Somewhere in the Skies - LIVE! From the Midwest Conference on the Unknown

Episode Date: August 15, 2022

On episode 278 of SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES, Ryan reports LIVE from the inaugural Midwest Conference on the Unknown in Cape Girardeau, MO! You'll hear exclusive interviews on site with paranormal power couple, Tobias and Emily Wayland of the Singular Fortean Society, as we hear all about their recent and latest investigations into winged flying creatures, UFOs, and a possible mer-man! We then switch gears and have a fascinating discussion with noted cryptozoologist, Ken Gerhard, about the evidence supporting the existence of the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot. We also discuss the possible connections between Bigfoot sightings and UFOs. Then, Ryan chats with researcher, Joshua Cutchin, about his latest books concerning UFOs as a death symbol, in what he's titled, Ecology of Souls: A New Mythology of Death & the Paranormal. We then wrap things up with an exciting conversation with the "Liminal Librarian" herself, Courtney Block, as she traces the history of underrepresented paranormal researchers of the past, and the future of paranormal research as we continue to explore the unknown. You've been granted a front seat to what Ryan and the rest of the speakers and attendees experienced at this highly successful conference, with plenty more to come! Follow Tobias and Emily Wayland on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/singularfortean  Follow Ken Gerhard on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ken_gerhard  Follow Joshua Cutchin's work at: https://www.joshuacutchin.com/  Follow Courtney Block on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/courtneymblock  Ryan is now on Cameo! Book your video today at: https://bit.ly/3kwz3DO Patreon: www.patreon.com/somewhereskies Website: www.somewhereintheskies.com YouTube Channel: CLICK HERE Official Store: CLICK HERE Order Ryan’s book in paperback, ebook, or audiobook: https://amzn.to/3PmydYC Twitter: @SomewhereSkies Instagram: @SomewhereSkiesPod Read Ryan’s Articles by CLICKING HERE Watch Mysteries Decoded for free at: https://bit.ly/3rJpbd7 Opening Theme Song, "Ephemeral Reign" by Per Kiilstofte Copyright © 2022 Ryan Sprague. All rights reserved. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/somewhere-in-the-skies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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A rooftop bar, have a ball. Bring a date, your squad, or even your mom. Book direct at choiceotails.com. This is Somewhere in the Skies with Ryan Spread. Hey guys, Ryan here. I'm recording this intro right now in the airport on my way home from the Midwest Conference on the Unknown in Cape Girardo, Missouri. This inaugural multifaceted conference brought together researchers

in all fields of study into the anomalous. I had the immense pleasure of meeting some of you at this event. So to each and every one of you who came up to my table or came to my lecture and introduced yourselves and had a conversation with me. Thank you. It truly meant the world to me to meet you and chat everything UFOs. I can't express how honored and touched I was that some of you traveled so far just to see me and the other speakers. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

And to all the new people I met as well. Welcome to Somewhere in the Skies. I hope you enjoy everything that we do here at the show. This episode includes some incredible conversations. conversations I had with some of the speakers at the event. You'll hear interviews I conducted live on site with paranormal power couple, Tobias and Emily Wayland of the Singular 14 Society, as we run through some of their previous and latest investigations, and what comes next for their upcoming research and book projects. You'll also hear a fun discussion I had with noted cryptid researcher

Ken Gerhardt on the evidence and possibility for the existence of both the Loch Ness Monster, and Bigfoot. We then died deep into a highly controversial discussion with researcher Joshua Cutchin, as he presents a fascinating argument for UFOs possibly being a symbol of death and the connections between UFO phenomena and the soul. We then wrap things up with a highly enjoyable chat with the liminal librarian herself, Courtney Block, as she traces the origins of cyclical and paranormal investigations and the importance of libraries and literature when studying the unknown. This was such a rewarding experience from the moment I arrived in Cape Toronto to this moment right now of waiting to go home. My immense thanks to conference organizers Michael Huntington and Ken

Murphy for inviting me and for making this one of the most welcoming conferences I've ever had the pleasure of being there. To the entire staff, crew, and volunteers, for Cape events. This truly was a conference that will become the standard for events like this. So thank you to all of you. And rumor is there's already a plan for next year, so I can't wait to see what this event will become in the future, and I hope you'll all check it out in Missouri. And I also hope you enjoy this special episode live from the Midwest Conference on the Unknown. And as always, keep your feet on the ground, but never stop searching somewhere in the skies. Hey guys, this is Ryan Sprague reporting live from the Midwest Conference on the Unknown.

We are in Cape Girardo, Missouri, and we are on the second day of the event. I spoke last night. It was fantastic. And two of the individuals who were at my talk are two of my favorite people working in the 14 realm of the unknown. And that is Tobias and Emily Whalen. Guys, welcome back to somewhere in the sky. So happy to be here, Lion. Always a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you. It's been a couple of mail word.

Looks like we got something going on. So we will, hopefully it'll quiet down a little bit in here. As you guys can hear, it's been pretty good today. It has. Yeah, yeah. I know this is the first annual mid-bust conference on the unknown. So I want to ask you guys first and foremost. Also, I love your shirt, by the way.

Oh, thanks. Emily has a Hellfire Club shirt on for you Stranger Things fans. What do you sport in here? Oh, this would be my Don't Talk to Strangers shirt, featuring some kids being potentially accosted by a saucer occupant. Yep, yeah. Very scholastic book, which I love. I love.

The vibe is cool. That's what I always appreciate. You guys always look so stylish. Your paranormal and 14 and stuff. But let me ask you, how has it been so far at this conference? It's the first one. I don't know about you guys, but I was super excited to get the call to be here. I don't get to the Midwest often.

I'm a city boy on the East Coast. But, yeah, how is everything going so far here? What makes this, I guess, unique to the area? Yeah, well, this has been great. It's something that we have needed here pretty desperately for some time. Now, we've always had Haunted America, which is a fantastic, conference. It's a great paranormal conference over in Alton.

That's Alton, Illinois. But, you know, that was really largely centered around ghosts and hauntings and things, of course, thus the name haunted America. And while it's a fantastic event, it was about the only thing we had, you know.

And so having another event that actually sort of broadens its scope into other areas, you know, of interest. It's not just ghosts, you've got UFOs, you've got cryptids, alien abduction, you know, contact these. All areas of weirdness, I think, is something that we've been missing for some time, because something that I've always been jealous of, especially for everybody living out east,

is how many conferences you guys have? Like, there's so many, like, if you look at just like the southeastern U.S. and then sort of like down into, you know, like Texas, Arkansas, like Kentucky, There are so many paranormal conferences, and we have had, like, basically none for most of the Midwest. And now, you know, other than, like, haunted America for so, so long, that it's just something that's been desperately needed. And so to be at this conference and see it doing so well, to see the kind of turnout that it's at. For a first-year conference, this kind of turnout is not something I have experienced. Now, Emily and I both have been to a lot of first-time conferences where, you know, you're talking to a crowd of three people. Yeah. I've been there too.

Yeah. And so this is the literal, like for anybody listening, this is the literal opposite of that. Like, there's so many people here. It's just what a honor, frankly, to just be able to be a part of it. You know, I'm hoping that this will go on for years and years, and we'll get to say, hey, we were at the first one. Yeah. You know, and then we've been at everyone since. Right. I have no doubt you guys are going to be speaking next year. We just confirmed it. Okay. Awesome. You heard of your first guy, someone with guys.

The singular 14 society will be here next year speaking. Emily, what are your initial thoughts on the event? What do you take it away from it so forth? I think it's really great. It's definitely, you can definitely tell there's a community here in Cape Girardeau that's kind of like finally coming together. Because I know the event company that is putting this on has done like a ComicCon and an anime con.

And I think there's a lot of... I think sometimes those can be kind of adjacent to what we do, so I think this lets all the locals let all their weird out and really get in, dig into what they love. Because, I mean, we all love, like, anime and Comic-Con conventions, too. But this, I think, if you really want to dig into it,

this is the opportunity to do that. So it's cool to see the local community kind of rise up and put this together. That's the value of it. And I'm glad that you touched on that because literally, I think the number one thing we hear at events like this is how happy so many of the attendees are to finally have a place where they can discuss their experiences without judgment. And most people don't have that. I mean, I know I sound like a broken record, but really, literally, the most common narrative presented to me by witnesses when they go to share their experiences is trying to share them with a loved one. and being laughed at.

And, you know, obviously that that leads to people sort of shutting down and then they just don't talk about their experience unless they meet someone like us or they find an event like this. And so there is great social value, I think, in having these events for people to be able to discuss things that, you know, they might not dare discuss with even their family members. Right. Well, I mean, touching on reports. Now, I believe the last time I had you on, Tobias, we talked about your book Strange Tales.

We also had you on to talk about the Lake Michigan Walkman. So I'd love to ask you guys, a lot of people, you know, when you hear that there's like a wave of something, it's like there, it's there for a while and then it's gone. But I want to ask, you know, in terms of this Lake Michigan walkway, this weird period in time where this winged humanoid is being seen in that area. of all places. Is this continuing? Are you guys still getting reports over at the society of these sort of flying humanoids? Sure.

Where does that all stand? Yeah, you know, like we do still get reports. And honestly, for the record, people never stopped seeing winged humanoid in West Virginia either. Right. You know, the collapse of the Silver Bridge didn't signify the ending of those sightings. It just signified the ending of Keel's book.

So in terms of what we've been seeing around Lake Michigan, we do continue to get sightings. You know, I've got one that came in recently from a woman down in Rockford, where she was outside with her mother. And they saw this black, humanoid-winged creature flying along this canal behind their house. and it was interesting, you know, because I talked to her at length over the phone. And, you know, certainly she believed that she'd seen something quite strange, you know, and there's sort of no denying that this experience had a profound effect on her, as they so often do. I just spoke to another gentleman in Madison. That's Madison, Wisconsin, who, and this is a particularly bizarre sighting reports.

He was at the dog park, and this is actually a dog park that Emily and I used to go to when we lived over there. It's a Kwan dog park, right? And he was out there, you know, he had his dog. He actually had his infant son strapped to his chest as well, which is important later, because it's why he didn't run after anything. And he saw there's this wooded area over by these train tracks. And there's like a creek with a bridge and stuff back there. And he saw what he described to me as this bulky, shadowy figure.

He said it looked like maybe it had, you know, like football shoulder pads on and then like a cloak thrown over that. And it's all black. And he says it was kind of peeking out from behind a tree at him. And that when it noticed that he had noticed it, I kind of hunkered down and spread out as though he was trying to hide. And he watched it for maybe, you know, 10, 20 seconds. And then he was momentarily distracted because he had to pay attention to his dog.

And he turns back and the thing is gone. And, you know, it was a very strange sighting. It could have been a lot of things, frankly. You know, I can't rule out. You know, there's a homeless population. in Madison, of course. And during the summer, a lot of people sleep outside. And so the idea of somebody, you know, being in a sleeping bag or something, that they were

just camping out in those woods, because this was at like 9 a.m. You know. Oh, you don't hear that often. Right. No, that's what's weird about. Exactly, exactly. And so, like, you have to consider that as a possibility. Now, we haven't been able to go out there and check out the area yet, but we'll be

it out there soon. And, of course, we'll go back in the woods and look pretty sign of habitation. You know, I'm not going to go back there and screw with anybody's stuff. Yes, I'm not going to, to, like, roust any, you know, any, any, any, any, any, any, any, any, any, any, any, any, any, any, out of, out of those woods. But we can look around safely and, and sort of see if it looks like people have been back there. And if, and if so, then that's probably mystery solved.

