Somewhere in the Skies - Mothman, Strange Tales of the Impossible, and the Singular Fortean Society

Episode Date: August 9, 2021

On episode 225 of SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES, we are joined by Tobias Wayland, co-founder of the Singular Fortean Society. We talk about his extensive research in to a modern-day wave of Mothman sightings throughout the Midwest, winged humanoid encounters with violent implications, commonalities between UFO activity and incidents of high-strangeness, and the power of perception in observers when dealing with the impossible.  Visit the Singular Fortean Society at: https://www.singularfortean.com/  Find Tobias Wayland's books at: https://www.singularfortean.com/books  Help Somewhere in the Skies with a SUPERCHAT or THANK YOU donation above. Your support truly helps the show continue and grow!  Get 25% Off on Somewhere in the Skies Coffee for the entire month of August by using promo code: DARKSKY at checkout: https://bit.ly/3mIAq2o Website: www.somewhereintheskies.com YouTube Channel: CLICK HERE Official Store: CLICK HERE Somewhere in the Skies Coffee! https://bit.ly/3mIAq2o Order Ryan’s book in paperback, ebook, or audiobook by CLICKING HERE Twitter: @SomewhereSkies Instagram: @SomewhereSkiesPod Somewhere in the Skies Subreddit: www.reddit.com/r/SomewhereSkiesPod/ Watch Mysteries Decoded for free at www.CWseed.com Episode edited by Jane Palomera Moore Opening Theme Song, "Ephemeral Reign" by Per Kiilstofte SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES is part of the eOne podcast network. To learn more, CLICK HERE 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

What's up guys, Ryan Sprag here, and I'm just dropping in to remind you about our Patreon campaign. Somewhere in the skies is always free to consume, but it's not free to create. So if you want to help the show on a monthly basis, we have tons of rewards for you in return, including shoutouts on the show and website, bonus content and episodes, and free merge. Want to be my guest or pick a topic for the show? You can do that too. So if you'd like to learn more and to help support the show, visit patreon. com slash somewhere skies. Thank you and keep looking up. Today on the show, author, researcher, and investigator for the singular 14 society, Tobias Wayland.

This is Somewhere in the Skies with Ryan Sprague. Tobias, welcome for the very first time to Somewhere in the Skies. Thank you so much for having me. I'm a big fan and, you know, I couldn't wait to be on. Well, thank you. And I know this has been a long time in the making. I was going to have Jan when you came out with your first book, the Lake Michigan Mothman. But I'm so happy that now you have another book out. So we get to cover more than just the Moth Man tonight, which I might add, I wore this T-shirt specifically for you, man. And I've got my, I've got my chupacabras in the background, too. I'm a UFO guy, man. So we're stepping out of my territory tonight a little bit. But

I'm excited. I think our listeners are really going to enjoy this one, because you have been investigating all types of things. Like, you know, I'm a euphologist. You've got people who just look at Bigfoot or just hunt ghosts, but over at the singular 14th society, you guys are doing everything. So I guess kind of my first question for all first time guests is how did you get interested in all of this stuff? Like what first got you interested in the unexplained and in the 14th, which is another question we'll get to. But yeah, man, where did this all start for you? Sure.

You know, honestly, I like to tell people that if it hadn't been for experiences that started in my early childhood, I probably would have been a relatively normal if pretty nerdy guy. But, you know, ever since I was a little kid, you know, I have had these experiences and I can't explain them. And they sort of cross the boundaries. between phenomena. So they're not easily sort of pigeonholed into one particular aspect of strangeness.

You know, I remember some of my earliest memories, honestly, as a kid, are just being terrified to go to bed because I knew when I did that something was coming for me. And it happened fairly regularly. I mean, I'm talking as young as, you know, two or three years old. My earliest memories are of, you know, things. poking my sides while I'm in bed or the feeling of like hands trying to get underneath me to lift me up or having the covers pulled over my my head in fright and seeing hands oppressing from the outside. And of course as I aged, the experiences, while probably not

more developed, certainly like my mind was more developed. And so my memories of the events as they progressed are clearer. But yeah, it really involved a lot of nighttime visitation, seeing shadow people, you know, receiving weird messages, things like that. And so, you know, I'm old enough that when I was a little kid, of course, like there wasn't any internet or anything. And so I couldn't really turn to my family. Like, they're great.

They're great people. but at that time, especially as a child, they weren't really prepared to deal with those experiences. And so they were largely written off as a child's imagination. And then by the time I was old enough, I think, to have my folks take me seriously, you know, I was just dealing with it by myself. And so what I did was I was a voracious reader. And I would go to the library where I discovered books by, you know, people like Whitley Streber and John Keel, Brad Steiger, you know, Lauren Coleman, guys like that. And I would read about these experiences that other people were having.

And a lot of them were very similar to the experiences I was having. And so that helped, honestly, just kind of knowing that there were other people out there. who were experiencing similar phenomena really, really gave me some peace of mind. You know, I knew I wasn't crazy if nothing else. And so, you know, when I was in my 20s then and I was kind of deciding what I wanted to do, you know, I started volunteering as a field investigator for the mutual UFO network. And from there, I tried to kind of narrow down exactly what I wanted out of this and what I wanted to give back. And eventually what I landed on was I wanted to try to provide for people

the same thing that those authors and a multitude of other authors since, you know, have provided for me, you know, engaging with witnesses, helping them try to understand their experience. If I can, I mean, we don't have a lot of answers or if I can't at least being a safe place that they can come to. and share those experiences, you know, that's not something that a lot of people have. And I think just in the Internet age, that's something that we're finally able to kind of provide for people on a more widespread basis. And so that was kind of our thinking behind the Singular 40 in society. You know, I met my wife, Emily, in 2015. And, of course, we hit it off right away.

and sometime in 2016, we were kind of thinking about different projects, like just creative projects. And, you know, my background in education is writing and literature, and she has degrees in photography and design. And so we were thinking, well, between the two of us, we should be able to come up with something, right? And so we came up with the Singular-Fordian society. And at the very least, I guess that was my motivation behind my half of it. Awesome. Well, I got to ask, was your wife into all this stuff before? I know for me, you know, when I would go on first dates and the euphologist thing would come up,

I would never get the second date to buy us. What was it like when you first shared all this with Emily? Was she, had she had experiences as well? Or how did that all happen? Sure. So, you know, I much like you, you know, I reached a point in my life where I, you know, I just wasn't happy dating women who weren't willing to accept that part of me. Because it is a really big part, you know, like, and there's no denying it. I can't ignore it. And so I was very upfront about it every time. Like it was like the first thing in my dating profile. So there, like there were no surprises. Now for Emily, she had had experiences. but she wasn't really into the paranormal or any aspect of it, you know, prior to us meeting. I think that she had some interest, you know, sort of a casual, you know, kind of of interest. But, you know, she wasn't actively investigating or anything like that.

Most of her own experiences, she had just kind of written off as some weird thing that who knows what it was, maybe it was a dream or hallucination or something. And yeah, it was really after. we met that she became more involved. And obviously now she is investigating and doing a lot of good work for the singing of the Fortian society. Right, right. And well, let's touch on that, Fortian.

