Greenwood says the same thing, Ryan.

He says we're collecting puzzle pieces. Yep, yeah. Puzzle pieces we bring together, the more we can correlate the information, cross-reference it, the better we're going to get. In fact, Jan Aldridge, when he was at the archives last October during our ribbon cutting, he had Barry Greenwood up on the big screen.

They were doing virtual conferencing, and they were pulling files. And they were looking at a particular NYCAP file. I can't remember which one. It was from, I think, the late 1950s. And Barry Greenwood said, hey, have you looked at the APRO files? Do they have anything on it? And guess what?

Apro had a case file on the same case they were looking at that NYCAP investigated, but not a surprise to you or your audience. In many of these historic cases, APRO interviewed witnesses, NYCAP didn't, and vice versa. And Jan at one point was sitting there. he had literally the NICAP file here, the APRO file here. And at one point, he literally sat back in his chair and looked at me and he said, for the first time in history, we're getting a full holistic picture of this case.

And so this is what we can afford the opportunity of researchers to do, to come in and access these case files, to connect dots. And ultimately, I alluded to the fact that we want to do a high-level digitization of all the case files. We've had three or four now independent individuals and groups contact us. stating when you get these files digitized, we have AI that we would like to apply to analyzing this incredible amount of data. And something that I say, and I mean this sincerely, it's not hyperbole, we may be at a moment in time in history where decades worth of work on the part of Jim and Coral Lorenzen, Donald Kehoe, Richard Hall of NYCAP, Dr. Heineck, all of these individuals,

all of that historical data that they've collected over decades, that they've never been able to make clear sense out of. Maybe now we're at a moment in time where we've now centralized that data set. We can now digitize it. And now technology is to a point where AI can apply itself to looking at that data. And what a perfect marriage of historical preservation and technological development where maybe for the first time we might be able to see true trends and correlations and patterns in the data. That'd be amazing. As a researcher, I drool at the prospect of it.

Yeah, I know. I feel, I truly feel this is one of the most important contributions we can make to the field right now. In an environment where, as we know, as I was alluding to, people are just throwing out sensationalistic claims, unverified videos, unverified photographs. That's not taking us anywhere. So let's apply our time, money, and resources in an avenue where we have data. We have all this information. Let's make it where it can be manageable from a data analytics standpoint, make it public, and let's start actually trying to derive insights into this mystery. Yeah, absolutely.

And I mean, we're coming up on the hour, Dave. So we'll have to have you come back to talk a bit more about the files themselves. But I'd like to know what have been some of those surprising moments for you since the center's opened. I mean, you know, you have appointments left and right for people to come here. Students can come if they want to as well. Have there been any moments where you've just kind of like sat back and looked at this creation that you and many others have contributed to making come to life? Like any moments where you were like, hell yeah, like we did the right thing here. We're really shaping some minds.

My wife always makes the comment. she goes, you don't realize what you're sitting on. And what she means is I'm constantly in front of all of this, right? That's my environment. That's my niche, if you will, where I exist. And she goes, you always have these people come out for a day or two. You need to tell them they need to spend three or four days because there's so much material. You take it for granted.

And I do have those moments where I'll be sitting alone at the archives and sitting in our file room where all the case files are assembled. And sometimes I'll just have kind of almost like an out-of-body experience or like an epiphany where I sit and I look at those files and I think those were the Kufos files that sat in Chicago for decades. There's the NICAP files that sat in Washington, D.C. and later Baltimore, Maryland. And, you know, there's the APRO files that were in Alamagordo, New Mexico and then later Tucson, Arizona. And just the idea that we've physically brought these incredible data sets in one local. where people now have that ability. I mean, literally, in fact, the term, I've had a couple of visitors say,

this is like the Disneyland for eophologists, for people that are interested in the history. This is like Disneyland. And it's just to be able to, you know, assist people and researchers. In fact, another quick little story I'll share, author David Buhar, who's a researcher that looked into this obscure case that was the Jerry Irwin case. missing time in 1959, military guy that went AWOL, David Booher wrote a book on it several years ago, and he reached out. He said, David, I would love to come out and go through the APRO material to see if I can find any information. And he had been given years later, or years before, rather, a photocopy of the APRO file.

He was one of the people actually got a copy of some of the APRO material when it was held by the previous owners. And he said, but I've always been curious on the report for, it said see tape. I'm curious that there's an audio recording. And so he came out from Wisconsin to come to the archives in New Mexico with the express purpose of looking for that information. And he came in and I said, well, David, I said, we haven't had a chance to go through the APRO audio recordings.

