Somewhere in the Skies - Mike Clelland: The Messengers

Episode Date: September 11, 2017

On episode 22 of SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES, Ryan pulls another fascinating interview out of the INTO THE FRAY archives. This time, he speaks with author and researcher, Mike Clelland, about his book, The Messengers: Owls, Synchronicity and the UFO Abductee. Without question, this is a classic by one of the most exciting new authors in the UFO field today. After reading it, your view of reality will never be the same. The owl has held a place of reverence and mystique throughout history. And as strange as this might seem, owls are also showing up in conjunction with the UFO experience. Mike Clelland has collected a wealth of first-hand accounts in which owls manifest in the highly charged moments that surround alien contact. There is a strangeness to these accounts that defy simple explanations. This book explores implications that go far beyond what more conservative researchers would dare consider. But the owl connection encompasses more than the UFO experience. It also includes profound synchronicities, ancient archetypes, dreams, shamanistic experiences, personal transformation, and death. From the mythic legends of our ancient past to the first-hand accounts of the UFO abductee, owls are playing some vital role. This is also a deeply personal story. It is an odyssey of self-discovery as the author grapples with his own owl and UFO encounters. What plays out is a story of transformation with the owl at the heart of this journey. Guest Bio: Mike Clelland is an avid outdoorsman, illustrator and UFO researcher. He has written extensively on the subject of alien abductions, synchronicities and owls. It was his first-hand experiences with these elusive events that have been the foundation for this research. His website explores these events and their connections to the alien contact phenomenon. This site also features extended audio interviews with visionaries and experts examining the complexities of the overall UFO experience.  Beyond that, Mike is considered an expert in the skills of ultralight backpacking, and has authored or illustrated a series of instructional books focused on advanced outdoor techniques. He spent nearly 25 years living in the Rockies, and now lives in the Adirondacks. Visit his website at: www.hiddenexperience.blogspot.com This episode is brought to you by HelloFresh. To learn more and to receive 50% of your first box, visit www.HelloFresh.ca and use the promo code: SOMEWHERE50 To become a SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES patron, visit www.patreon.com/SomewhereSkies Website: www.somewhereintheskies.com Email: [e-mail] Twitter: @SomewhereSkies Order Ryan's Book by CLICKING HERE Opening Theme Song, "Ephemeral Reign" by Per Kiilstofte Episode Edited by Jane Palomera Moore SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES is produced by THIRD KIND PRODUCTIONS, in association with Antica Productions Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/somewhere-in-the-skies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

a patron. To contribute and to learn more, visit www.patriot.com backslash somewhere skies. Thank you for your support. And now on with the show. This is Somewhere in the Skies with Ryan's bread. UFOs are often seen moving silently in the dead of night, piercing through darkness, attempting to tell us something. What that something may be remains elusive. But there are those rare times when directly before or after, a lot of a UFO event, something just as elusive can often make its presence known. The owl is a creature unlike any other. It symbolizes many things for many people. Wisdom, intuition, light, dark, life, and even death.

It is a totem that allows the individual to see what is usually hidden. Could these enigmatic creatures be one of many keys to unlocking the UFO mystery? Could their almost synchronistic presence hold much? more relevance than one's thought. Today, we speak to Mike Clellan, author of The Messengers, Owls, Synchronicity, and the UFO Abducty. Mike has compiled hundreds of accounts from across the world, ranging from UFO sightings, contact and abduction experiences,

and everything in between. He's written extensively about this topic, amongst many others, on his blog, Hidden Experience. we talk today about those experiences and just perhaps how the owl may shed some light on these mysteriously dark phenomena. Mike, thanks so much for joining us today. You're very welcome. When I first heard about your work, obviously everyone considers you the owl guy. You Google your name, you type an owl or UFO and you are the first thing that always pops up.

And I don't see that changing anytime soon. So let's start with owls, not in the UFO or abduction sense, but owls in general. These creatures, they've taken on many mythic symbology throughout history. You once stated, seen through the darkness to bring messages. Could you sort of give us a brief history of the owl throughout different cultures? Well, that's easier said than done. The owl is, I mean, just by its very nature, an owl. is intense, right?

I mean, a real owl is intense, especially the big owls. Little owls tend to be sort of cute and adorable, but the big ones kind of be, tend to be sort of spooky and threatening. So, you know, we're dealing with an animal that is, that has a presence. People recognize that I'm convinced that the cave dwellers of our ancient ancestors, if they walked out and saw an owl, would have the same visceral reaction. that we do now, which is one of, I almost want to say,

I mean, there's something, you know, threatening about an owl. They're not, I mean, they have these huge eyes, and they have this eerie stare, and I think that just translates into something that taps into us at a deep level. So that's sort of the starting point, you know, just straight up owls are intense looking.

The, the mythology, of the owl. I mean, if you, that's all over the map, right? I mean, it's a great big globe and there's owls everywhere. Um, you know, it's, it's, uh, you know, the Eskimos have owls and they have owls down in the jungles of Peru. So, um, we all have, you know, we being, you know, the world's culture collectively, we all have these owl stories that stretch back forever. Now, what we're dealing with is trying to like pick out the, the main thread that seems to connect all these. So the owls are capable of, you know,

what can only be called magic in some sense. Obviously, it's just physiology. It's their big eyes and their soft feathers, but they can see into the night. They can see into the darkness. Astoundingly well, I've done a bunch of research on this. And they, you know, so they have nocturnal vision. And they also have silent flight in a way that is, you know,

quite eerie when you see an owl. flying. So they are, you know, that ability to see into the darkness very quickly translates to traveling into other realms. This becomes a metaphor. You know, they travel into the darkness and then they would return. The ancient myths would be they would return with a message. If the shaman has any totem animal, it would be the owl.

and that's perfect because what the the shaman would do would be to you know go through some sort of ritual and then the shaman would travel to another realm that ritual might be meditating or rhythmic dancing or taking some sort of psychedelic mushroom or something but the shaman would you know travel to another realm

metaphorically obviously they're just sitting in their hut when they do it or wherever they are and then they would return with the message. Now that's the, that's the, that's the symbology of the owl in a very simple way, you know, what that message might be, that's up for debate. That, you know, that can be interpreted any number of ways, but the owl itself as, as a, as a, as a physical being, you know, is connected to these ancient lores. And, and, and I feel strongly that these ancient lores are, are acting out present day. And when I was working on the book, people would ask me,

so, you know, what do you, what have you been working on lately? And I'm like, well, I got this book project. Oh, what's it on? Oh, well, it's about owls. That's interesting. What about owls? And then I would have to size the person up, right? Kind of check them out.

I kind of go, okay, do I drop the UFO bomb? And I usually said, oh, you know, it's a book about owl mythology, which I feel was honest. And they'd go, that's interesting. And then they'd kind of want to hear a little more about that. So the case I would argue in that very cautious form, without introducing the UFO weirdness, was that the owl is performing the same role present day

that it performed for ancient man, and that what I'm collecting, I mean, you're holding the book in your hand, or it's there nearby, I suspect. And I mean, in many ways, that book is just a collection of one story after another, after another, of people who have had these strange owl experiences. And I feel all those people are being genuine

and and my sense is that people throughout the millennia, people throughout all history have had odd owl experiences and the lore, the mythos, emerged from those direct experiences. So that's, I sort of argue that, you know, what's taking place present day has been with us since the dawn of time. Right, right. And you mentioned, you know, the owl experiences, throughout time.

You sort of describe this, not so much as finding a pattern, but that it was, I believe it was in your intro, you mentioned it's more of a mood or a vibe. Could you sort of elaborate on that a little bit of what it means to you? Well, yeah.

I mean, so, you know, like if, you know, this is owls or UFOs? We're still on owls. We're still on owls. Okay, we'll definitely go deep into UFOs. You know, like, I feel like I'm an artist and an illustrator rather than a, than a scientist or a academic, right?

So I'm working off my gut, you know. So you hear two stories back to back, right? And, you know, like I'm tapping into the, right, the mood of these stories. You know, the story might not be the same exact story, but it has that similar vibe. I mean, I often refer back to the campfire story, like the Erie Campfire story.