Now, I know a lot of my listeners will be familiar with what Fortean is, who Charles Fort is. But for those who don't know, Tobias, I'm sure you're used to this question. Can you kind of run us through Fort 101, the introductory course? Who was he? What did he do? And why did you guys decide that that's really the approach and kind of the inspiration for what you inevitably wanted to do with the society? Sure. So Charles Fort was an early 20th century collector of weird news stories.

And so essentially what he would do is he would collect all of these weird news stories from all over the world. And he would put them together and he would write about them in giant volumes like this, which is a proud part of our book collection, the collective works of Charles Fort. And he would write about all of these weird news stories. And basically, he would sort of speculate, like very tongue-in-cheek about what might be behind them and all of the commonalities between these seemingly disparate subjects. And the fact is they have a lot in common. And he didn't ignore that.

And so one of his most famous quotes is one measures a circle beginning anywhere. And that is to say that by examining any part of the paranormal, you know, be it ghosts or UFOs or cryptids, whatever, you can learn something about all of it because there are so many similarities that it's almost certainly connected in some way. And what that means specifically is unknown, because nobody really knows enough about this stuff to really say for sure. But yeah, he would write all this stuff and he would find all of these different weird commonalities and sort of speculate about what was all behind it.

And, you know, I mentioned some of the authors that I grew up reading. and a lot of them were inspired by Charles Fort. And so, you know, I started seeing his name because of the authors that I was reading. And I was like, well, I mean, obviously, if he's inspiring these other people, then I need to know what he was about, you know. And yeah, his influence is everywhere. Honestly, Charles Ford's influence on, you know, modern day paranormal. investigation or uphology or just whatever, everything that has to do with weirdness,

it's sort of analogous to like H.P. Lumpcraft's influence on horror. It's just everywhere. And so if you really want to understand, like for instance, John Keel has seen something of a resurgence, I think, recently in popularity and people who are recognizing his work and stuff. And I submit, you cannot understand John Keel if you haven't read Charles Fort because he was such a big influence.

And so that was kind of the impetus, I think, behind us wanting to feature that Fordian mindset very, very prominently. Because I think the Fordian sort of flaw is, I don't want to say that it's necessarily unbiased, but I think that what it might represent is sort of the purest form of what people are trying to do in the paranormal today. So if you roll back everybody who is popular now and who is influential now and you look at what their work is based off of, you're going to find Charles. Hort almost every time. You know, that's Jacques Valet. That's, it's everybody.

And so rather than, you know, sort of focus on one individual or one perspective or philosophy or something based off of Charles Hort, why not just go back to Fort and include everybody's perspective since then sort of under this umbrella of Fortiana? Right. Yeah, I love. umbrella is the perfect word because I think, you know, a lot of us spend all our time, you know, for me, entrenched in just UFOs and not looking at the other topics that could be intrinsically linked with that, but I'm not even bothering to look at the data or the evidence of that. So I think you're right.

I think it's important to always know where we've been to see where we're going. And I mean, for it was that, that pioneer for that really paved the way for everything that's come since then. So, no, I completely agree with you on that. And I guess to kind of rewind a little bit, let's go to Mothman. Now, this is a topic I love. And I've covered it a couple times on the show, whether it be with Seth Breedlove or several other John Tenney, I know, talked about it a little bit on the show before.

But I've never really gone that far into it. And when I learned that Mothman had made a return possibly to the Midwest, I was, oh, man, I was so excited to hear about this. And you were one of the people who actually went out and investigated these modern day stories of Mothman. So let's go there, the Lake Michigan Mothman. This was a book you came out previously. And I know it's going to be the subject of an upcoming documentary as well. Tell us a little about what prompted you to write the book, how you kind of got involved with the whole Mothman investigation, if you don't mind.

No, not at all. So back in the spring of 2017, I had seen a trio of citing reports that had come through the Bufon case management system. And they had published a short article. There wasn't a lot of information, but they were all sort of. describing this weird flying creature that people were reportedly seeing in the Chicago area. And like I said, there wasn't a lot of information to go on. So I thought, well, you know, I mean, Mufon published an article, you know, to their own site about it.

We'll see how it develops, but Mufon isn't really forthcoming with information very often. So, you know, I honestly thought that it would just be like a one-off article. our readers would enjoy it and we just never hear anything about it, you know, ever again. And obviously, that's not what happened. So it wasn't too long after that that I started seeing more reports being shared. And they were mostly coming from Phantoms and Monsters. So Lon Strickler over at Phantoms and Monsters and Manuel Navarette at UFO Clearinghouse. And so I thought, well, if I'm going to cover this journalistically, I'm going to need to reach out to these guys and see what's going on with this investigation and what's behind these reports.

And so I had reached out to them both separately and was able to interview them in consecutive months that summer. So it was June and July. And, you know, I found them to be very friendly, very, very forthright in terms of, you know, being willing to talk about the investigations and sort of what they, they had done to look into these sightings. You know, there were a lot of hypotheses being thrown around at that time. But I found that neither Lon or Manuel really had a set sort of pet theory or something that that they were trying to wedge these sightings into. And so I was impressed by that.

And it wasn't too long after that because these sightings kept coming in, kept coming in. that, you know, our proximity to that area was, was noticed. And we had some, some mutual acquaintances. And so, you know, Emily and I were asked to join this investigation, which was great because it didn't take very long for the Singular Fortian Society to start getting our own citing reports from, from witnesses. So, you know, it really snowballed throughout 2017. And into 2018 and really began tapering off since then. And I don't know that it's ever going to completely disappear. We still get reports, honestly.

But that sort of furor from 2017 has certainly died down considerably. Which is interesting because we do see these things go in waves. I mean, look at the first wave in Point Pleasant in West Virginia. That's where we got inevitably the most reports of the mothman. where the book came from and eventually the movie and everything like that. Yeah, it seems to be like maybe in one year you'll get this many reports and then it tapers off and then it makes a comeback. And like you said, you guys, in the book,

you had so many different reports of these winged humanoids and impossible mothman sightings. So I mean, I guess my question for you would be, what patterns or connections, if there were any, were you able to make with, you know, what happened in Point Pleasant back in the day and what you guys were coming across in reports. Were they, are we dealing, I guess, Tobias, with the same creature

or an offshoot of that? Or, yeah, any patterns or connections you made between the mothman of yesteryear and today? Sure. You know, I would say that the phenomenon, whatever it is, is likely the same. Now, I think what people need to understand, about the Lake Michigan Mothman sightings is as a result of our investigation,

like we were really able to create two separate profiles of sighting types, really. So the first one is likely misidentified large birds. And look, nobody likes to hear that. I don't like to hear it. It's not fun. But it is part of doing our due diligence as, investigators of these phenomena. Like if we come across evidence that that's something like that exists,

then we have to report that. And so what I noticed was there were these daytime sightings where people would describe something large that they didn't recognize flying, usually at some distance. The sightings didn't last all that long. And they weren't accompanied by any kind of paranormal phenomena that is relatively common in the other citing reports. And then in the spring of 2018, we received a sighting from a man in the Pilsson neighborhood of Chicago.

