Somewhere in the Skies - Obscure UFO Cases

Episode Date: May 3, 2021

On episode 211 of SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES, we rewind to a classic panel discussion Ryan took part in with a jam-packed group of other podcast hosts. Originally curated and hosted by Rob Kristoffersen of the Our Strange Skies podcast, other panelists included Brent Hand of Hysteria 51, Chris Cogswell of the Mad Scientist podcast, and Jason McClellan of UNKNOWN, The Skinwalker Debrief, and the Old Fashioned UFOs podcast. The guys get together to share some of the most obscure UFO cases they've ever come across, and dissect them in all their strange and mysterious glory. Our Strange Skies: https://www.ourstrangeskies.com/ Mad Scientist podcast: https://www.themadscientistpodcast.com/ Hysteria 51 podcast: http://hysteria51.com/ Unknown: A UFO podcast: https://rogueplanet.tv/shows/unknown-a-ufo-podcast/ Vote for your favorite Somewhere in the Skies fan art until May 4th: bit.ly/3xGlJSA Have a UFO story to share? Contact Ryan directly at: [e-mail] Website: www.somewhereintheskies.com Somewhere in the Skies Subreddit: www.reddit.com/r/SomewhereSkiesPod/ YouTube Channel: CLICK HERE Official Store: CLICK HERE Order Ryan’s book in paperback, ebook, or audiobook by CLICKING HERE Twitter: @SomewhereSkies Instagram: @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

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So, welcome everyone to the blue ribbon panel. Hopefully the National Enquirer will take no legal action against us today. But we're stealing it. I am joined today by an illustrious group of podcasters. And this evening, we will be presenting you all with some obscure UFO stories. And we'll be taking some of your questions, too. Our first panelist is an author, UFO researcher. You've seen them on your TV screen recently.

And he is the host of the Somewhere in the Sky's podcast, Ryan Sprague. Ryan, how you doing, buddy? Good. I'm so happy to be talking to you again, man. Many people in my audience know you from UFO Happy Hour. So this is the ultimate UFO Happy Hour, in my opinion. So thanks for happening. Yeah, absolutely, man.

Absolutely. Next up, he, too, is an author, UFO researcher. You may have seen him on various TV programs, yourself, including I know his personal favorite, Hangar One. Yay. He is also a favorite. the host of Unknown, a UFO podcast. He is Jason McLaughlin. Jason, how you doing, buddy? I am fantastic, sir. I'm excited to be here, and Ryan is right. I mean, this is the ultimate

happy hour, so cheers, guys. Absolutely. Here's my man. Next up, he is one of the founders of the fourth-hand media network, also a Bon Jovi superfan, and one of the hosts of Hysteria 51, Brian! You know, 90% of that isn't true, but I'm not going to say, which part of it. But Rob, everyone, thank you guys for having me. I feel a little cheated. I'm drinking Diet Mountain Dew. I didn't get the memo, but

I'll take it, so happy to be here. That's fine. I've got water this evening. I think the memo said drink Clorox or something. I told you, I have a mainline started. You just can't see it. It's right off camera. And

the final panelist here, he holds a PhD in chemical engineering, He's the host of the mad scientist podcast and the eternal enemy of UFO Twitter. It's Chris Cogswell. Hello, everybody. Yes. I can say I'm not that kind of doctor, but please don't drink this. Not going to work. Not a cure for what ails you.

Yes, no, it is not a cure for what will ail you. But, yes, welcome, everyone. It is really great to have you here. And to everyone out there that's tuning in, we're going to share some great UFO stories with you. We have all picked our brains to find the best ones. Chris Cogswell overthought this thing a million times through. That's how much he really cares about this right now.

So when we're done with the stories, we're going to take your questions, but just hold on to those and I'll let you all know when to send those in. But the first story, Ryan, kick us off with the first story, man. Yeah, so this is an interesting one. know if it's going to be as compelling as a lot of the other ones, but I found it really interesting. You don't hear about this often. And this was a train, or I should say a UFO colliding with a train. This happened back in 2002. And I've got my extensive notes here. So I'm just going to,

I'm a slave to a script, man. So if I'm reading from a script, I apologize. But, all right, so this happened around 3 a.m. on January 14th, 2002. A cold train was traveling through Kentucky. And as the train near the town of Paintsville, the conductor and other workers on this coal train, they actually noticed these strange lights over the tracks ahead of them. So, you know, the conductor thought maybe this was an oncoming train on another track going the opposite way. So he's like, I'm going to dim my lights, you know, do the right thing so I don't blind them on their way. And he dims the lights. And as soon as he does this, the train is starting to go around to bend.

like there's a mountain on the other side. And he dims the lights and the lights start coming towards them. So they're clearly not on a track. And he doesn't know what to do at this point. He's freaking out. Something's coming right at him. Meanwhile, there are other workers on the train. They're looking out and they're actually seeing on the,

I believe it was the right side of them. Over a river on the other side, there were these three white luminous objects over the water. with like search lights looking down into the water. So this is pretty interesting. You got lights over the track. You've got these objects over the river. And the guys who were looking at the things over the river said that they were pretty big.

They were solid objects. They were metallic and silver in color. And like I said, they were like some sort of lights looking down into the water. So everyone starts freaking out. They don't know what the hell is going on. And the conductor starts to slow the train down. and as he does this, the train, as it goes just around the bend, it just, everything goes haywire. The train computers start malfunctioning.

The emergency brakes kicked in. And he's like, holy crap, I'm about to crash into whatever this thing is. And they did. The light actually clipped the top of the train and hit a few times and then completely disappeared out of sight after that. So the train goes into emergency mode, and it takes about, I think they said almost a mile for it to actually stop fully. And when they finally report this to their dispatcher, this was out of Jacksonville, Florida. They said, okay, get to Paintsville and we'll examine it from there. We'll get in touch with the people there.

So they finally get to Paintsville, and the conductor and all the workers get off. and they see that the first two cars of the train were completely demolished. There were dense and scrapes everywhere, charred and burnt marks, and another latch-on train behind the first two also was damaged pretty badly. So once they're getting to the Painesville station, they see a bunch of people there. So like, okay, this is all the people at the station. They're going to come check it out with us.

And as they get to the station and get off the train, they notice that these don't seem to be railroad workers of any kind. They're just a ton of people dressed in black. And immediately they start going to the train and start inspecting it and looking at it. And meanwhile, the conductor, the main witness says we'll call him, he said that a gentleman only known as Ferguson came up to him, shook his hand, introduced himself, didn't say who he worked for, why he was there. But he said, let's go inside and talk for a little bit. So they go inside and they question this main witness for, he said, like almost an hour, just asking hundreds and hundreds of questions about what he'd seen, what happened, this, that, this, that. Meanwhile, all the other people that had worked on the train, they were all huddled together and their phones were confiscated.

While they got medical examinations to make sure that they were all right, giving their phones back. and after the sort of the inquisition was done, they said, all right, we're going to let you go back on your train and get to your destination. For national security purposes, please don't mention any of this to anyone. Please remain silent about it, and we'll act like this never happen.

So they get back to their train, they get on to go out of Painesville, and the three train cars that have been damaged were already gone, just vanished. And the main witness said that there There's a tent set up on the other side of the tracks, completely covered, shrouded. He assumes this is where the other train cars were for further inspection, investigation. I don't know.

They all get on the train. They go about eight hours to their destination, turn around to go back to their original place. And as they're going through Paintsville, everything's gone. Completely. It's like this thing never happened. This is pretty interesting. It's just a story, but what I found actually pretty interesting about it is there was a corroborating witness to possibly the same event. We're not exactly sure.

A firefighter and a paramedic were on their way from work, and they said that as they were going down the road, they saw towards the direction of Paintsville. They saw these huge luminous objects whizz past them at unbelievable speeds, and while they whiz past the car completely shut down. you know, close encounter style. And that was it. That was reported to New Fork, I believe. And yeah, so this is an interesting one that I wanted to bring to you guys. I've never heard about UFO colliding with a train. It is just a story.

Rob, you did bring to me an official report from, who was it, Ron, Mark Rodiger, an official report where they, they got in touch with this main witness and they hammered the dude to try to to see if he was legit. They asked him all these questions about the train, his job,

what he'd seen, the distance, all this, that, this stuff. And they came away thinking Mark and this other investigator, he knows what he's talking about. It seems like something happened. So this one was really interesting to me.

Again, it's just a story. Everyone remained anonymous that reported it. But I don't know. We don't know what really happened there in Paintsville, but I thought it was a pretty exciting story to share with you guys. So I'd love to get your thoughts on it. It's, I remember first seeing it on a hangar one.

Like, it's weird how many cases that show introduced me to because it's quite a few. But I remember just being like, what? the UFO hit a train and like really it's it's kind of this obscure case that uh i i know new fork has uh some information on it and um a couple other places but uh yeah it's it's one of those wild cases love it i feel like i should be offended for people who work on trains considering you're like it don't look like normal train people like what did normal train people look like Ryan? What do you mean? Everyone knows. I'm wearing fancy suits and chairs.

