Somewhere in the Skies - OMNIBUS 06 | UFO Happy Hour (w/ Rob Kristoffersen)

Episode Date: August 1, 2025

In another Omnibus, we bring you the ENTIRE collection of UFO Happy Hour! In the most laid back and casual conversations of the podcast ever, we pull up a bar stool with the UFO encyclopedia himself, Rob Kristoffersen, tip back a few beers, and talk the good, the bad and the ugly of UFOlogy. While this topic can be very serious at times, it can also bring about the most ridiculous stories you can possibly think of. Stories that continue to be shared throughout the decades, making up the cosmic tapestry of this highly mysterious topic. Grab a drink and join us for longest happy hour you'll ever experience! Find Welcome UFO People at: https://welcomeufopeople.bigcartel.com/ Please take a moment to rate and review us on Spotify and Apple. Book Ryan on CAMEO at: https://bit.ly/3kwz3DO Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/somewhereskies ByMeACoffee: http://www.buymeacoffee.com/UFxzyzHOaQ PayPal: [e-mail] Discord: https://discord.gg/NTkmuwyB4F Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ryansprague.bsky.social Twitter: https://twitter.com/SomewhereSkies Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/somewhereskiespod/ Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryansprague51 Order Ryan’s new book: https://a.co/d/4KNQnM4 Order Ryan’s older book: https://amzn.to/3PmydYC Store: http://tee.pub/lic/ULZAy7IY12U Read Ryan’s articles at: https://medium.com/@ryan-sprague51 Opening Theme Song by Septembryo Copyright © 2025 Ryan Sprague. All rights reserved Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/somewhere-in-the-skies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here's the thing about that case. That case is charming as hell, as opposed to Billy Meyer, who is not charming in the slightest. Joe Simonton, I would listen to that man if he was still alive today. Tell me all about his alien pancakes. This is somewhere in the skies with Ryan's bread. We are tipping back a few brews, and we are just going to chat the nightaways. We've got some listener questions that we're going to answer, and today I am so excited to be doing this with my. good buddy, my colleague, and my fellow podcaster, Rob Christofferson of the Our Strange Skies

podcast. Rob, what's going on, my man? Not too much, you know, just to just a chill night, kicking back some brews talking about UFOs. So, thanks for having me on, man. Thank you. Thank you so much. What are you drinking tonight? I am kicking back a hearty bottle of Labat Blue, my beer of choice. Oh, I love it. You know, not many people know LeBatt outside of, you know, the East Coast and Canada. So To hear that is just, you know, making my heart warm up, my man. Yeah, I mean, everybody goes to Budweiser in America, but Labat is like Budweiser, but a little bit lighter, so you're not, like, kicking your butt by, like, 8 o'clock at night.

So that's why I, that's why you go with Labat. It's great. It's so good. And it just, you know, it reminds me of home so much. I miss New York. And I was home for a few weeks recently. And that's all I drank was. Labat. So it tastes a good, tastes like home, and I'm very jealous right now. I am getting a little

fancy out here in Los Angeles. I am drinking. This is from Modern Times Brewery right here in L. It's called Blazing World. I thought that was very appropriate for tonight. It's an amber L, a little fruity, little hoppy, a lot more hoppy for an L, to be honest. I thought maybe it was an IPA, which I usually hate. I like the darker stuff. I like the ambers. But this is pretty good. So I'm going to go with this. You know, it's 95 degrees here.

I'm recording in my mini studio, which many people know is just my closet. So to have a nice cold light beer, I think that's a perfect way to get this thing going. Absolutely, man. So we decided to do this because, dude, we talk off air so much about our grievances with things that go on in the UFO field. And if there's one thorn in the side that has been bothering both of us, I want to get this out of the way before we get to the listener questions, which I think is going to be really fun. But we're going to have what I'm calling a mummy slash skeleton party right now. So let's take a drink and let's prepare for this. So let's start with the 2003 case.

This is the Atacama skeleton. How much knowledge do you have on this one, man? because I remember when this first started, and I remember when the first images started going around about it. And I will admit, it was extremely compelling and pretty interesting. But then I saw who was connected to this case. So what do you know about our little Atacama baby here? So it was discovered in 2003, it was in a Chilean town near the Atacama Desert. It was found by a guy named Oscar Munoz.

and he ended up selling it to a Spanish businessman. And eventually there were people that got wind of it. One notable individual, Mr. Stephen Greer, who, how do we, we're not fans. Let's just put it that way. We're not. Sorry. I'm going to have to clean that up. You were saying?

We're not fans of this individual. But on one of his documentaries, What the heck documentary was that? It wasn't the latest one. It was serious. Yeah, it was serious. And let me tell you, he was seriously talking about how this thing was an alien. Nice to pine.

Yeah. Well, I mean, no matter what, I mean, if you're a scientist and in the biologies, yeah, it's this is, we know this is an organism. It's not matched up to any primate, any ancient hominid, any modern primate, any thing that is known. So it's an unknown. Right. That's what discovery is about. And so, you know, the point I make to people is that also let it go where it goes.

I mean, it's a short skeleton. It's only, I think, like 15 or 16 inches long. Yeah. And eventually, Gary Nolan and his team actually did DNA studies on the skeleton. They found it to be, you know, human because we've never had alien bodies. I don't believe we've ever had alien bodies, and it certainly didn't look alien to me. It just looked like a child that obviously had some problems, some deformities of some kind. And now Gary Nolan is under fire for testing the skeleton.

It's DNA because they went about it unethically, and this thing is just a disaster all the way around. Absolutely. You know, and the thing is, this thing has been haunting us forever now. We thought it was kind of done. And now, you know, once they sort of, I'm going to put that in quotes, definitively said this was human. This was a stillborn of a female. Stephen Greer and his cronies, they refused to give up on this thing. You know, they said, we got to give this thing back.

Like, this is so unethical that we keep doing this. And Greer went so far as to say that this was a cover-up. within the scientific community. Yeah. Dude, this is, this is disgusting. It's, it's moral, and it's just plain stupid. I can't even believe that this is up for debate in the UFO community still. And I can't believe people like Carol Sue Rosen promote Greer's actions with this thing.

Yeah, you know, I used to respect this woman. And to see that she's doing this, it just, it disheartens me so much. Yeah, because it precludes the fact, like, we need to stop de-heaval. humanizing whatever we find in archaeological digs in order to get us to that next step where we think we discovered alien life. It is one of the most disgusting things I have ever come across. It is highly unethical. And it just gets my blood boiling. It's a 200-year-old skeleton of a stillborn child.

And let's be honest, to begin with, Gary Nolan thought this thing was eight years old. Like, what? it? What would make you think it's eight years old? But there was a recent article. It just came out like a couple days ago and I forget who put the article out, but basically saying like, you can look at features of the skeleton and say it's 100% human. It's a child. Like, what are these people thinking? And this is not the only case of this. I mean, oh, God. Right. There are, there are two others. 2003, this is when this sort of started.

So we learned our lesson, right, Rob? We would never do this again. No, no. We didn't learn our lesson at all. Of course, we have the Peruvian mummies that were recently discovered. I forget how long ago now, maybe a couple years ago now, that had, they had deformities. They had three fingers and I believe three toes. and they had supposedly elongated heads.

And for the longest time, they're touting these as alien mummies. Alien mummies. Nazca Peru. And so, yeah, that was, I believe it was either the talent of 2016 or 2017, maybe, even early when this came about. And so who was first connected to this? Because this guy is going to come up in our next one as well. Well, our favorite person from Mexico City, Mr.

Mr. Jaime Muson. My name is Jaime Mausanne. I am an investigative journalist, and I've been working as a journalist for the last 47 years of my life. Can you hear them? He's one of your favorites. I know he's one of your favorites. That's the sound of 7,000 people clapping for him at his be-witness event. but we'll get to that in just a minute

so the NASCAR Peru mummy Rob this what they sort of deduced from this and I know there's still tests being done on this they believe that this was almost an amalgamation of different body parts from different

mummies that were infused together this if you look at the photos of this thing it's got like this white powdery plaster over it the mummies are covered completely in this white dust.

But it's not just white dust. It's something that is going to really dry the skin and the skin will be able to survive for so many years. And they say this is what, you know, is masking that different body parts are put together. So whatever this thing is, it seems like there were, you know, grave robbers who kind of took piece by piece in Legoed this thing together. It may be hoping someone would find it someday and someone did find it. And I know that Jaime put a lot of money into this, you know, to get the thing.

But again, we are dealing with the remains of human beings and touting this as aliens. Now, no. It's ridiculous, man, because like, and I mean, like, it wasn't just, Jaime. It was gaya.com. Gaia is completely committed to the story. We're going to let you know if it's human, if it's non-human. Like I said, our whole mission is just pure curiosity. What could it be?

And to honestly give a journalistic approach to that, that is our mission. And that's what we hope to bring to you. Yes. Thank you. The documentary, the series of documentaries about it. And it's just like, did you guys even bother to like go through genetic testing before you just touted this thing as an alien? And that frustrates me more than anything. That's not even good science.

That's not even science at all. It's just speculation. Exactly, yes. And for a price, you get to follow, you know, their discoveries as they make them. This is just the beginning. This is not the end. Not even with the samples. There is so much more to come.

News slash, it's body parts from humans. Okay, so the most frustrating one out of these for me, man, was actually a couple years before the Peru mummy. And this was drum roll, preys. The Roswell. Slides. How nostalgic at this point. Yeah, right? So this sort of started almost a year before the quote-unquote Roswell Slides came out

when Mr. Tom Carrey, one of the original investigators, most well-known on the Roswell case, said at an event, we have a body and we have proof. So this kind of went under the radar, but, I remember reading about it and I was like, holy shit. What? What? He's just going to leave us hanging like that? And that really got the UFO community buzz, you know, that Tom Carrey, one of the lead investigators on Roswell, was saying that we have a body.

And then it kind of went silent for a while. Do you remember that? Yep. Yep. They didn't, nothing, nothing came out and then, oh, God. Oh, God. And then it all came out. Yeah.

Well, for one thing. Let's just describe this photo of this mummy. It's under glass, clearly under glass. It's also in a museum. You can tell it's in a museum. And I don't get where the alien portion comes. It's like even if you go on the description of the bodies that were supposedly found at Roswell, it is way too short for that. Right.

Exactly. Well, okay. And even, like you said, under glass in a museum with a placard. Yeah, placard. And you could tell that the placard was, I believe it was rearranged or moved so you couldn't actually see what it said. Because in the photo, you can see that it's just white. There's nothing you can discern from it. So obviously that was moved. But, Carrie, what are you thinking, man? You just shot yourself in the foot. Like, the guy, one of the guys that gave us the essential timeline to Roswell. And you go and you present crap like this, your credibility.

down the tubes. And for me, like, Roswell is one of those things. Like, when somebody asked me to recommend them a book, like, you give them the starter book. Like, you give them something that, well, maybe what their whistle or something like that. That's kind of what Roswell is. Because there's so much crap to Roswell, so much controversy that it's, it's almost a joke now. At least it is to me. I mean, there may be some people that are finding new avenues and stuff. Like, Nick Redfern's stuff is great, right? You know, it's an interesting theory that, you know, is completely plausible. But I think, like, the Roswell thing, we just...

People got to stop acting like they found the new hip thing. We found the bodies. Like, no, we haven't. Stop it. Yeah. Well, and here's the thing, man. Like, so this whole debacle went down. Jaime Mousan rented out this huge auditorium.

And it was Mexico City, right? Yeah. supposedly there's 7,000 or so people there. He packed the place because he's really, he's a celebrity there. And he said that they had an alien body. They had definitive proof that they found the Roswell alien, and there's proof, done, boom. Be witness. Witness the change of history.

Hiring your pay-per-view service now so you can enjoy the biggest event of all time. Hyden M. O'Son breaks to you the evidence that extraterrestrial beings and the UFO phenomenon are a reality of our planet, and that in 1947, people who came from the depths of the cosmos were recovered. And also, you could pay online to watch the entire event. This event lasted four and a half hours to show one fucking slide. Oh, my God.

So... It was David Ike-level madness. It reminded me of, like, the days of, like, you know, the freak shows, the circus. Yeah. You know, the circus was. was in town that day for for this event and again you mentioned tom carrie let's not forget don Schmidt being involved with this as well yeah the all-star roswell people and here's the thing with this one rob i don't know about you i still am questioning whether carry and schmidt like if they

really genuinely thought this was authentic and this was going to be it or if they knew all along that this was all a guise of this Adam Doe character who brought the slides forward was going to make this documentary about the slides. And that never came to be, apparently. I think Doe was behind this the whole time and duped everybody. Probably made off with a shit ton of money. But at the end of the day, this one really, really hurt the UFO community for a while. You know, it was a huge joke in the mainstream. And it was a huge joke to us as well.

You know, Don Schmidt, I will give him credit, you know, wrote a really long apology about it and said, I was, I just got caught up in it. I got excited. And, you know, this is just a lesson I've learned. That's okay, dude. But how many lessons do you have to learn before you can say, like, we don't have bodies? Like, give up. Right. We're over 70 years now.

You could stop with the bodies thing. You could just stop it. And they said they couldn't decipher that placard we were talking about. somebody did it a day later after the slide was out to the public. A day later. You're telling me you guys investigated this slide for years to see its authenticity. And in a day, a group of people was able to... Yeah.

It's like, we need to stop putting stock in the alien mummy thing. We just need to stop it. Just listen, like, we don't even know what an alien is. We just have this massive pop cultural thing where the alien has an enlarged head, almond-shaped eyes, and that's the only alien that we have. Like, no, we need to stop. We've never, we don't have physical proof of an alien. We just don't. Like, if you want to go so far as to say that Neil Armstrong was an alien for stepping foot on the moon, go ahead, go ahead.

That's fine. I like that. Yeah. But other than that, we just need to stop, specular. that human bodies found in the desert, because these were all found in the desert. Have you noticed that? Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Just human bodies found in the desert, don't speculate their aliens, people. Please, do not speculate their aliens. We don't have physical proof of an alien. Just stop it. Just stop it. You know what? I have nothing to add to that. Just stop it.

All right, my man. So moving on to another discussion you and I have had off air, the term, you know, UFO. Now, this is a big one under contention. As of late, I'd say, especially after Hillary Clinton, you know, went public with UAP in the press, you know, leading up to the election night. And, and you know, there's a new name. It's unexplained aerial phenomenon. Unexplained aerial phenomenon, really. Yep, UAP. That's the latest nomenclature. I like the old one. I like UFO. I don't know why. So this one, this one, it's hard because we're so, so conditioned to the acronym UFO when it comes to this topic. But it's really not good anymore for what we're dealing with.

So I'm going to let you take the lead on this one because this was, this was one you brought up to me first and foremost. So why isn't it, why is it inadequate? There we go. Well, if we go back to the origins, we go back to 52. and we're going to Project Blue Book, and they were kind of looking for a new term to describe these, because flying saucers just wasn't cutting it, because, I mean, there's so much ridicule to the term,

and not everything was a saucer. So it might have been Rupelt himself that came up with the term unidentified flying object. I believe it was, yeah. Yeah, and the problem that I have with the term is the word object. And the problem is that you've now, front-loaded the term. If we're taking UFOs into this larger context of something that may not be 100% physical, it doesn't totally fall in the realm of an object. It's something else beyond that.

So for me, object just, it's too limiting as to what a UFO could be. And also, too, the way that people throw around the term UFO, I don't know if they totally understand it because, like, what I'll hear in conversations all the time is like, well, it was unidentified and it was flying. So it's got to be a UFO. And like, no, that's not what the term UFO means. That's not what its intention was. The intention was, and I think the way Heinek put it was, you see something in the sky, uh, that remains unidentified long enough for someone to write a report about it. Yes. Or something like that, but God, I love him. Yeah, it's like not everything that's in the sky that you see is a UFO. It has the potential to be a UFO. But unless you, you're not, it's something like, but unless you're not, it's something like that's,

you got eyes and ears on it, and it's totally been investigated, then it's not really a UFO. I mean, even if you go to Hynek's long, drawn-out definition of a UFO in the UFO experience, it's, there's working parts there. I mean, you got the person that sees it, you've got, you got the object itself, and then the person that investigates it. So it's a little more complicated than we make it out to be, but also it's just very limiting. because, yeah, objects, realistically, a UFO, you're only observing it with one sense most of the time. Yeah. I mean, sometimes you hear something, you get two, but, like, that's pretty much it.

So I feel like UFO is definitely limiting to where people like John Keel, Jacques Valet, even Heinek towards the middle 70s on were, you know, working with this. and we're theorizing about it. Like, it's, object is just a little too limiting for me. And, you know, maybe, maybe Clinton was a little too, you know, a little too brash.

You need to dial it back a bit. You're not in the community lady. Yeah, she wishes. She wishes. Yeah, just because you hang with John Podesta, it doesn't mean you're part of this. Stop it. I know.

Fear of missing out on her part. Yeah. So I guess, you know, my question for you, Rob, would be then, What should we call them? If we're not going to use UFO anymore because of all the baggage it comes with that, what should we call these things?

Or should we just use all different acronyms at this point? I mean, I'm all for like singling in and expediting. But yeah, what do we do if we can't use this term that we've had for so long? Right. Well, I mean, UAPs, it's a good term in terms of it's not, it's broad. It's not limiting. It's good to go with. but maybe there is another term out there.

Maybe we'll come across it down the line, but I think UAP is a good start. Maybe we could refine it down the line, but it's a good start. It is a good start because you change the O to P for phenomena, but then you still have the aerial thing, you know? Yeah, yeah. So what about are the objects seen underwater or this and that? Yeah, it's just, it could go a million different ways.

So, you know, it's tough. It's tough. Yeah, and I mean, like, If you think about it, too, like, when we call them, you know, abductions, that's also a limiting term, too, because we don't fully know what's going on there. And we can't always document that the people that are being abducted have actually left physically. So, you know, that's another tough one, too. So it is. Yeah.

We're so, you know, in the UFO field in general, I'd say we're stuck with these terms that we, a lot of the older guard, I would say. refuse to adapt to or evolve with. So it's hard. It's hard because, you know, abductions and UFOs. We've dealt with this for so long, you know, but how do we get the field, quote, unquote, to move forward with these new terms? I guess we just do it one researcher at a time

and hope the rest will follow. And if not, you know, I'm going to leave you in the dust, guys. I'm sorry, guys and girls. I mean, that's why this field needs younger people, more young people to, you know, get some new, inject some new life into this. You know, it's definitely needed at this point because when you look at the phenomenon from the course of like the late 1800s all the way to now, it's evolved on its own. It's evolved to suit like kind of our needs and what we need to perceive it as. So why shouldn't we evolve with it?

I love that. Well, you did mention Hynek a couple times. And I have to ask you on the spot here. We had this past week a trailer released for the new history television show based on true events, it claims, called Project Blue Book, with our UFO dad as the main character. We have a situation in West Virginia. Family report has seen something falling from the sky. I get down there anyway. I need you to meet someone first.

The name's Dr. Alan Heineck. You want me to investigate flying saucers. I want you to help me prove to the public the truth. They don't exist. So I have to ask you, you being probably the biggest Heinek fan I have ever met in my life. What did you think, man? What did you think when you saw this trailer? The first thing that I thought was I need to throw my phone, just like throw it across the room because I was I was not.

thrilled with it. For the Heinek officinados, you're not going to find a lot good about this. Like, the first thing, like one of the first things this shows is the Flatwoods monster, which Heinek did not investigate. Right. And other things,

Heinek never saw alien bodies in any bunkers. Heinek never personally saw a UFO up close and all that stuff. That being said, if I could divorce myself from the fact that this is Jay Allen Heinek, I might be able to enjoy this, but it's going to be hard.

Agreed. This show looks slick. It looks very well written, at least from the dialogue I heard in the trailer. And again, like, kudos on them for finding some obscure cases. Flatwoods, Lubbock lights, I saw in there a little bit. What else did we have? A few others. But again, you know, like the fact that they say based on true events, yes, but having nothing to do. do with your main character. That is where I have a problem. Why couldn't they have just used some fictional character instead of taking the legacy of a hero in the UFO field and beyond, even the astronomy field, and silly his name with this fictional account? The case history, the actual case history, is interesting enough. Why do we have to add all this other stuff to it?

But again, being in the entertainment field myself, I understand that. artistic license and that creative process, you have to divorce yourself from facts sometimes. But in this case, we personally both have spoken to and reviewed the book of Mark O'Connell. Yeah, close encounters man. It's a phenomenal book. I mean, you could, there's a great story in there. and he investigated a number of great cases. I mean, like, I think one of my favorite facts from that book is that when he was going to investigate Lonnie Zamora's sighting, their car breaks down. He's hitchhiking all the way into Socorro because he's not going to wait around. Like, there's so many great cases from 47 all the way up to 69 if you want to go there.

And even beyond, you know, with QFOS and all the stuff they were doing. I don't understand why you need to embellish because like if you look at the tone of the trailer a bit, it almost kind of has a tiny bit of a horror element to it. Like it's it's suspenseful, but it's like trying to like rope you in because like the first shot is of this one guy in his car and then it automatically just shuts down and then bam there's a blue beam of light. And you know, like I don't think we need to go at it from a horror element because there aren't a lot of good. like even the alien abduction horror movies there aren't a lot of good ones so like there's enough like high strangeness on its own is a frightening concept uh when you think about it and in the fact that it just does not most of what happens just does not fit into your concept of what things are with that

being said i can kind of also understand too at the same time because i high strangers is not something that you could probably easily film a perfect example is uh the mothman prophecies. If you look at that movie, like, and, you know, I'm good friends with Rich Adam, and I've talked to him about the script, and he's like, they had to edit so much of that script that, you know, the really scary stuff they left out because it didn't make any sense. So high strangeness, not an easy thing to film. I'll watch it begrudgingly, and I'm probably going to be angry about it. But you know what? A tiny bit of me will enjoy this. I guarantee it. I was going to say the same thing, man. You know, we all.

UFO fanboys when it really comes down to it. Yes, we're researchers. Yes, we're investigators. Yes, we're podcasters. But at the end of the day, like, we're fanboys of UFOs. We really are. And I embrace that fullheartedly. And, you know, even just hearing Heineck, hearing that name on mainstream television, like, I got chills. And I got chills when the, the, um, Flatwoods monster scene played out in the trailer. I'm just like, Oh, my God, this is so cool. So at the end of the day, I'm going to watch it, and I'm probably going to enjoy it, because it looks entertaining as hell. And there are going to be those cherry-picking moments where we're going to be like, oh, Mantel, oh, Roswell, oh, uh, uh, Sikoro, you know, it's going to happen. And we're going to be excited. And then you and I and the other researchers are going to pick out the things that were wrong, and we're going to bitterly talk about it with one another. And that's, that's what television is. There's a million podcasts out there about every television show you can think of, and that's what they do.

So maybe we'll have to do that, a little Project Blue Book mini-soude thing once this thing starts. Oh, yeah. I think it'll be fun. But again, at the end of the day, the fact that Heinek is getting out there to the mainstream and the UFO topic, again, I'm all for it. Even if it is masked in entertainment and some inaccuracies, I'm still going to watch it. But it doesn't mean I'm not going to complain about it. Exactly. All right, my man.

So let's move on to some listener questions. I put this out a few days ago to see if anyone would bite. And we got some really interesting questions from listeners of both your show, the Our Strange Skies podcast, and somewhere in the skies. So I want to start with, let's see, let's see what I got here. This one is from Kevin. And he asks, is it possible that the creation of Space Force, Pugh-Pew!

was inspired by Intel about an alien threat. So what are your thoughts on this, this whole Space Force thing that Trump is doing? My administration is reclaiming America's heritage as the world's greatest spacefaring nation. The essence of the American character is to explore new horizons and to tame new frontiers. But our destiny beyond the earth is not only a matter of national identity,

but a matter of national security, so important for our military, so important, and people don't talk about it. When it comes to defending America, it is not enough to merely have an American presence in space. We must have American dominance in space. Do you have any thoughts on this? I have this picture in my head of somebody in Trump's cabinet, like playing like footage of Gary McKinnon talking about, you know, the, uh, whatever the heck project he was talking about. All planet officers, I believe. Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. Non-terrestrial officers. That's right. Um, and talking about all this crazy crap. And then, you know, you've got the, uh, the, the truthers coming forward and talking about their service and our, our space force that we already apparently have. And I, I really, I really don't know. Maybe the man just wants.

like to dominate the entire universe. His ego might be that big. I don't know. But it was, I'm trying to remember exactly what I did that day. I think I laughed for about five minutes when I saw the video because I'm like, I understand how my country works and I understand that the only way this is going to happen is if Congress approves it. We already spend enough on, you know, our military budget.

There's no way you're going to be able to ask people to pay. You're talking trillions more. There's no way that you could get that off the ground without, you know, taxing people like crazy. Here's an idea. Why don't they charge every person that goes to this big military parade he's putting on? Charge them each like, you know, 45 million each ahead maybe? That could work. You know, that's not a bad strategy.

Before I go any further, I do want to say I have nothing but respect for our military. Yeah, no. Please listeners don't take that as an offense. I highly respect them. Yes, they deserve a parade. If it's the best way to spend our money, that's a different question. But yeah, anyways, I interrupted. No, that's all good.

I just don't understand what would inspire someone to say we need a space force. Maybe this is like, you know, that leftover Reagan era Star Wars stuff that he's, you know, all giddy about or something. and maybe I don't know. I mean, they have been saying that this actually has been long before Trump was in office, that this was a possibility. And that a lot of a lot of people thought it was a good idea, including Neil deGrasse Tyson, who actually responded and said, I think it's a good idea. He said, you know, in case there's asteroids that ever reach the Earth, like at least there's a contingency plan ready for something like that 24-7 monitoring it, ready to blow it up. up if need be. He said, you know, in terms of like science and astronomy, like this is a good idea. But again, space force, it's military branch. So it's just funneling more money into the military

industrial complex, if you think about it. And money that we don't have, like you said. So, that's kind of my thoughts on it. I'm on the fence. You know, I'd rather explore space, you know, and help save our planet rather than militarize it even more. Yeah. Here's a, here's a better idea. why don't you increase NASA's funding? How about we do that? I'm all for it. You know, instead of cutting the funding, how about you give more money?

Yeah. I'm with you. Done. Yeah. Let's see. Kevin also asks, what do other countries say about UFOs and aliens? Which country do you guys think is most open to disclosure?

What do you think, Rob? Disclosure. That's fun, fun word. I've kind of come down to this theory that I don't think disclosure. is a real thing because I don't think our military knows anything about UFOs. So it's kind of just like that buzz term you throw around just because like automatically your government has to know more. I don't think there's any government on this planet that knows any more than any of us.

But if you look at even in countries like Mexico, you look at England, the United Kingdom, you look at Belgium. all these places are a hell of a lot more open about it than we are. And I don't think disclosure is going to be a thing that any government's going to give to us. It's just I don't think they know what we think they know. I think they know maybe just, if anything, a tiny bit more, but nothing. I don't think they know anything substantial. I would have to agree.

Yeah, the only place I can really think of that really kind of looked into it was France. You know, with Kaipan, Sepra, you know, they were the most open about it in terms of investigating. Yep, yep, exactly. Brazil, like you mentioned as well, Mexico, like they all embrace the topic of UFOs and aliens, whether or not like disclosure is going to happen through another country. I don't know, but like you said, I agree. I don't think our military and or government, that big overarching word government, we have to remember how compartmentalized it actually. is that they don't know. But my friend Robbie Graham says, they may not know what's going on out there or can control it, but they control the information that can get to the public.

So that's kind of where I leave that. I don't know. Yeah, not just the information, but the way that it's perceived. Yes. There's definitely that aspect that I don't think a lot of people give consideration to. But like, look at popular culture. That's been formed. I mean, it's not formed in, like, really any kind of truth.

It's just gray alien heads. And actually, most of the time, they're green now, even though nobody reports ever seeing green aliens. I know. I do wonder where that sort of started. I don't know, little green men. Yeah, it's interesting. Well, okay, so let's see.

Kevin's next question. Kevin, Kevin really, really hit it on a park. He's got a bunch of them. He did. I love it. Locked and loaded. According to Cheryl Cost of, data, UFO sightings have dropped off in recent years.

Could this be due to lack of reporting, or do you think our technology has advanced to the point where they may be more cautious to approach? Hmm. That's a really good question. I think what it comes down to is more people aren't reporting their UFO sightings. And to me, I think, you know, there are some factors to that. I discussed some of it on my podcast. When you, like, when move on and the whole John Ventre thing, like, I get that people have

their own views and I get how other people have a right to express those views. But at the same time, if you want to harbor someone in your organization who expresses those views, well, hey, guess what? There's going to be a certain sector of people that aren't going to want to report UFOs to your organization. You mean everyone but white males? Yes, exactly. Oh, okay, okay.

Yeah, and that's problematic. That makes your data problematic. That makes it skewed quite a bit. And if you look at the reporting centers, look at Mufon's website. It is the most dated thing I think I have ever seen. I don't think it's been updated since probably the early 2000s. And in having experience with their CMS, it looks god awful. It really needs updating badly.

And I mean, even Newfork, their website, like, they pretty much want you to fill a PDF out and send it to them. I can't do that. Yeah, like, um, don't you know this. Yeah. This generation, don't you understand? We're, we're on phones and stuff. It's instant. Like, why have, why has nobody upgraded this thing?

And sure, I'm sure a portion of it comes down to money, but you'd figure Mufon of all places that, yeah, Maybe they don't, maybe they're not swimming in it, but they're got to have enough money to upgrade their system. I mean, I mean, where is the membership dues going? Yeah, exactly. It was something like New Fork, you've got a one-man band in a, you know, a abandoned missile silo taking all these reports. Like, I get that. He's, he's on the older side. He doesn't, he probably isn't tech savvy when it comes to, like, the website.

Like, you leave the dude messages on his answering machine. to report these things. Yeah. You know, that's how you do it if you're not going filling out a PDF online. But in terms of Mufon, you're right, man. Like, they have, clearly have people who are tech savvy within the organization, and they have funds. And you're right.

It's just, I don't get it. I don't get it. But you know what? In terms of, like, his point of have they had the reports dropped off or has the activity dropped off? That's another big one. that I kind of was looking at. I think people are looking to the skies less, too, now and days.

And, of course, that's also going to dramatically affect reporting, if they're not actually looking in the sky and seeing things. I also think that it's quite possible that if some sort of intelligence has and is visiting our planet, maybe they've started to move on at this point. You know, that's kind of what the comedic episode of The X-Files was in this season 11. The aliens finally came down and told Mulder, Yeah, we're here, but we're never coming back. We've sort of given up on you guys.

So goodbye. Good luck. See ya. So I thought that was a brilliant way to sort of cap off the X-Files. That should have been their finale. But maybe it's true. Maybe we aren't as, you know, such great importance to this Galactic Federation any longer. Maybe they're just on vacation.

What if the – I imagine it's not easy coming all the way here, adapt. to our atmosphere, trying to stay off radars, be elusive, abduct people. Maybe they just needed a really good vacation. Maybe they're, you know, on Venus or something. I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, maybe. It's a thing.

But like, when you think about, like, the all-time great cases going back the last 70 years, how many of them are from the year 2000 and up? Not that many. You have the. The Southern Illinois sightings, you have O'Hare, you have Stephenville, and these are just the American sightings. I'm not even talking about the sightings in other countries, but like those are really the only three that come to mind. Oh, and then maybe Tinley Park, you know, because a bunch of people who are coming from OzFest, saw some UFOs. I dig it.

Yeah. I'm sure they weren't on anything at that time. No, but I mean, like, you know, like, that's one of the things that I miss more than anything. Like, please cancel, please cancel ancient aliens, bring back UFO hunters. I don't care, you know, how crazy they got on that show, because they did here and there. I would rather have that than ancient aliens all day long. Agreed. I loved UFO hunters.

For anyone out there, if you haven't watched the show, please watch it. Please, please go watch it. Bill Burns is fucking crazy, and I love it. He is, but like, you know what? He gets things done with his craziness. I will give him that much. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, and he's not afraid to go there.

You know, while he's got the skeptical investigators out there, actually, like, trying to replicate a UFO event and actually find answers, aliens. It's aliens. I love it. I love Bill Burns so much. Yeah. Oh, man, bring back UFO hunters. Please, please.

All right, so here's the last one from Kevin. I think we've given Kevin his time here. This is a good one, too. What planet or moon in our solar system do you think has the best chance of harboring life? This one's interesting. I actually spoke to Seth Shawstack at AlienCon, maybe, what was it, like a month ago now? And I actually asked him that same question. So I'm so happy Kevin brought this up.

He's the senior astronomer at the SETI Institute for anyone who doesn't know. And he told me, he believes it to be a moon, actually, a moon. moon of Saturn called Enceladus. I hope I'm pronouncing that right. I'm not good with names. Scientists think there are reservoirs of liquid water that lie beneath the frozen surface and, you know, they're warmed by the gravitational interactions between the moon and other moons on Saturn. So he thinks that's our best bet. I don't know. Do you have any ideas? Rob, you're brushed up on your astronomy here? Not really. Like, I brought you on, man. Come on. I know. I know. I kind of

of rail against it a little bit just because like, uh, I'm, I'm so worn out by the extraterrestrial hypothesis. I'm just like, um, I, I don't know. I don't think we don't have the technology to visit them. Maybe when they come to visit us, we'll figure that out. But it's just, it's something that I don't even think about. Largely because like at the same time while it's exciting, we're so, I'm so worn out over, hey, we found this many planets that could support life in the Goldilocks zone or We found this many stars that could support life. And to me, that's almost kind of limiting because your parameters for what life is is limited to what we are and what we have on this planet. And while I can totally entertain that, to me, it's just limiting.

So whenever I hear new information about, oh, we found a planet that has water on it and could totally support life. I'm just like, cool, I dig it. When are the aliens showing up? Exactly. Yeah, we do. We always base it on, you know, our composition, you know, life on Earth, you know, the carbon makeup of us. Why does it have to be that? Why can't life thrive on, you know, a methane planet or a planet full of arsenic?

I don't know. You're right, though. Yeah, yeah. Like, just bring me, bring me the aliens. Awesome. Kevin, thank you for those questions. Next up is Saul. So I've got a good one here.

If there is one UFO incident or event that you would wish to investigate and solve, if that would be possible, he adds, which would you choose and what do you think the conclusion would be? Yeah, the case that has, oh, God, it has, it has bugged me for years is Lonnie Zamora. And part of the reason why Lonnie Zamora's case gets to me so much is just, he's this innocent cop that's just in the wrong place at the wrong time. and one of the most charming things about him is that when all is said and done, the guy's upset because he didn't meet his quota for tickets for the day. Like, this is your average Joe, has one of the most transformational UFO experiences of his life, and he ends up getting ridiculed off the police force, ends up retiring from the police force. And the thing is, is like, when you boil down all the evidence, all the facts,

you get to the nitty gritty of it. It's either from Earth or it's not from Earth. Those are the only explanations that can even fit. And we know it's a good case because we have a correlated siting from some family at a gas station that said, hey, our car was buzzed by a UFO. When did this happen, Rob? I'm sorry, this is the Sequoro case, correct? Oh, the Socorro, yeah, it was in 1964. Thank you, thank you.

Yes, in New Mexico. And, yeah, we can just, like, run down the basics of it for those that don't know. Why not, yeah? You know, I'm trying to open the show up to a lot of people who may not be familiar with these things. So this might be a good primer for him, for sure, because this is one of my favorite cases as well. If you don't mind, I know you have extensive, you've done your homework on this one for sure. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

So Lonnie Zamora, he's pursuing a car south of town. It's about 545 in the afternoon. And all of a sudden, he hears this really loud, roaring sound, and he sees this blue light, this blue beam of fire just descending into the desert. At first, he just thinks that it's the mayor's old dynamite shack, and it's about to explode, because, you know, every, you know, outskirts of town needs a dynamite shack. So he approaches the dynamite shack. And he sees at first what he believes to be an overturned car

because he can see people outside. This episode is brought to you by Netflix. Most valuable promotions in Netflix are hosting a blockbuster triple headliner Saturday, May 16th. Ronda Rousey returns to face fellow woman's MMA pioneer Gina Carrano in the main event. Plus co-main's Nate Diaz versus Mike Perry. And the best heavy weight in the world, Frances Ngano versus Felipe Lenz. Watch Rhonda Rousey versus Gina Carrano. Live only on Netflix.

Saturday, May 16th and 9 p.m. Eastern Center time, 6 p.m. Pacific time. It's a road about a half a mile, and then I stopped my car, and I got out and looked up. And I could see a white looking object in the distance. I thought it was an overturned car at first, but I got into a patrol car. I went up closer to it. And when I started to get out of the car, I could, I heard a big, roer. As I got to it, I could see a couple of, look like a couple of coveralls hanging from a close line. I couldn't see what it was, but it looked like a couple of coveralls.

When he gets closer, what he realizes is, no, it's not an overturned car. It's an egg-shaped object that has landing pods down, and there are two humanoids wearing these white coveralls just outside the craft doing whatever they're doing. And when one of them sees Lonnie Zamora, they get, they got this shocked look on their face. They get back into their UFO. And the blue stream of fire, it lifts the craft up into the air and then it silently flies off. And Lonis Zamora, just a really salt to the earth guy, calls in for backup. And his buddy, Sergeant Chavez shows up.

And they go and they go looking at the landing site. find that there are bushes that are singeing, they find marks in the ground. Yeah, this case pretty much ruined Lonnie Zamora's life. Yeah. Unfortunately. But it's become kind of a stronger case

over the years, and even Jacques Valet has this nice little anecdote about a UFO sighting from earlier the day in New York of a craft that matches the description, of course. When Zamora reported,

it, he talked about seeing some kind of symbol on the side, but this New York farmer that came across it didn't see it. But he did encounter these two humanoid beings, and they told him that they were from Mars, and that they wanted fertilizer.

So the farmer goes and gets the fertilizer, and as he's leaving, the craft lifts off and disappears, he brings the fertilizer back, though. And the next morning, when he goes out to this plot of land, which he was he was looking forward to increase his farmland.

He goes back out there. The fertilizer's gone. So, you know, this is one of those really weird fun cases that, yeah, if I could solve that, I would totally be, I would be elated. I would retire. I wouldn't even need to do a podcast anymore. I just, you know, go soak it up or something. Go it a day. I love it.

I love it, man. That's one of my favorite cases as well. Goofy is all hell, but again, such a straight shooter that you can't help but believe this guy. You can't help it. There's another silly case we're going to cover a little later here as well, one of the questions that we have. But for me, I think it would have to be Rendellsham. You know, I was looking for a really obscure case, but I kept coming back to Britain's Roswell. This happened in 1980 in Rendlesham Forest, which was between two joint military bases,

in England. There was three consecutive nights of UFO events in this forest. A ton of military personnel were sent out to investigate it. There was a craft that was seen hovering above. One of the bases, lights coming down over the nuclear bunkers that were secretly nuclear weapons were being housed at one of the bases at the time, unbeknownst to England. The American-owned base was hiding them. Supposedly a craft landed, a couple officers touched it, and then this thing shot up, disappeared. And it's crazy, man. It's a crazy case. It's well documented, but there were so many witnesses to it. And that's what really got me. There's documents, there's audio recordings. There's the first ever lawsuit that was won by one of the officers that involved

an actual UFO event as the cause of the officer's ailments after this all happened. And And it's just so full of weird shit that for me, what I think my conclusion with this case would be is that it was some sort of M.K. Ultra-like thing. And I know my mentor, Peter Robbins, if he hears this, is going to hate me for saying that. Because he did write, like, one of the definitive books on the case, a British bestseller. But the way I look at it, you know, these guys were drugged after the events happened to try to get them to, tell the truth about what they'd experienced and whatnot. A lot of the officers said they were in like a dreamlike state while it was all happening. And it seemed just so odd, so weird, and also staged.

That was another big thing. Like, it almost seemed too good to be true in many ways. I think maybe this was some sort of psychop. This was during the Cold War. This is in the 80s, you know, some shady shit was going on, man. But the way it was all handled. It just, to me, it seemed like it was almost planned. And I don't know how else to put that.

I'm sure there's so much to contradict everything I just said. But at the end of the day, it happened. There's documentation of it. There's audio recordings. Sorry, what were you going to add? Well, like, when you think about it, like, what's the other really famous case from that time that actually shares a lot of features of the Rendelsham case. Cash Landrum.

If you look at Cash Landrum, the object that they saw was like, it had harsh geometrical patterns. It was like diamond shaped. Right. Whereas in Rendlesham, it was this like, it was like a triangle on top of a triangle. You have the witnesses that both experienced, you know, ill health effects from this object.

And they both end up suing the government over this. You're right. I forgot about that. Yeah, Cash Ledger, that was in Texas, correct? Yep. It was in Texas, and I think it was like, I want to say it was like the day, maybe day before, day after. You're right. Yeah. Yeah. Two women, a little boy, they witnessed it and they all had elements afterwards, radiation sickness, which also a lot of the people in the Rendlesham case had. And then they went out there with Geiger counters and those things were fucking going nuts. I mean, clearly there was some sort of technology emitting very unhealthy doses of radiation at both these events. So you do really have to wonder. You have to wonder.

I don't know. So in terms of that, I'd say Rendelsham, for me, it just all seemed too good to be true. But if anyone hasn't heard, go to YouTube right now and type in Bass Commander Recordings, Rendlesham Forest. or anything, Charles Halt, Rendosham Forest. You can hear the audio recordings of the base commander doing a play-by-play of what was happening in the forest that night. And it's terrifying. It's terrifying listening to these tapes. So yeah, that's it for me.

If I could solve one case, for me, it would have to be Rendezum. So let's move on to our mutual friend here, Rosie from the Rabbit Hole Motel podcast. She's got a couple really good ones. And these are actually for you, Rob. get ready brother buckle yourself up her first question here is here's one i think rob will have something interesting to say why do you think ufo phenomena have different eras there's time periods where it seems to be mostly aerial sightings then it becomes about abductions for a while i know he's very interested in how weird the 70s get it's all like they're fads of some sort so what do you make

of that man UFOs throughout the decades it's kind of like the jacques belay at aspect again, where he talks about how the phenomena changes to fit our worldview in a certain sense. You go from airships in 1896 to 1897, and then it's pretty quiet for a while. And then you go to 42 in the Battle of Los Angeles, whatever happened there. And that's still something that's hotly contested, mostly because we only have one real eyewitness that has come forward to actually talk about it and his, I believe his name is C. Scott Littleton. And he actually wrote a book about what it was like to grow up in Los Angeles around that time. So you have that and then stuff just goes crazy in L.A. They're shooting in the air and maybe they

get the idea, well, we'll come back in a few years and see if anything has changed. So you hit 47. And despite the fact that they were calling them flying saucers, They all weren't saucers. They were discs, which you can call, you know, a spade of spade or whatever. But to me, that's a totally different thing. From there, they've kind of, you know, stayed within the same, you know, kind of configurations. You had the triangles start to show up in the 60s. But, yeah, it just seems to curtail itself to whatever era we're in and our understanding of our place in the universe.

The 70s were a really weird time for abductions, and a lot of them go like under, not underreported, but just they're not talked about, you know, Pascagoula, that has got to be the Pascagoula abductions, Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker. Holy crap, those beings. Let's see, the descriptors, they had, they were like five feet tall, had wrinkly skin, which makes me always think of the Michelin Man. and then they had like carrot like appendages on their head. They had lobster claws and elephant feet. I don't even know where you begin with that. Yeah. And it gets weirder and weirder.