But if not, then I'm sort of at a loss, frankly, you know, because again, this was guy who talked to me and he's very earnest. He certainly wasn't trying to embellish anything. He didn't have his own real prevailing theory about what it was. He mentioned that he had

related it to the Mothman when he first told the story because he sort of guessed that maybe some of the bulkiness could have been wings. It was all very speculative of course. But that's not something that, you know, that's not a hill he was

willing to die on or anything. So, you know, he didn't seem like he had a real agenda or anything that he was pushing in terms of belief or anything. So it's just one of those weird reports that, you know, we'll look into and see if we can find anything. But at the end of the day, we may just have to be satisfied with not having an answer. But that's so many of these, you know. What are you going to do? Interesting. Interesting. And, Again, that's what I respect about what you guys do. It's not just you hear a report and that's, you know, that's it. You have an intimate knowledge of the location where this event happened,

so you can go investigate. You can try to find a pro se explanation, which when it comes down to it, that's what we're looking for. When you can't find that explanation, that's when you have a true unexplained. Well, what I like to say is, if we don't explain the things we can, why would anybody believe us about the things we can't? you know, so we absolutely have to. You know, I want people to be able to look at our work and say, well, look, if they couldn't

explain it, there's a good chance it can't be explained because by their reputation, we know these are people who are going to go and do their due diligence to try to explain something if it's possible. Right. So, yes, absolutely. Emily, I'd love to ask, I know we kind of talked off-air here about a merman. Yeah, so... So I don't even know where to begin with this, but I know you guys were submitted a report about this.

If you want to share it, it's totally up to you, but I would love to hear about it. So this was actually a case referred to us from a friend of ours, Travis Watson, and so we've just started looking into this. So this is the testimony of the gentleman that we've been talking with. Back in the 1980s, my family would go to Geneva on the lake in Ohio, Lake Erie to stay at a cabin every summer. One time I was out past the rock pier things playing on an intertube, I'm guessing, is that what that says.

And I saw what looked like a head from the mouth up about 20 yards further out. I knew I was the only kid out there at the time, so I was really confused who it could have been. I watched it for maybe half a minute, then looked back at the beach to see who it might be, but everyone was still on the beach. When I turned around, it was gone. I thought maybe it was a log, but I spent the rest of the day watching because it scared me a lot. But nothing else surfaced. It's one of those childhood memories that was so profound that when I think about it, I feel like I'm back in that moment.

As the Krispy Chicken Sandwich from 7-Eleven, people always call me loud. And I'm like, yeah, I know. I'm crispy. Did you expect me to whisper? If you want quiet, go eat some soup and reflect. Like, I know I'm a handful. I'm bold, I'm juicy. Throw some pickles and barbecue sauce on me.

and baby I'm a whole meal. And with seven rewards, I'm just $4. Quiet. No. Krispy, saucy, and $4? Very. Only at 711. Valley through 62326,

participating stores only well supplies, lastly app for full terms. That's, yeah, that's, it is very interesting. This actually came in because of an appearance that Travis had had on Paul Pustall's podcast of monsters and mysteries. And so the witness initially reached out to Paul, who then sent it to Travis,

who then sent us to us. He's like, well, this is weird enough for you guys. It's like, it gave a telephone. Yeah, of course. So, you know, and we do have permission to reach out to this witness. And being, you know, as busy as we have been with the conference, we haven't yet done that. But, you know, it sounds promising.

And it's one of those where it seems too weird to be made up, you know. I don't know why necessarily, like, somebody would, you know, try to perpetrate like that kind of hoax. And, you know, I'm not particularly naive. You know, like I understand that there are people who like to play pranks and will make things up. But this doesn't really have a lot of the hallmarks of that. To me, you know, again, just looking at the actual report submitted, you know, there's not a lot of added detail. the guy just talks very simply about seeing what appeared to be like a humanoid head coming up out of the water, you know, at the mouth of this river coming off of Lake Erie.

So, yeah, I mean, on its surface, it seems like a credible enough report, you know, because there are various possibilities in terms of misidentifications and things like that that that we would have to consider. And so I wouldn't, just because it is somewhat outlandish in terms of the creature being reported, you know, that's not enough for me to dismiss something out of hand. Yeah. So it's definitely one that we're going to be following up on. And it should be pretty interesting. You know, we have friends out in Ohio that I think could help us investigate this, get some boots on the ground and have something to go out there.

And so, yeah, should lead to something pretty cool, I think. Nice. Open investigation. Stay tuned, guys. Stay tuned on the Merman. Phenomena. Well, you guys have been doing this for a while, and you've investigated, you've archived and preserved a lot of these stories. What has been some of the, I guess, weirdest or most impactful things you looked into? I don't know your guys' beliefs on a lot of this stuff. I would assume you're very objective. Um, that's what I gather from the diligent work you do. But, um, yeah, what are some of those moments and the journeys that you've had in these topics that have really stood out to you and made you think, wow. Like, the world is far stranger than I ever could have imagined.

Anything stick out to you guys? Yeah, I think there's been a couple times, you know, when we first started doing this, I was more curious in the topic. Obviously, Tobias had been investigating with Mufon before. And I'd had my own like couple of experiences, but I guess going into this, I didn't really expect to experience as much as we had on investigations we've gone on boots on the ground as described. We frequently go out to the Kettle Marine State Forest with our friend Jay Bichotian. He's a Sasquatch researcher out of southeastern Wisconsin. And I have seen some lights in the woods that I cannot explain. I know people like to talk about orbs and all that stuff, but I mean, twice now I've seen these bright white balls of light.

One time just soar and arc over the treetops. And the other time, it kind of like fell straight down amongst the trees. And it's weird because it would illuminate the tree tops. It was quiet. And there was no other like weather explanations that we could find or aircraft or anything like that that would explain it. So seeing those lights out in the woods that people talk about so often was kind of wild to me. And just quickly, too, I'll mention that a couple times we've been on haunted locations. I'm a photographer, and I've had my equipment malfunction in ways that I cannot explain.

So that's been, having those experiences firsthand is just completely wild. there's absolutely weird stuff out there. And when she says malfunctioned in a way that she can't explain, she means like having the flash detached from her camera with no batteries in it, and it's still going off. Whoa. Right. Like that level of unexplained.

Was this while you were trying to take photographs of something, of an anomaly? Well, we were, this particular time, I mean, obviously there's more of this, but this is probably most profound. We were at the Al Ringling. Can't talk. We were at the Al Ringling Mansion in Baraboo, Wisconsin. Okay. And we had been kind of being shown around, and we were in between rooms,

and I wanted to change my lighting kit for a darker area. So we kind of went out into the foyer, and I started, you know, I took my flash. I took the batteries out, and all of a sudden it was just going, flash, flash, flash. And you look over me at like, Oh yeah, like seriously, I thought she was just taking a bunch of pictures with her flash, like, right next to my head. And I'm like, would you not get off? Yeah, and I see her, she's like, like, she's down on one knee, like, having everything taken apart. And she's just like looking at me with this confused look on her face with like the batteries in one hand and the flash in the other.

And it's just going off. And I'm like, well, I don't know. Call an exorcist. I don't know what's happening here. This, we had just been in the room that was Al Ringling's old office that a lot of people have seen after. apparitions in and other phenomena. So immediately following that, that was interesting. And I think at the time, if I recall, we were talking about the room a little bit.

Sure. So I thought that was interesting. But I've never, I mean, I, it was so frustrating to have my flash just going off. Because I'm like, no, what are you doing? Is it broken? What's happening? Right. I promise.

I know what I've done. And it never happened again. No. It worked fine. I still haven't. There should have been no power source. Right. It shouldn't have been possible, which is why it's so weird, obviously.

Well, before to buy us, I get to maybe some of your personal experiences, the lights in the forest. You know, we just watched a talk by Ken Gerhardt, who talked about, he's not a big proponent of these ideas of crossing streams, as it were, with these phenomenology. Sure, yeah. In terms of UFOs, a bigfoot. And I actually, I've been digging into a lot of old Project Blue Book reports where Bigfooted creatures have been cited in correlation with UFOs. These are official documented reports. So you can't really ignore that in my personal opinion. What do you think about these ideas?

Are they connected? I think it's totally passable. And I think, you know, before I got into this, I think it's, and I think this, I still entertain this obviously. Like, I think to most people, an undiscovered biological creature makes the most sense. But, you know, probably several years ago, I would have been like Bigfoot and you have. No, no. But, like, to me, it makes more sense almost than the natural explanation. Because I do think the universe is a huge place.

I do think we've been visited. I think they're aware of us. I think there's absolutely aliens out there. who's to say that Bigfoot isn't an alien and that's a UFO put it down and he's checking it out and he can go back up, you know? Like I think there's some sense to that. I know it sounds crazy, but it makes more sense to me than like Portal Bigfoot's or, which I don't dismiss, but of all the theories, I think that the, you know, who's to say that it for a human, it looks almost human like we do, but who's to say that that's not from another. planet or something. So I think it does make sense to me.

Interesting. What are your thoughts on that? I don't think that we should dismiss the fact that these seemingly disparate phenomena are so often reported in the same areas. I think that it would be

irresponsible to dismiss that. Beyond that, I don't have any working hypothesis to explain it, And in correlation, of course, doesn't mean causation. So we don't know for sure that these things have to be connected in some way. I will say, you know, when we're talking about lights in the kettle, they're not craft,

you know, unless it's something, we would have to sort of redefine craft, I suppose. You know, because they really are just anomalous lights. And so you think about it like a light, maybe basketball size, you know, floating around. And so I don't know that I have personally seen anything that would lead me to believe that there are nuts and bolts, you know, ET craft coming down, dropping out Bigfoot or piloted by Bigfoot or anything like that. I will say that there has been some compelling witness testimony to that effect, which

you mentioned, of course, already documented in things like Project Blue Book, which is all very interesting, but, you know, I don't know that any of the nuts and bolts, ET craft are actually, you know, physical craft in the way that we would conceive of it as opposed to something stranger, some sort of projection or illusion or manipulation or something in some way, especially when you get into really high-strangen stuff, like Bigfoot driving it, you know, it almost takes on this dreamlike quality, you know, of, that Oz factor, you know. of just being so very, very strange that it's difficult to sort of reconcile it using our current, you know, understanding of like the material universe. And so I guess, you know, when it, if I want to speculate, you know, I think that, you know, maybe something similar to what, you know, like Kiel would say about ultraterrestrials or something, where, you know, he would note anomalous lights being seen in the same areas as these creature sightings.

And I think his thing was that the creatures themselves were projections of some sort and the lights themselves might actually be. the actual entities or how they really appear, which is an interesting idea, and I don't know that to be true. But it does lead me to speculate about things like interdementionality and maybe lights being some sort of like epiphenomenon that is a byproduct of interdimensional travel or something similar. There's a lot of weird places you can actually go with it. It's all, of course, very unproven.

I do think that we should be willing to, let our minds wander in those directions instead of just, you know, automatically dismissing them as, as crazy, because I think if there's one thing that, you know, we should have learned throughout the history of human civilization is that imagination and speculation are driving forces behind discovery. And when we limit those, we limit ourselves. and we limit what's possible. And I don't think that's going to be doing us any favors in terms of actually investigating this stuff. The world is full of dreamers and without them, like, where would we be today?