No, they wear suspenders. They've all got that same hat. A bindle on a stick? What are you talking about, bro? You're talking to the New York City guy, the city boy. I don't know what train folk look like. A little known fact, trains were outlawed in New York in the late 1800s. So this is all foreign to him. The people on trains in New York, like the Long Island Expressway and things like that, they're different types of train people. So, yeah, no, there's, yeah, there's a different, Ryan, you have an excuse. I was going to say, the 1 a.m. train back to the Staten Island ferry, that's a different kind of person. Different kind of person. The noon into Midtown, right? That's just a different kind of person.

That's a good point, man. It's so interesting. Oh, man, that's such an interesting case. Yeah. I know, Jason, you were onhanger one. Did you have any knowledge about this case? I know when I brought it to you guys early on, you kind of laughed it off. So I'm wondering, what have you heard about this one, man, personally?

I certainly didn't have anything to do with this case on Hangar 1. I'm pretty sure it was covered in the second season, which I was not a part. I was just in the first season. So no knowledge of it from the show. But I will say from the description of this case, you know, not to be a debunker, could certainly have to take in all of the different elements of this case, witness testimony, things like that. But the response, you know, certainly you could see it being the same for military recovering, you know, a top secret experiment gone wrong. Their response would have been the same.

They would have swooped in, removed all evidence of said experiment going wrong and sent people on their way. So just saying. Picture this. Me, Reese Witherspoon, in London, ordering fish and so often, they might start wrapping me in paper. I'm traveling with my Wells Fargo Autograph Journey card, so I earn rewards wherever I book travel, five times points with hotels, four times with airlines, three times on restaurants and other travel,

and one point on other purchases. Imagine getting rewarded for eating a toad in the hole. Wait, what is a toad in a hole? Visit Wells Fargo.com slash autograph journey. Terms apply. Yeah, uh, that's definitely a possibility. So, uh, Jason, we're going to, move to your story now.

So go ahead and with your story that you got bringing in time. All right. Well, the case I'm discussing today involves a strange incident that occurred way back on October 27, 1954 in Florence, Italy. This one had 10,000 fans who were packed in a stadium that day for a football match. Now, of course, here we're talking about European football or soccer, as we call it, in the States. And just after halftime, the crowd fell silent as they saw this UFO appear over the stadium. Both fans and players stopped. Like, they stopped the game to look up at this weird

object in the sky. And witnesses described being stunned by what they were seeing. One player even said that the UFO looked like an egg moving slowly through the sky. And if an egg moving through the sky isn't weird enough. He also said that glitter was coming down from the sky. Silver glitter. Sounds like a party. Other witnesses said they saw multiple cigar-shaped UFOs that were moving fast, we then stopped and just hovered in place. So we've got a mass UFO sighting here involving not just one, but multiple UFOs witnessed by thousands of people. That's cool. But let's get back to this glitter that was falling from the sky. This material is a strange sticky substance that has been reported in other UFO cases, and it's most often referred to as angel hair.

Several media outlets ran stories on this incident, but I believe it was the BBC that reported that multiple witnesses collected samples of this goo, this angel hair, and gave it to the Institute of Chemical Analysis at the University of Florence. So spectrographic analysis there revealed that this material came boron, silicon, calcium, and magnesium. So researchers knew the composition of the goo, but that's about it. They couldn't really determine what it was other than its composition. But when it comes to UFOs, there's always someone who knows the answers. And in this particular case, one person who loudly proclaimed he had all the answers was the notorious James Magaha. If you're not familiar with James Magaha, he's an astronomer

and director of the Grasslands Observatory in Tucson, Arizona. He's also a retired Air Force pilot, who held a top secret clearance and even worked at Airy 51. But he's most known for being a hardcore UFO skeptic. His explanation for the 1954 mass UFO sighting, well, spiders! He didn't start with spiders. When he initially looked at the case, he thought that a fireball meteor breaking up in the atmosphere

could explain what people saw. But then he said it became fairly apparent that the sighting was actually caused by young spiders spinning webs. What? Okay, so he explained that migraine, creating spiders use webs as sales. And when these link together, you get a big glob that spiders ride on to move between locations. That's true. They do that. I just want to say that I love scientists,

and I love when scientists evaluate UFO or other paranormal events. Now, that being said, Magaha is a noted skeptic who relishes the opportunity to explain away any and all UFO sightings, because to him the UFO phenomenon is nothing but myth, magic, and superstition. He's said that from time to time, and that's what he lives by. But Robert Pinotti, he's the president of Italy's National UFO Center, disagreed with Magaha's fighter theory, and one of the main reasons is the analysis done on the angel hair. The BBC pointed out that spider silk is a protein,

an organic compound containing nitrogen, calcium, hydrogen, and oxygen, not the elements reportedly found in the samples by witnesses. Now, Philip Ball, who's a science writer and a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, agreed that the spider theory sounded pretty flimsy. He explained that magnesium and calcium are fairly common elements in living bodies, who are in silicon, not so much. But if these were the main elements that the white, fluff contained, it doesn't sound like they come from spiders. So that was his analysis. And then

there were the 10,000 witnesses who watched the UFOs moving very fast and then stopping in the sky to hover. So as with most decades-old UFO cases, it's unlikely that this mass UFO sighting will ever be definitively solved. No matter how hard people like James Magaha insists on ignoring witness testimony and scientific analysis. Weird case, guys. Weird case. Got to love spiders and UFOs. Yeah, you definitely do. I think what's fascinating is that it ties into the 54 flap that was going on in France at the time.

You had these, a lot of these sightings all over the place of people seeing, like, classic saucer-shaped UFOs, people in, or occupants wearing, like, diving suits is what they said. you know, over and over again. So, yeah, that was probably one of the more fascinating cases to come from that time. And I think really the cool thing was is that Amy Michelle, who was one of the original investigators of that flap, was actually able to trace all of these sightings in basically straight lines. They could track them so easily from place to place to place, which was, you know, really fascinating.

And, yeah, it's just a classic case. Love that case. Yeah, I, James, is that his name, Magaha? Yeah. I hate that, dude. I'm sorry, I'm just going to say it. You know, he does no, he doesn't even look into the case. He's just got his sound bites ready to go whenever they have him on the news or, you know, commenting on these things.

I remember watching something recently where they had, James Fox on after one of his documentaries came out and the dude wouldn't even let James get a word in edgewise until James just flat out took him down right then and there. So that was nice to see finally that someone told this guy, why don't you actually

look into the case that you're debunking immediately before you know, passing judgment? He doesn't have a really bad name when it comes to UFOs because he turns off the science when he gives an opinion about a UFO sighting. He disregards any

sort of evidence there is to the case and just spouts off what the first thing that comes to his mind without even looking into the details of the case. Yeah, pigeonholing your own thought process into something without regard for what's actually going on is just as bad as being a yes man on the whole topic. And

you know, that's the whole Philip J. Class school of debunking there, even though Philip at least did research you know, before he spouted off. A little bit, yeah. It seems like, It seems like one of those cases where, you know, there's such more compelling and interesting, um, ulterior explanations for these things. You know what I mean?

And even like the, the fact that it's silicon and boron together in these strands, that to me sounds like borosilicate glass, right? Or borosilicate strands. Um, I was just going to say that. Yeah. Yeah. Which, which would be, you know, which would be these, which would be interesting in that area. I mean, you know, um. I mean, it could be all kinds of different things, right,

that's kind of going out there and hitting the wind and whatever. And like spider webs are occasionally used for an explanation for like angel hair or what's called star jelly, right? Is another name for the same kind of thing. But yeah, to use that to try to explain away like loads of people seeing something and then saying, no, everyone in that crowd thought it was an alien, but it was actually a spiders. That's almost scary to me though, too, spiders flying around. like this. Yeah. Not into that.

Just deeply, deeply not into that. I don't know, man. Not cool. Especially on that grand of a scale. I mean, they saw multiple,

like what they thought were craft in the sky. I mean, I have no idea what the size of these things were. But yes, that is horror movie. Terrifying.

Seriously, right? Like, not fun. Not into it at all. Like, no thank you. When you first started, he said a silver egg-shaped thing

came over a stadium and dropped glitter and it sounded like the good year blimp was there. You know what I mean? And it took a turn. So that was a, I had never heard that one. So yeah.

Yeah. I think, too, to point out what Chris, Chris was saying, a prosaic or other scientific explanation is just as fascinating as being a UFO, in my opinion. I mean, you know, strip it of alien immediately and just say, whoa, we have a anomaly that we've probably never seen before happening here. So I always go back to that. Like, it's really interesting to find a. earthly explanation that could be just as astounding as unearthly, in my opinion.

Yeah, and I mean, that's something that we bring up with UFO sightings all the time, right? I mean, something is a UFO to somebody if they're not used to seeing it. We're getting all the Starlink sightings right now reported because people aren't used to seeing this string of satellites in the sky that continues to grow all the time. If you're not used to seeing something in the sky, it looks strange to you there for a UFO. and how many of you have seen spiders moving through the sky on a ball of webs? Like, I've never seen that. So if I saw it, it would look really freaky to me. Yeah.

One of the things that always blows my mind just going off of what you just said, too, is when people come forward with things like that and you say, well, that actually is Skylink. It's one of the things I've seen where they go, nope, that's not what it is. And they want it to be something that it's not. And I think that's just human nature, though. But it's something that I've been seeing a lot lately. Yep. Yeah, like I said, a fascinating case.