There's a case that I talk about on Patreon on my Patreon. It would actually be a free episode so everybody will be able to check it out, but it's the abduction of this man named Lee Parrish. He was abducted in Kentucky. in 1977, and he was abducted by machine-like beings. He was driving home from a friend's house late at night, and he gets taken up aboard this craft. And what he sees before them is this really large black.

It almost looks like a wall to his left. He sees this white machine in front of him, and then he sees this red one on his right. And they do these experiments on him with these arms that are attached, and then they deposit him back in his truck like 30-some-odd minutes later. It is one of the weirdest cases I have ever read. I did one on, I did an episode on the David Stevens abduction, which the beings in that had mushroom-shaped heads with, they had really large, kind of black eyes with white pupils,

and they had webbed hands. The 70s are just weird. I love it. Yeah, and then when you transition into the 80s, you get these archetypal grays and like kind of the similar looking grays. And it seems like, you know, Whitley Streber kind of just popularized these beings and that's what everybody interacted with. But that's not always the case.

And I mean, even in your book, you've talked to people who reported very, very strange-looking. beings that I've never come across before or since. So there's definitely a variety, but I do think it's a phenomenon that shapes itself around our, not worldview, but our view of the universe and everything around us. So yeah, it's definitely one of the weird features of the phenomenon for sure. Yeah, absolutely. And I love that about it. It's extremely amorphous. It tries to relate to maybe, you know, what's going on in our society and culture at the time, just to have some sort of resemblance, you know, to communicate something to us. What that is, I have no idea when it comes to a mushroom head in black eyes or lobster claws.

But at the end of the day, like, that's what it is. And that's what it's, you know, trying to, that's what it's showing us. And it's up to us how we interpret that and how we give it meaning and purpose, I think. Yeah. It's fascinating. So Rosie's next question is, in the history of public acceptance of citing claims, It seems like things are changing, less belittling and teasing and fewer mocking news stories. I give credit to millennials who tend to honor everyone's different perspective, journey than previous generations.

There's lots of good with this. It's exciting to watch the shift in the waters. But how do you both see that this could also cause problems? How do we proceed with caution and not end up reaffirming to the less invested public that this phenomenon is something silly? that was a marathon. You know, that's a tough one, just because there's always going to be an element of this phenomenon that's just not going to be taken seriously by whatever groups of people. It might be, maybe the older crowd is definitely not open to it and the younger crowd is,

but you're always going to have a large, to me, a large portion of the population that is not even going consider this an actual thing. I don't think it's any particular one thing that is going to prevent people from, you know, looking into this anymore. Because like if you if you look at the crazy cases of the 70s compared to now, a lot of UFO sightings are, I would say, tamer. At least in the public, like, we don't hear an awful lot about abduction reports today. Right. And I think, you know, maybe that has something to do with the fact that, you know, those that were investigating it were very, you know, they tried to keep a public face about themselves. And you don't have as much of that anymore. I mean, like, Kathleen Martin's doing great work with Mufon, but that's with Mufon. It's, it's not going beyond that. So I think largely it's, you know, part of it comes down to who's now shaping this phenomenon, the people that are bringing this. information of the public. You know, it's being, I think, reshaped by different people, but I don't think there's going to be any major block or any major thing to prevent people from, you know,

even considering this. It's just going to come down to the perspectives that these people have. I agree, yeah. And I think another big thing is we spend so much time trying to legitimize the topic with credible cases, like what to the stars is doing, bringing military footage to the public of like very highly advanced aircraft that pilots are witnessing, you know, some of the most credible witnesses we could possibly have. And yeah, that's what's getting out to the mainstream right now and making it more acceptable. But it's a double-edged sword because you and I both know that what for every military witness there is, there's also a civilian witness seeing super back shit crazy stuff.

And we can't ignore that. You know, we can't play it down because we're doing a disservice, but to both the witness, their testimony, and to the phenomenon. You know, again, we're not dealing with just fucking metal saucers zipping through the air. We're dealing with every type of phenomena you can possibly think of, possibly interconnected with other things that are happening to people. So I do wonder, you know, as, the topic becomes more mainstream and possibly acceptable, what about all the really, really weird stuff that's going on?

Is that going to sort of teeter off and we're only going to look at these reports that are being given to us through ready, Rob, drip, drip, disclosure? I don't know. I really don't know. Yeah, it's tough to really say because, like, when I do look at these, like, The cases that are, you know, the ones that people cite from 2000 to 2018, I just, they are very tame. Yeah. Even for, even for Commander David Fraver's story. Because, like, the video that's been provided is not, it's not a video from his plane.

It's a video from another plane that went out later that day. So for me, it's just, it's just. It's so tame right now that it just doesn't seem like there would be a lot of barriers to being open to this. It's just, it's changed so much just in the people that have investigated it, the people who have reported it to the public. So in all honesty, maybe it's the fact that it's not, we're trying to make it a public thing again. At least to the star

seems to be trying to make this a public thing, although I don't think we can do what Tom DeLong thinks you can and just strong arm the government into releasing all of this information. That's not how it works. And you could go to jail

for that if you just, you know, release information without getting you know, without getting it declassified. So it's really tough. I, I, yeah. I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, don't really know, you know? Like, beyond that, it's just, we don't have those, like, killer cases

like we used to. I know. And maybe it's just because we don't have the investigators out in the field doing this as much. Yeah, that could be it. Yeah. Yeah, I agree with you. Yeah, it seems to have teetered off like Sheryl Costa's analysis would tell us, but yeah, we don't have Rosas. We don't have Rundlesham's. We don't have those anymore. But who knows? Maybe we'll get one. Or Maybe this is it. Maybe we have to accept the sobering and depressing fact that UFO phenomenon might be coming to an end. I know millions of people who would disagree with me and say it's still happening every day. And maybe it is.

Maybe it is. I don't know. All right. Here's another one for you, my man. Considering your first time on my show, we talked all about the men in black. This question comes from Val. She asks, why is it that, MIBs, assuming they're connected, are so often out of date, but only in a past, but never future manner, such as their clothes, their speech, their mannerisms.

Do they actually not know when they're coming from here, or are they making a point that they're not from our time or possibly outside of it? That's a loaded question, but really, I get what she's saying, you know, like they, you talked even about, like, how weird and strange the men in black seem to be. disconnected from the present time they're in and even like simple human mannerisms at times. So yeah, what do you make of all that? Either they're the best actors that we have on this planet. And they just act in these really odd ways. And we also have to take into consideration here, too, is that the men in black phenomenon, as it is such a varying phenomenon. Sometimes it's somebody who acts definitely like a government agent is just saying, hey, shut the hell up or we'll take care of you.

As opposed to like the Herbert Hopkins type encounters or the Shane Sovar type encounters that appear to be maybe, you know, beings from some other time or place or planet or whatever. It's such a varying topic. In terms of why they dress and what the vehicles they turn. and all that stuff, it could be just a, yeah, it could be that disconnect between, hey, we're, we're not from around here. And we, we kind of want to, you know, give you a clue as to that. Because, I mean, like, there are even cases reported of abduction cases where people see aliens wearing very strange and out of place outfits. Like, Whitley Streber's, their, his last encounter in the bedroom when he asked for quote unquote confirmation.

there was an alien wearing a double-breasted suit. Nice. And I mean... That fancy motherfucker. Yeah, right? And there's... Because when I had Rich Hadamon to talk about abductions, he pointed out this one letter that Whitley and Anne got in the communion letters where this, I believe it was a woman,

but it was hard to tell because you couldn't totally make out gender in every letter. But this one woman claimed to see on board this craft an alien wearing a World War I style helmet with a green trench coat. So you have that kind of weird stuff, you know, all over the place. As to its significance, it's tough to say. You could speculate all day long that it's maybe just the, they have out-of-date fashion stuff. I don't know. They could. They could just be, you know, trying to get that signal across that we're not from around here and we don't, we just kind of want to tip you off about that or whatever. It's such a varied thing. So it could be a number of things. But it makes for entertaining stories. I'll tell you that much. Oh, absolutely. It keeps us going. You know, I still go back to, you know, Paul Cornell's sauce. country saucer state comic book series where I think it's the the military playing pranks on people.

You know, I love that. The entire Men and Black phenomenon is just a prank that they play to entertain themselves. So maybe they're, maybe it's something like that too. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, you never know. All right. So our next question comes from Scott.

And he wants our takes on the Aztec case of 1948. So are you familiar with this one at all? Yeah, I'm a bit familiar with it. Me too. Probably not as much as I should be, but I've got some thoughts on it. What do you think? The interesting thing is, is like if we look at the highly publicized crash cases, so, I mean, we could quote a couple of them off the cuff here. Kexburg. We, you know, that happened in real time.

We've got Roswell, which took, if you think about it, over 40 years to actually, and maybe even longer than that. I think it was more towards the 50th anniversary that it really kind of just blew up. But I remember being a kid and like it was the fact that it ended up on unsolved mysteries that people just started taking an interest in this case. I mean, Stanton Friedman was there in 78 when somebody just, you know, happened to mention, oh, you should go talk to. Jesse Marcel. Okay, great. But it took forever for that case to come about. And even the Cape Gerardo crash. I mean, Dean Aliotto was talking about that on your show and how he's looking into that case. And there's a woman named Linda Wallace who's been looking into that case for years interviewing alleged eyewitnesses to it. And she actually put out a great book called Covert

Retrieval a few years ago. So if, if you... if you're interested in the Cape Gerard O'Crash, which happened in 41, you know, six years before Roswell. For Roswell, yeah. Yeah, yeah, go check out that book. It's a really great book. With Aztec, it's, it was ruled a hoax, and now it's not a hoax, and it's kind of confusing. But to begin with, it started with Frank Scully, and his book was Behind the Flying Saucer. Yes, yep.

And he reported, I think, a number of. crashes in there, but one of them was the Aztec New Mexico crash. And then it turned out that there were two individuals, Silas Newton and Leo Gabauer. It was claimed that they made up this story in order to sell fake UFO wreckage. They were known con men at this point, too. They were. But, you know, that's where Scully said he got his story from. And, you know, a few years ago, Scott and Suzanne Ramsey put out this book, the Aztec UFO incident, I believe it is. And, you know, they talk to numerous eyewitnesses. I'm kind of on the fence about it.

You know, it's interesting, but like, how do we go from hoax to legitimate here? Yeah. It usually goes the other way. Yeah. Yeah. I'm with you, man. I don't know what to make of it. And it's, what's even more interesting is that it happened in New Mexico, only less than a year after Roswell.

So a lot of people just believe this was, they were trying to bank off of Roswell and be like, oh, we had a crash too, you know? So I don't know. Again, it was proven a hoax almost from the start. I don't know. I will be honest, I have not read the book by the Ramsey, so I cannot definitively say, if it's a hoax or not, clearly. But there are those out there who do believe it. Stan Friedman is open to the possibility that it could have happened.

But, yeah, I don't put much stock in the Aztec case, to be honest. I think we have much better cases with documentation and way more evidence that something actually happened. Yeah, and I mean, even the Cape Girardeau crash, there's allegedly a photograph of these people holding up an alien, And whether that exists truly exists, I don't know. And like, here's to kind of put this into perspective, okay? If we're talking about Aztec right now, it was ruled a hoax. That kind of puts a big, you know, X in it for me, as opposed to Cape Girardeau, which initially came forward from a third-hand source, not even the second-hand source,

a third-hand source. You know, it came forward from Charlotte Mann, who was, I believe, the granddaughter, of Reverend William Huffman who, you know, Huffman told his story to his wife and then his wife on her deathbed told it to Charlotte Mann. So in any case,

I believe that one a little bit more than I do Aztec. And we're talking about your hand testimony. Yeah, yeah. That's a really good point though, man. Yeah, yeah, that's a good one. I suggest people check that out

the Cape Juret O'Kiss in Missouri, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. really good one. Shag Harbor as well, which will be coming up the anniversary in October. That's a good one out of Nova Scotia. All right. Here we go. I've been waiting for this one. This one comes from a listener, Chris. He would like to know what the both of us think about the Billy Meyer case. Yes. I really hope Michael Horn is listening to this. I'm going to have to tag him in the episode. I've read that it's all been a big hoax, Chris says, yet it spawned this hippie-dippy-dipy starseed astro-healing movement that just seems so damn delusional to me.

That's a really good descriptor. Kudos on that, Chris. Yeah, so I've definitely got an answer for this one. But, Rob, what do you make of the entire Billy Meyer affair, the one-armed Swedish farmer? I'll try to keep it simple. I think he's 100% bullshit. but for me, the thing about Billy Meyer is they, his photos are hoaxed. 100%. They've proven that.

That they found the model. I mean, it's like Ed Walters, except like Mufon determined that the model was not his or whatever. For Billy Meyer, it was. And I think what we also have to take into consideration is like, despite being this, this hippie-dippy kind of dude, He has some very racist leanings. And if you go and you read some of his stuff, it is definitely racist. So definitely don't put stock into him. And I'm going to kind of go on a little, maybe a little tirade here.

And like, that's what tonight's for, man, take a drink. Well, you know, this is going to, this is going to alienate a certain sect of people. And this is going to alienate X-Files watchers. Oh my God. I'm going to hang up on you. No, no, no, no. Just give me out. Okay.

So, I don't think a lot of people realize that the poster on the wall that says, I want to believe, that's a Billy Meyer photo on that. It is. It's in my living room right now framed. Yeah. And like, take into consideration. Like, the words I want to believe and the fact that the photo is, it's pulling the rug out from underneath your eyes.

Do you think Chris Carliners? Carter meant to do that. Maybe. I, you know. Or he was like, oh, that's a really good photo. It's very clear. Let's use that. I don't know.

I mean, it depends on how much, you know, how into the phenomenon you think Chris Carter was. And like, I don't think he was into it as much as like, you know, people may make out to be. But it's like one of those things where like that show promoted that phrase, I want to believe. and I believe that phrase has been damaging at least in terms to like the public perception

of UFOs belief has nothing at all to do with this phenomenon belief does not confirm or deny the existence of anything so if you're going around saying I want to believe

get that out of your vocabulary I'm just going to say it now get it out of your vocabulary if you want to take this seriously And the other phrase that I rail against from the X-Files that has embedded itself into popular culture, the truth is out there. I don't think for one second, like when anybody says, we're looking for the truth, that may be true, but you need clues before you even get to the truth. I don't even think we have a damn clue at this point. But don't jump to shark to say, hey, we're looking for the truth.

Now get a clue first and then we'll look for the truth. Welcome to X-Files Bashing Hour with Rob Christopherson. Don't get me wrong. I do love the X-Files. Whenever I want to get romantic about UFOs, I go watch the X-Files. Of course, man. Yeah, of course. You're a shipper.

I get it. Yeah. Whenever I need to reconnect with life, I throw on Jose Chung from outer space because I believe it's the best episode of television ever produced. It's that great to me. So I don't hate the X-Files. I hate what the X-Files has embedded into popular culture. Let me just put it that way.

And if we're going to cite anything here, I do believe it was Richard Doty that said he worked on the X-Files and that he even wrote a couple episodes of the X-Files. So if that's any indication there. Right. Our favorite disinformation agent, for sure. Yeah. He very well could be listening to this. I like Doty.

He's growed on me a lot, and he supports my work, and I'm going to have to get him on the show at some point. But, you know, before we leave both Billy Meyer and The X-Files, I always found it very ironic that the truth is out there was their slogan. And then their other slogan was, trust no one. Yeah. It always really threw me. I'm like, hmm. Which do I go with here? But that was kind of the point of the show.

So, all right, going back to the Billy Meyer case, it is so wrought with contention that it makes my heart burn. I get so much indigestion just when I hear this. You know, he's claimed contact experiences with humanoid beings since the age of five. He claims to be a prophet. He started a religious movement. He's apparently super racist, which I didn't know about. And he has produced many photos. videos, like you said, that have been

proven to be hoaxed. This dude, Michael Horn, appears out of nowhere and becomes the official spokesperson for Billy Meyer. And, all right, man, this is, I kind of made this connection not too long ago, and I know

I'm not the first to make it, so I don't pretend to be all smart about it, but this is Scientology all over again, if you think of it. Oh, yeah. The Billy Meyer followers, it is a cult. I will say that, and I'm sorry to anyone who listens to this show that believes in this case, this is a cult. Meyer is Elron Hubbard and his religion was hijacked by Horn, who is David Miscavage.

If you think about it, you know, he's made it into a money-making venture. He is taking the belief system of people and he is exploiting it to the endth degree. That's it, you know, and going so far as to have absolutely no reliability in. claiming that any photo or video that Billy Meyer has is real. You know, everyone under the sun, every photo analysis, every video person has said, these

are hoaxes, these are models. And Horn cannot argue that. He really can't. And it sucks. And the minute that a researcher argues it, you get gangstocked. You get attacked online. You know, they say that we're part

of the problem. We're the disinformation people. Why can't we just accept this man's story. And I'll tell you why, because it's all fake. Yeah. Billy Meyer's wife came forward and said, oh yeah, the models were all over the place. You know, these are not real. So aesthetically pleasing? Yes. Great for an X-Files poster? Yeah, definitely. Have I used them as my cover photo on Facebook? Yep. But at the end of the day, I don't believe a goddamn word that comes out of Billy Myers' mouth or Michael Horn's mouth. And I'm I'm going to leave it at that when it goes to this one.

Yeah, that's a good place to leave it. And you know what, don't anybody pick it up. Just don't pick it up. Don't, don't lick UFOs either. No, don't do it. You know what? You're going to have a worse time than anybody from Rendell Schum or Cash Landrum. You're going to burn your tongue off, okay?

Bye, tongue. Well, he also brings up, while Billy Meyer is silly and delusional and the case is ridiculous, He brings up that a lot of people believe this other ridiculous case, and this is when you've covered the Joe Simonton case, pancake aliens. Oh, man. Like, you know, I don't like to prejudge people, but if some Italians gave me some pancakes, you know, that case is so crazy. And I mean, like, it occurred the same year that Betty Barney Hill's abduction did for all of, you know. And here's the thing.

62-year-old chicken farmer sitting down to brunch at 11 o'clock in the morning. Here's this sound. And he goes outside and he sees this, it would probably be like a saucer. He described the UFO as two saucers connected by a depression ring that had like these six-inch diameter pipes that were going all around it. And this hatch opens. And he sees what he describes is. three five-foot Italian-looking aliens with mesmerizing eyes wearing onesies. And they want water.

So he trades them water for some of what he calls pancakes, even though I would call them cookies. And he gave me a salute with the back of his hand, a gesture of thanks, I presume. And then, well, I gave him my salute. What am I going to do? I noticed this little man, the same size of a man, right to the side, the right side of the hatchway cooking these pancakes, which I have one here yet. He was frying these these pancakes and I pointed to him and made a gesture like eating

I thought maybe I get a conversation out of them. Nobody was saying anything. But he didn't say a word. He just reached over and he got a handful of them and he hand them down to me and they were hot and greasy. And with that he reached up and he closed his hatch with a heavy thud, quick-like, on it latched. And with that, the thing started to raise, just like it came down.

Everything was time-perfect. It went up about 20 feet. It tilted at 45-degree straight south and shot off. Within two or three seconds, it was out of sight. Well, there I stood in the driveway with a handful of greasy pancakes. My mouth opened wondering what the heck I'd saw. What had happened? But, you know what?

You were about to sit down to brunch. I understand why you're calling pancakes. Heck, yeah. How'd they taste? they taste like cardboard okay cool here's the thing about that case that case is charming as hell as opposed to billy mire who is not charming in the slightest joe simonton i would listen to that man if he was still alive today tell me all about his alien pancakes i don't like to put a lot of stock into into belief but listening to joe simonton i believe that he did get some pancakes from some

italian-looking aliens who had mesmerizing eyes and they just wanted some water i'm going with it i don't care And one of the coolest things that's coming out this year, I believe it's still coming out this year. I had John Tenney on my podcast. He has written a children's book about this case. Oh my God. Yeah, that is coming out later this year. And it's all about Joe Simonton. And he even has a recipe in there for these space pancakes.

And he has instructions for children to submit a FOIA request. Oh my God. Yeah. If anything, if anything, this case got more charming just based on that. So I will believe Joe Simonton all day long. I love it. I love it, man. And you and I are going to make a trip to Wright Patterson.

And we're going to bring, are you an Antemima guy or a Mrs. Butterworth? I could go either way. I really could. Okay. All right. We'll bring both just to be safe. All right. Moving on from alien pancakes to the paranormal.

Jamie asks, what are our thoughts on how the paranormal and the UFO phenomenon might be related? This is a really tough one. We could talk in a whole episode about this one. And that's the thing. It's like when you look at the cases where paranormal activity was associated with UFOs, you know, you go to the Mothman sightings and there was a ton of that happening where people were seeing UFOs. They were getting these really weird phone calls,

and then all of a sudden they had poltergeist-like activity in their house. You have Skinwalker Ranch where there was poltergeist activity happening inside the house while there were UFOs seen. There was interdimensional bigfoots and skinwalkers and everything else that's going on, and I can't wait for that documentary by Jeremy Corbell. That comes out in September. It's going to be dope. There's, I don't know if it's just that it draws,

in that type of activity or if it's an extension of that activity. Because if you look at, for instance, a case I'm going to be covering is the 1973 case from Pennsylvania where this farmer and two kids walk up upon two Bigfoot approaching a UFO. Okay. Yeah. And apparently there are numerous cases like that in Pennsylvania. Seth Breedlove did the invasion on Chestnut Ridge, which is where all that stuff apparently happens.

They have a ton of cases like this. Even ancient aliens had an episode about Bigfoot's and UFOs. I just saw that the other day. They had a marathon and just happened to be watching it. And I'm like, oh, God, here we go. But again, man, yeah, no, you're right. I mean, even some of the people in my book, they claimed that after a UFO event, it just opened the floodgates to everything, you know? The Patty Donahue case with her younger daughters that had experiences with her in their home, after the UFO event and a possible contact experience in the home with a gray being, they had poltergeist activity.

They had really high strangeness things going on to the point where they had to have an electrician come to the home. because so much weird activity was going on. And the guy experienced it while he was there, and he told Patty, I am never coming back here again. I will send another tech. Good luck and goodbye. So, yes, you know, we hear all the time that after a UFO event,

there are so many other things that happen. And whether it is connected or not, I don't know, but I think once your mind has been, open to one thing, it's only going to be open to others. And that may again be inextricably linked with these phenomena, whether paranormal, euphological, whatever. It's just going to open up doors that you might not want opened. But it's crazy. So do I think they're connected? Yes. And no. I think some might be, some might not be, some might just be aliens, and some might be something we can't

even begin to fathom. So, yeah, I mean, like, even if you look at, like, the really odd hot spots around the United States, you've got the Bridgewater Triangle area where all that stuff is kind of taking place in one area. You have, I would put central Kentucky on that map just because, you know, I've been talking to people and they talk about how there is so much, there's a concentration of so much different stuff in that area that it's just so varied, you know, what Chuck Sikowsky was talking about on the 37th parallel. I think a lot of it does occur on the 37th parallel, you know, but what is it about these areas that makes it unique to all of this phenomenon occurring at the same time? What was it about Point Pleasant and the Ohio Valley in 66 and 67 that made it so

attractive to all this type of different stuff? That's the kind of crap that keeps me up at night, man. I know. Absolutely. I mean, you could go so far as, you know, the, is it East SETI? The East SETI ranch as well in Washington. Like what is with, or the Heseltine lights in, is it Norway, I believe? Yeah. Yeah. Like, what is it about these areas, Brown Mountain even, where these weird phenomena seem to happen? Chestnut Ridge, you got Bigfoot, you got ghosts, you got aliens, you got everything. What is it? What makes it happen? happen there. I don't know. Are we dealing with laylines? Are we dealing with some sort of natural resources that these things are feeding off of from the planet? I don't know. I don't know, but it's fascinating. Could it just be something as simple as water? Water does seem to factor into it. And I covered the Charlie Red Star sightings on Patreon. And I had Amber and Andrew from into the portal on to talk about that. And I asked him, because this is all in Manitoba. And Manitoba in Canada

is a hotspot for UFOs. And the only conclusion that I could come up with is water, because if you look at Manitoba on a map, it's just a ton of water everywhere. So maybe it could be water. It definitely, it definitely seems to play a part. It very well could be, especially if you're a, you know, a non-human intelligence coming to a planet that is mostly water. It's like, oh, you're like, they really, must depend on this stuff. Let's see what this is all about. You gotta wonder. You do have to wonder. All right, man. Well, we are on our last question, and it comes from our mutual friends over at the Double Density Podcast. And they want to know what do we believe is the biggest misconception with the euphology and its related research? I've got one sort of sentence for this, and it is the ETH hypothesis. My thoughts, exactly. Oh, I saw your thunder. No, but it's good that we're on the same page as UFO researchers.

I mean, the biggest misconception, every day when I tell them I'm a UFO researcher, they're like, oh, aliens. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's not what I said. I said UFOs. I study UFOs. I don't study aliens. That's up to biologists and scientists and, you know, alien theorists. I look at UFO reports, UFO activity, the witnesses who experience that.

Do I dive into abductions? Yeah, of course I do. All the time. But I think the biggest misconception is that when we study uphology, that it is aliens only. And everyone does that. Everyone makes that mistake. I make it myself all the time, all the time. I put on Twitter, I'm doing a UFO thing.

And I use the little alien emoji. And every time I'm like, God damn it, why did I do that? You could use the UFO emoji. Easily. Easily. And, you know, I have an alien emoji pillow right next to me right now. And I'm like, why do I do this to myself? You know, I'm touting that UFOs might not be alien, yet I've got all this alien shit everywhere.

But the emoji's cute. I like it. It's no Italian pancake making alien, but it's cute. But yeah. So you would agree that the ETH seems to be the biggest misconception? Oh, yeah. I mean, it's been pushed into popular culture for so long now. And like, I've asked, I've asked around because to me, you got to kind of understand the time periods in what you're dealing with.

And I've asked people as like, in the 80s, was there a lot of this, you know, alien head kind of stuff that was, you know, people were pedaling around. And they're all like, no, it didn't start until the 90s, you know, the late 90s. So, you know, it's become so prevalent in pop culture that they are synonymous. It's aliens, aliens, you know, right around in UFOs. They're the ones piloting the UFOs. So it's automatically that connection. But we don't know what the UFOs are. We don't even know if they have pilots.

We don't even know if they're physical things. We don't know what we don't know. And I feel like I quoted Rumsfeld, and I didn't want to do that. Too late. Yeah, but I mean, like whenever anybody said, whenever anybody, and it happens sometimes, ask me, what is a euophologist? The only answer I can give them is, it's an expert in speculation. That is what a euophologist is. Oh, my God, I love that.

I'm going to get that put on my business cards. Yeah, Ryan Sprague, expert in speculation. Yeah, man, it's, again, you're right. It is. It's become such a meme in popular culture, and I don't know if we're ever going to shake it. But it really could begin with changing the acronym of UFO, and it really could begin when we get past the fact that these craft or these things we're seeing might not be piloted by anything. They very well could be some sort of remote controlled thing from another dimension or planet or anything. It could be anything at this point. Yeah, and I mean, like, even if you look at, you go back to 48 and you look at the Gorman dog fight, that wasn't a UFO.

It was essentially a really, it was like a six-inch light that he was, you know, going back and forth with. It's not always, you know, a saucer or it's not always a disc-shaped craft. That's not always what it is. Sometimes it's just an orange light or sometimes, you know, it's a black triangle. It's so varied that we don't know anything. And it's not like you can hail them down and they're going to come and they're going to get, whatever's in there is going to get out and want to talk to you. They haven't wanted to talk to us for years, except for some people who they have apparently talked to.

You know, I haven't had a conversation with Ashtar, but, you know, some people have. And, you know, maybe I would like to know how Indrid Cold is doing these days. but, you know, I'm not the person that's going to be interacted with them. But at the end of the day, when you don't know anything, you're just speculating that they're piloted by aliens. Yeah. That's it. So, like, when you hear a UFO, just think of it as something that appears to be, it appears to be so varied that we don't know a damn thing about it. all we just know is that people see stuff and then they tell other people about it and they've been doing this since the 40s.

That's it. Yep. I love it. That is the most succinct way. I think we could say it, man. People see stuff and they tell people about it. That is UFO reporting. That is the UFO phenomenon in a nutshell.

I can't think of a better way to sort of end it there, my man. That was a marathon. I can't believe we got through that. I'm a little drunk, and for some reason, I really want pancakes right now. I mean, you know, if you could find a Denny's, there might be an Italian-looking alien that'll be able to mix you up some. They might be there. I'm not shitting you. I can see a Denny's from my window.

It's two blocks from my apartment. Perfect, man, perfect. They saw me coming. I'm about to drop some mad bills over there. But before we go. my man, please tell us what you got coming up over at the Our Strange Skies podcast, what we can expect, and where we can find it. Sure.

Right now, planning a bunch of mini episodes because I'm in the stages of researching Roswell, which is something that I am begrudgingly. Why would you do that to yourself? I know. I'm begrudgingly doing because it's just, it feels like something that you have to get out of the way. But we got Roswell coming down the pike. I got a great series of episodes that detail the craziness that was the year's 65 to 67. That'll be coming up.

And I've got a few interviews lined up. But if you're interested, we are available on every single platform from Apple Podcasts all the way to Spotify. If you want to connect with me on Twitter, I am at Our Strange Skies. and we have a Facebook page and a Facebook group over there. And we also have an Instagram page at our Strange Skies. And a Patreon as well, right? Yes, we do have a Patreon if you want some bonus content where we look at UFOs in other countries because primarily I do the United States.

So we got a couple of great episodes about the Falcon Lake incident and the Charlie Red Star sightings. and there's going to be a bunch of other stuff that's coming up over there. So definitely go check that out. Awesome, man. Well, I want to thank our friends at Double Density, Rabbit Hole Motel, into the portal. They all contributed to this and to all the listeners for sending in questions. This has been so much fun. I can't wait to do this again with you, Rob.

And I have to thank you, brother, for taking the time to do this, knocking back out of the bat with me, and just shooting the shit. because like you said, people see things and people tell people. Take us to your president. We bear tidings from the moon. The radar people breed. We've too many miles to feed. We may be among you soon.

Take us to your president. We've a growing weight of earth. We just sit around and moon because there's no more room to spoon by the light of yonder earth. So send us a surplus. Greetings, some meat, and tomatoes just help us. However you fleece, persuade you to invade you, brain cheese. Now you know why we are here. Greetings, everyone, Ryan Sprague, are host of Summer in the Skies.

For over seven years and more than 400 episodes, the Summer in the Sky's podcast has always been free to listen to, but it's not free to create. So we offer several ways to help support our efforts and get rewards in return. If you listen to the podcast on Apple, you can click the subscribe button at the top of your somewhere in the sky's feed

to become a premium Apple subscriber. Or you can join our Patreon campaign with several tiers available. Both of these options give you the same benefits and rewards, add free episodes, early access to the main show, and bonus episodes. and content. Help keep the lights on at the Summer in the Skies HQ and help us continue to grow by becoming

a Patreon subscriber at patreon.com slash somewhere skies or by clicking the subscribe button at the top of your Apple feed. Thank you for your continued support and keep looking up. They're out there, man. I've seen them. I've been out there in Aurora, Texas. They've got them little graves and stuff. Yeah, I've been out there and, I know, I'm planning a trip. I'm planning a trip. We're going out to like Arizona or something and figure something out. Or not Arizona. What was it? Yeah, it was Arizona, right? Air Force One where they found all that stuff. I got pictures of Rora. I've seen grave sites. They're out there, man, and I'm flying in the plane. I'm always hallucinating, but who really knows what I'm looking at? You know what I'm saying? Who knows, dude? They could be made of water.

I don't even know. Water, man. You heard the man. Water. They could make made of anything extraterrestrial. That extraterrestrial. This is somewhere in the skies with Ryan Sprague. Rob, welcome back to another edition of UFO Happy Hour. How are you, my man?

I'm good. Thanks for having me on again. How are you, dude? I am good. It's one in the afternoon here, and I have got a nice Templeton ride. sitting next to me here with one ice cube. I'm going classy today, man. So what did you bring to the bar stool today? Well, we're going to reprise this again. And we've got a nice 16 ounce aluminum can of Labat Blue

because you just can't go wrong with this Canadian Pilsner. I love it. And, you know, it's not going to fill me up. So it's the best. It is the best. It's a miracle drug. I can't wait, man, to get back on the East Coast and have my Canadian beers again. I miss it so, so much. I can understand, man. I can understand because it's just, it takes the edge off the end of the day. And, you know, it doesn't weigh you down. So. Yep. I couldn't agree more. We'll see if I even make it through this interview with bourbon. I don't know what I was thinking. But one in the afternoon is we're recording this on the, West Coast, but, uh, I, you know, I need all the drinks I can get right now, man. I'm in the

process of packing and moving back. So if it's a little echoy, I apologize to the listeners and do you. My sound quality might not be as good as it usually is, but we will, we will barrel through this. Oh, yeah, man. We're going to, we're going to do it. I wanted you to come to the table with your top three UFO cases today. And knowing you, of course, you did not fail me. You picked some amazing cases that we're going to discuss in a little bit. But there's two stories I wanted to bring up. One, most recently, that I believe I found through you and several other researchers. And that was the story that recently broke from Tyler Rogaway over at the War Zone, which is a sector of the more widely known online news site, The Drive. And it involved a bizarre chase

through a high security Nevada nuclear test site that ended in someone being shot dead. This is crazy, man. Yeah, this story broke on Tuesday, and like, somebody posted it on Twitter. I was like, what? Somebody was killed. So basically, yeah, on Monday at 5.18 p.m., there was a guy in a car. He drove through a security. checkpoint at what they call Area 23, which is designated as Mercury.

And a car chase ensued with not only private security, but the Nye County Sheriff Deputies. And it went for eight miles. The guy eventually pulled over, got out of his vehicle, and he was holding some kind of what they called a metallic cylindrical object. What the hell is that? What? Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. Could they be any more enigmatic? No, no, definitely not. And so this guy, he's not listening to the commands of the security personnel and the sheriff's deputies. And he basically was going to go confront them and they opened fired. Shot and killed him right on the spot there. So, yeah, we have a lot of questions and they're not getting answered. And I know it's early on, this story is still developing, but there's no motive of why he was there, what he was doing, his level of sobriety, which I thought was funny, Tyler Ruggaway brings up.

But it's very rare for these things to happen at this nuclear test site. I mean, we're all familiar with area 51 and the signs saying, we can shoot you on premises if you trespass. But, you know, these other areas, this vast area of Nevada, the testes, the testes, say, we have no idea what else is going on out there. Apparently, there could be, like, ordinance out there or, like, things that could explode. So, um, who knows why this guy was going out there, what his plans truly were. Yeah. And I mean, like, this is now, it's been kicked to the FBI. So it's probably going to be a long time coming before we really get any information. If we do get any information, uh, because we don't know, you know, what kind of, uh, national, uh, security risk this guy was and we really don't know what the heck he was doing i mean he's pretty

brash to just you know plow past security detail and just yeah the problem with this too rob is like because you know they shot him dead there's very little to work backwards on to find out why he did this i mean yeah it probably lays in whatever that object was he had with him i i don't know i don't know. Yeah, I don't either, man. And it's like, it's kind of terrifying, you know, because you just, it's, it's that unknown of, nobody's ever really done this before or if they have, we've never heard of it. So, yeah, it's, it's just frightening to think about. It's frightening. It's fascinating. And of course, all of us UFO people find it intriguing because it is near Area 51. But at the end of the day, we got to remember someone was shot and killed. I mean, this guy's gone. So it's tragic beyond anything else. And, you know, that comes up with another case that you and I had been discussing. Similar to the Nevada testing sites, we have Dougway Proving Ground as well in 2011.

This kind of reminded me of what was going on here, a top secret base where, you know, a guy wasn't pronounced dead just yet. He was pronounced missing. And that was Joseph Bushling, a soldier. He was assigned at Fort Collins, Colorado, but then he was stationed at Dougway. And for those who don't know, Dougway is considered by many to be Area 52, where a lot of top secret stuff is going on. UFOs have been reported. So, yeah, this was back in 2011. Joseph borrowed a friend's car, and they think he went out there to sightsee, you know, the desert.

And he ended up calling a friend and left a message saying that he'd run out of gas. was going to try to walk back to Dougway probing ground. And he said he was very cold. He lost his flip-flops. And he was using his shirt as footwear. And it was raining. So, I mean, everything that could go wrong seemed to be going wrong from it at this point. He'd never arrived back at Dougway.

And he'd never been heard from again. No. And as far as we can tell, there's never been a body found. And, I mean, Dougway is vast in size. Like, you could probably go missing and nobody would find you. They also made mention of how there's like unexploded ordinance out there. So there's a, you know, chance that he could have stepped on something and, you know, met his end that way. But yeah, it was just, it was kind of weird because he was heading towards, it's, I don't know exactly how it's pronounced Kalau Gate, which is one of Doug Witt.

gates and they he never made it there and they ended up going out and in a pattern from where they found the car up into this gate and they never found his body at all the only thing that they found of his was in uh i put an arkansas razorbacks hat that was it yeah so you got to wonder what happened to this guy like where did he go and and uh the last update i ever saw on this case, his parents had set up a Twitter account. And there was a dead link to a, I believe it was a blog post about some bones found out near Dougway. So there's a chance they may have found them, but we just don't know. As far as I can tell, he's still, he's officially declared dead, but he's also on many sites listed as missing. Right. I mean, the authorities ruled out suicide and foul play. And like you said, they did pronounce him dead. There was a death certificate issued in 2014, you know, so his family could receive military benefits and life insurance. So that's kind of understandable at this point, the fact that, you know, we found nothing and he hasn't shown up anywhere. But his friend, who he called, likes to think that maybe he's still out there somewhere or made it to. somewhere safer and is living the good life. But again, just another tragic, tragic thing to happen at these mysterious top secret installations. I mean, Dougway itself has so much

lore. Look at the sheep incident that happened back in the 60s, wasn't it? Yeah, it was the Skull Valley incident in March of 68, where, you know, all these sheep on farmers' land just died. Hundreds of sheep and it was linked to a chemical at Dougway proving ground because Dougway is essentially where we test chemical weapons. So yeah, it was linked back to that. And yeah, I feel bad for the Bushling family here because they seem to think that something happened to him and that they know what happened to him.

And, you know, your heart just goes out to him. because it's just, and I think what people need to understand is this guy was a medic. He was going later that week down to Texas to actually get his RN to become an RN, a registered nurse. So he got to wonder, it's like he was definitely panicked. Yeah, right. He was panicked. So that kind of, it kind of rules out that, you know, he went out there to, you know, commit suicide or anything. like that. I mean, he was on the right track to some pretty good stuff in his life. So, yeah,

again, just a tragedy all around. But, you know, besides that, you mentioned the sheep incident in the 60s. We also, in 2011, I found an article where the facility at Dougway was put under an extreme lockdown when the loss of a toxic nerve agent again was lost and then recovered. Then to shut down the entire, like, area. So they got to, I don't know what's going out there in Dougway, but they got to be more careful, man. These things are, like, killing 6,000 sheep in the 60s was, like, the total number. And now a nerve agent, like, goes missing.

And on the same day, like, numerous UFO reports were cited in the area. So, oh, man, this Dougway probing ground, dude, I look forward to hearing more about what's going on out there. They probably didn't help themselves when. Rob Lowe and his kids decided to go there on their TV show. Exactly. Again, once these bases are acknowledged, you know everything is getting moved somewhere else. But our good friend Dave Rosenfeld, he's a UFO investigator.

He goes out to Dougway all the time constantly and monitors all the weird aerial phenomena going on out there. So I wish him all the luck out there. I hope he's being careful. And we got to keep our eye on Dougway. I guess that's the only way to sort of put it. Yeah. I mean, he knows that base, like the back of his hand. So, I mean, he's the guy for it.

And yeah, it's just now it's kind of in the spotlight because people are being drawn more and more to it. So, yeah, it'd be interesting to see what happens at Dougway going forward. And I did, I will admit, I did a deep dive on Reddit, which I don't suggest to anyone out there. No. I did do a deep dive and just didn't see if anyone that was talking about Dougway and I found like so many military people who were saying yeah like Dougway I wanted to be stationed there and it was always denied and whenever you'd ask about going to Dougway like it was immediately stamped down like no no no one's getting put out at Dougway like no information out there on Dougway like just pick somewhere else so I found that pretty. interesting that even a lot of military people on Reddit were saying, we have no idea what's going on out there. And we want to know too. So yeah, yeah, I guess we'll leave it at that when it comes to to that. But the real reason, Rob, I wanted to have you here today, not just to have a

beer and a burden, but I want to hear about your top three UFO cases. I thought this would be a really good way to wet our whistle and get back to UFOs here on somewhere in the sky. So I'm going to let you take the steering wheel with this man. Which one would you like to start with? Are we going to go, you know, ascending order, descending order, whatever you want, my man. I think we'll go from, we'll go chronologically backward. We'll start with 1997 and the Lee Parish abduction. This is an abduction case that not a lot of people know about. It's briefly mentioned in an apprable news bulletin and like occasionally you can find bits and pieces of information about it on there

on various websites but and you can find some pretty cool looking artwork too but essentially this 19 year old guy Lee Parrish he works on his family farm he was visiting a friend a female friend and left her house at one o'clock at night and he was driving home and he sees a light coming from he he kind of experiences missing time and and he just sees the light fly away and what he notices is that he's missing 35 minutes now this is a five minute for him from uh this woman's house to his home so uh he was kind of freaked out about it and he

went home his his mother was asking him where you know where you been what do you what do you why are you home so late and he proceeds to kind of panic a little bit but the next day and what's great about this case is like it there's no time lapse here the next day he has he goes in for a hypnosis session and what he finds is that a an object stopped his truck in the in the middle of the road and from his memory he he's in the truck and then all of a sudden he's on board this craft. And he's standing in a room and in front of him to his left is this really tall. He guessed that it was about 10 feet tall.

It looked like a wall with a bump on it. And in front of him was, I would say the best way to describe it would be a large, like an oversized adding machine almost. And it was the color white. And on his right was this square. rectangular object that he said resembled like a Coke machine, like an old school Coke machine. Right, right.

And all of a sudden, this black wall comes forward and it has an arm on it and it just hits Lee on his left arm. And he starts freaking out. He, and to quote him

during the hypnosis sessions, he says, oh no, not the black one and I'm like, oh God. That is not a good quote out of context. No, no, it isn't. But that one seems to unsettle him. But then

the red coat machine has an arm of its own and it gets him in, I believe, like the shoulder or the neck and it kind of calms him down. And what he believes and what he feels is that the white machine

in front of him is kind of this, it's the leader almost. And it's observing what's happening. And the other two are kind of these subservient robots. And what happens is the red boxy robot thing basically backs off. It ends up going behind the white machine. And eventually the black wall thing basically takes. makes its arm away and the white machine goes behind the black wall.

And after that, he finds himself transported back into his truck. And that's at the end of it. It lasted 35 minutes. But it's just so, I don't even know how to categorize this because nobody, it's not like these are robots. They're machines. And there was no other beings. that he interacted with. You're just at a loss.

Like, what, what happened here? And he's this 19-year-old kid that has nothing to gain by telling his story. And it's a story that still is not, you know, widely known, even in most of UFO culture, unless you're, you know, into perusing old APRO bulletins. Exactly. Yeah, I mean, I, before you talked about this on your own show, I hadn't really heard about it. And I, it's hard to find anything on the Internet. about it, which is, you know, your last ditch effort when you're trying to look for UFO information is go to the internet.