Look at like science fiction. Eventually, most of it becomes science fact. And if it worked for these forward-thinking people, like, where would we be today? I think you're right. It really does limit the possibilities. I know when I first got involved with UFOs, and I, I'd get reports that would have really high strangeness aspects or, you know, they would claim to be abducted. But then over there is one of their loved ones who had passed away.

I'm like, whoa, okay, I can't deal with both of these. Let's focus on the UFO. Whereas now I'm like looking back at past Ryan and being like, what the hell are you thinking? Like that's part of the data. That's part of the report. That's part of this person's experience. It's you have to at least, like you said, entertain that and look at it. And I think now I've learned, if we're going to use photography, like, to zoom up.

Look at the bigger picture and realize that there can be connections or maybe not. But you have to at least look at it. Right. I love that. I love that. Well, Tobias, what have been some of your most impactful or weirdest or strangest reports or investigations you've been on? Sure. What has made you guys?

be like super like oh my gosh i can't believe her this is our lives well you know for for me of course now i i got into this because of a lifetime of um you know seemingly paranormal phenomena happening to and around me but you know putting that aside because yeah it's it's one thing for me to to make a claim you know that that is personal personal to me um i would say that the most impactful reports that we've received in cases we've investigated are those where I can really see the profound effect that the experiences had on the witness. And so there are a couple of those. You know, I'm reminded of iguanago, Wisconsin, where there was a wingedumoid siting.

And for anybody who's not familiar, it's basically this small rural community just south. of Milwaukee, basically. And meeting this gentleman who had contacted us about his experience in broad daylight and sort of seeing the fear and confusion on his face and how difficult it was for him to speak about it. And how weird and awkward it must have been for him to be willing to let these two strangers come to his house and show us around. and everything that had to go into that and how anybody could take those things in consideration

and not take that man's experience seriously is offensive. It is because regardless of what you think happened, something happened to him. And because of that, I think we owe people the common decency of respecting their experiences and taking them seriously. I love that. It reminds me, you know, I spent a weekend in the woods in the Adirondack Mountains with a group of alien abductees.

I was invited to come and just experience whatever that would be. And I remember having so many feelings before going of like anticipation of like what could happen or what wouldn't happen. And I just remember being like, just go. Just go and experience it. Don't have any preconceived notions or judgment on these people. And, you know, I kind of went into that.

This is early on in my investigative days of being like, this will make a cool story. And I look back at myself and how naive that was to be like, wow, cool story, bro. But when you actually get there and you meet these people, and you see how it affects them. I mean, we had times where we were sitting around a, you know, campfire and people were breaking down crying. And, like, what do you do with them? This person went through something clearly traumatic, no matter what it was. Right.

And it affected me. And I think that was a moment for me to really, you know, become humble and realize, wow, like, this is not just a story. This is so much more to this person. And ultimately, it could, you know, be perfect. profound implications on humanity. If any of this is true, aliens are actually abducting people. Just think of the ethical moral dilemmas that we have with that. If they were to finally show themselves and we say, look at what you've done to us for

whatever, 70 plus years of taking us and, like, what do you do with that? So I love that idea of no matter what happened, like paying that respect to the individual, who had the courage to come forward. I think that's parable, for sure. For sure. Well, I got to ask you guys, what comes next? I know you're always on investigations. You've got books, you've got articles.

Yeah, what comes next for the singular four teams of society? Well, you know, we're going to continue covering weird news like we always do. But we do have a book project that we're pretty excited about called the Sing about 4DN. Society's Euletide Guide to High Strangeness. And it's going to be written by me and then illustrated by Emily. And she's already got some fantastic illustrations that she's made. And basically what it's shaping up to be is a sort of comparative analysis of euletide myths and legends alongside modern-day paranormal reports. So I can give you an example.

There's something in Iceland called the Yule Cat. And the legend of this Yule Cat is that it is this black cat as big as a house, that if you do not receive a wool sweater as a gift after the harvest, you might be considered lazy. And if you are so unfortunately judged, this thing is going to snatch you away and eat you. Like, you're just done. And if you look at certain folklorists like, I believe Jan Arnison is one example, excuse me, there are folklorists who believe that this legend arose out of a real belief

in some kind of creature like this. Now, there's a good chance that its size has been exaggerated over the years until now it's as big as a house, but it could have started off much smaller. you know, say the size of a big cat, you know, like a panther or, you know, lion or something as you think of a big cat. And the fun thing about that is we still have people reporting black phantom big cats, you know. That happens today. And so what I have to consider then is, is it possible that this particular legend, at least in part, has arisen out of, you know, people's, experiences with something that we're still experiencing, a mystery that still hasn't been solved.

And so, like, that I think is going to be really the core of what we're getting at with this next word. I mean, it's the ultimate stocking steper, right? I mean, literally. Even if you're just interested in the actual legends, like, of course they're all going to be in there and researched and their origins, at least from what we can find. because, you know, something that I found in trying to research this stuff is we don't know where a lot of the things that we still talk about came from. We just don't. You know, like a lot of it has been lost to history. Much of it was never written down.

And so we've got, you know, word-of-mouthed stories passed through generations. You know, like most of my ancestors up until, you know, a Christian conversion, they didn't have written language. You know, like you think about, like, the Germanic tribes and stuff. Like, they weren't writing books with runes, you know, like, that's not what those were for. So if anything was recorded, it was recorded by, you know, Roman historians or, you know, or later on, like Christian monks or something, you know. And that was it, which has led to some real issues with trying to find out where a lot of this stuff, like the origins of much of these stories. So it's just endlessly fascinating to me. It is. You know, that asking questions and the mythologies that have been created throughout history, it really does say more about us than what the actual myths are in many ways.

You know, putting that mirror back on themselves, I think. You're trying to understand where we all come from and the meaning of all of this, I think. It's big, it's broad and it's sweeping and it's profound. And I just, I love that you guys are tackling these things day by day. So, of course, last question, where can we find everything you guys are up to? All right. Well, you can find us on singular 40n.com. We, of course, are on most of the social media platforms out there. Our handle for Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook will be at Singular 4N.

And we've got a Patreon and a YouTube. So, yeah, check us out online. I love it. I love it. Please support the ultimate power couple guys. Please. Thank you. Guys, thank you for joining me

on Somewhere in the Skies. Thank you so much for having us, Ryan. Always a pleasure. Absolutely. Bigfoot versus Nessy. So with me right now, guys, for the very first time,

I believe, on Somewhere in the Skies, is Ken Gerhardt. Welcome, my man. Thank you, Ryan. I appreciate you having me on. Absolutely. It's good to see you.

It's good to meet you in person at last. I don't think we've ever crossed paths before. I don't think so. I couldn't remember. Maybe we have, and it's just one of those things that we've forgotten. But yeah, it's great to be here with you, man.

Thank you. Having a good time at this event. It's been great, you know, and I've been a big fan of your work for a long time. Oh, thank you. As a UFO guy, we don't have that many, we don't have the luxury of speaking to cryptosologists and people who look into the other facets of the unknown. You know, it's an echo chamber and UFO researchers talking about the latest UFO case. But what I really like about this conference is we're getting a little bit of everything,

paranormal, supernatural, cryptozoological UFOs. And that's why I love that we can go see each other's lectures. There's time to actually do that. Absolutely. Yeah. I'm interested in all of it as well.

And, you know, I'm obviously, I specialize in cryptozoology. I always tell people I'm very open-minded. I'm a curious person by nature. And I love, you know, learning about UFOs and paranormal and just hearing what different people have to say and their perspectives and their research.

It's always kind of a good. time. Absolutely. And I like that you're open-minded like that because often in these fields, there's camps. There's the UFO people, the ghost people, the Bigfoot people. And none shall they meet. And I want to get your thoughts on that a little bit later in the conversation. So you touched on that in your lecture. But first, can you tell us a little about what your lecture was about today? Kind of the argument, I guess, you set up. And yeah, tell us a little about what you spoke about. Yeah, thanks. I did a presentation. that I titled Nessie versus Bigfoot

and it was actually inspired by Godzilla versus King Kong which I think it occurred to me last year when I was watching that movie that these are two archetypes that are obviously represented in pop culture and movies you always have these big hairy eight-man like King Kong and you know things like that and then of course Godzilla to me kind of represents the the archetype of the aquatic reptilian monster,

kind of serpentine or whatever. And yeah, so I just basically wanted to present an argument for both of those cryptids, which are both very popular, very enduring cryptids, and just talk about, you know, the best evidence available. A lot of it, you know, people aren't familiar with. And ultimately, you know, ask the audience to kind of form their own conclusion and vote

and see, you know, which one do you think is more likely to exist based on, you know, the evidence that I've presented. So that was kind of the theme. Right. And I know you have books on both, you know, essential guides to each of these. I do. And you have a lot of documented cases in the books that I highly recommend people check out. But would you be willing to tease a little bit of that evidence with us for each maybe? A little bit about Nessie, what the most compelling evidence you've come across?

Yeah, absolutely. So first of all, and I'm sure it's the same in the UFO field or paranormal or whatever, But one of the first things that has to be addressed, I think, is that there are a lot of misconceptions. There's always a lot of misinformation out there. People maybe read a book a long time ago or saw one TV show and have drawn, you know, conclusions from that. And so in terms of Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster, you know, one of the big misconceptions is that, oh, all that happened a long time ago. You know, way back years and years ago. But I've actually, you know, I'm in, and I correspond with researchers.

There's a guy named Steve Felton who's been on Loch Ness. for 30 years doing, he's the go-to guy there. And he gets about 10 good reports, sightings every year still. And so that's the thing is Nessi is an ongoing phenomenon. It's not something that happened way back in the 1930s, 60s or 70s or whatever. Another thing I like to talk about is the sonar evidence. And a lot of people like to fixate on the photographic evidence, which is cool. There are a lot of alleged photographs of Nessie dating back to the 1930s.

many of those have been proven through the years to be hoaxes and people don't realize that and they still are kind of supporting a lot of the photographic evidence there are some good videos and films out there but many that have been debunked and so I ask people to kind of be a little more objective and critical about the challenge the photographic evidence

but the sonar evidence is what I think people really overlook and many people are not aware of the fact Ryan that there have been dozens of sonar contacts dating back to 1954 of large, unidentified, animate things swimming around under the water. Many of these sonar contacts have been analyzed by sonar experts and scientists and who've basically determined that there is something unusual under the water in Loch Ness swimming around and they're very large and they move around. So I think that's very compelling. And also, You know, the eyewitness accounts are very consistent. And again, a misconception is that Nessie is basically a small-headed, long-necked animal that sticks its head out of the water like a sort of an aquatic giraffe or a plesosaur, which is a prehistoric reptile.