You know, often those stories don't have an ending. You know, they're just meant to be evocative of a mood. And I find that the owl experiences, especially, you know, so owls show up at the point of death. People see owls at funerals. People will have an owl land on their window and then find out that, you know, a sibling or a family member or a parent died at that at that moment that the owl was there shortly after. So owls are, you know, on a very, that is very common. the death imagery and the connection with the passing on, especially of a loved one.

So, and that's right interwoven into the mystique and folklore and mythology of the owls. So, you know, you might hear two stories and an academic may say, well, you know, I put this on the spreadsheet and I check this box here and I check this box here. And you look at the columns, they don't line up, so they're not the same story. You know, I don't know why you're comparing and contrasting these two stories. And I'm like, no, no, but these stories have a similar tenor, you know, there's a flavor to them. It's like saying, you know, how to, you know, like two forms of music might come from, you know, two different sections of the, of the record store.

But, you know, there's a similarity to the music. And that's not up to a, you don't have to catalog that and dissect it with the eyes of a scientist. You sort of have to step back and do it at an intuitive level. Yeah, I mean, relating to that, you mentioned in the book about the allure of owls in cinema or media, and I know you and I on occasion have contacted one another when we've seen owls in movies or in the background of things. What do you think this means in terms of the way art or, I guess, Hollywood or show business, what does it mean to them when you see these symbols in the movies? Or does it take on many different forms? Well, you know, I mean, that's, I mean, that's, you have a haunted house movie, right?

And then, you know, the person approaches the haunted house. And there's an owl hooting in the distance, right? You just hear the haired on the soundtrack. It's, you know, there's no one had to plan that out. You know, it wasn't like a conspiracy of people trying to indoctrinate, you know, the populace. That was just the guy in the editing room who went and got a stock bit of audio footage our audio of an owl hooting and just overlaid it into the movie. Now, that's, so this is happening.

It's 20th century, 21st century. You know, owls are showing up in spooky, you know, like little kids have, you know, owl decorations that show up in their elementary school, thumbtack to the Bolton board on Halloween. You know, this is happening present day. Now, you go back. I mean, the Bible has owls in it. And I've carefully looked at those and tried to pull out the symbology. of those owls.

And it's a little murky, you know, like I don't sense any deeper meaning. It seems to have the same meaning as the, you know, owl in the haunted house movie. It just, there's a great owl cameo in the bride of Frankenstein. You know, early on in the film, there just, there's this owl shows up and it just flies into the scene and sits on a little, it's in a barn or like the basement of an old mill.

And it's right before a woman dies, you know, she gets, and so it, you know, there it is. There's the haunted house movie. There's the death symbology. It's like meant to be like a set piece in a spooky, you know, in a spooky bit of entertainment, you know. And it plays that way in the Bible, too, where these owls show up. They don't really, they're not really there symbolizing anything. They're not really key to the story. They're sort of used as a set piece.

People will talk about how bear in the desert is and they say it's a place of owls, which is, you know, that's like how spooky the forest is. It's a place of owls. That's the haunted house version. So, you know, I think that, so this is over 2,000 years, this is, the owl has had the same lore. Right. And I think that, I think that the darkness meant a whole, that meant something totally different in the era before the electric light. Yeah.

Well, in terms of your research of the owl experiences, Mike, this is a question. from one of our listeners actually, have you noticed any specific type of owl that seems to be most prominent when these experiences come up, whether it be synchronistic or UFO related or just owls like you mentioned earlier in general? Well, I mean, not really. You know what I mean? I mean, so there's a, I mean, obviously it depends on where you are. You know, you're not going to see a snowy owl if you live in Florida. Exactly. And you're not going to see, you know, a barred owl if you live in.

in Arizona. So there's these, you know, so you're locked into the location. You know, like I'm like I've sort of given up in a way. Like, you know, I'm,

you know, people seeing, you know, owls at an appropriate time on a t-shirt or like at a prescient moment on a TV ad, you know, like I actually factor those kind of things in too. So, um,

yeah, so there's no specific owl. Obviously the most iconic owl would be the great horned owl and that's a North American owl. That's simply, doesn't exist over in Europe. So they have a different owl that's the Eurasian Eagle Owl,

which is essentially the same thing as the, as the, a bigger though, as our great horned owl. So, you know, we're dealing with, I don't know,

I mean, just this, is like the, the chance, how to, you know, like whatever the, the universe is offering up something.

You know, the universe is setting something in someone's path. And, And, you know, tiny little owls show up, too. You know, these little owls, there's some, a lot of owls are very small, which, you know, most people don't realize. And the smaller the owl, the less likely you will see them, because the more likely they are to come out only at night. So, you know, people won't see a saw-wet owl. They might see a great gray owl because those are the ones that will come out at dusk and dawn, and people might actually get a glimpse of them.

Right, right. Yeah, I mean, we'll talk about the size of owls a little bit. but later, because we have a lot to talk about in terms of that. What, now, Mike, I know you've had some extremely powerful experiences, sort of a one defining moment of just, you know, a profound experience with several different owls appearing all at once. What is the owl alarm clock that you describe in the book? because I know this was sort of an awakening for you.

What does this term mean to you, the owl alarm clock? Well, the owl as alarm clock would be, you know, that's just, you know, like people say like, well, you know, what does owl mean? You know, and I kind of have to have an answer, right? I can't kind of just brush them off and say, oh, I don't know, which I don't know, really. I mean, I, and but what I have found is there's a pattern where the owl shows up at a point. And I've had a handful of people say this, you know, well, more than a handful of, You know, people say that, you know, that they had sort of an awakening experience or the owl set them on a path. And that was certainly true of my case where I saw a bunch of owls.

This would have been 2006. I was camping. Two separate camping events, right? So just only a few days apart. The same mountain range, but not in the same location. And as the sun was setting, you know, me and the person I was camping with, her name is Kristen, we saw three owls at sunset. A few days later, we saw. the same thing happened.

Three owls at sunset, I'm convinced her the same three owls, even though we weren't in the same spot. In that moment, seeing those owls, I had the, I had the very clear thought that this has something to do with UFOs.

And it was, it was, that event. You know, when you get right down, it was not that exciting of an event, right? You know, like, oh, some owls flew around, and I landed, which is unusual. Very unusual. but it's not like, you know, it's not like the heavens opened up and, you know, the angels, you know, came down or something like that.

It was just, you know, these are normal owls in a setting where owls, you know, were certainly around. But the impact it had on me was really profound. It set me on the journey that I'm on now, the journey that created that book and the journey that I'm, you know, still continuing as I talk to you now and I'd answer letters and talk to other people who have had these experiences. So, I mean, you know, very simply, an alarm clock wakes you up, right? So if someone's asleep, you know, just, you know, nudging them may not wake them. And shaking them, you know, may not wake them either. So if someone's really asleep, you send in the owls. And that's kind of my sense.

And it would have to be for a specific reason. Like, it seems like the owls are connected to something. And it's a little elusive what they're connected. connected to and they may be one way to look at it is the owl may be the totem of the trans of a transformative process right so the change so from being asleep to being awake would be a change and not in that you know whatever getting up in the morning kind of thing I'm talking at a more deep spiritual level being awake to a deeper reality and and that's that's what the owl resonates for me after after sort of wallowing in this research for all these years

Right. And I know you personally struggled for a long time with several experiences you had involving possible contact with UFO occupants, UFOs in general. And do you, so you sort of consider this event of 2006 with the Owls a culmination of that it's somehow connected. Is that, am I sort of looking at that? Yeah, yeah. I mean, up until that point, I had been. completely denying these events. I mean, if I told the events, they sound exactly like what anyone who's ever read a UFO abduction book. You know, the humissioning time, seeing aliens and they, you know, out a window in a yard, you know, seeing UFOs close range. You know, so I had these experiences growing up and well into my, and one event took place in my 30s, or as I was 30 years old. And I managed to just deny all that.

I just push it all away and just ignore it and deny it. But I'll have to say at the same time, that stuff was bubbling over a little pressure cooker, you know, like the, it was just set on simmer and slowly, slowly, slowly got hotter and hotter. And there came a point when there was sort of a crack in the dam. And that was the owls were that crack in the dam. And after that, the dam burst. And I set off on my own journey of self-expiration where I really said, you know, like,

I'm going to, I'm going to figure this out. I didn't figure it out. I'm just as baffled in a way now as I was. at any point along the thing, but I do feel like I'm, I feel like I've got a clearer sense of what, of who I am in all this, in the sense that, you know, it, you know, like, I feel that the events that I described and denied, I'm no longer denying. I feel that's really happened. And the implication is exactly what they appear to be.