So, Brent, why don't you go ahead with yours, man? Yeah, so I have the August 29th of 1979 truck driver incident with Harry Turner. He woke up in Fredericksburg, VA. That was his destination where he was headed. The problem was he had no memory of getting there. And the last thing that he remembered was eating at a truck stop right after he left to go on to his normal hall. then boom he's at the end of his route he's parked he's good to go so he looks around his truck and he sees the odometer and it says that he's only gone 17 miles though at that time he should have went about 80 miles now

this is a truck driver so they keep logs they should be able to see exactly where they're at at any time and that's something that they if they get polar or they have to produce stuff like that he also sees that uh his gun he carries a gun in case there's trouble bruises as you know can and it is laying out in the truck and all eight shells are loose. They've been expelled. He shot it. He's emptied the entire magazine. So that's a little bit weird when you have no memory of that.

And he says after that you do that, the memory starts coming back. And he remembers starting his route and he's driving like normal for a little while. Then he sees a bright light come down from the sky and it's kind of coming towards his truck. And it starts following him. And then just like, I think we've seen. in so many things. He has electrical issues. His CB radio and his regular radio started doing static, and then boom, this loud tone comes through. And that's when the fun starts, and by fun, I mean, pant-filling terror, I think.

Struck is stopped, and everything there is filled with light. So he collects himself, he tries to get out of the truck, and he says that he feels something that is invisible is pushing on him, keeping him inside of a, truck. He tries to get off of it and he says that he actually quoted to say it was like it had bionic strength. It was so strong he couldn't get out. So he grabs his gun and he just starts shooting. Just empties the whole thing. And whatever's holding him back stops, pushing. And so he shuts the door, he sits there for a little bit, he says. Then he decides to get out and look around. And that's when he says that he's inside of the hanger or the belly of a large UFO.

And that is all he remembers at that time before waking up in Fredericksburg, Virginia. But that doesn't stop there. So that was, like I said, on August 29th, on September 3rd, he's laying in bed, and he's looking up at the ceiling, and all of a sudden he can see, he says, through the ceiling, and he can see the stars and stuff, like an x-ray, or he can see through what's going on. He looks, turns, looks over at his wife, and he can see. see her skeletal structure like inside of her.

That's not normal. I don't know if you guys know that or not, but he takes off, freaks him out, takes off running, ends up in a police chase that covers a couple counties. They finally stop him and they think he's crazy. He's screaming about all this stuff. So they do take him into the hospital, have him checked out. And they do say, oh, he says that he's hearing tones in his head also, he tells him that. So they take him in.

They do a complete mental and physical evaluation on the guy. And they say that he seems to be extremely sensitive to light and sound. And he lacks control on the left side of his body. That's also the side of his body that he was touched on in the truck. You could say maybe, you know, that could be because he had a slight stroke or something like that. move on though in this story does start an investigation and they go to the trucking company to kind of try to corroborate his story to see what's going on because he said and the big thing there was like i said he said he only went 17 miles or the the truck said that so that means he would have teleported or been picked up and placed at the destination she was going to truckers keep logs so this should be an easy thing to try to figure out and the paperwork is completely

missing. They have none of his paperwork. So they look into his past as you do, and he told him that he worked, he was served in the Navy. He had pics of being in the Navy. He had the sort of stuff like a veteran would have. So they requested his service records, and they're all gone like a Bob Lazare set up type story. Like his work records are gone. His military records are gone. Then he seems to, you know, he has a mental break. You know, he has a mental break. You know, He just went crazy. All this stuff happens. And it ends up, I mean, that's kind of the end of the story because they couldn't verify anything.

And, you know, a lot of people have tossed around ideas of this aliens interadmission travel, future us coming forward and granting him some sort of, I don't know if you want to call it evolutionary thing, everything, see-through stuff. It's a weird story. And it did have some investigation parts to it that didn't really work out. if we're to believe that those things are actually missing. It's, yeah, that's an interesting story. I've never even, I've never heard that one before.

David Flora in here with the stop, too much sexiness in one stream. I appreciate that, David. I do. And thanks to everybody for tuning in, Chris. I'm sorry we had to start without you, but it is what it is, dude. Got to do what you got to do in this case. And Dale, thanks for stopping in man. But yeah, that's an interesting case.

It parallels a lot of, in some ways, a lot of other cases that I've... Well, not to not be a bandwagon jumper, too, but it was on Hanger 1. Yeah, that is true. That is true. See a running team here. Right. Jason, you're never going to live that down, bud. You are never going to live that showdown.

bro. Hey, I love Hangar 1. This was an interesting story to me because I actually, when I was younger, I was 18 years old and I was in a wreck. And I had head trauma, big surprise to you guys, I'm sure. But I lost like a day of my life. And as time has gone by, I filled in the stuff that's happened by remembering little tidbits. And I would ask, you know, my parents or whoever I was with if that really happened. And they say yes. But sometimes you don't know if you're remembering.

things or if you're making them up, and I still don't. And I think that's an important thing to remember in situations like this. And I'm not saying that that's what happened here at all, or that he had any sort of trauma, but things like that do happen. And that's kind of an interesting reason why I was drawn into this specific case. Completely understandable, man. Completely understandable. I loved it, man. I loved it. I appreciate it, Brent. Thank you. You're welcome. I'm glad I could do that for you. I like the part with the skeleton

Yeah Yeah Which is probably this That's so it's such a craze Cause like Baby, baby no You're right You're using skeleton now

Oh my God Like if you think about like what If you think about what that means Right In terms of what this person's actually seeing Because like you don't see Like an x-ray You're not

You know what I mean It's not like you actually shoot Like at home alone When he Marv puts his hands on the washing machine. You know what I mean? He's like, whatever, you can see his skeleton, right? Like, that doesn't happen, obviously. Like, we all know that. But, like, the idea that this could,

um, just thinking even, like, physically what that would mean, maybe the, I don't know, the skeleton is fluorescing for some reason, or the skin has become see-through? And he also, well, and he also said that he looked up through his ceiling. He could see through the ceiling and see the sky above him. Right. So it's just a super interesting, like, just a very strange part of a story to add if you're going to make it up, you know? Right, right. Very strange, so I don't really understand

like what the whole yeah, I don't know, it's weird. I guess my takeaway is if you're ever in the military, your first day grab someone and say, remember me, because you never know he's going to have to come to your aid in the future and be like, I do remember that guy.

It was really weird. He grabbed me. You know, so. Yeah, absolutely. It's a pro tip there. If anything, Bob bizarre story has taught us, you need to have those people in your life, you know, that you can go to. She's not going to work out. She's not going to work out, man. No, you're in trouble. No. No.

I have no memory of you. No memory at all. And, like, that scares me because, you know, I work in a nursing home. And, like, it's people with dementia and I can't even imagine because we actually had to sit through a class at one point. and they went through the process of what it's like to forget things for some people. And they actually made us do this exercise where we wrote down some memories that we were fond of. And then they just came by and they're like, Yank, you don't remember that anymore. You don't remember that anymore. Wow, yeah.

That is, it's a terrifying aspect of being a human is just like one day waking up and you don't remember a damn thing. No, thank you. No, thank you. So, Chris, how about you grace us with your story, man? Hey, I got a great story. Oh, man. All right. So my story, so my story is a really interesting one because, or at least I think it's interesting.

We'll be the judge of that. Yeah, you guys will tell me whether or not it's interesting or not, right? This is the worst story I've ever heard. You guys can write mean comments in the chat. So anyways, so my story actually is one that was really popular back in the day. And the reason I like to highlight it, and it's similar to other stories similar to this, like, so originally I was actually going to do the Nuremberg mass siting, because that's another one of these sorts of cases that wasn't popular until suddenly it was,

because someone put it out there, right? Like a big name put it out there. So the story that I'm talking about is what's known as the Great King, is town napping. So, okay, here is the quote here that was part of a, it kind of got, kind of got all over the place back in like the late 1800s, like really, like 1890s, actually. So this was printed initially April 23, 1897. So, and then, yeah, there's the sweet photo here of this.