When, in fact, 85% of the reports describe a big hump or several big humps that are just protruding out of the water like an upturned boat. And that's what most people describe in a smooth-skirts. in. And so as an investigator, I find that, you know, that consistency in the descriptions, you know, and again, you could expand that to worldwide and, you know, beyond Loch Ness, of course, you have lake monsters that are reported here in the U.S., the Lake Champlain Monster, and Canada, there's Ogopogo and many others. Around the world, you have similar lake monsters that are reported. So, yeah, I think that, you know, the case for the Loch Ness Monster is, you know, the fact that you have these consistent eyewitness descriptions that go back decades from

seeming incredible people and then you have the sonar evidence and then you know going back in history of course you can find things like Nessie and different mythologies and folklore around the world native American folklore or Scottish folklore or whatever so now um I want to ask you this question because this is an argument a lot of skeptics like to make with Loch Ness specifically is this idea of a you got the salt water versus fresh water debate you know that something like that could not survive in the walk you know because of that um what do you say to that like you know this creature couldn't live if it was that big it would not be able to survive in this fresh water um yeah what's up with all that yeah well certainly um you know there are smaller

species that are called Andronomous that travel from freshwater to salt water. In fact, Loch Ness has examples of andronomous species like salmon. There are salmon runs that come into Loch Ness from the ocean annually. There are eels, populations of eels,

that travel into the Atlantic Ocean to spawn and then come back in when they're mature. But not larger species. You're right about that. There are also invasive things that come into Loch Ness like seals that occasionally come into lock nest. So, you know, you have to look at these things in terms of, you know, the zoology,

the zoological aspect, which is that obviously something like a fish has to go through a chemical process called osmol regulation where it has to adjust the chemicals in its body to adjust from salt water to fresh water, the salt content in the body and things like that. Other types of species, however, like mammals that don't, you know, that, you know, that, that are air breathers, they don't have to go through that process at all. You know, they can go from salt water to freshwater. I just mentioned seals. There are also documented examples of whales that have come into fresh water in different rivers and lakes around the world.

And in fact, there are species of freshwater cetaceans or dolphins in China and South American and so forth. So it kind of opens the possibilities up, I think, if you rule out... At first, I didn't think it was real. I woke up to this blinding light and I was transported to another place. Pluto TV! Then I heard a voice. Come with me if you want to live.

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No credit cards or alien encounters necessary. Pluto TV, stream now, pay never. Kind of the old archetype of Nessie being, you know, either a big fish, like an eel or something like that, or even a reptile, and, you know, maybe expand it into the possibilities of a, you know, of a mammal, which is kind of, you know, where I'm, where I personally lean in terms of what I think the Loch Ness monster represents. Interesting. Okay. Well, now we're talking mammal versus mammal. Let's move on to Bigfoot. A lot of what your research has been. You've looked into. You've been on so many television shows talking about this cryptid. And I heard things today that I had no idea about, you know, the history of Bigfoot

and what it could be, what it couldn't be. So, yeah, what is some of the compelling evidence you've come across in terms of Bigfoot? Yeah, yeah. Okay, well, first and foremost, I would say, again, the anecdotal evidence, which consists of legends and traditions of giant hair-covered wild men. That's what they used to call them before the name. Bigfoot was created. We used to call them Wild Men.

Different Native American names for Bigfoot, Sasquatch, all translate to either Bushman, Harryman, or Wild Man. But these disparate Native American traditions talk about something that sounds just like a Bigfoot. And then again worldwide, you have things like the Yeti in Asia, the Yeran, the Mande Barung, the Yawi. So it seems to be a worldwide phenomenon. But if we narrow the scope to just Bigfoot or Sasquatch in North America, you have very consistent eyewitness descriptions. These are, they seem to be hominins, which means they're very human-like in terms of their general form. But of course, they're covered in hair.

So they would be primitive hominins with primitive features. almost every eyewitness describes very powerfully built, robust creatures with kind of a pointy conical shaped head, which we can find in the fossil record of hominins. That's a common feature. Broad shoulders, no neck. But, in fact, these animals probably do have a neck. It's just their trapezius muscles are so powerful and their shoulders so powerful that it looks like the head is set right on top of the shoulders. but very broad shoulders.

You know, I didn't really talk about this during the lecture, but there's something called an intermembril index, which in hominins, Great Apes, is kind of the ratio of the arms versus the legs. So, for example, in great apes like gorillas and orangutans and chimpanzees, which are brachiators, and they live in trees and climbing, they have much longer arms in comparison of their legs.

The intermembral index is about 67, or somewhere around there. Humans have an intramaral index of about in the low 100s, which means that our legs are pretty long compared to our arms because we walk upright. And Sasquatch seems to have an intramaral index that's exactly halfway between. So they do have longer arms compared to humans, but they walk up right, their bipedal, and so they have longer legs than something like a gorilla or an orangutan or whatever.

So those things are all pretty consistent. Also with Bigfoot or Sasquatch, we have the footprint evidence, the physical trace evidence, which consists of hundreds of castings and photographs of impressions in the ground. Those are very consistent. There seems to be a consistent design or morphology to the Sasquatch foot. It's similar to a human foot, but not exactly because they're much heavier and bigger. And so it's a flatter foot with as much wider, smaller, smaller, toes in relation to the rest of the foot, no arch, things like that. There's a lot of midfoot

flexibility. They seem to, it's called the mid-tarsal break. So that's very compelling. And also we have, you know, I didn't really get into this in the lecture, but we have, you know, some hair samples that are intriguing. No definitive DNA evidence so far. That's a misconception that we have DNA that we don't. And vocalization. and of course the Patterson-Gimland film, which everyone has seen, which is the iconic footage from October 20, 1967. Of course, a lot of people think it's a hoax. But, you know, those of us that have studied the film for decades,

and especially now that we've got this great software for stabilizing, enhancing, enlarging, you know, because we've got to remember it came from like an 8-millimeter film that was basically very far away and kind of shaky and stuff. But I don't know. I still think that that film is pretty convincing in terms of if you really look at the movement of the subject in the film, you can see the muscle mass is very natural. It just doesn't seem like a guy in a suit. I think that's where most serious Bigfoot researchers kind of fall.

Especially since it's supposedly supposed to be a female. Yeah, yeah. We call her Patty. Patty. Roger Patterson filmed it and somebody coined the name Pat. I actually was some Russian researchers, I believe Demetian. Bayanoff that came up with the name Patty. But we can see large

pendulous breasts that, you know, especially when she turns in frame 352 and we can see these large breasts. So we assume it's a female and gosh, wouldn't that be hard to fake on a costume, I think? I mean, especially back in the 1960s. Why add that specific detail?

Right. Well, and also, you know, to the film's credit, we have the technology now to stabilize, to enhance. And you can see, like, the muscle literature and stuff in this thing. It's really hard to believe

that this could be a costume. So the fact that the film still stands the test of time and the technology we have today does say a lot, at least in my opinion. It's never been adequately recreated, Ryan, and there's actually a debate going on

or a conversation, I should say, in the Bigfoot field right now, about, you know, why don't we try to do a really good recreation using materials that were only available in 1967 to make a costume. We know the location of the film. It's been relocated thanks to the Bluff Creek Project in California. I visited the film site last year.

A researcher named Daniel Perez, editor of the Bigfoot Times, has acquired the exact camera Patterson had at that time. Of course, we can't find the original film. That would be impossible, so we would have to simulate some of the qualities of that type of film and stuff. But, you know, there have been some crude attempts at recreating it, and they just look awful. Like, nothing like it. And I think that's where, yeah, again, more evidence for Bigfoot researchers that have seen some of these attempted recreations are like, God, that's immediately recognizable as a guy in a suit.

There's absolutely no question about it. So, I don't know. It's a great mystery. Yeah. It remains a mystery. Two more questions for you, Ken. You don't mind. So the first being, you...

You have done some investigation in Alaska, like somewhere we don't hear about a lot when it comes to this stuff. And you had almost a life-threatening incident. Would you mind sharing, if it's not too traumatic, for you? No, it's not. It's actually more embarrassing than traumatic. But, yeah, I did host a, co-hosted a series called Missing in Alaska in 2015 for the History Channel. And we were up there, you know, it's true Alaska does have just a remarkable number of missing person. You know, like 50,000 missing person cases since the 1980s.

Some of those have been resolved through the years. But I forget the percentage. It's been years. But, yeah, a startling number of people go missing in the state of Alaska. And for the purposes of the show, we were kind of entertaining different, you know, theories about strange creatures like Bigfoot or Lake Monsters, Thunderbirds. I mean, could some people at least be disappearing because of this or that? We were filming one particular episode, and basically I was crossing kind of an icy stream, and I slipped on an icy, mossy rock, and I broke my ankle.

Snapped immediately, and I fell into an icy stream. And much to my chagrin, the cameraman jumped right over and started filming me as I was screaming like a little girl in pain. Because I guess, you know, they knew it was going to be gold footage or whatever. But fortunately, the team was there, and they, you know, made a splint for me out of driftwood and built a little journey out of their jackets. And I had to lay in this stream for a few minutes. I thought I might get hypothermia after a while. But they rescued me off the mountain. And, yeah, so it was kind of a bummer.

I felt really bad, Ryan, because I felt, you know, like I just screwed the whole show. You know, like, man, all these people, I just sent on. I'm all home. But yeah, I would have gone missing in Alaska if I had been alone, and I'm sure those kinds of things happen to people as well. But I am proud of the fact that I did have surgery almost immediately in Anchorage. I went through three months of rigorous therapy, and we were back filming three months after that.

And it was kind of funny because that particular episode, we were talking about the Nahani, which are supposed to be evil spirits that are protecting. gold or some territory so we kind of you know that the producers wanted me to kind of emphasize that storyline that well maybe because we were doing a episode about evil spirits that that's why this horrible thing happened to me which uh oh boy yeah yeah i mean you look at the curse of the skin walker yeah something that goes on with that something something along those lines so um yeah but um well we're glad you made it out well thank you you didn't become an active part of the investigation didn't become one of them I see.

I didn't. And there are a lot of reasons why people will, you know, I know there are a lot of theories out there and people are fascinated with these books about, you know, missing people in national parks and things. But, man, there's a million ways to, you know, in the wilderness, you know, in particular, as you know. I mean, people have accidents.

They fall in crevasses. There's bears. There are, you know, it's pretty dangerous sometimes. And I think, you know, we maybe take that for granted in terms of how dangerous it can be to go out into the wilderness sometimes. Absolutely. There's a lot of risks too, for sure. Well, you know, last question for you, Ken.

We are a UFO podcast, so I got to go there, man. You did touch on this in your talk. I've come across reports in the Project Luke book files of, you know, this correlation between people seeing a cryptid and seeing a UFO. Right. You have other researchers out there theorizing Bigfoot could be a ghost. Bigfoot could be an alien. You know, I don't land anywhere on that.

I think all theories should be asked. But what do you think of this correlation that people have made? Have you ever come across cases where UFOs have been seen in conjunction with Bigfoot? Yeah, what do you make of that whole debate? It's pretty controversial, right? It is. And, you know, I know people that advocate strongly for that possibility. Look, I'll tell you a personal story that's kind of interesting.

I did see a UFO one time. And I was on a Bigfoot research expedition. So maybe this sounds a little hypercritical, hypocritical, but I was at a place called Charles Mill Lake, which is just outside of Mansfield, Ohio, about 20 years ago, specifically because there had been sightings of Bigfoot at this lake. And a colleague and I were kind of sitting there at night and suddenly, you know, just kind of listening and waiting,

and suddenly one of these, I what you guys referred to as the black triangles, this giant black triangular thing. And we'd been watching airplanes all night. flying overhead and you know you recognize the flashing lights you hear the engine noise you know you can identify an airplane this thing was completely silent it was huge i mean we could tell it was you know it's it was hard to tell how high up it was but it was a black triangular shape that kind of blacked out the the stars and there were three flashing lights on each point of the triangle that were different colors and i was like red green and i didn't have ryan the right photographic equipment to photograph something

in the sky i wasn't expecting that i tried to get a picture of it. I couldn't. Passed over our heads. And so, yeah, so I saw a, you know, a UFO. Now, I acknowledge maybe it was a military experiment. I can't say it was extraterrestrial. I couldn't identify it. I did find out later there was a famous case near Mansfield, Ohio, where a helicopter was captured in a tractor beam by a UFO allegedly. And I know there are a lot of bases up there. So anyway, so that is my, but, you know, not to say, and, you know, certainly somebody that had that confirmation bias and say, well, see, you were there looking for Bigfoot and you saw a UFO. Well, you know, let's think about this critically, okay?