But with this one, now, how did we get his story? Did he, he, he remembered this, right? He recalled it, or was he put under? Basically, he contacted Appro. Okay. And there was a local, uh, psychologist that I believe was also, uh, hip to, you know, hypnosis and was able to do it like the very next day. Hip to hypnosis. Oh yeah. HIP to hypnosis. Copywriting that, my man, along with two secret space program, right? Oh, yeah. Definitely. Suck it, Corey Good. What can I say? I know the subtitle of this episode now.

Either hip to hypnosis or suck it Corey Good. This is one of those episodes. That's okay. We're drinking, man. We're drinking, which is fine. But it's such a baffling case. And like, look at all the weirdness that is Kentucky. And I don't think people realize just how weird Kentucky is. I mean, we have, we've got the hell year documentary series that is just phenomenal.

I urge everybody, if you have not seen it, stop what you're doing. go watch it. It's enthralling. It brings a new view to how we look at not just, it's not a documentary about goblins. It's about more than that. Oh, yeah. I mean, that itself relates in a way to the Kelly Hopkinsville Goblin Encounter from 1955. And it goes through the spiraling thing where for Lee Parrish, it wasn't the only,

kind of, there was a more well-known abduction account that took place a year before involving three women near Stanford, Kentucky, and they were celebrating, I believe Mona Stafford, it was her name, her birthday, and all three of them get abducted, and they end up going through hypnosis, and they don't even get all the answers that they need. All they can really say is that, They were tortured by these shadowy figures that they couldn't really make out. But in probably the National Enquirer's only, like, a move of sympathy that I could ever point to them, they actually, they were in desperate need of psychiatric help. So basically what they did is they ended up paying for it for the exclusive right to their story. So that's about the only case of the National Enquirer having a heart that I can think of. Yeah, really. Yeah, I know. They weren't too good to us back in the day when it came to UFO stories.

Let's just put it that way. Yeah, exactly. Or to people who claimed authentic and genuine experiences. Yeah. The second case, and this is one that whenever I talk to anybody about this, This case is so, it's so weird that it's, there's so many elements going on to it. So this is the abduction case of a man named David Stevens. Oh, yes.

Yeah. And David Stevens, he had just gotten out of the Navy, like maybe a few weeks before. and he meets this guy named Glenn Gray. They have the, they both work factory jobs. I think one works in a meat processing plant, and I forget what the other one did, but they both worked night shifts. So they kind of just hit it off, and they moved into this trailer in Maine. And one night, they both had the same day off, and they were up late because they didn't want to really mess up their sleep. schedule so they were just hanging out listening to music and they heard a booming sound and it was like

around one o'clock in the morning again it's we're in the witching hour damn it and they get drawn outside and when they when they go outside they don't see anything but glen gray turns to david stevens and he says hey let's go for a ride and he's like yeah sure no problem. That's fine. So they hop in the car and they're driving, driving for a little while. And eventually the car starts to move and drive on its own. David Stevens loses control of the vehicle. And it takes them down these series of back roads.

And what happens is they both see this object in a field. or it looks like lights to them so they figured oh there's people out there they must be looking for something and then these lights begin to rise up and they come near the car and they're both kind of freaking out there's an incident of missing time and it's it's almost like a like a cut scene and a fast forward here and um the two like desperately at first try to start the car and they can't do it and eventually they they're able to start the vehicle they they just book it and this UFO follows them

and it toys with them for a number of miles and for and for a number of hours like they just went back and forth with this UFO and eventually at like 7.30 in the morning it finally flies away and they both go home

and and they are just freaked out out. And almost immediately they had poltergeist-like activity in their house. There was, yeah, there was bangs, there was cupboards opening and stuff like that. And eventually they, I believe they were, they contacted the International UFO Bureau back

when it was up and running. And eventually, they finally get into hypnosis sessions. And what you find is that, When they first saw the UFO rise up out of that field, what had happened was, and I forgot to mention it, but when they came out of that missing time episode, they were on the other side of the road. They went from the right-hand side of the road to the left-hand side of the road. And what he finds is that he was taken, David Stevens was taken aboard this craft. he was he interacted with these beings that he described as having mushroom-shaped heads and they're kind of a gray archetype in a way i mean they have these big bulbous heads but like

they almost look like uh in a way they remind me of a hammerhead shark if a hammerhead shark had like a really rounded head and these eyes on the side that had they were white with uh black pupils. And he sketched these, right? I think I've seen sketches of that. He sketched it and then one of the investigators actually did a really, a really great sketch of this thing. And like, when you look at it, it's wearing this like almost flowing robe. It's, um, it's got webbed hands, which is very, very weird. At one point, uh, there, when David's first arrives on the, on the UFO, he's, one of these beings, you know, comes into the room. They draw them into another where there are multiple other beings.

And basically they want him to take his clothes off. Well, he doesn't want anything to do. He doesn't want to have anything to do with that. So he ends up hitting one of them in the face. Awesome. Travis Walton style. Right. And they, they back up.

They give him some space. And then he comes forward. And then he just kind of complies with whatever they want. And they conduct him medical. examination on him and I believe they even take blood at a certain point and they they deposited him back in his car and and realistically I don't understand why the UFO toyed with them for another like three hours until it flew away but it did and one of the most fascinating features of this account is that he worked with a he was a family physician but he also

did hypnosis to help aid in women going through childbirth to try to ease pain and stuff like that. His name is Herbert Hopkins. And he went through about six or so hypnosis sessions. And they learned all this. But one of the most fascinating things was when Herbert would ask him about the feet. He wouldn't describe the feet. He would just ignore the question. Okay.

And then the only thing that he ever said about their feet is that some were wearing shoes and some weren't. That was it. And it's like one of those nagging details that I kind of get obsessed with at times because more and more when you go over some abduction accounts and even close encounter of the third kind reports, they don't describe the feet for whatever reason. Yeah, you're right. Yeah. And maybe it's just because, I mean, you know, it's. It's the feat. It's the lowest point to a to a humanoid or a human being.

Like it's, it's probably the least interesting point to people. But, like, they always describe everything else in, like, full detail. But the feat, it just never seems to be. There was, yeah, poltergeist activity in their home in David Stevens' parents' home. There was polterlyzed, poltergeist-like activity, knocks on doors. And it was experienced by family. members. And this links to Herbert Hawkins is this, he had a men and black experience that may not,

in fact, be true. There's a blog post that says that it was completely and totally made up, but, you know, that is what it is. But that abduction account is just. It's so, and I mean, it ruined Glenn Gray. He actually ended up fleeing to, I think, Kansas because his own family didn't believe him. Well, yeah, what do you do at that point when someone is so vocal about it? The other one doesn't really want to talk about it at all.

I mean, Glenn never talked about this from what I can gather afterwards, really. No, he didn't. Really? Yeah, and he refused to be hypnotized, so we don't even really know what the full level of his experience was. So... Yep. Yep. I've dealt with that a lot with claimed abductees who I've asked them, like, do you want to go under regression or is that something you've ever considered? And a lot of them say no. You know, I have the faint memories or snippets in my memory now. I don't want to know any more of what happened to me or I don't want something to be, you know, implanted into my

subconscious that didn't actually happen. So the whole hypnosis thing, I, Obviously, we have to take with a grain of salt. But when you get a story like this from Stevens, like, it's so, like you said, it's so out there and so weird. And I'm like, how could anyone make all this up? Yeah, he has nothing to gain from it. This is not a widely known abduction account. This is, if you peruse the pages of, you know, issues of flying saucer review from the,

the mid to late 70s, you'll find these accounts. But that's where they remain. And you will find certain little mentions of it here and there. There was an article by Michael Hanks. He mentioned it briefly. Richard Dolan mentions it in one of his UFOs in the National Security State books. But that's all it ever gets is this brief mention. But it's also preserved in a great book.

called UFO Dynamics by Bertolt E. Schwartz, who was a psychiatrist who I believe was affiliated with APRO for a number of years. But if you, I highly recommend UFO dynamics. Get your hands on this book. It's hard to, it's hard to come by for a decent price, but there are so many great cases. There's an interview with Betty Hill years later talking about UFO experiences that she had. after the one that her and Barney had. And there's other contact e-claims. And there's a story from Woodstock. It's really great.

It's a really great collection. Interesting. So we might have had a alien invasion going on at Woodstock? You never know, man. It kind of seems that way. There was an invasion of something happening. Yeah, yeah. All right, my man.

So, well, this case is just the encounter of David Stevens is amazing. It's so rich with detail. And you heard it here on UFO Happy Hour. So go get that book that Rob just brought up, please. I can't wait to get my hands on that, if I can get my hands on it. All right. So what is our number one top UFO case for Rob Christofferson? For me, it's always going to be the,

case of Lonnie Zamora and his close encounter of the third kind. Perfect. I can't think of a better one to do this. Yeah, cheers to that. Yeah, absolutely. My history with this case goes back to unsolved mysteries. It's one of the very few UFO cases that I can think of that they ever did. They covered Gulf Breeze. They covered the Hudson Valley

sightings. They covered the other one that Yeah, they covered Roswell, which is how Roswell made it to the mainstream for a lot of people. They covered one of the most terrifying stories, the story of the Alagash abductions, which are just terrifying. Long story short on that one, folks, do not signal a UFO with a flashlight when you're in the middle of the woods. Just don't do it. No matter what Stephen Greer tells you, do not vector any UFO, guys. No, no, don't do it. it, don't do it.

But Lonnie Zamora is the one case that I remember so vividly from Unsolved Mysteries. And I believe it's the first time that I ever heard the name Jay Allen Heineck, to be honest. And I was, yeah, I was a little kid at the time. But I have this faint memory of being in middle school. And we were doing this English project where we were basically taking apart the song. we didn't start the fire by Billy Joel and we were breaking it down in the decade

and we were researching and writing reports on all of the events that he mentions in there and the other part of the project was that we were supposed to add on to it and stuff like that and put events that we think should have made it into that song into it and it was kind of a really cool project

but Lonnie Zamora is maybe one of the best UFO witnesses on on record oh absolutely i i firmly believe that and you know i don't want to disparage him really at all but like he's not a highly intelligent individual he's not but he's not somebody who's who's going to make stuff up now uh the story starts uh this is 1964 april 1964 and it's about it's close to six at night and he's chasing a speeder south of Sicoro, New Mexico and he suddenly hears this high frequency roar but he doesn't describe it as like kind of like a rocket or anything like that which which is kind of weird

but he describes it as going from a high frequency to a low frequency and he believes that it's the mayor's local it's the dynamite shack that is going to explode because the mayor just happened to have one you know because every town needs a yeah yeah every town needs an old dynamite shack totally he uh breaks off pursuit and he heads in the direction of this sound and he uh it takes him a little bit to get up this little hill But when he does, he can see what he thinks is a car that's overturned. And you can see people outside. These people apparently see him coming and they disappear back into this object.

But once Lonnie Zamora gets close enough, what he realizes is that this is an oval-shaped object that has, from his vantage point, what he can see is there's two landing platforms down. And he also describes hearing this sound, which it sounds like a door closing in a way. And this object that's sitting there, all of a sudden that familiar roaring sound comes back. It goes from a low frequency to a high frequency, and all of a sudden he just sees this flame coming out of the bottom of it.

he can feel the heat he takes cover behind his car he ends up hitting his ankle on his bumper but he ultimately makes it further back behind the car and when the sound stops he turns around and he looks and he can see this object hovering about 15 to 20 feet off the ground and it's at first it starts to slowly move away and it barely makes it over the top of this dynamite shack. And it just zips away from him. He's white as a ghost. He doesn't understand what he has seen. And he radios in for backup.

And eventually, Sergeant Chavez, one of his friends from the police force, eventually makes it out to him. He can see that Lonnie Zabora is shucking up. He's pale. He's sweating profusely. he goes down to the landing site and he can see that there are bushes that are on fire. There was some landing marks in the ground. Trace evidence, thank God. Yep, trace evidence.

And soon after you've got Blue Book coming in to investigate this case, Heineck was on the ground within, I believe, 48 hours. And he was with... Classic Heineck. Oh, yeah. And the most amazing thing about that story is that when they're driving into Socorro, their car gets a flat tire. And Hinek's not waiting. He hitchhikes into town. Oh, God, that's amazing.

I can't wait to see if Project Blue Book, the television show, covers that. I really hope they do. It's too good a story not, too. And, you know, we'll get to that. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So Heinek gets out there. He does his investigation, and they radio around to, because I forget what basis around there. Oh, White Sands Missile Range is just, it's nearby. They radio over there. It's nothing from them. And, you know, Heineck, this is one of those cases that is a high watermark for Heinek because, of he initially railed against the close encounter of the third kind cases. He was, he didn't like them. But if you read the UFO experience, he talks about just because you don't like something,

doesn't mean that they aren't happening and then it doesn't deserve to be quantified. So Heinek really, you know, he looks at Zamora and sees a guy who's really credible. and a guy who ultimately after this experience happens and after he shakes off, you know, the fear and stuff is ultimately upset because he didn't reach his quota for tickets for the day. A typical cop. I love it. But we also have a correlated sighting of this object from, I believe it's a family in a station wagon that end up calling a local radio station to report it. But there's also the story of this guy named Gary T. Wilcox, and his story, it takes place in, I believe it's called Tioga City in New York. And he's a farmer. And one day he's on the same day of the Zamora citing hours before.

He's looking to increase his farmland. And he comes to this one area and you can see this oval-shaped object that is, that has landed. And there are these two humanoids in these white jumpsuits that are outside. They talk to him, but what he says is that

it's not, they didn't talk to him from their mouth. It felt like it was coming from their abdomen, uh, of all places. And,

um, they tell him, they tell him that they're from Mars and that they need fertilizer. And, uh, you know, Gary T.

Wilcox, nice guy he goes and he goes and gets that fertilizer while he's doing that the ship takes off and leaves but he still yeah this but he still comes back with the fertilizer okay and the next day

when he goes out there it's gone yeah so it's it's an interesting correlated kind of correlated sighting that it's big for Jacques Valet in his contact trilogy

in one of the books and I he briefly mentions it in passport to Magonia, but it's interesting. There's one issue that I kind of have with it. And when Zambora saw this object, when it eventually went silent, he could see on the side of this object there was a symbol on it. Yes. Yeah, I know this is a big contentious part of the case. Yeah. Let's elaborate. So the way that he drew it and the way that he's drawn it repeatedly over and over again is what it looks like is it's in red there's like a half circle underneath the half circle is an arrow that's pointing up and underneath that is a horizontal line that is what he is drawn now we've been researching this case for about three

months i i've got a really fantastic researchers name's rory he's been really really diving into this case, going through the blue book files and just picking it apart, detail by detail. And one of the things that we have arrived at is that what he has written down and in the symbol that people associate that I just described is not the actual symbol that he saw. It is a different symbol that basically looks like an inverted V and there are three horizontal lines going through it. And a lot of people describe that as a decoy symbol, but we've actually, we've gone through the Blue Book reports. We've gone through the APRO bulletins. We've gone through testimony that basically the people that were invested, the people from the government, Heineck excluded, that

were investigating this case said, do not go public with the symbol. Because it's, It's kind of an investigative hallmark here. If somebody else saw it, we'll know. But at the same time, they basically suppress this symbol. Interesting. Yeah, so the symbol that we come to associate with this encounter is raw. It's not what we think it is. It's not that arrow pointing up.

It's not. Yeah. Wow. That's fascinating, man. I mean, and these are the kinds of things that they hope will be so, you know, bury it so deep that no one will come to find this out, but you can never underestimate a UFO researcher. Right. And I'm not going to get too into detail with it because we're eventually going to cover it on my podcast.

But basically, we have enough, we have enough information where we believe we can speculate that this was a government object, a government craft. of some kind. And we'll be getting into it. It's, it's, it's interesting. And I, I honestly, when we started to look at this case, when Rory went into it, I didn't think we would find anything. And the details in many cases are so different. And the narrative is so different that, uh, we actually got a lot to bite on with it. Ah, I can't wait. And I know you, um, you were making your way through Ray Stanford's book too, right? Recently, the Socorro Souser in a Pentagon pantry? Ray is an interesting character.

And at first, yeah, I reached out to your listeners on your Facebook group because I was trying to track down a decently priced copy of, yeah, Sechoro Sasser and a Pentagon Pantry. Yeah, it's a hard book to come by for a decent price. And then... I still don't have it either. Yeah, one of your listeners actually gave me his email. At first they gave me an old email that didn't work, but they gave me this new email and I contacted him and he's, and here's the thing, Ray knows how much his book is worth. He is on top of it. Yeah, so I can officially say that this is the most, most amount of money I've ever paid for a UFO book, which was about $60. but the cool thing is is that, one, it's autographed to me now, so, you know, that's amazing.

But second, yeah, it comes with this bookmark that has a correction in it. Whoa, that's pretty cool. Yeah, it's really cool. But, yeah, Ray was one of the, he was an independent researcher on the ground with it. And if you look at the book jacket, he actually had files taken from him by the government. So, you know, that's an interesting angle. We also have Kevin Randall's book here, too, that just came out, I believe, in 2017, about the Socorro case. And, like, his angle, which was a different angle, he actually went through, I believe, certain government officials for that book.

So it's going to be interesting to tackle it from all sides. but it's just such a fascinating case that I think people don't know as much as they think about it. Yeah. Yeah, it seems to be one of those kind of like, you know, I hate comparing things to Roswell, but it's true. Like the minute you think you have an answer, something flips it on its head and changes everything. And that's kind of what I've experienced in the past few months of my life is I thought I kind of knew what happened in Roswell. and now the further I'm digging in and the more stories I'm hearing and literally being boots on the ground in Roswell talking to locals, my entire theory on Roswell has been thrown out the window. So, yeah, it's fascinating, man. And I'm glad to hear that they're still developing stories when it comes to Socorro, because it is.

It's one of those pivotal cases that we can turn to and be like, this is a credible witness. no one can ever like denounce that and uh and it's amazing that you guys are finding new stuff so god i can't wait to hear that absolutely man and um i i can't stress enough to the people that are looking into this details matter and when details are represented it can totally throw off a case and it's done so repeatedly like um look at how it's been how things have been portrayed in Kelly Hopkinsville with the Kelly Hopkinsville Goblins. You know, they were labeled,

and they're still known in many circles as the Kelly Little Green men, even though they weren't green. They were wearing, they were metallic, wearing metallic suits or something because, you know, every time that this family shot at them, they would kind of hear this metallic ping

here and there. So the details matter, And one of the most fascinating details of that case that gets passed up every single time is that when the first being approached the house, its hands were up like it was surrendering. Oh, shit. Yeah. So it clearly didn't want this firefight that seemed to ensue. No, it didn't. It definitely didn't seem like it wanted anything to do with that.

So again, yeah, details matter. And when details are misrepresented, it's just it throws off an entire case and it and it can change the narrative quickly. Absolutely. I mean, if you even have like you're off by a day on a UFO investigation, that changes everything. Like it is. It's the devil is in the details, you know? Yeah, absolutely, man. Absolutely.

Okay. So we have your last one, which again is one of my. favorites as well, Secorro being investigated by Mr. J. Ellen Heinek. So I'm going to bring it up to recent times. We have the Project Blue Book television series on the History Channel. Very divisive show right now in the UFO community. So I want to get your thoughts, man. You know, I think the last time we spoke, it was just being announced that the show was starting, but now we're four episodes in. And what do you think? What are your thoughts on Project Blue Book, the television? series. It's been so great to see some of these cases come to life.

But even, even though, like, some of the details are kind of altered here and there, but at the core of it, are these real stories. When you're talking flatwoods, okay, for instance, a lot of that stuff happened. Like, the town, yeah, they were kind of on edge about things. They didn't go to like it didn't become this like Frankenstein trope. H forks and torches, yeah.

Yeah, but the town was definitely you know, uneasy about this. They didn't want that attention. But you know, it's kind of like for entertainment value, of course they're going to blow it out of proportion. The Lubbock's light's

case is another fascinating one that I think they did a really good job. Did it really? mess with people's cars? No, it didn't. It wasn't it was another six years before cars being affected by UFOs started to happen but you know what? There's a case from Texas you know that that

did happen so and you know it's cool to see that it's cool to see the Lubbock lights you know portrayed on a show it's cool to see the child's Whitted account portrayed on a show, even in this larger context of Operation Paperclip. Right. Yeah. And like I was saying to you earlier, it's like there is more truth to it than I think people realize.

Now, when people talk about Child's Witted, what they may not realize is that in Europe from in 1946 to 1948, you know, it was kind of off and on. What they had sightings of were these things called ghost rockets. And for a long time, people thought this was the Russians in Germany launching these B1 or V2 rockets. And you kind of have that in the United States with Operation Paperclip. And there's Werner von Braun, you know, the face of this entire thing. and, you know, it's cool to see how what they're playing up is, at first, what it seems like, well, we want to, you know, cover this up. Not because there's nefarious stuff going on, but, you know, we want to, we want to keep the public calm.

That's, that's number one priority. And there's still kind of that, but now you're getting glimpses of, you know, deep inside government stuff. which is fun, you know, it's fun. You know, from an X-Files kind of like standpoint. But, like, I'm enjoying the show so far. Aidan Gillen is knocking it out of the park. Michael Malarkey knocking it out of the park. Even though the woman playing Mimi Heinek, I love that we're getting to see this other side of Heinex life, you know, his personal life and how this job affected his relationship.

I mean, I was listening to an interview recently with the action. playing Mimi and she said like could you imagine how heartbreaking it is that you have to like go into your husband's office and peer into his diaries about what's going on in his life because it's so top secret it just i can't imagine having to do that yeah absolutely and i mean and and and i think it uh another thing that i don't think people are talking about as much is how well it's playing up this paranoia angle in the 50s, you know, with the Cold War and everything. It's doing a really great job with that. And at times, I feel like the show is a little busy with what it's doing.

At times, it seems like it has a little too much going on. Maybe with like the Russian spy angle, yeah, it's kind of, it just seems kind of like a little shoehorned in there. But, you know, it'll be interesting to see how that develops. You know, it'll be interesting to see, you know, what else is covered, where it's going, because I don't think it's totally, you don't totally, you know, notice at this point, where is it going? Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, that's a nice thing about it. But I can see where, like, the Heineck officiados get upset, but I think what people need to understand, too, is that two of Heinex children consulted on this show. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, they have the blessing of the family, so that's enough for me. But I agree with you, and I agree with the officiantauters. Like, no, this is not historically accurate by any stretch of the imagination. And we know History Channel isn't known for always being historically accurate. I mean, we have, if we want to run through briefly, like, the History Channel's kind of relationship with these strange, these programs about, weird topics. Yeah. It starts with History's Mysteries, which was a great show.

It was kind of like the history channels take almost on in search of. It was really fun, you know, a really fun show. And then you get into Monster Quest,

which is, you know, cryptids all the time. And then you get into the Nostradamus effect, which was just straight up garbage. I'm sorry, but there's no other way

to go around it. They played up the paranoia of 2012, you know, being the end of the world. So be it. And then the blockbuster ancient aliens, of course. Ah, the mother load. Oh, yeah.

Oh, and we can't forget about UFO hunters even before that. That's right. That was on history. I forgot about that. Yeah. Still one of my favorite shows. I'm not going to lie. It is.

And you know what's really cool is that at one point, they actually talked to Lonnie Zamora on that show. So. Yes, you're right. Yep. And now we have Project Blue Book, which none of us ever saw coming and never thought we'd see the day when, you know, not only was Project Blue Book going to be covered in like TV serial format, but to see Jay Allen Heineck, who's now like this super cool hero on television. It's just, that's enough for me, man. Yeah, and he kind of is a little bit of an action hero, you know, just slightly. Not too much. But I mean, like, in the first episode, the man survives a plane crash. Yeah, what? Yeah, that was a little much for me. But again, like, this is where the show is taking liberties. And what I really like is they're being very respectful to the cases after the episodes in terms of, like, having people like Richard Dolan or Jacques Valet come on and tell the actual case that it's based on. So I think that was responsible of them. And I look forward to those every week. And then you get to compare and contrast what you saw in the show. and the sort of fictional arc they're creating and what actually happened.

I think it's pretty cool. Yeah, and I mean, it's kind of a way to bring a whole new audience to these UFO cases, you know, sell some more books, damn it, you know? Why the hell not? Exactly, exactly. Well, Rob, this has been amazing, my man. I always love having you come on for these because I know we don't really have to plan months in advance for what we're going to. to talk about. I know you're always good for this and tipping back a drink. So what can we expect next from you over at the Our Strange Skies podcast? So right now, we've basically got two episodes

in the works. One of them, because I just randomly tweeted out one day, I was like, you know, this is all the weird stuff that has happened to me in my life, all these weird experiences. And people are you going to do an episode about that? Are you going to do an episode about You had to have expected that, man. Come on. I really didn't expect it to get as much attention as it did, but I'm like, all right, sure. So we've got an episode about my personal stories. And I initially started a series about the Gulf Breeze incidents with my friends, Sam and Jason, of the Not Alone podcast. and it's been a while.

We need to go back and finish it, so that's what we're going to do. We're going to finish Ed Walters' crazy story and his crazy encounters with these aliens and all just the weird stuff that was happening in Gulf Breeze. And then after that, we're going to be taking the year off, the rest of the year off, and we're going to get our bearings back.

And, you know, there's changes that are going to be coming. We're going to be telling more stories. We're going to be exploring it in a different format and trying different things. So, you know, I'm optimistic for what Our Strange Skies is going to be in the future. So really look for us in 2020. We're going to be bringing it. We will eagerly be awaiting that, my man. I can't wait to see what you guys come up with over there.

So where can we find the Our Strange Skies podcast? If you want to listen to the Our Strange Skies podcast, we are available on every single podcast platform. Just search for Our Strange Skies. And if you want to connect with me, I've got a Twitter account. We've got a Facebook group. We've got an Instagram account. Search for Our Strange Skies. Our Strange Skies at gmail.com.

And, you know, send us, contact us. We will talk, always. And we will talk again. my friend and do these much more often because these are my favorite episodes of the show. So once again, I have to thank you for pulling up a bar stool next to me for UFO Happy Hour, Volume 2, and I cannot wait for the next one, my friend. You too, man. Thanks again for having me on. UFOs seem to be invading both our skies and our news outlets like never before, and more people are starting to look up and are wondering who or what might be out there. In 2016,

Ryan Sprague introduced the world to countless UFO encounters that had never been made public before. And now, in the second edition of his book, he revisits these events and introduces brand-new UFO cases, in somewhere in the skies, a human approach to the UFO phenomenon. How have these events changed the lives of those involved? And what might it tell us about the phenomenon? With in-depth follow-ups, brand-new chapters and detailed testimony from credible witnesses and insight from those in the psychological, academic, and scientific fields. Somewhere in the Skies, a human approach to the UFO phenomenon,

weaves together a story of stories, attempting to get to the heart of these mysteries one experience at a time. Available now on Amazon in both paperback and ebook. To learn more, visit Somewhere in the Skies.com. This is Somewhere in the Skies with Ryan Sprigg. Welcome to Somewhere in the Skies. I'm your host, Ryan Sprigg. Well, I am on the road again doing some top secret projects, but I did want to bring you an episode this week.

So, I decided to pull this one out of the archives over at the Our Strange Skies podcast, hosted by Rob Christopherson. And when Rob Christofferson is on the show, you know it's going to be a UFO happy hour. But this time, Rob interviews me all about my book, what I think about UFOs in general, In what cases I turn the heart skeptics to. So sit back, crack open a cold beer or a glass of wine, or grab a coffee. No one's judging.

And let's begin this volume of UFO Happy Hour. Ryan, how you doing, buddy? I'm doing great, man. Hey, listen, I love what you're doing. I've been following your work ever since you started the podcast, and it's such an honor, pleasure to finally be on your show. I had you on mine a little while ago. So yeah, full circle here. So honored, pleasure.

Yeah, man. Happy to have you on. Definitely one of the first people that I thought about when I was going to do this. So I definitely appreciate you taking the time to come on and talk for a little bit. In the interviews that I've heard you do and stuff, you kind of got into UFO research after having a personal experience of your own when you were a teenager. Can you talk a little bit about your experience and kind of. of how it affected your life because your book really dives into the aftermath of the sighting and how it affected people. Right. Yeah. I mean, I'm a playwright first and foremost. I lived in

New York City for 10 years and that was my bag, man. That was my bread and butter writing characters, you know, how they live, how they breathe, how they talk, how they react. And, you know, the aftermath, what changes a character throughout the process of a play? So that's always a been the way I wanted to go with my UFO research. And that kind of is how I got involved with this. I had my quote unquote origin story when I was 12 years old, my Peter Parker moment, I guess. This was up in your kind of your neck of the woods. This was in central New York, right on the border of New York and Canada. I was on a nighttime fishing excursion off of a dock at a motel. I was staying out with my parents.

We were away for the weekend. And, you know, it's, it's 1995. I've got my Discman. I'm listening to, what was it, Duky by Green Day. Oh, wow. Yeah, man. And I was by myself. I love doing stuff like that.

Just listening to music and either writing, drawing, or fishing, as it were, that night. And so I'm just, you know, I'm reeling my line in. And I see this reflection in the most. water and it's, you know, kind of, kind of triangular, and it's like three white lights. I'm like, oh, that looks pretty cool. I thought it was in the water at first, but then I, closer I looked, I realized it was a reflection, so I naturally look up, and there it was, man. I mean, it was a triangular formation, three kind of orange, white lights and this huge red, basketball-shaped, hazy thing in the middle, and it's just floating there.

And there was no solid structure, not that I could see. I couldn't see the stars behind whatever the formation was, but I did not see any mechanisms or solid structure. But it was just like hanging there silently. And that really affected me. All I could hear was kind of like the water hitting the dock. And I was scared. I was kind of just frozen there.

And finally, I'm able to get, you know, these little squeals out of my 12th. year old voice to my dad. He's inside the motel watching a Yankees game and he's not going to be leaving that anytime soon. And I'm yelling. I'm yelling. The thing starts coasting over the water towards Canada. And finally, I get my dad's attention. He comes out and as he's coming out to look at the thing, it's just making its way over the water towards Canada. And it kind of disappeared right at where the water met the sky, the night sky. And I don't know if, this always kind of bothered me. I don't know if it just disappeared out of sight or if it actually submerged into the water. But my dad, he did see the tail end of it. He saw the two white lights in the back of this thing.

So he tells me it's just a plane, you know, doing his due diligence as a father calming me down. But again, dude, like I was 12 years old. Even I knew, you know, silent, no sound a propulsion, how fast and how slow I should say this thing was moving and how big it was. It was not any plane I'd ever seen. So, yeah, absolutely terrified me. I became obsessed. I had nightmares about it for years after that. And that's kind of how it all began, man.

I started taking out books on UFOs, cryptids, paranormal. And that's it. I was hooked after that. And it's always kind of interesting when you go back and you relive the sighting there and in just memory and like, I felt this emotion, I felt that emotion. Do you think that it was just the fact that you were seeing the craft or do you think the craft was kind of inducing that fear? Because there are people that talk about seeing craft like this and they hear this hum and then all of a sudden they are fearful or whatever. So do you think it was just you reacting in the moment, or do you think it might have been something else, maybe the craft itself? A little of both.

I've researched a lot of cases like you just mentioned, where there was physiological effects and psychological effects happening at the same time. For me, personally, I didn't hear a hum, but I felt a hum. Like, I felt this vibration going from the back of my neck down my spine and kind of into my stomach. Again, like, I don't know if this was adrenaline or fear, but I was definitely scared. I was definitely scared. You know, I ripped my headphones off. My disc ming goes flying. And just so I could, like, hear what was going on.

And when I heard nothing, that's when I was like, what the hell is going on? And I can't tell you, man, I can't tell you if it was making me feel anything. But it was this weird mixture of fear and calmness all at once. I wasn't, it wasn't, you know, flight or fright. It was more of just stay there, keep looking at it. I know you're scared, but you have to see what this thing does, whatever the hell it is. So there were physiological effects, whatever that was inside of me, vibrating. But other than that, I can't really tell you what else I was feeling in the moment.

I just wanted to remember it. Yeah, I totally understand because there was an experience I had like three years ago almost now. And, like, I keep going over it again and again in my head. And I'm like, well, why did I react the way that I reacted in the moment? Because I had a phone on me and I didn't take a picture of it. What that? Why didn't I want to do that? And, like, I experienced mine with a friend.

And I got to try and reconnect with him just to get his impression of it. But, yeah, it's one of those baffling things where it's just, this thing wants you to see it. And it's kind of inducing emotions in you, but it's such a baffling phenomenon that it does drive people to research this stuff. So I commend you, man. I probably would have, like, ran off that talk. I mean, don't get me wrong. I wanted to, but I'm telling you, man, like something kept me frozen there. Again, I don't know, maybe just scared.

But it happened. And, you know, I do look back and be like, oh, what could I have done? done, should I have, like, reported it? You know, we talked to the owner of the motel the next day. We're like, hey, dude, the hell is above your motel. Like, what's going on? But he really had nothing to say. He's like, oh, yeah, people report UFOs here all the time.

I'm like, what are you talking about? Like, and, but that was really about it. And I do regret that. But again, I was 12. I wasn't into UFOs yet. I didn't know about Mufon or, you know, reporting it to the police or the FAA. I just, I saw it. It changed my life instantly, and rest is sort of history.

And from that history comes forth a book somewhere in the skies. Your book begins in a bar in the lower east side of Manhattan, and it starts with a bartender named Tyler, and he starts talking about his experience seeing the Phoenix lights. This is kind of that catalyst moment that pushes you in the direction to write this thing. What was it about that encounter with Tyler that really made you want to write this book? So that was, that really was a pivotal moment in terms of my, my, my writing aspect of the whole UFO research thing, I guess. I, uh, I, I was on my way to do a,

you know, like a, a mini interview with my mentor, Peter Robbins. I'm sure a lot of your listeners know that name well um but i was nervous man i needed some some uh some whiskey in me that's kind of my go to bourbon in specific but uh so yeah i stopped into this bar and i don't know if you've ever had that that that that experience where the UFO thing just sort of comes up in conversation uh maybe happenstance maybe forced but um it's always a debate in your head like do i do it Do I take that leap? What's going to come of it? I mean, I've lost a lot of second dates, you know, bringing this thing up in the past.

God bless my girlfriend now. She loves it. But yeah, it can be a really big icebreaker, whether, you know, on a date or just in regular conversation. And, you know, luckily for me, it came up kind of naturally. In the book, I kind of explained how it all went down. But Tyler was such a cool dude. He was so excited to talk about it. And that really inspired me, man, to sit there in the middle of Manhattan with a complete stranger and have an extremely intimate conversation about the Phoenix Lights.

I interviewed some witnesses of that event in the past, but not to that extent and not face to face. So that was the moment, I think, being face to face with a witness, seeing how they recalled an event. and whenever I did interview people, I would write down how their voice sounded, you know, what the tone was in their voice. These were things I learned and was trained as a playwright. Like, how do you do those sorts of things? So I'm kind of analyzing him as he's telling me this, and I had no doubt he was telling me the truth. You know, I'm no speech pathologist. I'm no, you know, human lie detector, but he was sweating.

He was, you know, he was animated telling me about what he'd seen, how it floated through the air, how big it was. And that was the moment where I was like, I have to, I got to do this. I want to meet witnesses. I want to see how they react. And I want to know how it affected their lives. And that's kind of what I went with with the book. That was my approach is let's implement my playwriting skills of characters and induce that into my research, not creating characters. but kind of taking that idea and focusing on the people having the events rather than the event itself.

Yeah, and that's kind of one of the most fascinating aspects of this all. It's not the experience, it's the experiencer themselves and how they come away and how it changes them. And it's kind of amazing that nobody's really done this before. We're like over 70 years into UFO research, and nobody has really done this. It's always been the story or the report or what happened. It's never what happens after. So I commend you, dude. Great job on the subject of this.

It's definitely a book that I recommend now for people to go to. If people are interested in UFOs, it's definitely one that I recommend up front. how did you come to find all the people that you interviewed, and how long did it take to gather all the information and put it into a book? I'd say from like the first interview to literally, you know, send it in it off to the publisher. Maybe about two and a half years or so. I mean, it was not short, but it was not long either. I did some traveling to go meet people.

countless nights over Skype and on the phone my Verizon bill was higher than it's ever been and still on a family plan so thank you, dad, for that. But yeah, man, it was an amazing journey and just, you know, I went and stayed awake with some abductees. I flew out to Arizona to meet with some witnesses for this.

I went to a couple other places and interviewed people face to face. And it was just, it was an incredible experience. You know, I kind of wanted to take that journalistic approach and that boots on the ground approach and get out there and talk to the people. So, you know, Skype, Facebook, online forums, these were all very valuable assets to me that a lot of researchers didn't have in the past. So, you know, God bless the Internet for all its. It's good and bad. It really helped me with this. Man, you really mind for it, too, because what you get in the book is like a really wide swath of people and experiences that run the gamut from just seeing a UFO, like a CE1 or a nocturnal light kind of sighting all the way up to abductions.

And it's definitely well-rounded. And another thing that I really love about the book, what surprised you the most while doing the research and doing the interviews? I think what really surprised me was just the spectrum of reaction and aftermath. You know, when I first set out to write the book, I was like, oh, I'm going to find this one linear pattern to all the cases. And there we go. Boom. I've solved the UFO mystery. I did it. Yay. that was the stupidest thing I ever could have assumed but yeah it was definitely like the spectrum of you know someone has a UFO sighting or a CE 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 even and it impacts them greatly. It changes their entire life whereas I interviewed a guy who had a sighting on his way to his first,

military job and it was a classic saucer-shaped craft that stopped his car that circled around him, that took off. And he literally said to me, oh, yeah, just got in my car, went to a bar, and went to my job. I mean, that right there, man, astounded me. I thought, oh, wait, like, no matter what, this is a profound experience and it's going to change your life forever. For this guy, no, it really didn't. He had it. He thought it was pretty cool. and maybe it opened his eyes a little, but it did not change him in the profound ways I had expected. And as for other people, I talked to a guy who had an abduction experience, Michael Carter, the guy who became a minister of a church after he was aboard a craft apparently talking to these white alien beings,

and they showed him an image of prayer hands with a lightning bolt through it. This was his sort of, you know, I guess translation in his own mind that he had to pursue faith healing. He had to infuse his UFO encounters with his spiritualism, became a minister, wrote some books on UFOs in the Bible. So, I mean, that changed the entire course of that dude's life. So it really ran a spectrum. And I think that's what was most surprising to me is this is messy. It's profound. it's mundane, it's scary, it's beautiful, and it's everything in between.

And I think that's what's beautiful about all of it is we're all going to take whatever we experience a different way and either infuse that, embrace it into our lives, or reject it and deny it and move on. So, yeah, that's kind of what surprised me the most is just how messy this melting pot really is. Yeah, it really is. And I think some of the interesting interviews that you did involve, especially when you're talking about the ones that involve interactions with beings of some kind, like Claudette Huber's case, that's not any kind of alien being that I've ever really heard of. It's just, it's short, it's, it's got darker skin with, and it's wearing a black flowing robe. Yeah, dude, this, that one really surprised me. That was one of the

individuals I met in person. And it's kind of an interesting story. So I met her at a UFO conference and I asked her, I knew she had an experience and she'd never spoken about it to anyone. And I said, hey, you know, would you be willing to talk about this with me and just kind of see where it goes? I'll turn a recorder on, but I will never let it share it with anyone. And it took some time and some debate and she decided to do it. So I had dinner with her. her and her husband and you know she broke down into tears when she said I want to share my story with you and her husband's there holding her hand supporting her and she uh she came up to my hotel room we sat there for over an hour and a half maybe two hours and she divulged everything to me and again

it was one of those pivotal moments where i was like this is what i have to do i have to focus on the person and let them tell the story not me let them tell me what they saw what they saw what they experienced and how they felt what they think it was. So with Claudette, yeah, she was very young when this happened. She saw these weird beings, like you said, almost monk-like in appearance, dark, crackly skin, very, you know, moist, almost as if the air was very, very humid. And it was weird. You never really heard about this other than maybe some of the beings that Whitley Streber once

described seeing. but this actually happened Claudette's event before that came out so she had a trigger event later in life when her boyfriend at the time was watching Communion,

the movie, that horrible god-offal movie for all its faults. I still love it. It's a cool classic. But she saw the being in that movie and she flipped out. You know,

she cowered behind the couch and started crying. Boyfriends like, what's going on? What's going on? And she couldn't tell him, you know, couldn't tell them for many years later. So, again, a lot of this is not what you would expect. This was not the little gray beings with big black eyes, big head.

This was a monk blue and black in appearance and wearing some kind of ancient robe, man. I don't know. I don't know what to make of it. And I don't pretend to either. This is what she experienced. And I'm going to relate that the best way I can as the journalist and the author. And I think what's interesting is to say, Just in the way it reads, she only had like one experience with these beings, right?

Yes, apparently. You know, I've spoken to her a couple times after that. And she said she's had some other weird experiences, but nothing as dramatic as this. So that's another big thing is, you know, some of these people, it's a lifelong thing. It happens. It's reoccurring. For others, it's a singular event. So again, there's very few patterns that can be made with all of this.

But, you know, we're going to keep trying. and we're just going to keep recording what we can when it happens and if it happens. That's kind of one of those aspects that we don't get a view of most of the time, because when we're talking about abductions, it's always a lifelong event, or at least most of the life, and it's always, it runs in families and all this stuff, and there are definitely people in your book that kind of defy that a little bit. Like you said, Michael Carter, his experiences only lasted, like, what, about six months or so? Yeah, within the span of six months, he had a ton of experiences.

So, again, whatever is happening, no matter what it is, aliens, some higher power, interdimensional. I don't know, man. Again, I don't pretend to know what the adoption phenomenon is or who's in control of it. But, I mean, my God, they say, like, they won't, they won't do to it. what you can't handle, but I don't know how that man can still be sane after that many experiences. He did tell me that he went under therapy after a lot of this and kind of stepped away from it for a little while to live his life. But yeah, the whole running and families thing, I know you're a big proponent of that idea, that that seems to be one of the only patterns we can make with these things.

And I agree with you. While I didn't find many of those cases, I know they're out there, and there must be something to it. I just, in my own research, I haven't tapped into that quite yet. And, you know, it's a phenomenon that constantly reforms and constantly reshapes itself. So it's interesting to see this wide swath. They were definitely aspects of that book that I really just enjoyed. And I'm going to say that like a billion times because I really did it. I love the hell out of your book.

Well, thank you. I swear to your listeners, I didn't come on here just for that. But no, dude, I really appreciate that. Like, again, I just want to get these stories out there for individuals who just need, like, they want their voices to be heard, you know? They're not Whitley Streber. They're not these big cases like Rendlesham or Alagash or anything like that. They're people who had their everyday people. They're everyday people. people. That's that's kind of what I'm trying to get at with the whole thing is this is your next door neighbor. This is your, you know, your professor in college. This is your law enforcement officer. This is, uh, the mailman. I mean, it isn't some, that cliche of like some hick in the back woods having an experience. Those days are over. And honestly, they never truly were, uh, that, that cliche. So I, I appreciate the broad spectrum of individuals having, experiences and coming forward, having the courage to give the real names. That was another big thing in the book is, I wanted no pseudonyms. I wanted these people to own it, to embrace it,

and to get out there. And that's a huge, huge risk for them. So if any of them are listening, I always say thank you. Thank you for having the courage to do that, because the ramification to coming forward with this, as you know, it can go one of two ways. Either people are like, interesting, cool, or they're like, hey, you just lost your job, or hey, you know, we're going to ridicule the hell out of you after this. So again, I applaud each and every person in the book and who are not in the book as well, who come forward with their real names on these things. I think that's really the only way it's going to be normalized. Yeah, I absolutely believe that. And for all the criticism I throw to to the Stars Academy

and the New York Times article, hopefully, you know, at least we're on the, the precipice of kind of reshaping the image of UFO research, I definitely hope that's a step in the right direction. I think so. Yeah, I agree. Aside from the one story that takes place in my hometown that you were a part of, the one story that just scared the daylights out of me was Patty Blackburn's story and her daughters. Could you just kind of go into it, man, and talk a little bit about it? Because it is reads like an abduction case, but it's not an abduction case. Yeah. It's so very strange.