And he had a video. So he was bicycling to work. And he noticed this man and woman standing on a street corner pointing at something that was in the air. And he looks up and he sees what he later described to me as either a large bat or a man in a wingsuit. And so he's got this GoPro camera on his bike helmet, and he decides he's going to follow this thing around and get as much footage as he can, which, I mean, is amazing. And I wish everybody did that. And so he did. He got a lot of good footage.

I mean, it's a GoPro camera. So, you know, it's not the resolution isn't amazing or anything. But it's darn good enough. And he was very forthcoming with that evidence. And he was willing to send it to us. he even sent us the original SD card that the footage was on. And so I don't think for a second that this guy was lying to me. I really, really don't.

I think he saw something that was anomalous to him and that he understandably misinterpreted because what we found after examining this video and getting some good stills of the object that he had seen in blowing them up is it was definitely a bird. The silhouette to me looked like probably a great blue heron. They do live in that area. You know, they migrate through every year. And something people don't understand about herons in that area is that due to climate change and the destruction of their wetland habitat is there are more of these birds roosting in urban areas and they're coming up north earlier, staying longer, sometimes overwintering. And so I think that part of what we were dealing with was people seeing these birds who

weren't really used to seeing them. And so they interpreted it as something weird. And if they went at that time and Googled like, you know, flying monster Chicago or something, then they're going to get all of these winged humanoid sightings. They're going to think, well, hey, maybe that's what I saw because I I don't know what the hell it was otherwise. And so that's that first profile. However, those by my estimation account for maybe 40%, 45 at the most of all of the sightings received.

And so that really, I think, forces us to examine then the other profile, which was very strange and certainly had a lot of aspects. of the paranormal involved. And so what those people were describing, if you take their testimony at its word, really, and my personal approach to investigation is to always proceed as though whatever the witness is telling me is true, unless I have direct evidence to the contrary. So of course I follow up on all of the details provided,

check geographic and weather info, all of that stuff, to make sure that their story adds up. And if and when it does, then I'm going to proceed as though the rest of what they're telling me is what actually happened, or at least was their experience. And so in those sightings, often what you would have people report is relatively close contact with something that they said stood between seven and eight feet tall, would have these large wings. You know, they would sort of alternately describe it using, you know, either bat-like or bird-like descriptors. Often they would report, you know, these glowing red eyes. They would talk about feeling this overwhelming sense of fear or a palpable sense of evil. Some people would say that they thought that the eyes were sort of like staring through them or into their soul or they were hypnotized by them.

And so a lot of really, really weird stuff. And also sort of happening alongside those really weird reports is you would get reports of UFOs often by the same witnesses, certainly in the same area. I mean, everywhere around Lake Michigan has a lot of UFO sighting. So, I mean, there's a correlation there. But we all know correlation. That doesn't necessarily mean causation. But it's weird. And it's the same kind of weird that was happening in Point Pleasant back in the 60s,

you know, 66 to 67. And frankly, never really stopped. Now, you can talk, you know, like you've had Seth on before. And you can talk to him. And, you know, he's talked to people in the Ohio River Valley who are still investigating these sightings because really the Mothman sightings there never actually stopped. Right. you know, the silver bridge collapse, in my opinion, was a convenient narrative ending to the Mothman prophecies,

but probably totally unrelated to winged humanoid sightings in that area. Because, again, they never stopped. So, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of commonalities there in what people are reporting. So, you know, honestly, I held off referring to this as the, the, the Lake Michigan mothman for like at least a year because I didn't want to sensationalize anything and so I thought well you know if I just slap the mothman label on it right away then you know that's that's it's not it's not good journalism it's not you know it's it's just sensationalistic so I I used clunky terminology like a terminology like flying humanoid winged

You know, forever until finally it was too much to ignore. And I thought, well, look, the best way to contextualize this for people is going to be to compare it to the thing that it has the most in common with. And right now, in continuing, that is the mothman of Point Pleasant sightings. So here we are, you know, four years later with the Lake Michigan. mothman. Interesting. And I love that, Matt, because again, yeah, like we don't know if it's the same creature or, uh, or even the same, you know, phenomenon. But at the same time, the commonalities you're finding in the witness reports and even, um, like you said, how they're describing these feelings of dread or, or, or doom or when they are looking into the eyes of these creatures,

like that's so reminiscent of what they were reporting back during the, um, during the the Mothman days with Point Pleasant and the Silver Bridge collapse and all that. So I love that. Yeah. And I also really respect that you are willing to say a lot of this can be explained by natural causes or, you know, in terms of now e-natural causes of climate change being the reason that people are seeing birds they've never seen before in that area at that time. That makes perfect sense that your brain would not be used to seeing that and you would think it would. something out of the ordinary. So no, I highly respect the way that you you approach this and that you were willing to wait until the evidence was there to say, yeah, I think we might be dealing with

a mothman phenomenon. Well, I got to ask you, a lot of people took notice of the work that you did with the Lake Michigan mothman, including Josh Gates in his team over at Expedition X, and you were featured on the show with your research. So I got to ask, what was that experience like, you know, getting into the world of TV. I know it all too well when it comes to these topics. And sometimes it's, it's not what you hope for or what you expect. But what was the experience like working with the casting crew over there? And how do you think they handled the, the Mothman of Lake Michigan mystery?

Sure. You know, honestly, overall, it was a very, very positive experience. I had a lot of fun. Phil and Jessica were both great. The only thing for me was, you know, standing next to them. I was just like, I'm not attractive enough to be here, guys. I'm sorry for this, you know. But they were great.

They were a lot of fun. The entire crew was fantastic. The director, producers, you know, everybody from the mic and camera guys, you know, like all just great. And actually, it was interesting sort of between filming, I got to talk to some of the the crew more and and they had weird stories from other shoots they had been on you know like there's a guy telling me about um seeing the this weird ghost march in hawaii when when they were filming there so like that that was great i was like obviously these are my people um so you know this is this is a lot of fun um and so you know like i said overall that was that was fantastic

you know we shot it in the sears tower or willis tower if if one might lost. And so, yeah, like, that was great. It's beautiful. You know, we were up on the observation floor. And so, like, we had an amazing view of the city the entire time, which I love. I mean, Chicago's a, it's a great city. And so, yeah, that was all great. And then, you know, I watched the episode later. And, you know, honestly, I don't know about anybody else. But I, Emily had to make me watch it because I don't like watching myself. in things. And so I was like, you just watch it. And you tell me if it's good or not and like how it worked out. And she was like, no, no, no, you got to watch it. We'll just watch it. Yeah. And so I did. And I thought that it was well done because I understand, I mean, they sort of landed on

the bird hypothesis. And I think it expanded that sort of to most of the sightings, which I think is understandable, considering that the show itself has to deal with what is provable right now. And I think that what is absolutely provable right now is that some of the sightings were of large birds, you know? And so, you know, I had directed, well, one of the witnesses that was on there, the, like that video footage, that's the Pilsen video footage. Like that's the Pilsen video footage. Like that's the same, you know, that's the guy that I was just talking about. And so it's, I think it was perfectly understandable for them sort of with their, you know, material science-based slants, you know, like that direction for them to land on. Well, here's what we know.