When you're out in the woods or you're out in a desolate place at night, listening, watching, you're more likely to see unusual things, I think, you know, because you're really paying attention, you're looking around, you're trying to take everything in. And so maybe that played a part in that, but I know that was a digression. So I'll go back to, in my personal experience, 45 years. of Bigfoot research all over North America. I've interviewed hundreds of eyewitnesses. I've done field research all over the continent.

I've worked with all the main investigators out there. There's very little evidence that I've encountered. And I think we've figured out it's probably about 3% of Bigfoot encounters that hint at some kind of possible UFO connection, which I think scientifically speaking is a very small percentage of the overall evidence. So I think, you know, people that sort of advocate the Bigfoot UFO connection may tend to emphasize those cases. But I think if you take the wide angle view, it's not enough, at least in my opinion, to really indicate there could be a connection. But I will also say this, which is kind of an interesting theory that's come up.

I don't know a lot about UFO abduction per se, but I know that that's a, you know, a theory that UFOs are a, abducting people, might they also be abducting bigfoots from time to time? Because big foots are hominins, supposedly. They look somewhat like us. They walk up right. And so, I don't know, what are your thoughts on that? Ryan, is it possible that maybe when people see a big foot and a UFO in the same scenario, it's because that bigfoot or Sasquatch was just taken off of a UFO? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. That sounds crazy. But I mean, I love your turning the tables on me. All right. Let's let's let's go. Let's break. this time. So I always turn to, there's this one case out of the chestnut range,

where I believe it was two women were driving down a desolate road, and they witnessed a hominid creature standing up right, run across the road, hairy, run from, they almost hit it. They almost hit it. So, you know, they kind of screeching hole. The creature runs into the woods. And what happens? They see a craft above them. go over to where this creature had just entered the woods, being down, and then they believe that it brought up the creature. Oh, wow. Okay.

Disappeared all the second. Again, but like you mentioned, that's one case. And of course, it's going to be highlighted because it was a UFO and a bigflip. But like you said, when you kind of take that, you zoom out and look at the percentage of these things, you have to wonder. There's another case in, I believe it was Long Island, where... This group of people saw a creature that supposedly hopped on top of the car, dented the top of the car.

There was physical evidence of this, ran off again into the woods, as they always do, and then they saw a UFO go into that same exact area as well. Project Blue Book actually investigated that case. Interesting. But again, like you mentioned, these are two cases out of hundreds of thousands of Bigfoot reporters. So you truly have to wonder. Are they abducting, like you said, Bigfoot for some reason?

Is it because they know how rare it is and they want to scientifically Or they want to see how they're related to us If they are related to us I've got a weird one for you And I don't remember the exact reference Maybe it was one of John Keel's old books or something But there was a big

UFO sighting in I believe Fredericton, Wisconsin If I'm not mistaken Where a truck driver was driving down the road One morning, early morning And there was a craft kind of either parked in the road or, you know, and it was shroud, kind of mis-shrouted. And he said there was a little porthole or a window, and he could see the pilot, and the pilot

was a bigfoot. Have you ever heard that? I have not. So that would be the most, if you saw actually a bigfoot piloting UFO, I think that would be a pretty definitive. But again, these are outlier cases, Ryan. And that's all I want to emphasize to people is, yeah, we all love the really weird, strange stories, and particularly when these worlds collide and we get these kind of seemingly, you know,

dots connected, but yeah, I think it's just, you know, these are outlier cases, and so we shouldn't really focus on them. We should consider them maybe and put them in our back pocket for later if something else comes up. But, you know, these are all great mysteries, you know. Absolutely. And it's fun to kind of explore all the different possibilities and just speculate about it. It is, it really is speculation, I think, is key. And it keeps us curious and it keeps the mystery alive. And what is life without mystery? You know what I mean? Agreed. Well, to kind of, I guess, wrap things up, Ken, where do you stand?

I know, you know, after you had this talk, excuse me, Loch Ness versus Bigfoot, the room was kind of, you know, passionately debating, like which is the most compelling, the most intriguing, which could be real. Where do you land on either of these two? Do you believe in one more than the other to be an actual flesh and blood thing? Man, it's, you know, I guess it depends on the day. honestly, Ryan. I'd say, I tell people I'm 90% convinced that Bigfoot exists, and this is after 45 years of research. I think that the evidence is that compelling, but you know, you have to leave that 10% margin of error because, you know, it's possible that it's just a crazy cultural phenomenon. I don't think that's the case. It's very unlikely, in my opinion. I'd say the evidence for the Lochness Monster and other aquatic cryptids is right there with it. So I, you know, I kind of lean towards 90% percent as well. I'd almost flip a coin, man. I hate to I'm not trying to weasel out on you.

But they're both, they're both, if you really immerse yourself in the evidence, you can become convinced that, you know, these things do exist. They're very rare. They're very elusive. In terms of the Loch Ness monster, obviously it has the advantage

of living in deep water where it's not seen very often. In terms of Bigfoot or Sasquatch, I think that they are extremely rare, but they've also adapted avoidance behaviors to not be found by humans and that they're just, as some of my colleagues call them the ninjas of the forest. They're good at hiding. They're good at staying away from humans. And, you know, I'm just hopeful that one day we will find definitive evidence that one or both of these cryptids actually exist. I hope so too, man. And, you know, you mentioned, you know,

in terms of documentation. They are rare, but you have... compiled a lot of these cases in the essential guide to lockness monster and essential got to Bigfoot. So I've got to ask, where can we find everything you're doing and everything you're up to? Oh, I appreciate that. Yeah, all my books are available on Amazon. Just type in Ken Gerhardt and you should go to my author page.

If any of your listeners would like autographed or sign copies, they can contact me on social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and I'm happy to deal directly with them as well. Awesome, man. Well, I appreciate your openness. As someone who is going to be moving to Scotland in the next month or so. So jealous. I'm going to be reaching out to you probably every other day, man.

Like, who else am I going to turn to? Are you going to go to Lockness? Absolutely. Okay, I hope so, man. You've got to. You're going to be the first to know about it. Yeah, and maybe you'll see a UFO in the Lochness monster, and that'll open up a whole other debate when both of those are basically in view at the same time.

You're going to have a new book on it. Ken, it has been a pleasure having me on Summer in the Skies, man. Thank you, Ryan. Pestri's all mine. Hey, guys, Ryan here. The Somewhere in the Skies podcast is a labor of love every week. And with that, comes many different costs to keep the show running. That's where our Patreon campaign comes in. You give what you think the show is worth.

There's different rewards available all the time, including shoutouts on the show, early editions of main episodes, bonus episodes and content and very soon monthly patron hangouts where we sit back and chat all things UFOs. So I hope you'll consider becoming a Patreon subscriber today. To learn more and to join, visit patreon.com slash somewhere skies. Thank you for your support and keep looking up. The Midwest Conference on the Unknown Day 3. It's been an absolute blast seeing all the talks, meeting all the people here at the conference,

and spent an incredible experience. And another incredible experience I had was meeting for the very first time, Joshua Cutchin, a guy I've been following for a really long time, all of his work. You probably heard his ad for his new book that came out on the show last week. And I got to see a talk that kind of embodied

what the book represents here. And it pretty much blew my mind and I'm sure a lot of people's and had my head tilted the whole time thinking, wow, there might be something to this. So for the very first time on somewhere in the sky, welcome, Mr. Joshua Cutchin. Hi, Ryan. It's a pleasure to, I was going to say,

it's my first time meeting you too, but I guess that goes without saying, right? Unless you didn't know something I don't know. Yeah, I've been watching you from afar, hiding behind corners and whatnot. No, it's been absolutely wonderful and it was great. I mean, mutual admiration hour, right? I loved your talk as well. And I think that, I think that like, focusing on the human element of this stuff is something that has been, has been neglected for so long.

And I see more people coming around to that. And, I mean, in some ways, it ties in with a lot of my theses that we as inhabitants of this reality and this planet are kind of behind the phenomenon. Not that we are, you know, not that we are making it up and not that it's like all strictly aircraft from, you know, authorities and governmental organizations, but that the phenomenon is intrinsically tied to the human condition. And so I think in a lot of the ways that the two presentations really played off of each other. Yeah, that's such a good point. Yeah. Well, tell us a little, I guess, the ecology of souls, the ecology of souls, the UFO as something I never thought I would connect to UFOs as a death symbol. Walk us through, how did this

come to be? What made you, what were the first seeds that came into your mind about this, this theory that you're sort of bringing forward? Well, yeah, and I want to make it very clear that it's always a theory, right? I mean, I always try to make it a point to say, look, it could be this. And if it is this, here's the way this all fits together. But at the same time, you know, maybe I just wrote this giant book and it's not right, right? But, you know, it's about the journey and about learning some of the symbolism and things along the way. So two things always really stuck with me. The first was the observation from Anstrieber, after getting a lot of correspondence from readers in the wake of communion, had written down an observation about the contact experience.

and she said, this has something to do with what we call death. Now, I think what we call death is a really interesting idea, too. Didn't have as much time to explore that because just unpacking that one statement and how just death in general reflects and refracts through the UFO phenomenon just ended up leading me down innumerable rabbit holes. So that was something that always stuck with me. And then the fact that there are plenty. I wouldn't necessarily say it's a majority of cases,

but there are plenty of cases where people see dead love. loved ones during their contact experiences, either a boardcraft or during periods of heavy UFO contact. So they'll be citing UFOs and they'll see their dead father will come to their front door or something like that. So I really wanted to unpack that, but what happened when I did that was that I started finding all these older beliefs about the soul that a lot of us in modern Western society have just completely forgotten.

A big one is the idea that I talked about in the presentation, the idea of polypsychism, the idea that there are multiple parts to us that certainly have their own degree of autonomy and might wander at will. So I was like, okay, well, I guess this book's a little bit bigger than I thought it would be. So I ended up having to split it into two because there were not only those older soul-based traditions that I felt like needed to be provided as background. Because otherwise, you know, you're talking about the UFO phenomenon and you're having to digress and go off on these tangents to explain it. So I'm like, okay, let's just bring everybody up to speed on some of these older ideas. But then, you know, I just found all sorts of other things that really compelled me to continue expanding. And connections to laylines, which have their own UFO connection, but also their own spirit connection.

If you look at some of the older traditions that are outlined by like Paul Devereaux and films like that. And ancient monuments and mounds and megaliths and things like that, almost often rather, have death connections as well. So it just turned into a bunch of different things. And then, of course, there's always the fairy connection. because I always keep finding myself coming back to those very connections. So, you guys, this new term I'm learning this week, phalians, blew me away. I was like, that needs to be on a T-shirt today, today, Joshua Cutchard. Well, you know, I kind of like it because I always try to emphasize this,

because people always, I feel like often read some of my work the wrong way. They think that I'm saying that aliens are fairies or that fairies are aliens. And I'm saying neither. I'm saying that the way that we interpret the phenomenon is always culturally bound, right? But the consistencies between the fairy folklore and the UFO contact experience is so strong that I'm at the point now. You know, I used to hedge my bets and be like, well, maybe it's kind of similar, but like, if I can find something in one, I can almost always find an analog in the other, right? But it's something that, you know, I sort of alluded to in the talk, too, is that this is kind of the connection that haunts passport to Magonia in a way. is that, you know, Valia did a great job of showing how some of these older folklorers

connect to the alien abduction mythos, but the question that sort of lingers in the background that didn't really go answer was, well, how did the older folklorers think of these, quote-unquote, non-human beings? They always, almost always, tied them into the dead somehow. And you see this in Western fairy folklore where the dead will appear alongside fairies or the dead will even become fairies in some instances. And so trying to sort out exactly how that happens is another big part of this. But by the transit of property, it implies to me that there would be some link between aliens and the dead if aliens are connected to fairies and fairies are connected to aliens.