Right. A huge stuff for any experience here, I can only imagine. So where in the grand scheme of things does synchronicity play into this? You know, being the second sort of subtitle of the book. Could you briefly go over what synchronicity is, where the term sort of came from, and how it leads into the whole owl connection? Well, synchronicity is a term that was coined by Carl Jung, and I think in the 1920s he was coined due to a series of,

experiences that he had in conjunction with a physicist named Wolfgang Pauley, the simplest definition of synchronicity would be a coincidence that is meaningful to the observer. And, you know, there's run-of-the-mill coincidences, right? And stuff is going to happen all the time, you know, but there's coincidences that take on a deeper, meaningful aspect. And oftentimes it's very difficult to explain those to people. It's sort of like explaining a dream, you know, like, oh, my God, this thing happened. And right then this happened, and then you try to explain it. And it's so subjective that people just kind of roll their eyes and can't follow you.

And I recognize that that's almost inherent in what a synchronicity might, you know, be. It's meant for the individual. I spoke with a friend of mine. This is going back a few years ago, and I kind of was on my high horse, and I'd been doing a bunch of research. And it's one of the questions I ask, you know, people who've had the UFO contact experience or UFO abductees or whatever term you want to use, experiencers. I would say, what about synchronicities? Do you have syncreticities in your life? And they usually just roll their eyes. Like, like, it's like, you know, it's like trying to ask a fish if it ever experiences water. So, you know, I said, you know, like, so I said it to my friend, I said, you know, people have the UFO contact experience. They have more synchronies. than the normal folks and Joe Normal.

She looked at me and she rolled her eyes and she said, you know, anyone on a spiritual path will have more synchronicities. And immediately I recognize she was right. And, you know, the next step, the next, you know, if that's the case, then UFO abduction is a spiritual path. And so I kind of equate UFO abduction as a spiritual abduction as a spiritual path. And so I kind of equate UFO abduction as a spiritual path. I mean, UFO, I said the owl is the totem animal of the transformative experience.

And, you know, transformative experience can be a shamanic initiation. It can be a powerful meditation. It can be a near-death experience. It can be death itself. I mean, and I also will argue that, you know, the UFO contact experience is transformative by its nature, by its intent. It transforms the individual, not right away, maybe over decades, maybe over a lifetime, but the individual will be transformed. But the synchronicity would be just, I mean, and there's also, you know, people use that, overuse that word a lot, and I'm sure I do too. You know, sometimes people will say like, oh, my God, I had a dream, and I dreamed in the dream that, that, you know, I was going to see an owl on the ride to work today.

And I did see an owl. Isn't that a powerful synchronicity? And like, well, that's technically not a synchronicity. That's a premonition. So those are different. So synchronicity is when, you know, there's a coincidence, you know, so that's not a coincidence. So, you know, so both of those can be powerful and mystical experiences, but one's called a premonition and one's called a synchronicity. Now, you had a pretty powerful, I guess, coincidence happened in researching synchronicity.

You spoke to Dr. Surprise. And could you give us, you know, sort of the background of how you came to find his work and just exactly what happened when you looked further into his work and found some eerily similar interests? Yeah, it turned into a whole chapter of the book. Yeah. And it was great. It blew me away. Because I heard him on a podcast. He had a book.

He was promoting a book. Straight up. He'd written a book. He's promoting it. He's doing the podcast scene. You know, he's talking about. his book, the title of the book is Synchronicity. His name is Dr. Kirby Surprise,

which is a great name. And, you know, he got a real thoughtful set of ideas about the source of synchronicity. He argues that the observer, the individual is creating the synchronicity, that we as individuals, our consciousness, our intention, can affect reality.

So you take a, in a scientific experiment, someone rolls a dice, right? And then they do it 100 times. And then they're trying to create a, you know, get more one number series more than another. It should be random, right? They flip a coin.

They do it 100 times. They try to get heads more than tails. It should be random. It's not. What happens is that people will get, you know, if they want heads more than tails, they'll get heads more than tails. And this has been known in the sciences for,

nearly a hundred years. Nobody wants to like really, you know, tackle this one. The implication is that the individual, the guy flipping the coin, is affecting reality. He's affecting the way the coin lands. And the same thing could be said of synchronicity. The individual, according to Dr. Kirby's surprise, I'm a little, I like the magical aspect of it. He says it's welling up from the person. So I call him up, or excuse me, I send him an email and I say, I'm paraphrasing this from memory. in the book verbatim from the actual email. And I say, listen, I'm doing this research. I've had these UFO experiences.

I'm talking to a lot of UFO contactees and experiencers. And from what I can glean, they're having more or more synchronicities than the rest of the population. And he gets back to me, he says, you know, I've had my drone direct experience with UFOs. and that's not how it works. And I'm like, wait a minute, the guy who writes a book about synchronicity says he's had his own UFO experiences. And he writes a book about synchronicity. And he's kind of proving my point, right, that they're connected. So I kind of like said as much in the follow-up letter.

And he's kind of like, okay, just get the book, read the book, and let's talk. So I got the book. I read the book. And I can't remember what page it's on. It's like on page, you know, 226. So I turn the page, I get to this thing, and I scroll down, and he's describing how the individual can ask synchronicity, just like ask of the universe,

just ask for synchronicity to present itself and manifest synchronicities. You can just ask, and that's his argument. And so I read on, and this is all very interesting, and he says, I like to make owls. So the guy who has the UFO experience, who writes a book on synchronicities, when he wants to manifest his own synchronities,

he creates owl synchronicities. I literally dropped out of the chair when he said that. So I get a hold of him and we talk. And now I'm very cautious to how, I mean, so someone has given me permission to tell their stories. So I need to be, I need to honor that. And his UFO experiences are very interesting. They're very subtle.

They're not, you know, what you would see on a late night, you know, exploitative cable TV documentary. So he's had experiences in his youth. He started meditating when he was nine and has been actively meditating ever since. And he, in his early 20s, was, and he said it was, he felt like he was in communication with some higher form of intelligence. Presently he feels that's his own intelligence that he was interacting with, basically

interacting with his own higher self. At the time, he didn't think that. at the time he felt, you know, it must be an outside source. And the only thing that made sense was, you know, aliens on board a flying saucer. So he would go out at night and try to contact these things. And little dots in the sky, little eerie lights would appear. And now, he'd have his friends. He'd say, okay, there's going to be a little dot in the sky.

It's going to appear right over there. We're going to have a UFO. And then sure enough, it would happen. He would frighten his friends. And so those were his experiences. Now, when I asked into talking with him, you know, he was, he said, listen, you, like I described my life, like, oh, my God, I'm just immersing myself. I've just, like, thrown myself into this owl UFO thing, and it's my own experience, and I'm trying to make sense of it, and I'm wrestling with it. I'm reaching out to anyone. And he said, listen, you're putting a lot of intention into that. And it, and this is how reality works. Reality will reflect that back. And you should expect to have synchronicities. You are manifesting synchronicities. And I had to think, like, well, like, did I actually manifest Kirby Surprise? I mean, he's the perfect person to, like, to bat these ideas around with.

And we actually talked on Halloween night of all nights, which is just perfect. So, yeah, so he's a very thoughtful guy, very smart thinker, and a clinician, at the same time, very mystical in the way he frames these ideas, which was a perfect match for the way I am more comfortable framing these things. So, yeah, so the guy who writes the book about synchronicity, gets his own chapter in my book on UFOs and owls. And, I mean, obviously, I can't paraphrase to the entire chapter. But his ideas and his very thoughtful outlook, you know, helped me a lot along my way in this journey. Wow.