We know some people are mistaking birds for something else. And so we don't really know anything else beyond that. So that's all we can say for for sure, which again, like that's, that's fair if you're trying to fit this mystery into like an hour long episode, right? Because there's only so much you can do there. Right. Right. And, you know, I think it's important, too, that like we live in an age now where these shows are endless. You know, that you even have Discovery Plus where that's strictly what they're going to be is paranormal, mysteries, stuff like that.

So the more and more of this stuff that gets out there, the more saturated the topics becomes, you know, some in a good way, some maybe not so much. But what I'm seeing changing Tobias, maybe you agree or disagree, is they're willing to try to find an explanation more. And I think that's where Expedition X actually does some good work. Like they're putting the science behind what they're doing. They're not coming out and saying, yeah, yeah, totally. It's Mothman. Like, no, let's actually show what a proper investigation looks like, and let's try to find an explanation. And I'm noticing that a lot more of the shows are willing to do that now.

And not debunk, but try to explain what is happening. Will it account for everything? Certainly. Never. Never will. Like you said, like even in these waves of things, even if they die down, they're still happening somewhere and to certain people. So yeah, I think I see that changing where shows like Expedition X were willing to say yes. Like you, even you mentioned, like that 40% I'm able to check the box off and say this was a bird or something of that sort.

Or even I remember the episode that said it might have been a guy and, you know, bat wings and a jetpack going out there and flying around the city. And that, you know, as funny as that is, look, we're seeing jetpack dude all over the place in life. Los Angeles right now. So who's to say that's not what's happening. So yeah, I, I'm glad to see that shows are willing to do that and to reach out to people like you instead of just, you know, hypothesizing and not going to the people who actually put the time and work in to investigate these things. No, I completely agree, you know, and I almost forgot like that that wingsuit hypothesis was covered. And, you know, I had dismissed it very early. Well, you know, because working with with Juan and Manuel like, you know, people had already spoken to, to wingsuit experts who were like,

oh, dude, you would die. There's no way that you can't do it. You can't jump off like the Sears Tower in a wingsuit and not die. You would be dead. So, yeah. I mean, and they, of course, came to the exact same conclusion, which any reasonable person would. So, yeah, no, I mean, I think from that, that scientific viewpoint, like they did everything that they could, you know.

And, you know, like the weird stuff, you know, like they were able to entertain it. And I think that Jessica was more open to that than necessarily. You know, Phil, who's a big naturalist, right? Yeah. And so, like, they don't dismiss it entirely. I think just at the end of the episode, they're like, hey, this is what we can prove. This is what we can't prove. So here you go.

Take it for what it is. Yep. Right. Hey guys, Ryan Spreck here. When I'm not making podcasts, I am listening to them. Seriously, I'm obsessed. And if there's one person and one show I turn to every week, to hear stories of the strange, the weird, and the unexplained,

it's, of course, got to be Jim Harold's Campfire. With over 500 episodes, Den of Geek, called Jim Harold's Campfire, the best tool we have currently in existence to hear real-life skilts. stories from other human beings since the actual campfire was invented. The concept is pretty simple. Jim talks to other regular folks and strange stuff that's happened to them. And yes, that includes UFOs and UAPs, along with cryptids, ghosts, and true head-scratching mysteries.

One of my all-time favorite stories is one where a woman almost ended up being absorbed by a painting in a mysterious bar that seemed like the same. something straight out of the twilight zone. Or there's this story of a young man who encountered a spider-like creature with baby hands. Then there's the story of a woman in England who encountered what she thought was a banchie, only to suffer a horrible tragedy only moments later. Now, not all of the stories in Jim Herald's campfire are horrified. Some are actually pretty heartwarming, like a visit from a past loved one or a peaceful near-death experience.

Regardless, there are true and fascinating stories told by ordinary people who've had extraordinary experiences. So, pull up a virtual log, get cozy, and tune in to Jim Harold's Campfire. Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to someone in the skies. All right, so we are moving, from Mothman, Tobias, to your next endeavor, which might include Mothman, might not.

Well, we'll talk about that. But this is strange tales of The Impossible, your new book that just came out. So what was the impetus for this one? What, you know, for me, I know when I write one book, there's so much left over that didn't make it in that I'm like, I could write a whole other book. And I noticed that a lot of kind of the correlations you made in the Mothman book were now bleeding over into your other work as well, which is the sign of a good investigator. So yeah, tell us how Strange Tales came to be. Sure. So unlike the Lake Michigan Mothman, which was really meant to be a reference work so people could have all of the sightings and everything that it went into investigating them all in one place, strange tales of the imposterns. was meant to sort of describe the experience of us investigating everything else that was happening

concurrently, frankly. So, like, we weren't just investigating like Lake Michigan Mothman, you know, through 2017 and on. You know, we've had all these other weird reports coming in, too. And what I wanted to do was get all of those together in one place. And then, you know, in the 40 and sense, try to see what, if anything, they had in common and what we could sort of speculate about and maybe learn about, you know. And so it did have a lot or does have a lot in common with the Lake Michigan Mothman investigation and both because, you know, that's some of the same findings that came as a result of that particular investigation was noticing all of the weird commonalities, you know, all of the strange, concurrent paranormal phenomena happening

either to the same individuals or in the same area. And then we took it a little further because when you really get down to it, and this is something that's covered in Strange Tales, is across the board in sort of every aspect of the, paranormal, you have all of these really, really obvious or stark similarities to the point where if you kind of strip everything down to just its basic, you know, sort of framework, they sound exactly the same. I can give you an example there. So I started out talking about nighttime visitation, you know, because of course that's something that's very, very personal to me. And what I

found was interesting after speaking to people, you know, who had grown up in haunted houses, people who said that they had experienced alien abduction, you know, people who had, well, experience even weirder stuff, you know, visiting them in the night. If you kind of just took out the description of the creature itself, these stories were basically all the same. You know, what you would find is somebody waking up in bed, able to move. You know, so sleep paralysis isn't really a factor here. So, you know, they're ambulatory and they see this weird thing, whatever it is. Maybe it looks like an alien.

Maybe it looks like a ghost. Maybe it looks like an amber orb inside of a solid charcoal cloud, which is a real report that we had. But the point is they wake up. they are sure they're awake and they interact with this, this weird thing, whatever it is. And, you know, they kind of all had that basic story structure like in common, which I found very, very interesting. And I sort of thought to myself, well, why aren't more people talking about this? Because it kind of seems like a big deal to me.

And so that's what we get into. And there are other commonalities, like I said, of, of place and time and things that also exists. But that was a big one for me that really stuck out was the similarities in these nighttime visitations. Interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I kind of, I love that idea of kind of taking the focal point, you know, the alien

or the ghost out of the equation and seeing that the experiences still line up together, like run parallel to one another of how the, you know, the after effects are or the, you know, the mental toll it takes on you or the psychological or emotional experience. That's really interesting, the correlations. Well, let's talk about Bet, if you don't mind. This is one of the first stories in the book that really stuck out to me, primarily because we should add also in this book, your wife does photography and there's also illustration. throughout as well to help enhance the stories and to also, you know, give you an idea of what these people actually saw when kind of, you know, language or words can't define it. And man, that creature that Bet saw really stood out to me, not something I want to run into. So yeah, could you tell us a little about the story of Bet, if you don't mind? Sure, yeah, absolutely.