Kind of gilding the little, yeah, we're telling the story immediately here. It is a hoax, right? A famous hoax in euthology. So this is from Alexander Hamilton, the guy's actual name, not like the president or not the president, but the secretary of the treasury, whatever the hell he was. Yeah, I got a PhD, everybody. So, Jim McLean-Dering, though, it's not in American history. All right. So quote, last Monday night, about 1030, we were awakened by a noise among the cattle. I arose thinking that perhaps my bulldog was performing pranks. But upon going to the door, saw to my utter astonishment that an airship was slowly descending upon my cow lot, about 40 rods, which evidently is 600 feet from the house, calling my tenant Gid Hesliff, which awesome 1800's name Gid. And my son, Wall, again, amazing name. His son's name is Wall. His sister's name is Chair. We seized some axes and ran to the coral. Meanwhile, the ship had been gently descending until it was not more than 30 feet above the ground, and we came within 50 yards of it. It consisted of a veryxious and a great cigar-shaped portion, possibly 300 feet long, with a carriage underneath. The carriage was made of glass or some other transparent substance, alternating with a narrow

strip of some material. It was brightly lighted within, and everything was plainly visible. It was occupied by six of the strangest beings I ever saw. They were jabbering together, but we could not understand a word they said. Every part of the vessel, which was not transparent, was of a dark-redge color. We stood mute with wonder and fright. Then some noise attracted their attention and they turned a light directly upon us. Immediately on catching sight of us, they turned on some unknown power and a great turbine wheel, about 30 feet in diameter, which was revolving slowly below the craft, began to buzz and the vessel rose lightly as a bird. When about 300 feet above us it seemed to pause and thudder directly above a two-year-old heifer,

which was bawling and jumping, apparently fastened the fence. Going to her, we found some material fastened in a slip-knot around her neck, and going up to the vessel from the heifer, tangled in the wire fence. We tried to get it off, but could not, so we cut the wire loose to see the ship hath their heifer and all rise slowly, disappearing in the northwest. We went home, but I was so frightened I could not sleep. Rising early Tuesday, I started out of my horse, hoping to find some traces of my cow. This I failed to do, but coming back in the evening found that Link Thomas, about three or four miles west of Leroy, had found the hide, legs, and head in his field that day. He, thinking that someone had butchered a stolen beast, had brought the hide to town for identification,

but was greatly mystified at not being able to find any tracks in the soft ground. After identifying the hide in my brain, I went home, but every time I would drop to sleep, I would see the cursed thing, with its big lights and hideous people. I don't know whether they are devils or angels or what, but we all saw them, and my whole family saw the ship, and I don't want any more to do with them. that was then actually put into the newspapers with an affidavit that was sworn by around 12 different people who were like, so this is the list of these people, ready? E.P. Wharton, State Oil Inspector, M.E. Hunt Sheriff, H.H. Winter Banker, E.K. Kellenberger, MD. a pharmacist, an attorney, Justice of the Peace, two druggists, the Register of Deeds, the Postmaster, and the Deputy Sheriff.

Now, so this story came out and was a huge deal, right? It was part of what's known as the, part of what's known as the airship flap, which happened to the, like, 1850s to like the 1920s essentially, in the United States especially. And I love this story for a bunch of different reasons. One is the fact that this guy could imagine an airship that would, like, float and have this big glass case and everything else, but he couldn't think of a way to get a cow up into it without just like a rope.

You know what I mean? He lacked that in. imagination to be like, oh, then they used a rope and they got the cow and they drug it. They had it floating in the air of us. Like, he couldn't think of that at all. But the other reason why this is so fascinating is so it hit, it really hit the, it hit the national newspapers. It got all over the place. And then it fell off, like the story kind of died down.

It was forgotten a little bit until it was brought back up by Jock Belay, actually, who wrote about it. And then it was also part of a couple of, after he wrote about it. out in like the 60s, it became a huge, huge UFO story again. And so people started to, what's the word? It basically was almost like for cow mutilation, what Roswell became. No one here is big as Roswell, but it was like a foundational case in UFO history and lore, right? Until they started looking into it.

Here is the quote from the person who initially published the article. So initially it was published in the Gate Center Farmers Advocate. And so this is from Ed F. Hudson, who was the editor of that story. So, quote, I had just bought and installed a little gasoline engine. The first I believe to come to Gate Center, using it to run my machinery, replacing the handpower on the old country Campbell Press and kicking the job presses. I invited many of my friends in Quebec shop to see the engine work. Hamilton, the original person in Alexander Hamilton, was one of them.

He exclaimed, now they can fly. And there the earship story we made up took birth. This guy, Hamilton, was part of a little-known Midwestern tradition called a Liars Club. These groups existed in the United States in the 1850s all the way it's like the 1950s. And actually, they still do exist today. There's a famous one in Wisconsin still that's operational. I don't know if you've heard of another one that's pretty... In Chicago, right?

Well, Facebook, we call it. There's also, okay, there's like a bar in Chicago called Liars Club, I guess. Ever Brent, okay, yeah. All right, now I look like a butthole. Thanks. It was like a fool. So these Liars clubs, though, what they would do, it would be a bunch of rich guys that would get together,

and they would see how far they could get a tall tail to travel through their town. And this is one of those tall tales, right? that seemed to travel around. And if that wasn't enough of a, if that wasn't enough of a kind of proof that this was a falsified hoax story, one of Alexander Hamilton's relations from back in the day, like I think it was like his secretary, something that worked for him or whatever,

she remembered her mom talking all about how they used to make up these crazy stories on how one of them even ended up in the French newspapers, right, about a cow that had been cownapped out of this field in Kansas or out of you know what's it this area that they lived in so it's such for me it's such an interesting story and it's one too that shows

that story just fell off the UFO folklore you know Matt right after it was proven that this was like a hoax it fell off but if you still read up about it like on UFO blogs and things people are still trying to like prove that it's true yeah which is crazy yeah Isn't that the case with every UFO case? It is, it is, but it's like, it's such an interesting, it's such an interesting thing that, you know, it's such an interesting thing to me that this, these people then come out and they're like, yeah, we made it up. And even Hamilton, evidently, like, at the time was a really well-known, he'd make up these tall tales constantly, right?

But it was just because of his fancy title and his affidavit that was sworn to by everyone else. I'm affid, after, and affidavit. Yeah. It was only from this thing that people were like, oh man, this guy's going to be telling the truth, but, nah. Yeah. It always blows my, go ahead.

Yeah, just wanted to say, William Poland has a great point here, bringing up the Aurora, Texas crash, because that seemed to be a case that was really strong for a number of years until, I think it was what, like, the New York, maybe, like, Time magazine or something like that, interviewed some of the, like, family members, and some of the original witnesses and said, no, it was complete bunk.

You know, it was a situation in which, you know, the town wasn't doing good. So we're going to, you know, kind of drum up some tourism here by saying that a fake UFO crashed on Judge Proctor's property and all that stuff. Same kind of thing. And it kind of goes to show, like, considering the 1896 and 1897, it's kind of like the first flap, there's a lot of similar things that have gone forward in the flaps of the modern age in which people hoax things. It's great. It's fantastic. I think one of my favorite hoaxes is the Woodworth Saucer hoax of 1947 in which these kids, this was shortly after Kenneth Arnold had his sighting and the whole UFO boom really kicked off.

they ended up making like a fake UFO out of materials and they basically put it in this woman's on this woman's yard and she was like the town gossip so word spread fast. I believe the military was there within like a few hours and like these kids got in trouble for doing this. So great. Gotta love it. But yeah, man, with every flap, there's bound to be hoaxing. You know, that actually reminds me, I don't know why I thought this would be so funny, but it was really funny at the time I swear. When I was a kid, me and my Fred Ritchie were walking home from the train station, walking home from high school, and someone was throwing away a mailbox. And we thought it'd be really funny to take the mailbox and just put it on some random person's,

like, stoop, right, like on their, you know, on their entryway, I guess, like into their house. And so we did that, and then they found out it was us. And so we were sitting on my stoop, just like hanging out and being stupid. and the person came and started yelling at us like, you put this mailbox on my soup? And we were just like, no, no, why would we do that? That's such a weird thing for you to accuse us up. I was a little, I was a craphead.

No, I feel like it's such a weird, like, I don't know, it's such a odd, like, a mischief. God, it's. I remember when we recorded that Archipalooza, and I heard about many of the stories of you running, around with bad groups of kids, Christopher. My gosh. I'm chaotic evil, man. It's not a great thing. Marie is like the anchor that keeps me linked to reality at this point, I think.

Christopher Cogswell, putting his D&D alignment right out into the world. At first, I didn't think it was real. I woke up to this blinding light and I was transported to another place. Pluto TV. Then I heard. a voice. Come with me if you want to live. There were thousands of movies and shows, and they were all free. The truth is our city. It's just so beautiful. On Pluto TV, free streaming of Terminator 2, Fringe Arrow, the 100 NX files may cause excitement, loss of sleep, and sudden belief in extraterrestrials, no credit cards or

alien encounters necessary. Pluto TV, stream now, pay never. It always cracks me up or surprises me, I think, in these stories, what ones fall by the wayside and what ones refuse to, because people, just latch on to them. And in the conspiracy world, too, it's not just stuff like this. You can look at Polybius and Lake City Quiet Hills and stuff like that, that you can go down these roads and debunk them pretty easily, but people just go, nope, I want to believe this. Does it hurt people to do that? No, but it also doesn't do any good, and it sure doesn't give any credence to what we're trying to do. Yeah. Yeah, I remember I was at a conference

where Aaron Gulles spoke, and he gave this fascinating presentation about the repackaging of uphology from decade to decade. And it was stunning to hear someone from like the early airship days up to like the recent sightings. He was able to trace the same story, the same incident repackaged throughout every decade. And it blew my mind. So, I mean, that has every UFO researcher questioning every case they've ever looked at and be like, what earlier version of this is this or how was it built upon? I mean, I talked to Micah Hanks recently, who's doing a lot of research of UFOs in antiquity times. And I thought I brought a really fascinating case to him of a floating ship in the sky that drops an anchor.

Dude comes down. He's floating in midair, checking stuff out. People in a church are outside looking at this. the bishop's like, let him do his thing, let him do his thing. If it's a heavenly figure, let him do his thing.