We have hundreds of cassettes, hundreds of reel to reels going back to the mid late 1950s. I said, they're on those racks over there. There are no particular order. So you're not going to mess them up. I said some are labeled, some are not. And I left him just to have fun and go through that material. And I'm in there again digitizing some audio recordings in the next room. And it was about 20 minutes.

And I hear, David, David, I found it. And he comes running in with a reel to reel in a box. And it had Jerry Irwin on the outside. And I said, all right, let's cue it up. So we put it on one of our real to real digitization systems. And we queued it up. And we were both sitting there listening to it. And it literally started off by saying,

This is Jim and Coral Lorenzen. The date is November such and such, 1959. We're sitting in our living room in Alamagorno, New Mexico, and we're here interviewing the primary witness in this case, Jerry Irwin. And an hour and a half long interview then follows. My name is Bernard Irwin, and I'm 23 years of age. And at the present time, I'm a member of the United States Army, stationed at Fort Bliss, Texas. My job at Fort Bliss is

electronics maintenance on the Nike Ajax Miss. On February the 20th, 1959, I was returning from ordinary leave and was passing through the vicinity of Cedar City, Utah. The time was approximately 6.30 in the evening. It was beginning to get dark. I was on a interconnecting roadway between U.S. highways 89 and 91. While driving on this roadway, I observed through my windshield a flaming object approximately hundred feet at an altitude crossing from my right to my left I stopped the car

almost as soon as I saw this and got out of the car and I had time enough to know the place where it seemed to fall this this object wasn't a falling as any natural ops would it was on a more or less than a glide path and its speed was relatively slow I would say probably somewhere around 100 miles an hour after noting where the onset had apparently fallen I turned my car around and And I went back down the road to what I thought was the nearest point that coincided with the crash side. I should use that word at this time. I waited approximately 20 minutes for another car to come along so that I could possibly investigate what it was.

However, no car was coming along at that time, and I felt that it might possibly have been an aircraft at some time crashing. And I thought it would probably be best if I investigated instead of going someplace for help. I left a note on my car and walked up on the hillside. to see if I could find whatever it was. That was the last thing that I remembered before I woke up in the hospital the following day and apparently I had become unconscious

for some reason. David was sitting next to me and just beaming ear to ear and he said, there's so much new information I'm hearing in this. And this helps contextual. some of the stuff I wrote in my book, but I had questions about. And so we digitized it, digitally remastered it, threw it on a thumb drive for him.

He took it home to Wisconsin. He was kind enough to then do a transcript for us, which we introduced into the case file, which we had. So that was a nice edition. But he told me, he goes, there is so much new information here. I have to do a complete revision of my book. And then another one I thought of also that I'll mention, Katie Page up in Colorado, who I know and Tony Angeola did the definitive book on the snippy case from 1967, you know, one of the early utilization cases.

And there's so much misinformation, disinformation about that case for various reasons. And they came because we had the APRO files. APRO was the one that investigated that case. And I told them, you are the first people in 35 years to access those materials. They had the original color photographs. sketches and schematics of the crime scene, if you can call it that. They had tons of real to real recordings of the interviewers interviewing the family. I can't tell you how much information they had, but they took all of that, and then they now have written the definitive book on the

snippy case, setting the historical record straight. So this is what we provide in the way of value. You know, value to researchers, but ultimately to the UFO community as researchers come in and help clarify or gain new insights into these historical cases, which can then be shared with the population at large. I just have to say, Dave, like the Irwin case specifically. I always thought that was just a myth. I didn't think that person existed. No offense to the author.

No, no. It's great to be skeptical. Yeah, I just did not, because I couldn't find any military records. I couldn't find any other information on this case. And I just chalked it up to this is fantastic. to see. And for you to say that we now can hear the voice of the primary witness, that blows my mind. And recorded at that time, not something done decades later, but it was just, I think, a month or two, if I remember, from the date of the actual event. So, and also, I'll just, I'm sorry, you're making me think of all these things that we're stumbling across.