So, you know, I first spoke with Bet. this would have been what back in 2019 and uh she had become aware of some of the that we'd done on unwinged humanoids and she wanted to share her story and so her experiences as she recounted them to me began in 1981 when she was just 13 she told me that uh she remembered waking up to her room being filled with this this strange light and at that time her first thought was This is in North Carolina. She thought, hey, the mountains on fire. So they live by these mountains.

And she's like, well, there's got to be a huge fire, engulfing the entire mountain. And she runs through her window to see what's going on. And she sees this weird craft. And she becomes paralyzed. And she said for days after that, she experienced this weird sickness, like, you know, a very high body temperature.

and she just did not feel well. And it wasn't too long after that. She said that she was reading in bed one night. And she saw this weird figure walk past her door. She notices the shadow of somebody walking past her door. And then she said that she saw the head of this weird bird-like humanoid thing, you know, sort of peek around her doorframe and look at her for, you know, several seconds. and then duck around and disappear.

And so again, what's interesting about those is, now this is a UFO story, you know, and if you were a euphologist or something, you would look at this strictly in terms of UFOs. But again, this theme of people waking up to weird lights in their room, to, you know, being in bed and having creatures, observing them. I mean, it is across the board from every reported phenomena from Bigfoot to Mothman to UFOs to ghosts. It's, it happens in every aspect. So now five years later,

she had what would become the most impactful experience out of her series of encounters. Now, as she related to me, she was on her way to visit her sister. And, you know, her sister lived about 20 minutes away from her. And I believe it was about 8 p.m. in, I want to say, February. So, you know, it was already basically dark at that point. And so she is driving to her sisters. And she pulls up, now this is a very rural area. And so she pulls up to this T intersection.

And she sees, as she comes up to this stop sign, that there is this impossible creature in her headlights standing next to this barn that is just briefly illuminated before she can turn. And so she sees this thing that she describes. as sort of this bird-like human. And it's dressed. She said that she noticed in particular that it was wearing these combat boots. And this episode is brought to you by Netflix.

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So she can go maybe 45, 50 miles per hour without ending up in the ditch. And after she takes off, she looks in her rearview mirror. And she sees this thing following her. It had taken to the air, and it's coming after her. And so, of course, like terrified, like she's doing her best to get away. And it's to no avail. This thing catches up. And she says that it starts, you know, beating on her car and scratching on the driver's side as though it's trying to get in.

And she's absolutely terrified while this is happening. And the next thing she knows, it's midnight. And she's nowhere near her destination with no idea how she's. she got there. She said that she had basically just come to still driving and had no idea, you know, how she had gotten to where she was. And so she figured out where she was. She wasn't that far from home. And so she just went home. And of course, her sister was, was terrified. And so, you know, she had just kind of explained what happened. And she said that, you know, she had noticed some damage to her car. She had a picture of her car. She had a picture of her car.

have a picture of the damage, unfortunately. And I've seen that more than once, which, you know, these older cases, I don't know. I didn't own a camera in 1986. So it just kind of is what it is. But, you know, in speaking to her, you know, she certainly seemed like somebody who, well, she didn't have anything to gain. I can tell you that. Like everybody, you know, she had something to lose by having a story like this out there.

very bravely was willing to attach her name to it. And she actually provided that sketch of the creature. That was her, like that, that, that, that was that, that, that was a sketch, uh, sketch, you know, so. And, and, you know, she sent us a, a picture of her, her car and everything. Um, and so, you know, like I said before, um, I, you know, if, if I can verify the details of, of somebody's story, at least as well as I can, which I was able to with her. And she was willing to go on the record and everything else, then I'm going to proceed. as though, you know, the testimony reflects the witness's authentic experience because what choice do I have, really? I think at the end of the day, there's a humanitarian aspect where we have to remember, and I think this is very easy for some people to forget that there are human beings behind every single one of these stories. And these are very personal, very impactful, sometimes traumatic.

and they deserve to be taken seriously. They don't deserve to be interrogated or certainly not mocked or anything else. And so, yeah, it was for as wild of a tale as it is, you know, it was convincing based solely on, you know, my experiences speaking with that and how level-headed and credible that she seems. So and then, you know, again, just seeing the commonalities in, in her experiences with the experiences of so many other people. And of course, they don't know each other. And there hasn't really been any promoted, like, mainstream narrative for them to kind of, you know, for them to kind of take this stuff from. So I, you know, I didn't really entertain the idea that they had all just been absorbing the same media. or anything because really, like I said, the commonalities exist within the, that that exist within the narrative aren't really anything to do with the details of the phenomena

so much as like how it is interacting with them, which again, just makes it seem more credible to me. Yeah. Well, and you touch on something too that I think you should. stress in the book is perception is a big thing as well. And from what you just described to me of what Bet has experienced, a uphologist would think, whoa, that was like some sort of missing time experience. Maybe she was abducted. Maybe it was a screen memory. You know, I always go back to this story I'm told by a UFO researcher who's looked heavily into the connection between

owls and alien abductions. And, um, the idea that a lot of the time an owl precedes or a UFO event or a scene afterwards, and that maybe these are the form that an alien takes, so it's recognizable to the human observing it. And I was always like, yeah, that's really interesting. And he told me this one story where Mike Cleland is the name of the gentleman, where a woman who had been abducted many times throughout her life, You know, she was washing the dishes one night and she looked out the window in the kitchen and she saw a gray alien walking towards her house. And she just was like, no, no, not tonight. I, you know, my kids need help with their homework. I've got too many chores. No abduction tonight. Not happening. So she literally, you know, drops the plate in the sink, goes outside and confronts the alien. And when she gets up to it and she's like, no, no. The

alien like froze and literally just went owl owl owl owl it literally started saying owl in front of her as if it were supposed to take that form and that she wasn't supposed to see the alien and as comical as that sounds man i was like that makes perfect sense to me like it's something that you would recognize it's something that um you know if you were to tell someone uh i was abducted by a five-foot owl in the middle of the night, you know, near my house, like who's going to believe that? So I find it really interesting how much perception might have a lot to do with this and how Bet may have perceived this experience in the way she did,

but who's to say that someone else who was put in her shoes wouldn't have taken something else from it. So I find that fascinating too, this whole idea of perception. And I kept coming across that word in your book. And I'm so happy you went. there because I think that has a lot to do with this as well. Oh, yeah, definitely. You know, and it's interesting that you bring up that particular story too, because something

else that I had noticed was sort of this theme of interruption. You know, sometimes they're surprising us. Sometimes we're surprising them, which was always interesting. I spoke to a young woman in Janesville, Wisconsin, who had a very similar experience. only she caught the thing that she described to me as a gray alien completely off guard one night after, well, I can just tell the story real quick instead of dancing around it because nobody will have any idea what I'm talking about. Yeah, go ahead.