Yeah, that was, that chapter struck me more than most and really put the synchronicity at the forefront and sort of delineating between coincidence and synchronicity, excuse me, synchronicity and manifesting that. So, yeah, very, very interesting. Mike, I want to, I want to sort of move into the most, I guess, controversial and powerful part of your book, the UFO and the abductee. Now, I do want to dive into screen memory a little bit, but before we get there, I want to go into UFOs and owls in general. Now, you have many people in your book who have experienced this,

whether it was the UFO first and then owl or owl and then UFO. Could you briefly touch on that? The physical, you know, tangible reality of the UFO and the owl. I wish I could sum this up succinctly. There was someone at a conference and she kind of said, like, you know, I was it? I saw your talk and was called UFOs and owls. I had no idea what you were going to go. This didn't make any sense to me. She had no idea what she was getting into. And then afterwards she said, oh, you did a nice job of summing it up. And it's like, well, it took me like two hours. But so there is no easy answer. So what I have, so after my experience in 2006, started looking into this. I just got shameless. I would just pick up the phone

and call people and people who had, you know, contact experiences. I would just figure out a way to get hold of them and talk to them. Now, one of the questions I asked everyone, like everyone, researcher, or, you know, like, have you ever had any odd experiences with owls? Now, it's not 100%, but it's enough that there's a defined, palpable pattern that shows up. So I asked the question, have you ever had any odd experiences with owls? They'll say, you know, it's funny you should ask. No one's ever asked that before. And I did have this really strange experience. And, you know, sometimes it's as subtle as there's a woman named Nadine LaLeach

and she's an abductee very outspoken and clear about her experiences very level-headed. She's a great she's a great spokesman for the whole cause. So she said, you know, that's funny you should ask. No one's really asked me that, but there was a time when I was living in this apartment

and she was, you could just tell she was kind of like, well, this is odd. I was living in this apartment and it was right at the time I was having a lot of contact experiences and there was always an owl outside the house and outside the window and I would come home from work and there would be an owl. I mean a big owl would be right on the branch right by the door when I came home and that shows up you know like oh the owl would like you know I'd get up in the morning the owl would be on the branch and I'd come home from work and the all would be on the branch staring at me so that happens in the lives of abductees there's another guy

Ron Johnson who has stories like that another way would be that one of the first people that contacted me and this whole research was this guy Derek and he said yeah you know I was camping in the desert and looked up at this cactus and there was an owl both me and my friend we were lying there looking up at the stars and it startled us really eerie right owl looking down at you you're lying your back in the desert sand and looking up at this owl and beautiful stars behind it and it's like well you know it's like and I know just what he means it is eerie and the owl flies off moments later a triangle UFO floats past them very silently and it's hugging the natural terrain of the landscape in this very eerie way there in this canyon.

And I met him and he mimicked this, this, this flight pattern. And it was really, you know, so you could see he was kind of gritting his teeth as he was telling the story. This was, this was a, you know, weird, powerful event. So owls and UFOs show up side by side. As you said, sometimes the UFO show up first, sometimes the owl show up first. These are real owls we're talking about. These aren't the screen memory aspect, which we can get into it a little bit.

So, yeah, so why I don't know, you know, you know, like I spend, I wrestle with the, through the entire book trying to come up with the why. I still don't. You know, that's, I think I type of why owls question mark, a full sentence, you know, 10 times throughout the book. And I never quite, you know, I dance around it and speculate a little bit on what it might mean. But, you know, hard to know, hard to know. But my sense, my very strong sense, it sees are intimately connected in some way.

You know, there's a lot of UFO books out there, you know, books have been around for, you know, 30 years. and you can go and go through those pages and, you know, a big thick book might have a paragraph or two on owls and I made an effort to dig up and look back at a lot of those and, you know, they're telling these odd little stories just like I just told

and so the seeds were there. Like I didn't invent this subject. I mean, it was already there and I just, you know, I just dug a little deeper and put it all in one book. But, yeah, again, I don't know the reason. I can say with great conviction that there is a connection.

I don't know what it is. Yeah, I mean, and you make very, you know, startling connections between, you know, a silent bird in flight and a silent object in flight, whether it's triangular, saucer shaped. So that was very interesting. And I know what else happens a lot. Yeah. I'll do it. I'll probably do it before the dog is up. Yeah.

I mean, they're both three letters. I cannot tell you how many times I typed them wrong. Oh, good point. You know, you're working on this book, and I wanted to type owl, and I would type UFO, right? Interchangeable. Yeah, I mean, it's like it was just interchangeable in a way that they became, they blurred together, yeah. Oh, that's very interesting. I never even thought about that one.

Well, yeah, you say, you know, throughout UFO literature, there, there's always that one or two paragraph and you sort of brush past it. But I know that one individual in particular was the first to comment on, blog about that. Would you mind telling us a little bit about that? One of the preeminent writers on the U.F. You're talking about Whitley? Abducty, yeah, literature. Whitley, Strieber.

Yes. Yeah, okay. So, Whitley, this is interesting. So I just spoke with Whitley. He did it. I was interviewed on his show, and, oh, my God, he was so complimentary. I was a little bit like, whatever. Someone said he could hear me blushing over the, over the, uh, but, um, so his, he had

So if you get the book, the most important abduction book in the history of the subject is communion, hands down. Absolutely. You know, some people all, and there's all kinds of, whatever, people, some people don't buy it and some people are like, anyway, so I trust the guy. He said, if anything is this problem, if anything's working against Whitley Street, right, his own skill at writing. He writes so beautifully that you're holding this book in your hand. It's like, is this fiction? Is this real? It's like, it's a, he's a, you know, on a scale of, he's an A plus writer in a field that doesn't have that very often.

So, um, uh, very early on in the book, he has, he describes what we would now just call a nighttime bedroom visitation in abductions. Maybe he doesn't like, he doesn't use that word. Right. Um, I do. I just use it just because that's the vocabulary word we're, we're saddled with, you know, I don't like it, but that's the one. one that gets used a lot. And so I'll just, so he describes a bedroom visitation on Christmas,

the day after Christmas in 1985. The next morning, he actually felt there was an owl flying around the house. There was an owl in the house, which seemed impossible. His wife was like, there wasn't any owl in the house last night. All the windows are closed.

It's wintertime. And then he said, so the only thing it could be was the owl out the window. And it would have come through that window. I know it. And they went over to the window. and he looked and there was fresh snow and there was no footprints on the window sill

or on the you know so the snow had fallen a few days before so if there was an owl on that window cell there should have been some evidence and there wasn't and when he saw that he knew something far stranger had occurred than just a physical owl so somehow

this memory of an owl was implanted in his mind And that in research circles is referred to as the screen memory, which is bandied about and is very commonplace. And what will happen is people will tell stories of driving down a lonely road at night and they turn a corner and there's a great big tall,

four foot tall owl standing in the middle of the road and they'll pull the car right up to it and the owl will be above the hood of the car staring in at their windshield. Now, there's no such a child. thing is a four foot tall owl. They don't get that tall. There's no, there's no, there's no owl in the world that could stand on the road, no matter how small your car is, and then stare over the hood at you. So they're seeing something else. The implication being

that they're seeing a gray alien that has somehow used a psychic projection, some sort of hypnotic mask, and then they, they, they, the observer, quite probably the abductee doesn't see a gray alien with big black eyes they see a owl with big penetrating eyes and that shows up in the literature over and over again

I did a chapter on screen memories and I actually tried to I did it early in the book and I wanted to get past it because once you wrap your mind around what the screen memory might be and how it's used what I was more interested in

was not that but the stranger aspect of the real owl. Like, why are these real owls showing up? No, and you said, Mike, I mean, you know, being that it may be a, quote, unquote, fallible screen memory that the biggest owls often get to what? Two, three feet maybe? Well, if you look at a straight Google research is 33 inches, the biggest owl I've ever found written in, you know, in, you know, his size. 33 inches and that's that's in flight nose to tail

so that's not standing so it'd be a little shorter than that so I mean if you're seeing an owl if you see an owl a little over one foot tall in North America you're seeing a big owl and there's only one owl that can get that big and that you have to be in pretty far north to see an owl that big and that would be the great gray owl

and that that you know I mean that's not going to be that big in no way could it be four foot tall You know, I mean, maybe if off in the distance, you might, you know, how to accurately perceive what it might be. So, you know, there's a two and a half foot tall maybe, but very, very difficult to, you know, so what's interesting is that people will see these tall owls, these four foot tall owls and then just dismiss them. Like, oh, yeah, I saw four four tall owl. And then they'll say it as casually as that.

And then, like, they'll recognize there's something odd in there. I made a cardboard owl that was four foot tall. Let me tell you. I remember. Oh, that's right. You've actually held it. Yeah, you stood right next to it. Yeah, you stand next to this thing, and there's no way that you could mistake.