Yeah, absolutely. Again, yeah, this is one that really stood out to me, and I'm still working with Patty on this, because I'll tell you what, like, this is definitely one of those reoccurring event things that's still sort of going on. So, yeah, this was definitely one of the more dramatic stories. This happened in Michigan, and it was in 2006. right over Lake Michigan. She lived right near the water.

Again, that's another big thing. A lot of these things happened over water. I don't know what to make of that, but we can definitely talk about that. Anyways, she's heading out to walk her dogs one night, and she could feel something was sort of off. You know, the dogs, they wouldn't leave the front porch. They're whimpering.

And she makes her way down the front lawn to try to get them to come with her, you know. And that's when she noticed. that there is a black triangle floating right above the tree line over her property. And it kind of stopped her dead in her tracks. And obviously she couldn't believe what she's seen. So kind of like me at age 12, she starts yelling for someone to come see this, you know, make sure it's actually happening to her.

And her younger daughter, Jennifer, she comes outside. And Jennifer comes out, you know, they're both kind of staring up at this thing. The daughter did see it, and it starts slowly creeping closer until it's literally directly above them. What I kind of found most interesting about this one, though, was that Patty, while she's looking at this thing, she hears a low humming, like you mentioned earlier, like a washing sound almost. And she asks Jennifer if she can hear it, and when she looks over at Jennifer, she's covering her ears and telling her mom how unbearably loud the noise. is. So that was immediately where I was like, what, what the F? Like, you're low humming for the mom, unbearably loud for the daughter. What's going on here? So, you know, they're having completely different experiences in terms of hearing the craft. And while this is happening, Patty starts to feel

calm. She's collected. And the daughter's terrified. She thinks this is a threat of some sort, while their mom's feeling euphoric. And that's where I think that whole idea, man, of them being able to convey some sort of reaction and emotion out of us while an event is happening, whatever intelligence is behind it. But like you said, that wasn't kind of the end. That was the initial experience with Patty. You know, sometime later, the daughter, her other daughter, Jessica,

she's getting ready for bed one night and she's walking in the hallway of the house and she sees a figure coming out of her younger sister's bedroom. You know, she assumed it was her sister, you know, head into bed, maybe she was in the bathroom or something. But when whatever this thing is that comes into sight, it was not her sister. She described it as being about four feet tall, large head, small body, and it had large black eyes. So right here, you've got kind of the prototypical gray, as it were. this is where I start getting really creeped out, man, with this whole story. She went on to say that it had a robe on with a hood, kind of like what Claudette had experience,

and it just stared at her, and it starts slowly moving towards the parents' room. So Jessica freaks out. She goes into her bedroom, gets under the covers, and she doesn't know what to do. You know, she's a kid. She stays underneath. She's scared to death to look. and when she hears her mother's voice in the room, she takes the covers off,

you know, the soothing voice of her mother, and the mother's in there to say good night. She's still too scared to say anything to her mom about it, and she can see this hooded figure walking around her bedroom while the mom is in there, silently. And Jessica is just petrified at this point. She's frozen. She doesn't know what to do.

And finally, her mom kisses her on the forehead, says good night and goes out of the room. And the being just follows the mom out. And that was, that was it, man. She thought maybe this was some weird dream she'd had, but then she started seeing this being in her dreams constantly after that. And this all kind of culminated into a really bad experience for the family.

They started having weird poltergeist activity. paranormal stuff happening in the home. And it just got out of control. You know, one time their electricity went out, the dude comes to fix it. He sees a UFO over the house and tells them he's never coming back. So you have cooperation that something weird

is going on in this family's home. It really starts to eat away at them. The two daughters and their mother stop talking to each other. They become very, very introverted. and it's not good, man. The mother thinks that whatever's happening is demonic. She was Christian.

And what they decided to do, and this is a really other really interesting defense mechanism, I guess, is to pray. They all started praying together for these things to stop happening. And for a while, that seemed to work. They prayed, it didn't happen, the daughters moved on with their lives, but Patty is still having some weird experiences at the home and struggling with her spirituality and whatever the hell is going on in that house above the house and beyond. So it's just, I don't know what to make of all of it, man. It's heartbreaking.

It's terrifying. And I'm still working with Patty to this day to figure out what the hell is going on out there in Michigan. It's terrifying. It's absolutely terrifying. and really is one of the most bizarre cases that I have ever read, simply because when you're talking about poltergeist activity, it almost mimics the way that poltergeist activity happened in Point Pleasant with the Mothman thing, minus the really weird telephone calls.

But it's... Right, right, the whole injured cold thing. Yeah, it's so strange because, like, it doesn't fit into, a box, even for like the average UFO research. And UFOs really don't fit into a box very neatly themselves. But this goes above and beyond that. So damn, man, I had nightmares after reading that. Me too, dude. I don't know how she goes on day to day. And, you know, we do hear, you know, valet talks about this and many other researchers about that aspect of high strangeness after a UFO event, that it kind of just opens these doors. It lifts the veil. You know,

you've now had something that kind of bends your reality, and then it's just the floodgates after that. You know, the cryptids are like, oh, I'm coming in. The ghosts are like, let's do this. You know, it's just like, up, aliens, you got that? Cool. All right, we're going to go in now. We're going to mess around a little bit, and then we'll be out.

And you don't know if any of this stuff, whether it's the non-human intelligence, the apparitions, the high strangeness. Like, if it even gives a shit about these people, that's another big thing, is while it's impacting their lives and changing their lives, it's not always for the better. You know, I talked to people who became very depressed, had to get on med, started drinking. So it's not always good implications to these things. And it's not brotherly love. I can tell you that much, dude. But I don't know.

It does not fit into a box, and I think it's meant to be that way. Choice hotels get you more of what you value. Here's a little tune to help you remember. Same drive, different day. Don't you wish you were getting away? Pack your beds and come on through. Texas, Ohio, Alaska, we're up there too. Comfort in.

It's calling your name. Save on the stay. Oh, and free waffles are yours to claim. Well, I hope you like my little song. Book direct at sourceotels.com. Do you enjoy true stories of the supernatural from the people who experienced it? Well, then you might like my show, Jim Harold's Campfire. Hi, I'm Jim, and we've been doing the show since 2009.

And we talk about ghosts, cryptic creatures, UFOs, head scratchers, you name it. And you tune in and you might hear a story like this one. And as he was driving home, he encountered a shadow person who seemed to be dressed like a monk. I know that sounds very strange, but it was a solid black form, and it was wearing a hooded cloak tied at the waist with the cloak up, and it had glowing red eyes. He sees this thing coming out of a really teeny abandoned cemetery. If you haven't tuned in, I hope you'll check us out. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever podcasts are heard,

It's Jim Herald's Campfire and you can find it at Jim Herald.com. Thanks so much and stay spooky. The best way, and I always bring it up, that anybody has ever talked about to describe what interacting with these intelligence is like, is like the book Flatland, where it's a three-dimensional world interacting with the two-dimensional world and I don't understand how to fully make out what's happening. and it's absolutely terrifying.

So kind of shifting a little bit to your experience in this book on a weekend retreat up in my neck of the woods in my hometown. You gave me nightmares again, man. Just doing my part, my man. I tried to contribute to your insomnia. I appreciate it, man. I definitely appreciate it. So could you kind of go in a little bit

about your weekend up in good old Sarnack Lake, New York, and the experience you had there. Sure. I mean, first of all, one of the most beautiful areas I've ever seen. I've traveled the entire United States. I've been to every state but South Dakota. I'm sorry, South Dakota. They literally got nothing going out there for me to go see for any of your listeners who live there. I'm so sorry. That was very mean. Anyways, no, man, I wanted... I wanted... to really embed myself in this, you know, kind of like a journalist in a war zone. I wanted to become a part of what I was doing. And while some journalists may find that irresponsible, I think that's really the only way to go. So I had the opportunity to spend a weekend with a good buddy of

mine colleague Mike Llellan. Many know him as the owl guy. You know, if you've ever had a UFO experience that has somehow connected with owls or synchronicity, he's the most of the man to turn to. Absolutely. Yep. That being said, Mike also believes he is an abductee. And he, what he wanted to do is get a group of experiencers together, you know, just to have conversation and spend a weekend in an isolated area, which happened to be a bed and breakfast

that him and his partner own called the Doctors Inn, which is a really cool cabin right, you know, right near Saranac Lake, and right next to it is an abandoned sanitarium, which is really creepy. They even, you know, they had some of the doctors stay at the inn at one time. So a lot of weird history there, if we're talking like paranormal and legend tripping. But I'm getting off topic. I apologize. No, that's all good, man.

And actually, where the doctor's in is, my dad actually used to work up in that area. Really? Yeah. He used to work for. the American Management Association, which is up in that neck of the woods. Oh, wow. Okay. Gotcha.

Yeah. I mean, I got to wander the grounds of the abandoned place. And, oh, God. I wish I had, like, a psychic there with me. But anyways, yeah, so I decided to go there for the weekend and just kind of hear people's stories and put myself in that situation, that vulnerable situation. So we go. my girlfriend and I, God bless her for doing this. And it was awesome, man.

It wasn't like, go sit, talk about your experience. Mike knew that that's not really how you get to the crux of these things. And I really appreciated that about how he handled the weekend. It was let's just camp, have dinner, go out, drink some wine, and just kind of let things happen organically. And I noticed that throughout the three nights I was there, that it would. It would just be on a walk outside in the snow that maybe this one person would tell a story or, you know, why we're sitting down playing cards or eating dinner. Another story comes up. And that's kind of how the weekend went.

And I even got to meet a shaman, which was freaking amazing. I'd never met a shaman before. And what sort of happened is as the nights progressed, I heard more and more stories. and I began to get a little uncomfortable. And the last night that I was there, I was in bed. My girlfriend was passed out. It was a long night and she was exhausted. So she goes to bed and I talked to Mike and a couple of the others for a little bit

and then I head up to go to sleep. And in the middle of the night, I just start hearing a tapping on the window outside our room. Mind you, I'm three stories up in this building and there's no trees. next to me. So I'm like, oh, it's not a branch. That's immediately what I thought it was. It wasn't hell or snow. It wasn't snowing. Maybe it's an owl, which would have made perfect sense for where I was and who I was with. Right. So, you know, maybe that's it. And I don't know what came over me at that moment, dude, but it was more fear than I've ever felt in my entire life. Even having a UFO sighting, I've had a few paranormal experiences in the past. This was stark.

fear of, I don't know where my life is going to go in the next few moments. Everything I've ever believed is going to change. And I genuinely thought I was about to have an abduction experience. And I will be 100% honest with you. I am still very, very on defense with the abduction phenomenon, having it be an actual physical phenomenon. I've spoken to so many individuals, but I am still very on the fence. And I think that's the right way to go with it. But in that moment, I just remember seeing footstep or, you know, feet under my door, you know, in the light outside the room. And everyone was asleep at this point. Mike's cat was locked in, not locked, but closed in his bedroom with him. I'm like, who the hell is outside my door? And what is tapping on my window? And

I was just terrified and my girlfriend would not wake up I tried to wake her up she's the lightest sleeper you can think of if I even shift a muscle in bed she will wake up she would not wake up

for the life of her at this moment and I didn't know what to do man I literally thought I was about to get abducted so I finally had the courage to open the curtain to the window and look out

and that's kind of kind of where it all ended, I guess, for me, in terms of that night. I did not see an alien outside my window. I did not see a craft. I saw nothing. There was nothing there. And that flood of relief came over me. And I did not get abducted that night.

But I can sure as hell tell you that something weird was definitely going on. And no matter what I believe about the abduction phenomenon or those who have experienced it, I definitely experienced the fear that many of them have had, and I can't even imagine how much more multiplied it was for them than it was for me that night. And that's kind of interesting, because whatever it was, it wanted to get your attention. Yes, absolutely. We're going down the rabbit hole here a little bit, man. Why do you think it wanted to get your attention?

Well, just speculate a little bit, you know. I understand that, you know, we can't possibly understand what. you know, these things are. But if you had to speculate a little. Yep. Absolutely, man. I mean, I won't go through the whole case, but there's another case of a dude who saw a black triangle over a drive-in movie theater, shut down all the power. Hundreds of people saw this and then disappeared. And no one remembered it happening. They didn't react to it. So what I think these intelligence or these UFOs want from us is a reaction of some sort. Some of them are begging to be seen. Look at Phoenix Lights. Look at the O'Hare Airport case.

Look at what happened in Texas at one point. I mean, they want to be seen. Some of these things want to be seen. So I do wonder, is it to gauge our reaction to them? is this sort of a buffer into, okay, let's give them a little bit. Let's hang that carrot out there, see what they do. Look at like the Battle of Los Angeles. They see something.

They fire at it. They try to take it down and destroy it. Okay, we're going to leave for a little bit. We'll come back in 47, you know, and show ourselves in Washington to Kenneth Arnold. But let's chill for a little bit and then come back. So you do have to wonder, you know, is it to gauge a reaction? Is it to see how we interpret what they are? Look at like someone who has an experience and they say it's a religious experience.

Look at, you know, going back all the way to what valet said and what many other sociologists and psychologists have said. Is this like sort of, is the UFO reminiscent of our anxieties here on Earth? I think it's a huge experiment by many different controllers, and I think they just want to see what the hell we do with it. Is it to have a UFO podcast? Is it to become an artist and convey your experience through that? Is it to become a musician and sing about UFOs? I don't know. Is it to become a teacher and talk about, you know, God knows what?

I don't know, man. I don't know. But I think whatever it is, it wants to be seen on many of these occasions, and it wants to see what the hell we do with that. And I think that's really cool. It's like the biggest art project of all time. That is a fascinating way to look at that, man. Damn, you're like changing my perspective here. And I can't pretend that that's like my idea. You know, you look at someone like Greg Bishop who's looking at the whole co-creation phenomenon. that maybe we have a lot more to do with this than we think. So are we working in tandem with the phenomenon to create it? Are we a phenomenon to them? It's fascinating. Like you said, it's a rabbit hole.

And again, I didn't create these ideas or theories. I'm just kind of running with them and trying to look at it in different ways. And I think that's what you've got to do. You know, physical data, nuts and bolts, hasn't done shit for us. So let's kind of look at it other ways. and let's get weird and crazy. Absolutely, man. I'm totally down for that.

So science hasn't totally embraced this phenomenon. Like they haven't other phenomenons. In the book in Chapter 6, you talk with many scientists about UFOs and how we can bring a scientific approach to it. What do you think the best approach to this is in terms of science? a multidisciplinary kind of study, or is this something purely the social sciences have a leg up in? What do you think on that? That's a really good question, man.

And I can't pretend to have, like, one answer, but, you know, you've spoken to Chris Cogswell. And his approach, being a scientist, was to look at it both from a hard science standpoint and a soft science standpoint. And again, I think that's great. There's room for everyone in this. There really is. I mean, UFOs, their astronomy, their psychology, they're everything in between, their chemistry, their social sciences. It's crazy. We can connect the UFO phenomenon to any of this.

In terms of if we're looking at it from kind of a nuts and bolts data-driven phenomenon, I think some of the people I interviewed in the book are a really good way to go with that. UFO data, CubeSat. you've got Trumbull who's trying to put, you know, humvies on the ground to be a rapid response mechanism to go out and record a UFO event. That's so incredibly cool to me. I mean, you know, that's awesome. And I think that works in tandem with these other people looking at it from a more heady space. So what approach scientifically we can take to it? I think we're there.

I think we have really cool innovators out there trying to record data, trying to capture photos and radar and everything in between when it comes to the phenomenon. But I think, this is sobering to say, I think the phenomenon is always going to be a step ahead of our technology and our science. And we're never truly going to get there. Maybe. Maybe someday we'll hit that precipice with our soft sciences and our heart. hard sciences can come together and be like, boom, UFO mystery solved. Let's go do something else now. But I don't know, man. I don't know. I think it's all exciting. I think we can all work together. I think we've got to stop scoffing at one another for you're a little too new agey. You're a little

too cerebral. You're a little too science based. And let's just all share information and be like, oh, that's cool. Let me see if I could put that into this. And I think that's what it's all about putting the puzzle together? Yeah, definitely an open, an open-minded approach. Like, I think in this age that when we hear the term skeptic, it's always meant to be as this blocker from accepting what is actually out there or isn't. And I think part of it is definitely an image issue that we're still kind of trying to work through. And at times there are people that are trying to control the perception.

And to go back to the stars, when, you know, you have an article saying that you have a metal alloy that you're claiming is from a UFO. It's suddenly now a physical phenomenon. And it seems like it's more complex than that. So I definitely agree with you. I definitely agree that we need a very open-minded approach to this to fully gauge exactly what's going on, because it's not as simple as a nuts and bolts kind of thing. Exactly. And even with the whole Pentagon UFO program into the stars, like, yeah, we're getting physical data and imagery and videos,

but we know full well that the program looked at much weirder things than just that. And we're going to be seeing a lot more of that coming forward with Skis. Walker Ranch and whatnot too. So it's again, dude, like, I don't think there's one way to look at this. And I applaud to the stars in many ways. And I turn my nose up at them and others. But, you know, use it some Shakespearean language there as a theater nerd. Yeah, yeah, I don't know.

But I know that we can all work together. And that's exciting. So shifting again here, if somebody's coming up to you and they're a skeptic of the UFO phenomenon, or if somebody's like, I'm kind of interested, what cases would you point them to to kind of wet the whistle and say, you know, there might be something here? I've got two for you if you're down for it. Yeah, go ahead, man. Cool. So, yeah, I mean, I often veer towards pilot witness cases because there's usually, like we said earlier, the most data, documentation. and I do think those things are important.

Not the approach I'm really taken right now, but, you know, there's the Japan Airlines case of 87. That's a good one. You recently spoke about the Thomas Mantel case, which is awesome. You covered it so well. But I'd have to say I do have two favorite pilot cases that still give me chills.

The first one was the Carlos de Santos case of 75. Do you know about this one? No, I don't. Oh, this one is great. I covered this on episode five of somewhere in the skies really early on in my podcasting days. And I had Ruben Uriarte on, who looks at cases out of Mexico, out of the southwest. And I had never heard of this case either. And it blew me away that I really started looking into it. So this happened in 75. Carlos DeSantos was heading back to Mexico City. He's in a small piper plane that he owned. And he sees three. disc-shaped objects that begin to follow him. Very reminiscent kind of of Kenneth Arnold, but much, much closer in proximity. The objects, they surround his plane, and one of the objects hits his fusel lodge, and it sends the plane kind of into a controlled dive.

It affected his aircraft. So he radios the closest tower, makes a distress call, and this is all caught on audio. Mind you, you can listen to this distress call. It's in the episode. Episode five is somewhere in the skies. If, again, you want to stay up a little later at night and have some nightmares, man. Check that out. So the objects, you know, as he's making this call, Mayday, Mayday, I'm out of control.

This is what's happening. Help me, help me. The objects finally start to separate and they head towards a volcano of all things, a mountainous volcano in the distance and disappear. So Santos lands and reports what it happened. So immediately he's put under psychiatric watch. Right. Oh, my God. But, dude, he comes out on the other side of it completely like, okay. They're like, oh, he's fine.

What he says he saw, we legitimately think he saw. And he's okay. And what was also really interesting is, you know, sometime later, the radar operations. at the tower that he made the distress call at, they both swore under oath that they saw the objects surround his aircraft and then disappear, and that they were captured on radar. So this is an extremely well-documented case, corroborated, and I love it. I love it. Santos still talks about it up until today and hasn't changed his story one bit. So that was a really interesting one.

And I would say the other one would have to be the Tehran case, which I could definitely run through if you want. But if your listeners know it well enough, that one's amazing as well. No, definitely, man. Run right through it for us. Oh, sure. I'll try to do the express route on this one. This happened a year later. This was 76.

You know, I actually got off my lazy ass and made a freedom of information act request for this one. And I did. I got some documentation on it. it. Thanks to my friend John Greenwald. He told me, over at the Black Vault, told me how to properly do this so that I could actually get stuff. And the reason there was documentation is because the U.S. military was involved with this case. I'll get into that. I got this stuff. And what it sort of told me was that in 76, the Iranian Air Force, they'd gotten reports of a huge luminous object over the city, kind of like the Battle of L.A. and they had to go investigate it, you know? This thing was over the entire city. Hundreds of reports coming in. So they send up a fighter jet to investigate,

and as the first jet starts to get close to whatever this lighted object is, all of its instruments and equipment start to malfunction. Pilot kind of freaks out. He's like, oh shit, he starts heading back to the base. And this time, Parvice Trafari, he is the general at the base. he's like, I'm going to take care of this. I'm going to go up there and investigate and see what the heck's going on. So he goes up there and he gets even closer to what this thing is and he actually sees what it is.

And he reported seeing a multicolored diamond-shaped object and it was huge, like jumbo jet-sized huge. And he starts to move a little bit closer, tries to make contact with it. He's getting nothing. and then out of this massive object, another smaller object descends and starts to head towards Jafari. So what's going on with this? Jafari, he starts to try to lock in on the object. Like, uh, dude, what are you doing? His weaponry, his instruments, they start to malfunction and he can't use them.

And the thing's starting to move towards him. So he makes a U-turn and goes into defense mode. and starts a negative G dive to try to outmaneuver this thing. He's having a cat and mouse game with a UFO in midair, dude. This just kind of blew my mind. And whatever the object is, it gets a lock on him, and he freaks out. He's able to make another negative nosedive, negative g nosedive, and outmaneuvers it again and gets a lock on the object.

But right when he does, the object disappears out of sight, and he hears this loud explosion, like it had crash landed or something. So if that was not dramatic enough, he goes back to base, he reports what had happened, and the next morning he and a bunch of the Iranian military go out to where supposedly this explosion happened, and they investigate. They start speaking to witnesses, and nobody saw anything, but they did hear the explosion. Nothing was ever found, no object, nothing like that. But what I found most interesting was that apparently the DIA, the NSA, and the CIA in America, they all got involved because our jets were being leased to the Iranian Air Force at this time.

You know, they wanted to know what the hell this thing was that was out maneuvering our technology. So there's a bunch of documentation from these intelligence agencies about this event. and Jafari, he spoke about this entire thing at the National Press Club in 2007, and he's very outspoken about it. He spoke about it up until his unfortunate passing not too long ago, maybe a few months ago even. So, oh, God, these two cases, these are the ones I would tell any amateur UFO researcher, anyone just interested to look into in terms of documentation, radar, pilots, and legitimate. for sure. So I hope that serves some purpose to your listeners. I'm sure it will, man. Absolutely. Kind of pivoting a little bit here. If you had to direct these people to maybe a book or two, what books would you recommend for them?

So I know Jafari's entire event is logged in Leslie Keen's book, UFOs. That is definitely one I recommend everyone go look at. If you're looking for government, military, and pilot accounts of UFOs. Again, some of the most documented cases out there. She has them tell all their stories in their own words. That is probably one of the top ones, I would say. Also, anything by Jacques Valle, someone who looked at the phenomenon quite differently,

looked at it from a very cultural stance, psychological stance, and it's just an all-around amazing individual. And again, if you're looking for more of us, scientific approach. Anything by our UFO dad, Mr. Heinek, is the way to go. Definitely the way to go. But, yeah, there's many ways to go in terms of UFO books and documentaries. But I think a lot of the work being done by Jeremy Corbell in the film industry on UFOs is pretty awesome. And anything by Heinek, by Valet, and some of the younger people out there, Jason McClellan of Roeck.

Planet has a really good book called You, I forget the exact title, but it's like only weirdos see UFOs which kind of sheds the ridicule factor. It's not true that only weirdos see UFOs. So that's a good primer for anyone looking to

look at some of the cases and to see what's out there in UFO history and really get you into a good headspace to start looking at this crazy stuff we do. Yeah, absolutely. And one that I'm definitely going to keep people's radars is the one that it's not out yet, but the one that M.J. Benayas is working on

definitely seems, it's going to be fascinating for sure. It's going to be unlike anything I think we've seen before. Again, MJ's a philosophical person, and he's really looking at the culture of ephology, which I think is very fascinating and says a lot about it, and I think influences the phenomenon itself. So I can't wait to see what he comes up with. Yeah. And when in the pre-order link comes up. I'm there. I'm totally there. One click Amazon done. Absolutely. So from your book, Somewhere in the Skies, comes the Somewhere in the Skies podcast.

How did that come about? What inspired you to get in the podcasting game? I'd been listening to podcasts for so long. Jim Harold's paranormal podcast was my first endeavor into that world. I've been listening ever since. And I love it, man. I think it's a medium that is really booming and is the future of both journalism, of radio, of broadcasting, and anyone can do it. Look at how many podcasts there are out there. It's ridiculous. You could find one on anything. Anything you could possibly think of there's a podcast about. And I got involved by co-hosting another show into the Frey Radio with Shannon LaGro. And that was a dive into worlds I'd never been in, cryptids, ghosts, paranormal. And I

approached Shannon. And I was like, I loved the work you did with Sasquatch Chronicles and looking into Bigfoot and stuff. That's something I don't know much about. I want to know more. Like, I'd love to like maybe hash it out with you. And if you ever want any info on UFOs, I'd love to share that with you. And she said, why don't you, come on, why don't we like do this together and learn from each other. I'll learn about UFOs. You can learn about cryptids. So I did that for over 50 episodes or so of Into the Frey Radio. And the more and more I did it, the more and more I enjoyed the process of interviewing people, of doing the research and getting it out on a platform that I'd never really thought of. And that was, you know, over the internet podcasting. So I took the leap and I wanted to do

one just on UFOs, my bag, my specialty. And that's when the idea of, of continuing somewhere in the skies of the book in podcast form and do the show, man. And I had no idea how it was going to go. I was terrified. And, but the response has been amazing. And, you know, it's growing every week. And I've made so much, so many contacts and incredible friends and colleagues through that, including yourself.

And we're kind of, you know, we're all there for one another, all of the podcasts. It's a family. It's a community. and a community I love, and that supports one another. The UFO field is very divisive. The paranormal field could be often very divisive as well, people backbiting and arguing. I don't find that in the podcasting world. I'm sure it's out there, but for you and me, man, and other podcasts out there on the UFO topic,

we're just trying to share information and be there for one another. And I think that's what's really cool. and I look forward to what you're doing and where somewhere in the skies goes and how we can all work together. When I decided, hey, I'm going to do a podcast, I've done podcasts, okay, you do what you're passionate about. You just bring it to the table.

And one of the most fascinating aspects of doing a podcast is how supportive the community is, how everybody pretty much holds each other up and shares all the information. information. And it's definitely been one of the best parts of this, the whole process. And you definitely kind of gave you that little confidence booster when you had me on your show. So it's been great, man, you know. And I can't wait to see what both of us do down the line, you know? Yeah, man. We're either going to change euphology or we're going to become hermits and

and get our tinfoil hats professionally made. I don't know, but I'm ready, and I'm so happy to have you along on that journey with me. Absolutely, man. It's so great to meet all these great people, including yourself, and so many others, MJ Benayas, and Mike DeMonte, and so many others. Yep. So last question. What do you hope that people take away from your book the most?

I hope that they come away asking questions of me, of the phenomenon, of the witnesses, because, again, these are just stories. And I know that. I knew that full well going into it, that people are going to, they're going to call me out on that. Like, I have no proof that any of these stories actually happened. I don't have physical data. I don't have evidence. These are stories.

But I can tell you right now, man, I firmly believe that everyone in my book is telling me the truth that they believe these events happen to them, whether they happened in the reality that we all perceive, I don't know. But I think it's most important that we hear each other out, because that can be closure enough for people who have these profound, traumatic, dramatic, emotional events happen in their lives. And I just hope that even one person who reads the book who may have had an experience and never talked about it can now do that with someone. And can get their voice out there because again that's one more case we can be like

hey look at this this person who had this experience it becomes normal and then that's when we we keep moving forward getting it out to the mainstream and then we can start looking at it through many many more eyes so

yeah just keep focusing on the individuals having the experiences and I think we're going to be in a good place to move forward as the human race I 100% agree, man. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I appreciate it a ton, and it's been an honor having you here.

All right, that's it for this week's UFO Happy Hour with Rob Christofferson. You can follow his show, Our Strange Skies, on Twitter, at Our Strange Skies, Simple Enough. And you can follow us on Twitter at Somewhere Skies and on Instagram at Somewhere Skies pod. If you haven't already, please take a few moments to rate and review Somewhere in the Skies on Apple Podcasts or on any of your Android apps. Ratings and reviews and subscriptions help gain us visibility and find us new listeners. Thank you in events. All past episodes, news articles, and contact information can be found at the official website, somewhere in the scythe.com. Thank you, as always to the E1 Podcast Network, KGRA Radio, and Roke Planet.

especially thank you to you for listening. I'll see you here next week, and remember, keep your feet on the ground, but never stop searching Somewhere in the Skies. It is produced by Third Kind Productions in association with the Entertainment One Podcast Network. To learn more, visit Entertainment One Podcast.com. Greetings everyone, Ryan Sprague, your host of Summer in the Skies. For over seven years and more than 400 episodes, the Summer in the Skies podcast has always been free to. to listen to, but it's not free to create. So we offer several ways to help support our efforts and get rewards in return. If you listen to the podcast on Apple, you can click the subscribe button at the top of your somewhere in the sky's feed to become a premium Apple subscriber. Or you can join our Patreon campaign with several tiers available. Both of these options give you the same benefits and rewards, add free episodes, early access to the main show, and both.

bonus episodes and content. Help keep the lights on at the Summer in the Skies HQ. And help us continue to grow by becoming a Patreon subscriber at patreon.com slash somewhere skies. Or by clicking the subscribe button at the top of your Apple feed. Thank you for your continued support. And keep looking up. Today on the show, Rob Christofferson.

That's right. It's volume four of UFO Happy Hour. Folks, if there's one thing that you need to remember, you never flash a flashlight at a UFO. It didn't end well for the Alagash guys, and it sure as hell didn't end well for Terry Lovelace. This is Somewhere in the Skies with Brian Sprague. All right, today I have my favorite guy to pull up a bar stool with after a long day of work for UFO happy hour. And that is Rob Christofferson. Rob, how you doing, my man?

I'm doing good. How are you? I am good, man, coming off the heels of World UFO Day. Happy World UFO Day. Yeah, same to you, man. It's a glorious day, you know. And it falls in line with, you know, the general time scale for when the Roswell crash happened. So, you know, it's festive.

It's a very festive week here. It is very festive. Well, speaking of that, what do you drink it today for happy hour? So I toned it down a little bit. It's still, we're still drinking beer, but it's root beer. And not, not just any root beer. It's serenac root beer. The best root beer around.

Seriously, folks, if you don't, if you, you, you got to get your hands on this root beer. It's, it's great. It's not, it's not like mug where it'll, where it's like very, it'll leave you gassy. This doesn't do that. I couldn't agree more being from upstate New York myself. Like, that's what I grew up on, man. And I actually went on like a rupeer excursion throughout the country when I was in my younger days acting on the road. And I would try a root beer in every like city and town I went to.

That was like my thing. And it was it was really cool. I got to try all these local brews and everything. But I always came back to Saranak. That was always my favorite. Yeah. You really can't go wrong with it. And I mean, you don't live, you grew up not far from where they brew the stuff.

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, it was awesome. Well, good. Well, okay, so I guess I'm the alcoholic of the two of us today. I have with me, I found this beer at a craft beer bar here in New York, and, dude, I was stunned when I saw it. So about a month ago, I covered the Herb Shermer incident on the show. And at the time, they had a beer that was coming out commemorating the event, and I found it here in New York City.

Oh, no way. Yeah. I was stunned when I saw it. in the refrigerator. It comes from Broken Bowes Brewing Company and it's called, you'll like this, the Star Snake Dank IPA. That's great. I'm sure you get

the reference. It's inspired by the emblem that I hope Shermer remember seeing on the uniforms of the aliens that invited him aboard their craft. So I was just astounded. So I've got it in front of me. I'm going to pop it open as we get into our conversation here. But happy World UFO Day, Rob. And I'm glad you brought up the Roswell incident when I came to that, because I wanted to know where this all came from. People just started sort of posting this on their social networks and everything. And I wanted to know where did World UFO Day come from. And Al Jazeera actually did a pretty good write-up on this. So I'm just going to run through this briefly, if you don't mind. Oh, yeah, man. Yeah, a little crash course here on World UFO Day. It's defined by the World UFO Day organization aptly.

The World UFO Day is a day dedicated to the existence of UFOs. It aims to raise awareness about the existence of UFOs and with that intelligent beings from outer space, encouraging people to think about the possibility of us not being alone in the universe. It's also a way to encourage governments to declassify their files on supposed UFO sightings. And you'd mentioned Roswell. So originally, World UFO Day was celebrated on June 24th, Day, of Kenneth Arnold's sighting. What they ended up doing is they wanted to merge two of the most sort of famous events at the time,

Kenneth Arnold and Roswell, and just have it in July, you know, when everyone's out doing their barbecues and it's 102 degrees out and you're drinking a cold beer. So I thought that was pretty cool. And now we know where World UFO Day came from. So thank you, Al Jazeera. Yeah, absolutely. You just got learned, people. You got learned.

Well, you've been doing a lot of learning too lately, man. I've been following you on Twitter, and it's been such an amazing enlightening time for your Twitter feed. My God. You can always tell when Rob is really getting heavy into his research because you start posting all these, like, photos no one's ever seen before from all these, like, books from like 10, 20, 30 years ago. So I love it, dude. Oh, yeah, man. I get giddy with the research. because we have more resources than ever.

I mean, online, in books, and like hindsight's, you know, 2020, man, especially right now where we are in 2019, looking back on all these incidents and stuff. It's been kind of a really fun learning experience. I can imagine. And again, it's so exciting following someone like you on Twitter, especially as UFO researchers who get so, you know, dog down with dates and times and, you know, this, that debunking this. And it gets so, like, it could be draining and kind of boring, to be honest.

So when you see someone like you excited to dig into these old cases, like, it just reinvigorates everyone in the community. So I got to thank you for that, first of all. Well, you know, it's fun and I love sharing the well, so I'm happy to do it. Good, good. And, you know, you did bring up a good point. We're in 2019 now. there is a lot going on when it comes to to the stars and atyp these revelations which we'll get to

towards the end here but everyone is looking at this now from a military angle you know with the navy and everything but there's all these cases involving people that aren't part of the military so we have to keep that in mind when we're looking at this that most UFO sightings were not seen by the military and that sort of comes in the form of one of the ones I wanted to talk with you first here, and that is this Brazilian kick you've been on lately. So what cases really stick out to you? How did you, and how did this lead you to what I saw you posting about recently, about the 1954 French UFO flap?

I have a Brazilian friend, her name is Fabby, and she kind of like reinvigorates my love for Brazilian UFO cases because they're really, really kind of extreme. in many ways, to give kind of a comparison. In June 24th, you know, 1947, Kenneth Arnold sees the nine objects. Well, a month after that, Brazil has its first humanoid sighting. So while we're just seeing UFOs in the sky, Brazil's seeing some really extreme stuff. The first humanoid sighting in Brazil was by a man named Jose C. Higgins.

he sees this craft and he sees these really tall, really weird-looking aliens get out. They're kind of, they want him to come aboard their ship, but he doesn't want to. And he tries to convince them that, you know, he's got a family here. He doesn't want to go anywhere. So the aliens leave him alone, and then they just start frolicing around for whatever reason. It's very reminiscent kind of of like the Kelly Hopkinsville encounter or if you're familiar with the Mojave incident. Yes, yeah.

Or they were just these really strange-looking beings. They were just like they described them as frolicing around and, you know, childlike in a certain way. But I decided I wanted to do some cases from Brazil. And there's always kind of like three classic ones that always come to mind. There's the abduction of Antonio V.S. Boas. There's the Colares sightings in 1977

which is where we get the chupas from the rectangular looking UFOs that supposedly shot beams down at people and hurt them and the third one is the Varsinia incident in 1996

but I was just perusing old issues of flying saucer review online and they really provided the most in-depth coverage of the Antonio

V.S. Boas incident. So anytime I would see Olavo Fontes, who is a Brazilian doctor, he was the APRO representative, Aerial Phenomenade research organization, anytime I'd see an article

by him, I'd just pull it. And there's one from 1961, and it's called Brazil under UFO survey and is just perusing it a little bit and there is a line that's a sentence that

says the sightings followed a straight line pattern first discovered by Amy Michelle in France in 1954 see his book flying saucers and the straight line mystery and I just got really curious like straight line mystery what the hell are you talking about

man UFOs and straight lines that's kind of weird So I kind of put it aside a little bit and did some research on the Brazil stuff. And it was probably like, I don't know, a month and a half ago, I could stumble across this blog post that's about a really strange law that was passed in France in 1955 that basically banned UFOs from flying over this town. It's called Chate Noff du Pape. It's in southern France, and it was in response to this 1954 flap in France. And it was kind of the first flap that featured humanoids. And what people often described seeing was these short, three to four foot tall humanoid beings.

They were wearing what they called diving suits, just these metallic-looking suits that was reminiscent of, you know, the stuff before, Jacques Cousteau came along and gave us the scuba gear and all that good stuff. And they were often seen near small craft, oftentimes working on it. And one thing that they also reported that was kind of startling is that these UFOs would paralyze these people many times. More often than that, which kind of relates to some of the stuff that goes on in Brazil. But it was in that that I really just got interested in this straight line mystery thing. So I ended up finding a copy of Amy Michelle's Flying Saucers in the Straight Line Mystery. Not a cheap book if you want to find it, folks.

I think I piggled with an eBay seller to get it down to like $30. You were the king of that, by the way. I try. I do my best. I am extremely envious of your UFO library. It's just, you know, you get a tip and it's like, oh, hey, I got to go find that book. I know, man. It's an addiction. It really is.

It is. And, you know, a lot of books aren't in print these days or they're through, you know, publishers that are very dubious that I'm not really totally safe with. Very good point. Yeah. But what you find in France in 54, and I give a lot of respect to the independent investigators, because that's where most of this information comes from. this stuff was investigated by Amy Michelle and I think one other guy and they collected over I want to say 400 reports and the and then like the reporting was so good that Amy Michelle was actually able to take UFO sightings on a certain day and able to track it and they would always go in these straight line patterns

from you know place to place to place and the time frame generally matched up and everything. And he, this book is mostly about, you know, plotting all of this along and, and giving you all of these, uh,

UFO sightings. Um, and if you want kind of a teaser on many of these sightings, all you have to do is go to passport to Magonia and Jacques valet has a lot of them in there. Interesting. Okay. Yeah,

but, uh, it was so fascinating to see that he was able to, that the report, was so good that he was able to track that in straight line patterns. And Alavo Fantes was able to do the same thing in Brazil. He was noting in 1957 and 1960 that with the UFO sightings that they were getting, they were moving in straight lines.

And he has some very interesting graphs in Flying Slaus Review. And it looks like a jumble of lines and stuff. but it's all in straight line patterns. And Amy and Michelle is also able to link that to the 1957 flap in the United States that includes the famous Leveland sighting in Texas that was kind of around the time when UFO started shutting off car engines. Right. What's interesting about that, and it kind of begins with Antelior.

V.S. Boas himself, but it has this, it's almost like an analog kind of way, because when you look at his abduction account, it's very, there isn't a lot of, like, real authentic high strangers to it. When he, uh, he eventually, like, to go into the basics of it, Antonio V.S. Boas, he was a 23-year-old farmer. and he was living on his family farm at the time. He was plowing a field at 1 o'clock in the morning, as you do when you're living in Brazil, because it's hot as hell. And he had seen UFOs on previous occasions, including the night before, but he sees this red light in the sky.

It comes down really fast, and it kind of cuts his tractor off from the road leading to his house to actually get away from it. and he makes this split-second decision that he's going to try to, you know, outrun it anyway. His tractor dies, unfortunately, so he makes a run for it. It doesn't make it long before he gets tackled by a short humanoid. He said it came to about his shoulder, and he pushed it away, and he continued running and made it about 20 feet before he was tackled by three more figures. They dragged him on board a UFO. They stripped him naked.

They took blood from his chin, which seems like a really odd place to take blood. But, you know, we'll go with it. He had sex with a female alien being, or at least that's how he claims it. Yeah, he did. Yep. And not once but twice. Yeah. So this was not a one-night stand? No, it was, he had some very personal feelings when she rejected him the third time.

But you'll have that. He's so sensitive. He's very sensitive. But they also toured him around the UFO, and then they let him out and took off. And apparently he was on this UFO for like four and a half hours. Okay. But what he found when he went back to his tractor

is that when he tried to start it up, he couldn't. And then when he looked in the engine, He just realized that one of the battery terminals was unplugged. So it's very like, it's almost like a proto kind of abduction because it's not really, there isn't a lot of, there isn't psychic elements to it. He claimed that the beings he interacted with, they had a very primitive language that he said they sounded like dogs barking, almost.

And, yeah, it's, it kind of starts right there. with Antonio V.S. Boas, and then after that, you start to see flood of reports of UFOs shutting off cars. It's very weird. Yeah, it is weird. And the thing that always stuck out to me about his case is this happened well before the Betty and Barney Hill case, am I correct? Yeah, four years. Four years. So there you go. I mean, everyone thinks that they were sort of the start of this phenomenon that was starting to pop up everywhere. But yeah, it, you know, it's You bring up a good point, though. You know, it was pretty pretty straightforward in some respects.

But that almost says more to me that he's not exaggerating anything. He's like, this is what happened? This is what I saw. And this is how they communicated. So, yeah, fascinating case. Yeah. And unfortunately, they didn't believe him. When he went in, Fantas had his reservations.

and there was a journalist that he initially got in contact with named Jow Martins. He kind of, he was the, kind of the UFO journalist for this magazine called O Crusero, I think is how it's pronounced, but he didn't believe his story at all. And either this guy is really imaginative because when you read his affidavit, it's like a 13-page. affidavit is full of so much detail. The guy didn't really miss a beat and he did, he had conscious recall of everything. So that makes it stand out as a very strange kind of abduction that almost seems more human, kind of in a way. Like the perpetrators may have been human, but, and there's conspiracies like that. But, yeah, it's a very strange case.

The whole Brazil thing, there's so much rich UFO history when it comes to Brazil, so I'm glad someone's seeking it out. I do want to go back for a minute, though, Rob, you brought up these laws in France. I got to read these really quick, if you don't mind. Yeah. This is hilarious. Okay, so in 1954, here's the law. The overflight, the landing, and the take-off of aircraft known as flying saucers or flying cigars, whatever their nationality is, are prohibited on the territory. of the community. Article 2. Any aircraft known as flying saucer or flying cigar, which should land

on the territory of the community, will immediately be held in custody. Article 3, the forest officer and the city policemen are in charge, each one in what relates to him, of the execution of this decree. So there you go, man. City policemen are in charge if a UFO lands. It's fun to watch these laws pop up in, like, random. some places that have to do with like UFOs, Washington, there's a county of Washington that has a bigfoot law that basically says if they, when they examine the animal, if it turns out to be more human, you're going to be charged basically with manslaughter. Well, and we know John Greenwald, too, over at the Black Vault.