So she falls asleep on her couch one night, wakes up to this bright light in her living room, and it's coming through their front door. And so their front door basically, it has this small wall that doesn't let you see the front door from the living room. So in order to go get the door, you have to walk around this wall. And then the front door is right there. And so she notices this light coming in from the front there. And she's like, well, you know, maybe it's my roommate. I'll go see, make sure she has her keys since I'm up now anyway.

And then as she's walking over, she's like, oh, man, what if it's a burglar or something? And then she rounds this, this, you know, small wall in front of the door. And she sees what she described to me as sort of your typical gray alien. You know, she said she stood, I think, like, 5,5, and this thing was shorter than her. And it had the big black eyes and big head and everything. And this is where it got really interesting for me because she said that when she sees this thing, like she was terrified. And she screamed.

And then interestingly enough, when she screams, the alien. screamed. So like it surprises her. She surprises it. They both scream and then she takes off running. And from there she had sort of a not typical abduction experience, but there are, you know, there are other things that, you know, you would have seen or heard sort of in, sort of just similar to other abduction experiences where she's struck by this beam of light that that causes her to sort of float backwards and then, you know, next thing she knows she's being lowered down and sort of just free and awake on her couch as though nothing had happened. But it just reminded me of that, you know, like sometimes apparently we just, we catch each other off guard. And then

everybody screams. So who knows? That is just an awkward party for everybody. Yeah. Nobody's having fun at that party. Yeah. No, thanks. But, yeah, with the headers of perception, yeah, I think that from what I have seen, there seems to be some element of this sort of really directly linked to consciousness. And so I don't know if that represents sort of consciousness as a medium of communication. you know, like that's sort of how whatever we're dealing with communicates with us. And so there's a direct manipulation where it can just appear however it wants or how that all works. But it certainly seems to be consistent across phenomena, especially when you start to look at

the accompanying phenomena, you know, and how similar that is. You know, like we'll have a winged humanoid witness who might experience poltergeist phenomena after their sighting. That's very similar to poltergeist phenomena that's reported by somebody who lives in a reportedly haunted house. Or, you know, you'll have people, well, reporting, like glowing red eyes. Like, why does every cryptid have glowing red eyes? I mean, it's reported from, seriously, from Bigfoot to Mothman to dogman. Yeah, like people report these glowing red eyes. And from a purely, I think, biological perspective, they don't make any sense because one thing I'll do is I want to see if somebody reports glowing eyes, you want to examine whether or not that's eye shine, right?

And so, you know, if I asked somebody that, and they're telling me that there really was no light source that that could have been causing this, this eye shine and its eyes were glowing anyway, well, that doesn't make any sense from a biological perspective. Because I would think that the easiest way to go blind would be to have your eyes glow because you're not going to be able to see anything, but just red, you know, once that's happening. So it's just interesting to me. You know, like you see all of this, this stuff, these weird commonalities in these experiences. And it does make you wonder, what do they have, you know, what else do they have in common? Is there a common source? Is there just a related source? You know, one of the things that I like to speculate about because, frankly, the idea that all of this weirdness comes from the exact same source, you know,

as though it's one entity or intelligence or, you know, even just one like homogenous group of entities just like messing with us. Like, that's not terribly popular. And I get that because it does seem a little reductionist, you know, in terms of people's experiences, you know, because they do have some stuff that's not in common, like at all. So, you know, that being the case, you know, I have to wonder if there isn't just some set of related phenomena. You know, so sort of in the same way that, you know, you've got bears and wolves and they both live in this forest. That doesn't mean that a bear is a wolf or a wolf is a bear.

They're just both, you know, mammals with a lot of common characteristics, but still unique individual species that happen. to occupy the same territory. So sort of in that same vein, what if what we're dealing with is sort of this invisible universe of beings that sort of all exist in a form that has to interact with us directly through consciousness? And if you want to get really weird, then you can start examining ideas like, okay, well, our ancestors used to allow for the possibility, or at least one popular. explanation for fairies was that they were the souls of the dead. Well, what if human consciousness

does survive bodily death and it's able to take whatever weird form it wants? What are people when they die can become fairies? What if they can become grays or mothman or anything else? You know, what if our consciousnesses are part of this sort of ecology or ecosystem of of consciousness and we don't really experience it, at least not fully, unless we are either in like an altered state of consciousness or dead, honestly. Yeah, then it gets really, really weird. So these are the kinds of things that I like to speculate about. And certainly, you know, I talk about that in the book, Strange Tales.

Yeah. And look, man, I was going to say, everything's on the table, you know. I mean, we don't have the answer. So why not go there? Why not go as far out as we can? And then rein ourselves in. And I think, you know, like you said, this whole idea of consciousness and, you know, things being related is very prevalent. And I was actually surprised to see how much you did cover UFOs in Strange Tales.

And one of the places you brought up is very well known to us in the UFO field, and that's Chicago O'Hare Airport. When I say that, I know what everyone's thinking in my audience, 2006, disc over the airport, UFO event. But lo and behold, you dug up this report that came to you of not a UFO, but something completely different. So would you mind maybe telling us a little about, yeah, yeah, what you came across when it came to winged humanoids over at Chicago O'Hare Airport? Oh, sure. Yeah. I mean, since, what I want to say December of 2019, probably, is when people started reporting weird wind humanoid, like in and around Chicago O'Hare. And I mean, anybody familiar with that area knows that it is a huge, sprawling airport.

It is, it's, the airport campus is enormous. And so most of the reports were, you know, at least at first, sort of coming from the cargo area. And that's sort of a more isolated area. And there are some, some large fields and stuff surrounding those. It's, you know, kind of set apart from everything else. And so like my personal introduction to that. Now, I mean, most of these reports started coming into to Manuel and then Lon. And then I had somebody reach out to us directly.

And I spoke to this man who was a cargo employee with one of the major airlines there. And he told me about how he had left work one night. and he was going to meet his friend for a drink, which again, like this is another really common aspect of these sightings, which is people just on their way to do normal people stuff all the time, you know, whether it's running out to,

you know, grab a gallon of milk going to meet a friend for a drink. Maybe you're out to dinner with your significant other, whatever. But just out, you know, doing things that we all do all the time when, you know,

run into these impossible experiences. So that's what happened to him. He was, he was heading out from work to meet his friend for a drink and he was driving past this, there's this large, like I said, open field area. And it's bordered by this like eight foot tall fence. Like I've been there and I checked it out. And, and yeah, I mean, really, it is this large, grassy area with this, this big fence in front of it. And you'll get wildlife in there, like deer and stuff find their way in. And so he's driving past it. And he notices this, what he described, is like a seven or eight foot tall, black, winged being standing there with these glowing red eyes. And he was one of those people who reported this intense feeling of fear and this feeling of evil for lack of a better word, you know.

And what's interesting about speaking with him, too, is, you know, it was very down-to-earth, you know, sounding gentleman. Like, I spoke to him for some time. And like a lot of people do, I mean, he doubted his sanity at first. And because, look, I mean, we've all heard of Mothman, and we all think that it's really, really interesting. and super cool. But look, most people have no idea who Mothman is. They don't know about any of this stuff. They've never heard of it.