He's got an anchor. He's got a... You know, an evil has an anchor. Right. Get this, Chris. The anchor, as the guy climbs back up into the airship,

the anchor falls down, you know, to the land. And this church claims that they have the anchor to this day. So I thought this was really interesting. But then as soon as Micah heard it, I saw him grinning. And he told me four other stuff.

of that... The whole anchor story. The whole anchor story as it works. So, yeah, this idea of repackaging is fascinating. I think it's, you know, something that we have to be really careful of, I think. Creepy pasta is not a new thing, it turns out. It's actually really interesting, right? One of the most well-documented versions of this is with witchcraft stories,

or the shift from a purely demonic worldview or... So, okay, in like religious, like, theology, but like in philosophy of, say, like, science, I guess, but pre-science, when science was still demons and eagles and stuff, whatever. There was this idea of something could be supernatural, but then also preternatural. And so, oh, Brent's dead. Brent has disappeared. Where'd you go, Brent? I don't know what happened to Brent. You offended him.

I really offended him. He was like, witches are real. They're real. Not having any part in a witch conversation. Right. It's like if I brought up a Ouija board, you're like, no, I'm just going to, I'm just going to plow ahead. Because this is what I do when people stop listening to me. I just plow ahead. Yeah, that's good thing, God's well. So this, so preternatural, preternatural suggests that something is natural. It fits within the bounds of natural law, but it's just like happening in a way that we don't know about before, right? Supernatural suggests that something goes against the laws of nature that humans have to work. by. So a lot of theologians argued that, like, the only thing that could be supernatural was God, right? Because if it was anything else, then God wouldn't be all powerful. And therefore,

he or she wouldn't be God. Right. So God has to be the only thing that you need supernatural. On the other hand, preternatural would be like Flash, right? Like, the Flash could do things that we would think would be like demonic or like magical or whatever. But it's just that he's super fast. Right. But his body, still like he can't go through walls, he can't teleport, he can't, you know, be telepathic, whatever, right? So the shift was that it started out for demons and witches for supernatural. And then we started saying, no, no, that's ridiculous. They're just super strong and fast. Like really smart or whatever. And so we went from them being supernatural, then being preternatural,

for them being unnatural, right? They didn't exist in the natural world. But a lot of those ideas that we still gave to, like witches, like witches Sabbath, being abducted from bed at night, other things, continued into modern folklore. And you can argue one way or the other. Like, do you think that this is because people were being abducted by aliens instead and there's called the witches or there are no aliens or another larger thing or whatever? But that story, it's like one of the best things

to recap that example of the change because so many, like, say, Thomas Aquinas and others really looked at it seriously and were like, this is a problem because I guess they thought they would see a demon someday. They were really concerned about knowing what was going on. Yeah, it reminds me of the stuff that like Diana Pesolka and Leslie Kane were looking at with the Pentagon program and the DIA. They had a group in there, a splinter group almost, looking at this from a religious angle. And like that was the only way they were looking at it, which ultimately affects all the research moving forward if you're putting this demonic angle on the whole thing.

So I thought that's fascinating that, Chris, this is even going on with the freaking A-Tip program. It's crazy. Don't get me started on A-Tip, bro. Sorry. Well, I think some of this really highlights something that I'm a firm believer in, and that is knowing UFO history and not being afraid to revisit and learn UFO history. I know people in the UFO field can get a lot of shit for, you know, if you ever decide to do a show on Roswell.

I mean, God forbid, don't touch Roswell. Why do we care about listening about this old case from 1947? But I think there are a lot of people entering the UFO field now and even people who have been in the UFO field for a long time who haven't looked at some of these cases for decades. And, you know, it helps to bring these things back up and remind people so of the history of these cases because, I mean, there are just like some of the cases we've mentioned,

there are so many cases that come up that have been thoroughly debunked and, you know, the people involved in them have admitted perpetrating these things. Yet there are so many people who come to us now and say, oh, what about this case? I think this is a compelling case. You know, so there's this need, I think, for some proper education and revisiting historical cases to help people be better informed. with a lot of these things because I mean guys give me a break we're still seeing stuff about alien

autopsy i can't believe that made a resurgence yeah so i mean this is a big problem so i got a lot of love for history and revisiting historical cases frequently yeah i i agree and i think like one of the cases that has been a great example of that lately is the um the aztec crash because it's come back into the kind of the forefront in a certain way. And it was a case that was dismissed. I mean, Frank Scully, you know, God love him, but nobody was buying his stuff back in the day. But, you know, you've got these two researchers that go back in, you know, look at this case and say, well, maybe there is something there. So, yeah, I agree.

Like, I think one of the joys about having a UFO podcast. and going back and looking at these cases, like diving into the old issues of like flying saucer review, seeing how these stories evolved is so in eye, you know, eye opening in many ways. And with my story, it's kind of that way for me. So I'll kick into my story now. Mine comes from Finland and right up front, I'm just going to tell you, I'm going to butcher these pronunciations just because I do not speak Finnish.

According to ancestry for about six months, I was 5% finished, but I do not believe it for one second. I am not buying it. But in the late 60s and early 70s in Finland, there were a lot of, there was a civilian UFO groups that were looking into the UFO activity of that time. And there was kind of an escalation in cases. And this is probably one of the most well-known cases, but it was still kind of a little more obscure to me at the time. But this case involves two men, Arno, Hainanin, and Esco Vilo, who were cross-country skiing in the village of Imjarvi, is how it looks like it's pronounced, not pronounced, but spelled. Some village. Yeah, it's, um,

It's a very small village. It's located near the town named Heinala. Again, my pronunciations are terrible. So this story went through a few phases in its retelling. It first appeared in the pages of Flying Saucer Review in their May, June issue of 1970. And it was approximately 4.45 p.m. on January 7th, 1970. And the skies were clear. The temperature was beginning to drop as the stars begin to come out for the night.

And despite the now frigid temperatures, it had really been a beautiful day for skiing. And Hinen, who was 36 years old, he worked in forestry, and Vilho, who was 38, he was a farmer by trade. The pair were avid cross-country skiers for years. And they had just crested this hill when Arno first heard this strange buzzing sound. but it was ESCO that actually was the first person to cite this thing. And in the original reports, it was described as a thin, narrow point of light. And this light was what the men called the phenomenon at the time. And it exploded into a cloud that was, quote, brighter than the moon.

It descended below tree top level, and it came, and from it came a ring of white light that fell to the snow. And its outer edges were black, and it began to emit this red, these red green, and violet sparks on the snow. The ring measured approximately 50 centimeters or about a foot and a half in diameter. And from this ring, a small disc would come from it.

And it would lift up, back up into this cloud that was right above it. And, you know, it was really small. It was only 20 centimeters. And then this cloud lifted up and disappeared rapidly. And what makes this case what it is is the effects that these two skiers were having after it. So these negative health effects took place almost immediately. Arno's right side, which had been facing this weird looking cloud, felt like really hot.

it became numb and it was actually difficult for him to breathe for a time and his like went a certain point too he struggled to get back to hana lo himself and uh the doctor only prescribed him with some sleeping pills uh he couldn't find anything wrong with him at the time and uh he would make multiple trips uh over like the next two weeks to the doctor uh similarly Esco would have his face got very swollen and red. He described feeling light in the legs, which was throwing off his balance.

And the doctor too prescribed him sleeping pills because he couldn't find anything wrong with him, which is wild. You've got these guys with these wild symptoms, and they can't find anything wrong with you. And... Yeah, just crack doctor. Just crack doctor in here.

But through multiple... Trips, Esco complained of eye pain and headaches for which he was prescribed eye drops. Both men were prescribed blood circulation medication at one point. And still the doctors could find nothing wrong with him. But the story continues to evolve a little bit. And in the next issue of Flying Soss Review, the story, um, little more, you know, some more details start coming out.

So the sound that Arno heard initially, he said it sounded like it was really further away and then he heard it coming closer. And they described how when they were watching this, they were kind of paralyzed to the spot. They weren't afraid of what they were seeing, but they couldn't really move. So this explosive cloud would gain structure as a classic saucer with three half balls of light on the bottom of it. And in the center of it was a tube of light that was a little bit. bit larger. And from this strange self-numamous ring of light, it would emit this ring and with these black edges on it. But like the saucer itself, it's kind of in a way like a George Adomsky kind of description, but like its features are kind of smoother going up and everything.

They're rounded. So Arnault spoke of having strange dreams in which this object was descending toward him. And his friend, Esco, looked very different in these dreams. He was older. He was shorter. And whatever this image was, it scared this guy so much that he encouraged his friend not to visit him. So this clearly, you know, is having this great effect on these guys. Their health still hadn't improved.

Esco's hands and face would still become red. And he just continued to suffer from headaches. Arno described feeling like there was hot water sloshing around in his stomach, which would cause him to vomit a few times a day. And both of their memories were kind of like failing them. But still, doctors could not find anything wrong with these guys for whatever reason. Still crack doctoring here. Great, great doctoring. So, the.

there's reports from Falkenberg, Sweden, concerning a craft that people had seen that was of a similar shape, these balls on the bottom of them of light and stuff like that. But it was finally in September that the full story would emerge. And word of the men's story had started to get out

and journalists came a knocking. In fact, there was one that showed up at the guy's doors and basically said, tell us your full story. You're not telling us the full story. So these two guys, they blamed memory loss incurred during the incident for why they couldn't remember what was happening to them. But in the aftermath of the sighting, these details would emerge. The object had approached from the north. These two men had stopped briefly for arrest in the chill of this early evening air, a strange buzzing noise.