Right. So maybe. Again, maybe. I'm glad you make that disclaimer. You know, I wish more UFO researchers would do that instead of, I know, I know this to be true. You know just as well as I do. Any conference you go to, if there's someone up there talking and they say they have the answers to UFOs, run away. 100%. A hundred percent. And, you know, someone who actually did the layout of the book, but is also a dear friend of mine and, like, one of the nicest people I've ever had the chance to meet. Mike Cleland has always been a real touchstone for me on this, because Mike's had some experiences that are quite harrowing and are quite convincing. And yet you read Mike's work, and he's always saying, it might be. It seems to be. Perhaps so and so, to me it seems as if. And I'm like, well, if Mike can do that and he's had these experiences with a certain degree of surety involved, then the rest of us have no excuse for not doing that.

So there's one part in Ecology of Souls where I say, okay, like, I'm not going to say might be and seems to be just to streamline this conversation for this one section of a chapter. This is not saying it's right. It's just trying to streamline the text because it was sort of the part where I drew together a bunch of different threads and it was easier to say, if this is true, then this is true. I didn't just say this is the way it is. But that's, it was couched in that sort of language. So, yeah, I'm always about providing different ideas. And it's the sort of thing where, you know, even if it's not, quote, unquote, the objective answer to this, I think. still think it's interesting to see how many different models you can graft onto the UFO phenomenon,

and it still makes sense. And I think that's sort of anomalous at its own right. You know what I mean? You know, and I mean, I want to kind of break down some of the options you get in your presentation and in the book. You know, obviously not too much, guys. We want you to get the book. The books, I should say. Gosh, I can't like to dig into it. But some of the things that really stuck out to me, were obviously a the beings, the entities, the intelligences possibly behind the UFOs, the craft

or the the, let's not even craft so much, but the maybe the vessel. You're great at protecting your data, but lots of places could still expose you to identity theft. I thought it was safe. If that happens, LifeLock gives you a U.S.-based

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Terms apply. So it's actually a really good way to put it. Yeah. What about those symbologies did you find interesting patterns between... Let's start with the beings, I guess, a little bit, in terms of, like... Yeah. Yeah, well, in some ways it's the most superficial. comparison, right? Because

and basically you can sort of distill it to, the grays are quite skeletal, right? And I think it, you know, I think there, you and like three other people were the people who laughed at the Roswell slide that I threw up there. But, you know, I was, but I think it does emphasize the point that, like, the gray alien

is so skeletal that, like, when people, when you researchers see a mummified indigenous boy, they say, oh, it looks like a gray alien. And that sort of shows you how the proportions are basically the same. The proportions can change and atrophy after death in certain ways that are very evocative of that. And, you know, other folks like Martin Kotmeier have pointed these connections out.

So there's that. There's also the qualities which we attribute these occupants, which, you know, are the same suite of qualities that you would attribute to fairies or ghost. Or even if you're into paranormal Bigfoot, probably the same qualities you'd attribute to that. Invisibility, phasing through objects, all these sort of different things. But I also found it really interesting that a lot of the non-grays that you see, you know, if they're not, quote unquote, space brothers, generally speaking, or they're not grays. They're usually therianthropes of earth animals, right? And it's like, well, okay, why are these earth animals?

And if you impact some of the symbolism behind some of those, you find some interesting connections between those particular animals and a lot of our traditions worldwide regarding the dead. And a lot of these traditions are quite consistent in terms of the figures and the animals that might lead you to the afterlife. For example, dogs, birds, and horses are always the three animals that lead you and help you make that transition. So that's sort of a very rough and very brief over sketch of the sort of occupants.

But then, you know, if you look at some of these cosmologies, and I alluded to this in the presentation too, a lot of indigenous cosmologies don't differentiate between, well, first of all, they tend to view the UFO phenomenon as some sort of ancestor or spirit phenomenon. And when they do, they might see something that looks to our eyes like a craft, but they don't really differentiate between occupants and craft and just all. light in general. So it's entirely possible, as in some work like Ardice of Clarks, to see people converse with a star person, a star ancestor

that then changes into a light, that then changes into a craft, with those, you know, seamless transition. So there's that, and then there's this very persistent belief that you find that really you can trace all its way through, I would argue, Christianity and New Age and ghost hunting, that the

soul is a ball of light. And you find that in a lot of near-death experiences, a lot of out-of-body experiences, somehow people are able to have a third-person perspective of their soul, and they sort of perceive it as being like a bowling ball-sized ball of light. So I think that goes a way to sort of suggest that some of the straight-up light phenomena in the absence of structured craft might be some sort of soul phenomena. I mean, a part of the Jeffrey Kriple was kind enough to provide an endorsement of the book, and towards the end of his quote,

it's not on the back, but it makes it in the longer quote because he gave me a long quote. He said, you know, if you're trying to shoot down UFOs, you might as well be trying to shoot down souls. That was a really interesting way to put it. But even if there's souls,

it doesn't necessarily mean dead people, and that's the interesting thing where things like polypsychism come in, because during periods of trauma or illness or sleep or alter states of consciousness, it's believed worldwide that this aspect of your soul has a certain degree of autonomy

and can wander around it, will. And when it wanders around it will, it's often described as, again, a ball of light. So the idea that perhaps an aspect of the witness might be projecting itself like a doppelganger might, or the idea that there might be someone who is doing something like remote viewing or meditating and projecting their consciousness and to those who are able to see it, it appears as a ball of light are two things to be explored. And you can find these ideas. That was something that I really tried to put in the presentation too, is that these ideas, especially in those old flying saucer reviews, which always leaned a little bit more metaphysical than the Mufon Journal, you can find these ideas

as far back as like the 50s. And they've been talked about, but they've never really gotten a moment to shine, I think. And then there's a whole other conversation you could have about structure craft and the symbolism behind that. And some of the stranger ideas, which I don't necessarily think are what's going on because it doesn't really jive with my metaphysics. But I have to acknowledge the fact that it's a possibility is this idea of afterlife technology, the idea that the afterlife is a mirror of our world and it can technologically advance

and perhaps people on the other side are making these craft to pierce the veil and it's a weird idea, but there's shockingly more of a discussion around that than I think, even I realize, going into it. And you can see the sort of vestiges of this and Tesla and Edison who were trying to make ways to communicate with the dead.

It's tied in a lot of, little bit to EVPs and such, which pick up ghosts and aliens, by the way. Yeah, yeah. What is that that method called? It's like ITC. Trans-instrumental communication, I believe, is what it's called. Yeah. And there was a famous Brazilian researcher. Her name escapes me at the moment, but she was just just picking up ghost voices, and then she started picking up extraterrestrial voices. And she stopped. She, like, shuddered her laboratory, and then she finally got comfortable enough. And, of course, they were sharing very space-brothery sort of messages about coming in peace. and all this sort of thing.

So, yeah, in some ways, like the presentation last night was just a chapter of the book, because I play with so many different ideas, because the question still remains so open-ended, that there are a lot of different ways that you could sort of perceive it. And it's not only about death, but that's the other thing I found is that as I went through it, it's about, you know, death and life and rebirth and reincarnation, because you can't talk about death without talking about birth, and you can't talk about birth without talking about, you know, sexual reproduction.

which the phenomenon has always been super associated with. It's a sexy phenomenon. Well, sometimes. Sometimes. For every vilible eyes, you have a wittly streamer, you know. There's one case you brought up towards the end of your presentation, which has always struck me. It's a beautiful case of where sort of culture and, I guess,

a core belief system within your culture of the afterlife really took effect in terms of a UFO setting. And that was with Cynthia Hines when she went to investigate this case in Africa. I remember hearing about this case when you put that image up of the witness, it just hit me because I hadn't thought about that case in years. And it's a prime example of how one person interprets an experience

as opposed to another. A UFO researcher wanted to make it a UFO case. whereas the witness himself didn't. So did you find that sort of pattern throughout where, like, spirituality will put one lens on a UFO experience and I guess whatever else is anti-spirituality? I would probably make that,

I'd probably draw that distinction between, like, the modern West and just indigenous cosmologies. That's what I find time and again, is that not only do these cultures interpret these through a spirit lens, but, like, you know, we're cultured to be generally skeptical

and I would argue generally cynical. Not schenical, but cynical. You know, in our modern, you know, society here. And that's part of the reason that a lot, so much of Cynthia Hines research made it into the book is because it's just a snapshot. It's a poor snapshot in the sense

that there's an entire continent of Africa that we just don't talk about as you apologists, right? I mean, we kind of do, but it's always in like the heavily colonialized areas. And it's like, you know. South Africa. Yeah, South Africa, you know, even Zimbabwe has a long history of colonial occupation and stuff. So this particular case that you alluded to, which is, again, consistent with this idea of the afterlife evolving, which you see in a lot of different cultures.

You know, the Egyptians said that you still had to farm after you died. When will labor not be a thing? Yeah, seriously. Monday mornings, I guess. Yeah. But, you know, you see this idea in some Korean shamanism and stuff like that to use the term, on the Clifford-Muchina case I've always thought was just so charming in a lot of ways. I don't quite remember the date off my hand. I believe it was in the late 70s or early 80s,

but it was along the Mozambique Zimbabwe border. And he was in his village, and he was just doing some chores, and he sees this fireball rolling through town. And he's convinced that at first that it's a fire, and some other people are alarmed as well. So he runs to the village's alarm bell and starts ringing it. And as he does, he turns around, and he sees this ball of fire. And and he's about to collapse and fall to his knees, but as he does, he sees several figures in shiny coveralls. And later he is contacted by Cynthia Hind, who eventually kind of found the right way to ask the right questions

because she was always asking questions about UFOs and spacemen. And the gentleman said, describe these figures and these shiny coveralls. And she said, well, have you ever heard of astronauts? He was like, you mean like the guys who went to the moon? He's like, yeah, I've heard a little bit about that. but all of us who saw these things think that they were ghosts of our ancestors. And Cynthia Hines said, well, with all due respect, wouldn't your ancestors be wearing something different than shiny coveralls?

And Moushena apparently shrugged and said, times change, which I love. And I was, you know, I was just, I was, it's, we talk about a lot of strange and foreign ideas when we talk about euphology. but the idea that the afterlife is a mirror where technological development can continue a pace it's just, it's so it's almost that stranger

than we can imagine sort of thing. But you see it, but you see vestiges of this too in like the fairy folklore where the fairies would cry at births and laugh at funerals. So the idea that like there's some sort of exchange or transmission where a loss in that world is a gain in this world and vice versa.

a revolving door, I guess. Yeah. And it brings comfort. I mean, every culture, like, it's almost this innate insanity when you're born of you have no idea why you're here. Like, you know, from birth. And you're just trying to figure that out for the remainder of this existence, whatever this might be.

And it strikes me as interesting that, like, a lot of these cultures see death as, that you're right, a stepping off point to the next chapter. And I feel like that gives you comfort in some sense. Well, you know, that's the funny thing. My wife is like, why are you writing a book about death? I want to read about death. But it ends up being, you know, a really, in my mind, a very comforting book.