There's no way that could be real. Right. So owls are, you know, I mean, owls are, I mean, their hawks are bigger than owls and things like that. So eagles are bigger than owls. And there's, so. Yeah, I mean, sort of bringing it back around your blog. Hidden Experience.blog spot you wrote about

the owl and the UFO abductee and out of nowhere Mr. Streber was the first to comment on the blog. I mean that's pretty you know this is it's very interesting yeah so the very first day of the blog's incarnation I put three stories

up one of the stories was the uh it was titled Owls at sunset you can just scroll back right to the very beginning to the blog and there's the very first day which is March good God It's got to be right around the deck. Right around, I think it was March 5th or something like that's right around here. So it's seven years now.

It's 2006. That was 2009 or 2016 and now it's 2009. Yeah. Wow, seven years of the blog's incarnation. Congratulations. Yeah, my number seven. Yeah. So, yeah, so the very first day,

Whitley Streeper commented, I found out afterwards there was Mac Tonys, a researcher out of St. Louis, a friend of mine who was on Twitter at the time. And somehow he had gotten on the shared Twitter feed with Whitley. And then he had commented that, oh, there's this cool set of articles. And so Whitley read the Owls at Sunset thing and commented it on the very first day, which is bizarre, right? I mean, you know, you start a blog and then like it's the very, very first day.

So I remember And his comment was sort of It was actually poetic and cryptic And I actually And I've I've Whitney had a chat room thing that he used to do on Wednesday nights On this subscriber site

And I would Gonna go in the chat room And he I think is capable Of just zipping off like a three sentence little reply That is so Heavy and laden with deep mood meaning. And I think he just does that, I don't think he can help it, you know. Yeah.

I think he's when he's in the toothpaste dial trying to pick out, you know, like which toothpaste to get, he's probably, you know, it's probably equally as laden with, with deep meaning. And, you know, when he has the conversation with, you know, the checkout girl about, you know, like, you know, does he want paper or plastic, you know, he's probably equally as powerful as a communicator. But, yeah, so, so he made a comment about, you know, God and owls coming in threes. And, and, and it. deeper meaning and being surrendered to God. And it comes across as very poetic and I included that in the book too. Interesting. Yeah. I mean, sort of tying it back to just the UFO experience in specific, Mike, you refer to Joe Mantaldo, UFO researcher, who claims that UFO sightings can often be a trigger to other events, having happened to a witness.

Now, do you necessarily agree with this? If so, what do you think that means? means. You know, what is, is one event a trigger to past events, I guess? Well, you know, I mean, like, so the way Joe Montaldo argues this is that, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the owl is there as a marker. Okay. Right. So, so, so the owl is marking the occasion. And so if you have a, an event, right, you're driving down the road at night and then suddenly, you know, something weird happens. We see a great big owl.

And then, you know, the later you might use that owl. It's like, you know, there was that night. I saw the owl. There was something unusual about that night. You may, that may be the starting point for your own self-examination. Now, so he says that these, he basically, he basically argues that, like, He says ET doesn't need to make himself known, right? He can do everything using complete stealth.

The flying saucers can be completely cloaked and no one ever needs to see them. The techniques of mind control and erasing someone's memory can be so perfect and so streamlined and so complete that no one ever needs to see the aliens. So if they're being seen, it is because they want to be seen. Now, I don't know if that's necessarily true or not, but that's his argument. So his sense is if we're remembering an owl, people are seeing an owl and remembering an owl, it is happening for a reason. They want that memory to be in place for some reason. He senses to trigger a later form of examination, self-examination, or as a marker of, like, the point when an event may have occurred. Interesting.

Now, would this connect to what you consider the maybe people? Well, the maybe people is it's actually sort of a, so, you know, you talk to these folks, you know, you're like, oh, God, so what happened? Well, I was out, you know, I was like, you know, camping in the desert. And I saw this owl. And then I saw this UFO and then the UFO flow over. And like, it's like, okay, well, that's interesting. And then you kind of listen to their story. It's like, what do you think you've ever had?

Do you think you've ever been abducted? and I'll say, I'll ask it straight out and they'll say, oh no, nope, never been abducted. Not me, not me, never happened. Then you'll talk to them for a little while and they'll have other odd stories. They'll say, you know, I had a spiritual awakening or they'll say, you know, I had these vivid dreams

that played out like contact events. Now, none of that is proof, right? So I can't, so my sense is that there's a, there's a lesser tear on the last, one rung down from abductee. People are still influenced, seemingly influenced by some outside force, but they don't have that pop culture experience of being taken on board a flying saucer and put on the table. You know, that may never have happened.

But still, these people are out there. They're playing a role. And they talk to these people deeper. And they're like, what do you do? I'm a reiki therapist. Or, you know, they do, or like, oh, I'm an artist. You know, they have these, oh. you know, there's these things that seem to show up in the research.

And for some reason, I don't know, maybe it's just me that I'm like drawing these people in. But the Reiki therapy thing is out of control. I mean, it feels like, you know, half the people I talk to are Reiki therapists who've had these experiences. So the maybe people are that, like, like if someone doesn't say there, if someone said, like, if they don't say they're a UFO abductee, it ain't my job to call them that, you know. Like, that's up to them. and I might suspect as much and I would even argue that some percentage, perhaps a high percentage of the people in the book

that I call maybe people are actually experiencers, abductees that simply don't remember their contact experience. But without doing the proper research and without, you know, I mean, I would just, how would I, how would you prove that? You can't, you know? So I'm left with this sense that there's a,

there's a there's a there's a there's a a lesser rung in the latter but still these people are are they've experienced something no i knew you personally haven't chosen to take the hypnotic regression approved oh i have i've tried it a few times you have okay oh yeah yeah three times i've tried it on for the contact experience stuff and and each time um unsuccessful once with Leo Sprinkle, once with Barbara Lamb, and once with Bud Hopkins. Wow. Now, do you see this as a viable option for many experiencers? Do you think it is of value and actually works to, you know, bring these experiences forward? I guess what a mess is. Do you see it as a healthy way of dealing with these experiences? You know, my sense is he should probably exhaust other avenues first.

Okay. Before jumping on the hypnotherapist couch. You know, I also, like, I talk to people all the time. I talk to people all the time. And I bet you it is like 1% of the people I talk to have actually been through hypnotic regression for this type of thing. And that's, you know, that's contrary to what the popular culture is. They think that everyone, you know, the only reason you know, oh, they only reason

You can ever, you know, there's people who would argue with Jeff Ritzman and Jeremy Vaney would argue that it's the, you know, the hypnotherapists who've polluted the pool and, you know, given all these stories, in my sense is, you know, like, we don't need, I mean, like, there's plenty of evidence out there. People have remembered all kinds of things without hypnosis. Right. I know Kathleen Martin's done a lot of research into that, you know. Yeah. Yeah. And people, so that's even Bud Hopkins kind of rolled his eyes and said, yeah. a lot of people show up my office, you know, they don't need hypnosis.

They've got all kinds of conscious memory. We don't need to improve anything. Yeah. So, so, you know, it's a tool. I guess it can be used prudently and, you know, can be used irresponsibly. You know, that's a subjective argument, you know, like, which is, you know, on the continuum, you know, like one end is a responsible hypnotherapy and one end is irresponsible hypnotherapy. I mean, where in the line does it fall, you know? I mean, you know, every case is different.

Every individual is different. Every, you know, person trying to make a judgment call is going to be different. So, sure, I bet you there's been some sloppy things taking place. I bet you, you know, I've talked to a lot of people who've gone through hypnotherapy and then you ask them like, well, how was it? You know, like, and they say, I didn't believe it. Didn't buy it. I've run across that many times myself, yeah. And that doesn't make it into the literature, you know, like, that seems like, you know, there's this illusion that you have this hypnotherapy thing and you're all of a sudden you're like, there's this like little, you know, the magic wand gets the zap of your head and there's this like Disney ping noise.

and all of a sudden you have all your memories back and then it didn't work that way. Exactly. So, yeah, I ain't. It's true. I would do it. In fact, there's going to be a day when I'll probably give, you know, give into it. And quite honestly, like some of the events that I had were really scary.