Our mutual friend Lee Spiegel, who, of course, we lost a couple years ago. When Lee passed, we inherited his collection. And we had, we had. haven't had time to go through the hundreds of recordings that he has. But I have a dear friend Toby Martinez down in Roswell, New Mexico, who came up and he's looking at some of the Roswell material we have. And Toby, I have to give him a credit, he is truly objective as it relates to Roswell. He's not sold on any pet theory or any one conclusion. He's really objective in his approach. And he wanted to hear some of the tapes that we had. We have, and I'm just using this as one example of things that we're starting to get new insights on. We have original recordings between Lee Spiegel and Jesse Marcel,

senior from 1979, 1980, early interviews, early interviews. And again, just one that we queued up, we haven't had time to listen to all of these tapes yet. Time is the one commodity we don't have a lot of, unfortunately. I'm sitting there, much like I was with David, queuing this real-to-reel or cassette tape up and listening to it. And in the interview, Lee asks a very simple question. Mr. Marcel, when you arrived at the debris field, was there an area of impact or like a gouge in the ground or a burned area? If I can see this car on the ground, it's something that had fallen out of the sky and hit the ground.

But that was not an evidence at all. It was obviously something that exploded and scattered all the fragments. Okay. And from the direction of everything was pouring, it was from the northeast to the southwest. Now, I didn't cover the entire area because we were busy to take that. Perhaps how it all happened. When we got the, I sent the CIC agent back to the base with it, and I stayed there and take that and filled my car. It was about 8 o'clock at night when I got home with it.

Going back to the original weather balloon story. Right. Why? Why do you think they did that? I don't know why. I kind of get the feeling that maybe when the material was brought in, and after the initial analysis, it proved to be so significant that perhaps the people needed more time before they wanted to make a statement. I'm very... Well, they've had 33 years to make this statement, they haven't made it so far. Isn't that interesting?

And now command has gone down through several hands. That's right. Is it anything about the experience of finding the debris, anything at all? that really stands out about all of it in your mind? I think the one thing that stands, foremost, is the fact that with all their the debris scattered with such a wide area, nothing actually hit the ground, no one object hit the ground. It is integrated in the area.

Oh, I've got to ask you, how wide an area was it? Oh, it was about 200 feet wide, I guess it probably 3 quarters of a mile long. Uh-huh. And the one thing is that I have great, there's no weather balloon that the airport covered that great an area. And particularly using the kind of material that nobody could identify. I couldn't identify it. And I know all the materials that was used in weather observation. Now, is that I had kept up with it.

Also, you probably knew the basic materials that went into regular aircraft. It is not like that at all. How many people do you figure were involved with the picking up of the pieces, the sending it on to Causewell and then the change from Causewell to Wright Patterson. Well, I don't think they were all, maybe five or six. I see. All the people were a lot of people on the business. Never knew anything about it.

Really? That's right. So it's no wonder that the public was kept in the dark as well. And we looked at each other when we heard his response. He categorically said, no. There was no gouge. There was no burned area. There was no impact.

it was just the ground was littered with all this metal material. He literally said, it was that is that this stuff just came littering out of the sky. Now, I only say that because there is UFO reality and there is UFO mythology. And, you know, where does one begin and end? And admittedly,

sometimes they overlap. We have this coherent narrative that's kind of become a central trope of UFO believers with regard to Roswell. But here, I think you would agree, arguably, is the primary witness, Jesse Marcel, Sr., in 1979, 1980, basically saying there was no gouge or impact site. But that is like one of the sacred descriptions that we now cling to that's part of the mythology or the narrative. But here is an early interview with Marcel where he denies that there was any impact site. And we don't know what else we're going to hear on these tapes.

And what I'd like to do, and Ryan, I'll throw this out to you because I haven't really thought about it until now. You know, maybe we can take some of these clips and maybe even work those into a future show at some point. I would love that. Absolutely. Again, like, that's what it's about. If people weren't sharing these files with you, if people weren't sharing the information they have instead of holding it close to the chest for some rainy day. And some people have done that over the years. I don't understand why. I don't understand why, you know. If you truly want answers to this subject, we have to share data with one another. And I'm not saying Roswell didn't happen. I'm not saying it wasn't an extraterrestrial spacecraft.

All I'm saying is this particular characteristic that has become a fundamental, like, you know, law or belief. Marcel is refuting in this interview. And so. So senior, we might. We need to make that very important. And I actually got a little bit of flack from when I was in Roswell. in 2022, I was making some criticisms about Roswell. All I was simply trying to say is when people tell me they believe in Roswell, my attitude is which version? Because there's lots of different

versions. There's new information filtering in. And in some cases, admittedly, people that we thought were legitimate, like Frank Kaufman and others, turned out to be liars. So all I'm saying is if you're going to explore Roswell, do it with skepticism, acknowledge some people that came forward are now not considered credible, even though their testimony was considered sacred at one time. And just, you know, if we're ever going to make sense out of it, which I don't think we will now with the passage of time now, barring any official disclosures, I just don't see that happening. I think the civilian researchers have done their due diligence and credit to those researchers that have done that over the years.