Because there's just, I think at the end of the day, the most conservative thing that we can say is that we just don't understand what it really represents. That's the most conservative thing that we can say. But to your point about, like, you know, being sort of embodied. enforced into this reality. This is something that Terrence McKenna, who coined the term ecology of souls after which the book is named, said, you know, he said that part of the reason that... Part of the reason that the psychedelic reality is so alien to us is because we simply don't spend enough time there. The only reason that our reality is not psychedelic is because we're embedded within it. So the idea was that it's just as legitimate a reality,

but the reason that it remains so alien and unfamiliar and has a... sort of dream logic is because we're not their cradle to grave. And if we were, perhaps we would actually have a better understanding of that. Which brings up a whole new question of, you know, whenever, because you know, these entities are always surprised when they're seen, right? So is there some, you know, alien

gray in his sophomore college dorm taking mushrooms in the DMT realm or something and popping over here and being surprised? It's seen us. You hear that in the supernatural realm as well, like, ghosts are often just as surprised to see us as we are. And cryptids are as well, yeah.

I kind of wonder if there's not, you know, if that transmission isn't coming this way as well. It's like turning a corner and bumping into somebody. And I would suggest that, you know, a good way to see whether it's bleeding through or you're bleeding through is to look for that missing time. Because that's something that really is, I mean, you find that sort of misperception of time in near-death experiences, in psychedelic trips, in the fairy lore, obviously, in the UFO lore, obviously, and even in some cryptos, encounters too. So I think that might be sort of a, you don't see it in ghost stories, which is really interesting to me. I look for it. Whenever you find like missing time and ghost stories, it's almost always a time slip. And I did find a time slip where they perceived that they were only gone for like 20 minutes and they were gone for three hours. But they realized

it was also a time slip because like horses and carriages were going by somewhere. So to me, it seems like the missing time is like, is typically a hallmark of that transition. So that might be a good way, good metric to judge whether or not you, you went somewhere or something came to you. Right. Absolutely. Oh, that's fascinating. One other thing I kind of want to touch on with you. We'll wrap things up here because we're actually going to see one of our colleagues speak, is you brought up Ingo Swan in one of these cases. I wrote about this like six years ago where he remote viewed the moon and had an interesting experience. Could you run us through that a little bit and why he decided to put it in the

Well, you know, it's funny because every case that I put in the book is not necessarily endorsement of the validity of the case. It's more like to say, because I'm a big, known for my footnotes and my end notes, right? So it's more like, you know, well, this is what's said. And if it is true, it conforms to X, Y, and Z. It's not necessarily always an endorsement. So I view the Ingo Swan story, even though I love it to death. It's kind of like, really? Because it's so far out.

But he was, the short version is, but he was tasked with some coordinates on the dark side of the moon. And he was surprised to find that there was an entire. like mining operation more or less that was working there with with humanoid's present and in remote viewing it's always assumed that you can't be seen by by the people if there are any that you're viewing but in this case he was seen and they turned around and they seemed to have a look of recognition on his faces and ingo sort of wrestled with that aspect of it for a while he decided that if they were able to see him and he was getting a genuine vision that they must have been psychically sensitive but the question that I always ask is like okay well that's cool how did how did the moonites perceive Ingo Swan. Did they see Ingo? Did they see, as I would assume, a ball of light? And if they saw a ball of light in the sky and it was Ingo Swan remote viewing the moon, then, I mean, this is highly speculative.

But like, what's keeping an extraterrestrial civilization who I would assume would have discovered the same techniques of remote viewing? What's keeping them from remote viewing the earth and appearing as lights in our sky? And then, of course, you know, the fact that you have to be psychically attuned to witness remote viewers from that other end of the of the scenario kind of fits well with the heavy incidents of psychic sensitivity amongst UFO witnesses as well. So, you know, there's so many different ideas to play with.

And that's the thing is like it just turned into the gift that kept on giving. So I wanted to write one book and it turned into two books. And it's just a function of nobody wants a book that big. And I don't trust the binding to actually hold up over time. So it's volume one, Ecology of Souls and E mythology of Deaths. in the paranormal, volume one, volume two. And then there is a third completely optional supplemental volume called the Ecology of Souls Companion.

It's available in print if you're a completionist like me, but it's also available freely on my website. And it's got all the end notes, the full bibliography, and it also has three appendices, which are the dead who are known to experiencers who appear during UFO contact, the dead who are not known, which is kind of a trickier thing to figure out. But there's some interesting stories that someone like meeting someone, they give them their name and they find out later, like some researchers came along and found out that the person was in South Dakota and had died three years earlier. Yeah. So there's an interesting corroborative

stories like that. And then just a snapshot, and none of these are exhausted, but they are, they do sort of illustrate the tendency or the frequency of these particular modalities. And the third one is UFOs seen around modern burial sites like cemeteries and graveyards. Right, which we didn't even touch on. Well, guys, you're going to have to read the books to get into that. I know. Um, well, Well, before we go, Josh, last question for you. What do you hope people take away from the series of books? What was kind of your mission with this? So what I hope people would take away from this is that even though we are not a selfless species,

we pollute the environment, we tend to act selfishly. Selfishness is not in short supply these days. I think that the phenomenon might be trying to, to, of help us refocus ourselves on ourselves, by which I mean the better parts of ourselves, right, the compassion, the stewardship of the environment, the immortality that is, I believe, at this point, our birthright, and that is a fundamental part of being embodied on this planet. And to realize that, and to realize that because there's so much pressure taken off of us from what seems like this terminal end

that that actually frees us to do more good while we're here. That's beautiful, man. Yeah, I love that. I love that. Not living for death, but like dying for life almost. No, exactly.

That's sort of a constant refrain that comes across the book, which I didn't really realize. Again, you find this in the near-death experience. You find it in a lot of UFO contact experiences. You find it in a ton of psychedelic trips, and you find it in stuff like the, you know, the Greek mystery cults like the Oliocidian Mysteries, it's this refrain of die to death.

So you remove death as an impediment to what you're going to do here so that you can actually start living and so you can actually use the time that you have to seek inner peace, to learn to better the lives of those around you. And once you realize that death is not the end, to improve your standing as you continue being laundered through this ecology of souls. couldn't we could not wrap it up any better my man one more time where can we find the book in all your work uh well i i want to self-publish this one so it's available exclusively at amazon ecology of souls a new mythology of death in the paranormal volumes one and two companion book optional

um you can find links to that if you can't remember that at joshua cuchin dot com jos h ua cuchin dot com i also have um an email address where i offer um signed copies at a discount because amazon doesn't allow you to do like if you buy the complete series you get a discount but I do so I offer a discount as well so any of those places reach out to me and we'll get you a copy awesome gosh thank you for joining me on somewhere in the skies this is so nice meeting it really has it really has all right guys once more I am here at the Midwest conference on the unknown it's been an incredible weekend we're on day three things are sort of wrapping up here but but that doesn't mean that day three is any less important because we saw one of the best talks, I think, personally, of the conference this morning.

As a UFO person, I don't tackle the supernatural often, but this presentation is, I think, what would get people into that. When you have someone like this in the world of paranormal and supernatural, you know it's in good hands. So, for the very first time I'm somewhere in the skies, I want to welcome Courtney Block, the liminal librarian. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me, Ryan. And thank you seriously so much for the words that you just said. Like, I'm trying not to tear up a little bit.

I'm just so humbled and grateful to be here and excited to meet everybody here at this conference. And also really glad that the presentation came off that way. So thank you for saying that. My pleasure. And like your talk for those who aren't here was at 10 a.m., which is hard at a conference. Everyone's waking up. They're on their first coffee of the day.

and I've been there. I've been there. So the fact that you had a really good turnout and people were engaged, it says something. And I think it says something about the topic, too, that you covered. So let's start there. Can you tell us a little about your presentation, you know, maybe the Cliff Notes version? And then we'll dive a little deeper after that. Yes, yes. And I'll like to point out, too, that I'm not a morning person either. So when I saw that, I was like, okay, I'm just going to be a master of illusion about it. and just try to keep my energy out. But yeah, it was a great turnout. So the presentation was half of an introduction to the history of paranormal research, primarily focused on early psychical research of the 1800s through the early 1900s. And I touch on modern efforts as well. And then the second half of the presentation was a workshop kind of.

where I presented resources and databases completely free that people can access to find more information not only about the psychical things that I talked about, but all of the other things like that you talked about, UFO incidents and all the other things that people have talked about here. So I just wanted people to know that there are resources that they can access completely free wherever they are to find really great primary sources and secondary sources so that they can research the weird wherever they are. Right. Well, and you know what's funny? I, you know, the first time I ever read a UFO book was a book I took out from the library. And it's been so long since then that it didn't dawn on me until today. And I, you know, we live in the age where like

you click a button, the book's there in like a day. Or, you just download it. Yes. And you see, and I'm sure as a librarian, you've seen that landscape change drastically. You know, my father works in the printing company, and it's the same thing. You're kind of like, how much longer can something like this last,

even books in print, you know, at this point? So I'm sure it's a liminal experience in some ways. But I guess maybe tell us a little about, yeah, had that, like that whole, the importance of libraries, especially when it comes to these topics. I have thought. You always see in the movies, you know, like everyone goes to library to research. What ghost is there? Yeah. Okay. Thank you for that observation and the opportunity to answer this. Although sometimes people joke like, oh my gosh, don't get her started on libraries or she'll never shut up. But yeah, so libraries have always been liminal. I really firmly believe that.

there have been so many different media over the years. You've got books on cassette were once a thing, and then books on CD. And then now we've got streaming books that you can access through the library. So in a way, there are so many instances in which you are using the library without even physically being in the library. That's sort of the world that we're in now. So libraries have always been really good at adapting to change. and we're going to continue to adapt to change. And one of the things that I really also love about libraries

is not only the resources that they provide to people completely free of charge, because like I said, disposable income is a privilege, and the ability to be able to purchase books comfortably is a privilege. And not only books, but just databases, that nobody has the ability to get a subscription to like the historic New York Times,

unless you're, you know, super rich or whatever. but also just the spaces that libraries provide, it's also a very liminal thing. And I think it's a radical thing. Because where else in society can you just go and you don't have to have a reason to be there? Nobody's going to question you. You can literally sit at a table all day if you want

and just be at the library. And I think that in this society where so much is very consumer, driven, very capitalist. I mean, libraries are an active rebellion. They are liminal spaces, and I could go on. No, it's a fascinating issue and topic. And what else I found fascinating about your talk is, you know, in the world of paranormal, from someone on the outside looking in, when you see how it's handled in entertainment or a lot of the demographic, you often see a lot of just, And it's the same in the UFO world, just white males.

And what I loved about your talk is you highlighted the work of a lot of female cyclical researchers and some that weren't from the Western world even. Could you mind touching on maybe one or two of these individuals who you highlighted? They were really interesting people. Thank you. Rebels in their own way. Yes, yes. And also liminal figures because they get overlooked so much.