And so when they see something like that, they don't know what the hell to do. And they think that they're losing their minds until they manage to, you know, get online and look into it and find somebody like, you know, me or Alon or Manuel or, you know, whoever else. And that was this guy. And so it seemed, again, you know, very, very credible, at least in terms of being able to, you know, verify the verifiable details of his story. You know, like I said, I did go down there and check out that area. And everything was right where he said it was. And what was interesting to me was, again, you know, like my only experience with O'Hare had been,

you know, flying into and out of it. Like I'm relatively familiar with the area, but, you know, I've never really spent a lot of time hanging out around it or driving around it. And it really is huge. And there really are some very large sort of natural areas in there. It's not, you know, heavily forested or anything like that. But, you know, like I said, there are some big, big open areas that are relatively isolated.

And so the idea that somebody could have a sighting like that, in that area and have it be relatively isolated, it seems possible, you know, just from examining it. Because I think a lot of people hear O'Hare and they think, well, you know, there's hundreds of thousands of people going through there on a daily basis. You know, how could they all, you know, be missing it? Well, again, like my experience of going through O'Hare up until when I went down there to actually check it out was, you know, being inside of a giant airport. And you would have no idea if there's a moth man out on a field by the cargo area or something. Like, how would you know? You can't see it.

Yeah. So. Yeah. Plus your mind is like you're so overstimulated when you're in an airport to begin with. Like the last thing on your mind is looking out the window for a cryptid or even a UFO. Like, where's my plane and am I going to make it to my terminal is the first thing on your mind, right? Oh, totally. Yeah.

I mean, of course, you know. So, yeah, and the reports kept coming in, especially, like I said, from around that cargo area. Now, there have been some other reports that were made by people who claimed to be like pilots and Cina Swings, Humanoid on the tar. and stuff. Now, those can be a little problematic in that, you know, even with the witness contact information, I really wasn't able personally to

verify like the witness's identity. So, you know, I will definitely stop short of saying that they are hoaxes because I don't have any evidence for that. And one of my biggest pet peeves are people who label everything that could potentially be a hoax as a hoax without evidence of it actually being one. Because I find that to be as disingenuous as somebody who labels everything as being paranormal without any actual evidence of it being paranormal. If you don't know what it is or you don't have enough information to make a determination,

the only honest thing you can do is say that. And so when it comes to the like, supposed like pilot sightings and stuff. I don't have enough information about those to say one way or the other. But I can say that, you know, I did reach out to those witnesses and I was unable to verify their identity because they kind of clamped up after I asked for that. So, you know, whether or not that represents somebody just spinning a tall tail or if it's somebody who just doesn't trust a total stranger over the internet with information that could cost

them their career, you know, that's for you to decide. But, you know, the other case is like when you talk about the people working in the cargo areas and truckers and stuff like that, they were, I think, a lot less reluctant to really get into it and speak on the telephone and sort of verify all of these details and stuff, you know, because I, you know, I, you know, I, you know, I feel like they, much like a lot of people, I felt like they didn't want their name, like full name necessarily attached these stories because of the social stigma. But I don't think that they had the same fear of tanking like their entire career that you could possibly see amongst, you know, like a professional airline pilot or something similar. Yeah, that's a good point. I was just going to say, Devias, the only real.

witness that we have that has come forward from the Chicago O'Hare UFO incident was the same, was a cargo person as well. So I think you're right. I think there's, you know, not to take anything away from probably the really hard work that they do every day at the airport. But yeah, they're not flying a 747. They're not, you know, risking their flight, you know, their flight career. on this. So they might be a little more apt to be like, I saw something weird and I want to talk about it. So yeah, I think you're right. Yeah, definitely. And so there's really been all manner of high strangeness that sort of come out of that area since. And, you know, I don't think that this just started happening, frankly, because the longer that this investigation goes on, the more historical

cases that we tend to get. Because, again, most people have never heard of the mothman. They don't know who Jog Keel is. They've never heard of Point Pleasant. They don't know who I am. Like most normal people don't know about any of this stuff. And so what we would see is like a article that maybe I had written or something gets a lot of popularity online. And, you know, it gets, you know, five, six hundred thousand views or something.

And so it just finds its way to this person who's been sitting on a story for like 30 or 40 years sometimes. And they go, wow, holy crap, I had no idea that anybody had ever seen something even similar to this experience I had, you know, way back when. And so now, you know, they are actually sort of comfortable, I think, sharing it. Because, I mean, where else would you go? You know, people don't call it police for this stuff. It's just right. I don't think people have called the police to report this stuff since like sometime in the late 80s, early 90s. It's just it stopped being a thing.

I think especially the more these events got into the popular consciousness. Like it's not real tough for people to look, like especially beginning in sort of like the 70s. It wasn't real hard for people to look at what media coverage was doing to. people's lives and the kind of circus they would become. And it never helped. And the police were never able to do anything or help anybody with this stuff in any way. And so I think at a certain point, people just kind of decided, you know, hey, this isn't worth it. It's not worth it. Wow. Yeah, I never really thought about that. Yeah, you would see a lot of early UFO sighting reports or I'm sure cryptids as well going to law enforcement. Because, like,

you said, where else would you turn? And you didn't have, you know, kind of this ingrained, uh, ridicule factor within the mainstream media on how to handle these topics. And we know that's why Project Blue Book existed here in the UFO world and why they told all these news stations and newspapers to downplay it and to, um, you know, say they're cooks and crazy and tinfoil hat wearing and let it, you know, let it feed itself in terms of that. When you're right, back then, it was like, I honestly saw this. I don't know what else to do. I'm going to give it to the police or I'm going to give it to the local news station. Yeah, I never really thought about how the times have changed and how that fear of reporting things has just been ingrained

in people for so long. But I don't know if it's the same for you in the things you're looking into. But, you know, ever since this 2017 New York Times article came out on UFOs, my email is just exploding like never before. And more and more people are willing to come forward and talk about this stuff than ever before, almost too much. Like, I can't even keep up with correspondence anymore. So, yeah, I think I see things changing. I don't know if it's the same for you when it comes to, you know, the humanoid sightings and everything you guys are. doing. But yeah, do you think the tides are turning at all? Well, I think in terms of eroding the stigma around things like UFO sightings, yeah, definitely.

You know, and honestly, you know, we have investigated a lot of winged humanoid sightings, but, you know, we get a lot of UFO sightings, too. We get a lot of people contacting us about ghosts and other cryptids, you know, Bigfoot and similar. So, in terms of, terms of UFO sightings, I think that, I don't know that I've seen like an increase necessarily. I think that's always been a more popular one for people to reach out, you know, to us about. But at the same time, I do see what you're saying. And I do think that there has been an increase sort of across the board from what I've seen in people willing to come forward and actually speak of their experiences.

You know, I mean, when you've got, you know, military pilots and politicians and stuff who are willing to put their face on television, like publicly, talking about, like, this subject, that I think that does a lot in terms of making just, you know, your average citizen a lot. a lot more comfortable in coming forward with their own experience, which, of course, is fantastic. You know, we're probably just starting to see the unraveling of a lot of the confusion and harm caused by those early Air Force programs, you know, designed to debunk and ridicule UFOs and, unfortunately, UFO witnesses. Yeah. Yeah.