Since then, I've had a couple other events that weren't as scary. So they don't have the big, like, it's a little easier to like, oh, I'll just investigate that, that one. Because it's not as scary. That one over there that happened at night. It was super spooky and like, yeah, yeah, it freaked me out. And it haunted me for years. and then I had this other thing back in March of 2013, and it's like, you know, that was kind of nice.

It was kind of pleasant. You know, it didn't have any, there's no associated baggage to that one, you know, I don't have any. So, yeah. Yeah. It's hard. I spoke to a woman a week ago who had an initial experience and she thought it was the only one. And, you know, she came to me a week later and she's struggling to make a decision with her husband. You know, I want to go under.

I want to sort of find out what happened. She has glimpses of a second experience, but she's terrified to find out what it might be. So, again, when these things become deeply traumatic, every hypnotherapist I've spoken to who deal with abductees or experiencers, they all say the same thing. Look, if you're having a traumatic experience, seek actual therapy first or find what works for you. If not, we're here to talk to you. So like you said, there's not this magic wand that brings everything to the surface. Every hypnotherapist I've spoken to is very responsible, and they look out for the person first and foremost. So as long as you're smart about it, I think, yeah, I think it's definitely a viable option.

Sure, yeah. I mean, I went through hypnotherapy session where it was a past life regression. It was very therapeutic, very therapeutic for some like emotional issues that, you know, may or may not be tied into this. this other stuff. But, you know, it was just this, this story emerged of a life that I lived in the 1920s or the 19-teens. It was hard to pinpoint exactly. And, you know, and it was, like, died under crappy circumstances. And, you know, that maybe the baggage from that previous life is, like, kind of lingering and causing problems in this life. That said, you know, like, I don't know if it actually happened. I do know that it was very therapeutic to go through the process of,

of examining this, this set of hypnotically induced memories. They may, are they real memories from previous life? I have no idea. I, what I can say is that the,

that the, uh, that the, the, the result of the procedure was powerfully therapeutic. Now, while lying there on the, this is in the,

in the hypnotherapist, her name is, um, Lorraine Flaherty and she's out of, uh, London while lying, sitting there on her, like,

recliner couch thing there and, and, uh, you know, she addressed the UFO stuff. She said, okay, and we're going to talk about the UFO thing now, and I'm like, okay, it's like, so, you know, what's, what, what, what, what does your higher self need to tell you?

That's how she, that's how she phrased it. He said, and my house, like, my answer was, this is real. This is really happening. It really happened. It's like, okay. Now, if you could ask the, like, you know, and why is this happening? And my response was, because it's important.

and it was this little kind of thing where she would say and why are they doing this why are they taking you because they have to you know it wasn't so that my sense is that whatever's going on and I'm whatever like I could have been making this up

or I don't know so I don't have complete trust in it you know but it was you know painted something you know it wasn't like you know they're taking my sperm to make hybrids you know that kind of thing it did that's not the answer I gave the answer I gave was you know why are they here

the answer was it's important. So I do recognize that there's something heavy about this experience. Right, and it's, you know, the continuing of the journey, you know, to find those answers, I would assume. I know, like, you had

an experience outside your bedroom window with the quote unquote graze. I wanted to ask you, because I know throughout the book you also spoke to others who have come into contact with the grays and they have this sense of

maybe the Oz factor or some sense of okay I'm shutting down you know what do you what do you perceive this as you know this calmness that comes over in such a not calm moment as it were well yeah so so I had a um experience this would have been in the winter of 92 93 uh January February 93 I was living in rural Maine. I woke up in the middle of the night. There was a bright light shining in the

bedroom window. I sat up in bed. I looked out the window and there were five spindly gray aliens walking towards the house and they were backlit by this bright light. Now, you know, that's frightening. Right? I should have freaked out. I should have got up. I should have locked the door. I should have grabbed a baseball bat

but I didn't. I heard this calm voice in my head say, oh yes, they're here. Now is the time to put your head in the pillow and shut down. And that's exactly what I did. I mean, I probably saw this for 30 seconds. But the associated with that was a weird sense.

It's accurate to say it was dreamlike. It's not accurate to say it was to dream. It was very vivid. Just sort of heading the fishbowl quality to the thing. Very clear, very quiet. And this is reported. in close up UFO sightings, this quietness. People don't say the UFO is quiet.

They say everything was quiet. They say the birds chirping and the crickets, you know, were quiet. The leaves rustling were quiet. There was no traffic noise coming from the road nearby. You know, so they're not describing a silent craft. There's describing an alternate, you know, a reality, somehow reality itself is altered. And there's this eerie stillness that's associated with these things. and in an eerie stillness would be an accurate way to describe what, you know, what I felt.

There's a woman, her name is Bridget Barkley. She lives in, she's an experienceer from England. Oh, yeah. I had a conversation with her and said, like, well, why would you describe this? And she said, you know, I don't even think I said, how would you describe what we're talking about, you know, this, she's had some close-up experiences. And she said, you know, you take two magnets and they click together, right? And then you pull them apart and you twist them around.

so their polarities are opposite. And there's this kind of, you know, you try to push them together and there's kind of this warbling. I'm doing it with my hands right now. You can't see, obviously, but I'm pushing my hands together and they're kind of warbling a little bit

and they can't quite click together. And there's this kind of undulating, distorted energy that's between the magnets, right? You know exactly what I'm saying, right? Yep, yep, yeah. So she says, being close to the UFO is like being in between those magnets.

And when she said that, I was like, oh, my gosh. You know, I know. I know you and I have experience the same thing. That's perfect. That's perfect. Now, I've had that same experience four times total. Oh, wow.

So in all of those were related to other experiences that were connected to UFOs. One of them was a dream. And then the, so I was quick, you know, at the time in 2000 and, excuse me, 1993 and that winter the next morning I just got up and said oh god I had a vivid dream like who never even bothered to go out and look in the snow to see if there's any footprints why would I it was impossible it couldn't have happened but um I'll tell you the dream so the dream which I didn't put in the book but I've written about it and I did a little drawing of it too so it's totally a dream it's a dream it's not like don't uh don't think it's anything else so and I and I feel like

the dream was somehow projected into my psyche like it was stage managed from some outside source I feel this very strongly. I visiting my brother. My brothers says, hey, you know, like I'm doing this government work, and I'm not supposed to talk about it and stuff like that. But, you know, I ain't got this thing. You'd probably be interested. Let's go in the garage.

I'm going to show you this thing. So we walk through his house and we walk through the door in his kitchen and go into his garage. The garage doors down. Like the garage is all closed. And there's this little flying saucer like propped up on blocks, on saw horses, like right next to his car. I'm like, oh, my God. Then where did you get this? And it's like, eh, you know, some kind.

work had a thing and he couldn't keep it and so now I have it you know I'm like oh my god it's a flying saucers how weird you said you said yeah but you can't get close to it or distorts reality like what so I walked up to it right so as I approached it I got about five feet away I felt that feeling that I felt the exact palpable feeling I tried to describe earlier I'd back away and it would go away and I'd walk towards it and it would come back and it was like it was like a message being delivered to my through my subconscious to my waking self because the next morning I was immediately aware

that like that I know exactly why I had that dream. That dream was to confirm that that event in 93 was real. And it was funny in that you know so I go back and forth a few times and then my brother there's like the doors open on the flying saucer it's dark inside, he can't really see much and small

it's not much bigger than the van or something he's like yeah you know this problem I can't get close to the thing because the weird distorted thing but here's what I do I take this camera and I put it on the end of a big stick, and then I put it in the, you know, like he takes a little digital camera and puts it on a long selfie stick kind of thing and then puts it in the door in this dark room

and it takes pictures. And that's when I woke up. Now my brother does not have a UFO in his flying saucer in his garage. I never did. But that dream had a power to it. And it felt like a like a, like it happened for a reason. Like it was reassuring to me that dream. Ah, yeah, that's a very interesting dream.

And you may have ostensibly created the selfie stick. Well, I'm not sure I didn't, I'm not gaining any royalties from the selfie stick at this point. Not yet. Wow. I have a couple other listener questions here, Mike, if you don't mind on the fly here. In terms of the grays, one of our listeners was wondering, do you see any connection between the grays and, if they are considered demonic in disguise, as they put it? Well, I mean, you know, I mean, who knows what demonic in disguise means, right?