He's found many documents throughout history where like either the army or like the fire department, There's like contingency plans if a UFO is found. It's crazy. Yeah, absolutely. There was, before Dave Politis became the missing 401 guy, his thing was researching Bigfoot. He ended up staying and interviewing many of the Hoopa people, which are in Northern California getting their statements. But in the beginning of his book, it's called the Hoopa Project. talks about how there's a

I want to say there's like a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers map that has Bigfoot on it and listing it as like a potential threat to like deforestation and you know like like it would we would be like a threat to them

if we decided to deforest in certain areas so it was kind of interesting and then it has kind of a funny cartoon underneath it and it says something like Bigfoot does not exist and we shouldn't be putting stuff in there like that or something like that. It's kind of funny. That's awesome. Yeah, Bigfoot's making a comeback lately in the mainstream media too. Yeah. It's pretty cool. Well, one of the other cases, Rob I wanted to cover with you here is you tweeted recently about a case in New Jersey back in, uh, back in, uh, back in, in our neck of the woods here that involved a hefty amount of aliens.

So can you maybe run us through this case and what you found most interesting about it? Oh, yeah. This is a fun little case from 1975, like a whole nine months before the Travis Walton abduction. And I first read about it in Bud Hopkins' missing time. and it's in this like park in North Bergen, New Jersey. Now, if you're in Manhattan and you're standing on

West 89th Street, you can look across the Hudson River and you can see kind of the landmark and the area where this happened. It happened near this circular apartment building called the Stonehenge, which at the time, it was pretty, it was pretty much brand new.

It wasn't open that long. It was very modern looking. I mean, looking at it now, it's not like you have many round apartment buildings these days. But it's, and if you want to get really technical, it's New Jersey's 42nd tallest building. There you go, man.

Doing the deep research. Oh, yeah. But basically, Bud Hopkins at the time in 190, 76 or sorry 1975 November 1975 he he has a studio right across the street from this

liquor store and as he would you know would have it he would go at the end of the day you don't usually go over buy a bottle of wine or something like that something boozy because I mean it's Bud Hopkins he's an artist you know it's just it's just

yeah it's just his nature and he uh he rolls in sometime in mid-November of 1975, and the guy at the counter is named George O'Barski. He's co-owns the building. He's mumbling about you never know when something's going to come out of the sky near you and startle you and stuff like that, and, you know, it catches Bud Hopkins attention.

Now, this is November 75, so if I'm, I'm wondering why this guy, babbling about this. I'm wondering if he may have saw something about Travis Walton because it was around this time. But, you know, starts asking him, you know, a little bit about this and, you know, it's a busy,

a busy liquor store. So he comes back, he's got his recorder and George O'Barski tells him this story about how in January of 75 he's closed up shop, he's driving home, he lives in North in New Jersey.

And he cuts through this park called the North Hudson Park. And it's just kind of this random park. It stands out in the middle of a big city, but it's got playing fields of all kinds. It's got a little lake in it. And it's right across from this apartment building called the Stonehenge. So he's cutting through the park on his way home when he's sees this really bright light coming past him, basically keeping pace with his car, and it lands in a field nearby.

Now, George stops his car, and he just watches it, and this object is like 30 feet long. It's very weird. It's like a dome kind of structure with these windows that are all around the side. and he sees this ladder come down and these 10 alien beings getting out. He described them pretty much as short grays, and they're all carrying a small shovel and a bag. And they all start digging in the ground and they fill up these bags. And it's very kind of robotic. They're very systematic in the way that they do this and they got the job done within four, about four minutes, and then boom, the craft takes off.

So, O'Barski's naturally shaken up. He goes home, he takes a couple aspirin, and he tries to fall asleep, and eventually does. The next morning, goes out, goes to this park, and he's thinking that it must have been a dream or something like that. And he goes and he finds 15 holes in the ground around the area where these aliens were digging the ground up. And he pops a couple more aspirin. He's a little more nervous. And, you know, he kind of keeps it to himself for, he literally didn't tell anybody, including his son who was living with him. And until that day when Bud Hopkins comes in.

and Bud Hopkins, you know, this is his early days as an investigator, and he's like, well, I need resources. So he contacts Ted Blocker and a guy named Jerry Storer, I think is his name. He was a member of Mufon. And they investigated the hell out of this case. They found an eyewitness at the Stonehenge apartment building that worked at the door, who saw light on that night. and apparently around the time that this craft was departing, it ended up they heard like a sound, he were heard like a sound wave or something like that

and it shattered part of the glass on the front door of the building. Oh shit. Yeah. And prior to this incident, about a week before that, there was a family a few blocks down I saw this weird object passed by their window.

They were so, you know, amazed by it. They all ran outside their house. Some of them weren't even wearing shoes, and they chased this thing down the block. That is dedication. Oh, yeah, pure dedication. But, like, basically, it's one of the probably best investigated cases that you'll ever read. You can go on to Kufo's website, and there's a great write-up.

in there. I think they housed it under their abduction papers, and there's kind of a question. Oh, interesting. Maybe O'Barski was abducted because there's a little bit of a time difference there, but, you know, can't be totally sure. But, yeah, that was, it's one very straight, and this is a populated area, heavily populated area. North Bergen is a decent-sized city, and not to mention, you're right across from, like, one of the biggest cities in the world. Yeah, exactly. I know. Everyone thinks these things happen in very rural areas, but no, we got them here in the city as well. Right. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you talked about having a second sighting yourself. I saw the youth met video. Yeah, dude. Yeah, that was my second and only other UFO sighting that I can really think of, at least. but yeah it was so cool to have to have Jim here and Carl to be there on the rooftop with me

where I where you know right off the block where I saw this thing but yeah we see him here in the city all the time the problem is there's so much aircraft over us that like you never know you just never know I remember I downloaded an app where you could see every plane in the air and I just flicked it on one random night and there was literally I think it says something like 300 flights right above me. Oh, my God. It's, I don't know how that many planes can be coming in and out of both either LaGuardia, JFK, Newark, I don't know. Um, without crashing.

It's beyond me. Yeah. Yeah. I don't even want to wrap my head around that. It's wild. It's too much, man. But yeah, whatever I saw that night, I, I still think it was probably a satellite, just its movement and the way it, I, I try. it and everything. But yeah, it definitely like shot up into the sky and kind of disappeared. So that's when I was like, uh, what?

Like either my eyes played tricks on me or this satellite had some sort of like thrust to it beyond what it had. So I don't know. Um, but this isn't about me, Rob. This is about these poor people in, uh, New Jersey running barefoot after a UFO. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it is. It is. It's amazing that they were actually able to find as many eyewitnesses to this. Right, right. And they did it old school. They went door to door. They bugged everybody that they could at the Stonehenge.

And, you know, they just tracked down leads. There was, I believe, one of the members of that family was, they were at a UFO talk that somebody was given. It might have been Ted Bacher himself, but they came up and said, oh, we, we saw. saw something, you know, on this day, and we chased it down the street. Yeah. That's a good point, though, like, doing the due diligence when it comes to investigating these things. I know you had John Tenney on your show recently, and he brought up a good point.

He said, you know, I had these humanoid sightings happening in this town. So what did I do? I went door to door and tried to ask other people if they'd seen anything. And, like, you never hear about people doing that anymore. It's either posted on Facebook, hey, anyone see this? Or, you know, you just hope that someone finds you. But no, these people are going out there and doing the work. Yeah, it's important because, I mean, like, that when you go and knock on somebody's door, you're showing them that you're taking the time, that this is important and that what they have to say is important.

So it's kind of, it's important to do because what you see that Mufon investigators do, and I understand, they don't. have time to get out and investigate like a bunch of cases but most of the time it's an email phone call and that's it yeah yeah yeah i know it's the it's the digital age we live in it's good and bad at times but even i find myself doing the same thing i'm like uh i don't want to go to you know i don't even want to go to new jersey to interview someone right but no put the working guys put the work in. Well, here's another one you recently covered on the Our Strange Skies podcast, Rob, is Terry Lovelace, this case. I recently had him on a bonus episode of my show, and it was an interview conducted by a longtime listener of mine, Daniel Allen Jones.

I had him as sort of a correspondent out at Contact in the Desert, and that's where he got to meet Terry Lovelace. So a shout out to Daniel for his awesome correspondence work, first of all. But I know that you did a really good dive into this case. So would you mind maybe running us through the basics of it? I know that's probably hard to do if there are any basics to it. And your impressions of this case, I know we're going to get him on eventually. Terry's kind of an interesting person just because he represents this new age of experiencers in the way that they get their stories out there.

and that's through self-publishing. So if you look at a lot of experiencer stories, they are through self-published works. Sherry Wilde self-published her book, I believe. There's a few others that come to mind. But Terry's kind of leading the pack, at least lately. And I think the reason is because his story is very strange. It's very kind of relatable to, but there's also not a ton of detail at times, and then it's kind of juxtaposed with a lot of detail about one incident.

But for Terry, the story kind of begins in October of 2012. Terry was, and he probably still is an avid jogger, and it's kind of funny to read in this book how his dad has objections about him jogging. but I mean it was a different time the early 1980s jogging was new and he kind of asked Terry a good question why do you want to run if no one's chasing you and it's kind of this very prescient ubiquitous question like why the heck would you want to do that what the heck you're running from and then he proceeds to lay out that in October of 2012 he often when he was running his right knee. There's a spot above his right knee that would often go numb, which is not something you hear happening to most runners. And he initially had it to checked out, and the doctor

basically said, well, if it ain't broke, don't worry about it. If it doesn't cause you pain, it's not a problem. So he goes on, runs for years and years and years and years, and then one morning he wakes up with this incredible pain in his leg. And his wife, Sheila, drives him to the emergency room. They take an x-ray. And they find basically a, it's like a, looks like a piece of metal, a long, thin piece of metal. And they also find this very strange, like, circular pattern of what they call bone. But it's, like, laid out in this, like, floral type pattern.

So, this causes Terry to kind of remember a lot of strange incidents from his past that goes back to when he was eight years old and even younger, you would talk about these experiences with what he called the monkey men. And they were these shadowy figures that would dart around his bedroom on certain nights. and when they would come out into the light from like the moon or something, they would have these. They looked very much like a short bipedal, kind of like a gray, but their face was more monkey-like and their eyes were yellow. And they would always ask him, you know, come out and play with us. And Terry wasn't having any of it.

So he'd just scream his, scream his lungs out. And this would happen for, you know, portion of his childhood. And he would have a few UFO experiences. There was one during the day when he was just outside playing with a bow and arrow. And there's a UFO that just kind of comes over and hangs around him for a little while. He lays back on the grass and watches it for a little bit. And then it shoots off.

Then a couple months later, he has this, sees this series of lights that are coming through underneath his drapes and he shoots out of bed. He's kind of apathetic at first, which is something, you know, a lot of UFO witnesses kind of report being this like indifference. And he's been teased a lot by his sister and he kind of wants proof. So he can hear this low humming sound also that's coming through with it. and it vibrates the entire room so much that a bottle plane that's on his dresser just falls off onto the floor he's like if it stays there i know this is proof well okay and then and then he goes to the window and actually gets a look at this thing and it's a you know your classic saucer UFO shooting out

to these green and yellow lights and such and he's like i'll sweeten the pot by messing up the drapes and that way I'll know this really happen. So does that, he wakes up the next morning, and the way that he describes it is, like, the moment he hits, his head hits the pillow. It's like a switch, and then it's daylight. And he just wakes up, like he didn't get any sleep at all. And the model plane's still on the floor,

drapes are still messed up, so that's proof for him. But as he progresses, he has less, sightings as his teenage years go by and after he graduates from high school he enlists in the air force and he's basically an army medic that's uh what he specialized in that's what he got training in and he's stationed at whitman air force base he um he's a medic there with a with a guy named toby he's a african-american man and they become really great friends and one night and 75, it's January, so it's really cold as hell out there. They get a call that they need to go retrieve a guy who fell off of a silo.

And where they were is a missile silo. I believe they had nuclear ordinance there. Yeah, yes, sir. Yeah, and they pull up and they see these military checkpoints and a bunch of people just standing around, which is really odd. And Toby gets out of the vehicle, and he goes up, and he's like, he comes back and says, you've got to come check this out. And above the silo is this UFO.

It's just hanging out there. And it's there for maybe like five more minutes before it shoots off. And they retrieve the guy. So there's another UFO sighting for him. And then a couple years later, they both have another UFO sighting. And it's around the same time in January. And a couple months later, Toby has this idea that they should go camping. Now, these are two city guys.

They know Jack about camping. So it's just like one of those, like, impulse things that happens. And like... It sounds like an 80s comedy movie with like, what's his name? The guy from Home Improvement or something. Oh, like Tim Allen. Yeah, it's turned it out to be like a buddy movie or something. Yeah, I can see that.

But this quickly becomes like a joke, quickly moves from being a joke to this obsession. Yeah, yeah. And they all basically, and both of them basically kind of like beg steal or borrow what they need to go on this camping trip. Terry's going to bring his camera. he's going to take some nature shots and all that stuff. And Toby's got his binoculars and, you know, they got a tent from somebody else and they got a bunch of hot dogs and stuff. And they picked this place called the Devil's Den, which is in northwest Arkansas. It's a state park.

And it's, you know, it's got a history. There's some weird stuff gone on there. People have gone missing. It's a missing 411. kind of territory stuff. Okay. And it isn't long before their amateurism comes out. So they pull in and they pick the spot where they're technically not supposed to be.

It's illegal to camp where they're camping, but, you know, they didn't care. And instead of setting up their camp, they just go for a hike. Okay. They go for a hike. Yeah, mistake one. and they come back a little while later and yeah they'll set up the camp well they don't do that they just like you know zone out and pass out mistake too yeah for a few hours and they wake up in the in the middle of the night it's dark out and yeah so they they quickly set up camp their

their car isn't very far away and what they find is that most of the provisions that they had they didn't bring with them. They forgot to bring with them. Okay. Sammature hour here. And, um, but they set up their tent. They, they, they set up, uh, they get a fire going. And they've got, they still got hot dogs and stuff that, uh, you know, make themselves an evening meal. And they proclaim themselves like kings of the forest. It's kind of funny. Damn city, folk.

You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast. Easy. Just use Indeed. Stop struggling to get your job post seen on other job sites. With Indeed sponsored jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates, so you can reach the people you want faster. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed have 45% more applications than non-sponsored jobs. Don't wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. And, Listeners of this show will get a 100 pound sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash P-O-D-K-A-T-Z-14.

Just go to Indeed.com slash P-O-D-K-A-T-Z 14 right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring, Indeed is all you need. Yep. And things start to get weird pretty quick after that. Terry first notices that there's no wildlife sounds coming from anywhere. There's no crickets. There's no

nothing. The forest is gone completely silent. And it's Toby that sees these three lights in the sky off on the, I believe, the western horizon. Kind of low. Definitely look a little too low to be stars. But they just stare at it and they kind of like, you know, pass it off. That's nothing. And then these stars,

start to move up over the horizon, they're up and over, and then they just come directly over their campsite. Now, these guys should be like shit in a brick, but they're basically, like, looking up and they're amazed by it.

And they're at one point, and we know this is a mistake, and I want to make this very clear, you do not signal flashlights, or signal UFOs with a flashlight. You just don't do it. Don't do it. Didn't end well for the Alagash guys.

Didn't end well for these guys either. Yes. Don't take that from the playbook of Stephen Greer, people. Jesus Christ. No, no. If you take anything away from Stephen Greer, it's just that he's fraudulent. Just let it go.

But this UFO, after he flashes his flashlight three times, it drops this white beam of light down that it's there for maybe like 30 seconds and disappears. And then, boom, there's a blue pencil-thin light that just darts around their camp. Now I'm, like, freaking out here. But they weren't. They were pretty calm about it.

So that light disappears. And then the UFO moves away. That's pretty exciting. Yeah. I don't think I'd be able to sleep that night, but they go to sleep right after. You know, as, as, you know, any rational person I wouldn't do. but yeah but um it's terry that wakes up a what feels like a couple hours later and he sees this light that's flooding into their tent and he can see toby he's kneeling by the the um for the flap to

the tent and he's like crying and he's looking out and terry goes to grab the flashlight and see what's going on out there and Toby just bat some away. and says no, they're out there. And he can hear figures walking around out there. He can see this really bright light and eventually his curiosity gets the better of him. And he throws open the flap and what he sees is this UFO. It's in this field not far from their campsite taking up like the whole field because it was that big. And he can see 10 to 15 short figures that are walking towards it.

they're basically like the size of a child and they walk into this white beam of light that's projecting down to it and the way that he describes it they just dissolved so uh both the guys are kind of in this intense pain they're very thirsty they didn't bring water with them because you know we're amateurs yeah and for hours still even through all this yeah and uh they're uh they're They make the decision very quickly to get the hell out of there. So they drive the hours. It's like it was, I believe it was like six hours away from where they were living.

And everybody was surprised to see them back. Terry's wife, Sheila, upon just seeing him, took him to the emergency room because he was in that bad of shape. He was running a fever of 104. His face was very puffy. and his eyes were almost swollen shut. So, yeah, they ran him to the hospital. He was in there for a few days.

While he was in there, he got a visit from a guy from the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. And we all know AFOSI. We know players from AFOSI. We know who Rick Doty is. Oh, boy. He's involved with this shit.

No, he's not. But, you know, you can't, you can't not hear OSI. and not think Rick Doty. Right. And the only reason I use the word shit is because of that name. Yeah. I love him to death. I know he might even be listening to this.

But, yeah, not to take away from this incident whatsoever by using the word shit. I apologize. Just when I hear Rick Doty, I get all fired up. I think a lot of people get fired up, but, you know, that's to be expected. It is. It really is. But they basically interview him. The guy, the agent Gregory, you know, because we're not using full names here.

This is Shield, baby. Nick Fearing. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. And sets up a tape recorder, starts interviewing, and basically asks, you know, why did you come back so quickly? and, you know, the basic standard stuff. And they were really harping on whether Terry had taken photos of anything. And Terry forgot his camera because, you know, the only thing I think they remembered was the tent, some hot dogs, and I believe Toby's binoculars.

Okay, okay. The essentials. Yeah, but Terry was, he was an amateur photographer. He had a studio in his house. but he didn't bring the camera with him and just kept pressing him. But he's in the hospital for about three or four days, and when he gets out, he's reassigned to another unit where all he does is paints pieces of plywood.

Okay. Wow. He paints these sheets of plywood over and over again. They're basically just giving them grunt work to keep them out of their hair and all that stuff. This happens a lot, man. Like when military people have these encounters and UFOs, they send them different places in the world

and give them menial tasks, hoping they won't start talking about it with other people. Like, get them alone. That's what you got to do. Get them alone. Yep. And I think it was like a couple days before he was set to be reassigned again, and Agent Gregory comes back.

And basically, he forces, Terry had consent to hypnosis. Okay, let's do that. So they explore the night in Devil's Den and what happened. And basically, Terry recounts being taken aboard this craft, standing in a line full of people that are waiting to undergo procedures. And there's also this short, what he basically calls a hybrid woman standing with him, He recognizes her as being someone who has been with him his entire life with these experiences and such, like many abductees report.

And he also reports walking by a wall of like aquarium tanks that had very strange reptilian-looking beings in them. He talked about how there were human crew on this ship that all wore these like brown cover. with an orange insignia on them. And they worked beside the short gray beings. And he eventually was brought to this one room where they performed a procedure on him and brought him back. And that's really the only insight into any of his abduction experiences that he has. He never talks about exploring these monthly. he met encounters when he was a kid or anything like that.

And after that, he continues to have these lifelong experiences. Eventually, he's reassigned to a unit where he's basically a medic again. Toby, he loses contact with him for a while, but he tells us in the book that Toby died a homeless man in the 90s in Michigan. Okay. Yeah. But fast forward to... 2017 and Terry starts talking about his experiences he starts appearing at a couple of cons

and after he starts doing that he experiences this dramatic weight loss Terry used to be kind of a big guy over 200 pounds and nowadays I think he weighs somewhere in the neighborhood of like 120 or something like that yeah and extreme yeah and one night not long after he gave a presentation at a conference in I believe Houston. He woke up in his living room across from sitting in his living room. He went to bed upstairs. But yeah, he woke up sitting in the living room across from this woman that he's had these lifelong experiences with. And she's wearing very human clothes along with a wig and some sunglasses.

And he kind of makes fun of her for a little bit. for wearing the wig, but you know, you'll have that. She's trying. She's trying. She is trying. But, you know, he basically asks her questions about, you know, these beings, you know, being in his life for as long as they have. And basically, she says that if he talks, keeps to talking about his experiences, one, they're going to have to take the implants that are in his legs, which he didn't know he had two. He thought he only had one. but turns out he had two. It was a two-for-one deal, yeah.

It's a two-for-one deal, you know, on sale that week, but they also said that the military would kill him, which hasn't happened because he's still alive. But, and they also basically said that they'd never see him again. So Terry made the decision to keep talking about it, and about a week later he woke up two, incredible pain in his legs again.

He had these like red kind of puncture marks on both of his legs. And about a day later, there was a bruise that appeared on both legs that looked like that flower pattern that was seen on the X-ray in 2012. And that's pretty much where Terry's story leads you. It's interesting. It's kind of devoid of details that sometimes. but it's really intriguing and it gives a lot of the

the conspiratorially minded people something to bite on especially when he talks about being on the ship in 1977. Right. Wow. Yes. Well you know what? I was given the book by the publisher that was working with him on getting this out to the public and I've spoken to Terry I think once

through email. He is an extremely nice guy very smart very insightful but this this case is just it's there's so many gaps where conspiracy people can fill those in so i don't know man i don't know i don't know i struggle with this one i'm going to be honest there's a lot going on um but hopefully i can get them on to get some more detail but wow yeah you did a good job with that one i appreciate it man and uh i guess he's working on a second book. So maybe we'll get some more insight on those kind of details. I don't know.

Maybe. Maybe. Yeah. But yeah, there's definitely, we need a little more. We need some more for me, Terry. If you're listening, please give us some more to work with here. Yep. Awesome. Well, Rob, coming to today, we have these videos that came out, one of which is known as the gimbal video.

and a lot of researchers had been working on this lately, trying to figure out when and where this happened. And they're pretty much landing on the East Coast, the Skimble video. If anyone's seen it, it's the one where the gun camera footage, where the craft seems to be rotating in mid-air. It's the one that I know Unidentified,

the TV show uses as their main, what would you call it, like featured image, even though they doctored it a little, made it more saucer shaped. Yep. Anyways, I'm getting too detailed into the craft. The gimbal video, we think that this happened off of the USS Roosevelt

in the early to mid-2000s. And even in the Middle East, this thing possibly may have been seen. But you found something that happened with the USS Roosevelt that happened a while ago. So what is that? up with the USS Roosevelt? Why are they the ones to track all these UFOs? And what is this case he came across? Right. So the interesting thing about this USS Roosevelt, it's not the first USS Roosevelt.

This is actually the second. It's a Nimitz class carrier, which is a more advanced carrier. But before that, there is the Essex class carrier, USS Franklin D. Roosevelt. And basically it has a history of UFO sightings going back to the early 50s. And it starts in September of 1952 with Operation Mainbrace, which was a NATO exercise that a lot of there was like, I forget how many nations took part in it is probably about 10 or 12, but supposedly 85,000 like surveys. servicemen were a part of this exercise. And from the start, they started to experience UFO activity. There were some that reported UFOs coming out of the water and flying over their heads. Some of them, just basic flybys of UFOs.

But one of them was the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt. And basically, on September 20th, 1952, they were taking pictures of, the area and they see this object in the sky. It's in broad daylight and it just flies over their ship and they take pictures of it. They were supposedly took three pictures of the thing. And it was just kind of, you know, that's what it was. It was three pictures. It was interesting though, really interesting pictures.

You can Google them. They're out there. I'd also like to note that the crewmen of this ship called this, the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt swanky Frankie but the most dramatic report of UFOs comes from

1958 the Franklin Roosevelt was down in the Caribbean. It wasn't far from Cuba and they saw this light that was basically tailing their boat

and eventually it was basically tailing their boat. And eventually it came speeding by and it got so close to the boat that you could actually see the object, you could see windows on the thing and you could see figures in the windows looking out. Wow. Okay. And the object just hovered right there above the ship for maybe a minute or two before it just disappeared. And this report comes from a guy named Chester Grisinski. He was 18. years old at the time, but he kind of just basically tried to find anybody else that had, you know,

seen this after it had gone down because there was a cover-up. The CIA came on board this ship investigating gambling. Really? Of all things. Okay. Yeah. And, you know, they basically just told everybody to shut up about this and, you know, it became this huge giant cover-up. And, Chester, he basically he tried to track down anybody that he could that remembered seeing this thing. Now, if you Google, I just Googled

Operation Main Brace UFO. And you go through the image search results. What you'll see is this it's a sketch that somebody drew of it's right to Chester Grisinski's back

and above him you can see like the tower of the carrier and right next to the tower and slightly above it is this object and they drew it to scale and everything and it's a pretty great image I love it but yeah the

I don't know I apparently according to Rzinski there were like eight separate UFO incidents that the USS all throughout the 50s and 60s, and it was decommissioned in 1977. That was when the Nimitz class Franklin Roosevelt was set sale. So apparently something about Franklin D. Roosevelt screams UFOs. I don't know.

Yeah, I don't know what it is, man. I mean, he was cool and all, but come on. I don't know. Well, I found that really fascinating, because, again, The Roosevelt is becoming a buzzword now in the UFO community because of all the activity with UFOs involved with it. So I was so happy to hear that you found that. And I'm also happy to know it wasn't the same ship because my God, if there's ever been like UFO bait, now we know it's the USS Roosevelt.

Just throw that thing out in the water and you're going to get some UFOs. Yeah, pretty much. You know, it's the bait that every ufologist needs. And it's kind of funny because when you read about the history of the first, ship in 77 they were in talks to actually keep it going. People were afraid that Jimmy Carter was just going to, you know, keep this thing going forever. So they basically said, no, we're taking it out of commission.

They sold it to somebody for $2.1 million and it was scrapped. Ah, damn it. Damn you, Carter. Damn Jimmy Carter. Oh, man. All right. We'll wraping things up here, Rob. Take a good sip, man, because of your drink there,

because this is what we're going to end with here. You were recently on the Mad Scientist podcast with Chris Cogswell, a very good friend of both of ours. And this was a brutally honest conversation, man, about the UFO news coming out lately. So my big question to you is, where do you stand today on this mainstream coverage of UFOs? And what do you think is going on with, uh, to the stars, their new show?

Give me what you got, man, because people are very divided. And this is, this is really put a dent in the UFO community, both good and bad. So what do you got, man? Be honest with us here. So I'm very skeptical these days now. I've kind of been a little more, I've gotten a little more skeptical as time has gone on. And for me, there are. are things that to the stars academy does or doesn't do that kind of goes against it that being a

legitimate operation not to say that there aren't trying or stuff like that but like there's a if you're talking about science and UFOs there are ways to do this when you go on to the the stars academy website and you look at the videos you look at the gimbled videos you look at the gimbled the Nimitz video, the Go Fast video, what you find on there is not an explanation of how they came to their conclusions. What they tell you is this is what this is and this is what our conclusions are. Well, how did you arrive at that? And to give you a kind of an analogy, if you're in math class in high school and this is basically to the Stars Academy writing down the answers without telling you how they got there. and that's a big problem for me because if if the teacher hands that paper back what's it going to say what's it going to say

show your work yeah 65 show your work and I don't think to the Stars Academy is doing the best job of showing their work very well I'm skeptical oh man how do I how do I lay this out you know in a concise way I think it's hard it is hard but I I just don't know what the hell they're doing. I really don't know what the hell they're doing. And, like, they're giving you nuggets of information that they're tantalizing, but they ultimately don't lead to anything. Like, they announced the Adam Project last year. What has come of that? Right. Nothing. Well, here's the other thing. You bring up a good point. We know for a fact that Lou Elizondo, he's even

stated this in the TV show, unidentified, that he knows more than what he can say on the show. and what he can tell civilians. So you have this weird, like, purgatory where the investigator in charge of all this knows more than he's telling the public. So that's a problem. Like, why should we listen or trust you when you know more than you're telling us? It's hard. Because I honestly think, like, he's a cool guy.

I think he's doing some good work. And I do. believe that he wants answers, but he's got answers and he can't tell us. That's a problem. And not only that, how many to the stars members are former government officials that can't say anything? Chris Mellon, Steve Justice, Hal put off. He can't say crap about a lot of things. I mean, a lot of them can't, and especially if a lot of these people are former Bass employees or are still Bass employees, they're not going to say anything. I kind of had high hopes, but it's just like you're tempering this with non-disclosure agreements that you can't give anything up.

And now you've got people like McWest on doing, you know, I think he's doing pretty good work. I can honestly say I wasn't convinced by the GoFast video to begin with. And now I really don't think it is a UFO. I think it really is a balloon. Interesting. Yeah, I mean, I've thought that for a while now, too. But you're right. You know, we get blinded by the excitement that comes when this topic gets mainstream coverage.

And when we have people like Tom DeLong, like, really, I respect the hell out of the guy for what he's doing. I honestly do. And I think, like, he's done some great work, and he's assembled an amazing team. But you always come back to this fact that all those people involved with To the Stars no more than what they're letting on. And that is a problem because we're getting this narrative from To the Stars. Now, here's my thing too. And our good friend Jason McClellan always says, you don't have to listen to the Stars. Like, they're one cog in this huge machine of this phenomenon.

They clearly have an angle, and that's military, and that this is a threat, and we need to be ready for it. So there you go right there. Like, to the Stars has been pretty up front, even Tom DeLong saying, I want to paint a good picture of the military industrial complex. And he said that from the very start. So anyone who argues that, he said that from the start. So there's that right there. But like we said, this stuff is only military,

and that's only a small fraction of what's going on with these phenomena. Yeah, exactly. It cuts out, like, I would say, 85 to 90% of the rest of this phenomenon. Like it cuts out a lot And I feel And I've always felt that When somebody controls the field of perception here Because it always comes down to that

You need to start looking other places Not just at this one main body And their noble intentions You start to look at other places Which is why I will spend hours Digging through old issues of Flying Saucer Review I those still have value they're still valuable to us to in what they tell us about UFOs like when Lou Alizando is saying well there's a clear pattern of UFOs and military installations and nuclear

installations like Lou we've known that for decades but yeah oh okay I'm gonna all right I got a vent here man that last episode um first of all I love seeing some of the witness they interviewed, Larry Gessner, first came forward in my book. I must say that. I have to defend this in my book, somewhere in the skies with his UFO encounter, to the stars claims this is the first time he's ever come forward. It's TV. I get it.

I get it. But they went through the whole Rick Doty and Benowitz thing, which was interesting. And then, okay, who is this mysterious general Holt? Or what was the base commander Holt? with the Rendell's show case. We'd never heard of him before. So I think it's a little offensive that they're covering the nuclear angle to all this. When we've known this for so long, look at faded giants, look at all the work by Hastings and all these guys out there.

And it's almost like a slap in the face that, oh, Lou Elizando suddenly made this connection. Come on, dude. It bothers me. and like what you find in this field right now is a lot of people trying to like and I'm not like discounting you because you definitely did talk to Larry first but like you're finding a lot of that like people's you know saying that we had these people along before you did it's it's absolutely ridiculous like what I want to know is why is nobody in terms of the David Fravor citing why is nobody talking to Paco Chi Ricci and I guarantee you most people probably don't know who Paco Chi Ricci is or even know what I'm talking about. And like, I know that Jeremy Corbell, God respect him, thinks that he was breaking that, uh, favor story to begin with. Paco Chi orici broke that two years before he did. So, um, why is nobody talking to him? Yeah, again, it's all about perception and narrative. And, you know, I think I, you make a good point, though.

Like, uh, the ego got the best of me when I saw the Larry Gessner case involved with this. I'm like, I was the first to break that. But I don't know that. Someone else may have interviewed Larry Long before that. But that's not what it's about, I think. You're right. We need to keep digging, finding all these people. Look at like Dave Beattie and all these people he's working with.

Right. To find all these people that were on the Roosevelt. It's amazing the work that the UFO field is doing. Keith Basterfield. I mean, the list is endless of the people who are doing way, way more work than to the Stars Academy. Right. And my big problem with them is that they're cutting the rest of us out. They're cutting us, the people that have done this research. So it's like, to the Stars Academy is like hitting the reset button. Why do we need to hit the reset button when we have literature from decades and decades that are saying the same things that you think are revelations now?

Yeah. Yeah, it sucks, man. At the same time, like, I understand you're bringing, presenting this to the mainstream who haven't been into all this like we have. But, like, use us. Ask us for help. Like, we're all for you. I still am a big fan of what they're doing, bringing this to the mainstream, trying to de-stigmatize the phenomena and the topic. But at the same time, like, Tom DeLong from the beginning told the UFO community, read between the lines, guys. Like, you know what I'm really trying to get here.

Well, you're not showing that, man, because you've completely cut out the entire UFO community. And we were the ones defending you from the start. Right. And like, look at the UFO community now and how things are coming back. Yeah. Things are cyclical again. Why are we talking about some goddamn alien autopsy video again that we know is not real? Don't get me started. Like, why are we? And some topics are worth revisiting, but there are topics that nobody has,

even bothered to cover, which is what I love to do. When I first, like the first appearance I ever made on this podcast, and we talked about the men in black, I was like, I really want to dig into this stuff. And I looked at the Herbert Hopkins encounter, and I'm like, this is really strange. What the hell was he looking into? Because it felt like it was a question nobody had asked. So I find it in this book, and I'm like, why is nobody talking about this case? literally happened like two weeks before Travis Walton was abducted. And it's far more insane than Travis Walton's story.

Why is nobody talking about this? And it's those stories that really they need to be told because they've never really been told before. They've existed in the annals of these UFO journals that sometimes people pick up and read through and, you know, if you got a blind around. there's the whole like internet archive like if you go to it's either New Fork or New Forres it's really confusing at a certain time

New Forrest is in Canada I believe Yeah There's a database of issues of Flying Saucer Review from the time it started in the 50s up until it folded in the early 2000s They're all on there Go read through them There's some crazy cases in there

there, the, the, the, some of the bonus case, bonus episodes that I've done have come from these cases. There's, everybody talks about the mothman sightings and they don't talk about this one case from, uh, as I believe, South Carolina, Gaffney. Mm-hmm. Of these two cops, they were out one night during this meteor shower. And they were patrolling an area. It was an abandoned area And they see this UFO And it just comes straight down in front of their car

And this really short being gets out And it starts asking them questions What he talks about that case? It was a case that John Keel reported And it's like, why is that not talked about When people talk about them off man? Yeah You see and it's

It's those Yeah, it's those cases that like God, I find more value in them Than I do in a lot of what Two the Stars Academy is doing And I know that's going to upset a lot of people. I just don't care anymore. Yep. I don't either, man. There's no time for it. And I've been sort of taken to task with,

Ryan, like, make a decision. Are you for it or are you against it? Look, I wrote a shining review of the first episode of Unidentified because I thought it was fucking slick and beautiful and insightful. And it was great. Again, it was for a new audience. So that's great. But as the show has gone on. I get what they're doing. It's just, it's a recycling of everything we are ready know. That's not to say that they have not made strides and some progression in terms of the military acknowledging this or this or that. But at the same time, dude, it's the UFO researchers working in the shadows that are really doing the hard work. So I think we have to keep that in mind. Do not stop what you're doing. The Keith Basterfield

out there, the Dave Beatties, everyone out there who's doing that leg work, and to the stars kind of takes away from that, in my opinion. Just keep doing your work. Yeah, and I got to say, God bless John Greenwald for doing what he is doing because... He took a bashing. He did, he is taking a bashing. He has done it well. And he is, he's doing honest work, you know, and, like, I'll be honest.

I have never seen Alejandro Rojas as angry as he was. Oh, my God. But... That dude never gets angry. No, I've never seen Alejandro Rojas angry at all. And I was watching that Twitter thread, and I'm like, oh, my God. Really? Hey, if anything, this whole thing that's happened in the past couple years has made UFO researchers passionate again.

And we lost that for a long time. So, you know what? While it might be divisive, it's also really, really getting our flames going. So I hope we can use that passion, work together to find answers. Because I agree with a lot of what the young guns are doing. I agree a lot with what people like John Greenwald are doing. And we are getting some incredible journalism coming out of Tyler Rokeway, Alejandro, John Greenwald. They're all doing amazing work.

So, you know what? If that's what it comes down to, the way. that this topic is covered, I want to read everything that all of those people have to say. Because at the end of the day, we are all in this together. We're just trying to find answers. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, if people can use to the Stars Academy as a gateway drug, more power to you. If it causes you to look into this stuff more, then that's great.

Yeah. That's fantastic. Oh, yeah, man. TTSA is the marijuana, two. the cocaine. Yeah. Like, I like to think of myself as the cocaine right now. Yeah, you come to my podcast. You're getting the cocaine. You are getting it. Yeah. The Our Strange Cocaine podcast. Yeah, it's coming to you. Well, speaking of that, dude, wrapping things up here. You're back. The show is back. I can't believe it. We were all waiting so, so patiently. But you are back in the

floodgates have opened, new music, new formatting. What can we expect moving forward? with the Our Strange Skies podcast. What are you going to be covering? So you're going to get, you're going to get Lonnie Zamora. We're finally batting down the hatches. Probably get Lonnie Zomora in around September. Okay. We're finishing up the final portions of the research.

We're going to do a deep dive into Roswell. We're going to do, we're going to cover the timeline. We're going to cover the theories. We're going to cover Philip J. Corsos crazy crap. All that good stuff. We're going to, we're going to Brazil. We're going to be talking about Brazil. We're going to be talking about, man, so many, so many great things coming up.

Wow. That's awesome, dude. Well, I, for one, can say I'm so happy you're back. A vacation well-needed from the research that you've done. So it's good to see you're coming back in full force. And where can we find the show and everything you're up to? So if you want to, you know, stalk me on the internet, I'm out there on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, search for our strange guys. You can listen to the podcast anywhere at this point.

Just search for us. And we've got a bad catalog, but we're coming strong. We're telling the great stories, the great stories that need to be told. Absolutely. And what's the Patreon to? Yes. This is our Patreon.com slash Our Strange Skies

at the $5 a month level. You get some great bonus episodes. That's kind of where we put our meltdowns, which if you don't know what a meltdown is, it's basically where myself and some guests watch really weird UFO documentaries and movies and stuff like that, and then we just tear it apart. It's fun.

It's fun. We recently, watched UFOs, the best evidence ever one and two with the ever, ever, the greatest of the 90s, Jonathan Frakes. Yes. So we, we ripped into the UFO footage in that. It was fun. I remember those, man.

There were some freaky-looking UFOs in there. Mostly balloons, but some of them were pretty astounding. Yeah, some of them were, I think we, I think we found three of them that were. good in that thing, but you know what? You'll get hours of entertainment, hours of entertainment. Oh, Jonathan Franks, you are sorely missed in the UFO community. Alien autopsy, too, right? Yes,

absolutely, alien autopsy. Yeah. He was all over the place in the 90s, man. He was doing that. He, uh, what the heck was that other show that he had? Oh, yeah. Um, beyond belief. Yes. Yeah.

That was a fun one. So great. So great. I love it, man. Well, hey, I can't thank you enough for kicking back a root beer with me today here on UFO Happy Hour. These are always my favorite episodes. So thank you so much, Rob Christofferson, for coming back on Somewhere in the Skies. Thanks for having me again, man. It's always a blast.

And happy World UFO Day. Yeah. This is produced by Third Kind Productions in association with the Entertainment One Podcast Network. To learn more, visit Entertainment One Podcast.com. in the skies is part of the Somewhere Podcast universe, please take a moment to rate, review, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. To learn more about all of our shows, visit thespu.com. Today on the show, Rob Christofferson. That's right. It's another volume of UFO Happy Hour. He moves forward a little bit, and he can finally see this light coming down from the ceiling,

so stands under this light, and the loud booming voice says, what is your age? And out of Alfred Berto says, oh, I'll be turning 78 on my next birthday. And the alien beings tell him, you can go. You are too old and infirm for our purpose. Oh, my God. This is somewhere in the skies with Ryan's bread. Welcome to another edition of UFO Happy Hour. And as usual, I have with me, Rob Christofferson, the host of the Our Strange Skies podcast.

Rob, how you doing, brother? I am good. I am happy to be back. I don't know why these people keep wanting me back, but apparently they love it, and you got to give the people what they love. So I want a Twitter poll, so suck it, whatever else lost. The people have spoken. They like UFO Happy Hour the best. Me too, man. You do all the work for these episodes, so let's just be up front with that. And I do. I get to tip back a brew with you, which is always a really good time. So I got to ask you. What are you drinking? Well, I teased it on the internet, and let's, yeah, let's crack that one. I bought some cans of Labat Blue a while back, and they've been waiting for another episode of UFO Happy Hour, so finally got to dust those bad boys off.

I'm three beers in at this point. Oh, God, this is going to be fun. Yeah, it should be. Oh, God, you're a man after my heart Rob, Labat Blue. One of my favorites. I'm drooling over here. I can't find it in New York, man. We're not that far away. How? Like, how does New York City not have this? I've seen it at, like, two bars, and it's in the, like, way, way back in a dark corner. Shit's probably not even refrigerated half the time. And it's hard, man. You can't find Molson here to save your life, let alone with that blue.

so. No, Moulson's practically a no-go. It rarely makes it over the border. If you're a little closer to Canada up in, you know, like, I could probably go visit my sister in Ogdensburg and I could probably get some. But, yeah, it's really tough. It is. We're going to have to get some of our friends, M.J. Benayas and a few others to smuggle that shit over here next time. Yeah, come on, MJ.

Hook us up, man. I know. Mr. know he was a mothman researcher, did you? No, I did not. And you know what? The world needs more mothman researcher, so I'm down with it. Absolutely.

No, I was so impressed with the work he did on that show. I thought it was excellent. And we need more people to look at that stuff, you know, get more John Keel in the world. I know Hellier's going to be coming out with a second season now. We're going to be looking deeper into all that weird shit. So are you pumped for that? Oh, hell yeah. That trailer they dropped, I was just like, wow.

Yeah, you could, like, Greg Newkirk has seen some shit. That's the best way to put it about that trailer. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, the fact that the emails now continue, I just, I'm stunned. Yeah, yeah, I am too. And I can only imagine where this season's going. They announced on Twitter that they were filming the final portions of it this weekend. So I can't wait.

Yeah, I remember, you know, Carl Fyfer, the director and filmmaker was in here in New York not too long ago. And we had dinner. And I asked him, I'm like, so when can we expect more? And he just said flat out, he's like, when the phenomenon shows itself again. Like, you son of a bitch, that is such a perfect answer. That's so Carl, too. It is. It's so true, though, man.

You can't force these things. and they're on their own journey and path to find, maybe find answers. They might never find answers to all this weird stuff, but the fact that they're documenting it and doing it independently and on their own, I love it. I love it. I'm a huge fan. I can't wait for that.

You know, answers I don't think are something that is built into this phenomenon, to like any of this phenomenon for the most part. It's just something you experience, something that reminds you that your world is not as, familiar as you may think it is and that there are other nuances to it that, you know, will keep you scratching your head for a lifetime. I know people that have had one or two strange experiences and it like totally changes their worldview. So if that's what this phenomenon is doing, well, it's doing a pretty good job of it. I think so, man, this whole trickster element,

too. I don't care. I've told people so many damn times. I don't care if I ever know what UFOs are or aren't. Like, the journey alone and the little nudges these phenomena give you and be like, ha ha, you thought you knew this. Fuck you. That's right. I love that stuff. Just when you think you know something, you know, something creeps around the corner

and taps you on the shoulder and says, hey, I'm over here. Come look at me. So I love it. I love it. It's sobering to think we may never know what's out there. But I know a lot of the stories we're going to talk about tonight. A lot of these people probably will never know. what actually happened to them. So I am stoked to do this with you. We've got some really good stuff lined up.