And things seem to be changing. I hope that the rest of the communities who investigate these things will see a change as well. I think right now it really is the time of UFOs, and that's because it is in the mainstream media right now, and it's being legitimized by politicians, by the military, and that's great. My hope is that that will bleed over into the other communities that do look into the paranormal, that do look into cryptids. hopefully we'll get there. I think, you know, a lot of people have asked me, like, okay, the government is saying UFOs are real. That's a huge step. But what about the abductions?

What about the close encounters? What about, you know, you've even had reports where witnesses of UFO events have had physiological effects happen to them. What about those people who've been burned by, you know, radiation from these UFOs as well? When will that become a part of the conversation? And I tell them, we'll get there. We're not there yet, but we'll get there. So my hope is that, yes, one day it starts with UFOs exist. At least that's what the U.S. government is saying. We forget there's a whole world out there as well with other governments who are looking into these things too.

But my hope is that one day we will get to, okay, where's our government program funding for Bigfoot? Like, let's go do that now, you know? Right now it's UFOs. but maybe in the future we'll get there. I don't know. What do you think? Oh, sure. Well, you know, honestly, they've all had their time.

You know, if you look at how Bigfoot was covered in the 70s, you had a lot of, you know, sort of credible scientists, you know, like looking into that particular mystery. You know, ghosts have certainly had their heyday, you know, beginning in the very early aughts with the advent of, you know, paranormal reality, television. And so I think that there are cycles that we go through, like anything. You know, this is the UFOs moment.

And for everybody interested in UFOs, just enjoy it. And hopefully it'll, it'll last forever. Traditionally, these things do not. But, you know, this eventually, you know, like it has to start somewhere. So it might as well be here. And hopefully, yeah, we can build on this and increase the momentum of interest in all kinds of weirdness. And there are still credible scientists that are interested in Bigfoot. I didn't mean to like imply that there aren't.

It didn't all end in the 70s or anything. But, you know, in terms of like sort of like the it paranormal phenomenon, you know, like it is. it is secular and they sort of take turns. And so it's UFO's turns. It's the UFO's turn right now and quite deservedly so. And I hope you're right, Ryan. I hope that this does lead to more mainstream interest in these types of subjects. Because honestly, one of the things I've learned, if nothing else, is that there is no specific type or social.

socioeconomic class of person that experiences this stuff. It is across every strata of society. And so, you know, like literally, whatever people who are its experiencers or haven't met experiencers are picturing in their head of who the type of people are who experiences stuff, get rid of it because they could work in your office. They could go to your church. You would pass them at the grocery store. or anywhere else walking down the street and you wouldn't look at them twice because they are

your friends, they are your neighbors, they are your loved ones. And so I would hope that that being the case, we would actually be able to do these people that we should care about, the service of examining these experiences seriously. So, you know, if that's what this leads to, all the better. I love that, man. Yeah, like I always tell people, these topics bring us together more than they pull us apart.

And in a world right now, divided by so many different things, in so many different ways, I'm glad we can come together on one thing. And that's what the hell is going on in our skies, in our woods, in our oceans with all this weird, weird stuff. And you are one of those pioneers that's really going out.

and asking the more philosophical and harder questions of these phenomena, you know, not just, it's not just a disc in the sky. It's not just a missing link creature in the middle of the woods. It's probably a lot weirder than that. And I highly respect the work that you and Emily are doing in terms of that. So kind of to wrap things up with you. I know we're going a little over the time I told you we would. So thank you for sticking with me, man.

I appreciate it. It's been a great conversation. Thank you. Thank you. What do you personally want out of all this? I love to know, yeah, how you got involved, but what has kept you going? And what do you want out of this journey you're on? You know, I always tell people for me, I don't think I'm ever going to get the answers to the UFO question.

I saw one and I want to know what I saw, but I don't know if I ever will. And a big part of me actually is okay with that. But I love to hear, like, what do you hope for? Do you want to know what these winged humanoids are or what UFOs represent? Or, yeah, what do you want out of this journey you're taking in this lifetime? Sure. Well, I think we all sort of want those answers. But you're probably right in terms of being realistic about it.

You know, everybody's sort of after the Big D disclosure, you know, experiences largely are just looking for closure in, you know, in terms of their own experiences. But for me, honestly, if I'm being realistic, and this is sort of my advice for anyone who is interested in these subjects, especially if you're interested in investigating them, learn to love the journey, frankly, learn to marvel at the mystery. of the universe and in our tiny, tiny place in it, because likely that that might be all you're going to get. Don't be obsessed with this stuff. You can't. It's not worth it. Have other hobbies. Start a family. Volunteer in your community. Do anything else in your life too. Because, again,

you know, we're very, very likely to not necessarily have any, certainly not all of the answers we're looking for within our lifetimes. I mean, many, many people have come before us all sure that, you know, by the time their life was over, we would have these mysteries solved. And none of them so far have been correct. So you really have to find your joy in experiencing the investment. and speaking with people and hearing their stories and then sort of speculating about what might be behind it. It's almost analogous to religion in that way, in that I don't know that we have the technology necessary at this point to even properly study this stuff, which means until that happens, we're always going to be in a position of just having to observe it from afar, experience it under circumstances over which we have very, little control and and just speculate.

So learn to enjoy those aspects of it. And I think you'll probably come out of this scene. And that's what I'm looking for. I love that. Yep. Embrace the strange. It's just going to make your life a lot more interesting. And look, man, this has been an interesting conversation.

I know we only scratched the surface of both of your books. So I got to ask, where can we find everything you and Emily are up to? And where can we find your books? And what comes next for you guys over there at the Singular 14 Society? Sure. Well, if you're interested in finding out more about what we do, you can go to our website at singular fortian.com. If you're interested enough in what we're doing that you want to be a part of it,

then I encourage you to check us out at patreon.com slash singular 40. Now we have tiers for any level of interest or involvement in high strangeness. So, you know, if you like this stuff, I would encourage you to take a look. As far as the Lake Michigan Mothman and Strange Sales in the Impossible, they are both available for sale on Amazon. We do have signed copies available of the Lake Michigan Mothman through our website right now. So singular 4d.com slash books. We are going on vacation from the 7th through the 14th. And so we will have signed copies of Strange Tales of the Impossible in mid-August.

So look for those also at singular 40.com slash books around then. Another great way to keep up with us is to follow us on social media. We are on every social media platform that you would expect a 41-year-old man to be on. So Facebook and Instagram and Tumblr and Twitter, we're on all of of that stuff. So definitely check us out there. And, you know, we've got more exciting stuff coming up. There's that Saltown Monsters on the trail of the Lake Michigan Mothman documentary that's coming out later this year, I think. You know, and we always have stuff that we're working on. Who knows what'll, like what'll be next, but I'm sure it'll be exciting. It always is, man. And to tease your Patreon, I want to let my listeners and viewers know that

you and Emily actually did a CE5 experiment, which I'm really interested to hear how that went. So please go check out their Patreon as well to see how that all turned out. But other than that, Tobias, I got to thank you for giving me your time today, man, and your insights. This has been very refreshing for someone who only talks about UFOs 24-7. So thank you so much for coming on somewhere in the skies today. Hey, thank you so much, Ryan. This was a blast. It was my pleasure.