So someone has a UFO experience in like, you know, 15th century, you know, Spain. They go to their, you know, Catholic bishop and tell the story. The Catholic bishop is going to say, you had a demonic experience and it gets written down in some book. And it's described as a demonic experience. And someone does a painting on a mural. and it shows up as a demon and, you know, it may not have been that at all. It may have been a gray alien, you know,

and it may have misinterpreted as a demonic thing. Now, I will also say that people have very dark, frightening experiences. And so calling it demonic might be completely accurate in the sense that it's, the emotional visceral reaction is exactly what you would expect from confronting a demon. Right. So, yeah, so there's a blurriness there that I can't answer. You know, there's a, like, this is where it's, we're in, like, Google Research Land now.

I mean, you're one-click away from so much, like, flooded with information. If you wanted to write a 400-page book that gray aliens are demonic, you would have no problem filling up a great big book with available accounts. Right. So, you know, that's, does that mean it's true? I don't think, you know, like, I don't know what to think as far as what may be true. I'm certainly you could make a very forceful argument and collect very credible data and accounts. Right.

I would imagine it's all through the lens that you perceive the experience. You know, if you're a spiritual person, you may see it that way. If, you know, if you're more of the shamanic, you know, belief system, it may be a sort of, like you said, a totem or a messenger of some sort. So, yeah, it seems to be all about perception. Yeah, and I had to jump way back, because I feel like I try to perceive it from a lot of different angles in the book. Yes.

And so I had to step out of, you know, like one mind frame, which I do, if I do have any mind frame, you know, like the shamanic thing was just such a tidy, clean fit that as well as the archetype was a very clean fit for the why of it, you know. Going back to the owl, I'm like, are you aware one of our listeners wants to know of any symbol? of the owl in Russia or China in specific? Why they chose those, I'm not exactly sure. I'm not sure. I absolutely have to think there is. I mean, the term shaman comes from Siberian word. I can't remember the name of the tribe.

The Inuits or the native people of Siberia coined the term, I think it was called Salman, and then it somehow got translated to shaman. So, and then, and I know that the totem animal in that, the Borat tribe. That's actually not right. The Borat's what am I saying? That's the dumb movie. So yeah, some tribe in northern Russia would have

you know equated that they have owl symbolism. I know they do and it's associated with a shaman. And I'm quite certain that China with the long history has all kinds of owl symbolism. I don't know what it is. So yeah, I can't answer that one very well. Sorry. No, not at all. It's a very specific question. I'm interested to look further into that. Did you come across any cases, like, where owls were heard but not seen and in event of high strangeness may have occurred? Do you remember anything in your research of that? Well, sure, yeah. So a woman on the beach with her husband, she had a stressful day. She's, you know, they're waiting to get seated at a restaurant like on the ocean. And they're drinking their, you know, they're drinking their, your margaritas.

and the sun is setting and she hears an owl hooting. It's like, well, I didn't know owls would come to a beach like this, and she looks around, she doesn't see anything. She looks up into the sky, and there's a silvery disc-shaped craft hovering far on the sky above them. She watches it for a little while, and she points it out to her husband, and he says, like, you know, kind of a doubter. And he, you know, she's kind of like, well, what's he going to make of this?

And he says, like, well, it's very unusual. It's not making normal motions that would be associated with any known craft. Very interesting. And then she later checks the newspapers and write in that area over that weekend, which is weird. It's like last for a few days.

There's a series of sightings and people are reporting, you know, classic silvery flying saucer, you know, polished aluminum flying saucer in that area. Now, you know, I get that's that, that kind of thing shows up a lot. I mean, people will say that, you know, like I've got people, like one woman contacted me.

And she's like, oh, God, I was reading your book. And this is like, since the book has come out, so this is in the last couple months. Like, oh, I was reading your book. And then I would, you know, I would, as soon as I'd lay in bed and I'd open the book, and I'd do this hooting out the window. And I'd close the book and the hooting would stop. And I'd open the book up and the hooting would start again. And then I would close the book and tell my husband, like, oh, God, wake up, wake up,

there's an owl right out the window. And I'm reading this owl book. Isn't that weird? And like, he would go, huh, what, what? And it would be no hooting. And so, yeah, so, yeah, the hooting shows up, you know, fair amount. Yeah, there's one person, a young guy talked to who's had his own set of abduction experience, and he very clearly said, lying in bed, here's an owl hooting out his window,

bam, the next thing you know, his bed is surrounded by gray aliens. They just appear. So, yeah, so, I mean, the hooting is just as vital to the whole thing as seeing them themselves, you know, so. Right. Well, playing off of that, I mean, you looked a lot into the work of Lindy Tucker as well with the beeping owls and the UFO connection. What can you tell us about that work being done? Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. So this is kind of a little bit of a long story, but Lindy Tucker is a researcher.

She's Canadian. She now lives in America. But this is back in the 70s. She was having sightings around her house. And at the same time, she was hearing this beeping noise. And she went out and recorded this beeping noise in the presence of this flying craft. So she's got an audio recorder. She's with this other person.

His guy's name is Christopher, which shows up a lot in the book. Don't ask me why. People named Chris show up a lot in the book, which is like Christopher, the first five letters is Christ. So, I mean, if you want to word, heavily laden with symbolism, that's it. So she goes out. She does an audio recording of this owl. Excuse me, of this UFO.

I just did it. Spoiler. And you can, I would put a link on your site. Go to beeping. UFOs.com. It's amazing. And then there's a little audio clips that she's put a whole bunch of minerals. Very interesting. And she has an excellent article that she was published in the Mufon Journal in the late 90s.

Very important to read that. So she did very straight analytical clinical research on what this may have been. This initial recording, I think it was 1976 in Orton, Ontario. has this beeping noise. It sounds like a car backing up, very mechanical. Beep, beep, beep. And overlaid with that is, you can hear crickets in the background, you hear a little rustling from the wind.

And you can also very clearly hear a great horned owl. Now, this, like, blew me away, right? Because I was, like, so primed. I was like, like, I'm waiting. I'm waiting for someone to show a picture. And, like, there's a, you know, like there's a UFO, a flying saucer above the trees. And in one of the trees, you can see a little owl sitting in a branch.

I don't have that picture. I want that picture. I'm like waiting for it, but I do have this audio. I don't have it. But I mean, this audio exists where it's an owl overlaid with this odd beeping noise. Now, things get weirder. Okay, so the, the, in the, oh, it's not Project Blue Book. I think it's the, I'm drawing a blank on that, one of the reports of the government,

but the Condon Report, the kind of report that came out in the late 60s. They said, there's no, you can't listen to anything, but they said, we analyzed a bunch of supposed recordings of UFOs, and we've come to the conclusion

that it is not a UFO, it is a saw-wet owl. Now, a saw-wet owl, you can go right online and click a little button and listen to the call of a saw-wet owl. It sounds like a car back amp, very mechanical,

a little tooting noise. Beep, beep, beep. You know, you listen to them side by side, just straight, you know, straight ears. You know, you listen to the recordings that Lindy Tucker has presented and you listen to a Sawwit Owl.

They're very similar. Sawwhat Owl is going to sound a little more flute-like. The recordings of Lindy Tucker sound a little more mechanical. But a researcher, Ronald Steerman, I think is his name of the University of Texas

and Austin back in the 90s, did an exhaustive amount of research on these two noises. And he says they are not the same. The call of the saw A wet owl is not the same of what Lindy Tucker had recorded. And then Lindy Tucker, under very synchronistic circumstances, collected all kinds of these things. Like they just kind of arrived in this very strange way, you know.

So she was doing research on exactly on the sound of a UFO. The government dismisses this sound as an owl. Okay, so here we have the owl connection. She's got a recording, the very first recording that she did that sent her on this journey, that then spawned all these synchronicities and getting more of this stuff, the very first recording she does has an owl overlapping

with the UFO sound, this beeping noise. Now, she wrote up this report, excellent report, kind of well worth reading. That's on the site, beeping UFOs.com.

This goes into the Mufon Journal and they say, hey, the deadline's coming up. They tucked her on the phone. Like, oh, you've got to get this thing, got to get it in the mail. we got to get here for the deadline. This is back in the 90s, an ancient era where things like,

you take a piece of paper and put it in an envelope. And so she's like, so our desk is messy. She's searching around. She's got this deadline. It's got his full daylight. The window's open.