We do. We do. Before we do that, though, I got to tell you what I am drinking. Here we go. All right. This is the Thousand Stars Pilsner from Alwife Brewing Company in the Bronx. I went all the way up to the Bronx to get this one. So this is going to be a good. That's bold, man. I know. Bold. A little white boy going up into the Bronx. It can be a tough neighborhood. It can, man, especially if you're wearing a New York Mets hat in Yankee territory. Yeah. I've seen what happens. You know, my old man was born in Brooklyn.

He grew up on Long Island. And every now and then we'd go back down to Brooklyn, visit the family. And yeah, I learned pretty quick you don't wear a Mets hat down there. Nope. And vice versa. I live in Queens. I live about maybe 25 minutes from City Field. and it's the same here, man.

You got a Yankees hat on anywhere in a five-mile radius, and that hat's going down the gutter, I can tell you that much. Oh, yeah. It's always fun when they have the subway series here, too. My dad comes to town, and, you know, we'll be on our way to the Yankees game, and I'll bust out all my Mets stuff, and he'll be like, you can't be seen with that. What are you doing?

That's what happens when you grow up in a Yankees family and then turn to the one of the worst teams in history. The Mets, not so much this season, but, um... No, no, this season, you know, they're doing pretty good. Um, the, this is the, uh, the home run derby season because it's just everybody's slamming them, so. I know, man, it brings me back to like the McGuire days and Sammy Sosa. I'm like, all right, what, who's, who's taking steroids? Let's, let's look at this again.

We've got to do another investigation. Like, our entire team, our entire team's just juicing right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's crazy. It's like the late 90s all over again. It is. Well, I'm sure we could do a whole episode on baseball, too, but that's not what our audience is here for. So I guess we should talk a little bit UFOs. How does that sound? That sounds good, man. Awesome. Well, we're going to start with the most popular thing going on in UFO conversations right now.

No, I'm not talking about Tom DeLong. I am talking about hashtag storm area. 51. Let's get the shit out of the way early. What do you think of all this, Rob? What do you think is going to happen, not happen? What are your suggestions to anyone out there who's planning on going to this storm area 51 on September 20th? I honestly think this is the dumbest thing that I've ever heard. And like, this went from being a joke very quickly to something serious. and then it became like a First Amendment's right thing.

And now it's, let's just try to pop off with a festival or something or two or three. Three, I think we're up to three now. Yeah. It's very unorganized. My advice would be to let's just avoid this this year. And next year, why don't we take a year to plan this out better? So, you know, you can find a good location where people, you know, want to host it and not Rachel Nevada. How many people live in Rachel Nevada?

Dude, it's not even like a town. They call it a township because there's so few people. I don't know. I couldn't tell you, but I could tell you every single one of those people don't want you coming there. No. No, and I'm pretty sure most of the people in the outlying areas don't want it either, just because most of them are very strong. small towns. So it's not, it's not, it's not, you know, a very good place to host something like that. Yeah, I would agree. I mean, they're expecting thousands of people to show up. And that's

just, you know, that's just a guess. Like, honestly, nobody knows how many people are going to show up to any of these three events. I think it's alien stock, uh, peace stock or some bullshit. And then we've got, um, Storm Area 51 Base Camp, which, uh, Jeremy Corbell is. working on. And of course, anyone who knows our show or knows Area 51. Jeremy Corbell is now forever intrinsically linked to that. Whether you like it

or not, a lot of people don't. But I got to hand the guy some props. I talked to him a couple weeks ago and he is trying to make this thing as safe, as educational, and as worth people's time going out there. But

I do agree with you. If you're going to do something like this, if you're coordinating any sort of thing that's expecting this many people, take a year to figure the shit out. You know, it happened, it blew up, and of course, you know, people are going to take advantage of that and get something going. But this could potentially be really dangerous. Just think, you know, out of maybe a thousand people show up, and that's being generous. One percent of those people are going to actually be in a not good state of mind.

and they're actually going to try to storm those gates. I guarantee it. I guarantee it. There's going to be some asshole who wants that YouTube video or that Instagram photo of them on the other side of the gate or, you know, Naruto running towards whatever the hell they expect to see. Dude, there's no building within like 10 miles of the actual gate. So good luck with that. There's going to be no photos or videos because they will be confiscated. They will be taken down if you put them up.

It's just because it, I mean, it's a, it's. a classified military base. There's no way that you're going to be able to keep that for one. And you may be lucky if you get to keep your life because we already had one guy try to storm area, what, 3, 31, something like that, and he paid for it with his life. So. Yeah, dude, we brought that up, I think, on our last UFO happy hour. It happened like the day before or something. Yep. Yeah, that's scary. I mean, that's the shit that happens. You get shot dead. Now, I mean, I know that the security at the base is, they're well equipped for this sort of thing.

I don't care if you have 1,000, 2,000, 4,000 people storming that gate. They will stop you. They have every right to, and they have every resource to do that. This is a black budget, high-classified military installation. They have more money than any military base you can possibly think of. So you know they're going to be doing everything. I was talking to someone recently who said they've got like this technology that can make you sick to your stomach. Like immediately when you get to a certain area, they can shut down your phones with like the click of a button.

We're not talking like shooting people in the head left and right, like a total firefight going on. We're talking to some of the most high-tech ways of securing the base, which needs to be secured. This is a defense base. They are doing these things there for a reason. whether you think there's aliens there or not. Like, this is some serious shit, and I think a lot of people don't really realize that. Right. And if you really honestly want to know what's that Area 51, there's a couple of sources we can send you to.

One, go read Annie Jacobson's book about it. It's pretty well in depth, and it pretty much lays it out. Secondly, the History Channel actually produced a documentary about Lockheed Barton and their Skug Works program, and that's basically what was out there. developed U2, they developed the F-117, they developed the SR-71, all out there. That's what that base was designed for. I mean, the... Which is fascinating enough.

I mean, yeah, I mean, they literally put it in a place that is adjacent to atomic testing. I mean, I wouldn't want to go out there. No, man, that's another thing. I think people don't realize is there have been so much, so many bombs, blown out there that I wouldn't even want to get close to that area. And I did. People are going to see it tomorrow night, actually. See me at the gates of Area 51 once this episode airs. And I can tell you right now, I'm a little scared. I might grow an extra arm. Um, I don't know, man. Everybody, everybody, we're going to need you to keep an eye on Ryan. Uh, just like, make sure

that he's okay. Make sure that, you know, he's not turning any weird colors or, you know, He's not like, you know, hulking out here, like Bruce Banner. I wish, man. Yeah. Yeah, those days are over. Muscular Ryan is gone. Replaced by a nice doughy doughboy over here, which, uh, that's what unemployment gets you. It does.

It does. I was unemployed once for two years. It was not fun. Yeah. Yeah. For anyone listening, I did lose my job temporarily. Um, I'm going back to work soon. But, um, that's why I,

have the time to do these fun episodes of the Rob. So God bless the economy for failing me. That's all I can say. Thanks, economy. Thanks, Obama. Anyways, yeesh, moving on. So I got to ask you before we move on, Rob, with this whole Storm Area 51 stuff, do you think this is going to help or harm the UFO field if there is a UFO field or the UFO community? Does this help us or hinder us? I don't think it does. either. I think it's just this is something that's kind of slipped through the cracks.

It's really a joke. And I don't see really any sides of the UFO community, with the exception of Jeremy Corbell himself really contributing to this. Like, if you talk to most ephologists, they'll tell you that this

is absolutely dumb. And, you know, they're not really giving it the time of day. Most of the people that are interested in this or just your average Joe's. It feels like people are haunted by the fact that Woodstock did not take place this year, so we can do something else. We need some other stock to happen, and this seems to be the only way to do it.

But that's a good point. You know, I think the UFO community, quote unquote, they're actually smart enough to not go to this thing because they know what could happen if you go there. And they also know that there's nothing out there. I mean, leaving Las Vegas, it's like an hour and a half drive just to get to that gate. And I got lost, man. I got lost an hour and a half into the drive. Had to turn around, go all the way back to the little alien and get directions.

And I almost ran out of gas on the way there. So I could be still out there deserted, dead in the middle of the desert if I didn't have other people out there to make sure that didn't happen. But everyone going out there, I don't think they're prepared for this, man. it's a long-ass trek just to get out there. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever's going to happen on September 20th.

I'm interested to see how this all plays out. I have a feeling it's going to be a dud, to be completely honest. And again, Jeremy Corbell is a friend, but I just think this is way over the heads of everyone involved, including Maddie Roberts, the kid who started all this thing, you know? And God bless him. He's trying. He's trying to spin this into some positive fun thing. but I think just like it was a surprise to him that this thing went viral,

it's going to be a surprise at how hard it is to pull something off with these expectations of thousands of people coming to Rachel Nevada, especially when the people do not want them there. It is. It's Woodstock all over again. You know what I think people should do? I think people should protest this by reading about the Betty and Barty Hill abduction because it's the same time. It's the anniversary.

Read about it, folks. Absolutely. That is such a good point. I think they just had the Exeter UFO Festival as well. They did. Yeah. Yeah. That is such a good point.

And I know you've covered Betty and Barney Hill extensively on your show. So please, I hope people will definitely take your advice on that. But, Rob, I want to get to some of the stuff you got going on at our strange skies. Is that cool? Oh, yeah, man. So this one literally made me laugh out loud. when I heard you were writing this. A recent blog you wrote at your website, it is called Don't Go to the Grays for your

gift wrapping needs. So could you maybe tell us what the running theme of this post is and maybe a few examples of what you mean by this, man? Sure. So last year I did an episode that was an overview of the abduction phenomenon. I did it with my good friend, Rich Adam, screenwriter of the Mothman, prophecies. And we started talking about how sometimes aliens, for lack of a better term, fuck up when they're doing something. They mess up, you know, bringing a person back.

Sometimes people will be brought back a mile or two away from where they were abducted. There is a supposedly one story that was told to a researcher named John S. Carpenter that one person was returned 20 miles away from where they were abducted in a nearby town. What is Dick move? Yeah. But, I mean, in Travis Walton's case, he was, I think, a couple miles away from the Sit Grieves National Forest. It gets more, you know, nefarious from there. Sometimes these aliens will take personal items from people.

There are some experiencers that report that. they have jewelry missing. Some have reported that apparently some grays have a thing for nightgowns. Apparently, this one guy told John Carpenter that he had to keep replacing his wife's nightgowns because he was afraid that she would be seen by the neighbors floating outside in the air, you know, completely naked. Wow. Oh, that's a possessive husband right there, I guess.

Yeah, you know, he's doing good work. Sometimes when the aliens bring people back, they bring them back and put them in the wrong place, not just miles away, but just like in the wrong central location. So Terry Lovelace reported that during the actual devil's den abduction, when they brought him back, the aliens placed him. near their car, when in fact they actually abducted him from their tent. So the aliens had to come back and move them back into the tents. Whoops. And if you read John Mack's abduction, there's this brief little tidbit in there about this guy who's researching an abduction, and apparently these two people were abducted at the same time

from two different cars. When they were returned, they were returned to the wrong car. Each of them saw each other on the highway as they were driving past each other, and the aliens had to come back, re-abduct them, and put them in the right cars. Oh, my, that just gave me chills, actually. Could you imagine, like, driving down the road and seeing your own vehicle being driven by someone else? Yeah, yeah. That's weird, man. Creepy.

Where the essay gets its title from is the account of a woman. named Carol Denham. And she was an abductee. She lived, I want to say in Massachusetts, I think. And basically, she had had experiences her entire life. This was in January of like 92, 91, 92, somewhere around there. And she had gone to a company Christmas party. She was returning.

And with her in her truck, she was returning to a farm that she worked on. She had this gift-wrapped package of cookies and, like, fruitcake, and she recognized the signs that she was about to get abducted. And in one moment, you know, there was just this bright light, and then the next moment she's in her cab. Everything's all messed up, and then there's papers all over the cab of the truck. And she looks down at the package, and she realizes that it's been poorly rewrapped by the grace. It sounds like me at Christmas. I used to volunteer at our mall to wrap presents. And people would just be like, uh, I think I'll go somewhere else.

Wow. That's, see, this is, this is what's amazing to me. And I'm so glad that you were able to, like, cherry pick all these stories out of different abduction researchers work because they happen. I mean, we know people have been returned in different clothes that weren't theirs or clothes were inside out. and just like small things like that. It's so interesting. Yeah. And I mean, there are things that aliens seem to be puzzled by that, you know, to the average person, like, are really everyday items that we use.

Like, there's one situation in which the aliens bringing back this one woman didn't understand how the blankets on her bed were used. So they just draped them around her neck. Oh, my God. The funny thing was is that she was at this UFO conference and her roommate was in the room with her and she watched the whole thing

and she's just talking about like they seem confused and frustrated by how the blankets work. Yet they could travel hundreds of millions of light years to get to our planet. That's what always fascinates me

with these conundrums of the grays. Yeah. It almost really makes them kind of human. And just, yeah, don't understand how things work. But, you know, we'll give it our best shot. Right, right. I mean, it's kind of like, you know, I'm good at some stuff and I'm completely horrible at others.

I mean, you ask me to add two and two, and I'm clueless, but you want me to write a soliloquy of Shakespearean, you know, dialogue. I'll do it. I'll do it for you, like on the spot. So, you know, it's just like humans. We all have our own set of skills and traits, so maybe the grays are the same. We think of them as these drone-like things, but maybe they're more human than we think. Maybe, you know, maybe lends credence to these theories that, you know, these are humans from the future. And, like, this is not something, this is an old idea, because if you go back into the late 1800s, there were people postulating what the humans of the future would look like.

And a lot of them had really bulbous heads, and some of them kind of walked on, you know, four legs, almost kind of reverting to like the man in the trees and kind of stuff like that. But if you do look at that, there's an interesting account. I can't remember the guy's name, but he wrote this account after being in a coma for a few years. And he talked about seeing man in the future and kind of looked a little bit like the great. Grays. H.G. Wells also kind of toyed with this idea in a satirical work called Man of the Year Million. And if you Google pictures of what Man of the Year of Million looked like, kind of looks like a gray on all fours. There is, there's an incident I came across. Rob, this one's pretty funny. This comes from Mike Leland, the Owl guy. Do you know Mike's work? I do know Mike's work, yes. Yeah, he lives

not too far from you actually. He lives, uh, the, the doctor's inn is in my hometown. Oh shit. Yeah. I think you mentioned that at one. Yeah. Yeah. It's, uh, yeah. And then, you know, some aliens showed up there when you were there one weekend and, you know, my hometown has never been the same since. Sorry about that. I'll never return. Well, Mike told in his first book, The Messengers, uh, this really funny story, almost hard. heartwarming where a woman, a multiple abductee, she'd been abducted all her life, she was, you know, putting her kids to bed one night and getting ready to go to sleep and she's on the ground level of her house and she looks out the window and she sees a gray staring at her from the window.

And the gray runs away from the window. She can see it like running away. So she goes outside and she's like, hey, I see you. And the gray turns around, looks at her, and not telepathically, like she could see its mouth moving, and it just goes, owl, owl, owl, owl, owl. And it was trying to screen memory itself into an owl. And it couldn't do it. So she's staring at this gray outside, and it's just looking at her going, owl, owl, owl. And it couldn't do it.

For some reason, it could not implant the screen memory into her head of what you're looking at is actually an owl, not a gray, alien. So, I mean, that gray fucked up, probably got demoted that day and didn't get to do the abduction. Yeah. You know, he's probably one of those craze that's, you know, just hanging around, waiting to do something around the table or something. Right, right. He's like, oh, let me, please, let me try. Let me try. That's so sad. I know. It's so great. I hope he was able to finally screen memory someone, abduct them, and traumatize them for the rest of their lives. Yeah.

That's all we can move for. That's all you can ask for in an alien abduction, really. I know, I know. And I know we're making light of it, but I do, you know, have all the empathy in the world for people who suffer these experiences. Oh, absolutely. You can't help but laugh when an alien is yelling owl at you. Yeah. You can't help but laugh when aliens just screw up.

Exactly. Well, I know you have a bunch of other examples in that article, so I definitely suggest people check out. that one over at your website our strange skies.com. All right, man. So let's move on to your, one of your latest episodes that I was listening to titled Harm from Above, Part 1. This is great. We're going to get a part 2. Which you cover why UFOs may be hostile. And you gave a few examples. So I was wondering maybe, what you mind teasing a little of this episode for us? So I've been on a Brazil kick lately, mostly because their cases are so out of the norm for most countries. Like you talk about people seeing humanoids or just having a random encounter.

Well, in 1977, UFOs in Brazil started to get a little violent. And they coined a term for them called the Chupas. Now, you may know a... about these a little bit. If you've read Hunt for the Skin Walker, they get kind of a little mention because on the ranch, I think it was Mrs. Sherman, who had the encounter with the box-like UFO out there,

or it might have been Terry. I can't remember exactly, but they talked about the Chupas, and they talked about how some of them were these rectangular or square-like objects. And the people, of in northern Brazil ended up undergoing this intense flap with UFOs that would shoot beams down at them and would cause them all sorts of bodily injuries. Sometimes there would be skin

lesions. People would feel nauseous, dizzy. Sometimes they would, I think, just black out. A lot of physical symptoms in response to these, but there were very few occupants seen. Some of them were very strange. There was one person who saw a man and a woman just flying in this weird-looking cylinder. And in another one, there was a very strange-looking humanoid that floated out of a one of these chupas. You're going to get that in part two and was checking out a boat. But But the M.O., yeah, most of the time, it fit this pattern. And this was seen by countless people. Like, we're talking in the hundreds.

Not only that, this was Brazil's first government-run study of UFOs. And their investigators experienced them. The doctor that treated the injuries sustained by these chupas also saw them. Everybody was seeing him. So I wanted to cover it because it's a flap that I think people overlook a lot of the time. There aren't a lot of pods that I've seen cover them. And it's definitely one that is worthy of its own episode. We broke it up in two.

But I think a lot of the problem is too where, you know, Antonio V.S. Boas and the Vars Vars and the Varsinia incident, they're readily available sources in English. You don't have that for Calares because most of the... Most of the documents are coming from. It was called the Opera Cal Prato team. So literally in Portuguese, it's Operation Plate because, you know, it's kind of tongue-in-cheek for a saucer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But if you want to try and take a crack at those documents, John Greenwald has him on his website, the Blackfault.

And we're talking about two, over 2,000 pages of documentation. and the Brazilian government investigated this for about a year and a half, just writing reports, interviewing witnesses, gathering testimony. It really is one of the best flaps, you know, something that is on par with the 73 year of the humanoids or the 65 to 67 flaps in the states or the 54 flap in France and, all these, yeah, just all these flaps on par with it, kind of just really goes above it. It's disturbing to think because, I mean, you can find reports of, her name was Dr. Carvalho. She traded like, I want to say about 50 patients.

So it's a wild one. But definitely check out those episodes. Yeah, part two will have come out by the time this episode goes up. So it's an interesting, it's an interesting, it's an interesting flap. Absolutely, man. And I mean, you know, we have so many examples here in the U.S. too. Look at like, you know, Rendell Shum. Look at the harm that came to, uh, to the gentleman there.

His name's escaping me right now, not Penniston. Oh, Burroughs. John Burroughs. Yeah, man. I mean, he had to get like congressional help to get helped out with this thing. This, like, ruined his heart, this UFO of me. Yeah. I mean, you look at the.

the cases in which maybe the UFOs weren't acting aggressively, but they had negative health effects, like Cash Landrum. That's what I was going to mention. I couldn't think of the name. Yeah. The Falcon Lake incident, Stephen Mickelak had

all sorts of health problems after that. And he had this grid pattern of scars that would materialize and disappear like every so many months for a while. was a wild one. And then there's, you know, the other side of that, the healings and such.

Yeah. So, I mean, yeah, let's do a complete 180 here. You go from UFOs that cause harm to UFOs that are helping people out. And this is another episode of your show called the UFO Miracle. So could you tell us a little about this one? I'd like to end a little happier. Yeah, right? So in an issue of Flying Sasser Review from the mid-60s, uh, doctor, a lot Alvo Fantes, who for a long time was Brazil's, like, number one UFO investigator. There were a few others, but he was really the one that had the best resources because he was affiliated with APRO. He had a partnership with a journalist named Zhao Martens, who published in this magazine

called O Cruzeiro. It was kind of your average, like maybe Look Magazine or Time magazine or something like that. And occasionally he would publish these UFO accounts. And he got, he would routinely get letters. And one of them that he got was from this woman who was a caretaker to this one man's daughter. And she told this story about how she had, I want to say it was like stomach cancer. And it was really painful for her as stomach cancer is.

and they were pretty much certain that she was going to die. And all of a sudden, they're all gathered around in this one room. They see a bright light outside the window. And there's this UFO. And all of a sudden, this doorway opens up. And there are these two beings that float out, and one of them that stands in the doorway. They were short, about four feet tall. They came in, and they started to perform.

an operation on this girl. And there was another one that was explaining to the girl's father that, you know, you're going to have to do this after we leave, give her these pills. These aliens apparently gave her, gave this man pills to give to his daughter. Wow, they're like pharmacists. Yeah, pretty much. And according to the letter, she was cured. That's, that's, I don't know what to say.

I mean, it almost like makes you really wonder, you know. Maybe some races are here to harm us or to, you know, deplete our resources. But then you have situations like this where it's like, wow, how else do you take it other than like a miracle? You know, you got to wonder how many people think this could be something angelic or spiritual even. Right. And to this woman, it looked like a UFO and aliens getting out. I mean, we have other cases of UFO healings. There's a fascinating case from France, the case of a man.

They called him Dr. X. They didn't want to reveal his identity. But one night, he is awoken in the middle of the night. His son wakes him up, and he's a little restless, and he looks out the window, and he can see, like, these bright flashes. like there's like thunder and lightning out there except there's no thunder, there's just these flashes of light. And he goes to this picture window.

See these two UFOs that keep dropping beams down, and they're flying parallel to each other. And at one point, they just come together and they form one big, huge UFO. This UFO comes towards the window where the doctor's standing. The doctor has all these health problems. some of them stemming from World War II. And I think one was sustained after falling off a ladder. He couldn't walk very well.

I think he had like blood clot in his leg and stuff like that. Well, he, after this incident, he gets up the next morning, finds out that, you know, he's walking just fine, seems to be healed. At one point, he gets a message that these aliens are going to return after he falls down a small, all set of stairs. He falls down the set of stairs. The UFO does return. And apparently this man has interactions with this UFO and supposedly alien beings for the majority of his life. But at certain points, he and his son would get this triangular shaped red mark that would appear on their abdomen every so often. So yeah, that's one

fascinating case. I'll do an episode on that. that at some point. But yeah, that's another one. These, these healings every now and then are very strange. There's another one in 1951. It's called the Georgia Stocks case. And this pilot was flying and he had made contact with the UFO. And instead of falling to the ground, this UFO brought him on board. They apparently diagnosed him with cancer, and they cured his cancer on board. He wakes up a short while later on the ground outside near the wreckage of his plane. But unfortunately, he dies a year later. All that for nothing. Yeah. Jesus. That is just like irony at its finest. I don't even know what to say to that. I need to take a sip on my beer. Hold on. Yeah, we do. We both do.

Oh, I'm choking. Wow, man. Well, I mean, and you look at something like the Carlos De Los Santos case where UFOs collided with a dude's plane. They make him go into like a downward spiral. And then they safely guide him to like an area where he can land safely. So you got to wonder. Look at Travis Walton. Yeah.

You know, hit with the beam. Might have killed him. Who knows? And then they bring him on board to fix him up. That's what he says at least. So you got to wonder. Well, yeah, because, I mean, like, it didn't seem like those aliens were touching down in that field to abduct anybody. It seemed like they were having some kind of mechanical problems because they were just, like, kind of floating up and down in this field.

And then you got some young, brash idiot that decides to come over and gets hit with a blue beam of light. Well, well, we got to fix them. Yep. And now we forever have that abduction scene planted into our heads for the rest of eternity. that thing gives me nightmares. It does. It really does, especially when you see Mike Rogers' illustration of the first aliens that he comes into contact with. Yeah, they're very strange.

I think their eyes and the way that their pupils and their brown eyes are kind of freak me out more than anything. Not to mention the fact that he painted them with these stern expressions. I'm like, I think they were a little more emotive. lived in that, but okay. Yeah, yeah, you do have to wonder. Hey, artist's interpretation. Yeah, pretty much. And I mean, yeah, I mean, it's, you know, Mike Rogers.

He got brought into all this mess anyway, so. Yeah, is he the one, Rob, I don't know if you know, one of them, like, goes out to the site now all the time and, like, is begging and waiting to be taken? I don't think it's Mike Rogers. I think it's one of the other guys. Oh, so sad. Yeah, well, I mean, like, I don't even know.

what it would be like to be in that kind of situation to be a bystander to how that would affect you your entire life I mean we know that guys like Philip ass I call him that you know like tried to fucking ruin some lives there not to mention that just seeing something like that

just how like what kind of existential crisis will that create in some people I can only imagine. Right. And to, you know, have such confidence in one another and loyalty to stick to the story. And meanwhile, your life is just going into a downward spiral of like, you know, being involved with this UFO case. You got to wonder, and all these guys stick to it to this day, even if it did ruin their lives. So, no, even though Travis was the one taken, they all suffered because of this.

And they all had their own existential crisis, I would believe. Crisis of faith, belief, and the fact that one of them is going out there begging to be taken. I guess I can understand. Like, he wants confirmation that the shit actually happened and that the way his life went is maybe worth it? I don't know. Right. I mean, like, you know, Travis Walton was literally taken. These guys were taken in other ways.

So, you know, that will. definitely affect you. Yeah. Well, you know, not to get too sad again, but this one dude broke my heart when I heard about this. A rejected abductee. So, you know, we have UFO occupants that are harmful, sometimes helpful, and sometimes they simply are just doing their job. And quality control seems to be a big part of that. So could you maybe tell us a little about this poor bastard Alberto? Alfred Bertow, he, uh, oh my gosh. He's, God love this guy. He, um, he was night fish in this place called the Bassing Stroke Canal.

This, this canal was essentially built in the late 1700s in England to kind of introduced agriculture all along this canal way. And, uh, it, uh, it, uh, kind of went out of commission not long after, maybe 40 years after it was built and it went through different stages. The military used it for. training during World War I and to bring supplies up and down. But a lot of people used it for recreational fishing and boating and such. And one of those people was Alfred Berto.

And in 1983, we're approaching the height of, you know, abductions in pop culture, at least in the UFO community, we're getting to that level. and Alfred Berto decides he's going to go night fishing, something that he did every so often, and he was 77 years old at the time, brought his dog tiny with him, and he settles in at around 1 a.m. He's got his line out there.

He takes a swig of tea, and he sees these lights just coming and approaching, and they set down in this copse of trees nearby, and a few minutes later his dog just starts going, nuts. So he looks over, he can see these two figures approaching him. They're kind of wearing coveralls and helmets with a, with a visor on them. And they basically motion for him to come along with them. So you've got one leading, and then one behind him, and they approach this craft that it's kind of a little donut shaped with a really strange dome on top.

It's got these porthole lights on the outer edge of it. And there's this small stairway leading up into an opening. So they lead them up in there. He's standing in this room for maybe a few minutes. And this shaft comes out of the floor. And this really loud, booming voice says, stand under the amber light. And at the time, he couldn't actually see an amber light.

So he moves forward a little bit. and he can finally see this light coming down from the ceiling. So stands under this light and the loud booming voice says, what is your age? And Alfred Berto says, oh, I'll be turning 78 on my next birthday. And the alien beings tell him, you can go. You are too old and infirm for our purpose. Oh, my God.

Albert, no. So Albert, you know, he wasn't. dejected. He didn't feel dejected or anything. He just went back to fishing. And then he's fishing until probably about noon the next day. He runs into a couple of a ministry of defense guys out there. And he's talking about it. And they're like, oh, I guess you did see that UFO. I was like, well, that's interesting. But, uh, oh, man. Poor Alfred Berto, just too old and infirm for their purposes. You know, if it wasn't enough that like society casts the elderly.

aside and forgets about them. Even the fucking aliens won't take them, man. I mean, I think Dave Huggins is the best of us all, because he, you know, he's like how old now, and apparently he's still getting it? I don't know. Yo, Dave Huggins

is the man, still macin it with an alien at like 79, I think. Yeah, yeah, more power to him. Hey, dude, if you still got it, use it. That's all I got to say. Rob, now, before we leave here, there is another series

you do with your show called The Meltdown. And these are where you get kind of like UFO Happy Hour. You let loose and you just air all your frustration, man. And these are the best episodes of any podcast that's willing to like shed that professionalism or that performance mode

and really tell their honest opinions. So I love when you guys do these episodes. And you recently covered something that should not be back in the UFO conversation and up for debate, but for some fucking reason it is. I don't know why, but people think the alien autopsy video, once again, is real. But you recently covered it and you talked

about the Frakes, man. So what was this meltdown episode, man? So I had my buddies, Brian and Angelo from Double Density on, and man, we did what we call the Freaks trilogy, which is the Alien an autopsy video and two specials that he did in 97 and 2000 called UFOs the best evidence ever caught on tape. Yeah. Oh, man. I remember those. Yeah, which most of those were not the best evidence ever caught on tape. Some of them were very much streetlights.

Some of them were the reflection of indoor lights, you know, from a window. And, you know, there were a couple of them. We gave a little credit to Jaime Mousson during the 1990. Mexico City Eclipse footage because some of it's good but most of it we've actually

asked like you know instead of getting wrapped up in these alien mummy hoaxes why don't you like digitize all these videos that you say you have like over 5,000 UFO videos that you've been sent why don't we just digitize those buddy

just come on we even offered to set up a Patreon forum I mean come on Jaime He doesn't need your money, trust me. He's doing just fine. I know, but I figured it would be a little more motivation, but you know. Absolutely. But we talked about the Ray Santilli alien autopsy video from the absolute,

oh, just great special alien autopsy factor fiction. Oh, dude, I watch it like on a monthly basis. It's on Netflix right now. And like, I always go back to it because even, even without. the videos of the alien, it's a pretty good wrap up of the Roswell incident, to be honest. They got Frankie Row on there, who you don't hear from that often.

So, yeah, so how did it go? What were your conclusions or? The interesting thing is, is like, yeah, you get the Roswell portion up front, and then you have all these quote-unquote experts looking at

this, you know, video, and one of them is um, Ciro Brecht, uh, the all star, uh, he was the,

uh, what was the medical examiner that was like featured on every program in the 90s in 2000. Zero Wecht. Just an interesting guy. And he's somehow convinced that this is an actual life form. Okay. We got a medical examiner convinced this is an actual life form.

Then we have Stan Winston. Yeah. Stan Winston. Stan Winston built the freaking dinosaurs from Jurassic Park. He was just, at first he's like, no, this is fake. And then, you know, as you go along, he's like, oh, no, this has got to be real because we couldn't even duplicate this. And, you know, today, even though one guy duplicated it in his London flat, he built it in his London flat. Yeah, come on, man.

Like, how much did they pay him to save that? Right, right. I mean, realistically, this special, the only thing this special was missing was Bruce. Maccabee because he falls for most things hook line and sinker. God bless you, Bruce, but some things you put a little too much stock in. Golf breeze. Crop circle videos.

But, yeah, we tore it a new one. I don't understand how people can still believe this after Ray Sintilly himself said that he had to, quote unquote,

remake this footage because he saw a video you saw video footage of this originally but it was in so poor quality he had to refill it himself and then you had I forget what his name was in 2017 saying oh yeah I created this in my London flat it wasn't that hard Spiro something I don't know he was the one who so I don't know

there's actually a good movie I remember watching but I think Bill Pullman was even in it Um, if I'm not mistaken. There was a 2006 movie. Yeah. And it was, uh, it was a British movie. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. You know who created that? No. The guys that host British, British Scott Talent. All right. There you go. It's got talent. Yeah.

The two hosts that they have on there created that movie. Okay. Okay. It's actually, I really enjoyed it. Yeah. It's a good movie. A step by step of how they did this thing. But I don't know if you know anything about all this shit going on right now with people claiming that it actually is real and that like admirals or someone are saying that it was real.

I don't know. I think it was in one of the Eric Davis memos. Okay. They were talking about it in one of those because they were also talking about the MJ 12 documents being real. I had MJ Banais on last year and we talked about the, the podcast. Paul Benowitz stuff and the MJ12 documents. And, you know, he's like, MJ12 was a thing, but they just didn't investigate aliens. They were involved in covering up, you know, atomic fallout and stuff like that.

That's what they were there for. And I mean, if you have heard of the MJ12 documents, what you need to do now is go to the internet and look up something called the Pratt tapes. If you go and look for the Pratt tapes, you can pretty much tell where the MJ12 stuff came from. Not to mention the first MJ12 documents, who were they sent to? Jamie Shandra and Bill Moore. He hasn't been wrapped up in any sort of disinformation controversies. Not at all.

No, not at all. I mean, he didn't admit to, like, you know, playing his part in the Paul Benowitz affair at all, like, in 1989 at the Mufon symposium. Like, that symposium had to be, like, you know, gangbusters. I wish I could have been there. Yeah, I know Greg Bishop was there at the time. He said, like, you know, those people were, if there were pitchforks there being sold, they would have sold out in like two minutes. I'm sure, because, I mean, I can't imagine it's an easy thing to get up there and say, oh, yeah, I helped ruin Paul Benowitz's life. In return, I get all this authentic UFO information.

I mean, a lot of people think this is, you know, the whole Tom DeLon thing. Like, he's getting fed actual information, but then he's going to pump out a whole different narrative to the public. Now, I don't believe that, but at the end of the day, man, it's the fact that we're still talking about the alien autopsy video and that it could be real, what kind of world are we living in? It just, it astounds me that this is happening, that the MJ12 documents, the alien autopsy, are being debated again, and that's the UFO field. There's such amnesia when it comes to these things that people are so hungry to believe in something that the minute someone, someone says, let me recycle that alien autopsy thing again. And let's see what happens. People are going to fucking believe it.

It's astounding. Right. And like, the thing is, it's like, I at Hookline Sinker, what I would tell you to do is to go out and do a little more research. And that's really what this field of study is. It's looking into all angles of this and saying, oh, well, I think there's something to this. Or, no, this is completely bogus. And I mean, if you go to the FBI's website and you look at the MJ12 documents, somebody basically wrote bogus and big black letters on these documents and put pictures of them on their website. That's what they think of them.

And I mean, here's a good barometer. So the Psalm 101 manual that was sent to Don Berliner in 1991, I believe it was. Now, Clifford Stone, do you know who Clifford Stone is? The crash retrieval guy? Yeah, yeah. They asked Clifford Stone about the Assam 101 manual. He's like, no, it's not like anything that I had to work with. So I don't think it's real.

No, it's not real. Yeah, if Clifford Stone, who will believe anything is saying that, then that means something. Yeah, that's definitely significant. And, oh, God. Like, my advice to people is go look at every aspect. of something and then draw your conclusions. Don't just listen to me, all right? Don't just listen to one person.

If you're going to listen to me, just go out, find every bit and piece of information about one certain thing that you can and then draw your own conclusions. I mean, that's what some people say, you know, to do in some forms of entertainment. I'm not going to name names here, but like there are some people. that say, I want you to draw your own conclusion, but don't do an honest job of giving you honest information. So you need to go out and you need to go look for that information, unfortunately, these days, because it's a tough world and you may not know who you can trust. That's a really good point, man. If I've learned anything from working in the entertainment field

as of late, it's you don't know who you can trust and you have to be very careful. And at the end of the day, like, don't pay for someone to tell you what to think. Just think on your own. That's why we're here. That's why we have brains. That's why we have the freedom to learn. So, like, do it. Do it. Learn. Research. Put the legwork in. And be honest with yourself about the information that you were receiving. Don't just outrightly discount it because it doesn't fall into your line of belief system or the belief that you have in somebody. No, you're not looking for belief in people. You're looking for the actual information, the facts.

So follow those. Don't follow the beliefs of other people. And in particular, Stephen Greer. I think it's kind of like a tradition that we just like, you know, name call them at least once in one of these episodes. Yeah, I think his name comes up at least once. But while we're at it, Corey Good, done it. Done.

Yep, yeah, Corey Good. Get out of here. You know what? You know who's a better version of Corey Good? It's Randy Kramer. I love Randy Kramer to death. Like the, he's one of the, he's, he's in that line, but he's not as egotistical. Go, go listen to Rainy Kramer if you're into that kind of like secret space program kind of stuff.

Go listen to him. Go listen to him. Yeah. Well, if they're not listening to Randy Kramer, Rob, where can they listen, like this transition here? Where can they listen to the. Our Strange Skies podcast, brother. Well, you can find it on pretty much every single podcast app. And you can find it at the new website, Our Strange Skies.com.

I've only been doing this for almost two years. We finally got a website. Dude, it's beautiful, by the way. Yeah, it was done by the great Desdemona. That's the only thing that I will call her, the great Desdemona, because she's great at everything she does. She does all the artwork for our website. and most of the t-shirts and merch that you can find

in our T-Public store have been done by her. Yeah, she did one for me too. Yep. She is. If you're intrigued by the Antonio V.S. Boas story, we have a T-shirt over there. The Antonio V.S. Bois' Bois'Bos craft. It's really pretty cool.

Nice. Yes. Bois is boss. She is boss. I mean, just like he was taken on board that UFO. but he didn't seem to have too bad a time. Yeah, dude, party it up. Yeah.

That's all I got to say. Rob, thank you, as always, brother, for coming on, given your honest opinion in a field that is always afraid, it seems to be honest. So I love doing this. It's so refreshing. Again, everyone, go check out the Our Strange Skies podcast, and I cannot thank you enough for tipping one back with me again, brother.

I appreciate it, man. Thank you so much. That's it for this volume. of UFO Happy Hour. As always, my sincere thanks to Rob Christophis for coming on. If you're listening to this episode upon release on Monday, please be sure to tune in to my brand new episode of Mysteries Decoded. Tomorrow, Tuesday, September 10th at 9 p.m. Eastern, 8 p.m. Central on the CW Network. If you're listening to this after September 10th, the episode is free to stream right now on the CWC'd app. To watch it, visit CWC's

and just look for mysteries decoded. If you haven't already, please take a moment to subscribe, rate, and review somewhere in the skies on Apple Podcasts, your Android apps, or wherever you get the show. It helps us find new listeners and gain visibility. Thank you in advance. Somewhere in the Skies is always free to consume, but it's not free to create. To help the show out and get rewards in return, visit our Patreon campaign. That's patreon.

We're on Twitter at SomewhereSkies and Instagram at SomewhereSkies pod. To stream past episodes, read articles, and to contact me directly with your own UFO stories, visit our official website at somewhere in the skies.com. Thanks as always to the E1 podcast network, KGRA Radio, and especially to you for listening. I'll see you here next week. And remember, keep your feet on the ground, but never stop surgery. Somewhere in the skies. Somewhere in the skies is produced by third-kind productions

in association with the Entertainment One Podcast Network. To learn more, visit Entertainment One Podcast.com. UFOs seem to be invading both our skies and our news outlets like never before, and more people are starting to look up and are wondering who or what might be out there. In 2016, Ryan Sprague introduced the world to countless UFO encounters

that had never been made public before. And now, in the second edition of his book, he revisits these events and introduces brand-new UFO cases, in somewhere in the skies, a human approach to the UFO phenomenon. How have these events changed the lives of those involved? And what might it tell us about the phenomenon? With in-depth follow-ups, brand-new chapters, and detailed testimony from credible witnesses and insight from those in the psychological, academic, and scientific fields, Somewhere in the Skies, a human approach to the UFO phenomenon,

weaves together a story of stories, attempting to get to the heart of these mysteries one experience at a time. Available now on Amazon in both paperback and ebook. To learn more, visit somewhere in the skies.com. This is Somewhere in the Skies with Ryan's bread. All right, guys, welcome to a very special episode of Somewhere in the Skies, a voice you haven't heard in quite some time. So without further ado, you know what time it is. It is a UFO Happy Hour.

And with me today is the one, the only Rob Christofferson of the Our Strange Skies podcast, which is back. Welcome, Rob. Thanks, man. Holy God. It's so weird doing these again. It's like, you know, you talk to people, you're talking about UFOs and you're like, you swore.

You were never going to talk about them again. And then they somehow like shoot down that tractor beam into my brain cavity and I'm back here talking about them again. We got you back. No, you're so right, man. This is a field of study that pushes you away and draws you back in. It's one of the most toxic relationships you'll ever have. I can guarantee you that much. God is it, man.

My God. It's just you come across some stuff that you don't want to, you know, even. and acknowledge exists within this community. And then, yeah, it somehow manages to just be like, but why haven't we solved this damn thing yet? Come on. Right. It is.

It's frustrating. And, you know, I would think the last time we spoke was when you came on to do our Unsolved Mysteries special, which is still one of the most downloaded two-parter things I've done in a long time. So I think that was right around when you took your break. So I love, you know, before we start here with what we're going to be talking about tonight, and that's going to be New York UFOs, which I'm so happy about. What made you come back with our strange skies and maybe tell us a little about your return,

your first episode back, if you don't mind? Yeah, it just seemed like I kept getting messages after I shut down. And I'd been shut down for four, five, six months somewhere around there. and I just kept getting these messages and people just kept, you know, commenting and be like, you know, we miss you and we hope you're doing good and all this stuff. And with UFOs, you just kind of catch the bug. You ride a wave, whether it's on a certain case, whether it's on a certain theory, whether it's stimulated by a book, you are captured by this subject. And if you're not, it's just not meant for you. But driven by that, by, I get nostalgic for UFOs for some reason.

And I don't really know what that is. Maybe it's like some romanticized thing that I have in my head that some intelligence in this universe, in this wherever the hell they come from, they have this knack for wanting to communicate with people. They do it incredibly terribly terribly or incredibly vague ways. And they leave us with mystery. So

armed with that, I came back. I was right before New Year's Eve and New Year's is kind of an anniversary for us because that's when we dropped the first episode in

2017 and figured, you know, if you're going to put them up. Why not commemorate it with an anniversary? So put them back up and then I got the itch to do new episodes. And we just dropped one a few weeks ago. I recorded it with Robin Mark from the Kryptonot podcast. And it was on the M.RV. Elf encounter of 1970, this really strange UFO and humanoid encounter that

these two skiers had in Finland in 1970 and just the strangeness of the entire experience and the strangeness that one of the original witnesses reported after it and it is

just it's out there and like the episode it'll have you laughing quite a bit you're to get some of the narrative elements that I have in the solo episodes that I do. And then you're going to laugh. And there's a lot of statements I didn't think I'd be saying on an episode like that. But, you know, that happens from time to time.

Yes, it does. Absolutely. Man. What a hell of a way to come back to with such a weird, strange case. So, again, I think I speak for a lot of my listeners. And many people out there were so happy to have you back. It's a interesting time for UFOs heading into this new year with everything going on with the UAP task force and, you know, this bill or this request within this bill about making the findings public. And maybe I'll get your thoughts on that a little bit later. But like I said, we're here today to talk about New York UFOs. Both you and I live in New York State. I grew up pretty close to where you are, actually.