But the point is, though, I think it's interesting when we find these little discoveries that kind of make us quizzically kind of like, okay, that's interesting. So he's saying there wasn't a gouge or an impact site. To kind of wrap it up, Dave, here. And again, we would love to have you back to really get into the- Yeah, we've got a lot of material we could cover, obviously. Absolutely. I think it's important because you had mentioned, you had stressed this whole disclosure bro era we're sort of living in. in uphology right now of like uh you know all these people saying that the government's going

to disclose the truth and we're getting closer maybe we are in some respect but you know what i always tell people you're looking for the answers from the people who seemingly first covered up that's what i say yeah it's it's it's kind of a yeah it's an illogical approach to the subject so you're holding your breath waiting for and i always love the term the government, like it's this monolithic entity. It's multiple agencies over time, different administrations, et cetera. But we'll just use that term for a moment. The government has covered this up for decades, but we're waiting and lobbying to push for disclosure for that same government to tell us the truth. Well, if they did tell you the truth, how can you believe it?

When you just acknowledge that for decades, they've lied to you. Yeah. And this is why I go back, Ryan, I completely agree with you. This is why I go back to the fact. Don't wait for the government and not just United States government, whoever's hearing this in whatever country, don't wait for your government to tell you the truth. Work with civilian researchers that have data. Work with us once we get our files digitized and made available, unless you can physically come

and actually access the files in the short term. Access the information that we already have. And you don't have to wait or rely on the government to tell you the truth. But I completely agree. There's a fundamental mental disconnect in that sense. You say you can't trust them, but yet you're waiting for them to basically give you the keys to the kingdom. I've never understood that.

Kingdom's a good word, Dave, because I think any way to suppress the people is to strip them of their knowledge. Knowledge is power. And what you're providing to people is knowledge outside of a governmental body who you are trusting to give you that information. So I think what you're doing is essential. that the public can have the knowledge when it comes to. Thank you. And something I should stress because there's a lot of people in this field, like I said, journalists and pseudojournalists that are out there sensationalizing the topic

or filtering the information to fit a certain narrative. We provide the records. You tell me what you want to look at. We provide them. We don't offer interpretation. You can ask me my personal opinion, and I can give it to you. I'm not speaking on behalf of the organization. But the point is it's a neutral.

territory where we're providing information, it's up to you to interpret it. It's up to you to figure out how does this fit into the larger, you know, amount of data that we have. It's just simply providing information in its raw form for you to interpret, for you to analyze, and for you to come away with whatever you take from it. This episode is brought to you by Nespresso. Being the best version of yourself is an everyday journey, and it begins in the morning by taking a moment to ground yourself. With the new Nespresso So Virtual Up coffee machine, morning routines become rituals, just one gentle press. And coffee brews unfolding into whatever you need today.

Bold or delicate, iced or hot, familiar or new. Press to explore every coffee and new world. New Virtual Up. Shop now at nespresso.com. I love that. What can we do? What can the public do, Dave, to further what you guys are doing? Yeah. Great question, Ryan.

And really just awareness, letting people know, spreading the word about the work that we're trying to do. Again, we do this all on a shoestring budget. I went out to Cleveland, Ohio last year. And people always asked me, well, you say you need money. You know, you're a nonprofit. You're doing all this work. What does the money go towards? In the short term right now, the biggest expense is shipping.

I went out and we paid for a $4,500 pod to be dropped off in Cleveland, Ohio. I worked with Rick Hilberg, who's now in his 80s. He wanted to donate his entire collection to us. While I was out there, I met with my dear friend Tom Wordman, who's the Ohio State Director, and he said, well, you know I have Richard Lee's collection, who was involved in UFOs for years. I also had the Cleveland Uphology Project files, which was called CUP, Earl Neff, going back to the 50s and 60s. And I also have the UFO Research Committee of Akron, Ohio's files that go back to the 50s 60s. George Popowitz was the investigator back then that had headed up that group.