Summertime. She's got the, then she sees it, right? Oh, she finds the document. She puts her finger on it. As soon as she touches it, this beeping noise comes in through the window. Beep, beep, beep, beep,

the same noise. When she touches the document that, argues that the beeping noise is not a saw-wet owl but is instead a UFO. This is very strange stuff. This is very strange stuff. This goes well beyond like little scientists in a metal spaceship flying here to, you know, conduct some some experiments on the hapless humans that live on this planet. something much richer and much stranger is taking place than that very simple explanation.

Yeah. I mean, therein lay, you know, your entire journey, like, I mean, I remember you once saying that you don't mind not finding answers and that you enjoy living in the mystery. What about these mysteries do you find most compelling? Well, I mean, I don't know. I mean, like you get like a mystery novel, right? So there's got a beginning, middle and end, right? So there's a reason, like the dime stores are, well, whatever, I'm not sure what's going on now.

Like the Kindle rack or whatever he could. I mean, it used to be like you'd have the little rack in the in the drugstore with all the paperbacks, the pulp paperbacks. Yeah. Detective novels. It's a mystery. You know, it's a murder right in the beginning and then they solve the murder by the end. But that's the murder at the beginning is inconsequential. The solving it at the end is inconsequential.

It's the journey. It's the story of the detective, which is exciting. There's a reason why, like, you know, I mean, half the television shows in the 70s were detective shows. It's a, it's solving a mystery as is part of the core human experience, you know, or like actually not even solving because I got to say that like by the, like when you're in the middle of a detective novel, you don't want it to end, a really good one, right? Yeah. Yeah. You read the long goodbye by Raymond Chandler. It's like, no, don't end, don't end.

And it almost doesn't matter who the murderer is, right? You know, like at the end, it's just going to be, you know, the person you least suspect anyway. So my sense is that, you know, that's hardwired into us, kind of liking the mystery. And I've gotten to the point now where, I mean, I've talked to people feel like, you know, Richard Dolan says this. He's like, you know, I'm going to take a few years out of studying, you know, the historical documents on the Cold War. And I'm going to put some efforts into this UFO thing.

I'm going to solve it. And then, you know, sort of pat myself in the back and then take on another project. He hasn't solved it. I mean, a lot of people say that. Like, I felt the same way. Like, I felt like, I'll just write up a little essay about UFOs and owls. And then I'll get that out of my system and I'll be done with it. And that's not what happened.

It was a bottomless pit. You know, I pick owls, right? So it's like, as I said earlier, it's a paragraph here and there in any given UFO book. It mentions owls somehow or another. And sure, you know, like, great. Like a little teeny, the tiniest little point on the outlying boundaries of the core UFO phenomena is this. stuff. But, you know,

digging into it, you know, you would think it would just be like a little aside in the literature, but it's just, it's its own beast. It is, it's a bottomless pit. And not only a bottomless pit, it's a bottomless pit, it's a bottomless pit of wonderfully engaging, eerie, evocative stories. So, so, yeah, I don't have a good answer to to what it is, but it has been just so fascinating.

I've given up trying to solve it, and I'm content with the mystery. And yes, yes, so I don't, I wish I had a good answer to that. All I can say is that it's been, I don't know, I mean, it's changed my life. It's changed the direction of my life. The question, why owls? Yeah, why owls? Exactly. I mean, you have clearly lifted a veil of sorts on a very,

interesting topic pertaining to the UFO phenomenon as a quote unquote hole. Like you said, this is a small, small fraction of this. And then it overlaps with other things. You know, the guy who says like, you know, like I went out in the field and I meditated and I actually asked the world, you know, like, how can I be of service to the world? I need a sign. I want to give back to the world. How can I be of service? And he closes his eyes and meditates in this field. And he opens his eyes and there's an owl in the field with him. You know, the woman who's had UFO experiences, you know, goes in the woods and meditates. And she says, and he closes. And he says, says, I need to find my spirit name, you know, and then she opens her eyes and there's an owl, like right on the branch right in front of her. You know, like the people who have seen, you know, the guy doing death research is catalogued all these strange stories of owls showing up at people's homes after someone has passed. That doesn't have, I mean, some of this stuff doesn't have anything to do with UFOs, but it does have to do with a deeper mystery that's beyond the veil in that realm where the owl would travel, you know, in that, you know, in that

alternate form of reality, you know. So, yeah, this is, it's been yes, yes, so that was the, you know, the thing that sort of shook me up a little bit about this book was that, you know, like, wow, it did, this is blurs, right? There's not a delineated line, and the UFO thing doesn't stop at this one boundary. You step over the fence and then the, the meditation thing begins.

They overlap. Exactly. Well, I mean, and they continue as well, Mike. I mean, Ruber has it. You're working on a sequel to the book? Well, it's a companion to the book. And it's not a rumor. It's a fact.

I'm not very open about it. You're not giving away, not divulging anything. Okay, good, good. So in the context of doing the book, you know, what I found is that there's these stories, right? And this is almost like, and I actually used the term the paradox. syndrome to describe these, and that sounds a lofty, and I wish I had a better term, but it was kind of like I needed to, like, say, like, you know, kind of find these stories, and they just, there's, it's like, there's an example here, and I call it the paradox syndrome

where you get a story and it doesn't make any sense. It's long, it's complicated. It's just page after page after page to write these accounts up, and you talk, go back and forth of the person, I'm like, well, what else happened? And oh, and this other thing happened, and it just goes on and on and on. And it doesn't make any sense. It loops back on itself. There's no point at the end where it just,

culminates and someone has an answer. It just is this loopy logic and it just you know a mess of synchronicities and owl stories and UFOs and and they were too long to put in the book right? So there's a couple that I did put in there, you know, that have this quality and I initially wanted to put all these stories as

an appendix just to have a set of, but it just didn't. It was, you know, it wouldn't have worked in a book format. So the easier thing was just make a separate book. So yeah, so the separate book is going to read hopefully like a collection of short stories and I'll try to keep my speculation to a minimum and just let the stories stand on their own. But, um, uh, so the, the working title is stories from the messengers.

It'll have a cover very similar to the messenger, the owl picture on the present book. And, and hopefully they'll be available side by side. And if one, if you read one, you might be, you know, uh, eager to read the other. So they're just stories that are too long and too complicated. And these long and complicated stories have a sort of, um, proof. to me anyway the weirdness almost the

the irrationality of them Anne Streeper the wife of Whitley Streber had a like she said you know like I have a bullshit detector I've got a BS detector

and I and if people tell me a story and it's not weird I don't buy it you know if you try to make up a UFO story it's gonna make up something logical right

but that's not what people are telling people are telling illogical stories So these stories are perfectly illogical. I don't understand why they play out the way they do. But, and then I just wanted to... So yes, so this follow-up book is... Hopefully we'll read as a book of short stories.

Great. And where can we find the recent book, Mike? You can find it on Amazon. You can find it on my website. You can find it on Richard Dolan's website. You can go to your local bookstore and walk up to the counter and say, can you look up a book by Mike Cleland called The Messengers? And they'll find it within a couple of keystrokes.

So it's out there, and I would prefer everyone to go to their local bookstore because they're not going to be around for long. Absolutely. Those people have kids, and those kids are hungry, so you've got to have... Support your local bookstore, for sure. And where can we find your other work, Mike? There's my blog is hidden experience.blogspot.com. I have been mostly using it to promotion, I'm sad to say, but I've been so wrapped up in these books, things they love. So the recent posts are kind of promoting the book.

But there's all kinds of stuff in there. It's a lot now that it's seven years old, which we figured out this makes me feel a little weird that I've been doing it this long. Seven years of blogging like this. And then there's a bunch of audio interviews. And there's even an audio reading of one of the chapters of the book that's posted online there. And that would be read by you. Oh, you. shameless promotion. Yes, I mean, I've been captivated by your work for years now, Mike, and it was an honor to read just one chapter. I look forward to hopefully reading more. Your work is prolific. It is extremely relevant, and I can't wait to see what you bring to the table next, man. And maybe we'll finally get some of those messages we're all waiting to hear. So I want to thank you for joining us. Thank you so much. It's been an honor.

by Third Kind Productions in association with Antica Productions and the Antica Podcast Network. To learn more, visit antica productions.com.