That was the first thing. And it drew closer and closer. And Arno, yeah, he was the first to notice it. And then Esco was the first to notice the actual object itself. It was a powerful light that hovered high above these skiers. And it was shrouded in this really strange cloud. But from the bottom of it, they could see these tiny, these balls of light on around the perimeter in this light tube.

It was kind of separated by three hemispheres. But as it descended, this mist was starting to dissipate a little bit. And when it came down, it was hovering just like 13 feet off the ground, four meters or so. And Arno claimed that it was so close he could have touched it with his ski pole. The object emitted an intense beam of light down at the ground, which created a self-luminous circle with dark edges, like I've said before.

And the circle started to emit red and green violet sparks and arcs that would shoot as far as three meters or about 10 feet. They talked about how they just about landed at their feet. And a red-gray mist descended upon the forest at the same time. And from this luminous circle, the small dislike object ascended back up toward the craft. and Arnault at this point felt like somebody had seized him by the waist and pulled him back. It was some unseen force. He couldn't really make heads or tails of it.

But through the mist, he and Esco caught sight of a short humanoid creature about 90 centimeters tall or about three feet. Its features were very thin. Its nose was a really odd shape that was hook shaped. Like think of like Squidward if it. It's like angled instead of just like falling down. But its scale was, its skin was very pale, but very little of it was exposed because the creature wore a covering that was green in cover and its feet were covered in a darker green fabric. And what's interesting and fun about this creature is it wore a conical hat. It kind of gave it a rank and bass Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer elf appearance, which is great.

I love this visual and I'll share this with you guys right now. Let me let me get the appropriate links up here. But this is, yeah, this is great right here. Rob, what year did you say this was? 1970. So this first image is of Arno and Esco and they're basically at the site where this happened. they're you know Arna's pointing up to

how high this thing was at the time but the cool thing is is in this issue they have this incident like playing out so I'll bring this down so at first you have this UFO

it comes down it drops this ring here and you know from it you can see that this disc flies starts flying back up and if you follow it, the disc goes back up into the craft. And there is the short, tiny humanoid figure right there. And what's interesting is it's holding a box,

a black box, which is kind of a motif that has explored again and again through many accounts and stuff like that. I know black boxes was something that, there are box like things were talked about on Skinwalker Ranch and stuff like that. But I'll show you guys a little closer up

version of the face of this thing because it's another fun drawing here. But yeah, there you go. There's its hooked nose. It's very kind of elf-like. Which is

kind of funny, you know. But it looks like the dude from Doug the bad guy with an elf hat on. What's his name? What's that guy's name with the green skin? Yeah.

Oh, Roger. Roger. Roger. There we go. You know what? Stories like this, that story reminds me of the Utsuro Bune. Yeah.

Which is this for people that don't know in the chat or watching or whatever. It's a famous piece of Japanese folklore where a woman like a ship washes ashore. and they get there and they see that there's a woman inside who can't speak Japanese, but she's holding like a shining box that, you know, people,

that she says you can't touch, you can't see, whatever. Right. A really interesting story. But yeah, like, it is a very similar motif and a very interesting one. Yeah. So this creature turned slightly and aimed the box that it was holding. It's holding this black box. It's got kind of a lens, as you can see there.

it's uh he aims it at arno and this pulsating light came out of it and just like shone directly at him um the the sparks were still flying as this thing is like shooting this guy with the with whatever weird ass camera that he's got and um yeah the both of these guys ended up like in the beam of this in the beam of light itself and um the red mist started to get thicker at this point and both of the guys lost sight of this creature. But both men claimed to have a good view of it for approximately 15 seconds. And, you know, that's just freaky. You got some weird ass elf coming down here.

Like, you know, you're about to sit on Santa's lap. He's taking pictures. I'm not down with that, you know, at all. But then this light beam rose up from. from the snow and it reentered the ship and the mist completely parted like, you know, someone was throwing open some curtains. And there was a flash in the sky and the craft was gone. It just completely disappeared.

The physiological effects, though, would just remain for months. It was hard for both been to work in the weeks following the encounter. Yeah, Hindenden Arno, he vomited, like, regularly for months and Esco's skin. was just turning red all the time. And in fact, these guys would lead a party, including the journalists that told them to come forward, you know, and tell the true story. He would have them, you know, come forward and bring them to the spot. And of the guys that were there, I think the majority of them, their skin started to turn red and it was irritated. So, you know, there is some skeptical views of this case.

I don't really think they hold water. Maybe they were exposed to, like, I don't know. In this case, I'm not exactly sure what they would have been exposed to. But it's one of those cases where that is a hell of a hoax if it makes the guy puke continuously for. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, whoa. Like, what was he hoaxed with?

got to commit to that. Yeah, seriously, that's like, that's no joke, right? I mean, outside of some, like, intense sort of, like, anxiety issue that's underlying or something, what makes, I don't know. How can I cover my bulimia? I mean, seriously, yeah, like, it's all UFO. Yeah.

It's a way to raise some weight. Yeah, just say you don't like, I don't know, it's such a weird, so strange. Rob, I was wondering if I could. bring up you just did an episode about the falcon lake incident and dude this is like strikingly similar in terms of physiological effects i mean stan mickleck had like you know the radiation burns he was vomiting i believe for months and the same thing where these doctors like didn't do anything for him they gave him like some pain meds and we're like get out of here man um i find this case eerily similar to that one it's really interesting yeah there there are a lot of

similarities to it and I'm not going to get into it on this live stream I might do an additional episode or something but these guys claim to have further contact with like alien beings after this so the story kind of goes off the rails but the interesting thing is is that there were additional sightings in the area at a you know near the time of this incident

but in a village 15 kilometers or nine miles from the encounter, a woman named Elna Satari witnessed a strange light on the day the two skiers had their encounter. And in the village of Paso, it's like 10 kilometers away, about six miles. An unnamed a man witnessed a strange light in the sky around 4 to 45 that evening at the same time the encounter took place. So, you know, these folks are witnessing stuff not too far away. And later that evening, a 16-year-old boy named Maddie, who was from Imjarvi, witnessed a strange light, not far from where the encounter took place itself.

He was on his way home from a friend's house when the forest just lit up all around him. He witnessed a bright light above the trees moving about, and it disappeared not long after he caught sight of it heading to the south. for this live stream, that is the M. Jarvi humanoid sightings. It's, you can see a lot of parallels in cases where people have had negative health effects after coming into contact with a craft of some kind like that. I think of the cash lander incident because there's a lot of similarities there. There's just, you know, a smattering here and there cases like that. but I just want to say if

the alien watching this we don't want your Santa Claus photos so please do not come down. I don't. I don't know. I'll entertain it. You know, don't throw me in there. Brent is looking for more.

He wants negative health effects. Don't immediately put Brent in that category of not wanting Santa photos. You might want it. You might absolutely want he might actually want the photos that's fine maybe you could play alien santa brent that maybe we were just talking to some pilots for an upcoming episode on ours and that's funny that was the the term they used to use that they know or use is if you saw something you'd say we spotted santa claus and uh now it's kind of gone by the wayside but yeah nice i got the

height to be your elf brent so yeah right apparently apparently Ryan fits in pockets. I never knew this until today. Pocket size. Yeah, that's amazing. So I'm going to turn this to the listeners here, the people tuning in. If you have any questions, throw them our way right now. We'll answer them.

So if any aliens want to drop off some pancakes, I'm down with it. We just want your alien pancakes. We want your alien pancakes. want people. If you could add a little salt, you know, I would be appreciative, you know. I don't, I don't want ballet writing about my space pancakes, okay? I like him. He's a good dude, but. He's a good guy. Hey, Rob, I was, I was curious what, um, the name of the panel, I think is pretty intriguing. Um, would you mind describing that for us? The, the blue ribbon. Yeah, yeah. The blue ribbon panel. I had a couple people asking me what that meant, yeah. So, um, back

in the 70s, the National Inquirer had a panel of UFO experts that they assembled and they would hand out a prize for someone who would come forth with proof of, you know, the UFO, an authentic UFO incident or, you know,

contact with an alien and stuff like that. Famous winners of the Blue Ribbon Prize include Ronnie Johnson of the Delphos Ring Incident and Travis Walton. He won 5,000. for his story and it's been used as a tool to debunk a very famous UFO sighting.

So I thought it would be appropriate if we called ourselves the Blue Ribbon Panel. I thought it was a PBR. Yeah. But I guess that was. Bust out the PAPs next time. Yeah. We're good to go. So William Pullen asks, why are charlatans, hoaxers, and frauds embraced by the UFO community?

I got a great answer for that. Yeah, wait. So honestly, so I don't know how I got part of this, but I got added in a, in the thing of that Skinwalker Ranch. And so I'll tell you why, because, you know, you can read the thread, whatever. I'll tell you why. The reason that they are embraced in UFO community is because a lot of the time, what people in the youth community want is not proof.