And we have the go-toes in New York, you know, Whitley Streber. We've got the Linda Napolitano, Brooklyn Bridge incident, which a lot of people know about, the Hudson Valley Wave, obviously. But I remember you and I kind of sitting down and racking our brains being like, what else can we deliver to the world of UFOs here in New York State? And it's hard, man. It's hard to find anything that's worth really talking about. And, you know, that's not just some lights in the sky. And lo and behold, I knew you would do it. You brought three unique cases to the table.

I've got a couple as well. So we're going to run through those tonight. But, yeah, how was it digging up New York stories? New York stories are tough. And there are these blog posts that have, like, emerged in the last few years and it always starts with something like such and such state accounts for so many UFO sightings or this state has had so many more UFO sightings this year and things like that and like reported cases and cases that are just like talked about in New York

are very little, very infrequent. A lot of the cases that I'm bringing to the table are all old there from the 50s and the 60s, but they were significant during their time, especially in the 50s when Donald Kehoe was kind of the guy really putting UFOs in the mainstream and like trying to combat UFO secrecy. And like, you can see a lot of, a lot of activists these days. You can see the Donald Kehoe in them, which I can appreciate to a certain extent. But, man, New York just doesn't. there aren't enough cases that are known and people need to know these cases, you know? Yeah, and why do you think that is? I mean, for me, I go to the whole idea of like, yeah, there's a ton of light pollution, at least here in New York City. So you don't hear a lot of cases

out of New York City specifically, unless it's a misidentification at our airports. I mean, you throw up of one of those apps where you can see every flight above you here, dude, and it's insane. It's like raining airplanes left and right. And like you said, a lot of these cases seems to be from decades ago. The two I'm bringing forth are in the 60s and 80s as well. But is it that? Is it the fact that there's not a lot of researchers here on the East Coast even? A lot of the people are always out west or down south or in the Midwest or Philadelphia.

But you don't hear a lot of people coming out in New York. No, you don't. And I think a lot of that is just, I think the area has to do with it. And, like, New York is just one of the most light-polluted states there is. I am fortunate and live in one of the, you know, least light-polluted areas. The Adirondiac Park is one of the best places to, you know, look up at the stars because they're really, you're pretty well isolated. You don't have a lot of big cities around here. and if you do, they're generally less than 100,000 people that live there.

So I figure there should be more UFO sightings coming from the Adirondex, but unfortunately, there aren't, which is unfortunate. But, you know, I definitely just think that the research is not being done. I don't think that the investigations are really happening here, which, you know, I can kind of understand. and to be completely honest, I don't think like some agencies are doing their best to do it. And that's because it's a, they're volunteer agencies, you know, they do what they can with their spare time. But the dedicated investigators, and we've talked about this before, they're not there anymore.

And it's, I think it largely has to do with the fact that those investigators, kind of made a living reporting on these things and submitting these stories to UFO journals and other strange magazines and stuff of the time, but we don't really have

that anymore, so. Yeah, the days of you're right, all these like, diamond nickel UFO magazines that came out with the weirdest stories. We don't have them anymore. I mean,

God, this is awesome. This is something we could bring up. The weekly world news is coming back. Yes. Isn't that awesome? They did a Kickstarter and they, like, they reached their goal in, I think, like, 24 hours. So we're going to get more Bat Boy. We're going to get more, you know, I'm pregnant with Bill Clinton's alien human hybrid baby. I can't wait, man. So I think you're right. I think those days of like the John Keel. going all over the country and in meeting and investigating and writing for pulp magazines or Playboy or what have you. They're kind of over. We live in a whole new digital world where that's just not what's happening. But let's stay on the positive side. Let's highlight these awesome stories that we did find about New York UFOs.

Do you want to go first, whichever one you want to start with, then? The Walesville, New York UFO incident. One of the most infamous cases, New York cases, that was a highlight for Donald Kehoe and in the Blue Book files. It happened on July 1st, 1954, between the hours of 6 and 10 p.m. The call started coming into Rome, New York's Military Depot. And Rome, New York is, it's in central New York. It's not too far from where you grew up. So, and it was alleged that over a thousand calls were made that night to the Utica Press as well.

And people were reporting a strange object. They compared it to like a silvery, like illuminated golf ball. And it was flying over central New York for about four hours. And, you know, aside from the numerous eyewitnesses that saw this on the ground, Back in the day, there was an airline company called Mohawk Airlines. Right, I remember. Yeah, they flew mostly within the state, but there was one pilot that noted at 20,000 feet, he saw just an extremely bright object that was flying not far from his plane.

But what's interesting and what was reported in the Blue Book files is that the officer in charge at Griffiths Air Force Base, which back in the day was one of the most active bases in New York State, they said that in their files it was a balloon, but the officer in charge said that if the object returned the next day, that he would send out a plane to investigate it. So on July 2nd, the next day at about 11 in the morning, the Air Force scrambles an F-94, C Starfire Jet.

It's piloted by Lieutenant William E. Atkins and Lieutenant Henry F. Cowden. And soon after takeoff, and it wasn't exactly clear as to why they were dispatched in the first place, they were sent to intercept a target at about 10,000 feet. And when they arrived at the location, what they claimed is that they saw a Douglas C-47 military transport plane. And then they were sent, allegedly sent back. At least that's what the files initially said. But what the pilot claimed was that they were sent to go look at another target.

And they were claiming that this target was a UFO. They didn't know exactly what it was. But as they went to investigate this second target, their cockpit immediately started to get hot. and there was a sensor that went off claiming that there was a fire in the cabin. So the two men,

Atkins and Cowden, ended up abandoning their plane and it crashed into the town of Walesville and it killed four people in the process. A man named, yeah, a man named Stanley Phillips, his wife, Florence, and their son Gary. They were actually

just sitting in their car. when the plane came down. And there was a woman, Miss Doris Monroe, who was inside her home and was killed at the time. So, yeah, it's, it's, the story gets legs the next day when Atkins starts making claims that, what was being reported was not actually what had happened and he maintains that

they noticed a silvery colored object in the air it's unclear there's like so much muddying in this account because they're saying oh well they went and they investigated the C47 and then they were just sent back while he's saying that

we were spent sent to investigate a UFO. Okay, so you've got that discrepancy there. But when they investigated the plane, they found that the military claim that it was caused by a faulty fire detector circuit. But when they examined the plane, it didn't seem to be malfunctioning at all. There was no evidence of smoke or oil in the cockpit anywhere. And then they started to blame the pilot at that point and saying that he didn't recognize a normal change of temperature in the cockpit, which just it screams bullshit to me because like a fire sensor is not going to go off for just like a sudden change like that. That just seems really dumb.

But the military just kept muddying up the waters here. And they were just saying, oh, well, when the plane turned around, you know, that's when the plane turned around, you know, that's when the. this malfunction just started to happen. There's just so much confusion around this case and the Air Force just kind of just kept changing its mind as to what they wanted to

label it as. But to me you don't scramble a jet fighter to investigate a military transport plane. Right. Like that just doesn't make sense to me, but it just seemed like the military did their best to downplay whatever the heck this was, and then in the process, four people were killed.

It's just a crazy, crazy case, and it was one that, you know, Donald Kehoe cited as like a major cover-up in the Blue Book files and for the Air Force at large. Yeah, and, you know, Kehoe was all about the, you know, the cover-up. And, I mean, again, when four people die from a, you know, a possibly malfunctioning plane from a UFO, that screams, yeah, there's going to be a cover-up. I hope those families were at least, you know, compensated or something for all of this. But can you think of any cases, Rob? I'm trying to think off the top of my head where, like, something like this happened. There was a – we hear about instrumentation, fan. you know, all the time with UFO cases and pilots, but like literally heating up the cockpit

and like trying to bake these guys from within. It's crazy. Yeah, it's not something often reported. There are instances, you know, or UFOs allegedly, you know, cause certain effects like the coin helicopter case, the UFO, at least according to, you know, Coin and the other members of the crew, allegedly, you know, that thing, that UFO moved their plane up like 2,000 feet or something like that. It was kind of crazy. There are those strange instances where it just seems like UFOs mess with the instrumentation in the cockpit of some planes, but nothing like this. Right. The one that's going to bite for me is the Carlos Delos Santos case, where the UFO literally like,

crashed into his plane and then was kind of like, oh shit, we got to help him. So they like helped guide him to safety after that. I love hearing when they, you know, when the aliens or the intelligence beyond the UFO messes up and then has to self-correct and help after that. It's always great to hear things like that. Yeah. And, you know, and sometimes it's a Travis Walton kind of case where stupidly got out of a truck and you got shot with a beam. the light and allegedly those aliens are just trying to fix you and you got confrontational buddy you got a little confrontational that's the redneck coming out that's his fault you know that is

completely his fault he would say the same damn thing yeah wasn't he a boxer too from what i remember he was a scrapper yeah he was definitely a scrapper back in the day Travis walton uh before the UFO experience uh definitely a little more daring than i think he was after it yeah absolutely for sure, man. Well, hey, that's a tragedy with those four people dying. Let me try to lighten things up maybe a little bit over here. I've got an interesting one. The Cherry Creek, New York UFO Landing. This happened back in August of 1965. It was investigated by NYCAP, state police, and the local Air Force base. So this occurred. near the William Butcher Dairy Farm near Cherry Creek, New York, and it involved three members of the butcher family and a fourth witness. And I'm just going to read a little from the report here. So at 8.20 p.m. on August 19th, Harold Butcher, 16, was operating a milking machine in a dairy barn housing 17 cows. There was a portable radio on the wall that was turned to a newscast. And all of a sudden, this status. like interference, drowned everything out, and the tractor, which ran the milking machine abruptly stopped, and a moment later, a holstein bowl secured outside, began to bellow and pull at a steel bar to which it was

chained to. So there's a lot of shit going on for this young butcher boy. And he runs to a window, and he sees a large elliptical object near the ground, a fourth of a mile away. way, and there is a reddish vapor that could be seen underneath this thing. And he heard a steady beep, beep, beep sort of sound. And the UFO, as we'll coin it, was on the ground only for a few seconds, then it shot straight up and it disappeared into the clouds. So when the other witnesses came out after Harold Butcher told them was yelling and screaming, they noticed a strange odor. And also a greenish glow in the clouds where the UFO had vanished. So meantime, it was found that the bowl had bent the steel bar in an effort to get loose. So half an hour later, when the craft

reappeared actually, it starts circling the dairy farm. So Mrs. Butcher, she calls the state police, and two troopers come, they investigate, they notify the local air force. So then the next day after the UFO that was circling like left again, the next day Captain James Dorsey, operations officer, he arrived with technicians, and they examined the ground, and they found an odd purplish liquid substance that was discovered at several places.

Small unexplained marks, two inches wide, two inches apart, were also found, and along with patches of singed grass and foliage. So after the Air Force team left, NYCAP member showed up and they obtained samples of this substance. And they were studied at a local chemical place. And using spectrographic analysis, it showed that the main elements of the liquid to be aluminum, iron, and silicon. Some phosphorus was found in the weed samples, which the analyst said might cause a phosphate smell explaining the odor. Okay.

Okay. So on the night following the Cherry Creek incident, state trooper Richard Ward a few miles from this area, he watched an object with eight circular lights in line flying twice as fast as a jet. It emitted a faint, unfamiliar purring sound. And then John Maxwell of the NICAP New York subcommittee, he carefully checked the Cherry Creek site and questioned the witnesses. And on the basis of present evidence, they believed the same. entire thing to be completely genuine. It wasn't a hoax. They weren't making it up. They didn't misidentify something. And yeah, this is pretty crazy, man. The animal reactions during this whole thing were really interesting. The people on the farm said they'd never seen any of the animals act like this before.

Oh, this too. After the object that circled the dairy farm after it disappeared out of sight, It actually left a sonic boom. So whatever it was, that thing was like, what, mock? Yeah. Three, five, I don't know. Pretty, pretty crazy. And then also physiological effects, the kid who first saw it, Harold, him and his younger sister after this whole event, they had really upset stomachs.

And the cows, now this is the most important about it, the cows were giving less than normal amounts of milk after. milk. Oh, man. I don't know, man. What is going on here? You know, it's making people sick. It's got sonic booms. It's light emanating out of it.

And the cows ain't milking like they used to. So, yeah, that is the Cherry Creek landing of 1965. That's, damn. Who is the ex-political lawyer that we can get in touch to get some compensation for these cows that aren't putting out as much milk as they used to be? That's a problem.

That's a problem right there. I think we got to phone either Stephen Bessett or Danny Sheehan, I think, is one of the lawyers, right? Yeah. Yeah. Get them on the case. Well, I hope the dairy farm is doing okay if it's still around.

God, if they're still. around now, that'd be amazing. Right. But yeah, pretty interesting case, a UFO landing in New York that I'd never heard of before, so. Yeah, that's new to me, man. I had never heard of that one either, and like,

that's, there's, there's, there's just like a lot of, you know, it's a, it's a very fascinating CET2 case. You got some physical evidence, you got some animals just going nuts. Man, that's, that's a good

stuff right there. That's the good stuff. Yeah, that ain't no New York City. That is the farmlands of Central and or upstate New York for sure. I mean, where are the aliens going to land in New York City? Like, the best that they could do is North Bergen, New Jersey in 1975. George O'Barski saw that thing. He wasn't thrilled, you know? Oh, my God. Yelp. Oh, yeah, man. I remember, I think you brought that up in a UFO happy hour. That's a great case. I highly suggest people go check that one out as well. Oh, Barski, what a name. I love it.

I love it. Was that the one on the playground? It was in this, like, a large park. Okay. It's named after a boxer. I can't remember his name. But, yeah, it was like in this kind of, like, tree-shaded section. But, like, what became so fascinating about it is, like,

not only did George O'Barski see these 10 aliens get out of this UFO and start collecting soil samples, there were eyewitnesses that were able to corroborate it from the apartment building across the street called the Stonehenge. And it's kind of one of my bucket list items to stay for a night in that apartment building because it looks really nice. It's got really great views. and, you know, why wouldn't you want to stay in an apartment building that had a notorious UFO incident happen across the street? I mean... Exactly. I guess, hey, it's never too late to move, man.

The prices here in New York are insane, so maybe I'll have to make it over there myself. But I guess let's move on to this next one you got for us. This is a UFO pursuit case, right? The Raymond Brian UFO pursuit. Two years after my first one on April 8th, 1956, at 10.15 p.m., American Airlines flight 775 departed Albany heading for Buffalo. When the plane reached Schenectady, Captain Raymond E. Ryan and first officer William Neff spotted this white light. It was a couple of miles away from their position, but they decided to change course to avoid, you know, an in-air collision.

And when they did, this light immediately turned 90 degrees and headed straight for their airliner at speeds that they guessed was about 900 miles an hour. It was, it was booking it. Ryan radioed into Griffiths Air Force Base to report this object, which they confirmed to be tracking on radar at the time. And in response, they scrambled two jets. but what's interesting here is that Griffith Air Force Base said change course pursue this thing and Ryan was uh Ryan was there for it so he immediately changed course and he kept up with it

as best as he could uh he pursued it up until Lake Ontario um at which point he actually turned back around and headed for Syracuse um but when he ultimately landed in Buffalo, Ryan and Neff reported their story to the Buffalo Evening News, who ran it in the papers on April 10th. So Donald Kehoe pursued this story, and when he got his hands on the official Civil Aviation Authority report, it told a much different story.

It stated that Ryan did see a mysterious light, but that he hadn't actually changed course and pursued the object. Ryan himself recanted his story not long after, but on April 16th, 1956, he appeared on a Toronto talk show called Meet the Millers, in which he attested to Griffith's orders to pursue, saying, quote, Griffith asked us our next point of landing and to identify the aircraft. I told them Syracuse and identified the flight number. They told us, abandoned that next landing temporarily. Maintain your course in altitude. We're sending. two jets to intercept the object. Despite this admission, flight logs appeared to contradict Ryan's words, and Kehoe cited this case as a major Air Force cover-up. Wow.

Yeah. Yeah. But I think, you know, Ryan probably backed down because, you know, the civil aviation authority is going to rule on this and say, oh, you're crazy. You can't You can't fly anymore and stuff like that. But this is another one of those big cases for NICAP back in the day in which to try and stimulate the congressman to hold an official hearing about this. This was one of the cases that they presented and claimed that it was a giant cover-up.

And, you know, very well could have been. I don't doubt him. It's just, there's always in these cases from Blue Book history, when something really strange happens, it's always muddied up in the files. Like, the cover-up is not denial. It's, let's just confuse the hell out of you. Right. That's the easiest way to do it. Exactly.

Yeah. It seems to be a way to muddy the waters and get everyone on different pages. And then, yeah, I mean, you look at something like, uh, Let's take this story that came out maybe a month ago where John Greenwald over at the Black Fault, you know, there was all these headlines that the CIA had dumped all their files on UFOs finally to the public. When in reality, no, these had all been accessible for a really long time. But what they did is the way that John originally got him, they sent the dude to CD-ROM and they made it as hard as possible to, to either read these files or, you know, just there was no way to really search through them,

like in any logical way. So they would make it as hard as possible for people like John or UFO researchers to make sense of any of these things. So let's give John, you know, maybe a little UFO case here. And then let's give them this thing. We found a memo about missing Coke bottles within one of the departments at the CIA. And if those Coke bottles aren't returned, we're going to get rid of the Coke vending machine. So, like, it's crazy, man. They just, they gave him all of this stuff in hopes that he would kind of just give up on it. But what does he do? He literally scans every single file he got,

puts it into a searchable PDF format of some kind. And now you can say, like, I want to go to this year of the CIA files. Here's everything. I want to look for cylindrical objects. Here's everything. So yeah, man, I think you're right. I think they will do anything they can to make the stories conflict, for sure. And it seems in this case, with a lot of these New York cases, it all ties back to Griffith's Air Force Base, right? It's pretty crazy. Yeah, which now is like it's a public airfield. It was shut down back in the mid-90s or whatever.

But yeah, it's, Griffiths seemed to be like the central high. hub that was tracking, you know, all air traffic within New York at the time. And it was kind of in, like, the central location to do it because, like, Rome, New York is basically, you know, smack dab right in the middle of New York, which is, you know, as states go, it's very strangely shaped. But it's, you know, it's, they probably did a fair amount of tracking of UFOs back in the day and downplaying reports because, uh, they're, they're, are a number of cases from New York in the Blue Book files that were marked as unidentified.

So, you know, there's probably more gyms in there if you can track down all the information. Yeah, and if I'm not mistaken, I think, you know, a lot of people know about Gary McKinnon, the guy who hacked for UFO info. But the predecessor before him, another guy, I think in Wales, Matthew Bevan, When he was hacking into stuff trying to find UFO info, like a decade before McKinnon, I think Griffith Air Force Base is one of the places that he hacked into and found stuff. So something's going on, man. Something is definitely going on.

Yep. Yeah, for sure. Cool. Well, that was a good one, man. I'm glad you were able to dig that one up. Here's my next one. And this is actually comes out of the book Night Siege by Philip and Brogno, Bob Pratt, and of course, famed J. Ellen Heineck, about the famous, like we mentioned, Hudson Valley UFO wave. But this happened kind of right before or maybe in the middle of it.

The Indian Point Nuclear Reactor Incident. So there's this place called Indian Point. reactor. It's a nuclear site in New York. And this brings us back to 1984 on July 24th, Indian Point Energy, and it's a three-unit nuclear power plant station. There we go. Located in Buchanan, New York, right off the Hudson River. And so on this night, a security guard, he gets on the radio, and he alerts the other personnel that he had cited something that looked at. like in, quote, ice cream cone over reactor three at the site, which, mind you, was the only active reactor at the time. So, of course, this is where a UFO is going to be cited over the

one active reactor. So, of course, they're freaking out. And he starts getting all the other security on the line and saying, is anyone seeing this? Anyone saying this? And another guy says that he did see it, but it looked boomerang shaped to him. And this thing, it's just chilling, like a 300 feet above this reactor. And they said it was massive, dude, like three football fields in length. And it was extremely bright, very blinding. And so eventually the thing disappears out of sight. And the reactor, it didn't seem to be adversely affected by whatever this thing was or anything.

but clearly there was a breach of security. So the main investigator on this, controversial UFO researcher, Philip and Brogno, who would go on to investigate Hudson Valley and everything. He discovered that the reactor services, local and state facilities, including New York City subway systems, trains, and several military installations around Duchess County, New York. So the main company overseeing all of this is the New York Power Authority. And supposedly, they dissuaded, as Imbrano puts it, dissuaded him to not publicize this incident. So he kind of kept quiet about it.

But then more witnesses started coming forward from Indian Point and surrounding areas and talking to him. And one of the security guys, he told Embrogno, quote, As the object approached the east gate of the reactor complex, the sensors that detect movement shut down, and the entire alarm system failed. At this time, I radioed for assistance and several other officers, left their posts and joined me at the east end of the plant to watch the object approach. Inside the security console,

the computer that controls all security and communications, shut down. The cameras were still however functioning, and we know for sure that the object was videotaped. But then he went on to tell and Bribneau that the next day, the commander called in all the guards involved and informed them that, quote, nothing happened. They were all ordered to forget the entire incident, and all radio communications that night were taped, but according to the plant supervisor, the tapes, no longer. longer exist, which I find very hard to believe. So, yeah, man, this is pretty crazy.

We got a UFO and nuke case in New York State. This is why currently Indian Point Energy Center has a 3.4 rating on Google right now. It's because of a crap like this. This could be a five-star facility, but no, you got to cover up your dang UFO sightings right over the damn thing. and this is what you get. Fun fact here, they are open 24 hours. I would certainly hope so. Oh, that's good.

Okay. I would hope so, especially if they're powering the New York City subway system. Yeah, absolutely. You got to, they got to be going. Guys, you got to be pulling those all-nighters. That's just the way that it has to be. But it's always interesting when you hear cases of, UFOs just hanging out over nuclear sites, over military sites.

There was one interesting case that I stumbled upon about a month ago from Italy back in July of 77. Over this NATO base in northern Italy, there was this really large flying saucer that just hovered over this igloo that was storing jet fighters. and it was there for like maybe an hour. It was corroborated by other eyewitnesses off the base. And it's stories like that that are just always fascinating. It's just like, hey, we're going to hang out here, you know. We're at O'Hare Airport. We're just going to hang up above the terminal here for a little bit.

And then, you know, we'll punch, you know, holes through the clouds, whatever. Yeah, man. Again, it's this trickster element to all of this. Like, yeah, why we, while we can be. like, yeah, Red Alert, UFOs, nukes, and everything, I still think they're messing with us. You know, like, if they really wanted to cause destruction or really send a message, they would render these things useless forever, or they would just blow them all up, you know? So why?

Why are they just hovering over it? Is it just to scare the shit out of us or make us think, wow, something could have happened. Maybe we should rethink this. I don't know. I don't know. What I want to know now is are aliens in on the online review game? And are they the ones that drove down their rating for the Indian Point Energy Center? Like, I want to know.

Are they given one-star reviews right now? Because if they are, we've got an even bigger problem here that we need to tackle. And I don't know how we're going to do it. How do we tune in to like alien podcasts and give them? one stars. I don't know. I don't know. But if they're going to be out here, giving us one stars for our energy centers, we got to deal with that. Intergalactic bots. That's what we need, man. That is definitely what we need. Your joke is so much better than mine. I was going to say, well, it was ice cream cone shape. So maybe they were trying to cool off the reactor. Listen, man, you got to cool those

things down. It's right by the water, but you know what? Sometimes, especially, you know, those days get, they get the hot down there. Like, it was July. Yeah, it was, it was July. We're talking, you know, southern New York here. So, uh, those guys don't know what it's like to be negative 20 with a wind chill that puts it to negative 40 like we do up here. You know, you have those days. but sometimes that energy just needs a nice cool treat, and I can understand that. I think what's interesting about the ice cream cone shape of it is that there is a history of objects that look like ice cream.

Yes, absolutely. Thomas Mantell claimed to see something that looked vaguely ice cream shaped, you know, which you can say that's a balloon, but it didn't really, it moved too fast. be a balloon. The guys in the Portage County UFO chase, Dale Spar, who like pursued that UFO 60 miles over into Pennsylvania. He claimed that the UFO was ice cream cone shape. And like that's one of the strangest shapes that keeps popping up from time of times. Like ice cream cone, just hanging out. Oh, man. Well, first of all, I knew again, this is why you're here, Rob. I know you can just rattle off

names and dates of cases, that I'm just like, why do I even bother having a podcast? Why do I do this? It's a blessing and it's a curse. Right. I know. It really is. I'm just, I'm thinking to you now, July 24th, that was like eight days before my birthday, my literal birthday. God, I could have had a UFO nuke's case on my birthday if they had waited. Like, one more week. Damn you, ice cream cone, alien. So well. Well, let's, let's move to our last case to bookend our New York cases. Rita Malley's UFO encounter. Tell us about Rita Malley, if you would.

Oh, man, this is definitely one of the strangest New York cases that I think we have here. This one comes from the pages of John Keel's Operation Trojan Horse, and it fits into the flap of sightings that was occurring between 65 and 67 in the States. And on the evening of Tuesday, December 12, 1967, Miss Rita Mollie was driving home. She lived in Ithaca at the time. And out of the back window of the car, her son that was riding with her spotted a red light that seemed to be tailing the vehicle. So Rita was speeding at the time. So she assumed she was about to be pulled over by the cops.

But when she looked out the window, she realized that she realized that she was. was being paced not by a police cruiser, but by a UFO. It was shaped like a disc about the size of a box car with a dome top and square red and green windows, she told John Keel. She also described hearing a humming sound, the same kind made by like a television, an old tube set television. She came back to her five-year-old son Dana to like brace himself. Like she was thinking like this thing is going to make an impact with us. Just brace yourself. But when she did, she noticed that he was in some kind of trance.

And it was at this point that the car was taken over by the UFO. It was pulled over to over the shoulder and into an alfalfa field where it came to a stop. Quote, a white twirling beam of light flashed down from the object. I heard the humming sound. Then I began to hear verily. voices. They didn't sound like male or female voices, but were weird. The words were broken and jerky, like the way a translator sounds when he is repeating a speech at the United Nations. But it was like a weird chorus of several voices. I became hysterical. My son would not respond

to my cries. I knew the radio wasn't on. The voices named someone I knew and said that at that moment my friend was involved in a terrible accident miles away. They said my son would not remember any of this. Then the car began to move again. Although still not under my control, we came up out of that field and over the ditch as if it were nothing. And then back onto the road. Rita then raced home. She was just incredibly panicked.

And, you know, rightfully so, I can completely understand. When she flew through her front door, the next day she did, in fact, learned that her friend had been in a terrible car accident. Whoa. Yeah. Okay. This is definitely one of the weirdest. God, I don't even know what to make of this.

Yeah, it's got a little bit of everything. It does. UFOs taking over cars. We've had cases like that. What the hell, man. Your UFO is literally, is literally taken over a car. You have singled out this woman

and you brought her into an alfalfa field. Are you kidding me right now? Alfalfa? You couldn't bring it. You couldn't like tie it into like a cornfield or something. Cornfield. Lavender maybe.

Yeah. You know like me we got some sunflowers out there. Let's do something a little more classy than alfalfa. Come on. That's like the shit you dig off of your salad and don't eat, right? Yeah. Pretty much like, it's not something that you want. Like, it's named for one of the little rascals here, you know?

Good, good reference. I knew we could work little rascals into this somehow. Little rascals doesn't get worked in enough to UFO lore and literature. We need more of it. Yep. If not, you're not doing your job. Wow, man. That one's crazy.

Oh, I'm, there's, I don't know. Are there any others you can really think of? These were the two main ones I came across. There is, I should say, speaking of John Keel, some murmurs of Mount Misery, which I believe is in Long Island, of men in black and stuff like that. But I didn't really come up with anything specific in terms of that. Do you know anything about Keel's work up in Long Island? Mount Misery is kind of, it's one of those notorious places that, People claim to have all kinds of different strange interactions with, you know,

spirit phenomenon. You have UFO sightings. There's just like a lot of weird things reported at Mount Misery. But, yeah, it's, there aren't a lot of specifics that come about it. But it's just kind of one of those places in New York that has this very eerie reputation for strange things that happen in and around it. Yeah. It's just one of, exactly. It's one of those places. Man, Rob, these are great, man. I knew if we really dug and I knew if I, if I came to you that we would find something to make our home state truly proud of. You know, that's what we're doing here.

We're, we need to put New York out there. Listen, we're here. We're here right now. There isn't a lot of good things happening in New York right now. Uh, we'll be a lot of. all right. I think we'll be all right with this one. But, you know, we, we've got the Rona pretty bad up here. But you know what? If we can make it weirder, that's, it's our job. We got to make it weirder. We got to tell the weird stories that everybody needs to know so that there's a little, you know, there's a little faith in New York and stuff. And, like, New York had its brush with its mystery air flap in 1909 down in the Pine Bush area, which is where a lot of sightings during the Hudson Valley flap took place. And I think what with Hudson Valley, what that flap doesn't get the reputation for that it truly deserves is witnesses having psychic encounters with UFOs in which they would often see these. UFOs have a thought and the UFO would react.

Like, there was one story in which a woman saw this UFO. I think it was, she was on the highway. She pulled off and I believe it was over a body of water or something like that. And it was moving away from her. And she thought that she was looking up at it. She just, it was like very beautiful to look at. And most of what the UFOs looked like in New York, during this flap they were very boomerang shaped

and she put out there like no don't don't go away so the UFO responded and it started to come back and it actually came toward her and then she chickened out she chicked out said no no you're getting too close and then it's like fine you hurt my feelings and the UFO went away and um what a tease yeah no I know like listen you got sometimes you got to be brave sometimes you got to put on that brave face.

If you're going to say, please don't go away. Don't hurt the UFO's feeling to say, no, you're getting too close. Yep. Don't know. What's the old saying?

Don't mess with the bull. Oh, yeah, you get the horns, man. You get those horns. You don't want it. Get those galactic horns. Yeah, you'll get those galactic horns. But, like,

there are a couple of accounts of that happening in the Hudson Valley flap. And it's just, it's so great to read those. And what brought that flat legitimacy to begin with is that the first person that reported anything was a police officer. Awesome. That's what we want, man.

Yep, exactly. That just brings more credibility all the time, whether it's military, law enforcement. It just always gives it something extra there. Wow, man. Oh, well, you know, in that whole parapsychological phenomenon in the terms of these, you know, whether it's thinking or trying to communicate, with the phenomenon and it reacting. That's so fascinating to me. And we hear that a lot in the lore with all of this.

But there's one lesson that you taught me, and I think we kind of have to bring back when it comes to all that. And it's, I think you know where I'm going with this. What don't you do with UFOs, Rob? You don't flash SOS at a UFO because you know what's going to happen. It's going to come abduct you. It's going to come back. It's going to come down.

It's going to abduct you. You want to know what? It happened to Terry Lovelace. And Terry seems like a really nice guy. It's happened to him and his buddy. Happened to the Alagash guys. Oh, hey, let's take our flashlight and flash it out of UFO. What are we going to do?

Oh, let's, you know, flash an SOS. No, they're going to pick you up. You want to know why? Because you said you need it out. Trying to be genuine here. These aliens are trying to be genuine, trying to help people out. But no, you've got to go and you've got to flash an SOS. So they picked you up.

And you know what? They did some stuff with you. Well, I don't know why, because you pissed them off. You didn't need to be picked up. You were fine in that damn canoe with the four of you in it. You weren't catching fish. You didn't complete your task. But, hey, let's just flash this UFO.

Don't do it, folks. Do not flash an SOS at a UFO. That is the one lesson I want to teach everybody here. Don't do it. And this has been learning with Rob. on PBS. Thank you for joining us tonight, everyone. Next up is, uh, what, uh, fresh air. Coming up next. Oh, wow, man. I, hey, we didn't just learn about New York UFOs. We learned what not to do with these UFOs. And I know there's going to be so much more to learn with the future

of our strange skies, man. So tell us what's next for our strange skies. And, uh, this is not the only podcast that you've hosted. You've got one on music. You've got one on, um, am I correct? D&D. Oh, yeah, man. Yeah. Tell us a little about everything you're up to. It's, it's weird. You know, you, uh, you say, no, I'm done with this UFO stuff. And then you start two more podcasts. Like, what the hell are you doing here? You're completely batch hit. But, uh, yeah, um, with, with our strange skies, we've got new episodes in the works. There's going to be some coming out real soon and some really great topics that we're going to be covering, you know, some of productions we're going to be looking at, you know, UFOs as they progressed before we got to

1947, a lot of really interesting topics that I think will be enjoyable. But I do have a music podcast that I do with my buddy Brian Hastie. It's called the Coda music podcast. We start recording new episodes actually really soon. So there's about 20 of them there right now. If you want to go give those a list, you can. And I am involved in the role-playing game community. So I do a podcast called The Order of Podcasters in which some friends of mine get together and we play this game called The Esoterrorist, which is kind of like X-Files for people who have day jobs.

So I play a character named Myron Dripchen, and he is a coast-to-coast like George Nori character. And it was fun, it's fun to play him because he's over the top. I definitely stole some of Nori's best moments from coast to coast, like the infamous pizza roll incident. What is that? You don't, oh, man, there was an episode of Coast to Coast, and he opened up this episode. by claiming that he had he had he had given himself third degree burns by eating pizza rolls. Oh no. Had to go to the hospital and everything.

Wow. It was so bad. But, you know, George Nore has beats that are just completely amazing. Did he, correct me if I'm wrong, didn't he fall asleep on air once? And, like, the guest was talking. And all you could hear was norie snoring. Yeah. Yep.

Noring snoring. Noree snoring. Yeah. Tune in to the new segment of my podcast, Nory snoring. And anytime there's a boring moment now on my future episodes, I'm going to play a soundbite of him snoring. Tell your guest to, you know. Let's make this a bit more interesting. Come on.

Yeah, you need yourself a soundboard, definitely. We have a bunch of episodes up now, I think, like, over 10. We've done three different adventures, but it's fun. We shoot monsters with guns, and we have fun doing it, and we kind of poke fun at the podcasting community a little bit, which is always good. As you should. Yes, and the fourth podcast I'm involved in is a Dungeons and Dragons podcast, called Rolling Through the Realms.

And we, me and my friends, we get together. We play some D&D. It's funny. At times it's heartwarming. You know, you get a little bit of everything. So, yeah, if you're looking, if you're so in love with my voice,

which I really hope you're not. Please don't be in love with my voice. But if you are, there's plenty of content out there for you now. I'm not in love with your voice. I'm in love with the idea of your voice. Okay. Yeah, okay. Okay, I got you. Okay, so now I'm going to get messages of people saying that, Ryan. Thank you. You're very welcome, man. Hey, if there's anything you're known for, it's catchphrases, don't lick UFOs.

Don't do it. And everything in between. Brother, this was awesome. Where can we find everything you're up to? If you want to stay in touch on Twitter is probably the best place to find me these days at your UFO guy, spelled Y-E-R-U-F-O guy. I usually post. updates there. Pretty much every single one of my podcast projects with the exception of our strange guys has a social media presence,

so you can find us out there, but yeah, the best musings that I often have is they come on Twitter, and I'd like to read one for all of you right now. I had this thought earlier today.

And it goes something like this. Imagine being a gray and realizing that you have no chance of having a dump truck. That is depressing as fuck. There you go. There you go. Those are the kind of thoughts you can get from me. Oh my gosh. It's like, what is it, deep thoughts with Jack Handy.

You're killing it, man. You're just dropping bombs everywhere you step. I love it. I absolutely love it. Hey, dude, this has been, it's been so good to, just lay back and laugh about things, you know, especially in the world today with everything going on. This was exactly what I needed. I know it's what a lot of our listeners probably needed as well. So first of all, it is so good to have you back with our strange skies. And of course,

I have to thank you for coming on today, brother. I appreciate you having me on. Any time that we can laugh. Any time that we can make other people laugh, it's good in the UFO community because I've said this many times before, y'all, sometimes you take yourself a little too seriously. You need to learn to laugh a little bit. And I'm glad that I can bring forth the laughs. Do not let aliens leave one-star reviews for your podcasts or your businesses. Please, this is an epidemic. Somewhere in the Skies is produced by Third Kind Productions in Association. with the Entertainment One podcast network. Greetings everyone, Ryan Sprague,

our host of Summer in the Skies. For over seven years and more than 400 episodes, the Summer in the Sky's podcast has always been free to listen to, but it's not free to create. So we offer several ways to help support our efforts and get rewards in return. If you listen to the podcast on Apple, you can click the subscribe button

at the top of your Summer in the Sky's feed to become a premium Apple subscriber. Or you can join our Patreon campaign with several tiers available. Both of these options give you the same benefits and rewards, add free episodes, early access to the main show, and bonus episodes and content. Help keep the lights on at the Summer in the Skies HQ and help us continue to grow by becoming a Patreon subscriber at patreon.com slash somewhere skies. Or by clicking the subscribe button at the top. of your Apple feed. Thank you for your continued support. And keep looking up. This is Somewhere in the Skies with Ryan Sprague. Welcome to Somewhere in the Skies. As always, I am your host,

Ryan Sprague, and welcome to another volume of UFO Happy Hour. So you know what that means. He is back, the host of the Our Strange Skies podcast. I'm not even sure which volume this is anymore, because they are all a blur. They are all the most fun we have here on Summerless skies. So I am so honored to once again bring him back to the show. Rob Christofferson, welcome back, brother. Thanks, man. Appreciate you having me back on. Having me back on the best UFO podcast, it was announced yesterday, people, this is the best UFO podcast.

It won the podcast award. You got the bona fides now. Well, that's extremely kind of you, man. I mean, I was amongst some heavy competition. You should have been in there, in my personal opinion, and you should have won. But that's, you know, it is what it is. If I had had a better year, if I had a better output, maybe. But I'm kind of one of those turning into the kind of person that's just like,

what I feel like this episode has what it needs. and I'm confident that it's the best that I can put forward in that episode. I'll put it out. Absolutely. Unless it's just a discussion with people, you know, discussion with, you know, friends, or if it's a two-hour presentation for a paranormal conference. Exactly. No, and that's why I've always respected what you do.

You drop it when you want. You put the research in. You're under, you know, no pressure to just get things out, get things out for the same. of it. And that's amazing. So when you do come out with something, it's like a big event. It's like the new, you know, phase four of a Marvel movie coming out. Everyone's like, oh my God. It just drops. So no, man. I highly respect that. And I highly respect all the shows that were nominated for those awards. So thank you to Paranormality Magazine. Our good friends, that UFO podcast were right there next to us. So that's why I love this community, man. Podcasting community is the most supportive I've

ever come across way more than the UFO community. Oh, yeah. Which is something we'll talk about tonight. For sure. But yeah, if you are watching on YouTube, you do see the continent of Africa in the background there. So that's what we're going to be discussing tonight, man. Our last happy hour was all about UFOs in New York.

But we're going to travel. We're going to Africa where a lot of cases are not talked about here in America about what goes out in Africa. You know, we have very few research. who have put in the time and effort to do that. And I know you highlight a lot of the research done by one of those individuals in a talk you gave recently at a conference. So would you mind before we dive deep into UFOs in Africa?

Tell us a little about the conference you just took part in if you don't mind and a little about maybe what we'll be talking about tonight. Yeah. So a couple of weeks ago, I gave a two-hour presentation at Pan ParanormalCon. And it was a conference that was meant to be very inclusive to talk about issues that are often left out of the paranormal community because nobody wants to talk about them. People want to talk about the cases and stuff like that. And like I get that totally. But they were issues that needed to be highlighted.

So for this conference, I was asked to actually give a presentation. the first time I've ever given a presentation on anything. And I had already started working on, like, the research for these cases from Africa. Because I wanted to do an episode, and I wanted to highlight a lot of cases. So the main researcher that did a lot of the work on the cases from Africa, and it just put the time in for over 20 years, was Cynthia Hein. And she wrote literally two books about it. She had a magazine dedicated to the subject called UFO Afro News.

She ran it for about a decade and a half. The sad part was from what I was able to glean just from the research I was able to do, is like UFO research kind of lived and died with her. There was definitely a bunch of researchers in a bunch of different countries that were, you know, feeding her cases and having them published and stuff like that. But when she died in 2000, like, it just kind of, you know, died with her. And that's not to say that there aren't investigators today in Africa. But the problem is, is that if you go to your browser right now, you go to Google and you type in UFOs, Africa,

what you're going to get is a BBC article about the aerial school landing. Don't get me wrong, that is one of the most important cases of the last 30 years. Hands down. It's incredibly important. And it's kind of a great representation of what Africa brings to the table in terms of UFO cases, because you get a lot of different cultural perspectives that you don't necessarily get in the United States. Because, you know, I'm just going to say it, the United States is very white. So the demographic of cases that you're getting are primarily from white people.

And that's not to say that black people do not experience UFOs in the States, but primarily your reporting comes from white people. That's just something we have to admit. That's just something that it is what it is. But when you go and you look in Africa, that same trends still exist. And primarily, and Cynthia Heinz, she was a white one. So we can we could totally, you know, that's totally fine. Fault her for that.

Yeah. Yeah. It's like, no, she was from South Africa. She was, she's right through and through. So, but one of the things that she highlighted is that there are different reasons why some things get reported as UFOs and some things don't. So the main thing is the cultural context. So in a lot of UFO cases, particularly involving folks of people of color, black African ancestry, they often relate them to spiritual ancestors or ghosts. And that's not to say that, you know, some phenomenon in the United States aren't related to that.

Ghost lights are very often, you know, considered to be of a spiritual nature. So oftentimes these are very similar things, but more often than not, they are viewed as ancestral spirits. But what you find more and more is that the cases that Cynthia Hein investigated, the cases that were reported to her, 99.99% were reported by white people. and if they were involving folks of black African ancestry, they were reported to her by a white person anyway. So that's something that is endlessly fascinating to me, something that I don't think that we just have enough to add at this point to really get to the bottom of.

But it's important to note these things when talking about UFOs from other countries because as much as I don't like or have issues with Mick West, there was that one map that he, retweeted on Twitter a couple months ago, and it's that thermal image of UFO cases from around the world. And you see that, you know, in the United States, that thing is bright as hell. And one of the comments that he made was that this is clearly a cultural thing. And while that's not totally the case, because we have UFOs all over the place, that map also doesn't take into consideration that these are reported cases. So you're going to get less reports from other countries

that don't have the investigators. So given that, to an extent, yes, it is a cultural phenomenon through and through, definitely. And you can see this while looking at other countries. So if you look at Puerto Rico, for instance, a lot of the UFO cases that come from Puerto Rico, they almost seem to be indigenous inhabitants of the island in a certain respect, especially from a lot of the cases that you can. get her from rural areas in the L. Yonukee rainforest. When you look at cases from Brazil, they are often hostile.

Like that is one aspect of these cases is that they are often hostile towards the people that live there. And in the United States, especially right now, given the conversation of UFOs and the UFO community, it's a military bent. You have a very military image of the phenomenon, despite the fact that you have a very long and historyed, you know, case file of just crazy cases all over the place. It has a very predominant image of being a military phenomenon right now. So culture definitely plays a part in it.

So in Africa, I was kind of able to break it down into four different types of cases. And a lot of these are going to be similar to what you see in the United States and such. But the first one that I want to note is very important, which is the idea of these globes or orbs of light. These are very important. And often these cases are reported by people of black African ancestry, people of color. They are often the ones that interact with these things. And the most ways to come from Africa on this is note as the Law Rochelle incident. And this really gets into the cultural aspects of this phenomenon.