And he goes, I've got all these collections. Do you guys have room in your pot? I said, yes, we do, and we paid a fortune for it. But the point is, we went out for one collection, and we came back with four collections. We also had to ship a pod out to downtown Manhattan to get the late Timothy Green Beckley's collection. Yep. We have his collection as well.

That was $5,500. So, and many people, like Jan Aldridge, shipping his collection out piecemeal, the collection from Kentucky, you know, $60 to $80. a box, we had like 16 to 20 boxes that was shipped out. Shipping is our biggest expense right now. Most people want to donate their materials. It's up to us to get it from point A to point B. And so there's a couple other collections. We have 10 to 20 other collections that are in the queue for the next year or two that are going to be coming out. But we need money to really help with that. I hate to say it. It's that, you know, every 501C3, right, petitioning for money. But, you know,

I've done this out of pocket for decades. I'm, I can't. continue to afford to do that. And if people believe in what we're doing, if you believe, you know, I don't want to donate to the sensationalist, but I want to donate to preserving the history, to making that information available, I want to come and visit the archives. You know, word of mouth is great, but if anybody can assist with getting us in touch with significant donors or just small monetary donations, it helps. I mean, we all volunteer our time. None of us are paid. I have a dedicated team of about 12 to 14 volunteers now. I mean, every Saturday and then some weekdays, they're in there,

and they are busting their butts, sorting these boxes, you know, separating the wheat from the chaff and getting things indexed and filed. We have over 2,500, I think 2,600 books on the subject, both foreign and domestic in our library. We're getting more newsletters that are delivered to us. And again, like I said, 10 to 20 other collections, some names that people would recognize and some names that people wouldn't recognize. that are going to be coming our way.

So it's an organic collection that's continuing to grow, and we're looking to expand our facilities in the short term to accommodate this growing collection. Wow. I'm so excited, man. Well, we will have links to everything in the show notes, guys. Check it out. If you can go set up an appointment.

If you can donate, please help. I mean, I cannot stress, Dave, how important your work in this field. Is and has been for a long. If we don't preserve the historical record for future generations, it's going to be left to, again, these sensationalists in the field to rewrite the history. Exactly. But when we have the original documents, we can demonstrate, no, this is what the witness is stated. This is when this actually occurred. It's not going to be left to people to rewrite history when we have the original documentation.

And something else that's important, and I'll just mention this as we wrap up, a lot of people say, well, Once you have the original materials and you digitize it, you don't need to keep the originals. No, fundamentally disagree. Yeah. If anybody were to look at a PDF document that we scanned from an original document, whether it's tomorrow, a week from now or 10 years from now, with AI technology being what it is and nefarious people out there in the field, anyone that sees a purported document should question and say, okay, I see this supposed document online. How do I know it's real? Right. In our case, we can pull the original document. We have Heinex files going back to the 40s. Here's the paper. Test the paper. Test the ink. Look at the letterhead. Here's the watermark of the paper. It's so important to maintain the integrity of the original document because we're now in an era we're seeing is not believing, whether it's documents, photos, videos. So we have to retain the original intrinsic nature of these documents. So people can fact check in the future. Yes, this is. is an original document, and here's the supportive documentation that goes along with it.

Yeah. The X-Files said it best, fight the future, guys. Fight the future, Ryan. In some ways. Dave, this has been incredible. We've gone way longer than we had promised you. So we'll have to have you come back. No, thank you.

Suzanne, any final words for Dave before we? I'd love to know, Dave, just quickly. Is there someone's file you don't have that you have your eye on? I would have said the APRO files. That was the one that was really, you know, the one that was just out of reach that we never thought we would secure. Not currently, only because the names that I would give you are names that are in the queue to eventually come out here in the next year or two that I had told you about. But that's a great point you bring up because we don't know what information some people may be sitting on. Some of the material we've obtained are from names that aren't widely known.

independent solitary researchers that collected material, and then we suddenly get it donated. So we don't know what might be sitting out there in the way of information. And so it's all important, as Ryan said, these are all pieces of the puzzle. And the more puzzle pieces we can bring together, the better we're going to be as far as understanding this mystery and truly preserving the history of the subject for current as well as future generations. Great. Incredible work, David. Thank you. Thank you.

Dave, thank you so much for joining this again. Thank you. Absolutely. Somewhere in the skies is part of the Somewhere Podcast universe. Please take a moment to rate, review, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. To learn more about all of our shows, visit thespu.com. Spectrevision Radio. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes.

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