They want belief. They want to be told just believe. everything I say, follow me, share the videos, listen to the stuff, do what I tell you to do. And people love that stuff. That's true. And it's like Jason was saying earlier, we need to look at these things or they're doomed to repeat themselves. And if you guys have been looking at the things that are going on now, we see the same people that are known disinformation agents are now poking their heads back up and being embraced by people again that we should have seen through. and I'd be doing this 25, 30 years ago.

And the fact that that is being something that we're having to go through again and be like, why are you doing this? And getting pushback blows my mind. So, Jason, I think that was an incredibly important point in a reason why we look at cases, because no matter what, it's someone's first time, a lot of times when you're doing it. And if not, things like that get, you know, we do them to repeat itself as, you know, the old same. Yeah.

Yeah, and Chris is absolutely right. There are always people, I mean, that's really primarily what this field is. It's based on belief. You have to make determinations for yourself, who you find credible and who you don't. And what information you're going or what evidence or what tidbits you're going to consider evidence and add that to your pile as you're evaluating these cases on an individual basis. But like Chris said, people are looking, some people, many people are looking for answers. And you're going to find somebody who is spouting the answers that you want to hear.

And people will gravitate toward that camp. And then Colts spring up. And that's really what you have around a lot of these people, because people gravitate toward the person saying the thing they want to hear that supports their preexisting beliefs. And they're going to follow that person no matter what everybody else and the evidence say about this person. They're hearing what they want to hear. Now, subtract the UFO out of that and put in politics. Anything.

Anything. Family life. People gravitate toward what they want to hear, what support their beliefs and anything. Absolutely. And that's why I think it's so important, too, that we have things like this, or at least we have shows like what, you know, not to tut all of our own collective horns, right?

But telling these stories and re-investigating them and seeing, like, that's how any field of knowledge is built. Right? When you start to study a science, you're not just given like a Bunsen burner and some chemicals and you're told like, well, get it all yourself, right? You learn what people did before you and you build off of that initial study. You build off that initial storyline. And so by not allowing that to happen or by never having like a standard set of, well, this is probably what happened with these cases that came 50 years ago.

This is what we can learn from them. This is how we can, you know, philosophy is a great example of this. philosophy is always reimagining old texts, you know. The fact that people still write PhDs on like David Hume, you know what I mean, or Emmanuel O'Anne or these other philosophers who wrote hundreds of years ago, seems crazy, but it's because there's always reimagining. There's always new interpretations. Something similar could happen in a field like this if we wanted it to be taken seriously.

And again, even if, you know, not everyone on this panel agrees at the underlying reality of the phenomena that we're describing, not everyone agrees, even on specific cases, right? Like, we tend to broadly agree, I would say, but generally, like, there's a big gap there or a big difference here on what we believe individually, but we're still able to at least look at this in a semi-intelligent way, right,

and say, like, this makes sense, this doesn't make sense. This seems logical. This seems illogical. You can still pick apart arguments that way without needing proof. Right, Chris, and that's why I'm so pissed that the fucking Mufon shit fell through because we were set up to fucking do that, man. We were set up to fucking get it in the front, get it in the back here and fucking, like, really run these goddamn cases through their paces and pick out the really good shit. Yeah.

I think that was probably the only, like, that has got to be the only time where, like, I think anybody has come that close to doing that. which again, it just frustrates me endlessly. You know, it's actually, I think, going to be one of the more... So you guys all know my views on it to the Stars Academy, right? Obviously. Yeah. It's actually one of the things that I'm probably the most excited about with, if they do end up doing this UAP reporting app they're talking about,

if there was even just some kind of feature on there that was essentially like you could upvote or downvote a case. Right. You know what I mean? At least maybe that would get people out of their, like, weird pigeonholes of, you know what I mean? Like, everyone on the same Facebook group shared the same stories about angels. Yeah. And they're all like, oh, they're aliens, right?

Like, right? Everyone thinks that. There's a lot of conflicting evidence out there for the end. And I think that also speaks to the field of investigators today where, you know, it's a lot of them are, like, Bufon field investigators. which only gets you so far. And a lot of it comes down to the passion that you have for this subject and what you're willing to do to investigate it. But yeah, man, I have high hopes for that app.

But Druid in the 559 asks, any encounters in the last year you think are promising? Also, where are the girls? Don't worry, if we do this again, There will be girls involved. I promise. It was hastily assembled on my part, and I apologize for that. But any encounters in the last year that you see is promising.

There's none that really come to mind, like, straight away. Because, like, again, it comes down to the fact that it just seems like the modern, the accounts of, like, that are happening within a year. They don't get a lot of spotlight. They don't get a lot of spotlight. They don't get a lot of like anything. They don't get a lot of coverage. You know, maybe you'll find one or two on a blog or something like that.

But a lot of the time, you know, I'm not really looking at the newer cases. I'm more looking at the older ones. That's, you know, more of what I do. But if any of you have anything in mind, feel free to share. But like that, I think that's going to be a tough one for all of us. I don't mind a little bit out of that. But Chris actually helped me on this. We had something that came across our desk that was interesting.

I had a gentleman who cleans out basements for a living, and he found a stash of old negatives. Well, they were negatives. They were slides. And the tiny, like, one-ten up to, you know, normal size. And they looked like they had some of them really good UFO photos on him. He's like, he's like holding him up to the sky. And he called me. He's a father of a guy I went to college with.

And he's like, I don't know really what this is. I usually would just throw this way. But by God, it looks like UFO. So he sends it to us and I got with Chris and we had them looked at and I actually had them developed to actually just digital off that. And it was someone that you could see in the 50s and 60s learning to fake UFO photos with double exposures and manipulating negatives and stuff like that. And that was really an interesting thing that, that I mean, that I came across that I was like, oh my God, this is awesome. And then it was fake. And that was still really awesome to me because you.

You can see how people, I know that's not the exact answer you're looking for, but that was the one that's within this last year that really got me excited was, you know, seeing how the yesteryear people faked things, because that's kind of been a thing that we've talked about in this episode. Yeah. Was this, uh, Roswell Slides part? Yeah. It was like there was actually some stuff from Vegas and some stuff from like,

whoever had done it had taken photos from all over the nation at places where you could see, this is such and such because there's a sign in the background, you know, so like made sure that they got the the landmarks in there. Right. So you could see them. And then it was just Billy Meyer flying through the sky. They were legit pretty cool, like I'd say, just generally, like the, all those old Scott style UFO picks like that are so sweet that like, dude, you got to, Brian, you got to grab them. You got to get those, man.

Yeah, I got them. got him. You got them all. You got to do something with him then. We also have a guy in Mexico City who I'm sure would have... I hear he's into alien mummies, but maybe he'd be into some old photos. I don't know. I got any, got any... Mummy powder. Human remains to sell illegally. So there's actually, I think probably the best... So actually, it's really interesting. The story went really under the radar this year.

but we actually found out why most of Mufon's new cases don't go out there to the public anymore this year. And it seems like it's because they are holding them to try to get documentaries made. Yeah, yeah. So that's probably why there aren't so many new cases out there. But another reason, or I think that's why, for me, at least, the best new cases that I've heard of

have come from independent researchers like NK. Cranda, who we actually had an experiencer on our show named Jake who had like a just has an amazing story. And a really interesting outlook too, you know, where he's describing, waking up, he's describing events where he woke up. And then is outside of his house.

He remembers like a light taking him. He remembers waking up in a field and in trees and whatever. And then he wakes up as a kid locked outside of his home. And he has to run back home and like get the door unlocked for him and everything else. You know, normally that's the kind of story that I would hear and be like, yeah, okay, right? But talking to this person and then kind of vetting his background a little bit and, I don't know, man, maybe it's just because I had that personal experience with this person

and talked to them one on one. But for me, that was a story that really, I think, made a big impression on me. And actually another one, too, that made a big impression on me. Sorry to, like, take up all the air time here. on this question. But I actually had a really interesting, a really interesting case that started when I was still with, when I was still with Mufon.

And a guy out of here in Minnesota claimed that he was being followed by Kraft. And that his family was becoming really afraid and, like, freaking out of everything else. And so the investigators followed up and they took these photos and they brought him to a meeting and we all heard from him and everything else. and then it turned out that the guy was actually, when they investigated, they found out that all of it, he lived near a private airport. And so this was a person who was going through like a deep traumatic experience,

like psychologically, but was seeing these craft and everything else. And he was seeing a real thing. You were seeing real things. We were just misconstruing them. But being with or talking to the investigators and seeing how, how well I think they handled that and how compassionate they were. And it just again kind of like reinforced for me that these are real people that you need to take,

at least if you can't take their story seriously or you don't believe their story, you can at least treat them with respect. You know what an empathy? Well, that's the thing I think that NK. Cranda does really well as she humanizes these things. Yeah, absolutely. And that's important. Yeah. Yeah.

One of the most humanizing, I guess, or revelatory experience I had was at an alien kind event where Chris was in the audience. And Jason and I had experiencers from every spectrum bringing us stories of abductions and close and clouther encounter claims. And they all almost Chris, you can vouch for this. Almost every one of them said, well, I'm working with this hypnotherapist. I'm working with this hypnotherapist. This hypnotherapist.

And I could see Chris in the audience. I could see him getting, like, enraged. Like, are you effing kidding me? And it was a weird moment for me up there being like, okay, I can't just tell this person, like, you know, don't do that. You're being damaged. But Chris got up and he said, like, I'm sorry, I just have to say this flat out. Like, get actual therapy. Because like you said, someone like that gentleman was misconstruing something and was having actual traumatic experiences.