So on the border of Zimbabwe in the Mbiza Valley is this very beautiful estate called La Rochelle. It was built by Stephen and Virginia Cortald, who were these wealthy folks that treated the country right. It was known as Rhodesia at the time, but it would later go on to become Zimbabwe. I think might have even happened before they left. But they built this property that has like this beautiful watch tower. There's like a tea room. There is a building that is called the fantasy building. And this is where Virginia Cortal would like house her orchids and like have friends over and stuff like that.

And it's like, okay, that's an interesting name for the building. So it's a little like Michael Jackson's house, if you ask me. Yeah, definitely out there. and like architectural choices totally just out there. Just a combination of mishmash of different things. I love it. Yeah, you can search this place online. You could actually book events there if you want to.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it looks really cool. Yeah, to be serious, it reminds me a lot of like the Great Gatsby. You know, like just this huge house. Every room is themed. And yeah, I'm sorry to interrupt, man. But yeah, I did look into the house. And it's crazy. So no wonder something weird happened there.

So yeah. go on. Yeah. So in 72, the Cortalds left Zimbabwe and they kind of just gave the property to the country. And then they just decided to, it's been, it's served a lot of different purposes over the years. It's served as an educational center. It's served as, you know, a place that you can book weddings. You can book conferences and things like that. But it was, overseen by the Forestry Service at the time. And in 1981, August of 1981, when this event happened, there was about 20 staff that worked there.

So August 15th, 1981, it was about 5.30 at night. And there was a woman named Eunice Kochti. She taught, I believe, like basket making and things like that that you could learn out there. And a lot of the folks lived there. So she looked out her window and she could see this globe of light at the top of Akosia tree. And she saw these three figures right at the base of it just looking up at it. And like she couldn't make out a lot of details. But the one detail that was interesting was that they were all wearing jeans,

but they were all just like standing next to each other. And then the next moment, this globe of light just like, climbs down the tree, starts rolling around the property, which the one thing that they described this globe of light as is a ball of fire. But it didn't leave any scorch marks. It didn't burn the grass or the ground. But it rolled from the tree, ran to the tea room, and then it ran back to the tree. And it kept going back and forth for a while until it just kind of kept going on the property, just rolling around and you just didn't really know what to make of it. But interestingly enough, like about 15 minutes later, there was another witness named Nason Sienbandi.

And he pokes his head out the door because he starts to hear this ruckus. He doesn't know what's going on. So he sees this globe of light immediately goes back at his house. He's like, no, that's a ghost. I'm not dealing with that. Pieces out. Nice. But this, this.

this ball makes its way to this watch tower. And then it starts to climb up the watchtower. And it enters it through this window at the top. And the witnesses that were all starting to mount at this time, notice that it looked like the room was on fire, is what they would say. And eventually this ball would start rolling down. Now, as it did, there was, the main witness in this case is a gentleman named Clifford Machina. who was the head gardener at the time. And he sees this ball rolling out this tower, and he decides to follow it. He's going to go hit the emergency bell because he thinks it's just a fire,

a very strange fire. But as he rounds this corner, as it's headed for the fantasy building, he notices three figures. They're just standing there with his back to him. And he believes that it's his boss, a guy named Andrew Connolly. So he yells out, calls one of these figures, Mr. Connolly.

They all three turn around. That's when he notices, like, they're wearing these, like, very shiny overalls, but their heads were just, like, emitting pure light. And he got terrified. He fell to his knees. He fell forward so he could just, like, block the light from his face. He didn't know exactly what he was seeing. But he just covered up for a number of minutes until he brought his head back up and he noticed that everything was gone.

So eventually, Andrew Connolly learns of this incident and gets in contact with Cynthia Hein. Cynthia Hein comes out not long after this event took place. And she starts interviewing the witnesses. And she talks to Clifford Buchena. And she asked him, well, what do you think this was? And he's like, I think it was the ghost of my ancestors. And he was a member of the Moshona tribe, which many of the employees there were members of that tribe. And there was a spirit in particular that they called a rave.

And essentially a rave is like a spirit that is not at rest because its ancestors have not. put it to rest for one reason or another. They have some purpose to fill. But she asked him, yeah, I think it's a ghost. And she just kind of pressed it. It was like, well, that's not what your spirits, your ancestrals would look like, you know. And she, he had the best response. He responds back, well, you know, times change. Times change. Times change. ancestral ghosts change. We all grow. Yeah, exactly.

And the thing is, you know, going through additional cases of Cynthia Hines, you find these cases where these witnesses see these craft, like something that should clearly be technology. They see people get out of this craft and they still think it's a spirit. That's endlessly fascinating that their, beliefs, their tribal beliefs, are, you know, still, you know, widely intact and it's viewed through that lens, as opposed to a technological lens or an interdimensional lens. And that's what makes these cases fascinating from Africa is that there are multiple different cultures at one point looking at this phenomenon and coming to different conclusions. So that's important

in terms of a lot of the time, why you don't hear a lot of cases coming from Africa? Because a lot of the inhabitants of Africa do not associate them with aliens or advanced technology or anything like that. Or I would assume, Rob, like, they don't report it because it's kind of a given that like your ancestors would eventually visit you in some way, shape or form. I mean, that's a presumption on my part. But I would imagine that's why, you know, and who to, report it to. You know, again, if you have a supernatural experience that's part of your culture or religion, like, you just embrace it and move on. You're not seeking out a UFO researcher because maybe by chance you had heard that these things happened elsewhere in the world. I mean,

and I know that's what we're going to talk about as well is like the conditioning, that kind of pop culture and other countries have when other countries or cultures report. these things as well. But wow, that's fascinating. Sorry to interrupt. No, no, it's all good, man. There's another case kind of like this with a guy named Maganga, and he was actually just traveling home.

He was taking this path, and he saw this ball of light. It just appeared right in the middle of the path, right in front of him. He was terrified. He thought it was ghosts, too. He turns around. starts to run backwards. It appears in front of them again. He keeps turning around until eventually this ball of light goes out and he feels these like hands around his neck, falls to his knees. And when the hands, the sensation kind of finally falls away, he ends up running home. He ultimately

ends up suffering from health effects. He wasn't able to walk around. He didn't have a lot of energy. They eventually called in a medicine man, and the medicine man gave him a durable remedy that made him throw up this nasty green bile, and he was fine after that. But again, that speaks to that cultural context within this phenomenon, is that what one person's unidentified flying weird looking light is is something else to someone else and into different cultures in this country or in this continent. I'm sorry. I love that. It's Jacques Valet all the way, man. I mean, come on. It's, yeah, one man's demon is another's fairy, is another's alien. That's

what I love about this topic. And I know you and I have discussed that in the past, this amorphous nature to it all that you can put every lens on it, you know? In America right now, it's military. Elsewhere, it's ancestral ghosts. Yeah, exactly. You know, it's interdimensional beings. I don't know, but yeah, those are fascinating. Now, those are part of the first category, right? Yep. Okay. And the second category is the CE1. There are CE1 cases, very much in line with the classic saucers and things like that. And one of the most interesting cases from this tier occurred to a guy named Joe Seeley, who was, he had some money.

And on this particular day, this was in late November, early December, 1980, he was bringing home a live-in maid servant. He had just hired her. And he was just on the way back to his property when he was, driving in Cape Town, South Africa. And he sees this glint in the sky. It's very high up. And then he watches it just descend rather quickly.

And what he says he sees is very out of the ordinary. It has a lot of the characteristics of a UFO, but it looks very terrestrial. So what he said he saw was like a rocket. but this rocket they weren't hiding it it said USA on it had a flag on it there were other identifying markers on this thing

and the thing was it's like it came down in an angle and then it just kind of flattened out hovered above the road the thing was it's like he said that this thing was emitting fire out of the back of it but he never heard a thing

like he got out of his car looked at this thing yeah it was completely silent like even as close as a god I think he said he was about 300 meters or so away so you know fairly close up definitely easy to see

this was in broad daylight so he sees this thing and it kind of just like revolves around a couple times and like he describes this thing at one point as being quote unquote dumpy which is like the most hilarious thing that you can

say about a UFO This UFO was dumpy. Okay. Great. Dump's like a truck. I love it. Dumpy. That is one descriptor I've never heard at any project blue book file to my knowledge or anything.

That's, I love it. I love it. I mean, uh, the only other thing that comes close is clown pants and like not everything can be clown pants, man. I mean, those are for the worst of the worst, you know. You're on a Hollywood set. You throw some clown pants in the air and you try to pass it off as a UFO. At least that's what that move for. on investigator came to.

But, you know, dumping UFOs hovering over the road. He watches this thing for a couple minutes and then it just shoots off up into the air. But like the odd thing of it, he said it also felt like

he was kind of in a vacuum. It was very still, very silent. And like that's one of those features of UFO phenomenon is that you often find these accounts. of people saying, oh, there was no sound. Hey, there should have been crickets here, but hey, they just shut the hell up for whatever

reason. And very similar instance, you know, two witnesses. The woman that he had in the car was a black woman. So you got different perspectives there, which I appreciate. And I don't know what she thought of it because apparently he fired her not long after for stealing or something like that. that I don't know. Yeah, it's like, okay, whatever, Joe.

This was all a diversion for her to steal that extra cash in his glove compartment. Oh, that's a bummer, because that's who I would want to hear from to see what her perception of the event is like, oh, well. Yeah, bummer. Exactly. Like, multiple witnesses potentially from multiple different backgrounds. And again, that's what makes these cases so endlessly fascinating is the perspectives that you're given. But like, yeah, Joe just kind of a weird dude. Weird.

Like, he, reading it, he just seemed like a kind of a just like a weird dude to begin with anyway. Well, Rob, you mentioned, did he, he specifically said he saw US stamped on that thing. Am I correct? USA, American flag, right on the thing. He said that he saw other identifying marks, but he couldn't remember them. and he was considering going in for hypnosis at the time, which was something that Cynthia Hine was recommending that he do. But yeah, let me, for those that are watching on YouTube,

I'll bring up an image. I've got it, the handy-dandy book right here. There you go. USA, and there's like some other, like, numbers that they put at the bottom of that thing. There you go. Now we're focused. Nice. They, he said that there was,

like a ton of flame coming out of the bottom of the back of this thing. Oh, and then you have the penis UFO here. We can't go. I'll just mention this briefly. So there's a section in this book about different shapes of objects that are seen. And one thing that seems to come up as like cylindrical shaped objects. They're mentioned like all the time. And there's this one case from these five guys who were attending a funeral for their friend. And they describe seeing a lozen-shaped object with like these balls of light at the end. And like when you see representations of it in UFO Afri-News in that book, it looks like a penis with some balls on the end.

That's like the only way that you can describe it. Yeah, there's no getting around it. You know, call us immature, but come on. I mean, when you see that picture in that book, like, wait, you got to look at the cover again and be like, this is a UFO book, right? Yeah, right. I didn't mistake this for something. Wow, man.

That's a crazy case. I want to be like, okay, it was a rocket from the U.S., but like you said, it was completely silent. And also, what was a U.S. rocket doing over there? I mean, maybe it was landing or coming from space. But again, how could it be completely quiet? That's what really gets to me on that one night. And how can it just like shoot out all that flame and still be so maneuverable?

And then zip away. Yeah. Yeah. There's so much high strangeness to that case that, like, the nice thing is, is like, there are those cases that have that subtle high strangeness stuff that just like, kind of like, okay, that's a little weird. But, you know, that's definitely one of those kind of cases for sure. That has that kind of feature, which I absolutely love.

Now, I correct me if I'm wrong. And I don't know if you planned on talking about this one or not, Rob, but this might be later in the you know the classification system but um the one where it in the driveway is that one you were planning on talking oh the the rosmead lights yeah um if this is this yeah this is technically you could consider it as c e2 case but it's also kind of a ball of light type of case um it's um it takes place uh it occurs in this uh kind of primary school in uh Rosmead, South Africa. And let me just bring that up.

Yeah, of course, man. I put you on the spot. I'm sorry. Oh, no, you're good, man. You're good. Bringing up the cases. I just got it all written down. Oh, I'm sure.

This is November 12th, 1972, Rosmead, Karun, South Africa. and this gentleman by the name of Harold Truder, he was the headmaster of this primary school. I can't remember what the name of it is, but he had been coming home from a vacation that he had taken for the weekend. And, you know, it had been a warm day. And that's when he noticed this like,

it was around 8, almost 8.30 at night. He noticed, as he was, was coming back this red kind of ball of light in the sky. And it was shooting a beam down on this tennis court. He gets, he pulls his car into the garage. He goes over. And that's when he notices that there's like some actual damage to the asphalt on the tennis court. It looks like it's been depressed as if like a great weight.

has been sitting on it. He also finds these like erration holes, like in strips on this thing. And the interesting thing here is that there are additional eyewitnesses to this case. There are nearby soldiers at a military camp. One of them, his name was S.J. Rousseau. He was, they had actually taken their mattresses outside because it had been just so hot. So they were just trying to get some air, trying to sleep. and they had these mattresses facing the tennis court,

and that's when he saw at about 815, this light that just kept circling around the tennis court. For whatever reason, it was just incredibly interested in the tennis court. And later on, because he assumed that these were like, I think like headlights or something like that, or tail lights, but he's like, yeah, I didn't see any headlights. It was just this like red light. he observes it and later on herald truter ends up calling the police department out there because he assumes it's just some kind of vandalism somebody came and vandalized a random tennis court on a on the property of a you know primary school like i understand it's brand new i want somebody to have faced some accountability here absolutely yeah and what they found is that whatever it happened uh had launched bits

of the tarmac into the back of his garage, which was like, like 200 meters or so away or something like that. So whatever it was. So it had some force. Yeah. And there was a nearby tree that some of these pieces ended up going into. There was actually some burn marks on the tree. And there were like leaves that ended up dying on this thing.

So it's one of those weird like cases that, Cynthia Hein had an interesting take on it because, like, they had called scientists out here, and some of them were saying, well, it just melted in in the sun, which, no, like, I've seen 100 degree days. I've been in 100 degree days. It doesn't happen up here that often, but it does. It doesn't melt like that. So, you know, they initially threw that out. But the thing that Cynthia Hein said about this case was that she believed that whatever this light was, it got. got itself stuck in the tarmac and it essentially pulled itself out. Oh, interesting. Yeah, and ended up ejecting all these small bits of pieces and, you know, everywhere. But like, yeah, these were like tiny pieces of the tarmac on that tennis court, but they just like embedded themselves in this tree in the back of the sky's garage. And yeah, it's just, it's one of those weird kind of CE2 cases where there aren't a lot of,

explanations, but like you've got a tennis court where it just looks like it's depressed into the ground. And not only that, you have like perforated holes nearby, which was very strange. But yeah, just one of those odd kind of cases that, you know, pop up. Yeah, that image stuck in my head when you talked about it in your lecture. So I had to bring it up. It was killing me. But a tennis court. That's, I'm a matter. Imagining, like, in Superbad, you know, when all the bottles of beer and stuff gets shattered, and the guy there is, like, F, my life, because he's got to clean it all. I'm expecting someone, like, who just finished constructing that tennis court.

And then, like, that day, UFO comes down and completely destroys it. And you just left there, like, F my life. UFO, of course. Right. Right. Act of God. Act of God. Act of God.

It's a bullshit. No, the government will be. pay for that, right, act of God? Okay. Maybe. You know, if, uh, you know, if they got government funding into UFOs, maybe, but I don't know. Maybe. Yeah. I mean, you know, Mac Brazel,

you might have got some hush money. We don't know fully, but, you know, uh, people said he bought some, like a new truck or something. Good for him. Good for him. After that. Yeah, he needed it. Definitely. He deserved it. I know. I know. Anyways, I'm sorry. I kind of, I, I shoehorned my

way into your, um, your category. here. So whatever you want to talk about next, I can't wait, man. Thank you for doing this. Oh, yeah. So this is kind of like the final category is broken down kind of into three parts here. But the CE3s, there are a lot of similarities to CE3s in the United States. So there are contactees from South Africa or from Africa. and from South Africa, Elizabeth Clare. She, you know, had an intimate relationship with a man named Acon. And again, I can't, you know, I can't get the song smack that out of my head every time I hear that because it's Acon. I mean, what are you going to do?

But she, you know, claimed to have an intimate relationship with this tall, blonde hair, blue-up. I'd kind of got. Of course. She ended up having a child and it ended up going to live on his home planet of Matan. And yeah, she was kind of upset that she couldn't live on the planet because the oxygen level was not to her sufficient needs. So, you know, it is what it is. She became very well known within Africa for her experiences. She went on a lot of radio programs, which is a lot of, a lot of the exposure that UFOs got was through radio programs.

Cynthia Hein made appearances and a lot of other UFO witnesses made appearances on local radio stations and stuff like that. It wasn't often that the newspapers would carry this kind of stuff, but radio totally there for it. one of my favorite cases is from 1951 from a guy who only gave his first name he didn't want himself to be identified his name was henry and he lived near the drackenstein mountains and uh he was living there he was he worked for the british rio static company at the time he was an engineer and uh this was around Christmas time in 1951 and his wife's car. And now his wife was Spanish. He was British.

And they had this kind of like beater car. And it had been experiencing problems. It was a battery issue. So you spend four hours kind of like tuning the thing up, replacing the battery, all that stuff. And at around 11 o'clock, he's like, well, I'm going to go drive this thing just to charge up the battery for a little bit. So he goes, takes a shower, gets in the vehicle. and he decides to drive up Draconstine Mountain. And, you know, it takes him about from the time that he leaves to get to the time that he gets to the top.

It takes like 15 minutes. And he stops for a bit, looks around. There's kind of like an area or a pull-off area where you can do that. But he gets it back in his vehicle, turns around, and he's heading down. the road again. And he gets flagged down by a strange man that kind of just comes out of nowhere. He's very kind of human-looking, but like a little shorter. Faces, the features are mostly there.

He's kind of got hair that's sticking up. But like, he just waves him down and he comes over to his window. He's like, do you have any water? And he's like, no, only water I've got is in a radiator. And this dude just starts getting upset. So he's like, come on. There's a stream just down the road. We'll get you some water.

So this alien being gets inside this dude's vehicle, and they drive down to the stream. The only thing that he has to collect it in is an old, it's like an old oil can. So it gets out this old oil can and they clean it out a little bit and they fill it up. and he asks him where he needs to bring him. So he takes him to this area just kind of like in the shadow of the mountain. It's completely dark. And this was on a night when the moon was out, full moon. And he's like, yeah, just drive over this way.

And he's like, okay, it's a little rough right here, but let's drive on over. So drives on over and his headlights fall on this UFO that's sitting there. It's suspended on legs. He's kind of like a ladder from the bottom of it. And this guy ushers him, you know, has him come on. So he escorts him to the UFO. He climbs up and into it. And there's really just like one circular room.

It's fairly large. There's like a bench that runs around the entire length of it. And he notices that there's like three other figures. The two of them are attending to this one that's laying down. And one that escorted him in there basically told him that, yeah, he burned himself. So, you know, we just needed some water to address to burn. Cool, cool. Damn, damn, Ricky burned himself again.

Always dealing with his BS when we're trying to do these earth excavations. It's Ricky's first day. This is bullshit. But he, uh, wow. As a reward, this alien being says, hey, just ask me whatever you want. Like, he does Reddit AMA, like right there. It's pretty cool. And, you know, he's, Henry's an engineer, so he starts asking him questions.

He's like, where are you from? And he just points in the direction. He's like, from there. Ask him again, from there. Keep it at vague. I understand. I love that. I am human.

I've seen what we can do. I don't want, I wouldn't want to tell anybody where I'm. from if I'm an alien because holy shit I see what Elon must is doing right now I see what could happen yeah right it's like when you

you someone asks for like your number but you know you don't want to talk to this person and you you make your phone number like one off so that they will never reach you I feel like right there yeah we're from right there oh thanks perfect yeah yeah wow well hey I give him credit for asking that.

Like that's a good question to ask, you know. It reminds me again of like Homer Simpson, you know. Homer ask me anything. Anything you want. You get one question. One question. Really? And that was his question.

Yeah. That's it. That's it. Or three questions I think it was. Really? I only get one question. Yes. That question?

Yeah. Yeah. That's what it reminds me of. I butcher that, man. Wow. Let me stop. You continue. So Henry ends up asking him, it's like, how does your shipwork?

I notice that there's no motor. He's like, oh, there's no motor. It's just, we use magnetic force. Cool. You do. We use, I think he said heavy metals that he create a motion that create their own artificial gravity and bam, just, you know, go anywhere. And the interesting thing is, is like there is a chapter dedicated to this book.

And if you enjoy UFOs, get yourself a copy of UFOs over Africa. This is an amazing book. It has every case that you can think of. And the only one that you can think of right now is the aerial school landing. Let's be honest. But you're going to get so much more in this book. But there's a chapter dedicated in this book to scientific theories about what this alien told him and how it could possibly work. So if you want some science in your book, get that goddamn book.

It's amazing. Still in print today. And the publisher, Horace House, actually does a few different books. There's one from Irene Granchi, who was a famous Brazilian UFO researcher. She wrote a book decades ago. It's still in print. It's a fun book. But definitely get your hands on this book.

but yeah, Henry, he had this case wasn't even originally reported to Cynthia Hein. Cynthia Hein, I don't even know if she was born at this time, but it was reported to J.J. Benitez in Spain, and it ended up appearing in an issue of Flying Saucer Review, like in the 70s. I remember coming across it, just going through the stuff. But it was a really small, compact UFO, but, you know, kind of like the TARDIS, bigger on the inside and kind of had like a control panel in the middle of the room, didn't really know what it was for, didn't know. This alien didn't explain things very well.

Let's just put a little bit that. Very vague alien. Yeah. You know what, man? It reminds me so much of the, uh, the Herb Schumer case, like kind of giving a tour of the inside of a craft. But when you ask, like, what does this do? They're like, don't worry about that. Don't worry about that. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. There. It's like, oh, okay. Well, I should have. change my question then. I mean, those aliens fed him so much bullshit. I felt bad for, you know,

my question is, you know, what did they really need the water for? I don't believe it was for a burn. Like, we hear this all the time that, like, maybe water is a source they need. Why are so many UFOs seen around water? Yeah, I mean, the possibilities are endless.

But that's interesting that the one thing this alien would need was water. You got to, you do have to wonder. You do. Yeah. Oh. and there are cases from Africa in which UFOs appear. There's a case with this one UFO that appeared over this woman's pool pump. And like every time I hear a pool pump, I can't not think of Ed Walterson's crazy crap.

Just because it's just like the pool pump, the pool pump was the antagonist of that entire set of encounters that he claimed to have. it was always that goddamn pool pump. But this woman sees the, like, she thinks that her pool pump is kind of messing up because she hears this, like, giant hum. And like, she's just, this is like 2, 2.30 in the morning. She's over it. She goes and she sees this like blue light right next to her pool pump. It's like, oh, God, is it going to catch on fire?

And eventually this light just like lifts off, lifts away. She sees it in the neighbors, through the neighbor's window or something like that. So the next morning her husband goes outside and notices that there's like, I don't know, 300 less gallons in the pool. Whoa. Yeah. Well, okay. Well, talk about siphoning. What the hell was that much water for?

Yeah, exactly. Oh, holy shit, man. That's just like, I was not expecting you to say that much. I was like, oh, maybe like, maybe they took a foot off the pool. Like, maybe they were like, the kids, they can't swim in four feet deep yet. So let's put it down to three feet. for the human kids. But yeah,

it's pretty significant. Pretty significant. There's another story in which, uh, this couple, they had a water tank that was like two inches from the top. They looked at it like one night right before when inside went to bed, came out the next morning.

The thing was bone dry. There was no evidence of a leak or anything like that. But there were reports of UFOs in the area. So it's the only explanation. that fits here. You decide. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I want to believe. I want to believe like everybody, you know? Absolutely, man. I love it. Now, I hope that they know there was chlorine in that. That could change everything. That could be a whole different ballgame, man. That could ruin an alien powered system, I'm assuming, you know, you get some. It's like putting diesel in your, like,

little, you know, moped or something. Oh, yeah, you're going to ruin that thing. Your skin's going to get all wrinkly if you're in the chlorine too long. Oh, God. Yeah, it's terrible. The things we could teach these aliens and they can teach us. Anyways, I digress. What else you got for us, man? So I'll hit you with a couple more here, two more.

Cool. So one of the kind of other sort of well-known cases from, South Africa is known as the Mindelor incident. And this goes back to January of 1979. Megan Gazette, she was up late reading around midnight. And her son Andre gets up, says he can't sleep. So they end up going to the kitchen to get some water. And that's when they hear their dog, whose name was cheeky, just barking up a storm.

So she opens the door, yells for, for Cheeky to come in, and that's when she noticed that Cheeky just jumped the fence, like, you know, some Olympic kind of shit here. And she and Andre just run out, chase the dog up a couple streets up into this service road that was being built at the time. And that's when they noticed, like, what they thought was a plane coming in for landing. She described it as being like a pink light, and then getting closer. That's when she noticed that this was kind of a saucer-shaped object that was surrounded in light.

It had legs down that it was standing on. And she and Andre just, like, stood there for, you know, a few minutes. And that's when they noticed these six figures that got out of it. And they started, like, moving around and kind of messing with the soil and the asphalt. and stuff. Most of these figures were, like, clothes from head to toe. They were wearing kind of like a single one-sy kind of deal here. But two of them, they described them kind of like wearing, like,

doctor's lab coats and pants. They had dark olive skin. They had, like, beards, black beards, black hair. And when one of them started, to play with the soil in their hands. They noticed Megan and Andre just standing there, staring at them. And like, these figures were conversing back and forth in languages.

Like, it seemed like two totally different languages. So the figure that with the black hair comes up to Megan bows and starts talking to her in a language that she didn't understand. At first, she was okay. And then she just got terrified. So she tells Andre to go and get his father. She's kind of anchored to the spot. She's kind of paralyzed.

She says she can't move. And when they see that she is terrified, the beings all of a sudden disappear. Like they just reappeared back in the ship. Now, initially, this thing doesn't take off. The legs of this thing, she describes the legs as getting bigger. And it starts, like, walking around a little bit. like, you know, core of the world style. Yeah.

Until it just flew into the air. But I'm like, no. That's pretty creepy. Yeah. No HG Wells for me, please. That's not what I want in my UFO landings. My UFO cannot handle that. You know, just I don't have the mental capacity to make it through a day most days.

So I don't see that being a good, a good thing to happen to me is like, hey, you know what? Why don't you see my UFO do some crazy stuff on its legs? Yeah. Yeah, bust a move, UFO, bust a move. I love that, man. That's so cool, though. Especially since they bowed, like, how polite.

How polite of them. No. Yeah, just, you know, incredibly polite and just doing what they're doing. It kind of has like the George O'Barski Stonehenge vibes of, you know, collecting soil looking at stuff. just like getting back in your ship and taking off. Isn't that? I love these older cases where like they actually seem to have a purpose,

you know, these beings or intelligences like collecting soil, collecting water. Unfortunately, sometimes experimenting on human beings or animals even. If you, you know, buy into the whole cattle mutilation thing.

Oh, yeah. That's interesting. So is that kind of how that case ended? It kind of walked around. And then maybe it needed to get a running start. That's kind of what I'm picturing. You know, sometimes that happens.

The craft and the Lonnie Zamora incident needed that little boost to get into the air. And then, you know, it was good. It was good. You know, sometimes you need that boost to get up. And there's no shame in that. Look, I get it. Sometimes people got lifted trucks. You need, maybe sometimes you need a stool.

I don't know. Sometimes it's just tough to get. up into those things. But I know that feeling. Oh, yeah. Yep. Been there. I mean, if you grew up, you know, in the Aeron, X or like anywhere beyond New York City, lift the trucks, man, they were just a, they're just a way of life around here. Still are. Yeah, I was going to say, some things never change, man. Even in Syracuse, some things never change. Exactly, man. Exactly. Oh, love it. Awesome. And you have one more for us, you said? I do. I do. So wouldn't be complete if we didn't have a CE4, an alien abduction kind of case.

Let's go there. And what's interesting here is like the abduction cases, you have your traditional abduction cases. they come up here and there. But the cases that Cynthia Hein talked about were cases in which it seemed like they were trying to take the soul out of the body almost and just this feeling of being lighter and being lifted out. And one case in particular

is, it involves a man named Bruce. He is a black African ancestry and he was from Zimbabwe. And in November of 1989, this is when

abductions are huge in the United States and because they are huge in the United States, they start to receive exposure in other parts of the world. And in Africa itself, there are

cases that start to come forward from people in the late 80s of abductions. So that's just the landmark, you know, the impact that like books like communion and intruders were having at this time, those two books are kind of monumental to the public face of UFOs and aliens. And in particular also is the when the Roswell incident appeared on Unsolved Mysteries, those two things right there, those books

and that special, and that special, because like, that Unsolved Mystery Special was like half the show. It was huge. It, like, kind of catapulted UFOs into, like, a mainstream that it had never seen before. Like, this was, It had a whole new image as opposed to before where, you know, it wasn't getting this serious treatment.

And it was seen as like, oh, the government's covering it up and like pure cover up and stuff like that. This now was a wider facing phenomenon. Not only that, you had other individuals now feeling comfortable enough to tell their stories, which is important. So, yeah. So Bruce, his first experience, November 9th. He worked in some fields in Zimbabwe, and he came home, he showered, he lived with his mother. And as he was going to sleep, because he didn't eat, he just took a shower and decided to go to bed. And he described how his hands and legs just like all of a sudden, as he's like trying to fall asleep, they felt dense.

And he had this feeling like someone was in the room with him. he heard this loud, whirring sound like a motor. And his first thought was, this is a ghost. This is, you know, this is absolutely terrifying. So it eventually passes. But it makes him remember that these incidents had happened to him in his childhood. And they just kept coming up over and over again, this feeling of paralysis, this feeling of, this feeling of, like, you know, weight and weightlessness and such.

But the follow-up experience that Bruce had was just utterly terrifying. And it had, it seemed to be related to health problems that he was having. This was in July of 1990, and Bruce, he kind of wakes up. He's feeling, he's feeling ill that day. His skin was actually burning. He said his throat was sore And that his eyes were actually swollen. He couldn't keep any food down at the time.

So one thing that he noted was that a lot of the times when he had experiences, sore throat was a common feature of them. He would often suffer from them afterwards. But he started to recall that there was one experience, and this experience had happened a day or two before. he was in that similar feeling of just feeling dense and weighed down and unable to move. And that's when he noticed that there was a figure sitting in a garden chair over by his door. And this strange being when he noticed that Bruce noticed him got up, he said that he floated on over to him.

And he described them, like the description is similar. similar to a gray in many ways, but he moved towards him, started to pull back on his hair and said, if you tell anyone about this, I'll kill you, I'll finish you off. And Bruce tried to fight back, pushed him right back down on that bed. And this was just, he said that the face was just very white. So like very gray in description, just like very white. non-human figures and that terrifying description of it gliding just

no thank you but there was physical evidence in this case but for instance he noticed that the next day as he got up that because he had I believe he had a dirt floor

and he noticed that in the floor there were these very small looking footprints that led from his wardrobe to the front door, and they just disappeared. Oh. No, thank you. No, thank you.

Yeah, like, very, like, there are other similar cases in which there was a woman named Caroline who had this, like, really dramatic encounter in her bedroom where she saw this kind of globe of light come into her bedroom. But the weird thing is, is like, through the roof, she could see this, like, tunnel of light that connected to a UFO outside. She could actually see the trees from inside her room. And she described this weightless feeling and stuff. And eventually she was able to get up. She wakes up her mother, wakes up her sisters. They're all sitting in the living room. And all of a sudden, she starts to feel this again.

And her sisters, when they were talking to her, describe how when they were looking at, at her our eyes were like brilliant orbs of light like some like you know Ghostbusters 2, Yanoshen in the hall

and light eyes I'm getting those vibes and I do not like it I mean if you're GB2 vibes yeah total GB2 vibes you know he's got that painting of Vigo around

and you know he's just doing his best to restore it it's that kind of vibes but The DE4 cases are incredibly interesting because there is a range of them. It's just in like the very, from the very strange to the very typical. There were two women, Phyllis and Diane. I will recommend you go watch my presentation or listen to it because like these two women,

one of them was just not having it the entire time. She was on this craft every single time. She was resisting. She was like, no, I don't want to go. And they're just like, it's okay. Everything will be fine. And like, they're telling her to get onto this table. And she's like, no, I'm not getting on this table.

She's just like, all right, you know what, whatever. You're persistent. I'll get on the table. And she just goes to this. Oh, my God, man. I'm imagining, like, Phyllis and Diane, like, what was that old show where the women worked in, like, the bottle factory? Oh, yeah, yeah. Doing it our way, or whatever that was.

Yeah, I'm getting, I'm getting those vibes. It's escaping my mind, but I've seen like, Phyllis, no, no, we're not going. Diane, I want to do this. Let me do this. You're either my friend or you're not. We're going to do this together or not. That's amazing. And it's funny because, like, Diane, like when this is going down initially, they're seeing this object, she's kind of reticent.

But, like, Phyllis, who is her mother? is like, come on, Diane, if you don't look at this thing, you're going to be missing out. Live a little. That's amazing, man. Well, hey, you know what? That actually, to be serious, that reminds me of, like, the juxtaposition with Betty and Barney Hill. Like, Betty was so, like, let's do this. Like, show me the star map.

What do you want? Can I take something to bring back? And then, meanwhile, like, Barney is just like, F no, get me the F out of here. I want nothing to do with this. It's interesting when you have two people having an experience and how, like, one really wants to do it. And it seems like always the other one doesn't. I don't know if that's true in all cases. Obviously, you look at, like, the Alagash case or something like that.

But that is interesting when you have a pair of people having a singular experience. It always seems that one really wants to embrace it and one wants to reject it. I came across a case like that with a mother and daughter as well, where the mother thought it was like the most euphoric, amazing experience. And the daughter was like, nope, hate it. Hate it. Would it want to date it? So I don't know.

No. And I mean, like, if you want to know about that case, folks, you need to go get Ryan's book because it's in there because I've read it before. And there is a terrifying moment in that book involving when the mother comes into the room, when her daughter's about to go to bed and. There's something that follows her in and I don't like it. I don't like it. But you know what? It's a hell of a read.

So go get somewhere in this guys. It's a good book. You know what? I'm in it. So go get it. You are. You are, which I'm so honored. Yes.

If that is not a selling point, I honestly don't know what it is to be completely honest. I mean, shamelessly self-plugging. I'm on the best UFO podcast of all time. It's been announced, folks. okay it is final the talent the votes were tallied okay and it was it was awarded last night on the best UFO podcast in a hell of a UFO book uh just consume consume i uh you know i we're all ascending brother yeah i'm here for shameless plugs uh you can pay me later uh pay pal me whatever check yeah virtual check is in the mouth no hey that's a lot of pressure but no we're not here to talk about

that. We're here to talk about UFOs in Africa, man. And you, of course, I knew you would bring it. I had to do very little lifting in this episode. So I have to thank you for that. But I guess to kind of, unless you have anything else, any other cases you want to share, I love to kind of not conclude, because we never conclude these things. Nothing's ever solved. Nothing's ever answered. More questions than answers. But what do you? you um what do you think we need to do here in the united states to really uh uh invite more of a world a global view of these cases because again we get so caught up in like you know roswell and the tick tag and like all these things happening here in america um when there's a whole world out

there i mean i'm doing right now i'm looking into bolivia i'm looking into um And it's just blowing my mind how much data is out there globally that we're not taking into consideration when we're researching, when we're even investigating. So big loaded question for you. What do we do to like really welcome the rest of the world to like share these things, report these things? Or or can we even do that? I don't know. I think there are a bunch of things that we can do. One, these cases deserve a seat at the table.

with every well-known case that is out there, you know, for all your Betty and Barney Hills, for all your, you know, Belgian UFO waves, and for all your Antonio VES, all these cases deserve a seat at the table. For one thing, people need to talk about them more. Like, seriously, I don't, whenever anybody is like, I wanted to cover a case, but I saw that you covered it and I didn't want to do it. Cover it. Like, these cases deserve to be covered. Get yourself a copy of this book.

I, like, I will, you know, shill for Cynthia Hind all freaking day. She's no longer with us. So honor her work. Go get UFOs over Africa. Go read the cases in this book because they're endlessly fascinating for one. Two, you're going to find the similarities, the differences, which is important to note. I also think allowing people to tell their stories is one of the most important things that

anybody can do regardless, especially now with the way that we could bridge technology and just do this. We can do this podcast, Ryan. We're hundreds of miles apart, but we can do it. It's amazing. Opening those doors to people in other countries that want to tell their stories is incredibly important. And it gives this phenomenon a more broad view, gives it a more inclusive view. It gives it a better view because you have a more complete picture when you can see

all of these cases from all over the world and see how they are the same, how they're different, how they affect people. And giving these cases a seat at the table is incredibly important. And that was one of the things

that I wanted to do with my presentation is give these cases a voice that they definitely needed because again, there are probably investigators in Africa, but it's just they are not easy to find. Again, if you try and Google UFOs in Africa and like, yeah, there are probably better search terms that you can use.

There aren't a lot of people that you can probably report to, but like encourage those people to report where they can report to. If it's to move on, report to move on. If it's to Newford, report to Newford. If it is a podcaster that you feel comfortable sharing your story with, report it to them, send them an email, get in touch with them, and say, hey, I've got a story. Can I tell you my story? Absolutely. And that's definitely important. And, you know, if you can feature these stories on podcasts, great. They deserve to be known. They deserve to be recognized. And, you know, just they deserve to be

embraced by the UFO community, even if they, you know, know about them or probably don't. Because, again, this was an issue that I started to think about in 2018. I'm like, why aren't there a lot of UFO cases that come from Africa? Why is it that the only UFO case that we talk about from Africa is the aerial school landing? Again, a very incredibly important incident, but not the only one. So, you know, that's kind of what fueled this. But, like, when I listened to the Saucer Life episode about Elizabeth Clare, I was like, holy crap, there are other cases from Africa? Yeah.

Right. That's important. So to anyone listening to anyone that has a platform, just give these cases, give these witnesses a platform to share their stories. And, you know, the more well known that these stories, because. come these cases, you know, the better view and more inclusive view that we have of this phenomenon. Absolutely, man. I couldn't have said it better. I mean, if you have that platform amplify those voices, especially, you know, voices of color who we don't honestly hear a lot from in this community. And, you know, that's a whole other issue in episode we could have.

Yeah. As two white guys talking here on a podcast in America. But it's true. You know, They're out there. And it's a matter of welcoming more different types of communities in here to have this human conversation. And I feel like that's probably why a lot of people don't come forward or report things. They don't feel like they can or that they have a place. But like you said, everyone's got a seat at the table. Nobody knows when that turkey is going to be done and when we can all eat because we have no idea what the hell is going on. But like, why not get every viewpoint, every culture, every everything?

I just, that's why I got involved with this topic. I don't know about you, but it was to find a community. And the more I got into it, the more I realized, yeah, there's going to be those darker corners of these communities always that don't want voices amplified and don't want this or that. But overall, man, like, it's just so what better community more open-minded than people. who believe in aliens visiting our planet. So that's all I'll say. That's my kind of soapbox moment. Like invite people into the conversation that you normally wouldn't.

And let's all just try to find answers together. Yeah, not just people of color. They're definitely important. Their voices need to be amplified. LGBTIQIA plus people, they deserve to have their voices amplified. Women deserve to have their voices amplified. like bring these people deserve to have their stories told that have a place for them and to contribute to this phenomenon because it's it's a global phenomenon there's no way to get around it

it's a global phenomenon they are all part of this world and the more inclusive that you make it the better a grip you have on this subject overall but a better community that you're going to, you know, ultimately create. Absolutely, man. When that UFO finally lands and we're ready to finally make grand contact, they're not going to give a crap what country you're from, what religion you believe in, what color you are, what orientation. It's all, it's going to be all of us working together.

So it's beautiful. I love it. And I love that you highlighted these cases for us, man. And I also love that you shared your personal experiences over on Our Strange Skies recently with the gentleman of astonishing legends and everything. So I got to ask, can you tease us a little about that episode and what you got coming next over there at Our Strange Skies? Yeah, absolutely. So I sat down with Scott Philbrook and Forrest Burgess from Astonishing Legends. and Rich Adam, who is the screenwriter of the Mothman Prophecies TV writer, good friend of mine.

And I basically said, hey, I've never given people the chance to just, like, grill me about my experiences. So here's two hours, have at it. And, you know, we talked about some of my experiences that I've talked about on other pods and some experiences that I've never talked about before. And we kind of just started to, like, hash it out. and it's a great conversation. The presentation I gave for Pan ParanormalCon is online. You can listen to the audio on the Our Strange Guys feed right now.

If you want to watch the video, if you want to watch me, be hectic for two hours on a video. You can subscribe to my Patreon. Oh, yeah. Subscribe to the Patreon. You'll get to watch that. But coming down the line, I am in research on an episode about the aerial. school landing and other

landings at other schools because there are lots of them. Preston Dennett, like documented a bunch of them in a book and like that book is endlessly fascinating. He's an interesting figure. I've been doing this a long time in this field. But we'll be

talking about the aerial school landing. I'm in the beginning stages of research on a couple specific abduction cases. So that's pretty much what you got coming on down the line. If you subscribe to the Patreon later, this, it would have already come out by the time this episode comes out. But there will be an episode about further African cases that I just recently stumbled upon that is like, oh, hey, that's cool.

Oh, there was a UFO wave in South Africa in 1972. Cool. Let's talk about that. So, yeah, more cases from Africa. If you're so interested, check out the Patreon. Awesome, man. And again, you're not just a one-trick UFO pony. I know you do another podcast as well.

Would you mind telling us a little about that before we say good night here? Yep. So my other baby is rolling through the realms. It is a Dungeons and Dragons podcast. If you enjoy tabletop role-playing games and, you know, if you want to hear conversations about how our cleric is more like a wizard, go check that out. I'm also a part of the order of podcasters, which if you do, if you really into UFOs, go check this podcast out.

We're coming up on our season finale, and there's about 20 some odd episodes in the feed right now. But it's basically kind of like if the X-Files folks had regular day jobs, what would they be like? And I play a George Norrie-like character that definitely takes it to extreme. If you will listen to that first episode, I definitely talk about, you know, pizza rolls giving your mouth third-degree burns. It's the way it is, you know? You got to celebrate those moments. So if that appeals to you, and if, you know, a scripted show about people trying to save horrors from coming into our world, go check out the order podcasters too. I love it, man.

I love everything you do. You are a Renaissance man through and through. So as usual, I have to thank you for coming on UFO Happy Hour, our fan favorite series with Rob Kerstoffersing. And as always, brother, thank you for coming on Summer in the Skies today. I appreciate it, man. Thank you for having me on again. These are always great, man, because it's just, you know, let's bring all this crazy shit to the table and let's talk about it. Let's do it.

I'm hungry. Somewhere in the Skies is part of the Somewhere Podcast. universe, please take a moment to rate, review, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. To learn more about all of our shows, visit thespu.com. I'm Ryan Sprang. And I'm Andrew Sanford. And we love pro wrestling. It's the best.

Headlocks, elbow drops. Scathing promos and chair shots. We just can't get enough of it. So, we started a podcast. You can join Ryan and me as we dig into the ins and outs of pro wrestling like the rabid fans we are. We've got interviews, previews, predictions, news, and so much more. And we're going to cover all of it on Somewhere in the Ring.

Oh, yeah. Is that supposed to be macho, man? Nope, no good. We'll work on it. Join us every Wednesday, wherever you get your podcasts, for all new episodes. And we'll see you somewhere in the ring. Somewhere in the Ring is part of the E1 Podcast Network.