So one of the ladies that I talked about was Mary Buhl, who was actually a founding member of the British Society for Psychical Research, but she's almost never mentioned. People talk about, you know, Frederick W.H. Myers and Frank Podmore and like these other men. But Mary Bool was a founding member of the Society for Psychical Research when it was formed in 1882. And she was only on the board for a few months, though, because her official reason for least, was that she was the only female member on the board. So we can sort of infer from that. Maybe we don't know exactly what she meant necessarily by that or how that sort of played out in her time on the board, but that is why she left. But she was a self-taught mathematician. She wrote books about psychical topics, especially for mothers. I can't remember the title of her book, but she wrote a book

that was specifically geared towards like mothers, like new mothers, and psychical topics, yeah, and you can read it online. And then another figure, who is fascinating, is Tomokichi Fukurai, who is a Japanese parapsychologist, who for a long period of time had a seminal textbook on hypnosis and introduced the concept of thoughtography in Japan. But unfortunately, his case is a little bit of. a sad one, people can look into it. But after his downfall, unfortunately, parapsychology didn't

gain another foothold or interest in, within the academy, in Japan for another 30 years. So it's always been a tenuous field. Yeah. So he was ahead of his time. You know, you always hear these stories of like those who have to step on

the landmines for the rest of us to run forward. So he was a true pioneer, I think, especially in Japan. Right. I would have and he had sort of a connection to the ring, am I right? One of my favorite movies. Yes. I came across an article, and in the article, the author was referencing just Tomokichi, Yu Fukkai's life and work,

and also the fact that he was the inspiration for the storyline with the researcher doing the psychical studies and so forth in the ring. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Ringu, check it out, guys. Either the American or Japanese version. Another interesting thing is, you know, we saw Ken Gerhardt talk about Bigfoot yesterday, and he brings up the plaster casts, like some of the best evidence we have of Bigfoot are these footprints that we find. And you also talked about plaster casts. What is that? That's something I've never heard in the paranormal world. Yes, that is a wild example. So I talked about plaster castings in the seances of the Polish.

medium, fronic, Kluski. And he was investigated by French psychical researcher Gustav Gale who, during the seances where these strange anomalous hands and feet would materialize

and Gustav Gleilin was like, wait a minute, I need a mold of those hands and feet. And I imagine in much the same way that you would cast a print of a supposed big foot, they were molded during the seance.

So it is a bit of a wild example. It's crazy. Well, and the thing, you know, a lot of these old conferences were very stuffy. Lectures were like, you know, they put 10 paragraphs up on it. And you're like sitting there like reading it. You're like, what is the point of this? But what I loved about your talk is there was very little text in a lot of images where you would tell stories.

And you also found a lot of really old stories. digging in the archives. And they were very, a lot of them were very endearing and funny, which again is a part of all this. The weirdness, we have to live in that, you know? It's not all sad and depressing or scary. Like there's moments of levity in a lot of this too. Could you point out maybe one of those stories that kind of made us all chuckle? Yes.

There was one story. This isn't necessarily paranormal, but it's paranormal adjacent because there was a story. in the late 1800s, maybe early 1900s, from this Cape Girardeau area where there was a little boy who had just been sleepwalking. And I guess he had a white dressing gown or nightgown and was kind of scaring people who thought that there was a ghost or something. And then the news article says one brave person stepped forward and realized it was just little Ned Stewart, I think, was his name. And he was just sleepwalking. And, but the headline was like ghost, you know, is not a ghost or something like that.

And that was sort of funny. And then another one that kind of made us chuckle was a late 1800s newspaper article out of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, sorry, who that outlined two gentlemen who were renting a room at a boarding house. One of the gentlemen woke up late one night, claimed that he saw a ghost on a cloud who smacked him in the face and exploded through. the ceiling. And that is how it's worded.

And that, just the synopsis is amusing and makes you chuckle. But you have to, like, I have to send you the article because the original article goes into such detail. It literally had me laugh crying. And I kind of feel bad because this guy gets, like, smacked in the face. And he's like, I think in the article it says smacked so hard, he gets laid out. And I'm just like, oh, my gosh. But it's just, it's almost unimaginable.

It's so wild and descriptive, the article. And so, yeah, and a lot of those articles are. You find, like, a poetry and kind of like a, almost like a setup of like a Shakespearean play and an arc to them, which you don't see in journalism a lot these things. And, you know, you mentioned smacked in the face. I often use that as kind of like an analogy of how these phenomenon do smack us in the face when we least expect it. But in this case, it was literal physical smacking in the face. That newspaper article is so wild because you can clearly tell those two guys, those poor guys, had a night.

And I think they end up pushing their beds to one side of the room together because the other one wakes up because of all the chaos happening and sees the guy like sliding out of bed. And it's just, it's insane. Oh, gosh. Yeah. Well, I know you have a lot of stories in the books that you've written as well. I'm looking right now at the feminine macabre. In that title, obviously, I'm sure catches a lot of people's attention. And the cover's beautiful, obviously.

But tell us a little about the books that you've written, if you don't mind. Yes, thank you. So I have an essay in the feminine macab, which is a collection of essays that are contributed by women in the paranormal on a wide variety of topics. My essay is in volume 3 of feminine macab that is produced and put together by Amanda Woomer at Spook Eats. And my article is about the perils of representation

in the early historic literature about psychical research. For example, I talked about in my presentation how the seminal sort of American parapsychologist J.B. Rhine, his wife was also a parapsychologist. She was also a doctor. She got her Ph.D. three years before he did. But in the historic literature, she's often only referred to as Dr. J.B. Rine and Mrs. Rine. She's not even referred to as a doctor. It's not the doctor's Rine. It's, yeah. And so I talk about the perils of representation when you're digging through. the historic literature, just things to be aware of when you are engaging with older resources

so that you can understand just the context and the societal sort of norms at that time period. But my other book is, well, that was just an essay rather. My first book is researching the paranormal. It came out in June of 2020, so it was really interesting to be finishing a book like in the midst of the height of like, you know, the pandemic. And basically it's a compendium of resources that summarize and present decades' worth of research from scientists and others who have done studies about all sorts of things, ESP, psychokinesis, poltergeist, cryptosology, ghost hauntings, all sorts of things.

So just highlight to people that there are. credible people who are doing really creative, credible research. And in my book, I'm not trying to convince you of anything. I'm not trying to change people's minds. I'm just presenting the long history of paranormal research because it can be really hard to find credible information about anything, but especially about the paranormal. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. And I think that's what books and libraries afford us is sort of that, untainted kind of crowd sourcing of information that often, I mean, you ask anyone like how they do their research and like, I go to Google, I go to Wikipedia and you're just like, oh God, here we go. But when you actually put the legwork in and go research your local town and find out the history or what paranormal cases or investigations have taken place there, where else can you find those resources. You know, we think we have it good with one click of a button to search for something. But in reality, at least for me, I love going to the libraries, smelling the books, digging through,

going through the micro-feasch if they still even exist. I don't know. Okay, okay, good, good. And doing the work. And that's what I respect about what you do and a lot of the very credible researchers still do that sort of stuff. So it's very important. Thank you. And just to a little bit of a defense maybe for Wikipedia. But I understand what you're saying, definitely. But as a librarian, I will use Wikipedia sometimes because the references and the footnotes can be really great places to start. Of course, you would never want to cite or rely just on the Wikipedia article,

which is what you were saying. But yeah, the references and the end notes can be really great places to start. when I help students with their various research projects at my university, they throw out such wonderful events and topics and stuff. And I'm just like, wow, I don't know about this. Let me Wikipedia real quick and get familiar and look at the footnotes and get started. And then also, too, yes, everything that you just said yes, about the physical resources in the archives of libraries and microfilm

and things that have not been digitized and that are only accessible in certain ways. but also I just really wanted people to know that there's so many databases that you can find information from the click of a button through the chronicling America historic newspapers with the Library of Congress, the directory of open access journals, where you can find scholarly studies about, you know, ESP or ghost haunting, or just even other non-paranormal related things. Hathi Trust, which is a great archive.org. Yeah. There's a lot. Well, and you presented those resources, again, to people who can go use these for free, which I think is a very good thing. Information shouldn't be behind a payroll.

To an extent, I understand a newspaper needs to survive, therefore subscription. But a lot of it, like you said, you have the right to have information as a human being. So I really appreciated that. There was one other thing I wanted to touch on with you. We talked about this last night and you presented this today is you did include UFOs in your talk too. You mentioned the now famous, now famous, the famous MIT conference that took place. Yes. Could you maybe run us through the Cliff Notes version of what that was and why you decided to include that in your talk?

Yes. So the MIT Abduction Study Conference was held in June of 1992, I believe, and it was organized. organized by John Mack, who you talked about in your presentation. So when I was listening to your presentation and you started talking about John Mack, I was like, yes, I talk about that dude too. And then David Pritchard, who was with MIT. And basically, both John Mack and David Pritchard realized that people have been and are continuing to report these abduction experiences. And the numbers are staggering. numbers of reports are sagering, and these people appear to be of sound mind with no ulterior motive or personal benefit.

And so they basically just said, hey, this topic is worthy of inquiry. And let's have a conference about it where we invite the people who have experienced these things, but also invite other psychologists and people from Jenny Randalls from the British UFO. Research. Yes, yes. You know, she was there. They had emergency personnel people who were there who would often be the first line of people that had maybe gone to the hospital in the aftermath of an abduction event. They had all types of, I mean, you know, they had all types of people.

And the reason that I talked about that is because I think it is such a wonderful example of the intersection of the strange and anomalous and the academy. because you have these two guys from Harvard and MIT, the academy intersecting with this really sort of strange, if you will, fringe topic of abductions and UFOs, and the two things can work together. Right, and that's kind of what this conference has embodied, is we can all share information. And there might be some intrinsic link between ghosts and UFOs and Bigfoot.

And a lot of researchers don't think so. And I respect that. Like, they're focused on what they want to look into. But I think for a lot of people here, they're just looking for answers, no matter what ghosts or Bigfoot or UFOs are. And that's what I loved is like, we went to a haunted house last night. And you've got like three or four UFO researchers here. So that's when we gain an appreciation for the research being done in other facets of the unknown. In my opinion, I don't know. How do you feel? feel about this whole idea of everything being possibly linked? I am open to it. I think that we don't know what we don't know. And I think that there's nothing wrong with specializing in your particular areas, being drawn to the topics that you're drawn to. Like if you're more drawn to UFO stuff than you are, you know, ghosts, absolutely nothing wrong with that. I think the only harm that comes from that is when you're, closed off to discussion and possibilities and or are actively trying to censor or silence,

you know, other people just because maybe they focus, they think something is a ghost and you think it's a UFO and, you know, the, yeah, those are the only times when I think it's harmful. But I don't think there's, I'm into the idea of all things being interconnected because I think that there is a lot that can be. gained from the inquiry of the possible multi and interdisciplinary interdisciplinariness of it all. Yeah. And it's just fun to muse about. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, I don't know. It's fun. It's fun. And that's kind of what I took away from this entire event. You know, it was fun. It was enlightening. And I know already they're planning another conference next year. So I'm so happy I finally got to meet you.

Likewise. It's been an absolute pleasure getting to know you and your work. And please, before we go, let us know where we can find everything you're up to. Yes. Okay. So my second book comes out in September. That is the encyclopedia of parapsychology. And it is a decade-by-decade annotated bibliography of research done on parapsychology. Also provides biographical sketches of historic researchers, modern researchers, and then the mediums themselves and the people who are often at the center. of these cases. That's primarily what's next for me. I'm also on sabbatical this semester, so I'm excited to do more things like this conference. I'm going to meet up with a group of other contributors to the feminine macab in November. I'm so excited about that. And people can find me. I'm primarily active on Instagram at liminal.com. Amazing. The liminal librarian. Courtney, thank you so much for joining me on somewhere in the sky.

Thanks for having me. Somewhere in the Skies is produced by Third Kind Productions, in association with the Entertainment One Podcast Network.