So were probably a lot of those experiences. at this alien kind of event. But when you're in this bubble of believers for three days straight and you have actual hypnotherapists at this event doing sessions with people, that's a problem. And that's a problem that I struggle with every day of talking to experiencers as, you know, should they do something like that? Is it ethical? And what I think is the safest thing to do.

And what Chris said to these people is go to an actual therapist or what, work through your problems with someone. Don't go to someone who's going to say, you were abducted by aliens. You saw, you know, a tall white alien from the Pleiades. I don't know. So that was a big moment for me.

And I have to thank Chris for doing that. Thank you, man. Well, you know what it is? It feels like if you, like Kierkegaard, there's a philosopher of, a theologian philosopher, or whatever, Sorin Kierkegaard,

who was a Christian, Christian philosopher, but also an existentialist, or like, he wasn't really, he's like considered one of the earlier existentialists, but never gave himself that name or anything, but whatever. But he has this, like, methodology of analyzing his religious beliefs by, like, dashing them against the hardest rocks he can find and seeing if he still believes after all of that, right? And so he has this book called, it's called Fear and Trembling, I think. It's a really long quote of the beginning, but it's a really great piece of philosophy. and it talks about the binding of Isaac

and how that, what must have that been like for, um, for Isaac and for Abraham to be asked by God to, like, give up your only son and then to do it. To try to do it and then have God come down and be like, L.L, just kidding. Oh my God, you were going to do it. That's crazy. What are you doing?

Bro. Bro. I would never ask you to do that, bro. I'm the good guy of the story. Um, but so, but like, sarcasm. Right. Yeah. Slash ass.

Slash ass, bro. So, you know, in my mind, the same thing is true here. We have these beliefs. If you should try all other options first to be like, rule out all the possibilities. If the possible is gone, all your left is the impossible. Are you saying to use the scientific method? Maybe I am. Minds are being blown here.

One of the coolest things about doing, being on the internal review board and, like, going through those cases was seeing how they were kind of investigated in real time. And one of the investigators that I really enjoyed his work is a guy named Eric Hartwig. He's a Mufon state director out of Massachusetts. He did impeccable work. He actually recorded phone calls with the witnesses, which I listened to many times. And one case that was fascinating to me is this case. of this graphic artist who was going home

and he ended up seeing this black triangle but what was cool on it is it had like a stabilizer on it and I'll share the image with you guys here in a second because I'm like blown away by this because it's like I've never heard of a black triangle with like a stabilizer on it so. I remember when you saw that you like sent the picture all giddy on Facebook message.

I love this picture but yeah there it is. It's got a tail fin on it, which is really cool. And like, I listened to the audio of the interview that Eric Hartwig did with the guy. And he's like, I saw it, my wife saw it, a friend of mine saw it. And I'm sure many of people that were on the highway saw it that night. And I think one of the underlying problems with these kind of mass sightings in this general, um, time period is that unless they report it, you don't know who witnessed it, who else witnessed it, which is, you know, a definite problem. But like this case, and there are a few others that we did, I really, I really love the hell out of. But so moving on to another question. My lead researcher

Rory asks, excluding anyone on the panel, whose work within the UFO field do you find the most insightful? A Lego Duplo set is a gift that always clicks. No one. And clicks. And clicks. For all the kids who love to stack and play, choose a Lego set. A gift that always clicks. No one.

Our silence says it all, I guess. I really like William Pollan. Yeah. He's commenting in here. I love William Pollan. Great guy. Because our buddy is watching, I'll say I love him too. There we go.

Yep, see, I really like N.K. Cranda. I think she's doing really good stuff. We do love you, William. I do think that she's doing a great job. And, yeah, William, not only am I a fan, I love that you quote yourself, quoting yourself, when you repost stuff. And I want to be able to do that someday.

So that I like. Yeah. I'll throw a couple names out there. I think Frank Kimber is the geoscientist doing amazing work on the Roswell incident. Still out there. digging, looking for shit, which is awesome, and finding stuff. And look, if you're looking for scientific method, that's all this guy does.

So, and there's other Mufon field investigators. That's the other thing. Individual Mufon field investigators is one thing. Mufant as an organization is another. There are some incredible field investigators in every state. Like Mr. Shane Hurd in Arizona. Just want to give a shout out to Shane Hurd, who's one of our. rogue planetiers over at Rogue Planet.

Yep. Earl Gray. Who is the assistant state director of Arizona, by the way. Yep. Earl's a great guy. Those two are the only ones coming to mind right now for me. But, you know, you look at the work of Erica Luke's, Chase Kletzky. I mean, these are people who've been doing this for years and kind of get, you know, pushed down by the more sensational cases going on. Or for whatever reason, get pushed down by people doing what they're doing.

You know, it's unfortunate. yeah absolutely absolutely so uh yeah William he has another question why do some UFO researchers darrell sims comes to mind never publish their investigative reports including parties involved that is a fantastic question uh ridicule I think desire to not be ridiculed um the reason that we pick apart everything I think you know a lot of times they want to protect the people that they've been through, but then again, that is also setting everyone back because if there is great research being done, we have no way to compare to other sightings, to find trends, to look through things like that. So it's a double-edged sword to me at least. I think Rainy Day Fund is another phrase that comes

to mind too. I think a lot of researchers hold these cases so close to the chest and they're just waiting for when they can, you know, put it out there and how they can benefit from that, which is kind of sad when you think about it. You know, if they haven't come out with something in a long time, oh, I'll bring this out right now. So I think that's another struggle in the field is transparency and sharing information. You know, whenever I find something, I always go to Jason and Rob first to be like, have you heard about this before?

Should I steer clear or is this something I should pursue? So yeah, I think, you know, things like this, doing panels and just, like sharing information, I think, is really important. And I feel like a lot of the, I don't ever want to put down the old guard because we've learned everything from them and are trying to build upon them. But they're more, they're more reticent to keep that, that, those cases in. So, yeah, yeah, that's kind of my two cents on it. I think the case is different for everybody, right?

Everybody's an individual. They do different things for different reasons. And I know Daryl, Daryl's a sweetheart of a man. I love the guy. But, yeah, I mean, William makes a good point. And his reasons for not publishing his work, I don't know what they are. So not speaking about him specifically. But others I can see in this field, you have a lot of, I guess I'll call them professional people.

And then some not so professional people who, you know, I've just picked up this topic and they're doing it. And they do what they do the way they know how to do it. And they might not be in it for publicity. but even if they are, they might not think about publishing a paper or doing things a certain way. They're just doing what they do with their investigations and their own style, then going around to different conventions and things and showing off what they've discovered and or talking on TV shows and, you know, the various routes. So people do things different ways.

I don't pretend to know the motives behind those. But I think the obvious with some people is that they know if they were to publish and try to get peer review, they would get ripped to shreds. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think, like, when it comes to, like, the preeminent investigators and some of the cases that they have worked on, and I think one that immediately comes to mind is Lyndon Napolitano's case. Like, that case kind of, I think, ruined the credibility of Bud Hopkins for a lot of people

just because of the way that he presented his information and the way that, you know, like, no, no, there's 22 witnesses. we don't know who the hell they are. They contacted you anonymously through letter and all this stuff. And there's like some weird love triangle that's happening here. And like I've been I've been blasted for my critical opinions of Bud Hopkins. I think he was a fantastic researcher. Don't get me wrong.

But I think he went down a line of thinking that kind of like, I don't know, soiled it in a way. But yeah, motives are, you know, everybody's got a different motive in this case. and we can't also leave out the fact that sometimes money has to do with it. I'm all about the money. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Speaking of you guys are not getting paid for this, just so you know, I am. I'm getting interference here. My connection is great.

Let's see you later. Bye. Sorry, but, yeah, like different motivations I definitely think play a part. this. As de Mona said, put this panel on a shirt. And I think we should. We should definitely put this panel on shirt. Just make it the Mortal Kombat. Choose your fighter on screen.

Yeah, absolutely. I think here. But I think this is where we're going to wrap it for this first edition of the blue ribbon panel. So thank you all for coming on. This was super fun to do.

It was a lot of fun. Thanks for having us. Yeah, Rob. Thanks, man. It's so good. Absolutely. Yeah, folks. And yeah, don't forget to look up. Support your local Uthologist. Yeah, support your local Ufology.

Keep looking up. You never know what you'll find in our strange skies. And you never know what you'll find on your computer screen when five guys get together and just talk about UFOs. In Gray, we trust. 18 or 80, crippled blind. under crazy. I'm going dancing tonight. It don't matter which one it gets a hold to me or I get a hold to them, you know. That's Hoot Gibson. I met him at Arkey Blue's Silver Dollar in Bandera, Texas.

He's just one of many characters you'll hear from in Vanishing Postcards, a podcast where we explore the hidden dives traditions and frequently threatened histories discovered by exiting the highways. We don't give a fly and slip for most of your regular bar types. featuring dispatches from the back roads, Vanishing Postcards is a touching, frequently humorous experience, perfect for when you need a breather, but don't have the time or luxury of jumping in the car. I'm Evan Stern,

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