Somewhere in the Skies - The Guardian UFO Incident

Episode Date: April 5, 2021

On episode 207 of SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES, Ryan is joined by author and UFO researcher, Ian Rogers. Rogers was prominently featured in a new CBC documentary, 'UFO Town'.  The Carp, Ontario UFO case is one of the most controversial in Canadian history. For some, the mysterious communications,including a VHS tape and supposedly declassified documents from an individual identifying only as “Guardian”, are incontrovertible proof that UFOs exist. For others, they’re just part of an elaborately staged hoax, impressive only for the work and creativity behind it. Three separate U.S. network television shows featured the case and investigators from both sides of the border arrived to investigate. One of those investigators was 16-year-old Ian Rogers. In 1994, Rogers borrowed his mother’s car and drove to Carp to attempt to solve the mystery. In the summer of 2020, Rogers returned to the area to revisit the case and, in searching for the truth about Guardian, discovered something startling: credible people in the region have had the strangest of encounters independent of the Guardian sighting. 'UFO Town' is a documentary about our collective fascination with the UFO phenomenon and our want to believe. Rogers runs us through his entire experience with the case, where it stands today, and how this strange event shaped his life.   In Canada, stream 'UFO Town' for free at: https://gem.cbc.ca/​   Visit Ian Rogers at: http://www.ian-rogers.com/​   The Fan Art Design contest is now open! Submit your Fan Art to be included in the Somewhere in the Skies store. Deadline is April 30th. To learn more, reach out to Ryan at: [e-mail] Buy the Somewhere in the Skies coffee and use promo code: SITSpod for discount at: https://bit.ly/3sJrnRi  Patreon: www.patreon.com/somewhereskies Website: www.somewhereintheskies.com YouTube Channel: CLICK HERE Official Store: CLICK HERE Order Ryan's Book by CLICKING HERE Twitter: @SomewhereSkies Instagram: @SomewhereSkiesPod Watch Mysteries Decoded for free at www.CWseed.com Episode edited by Jane Palomera Moore Opening Theme Song, "Ephemeral Reign" by Per... 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

I wrote a little song to remind you, Choice Hotels, get you more of the experiences you value. The Can Beah Hotels got it all. A rooftop bar, have a ball. Bring a date, your squad, or even your mom. Book direct at Choiceotails.com. What's up, guys, Ryan Sprague here. Are you an artist, graphic designer,

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or at ryan.sprag 51 at gmail.com. Thank you for your continued support. And now, get designing. This is Somewhere in the Skies with Ryan Sprague. In 1991, a package was sent to various UFO researchers across Canada and the United States. The package included several documents claiming to be top secret and involving a UFO crash in Karp, a small community in Ottawa, Canada. Along with the documents was a VHS tape that appeared to show a UFO that had supposedly crash landed in the region. On the label of the VHS was a fingerprint, and,

One simple word, guardian. The case soon made international headlines, with researchers from the U.S. and Canada, digging deep, trying to find out who Guardian was. And if any of this was real, one of those researchers was 16-year-old Ian Rogers. And now, the story of Guardian and Ian's involvement has become the focus of a new documentary on the CBC called UFO Town.

UFO town weaves together two compelling narratives in an attempt to uncover the human side of this otherworldly event. First, an investigation into what prompted someone to kickstart this alien frenzy. The second, present-day interviews with local residents in the area who witnessed UFO sightings and are convinced that this incident happened at their doorstep. And locals, authorities, and experts who argue that all of this, was a sophisticated hoax. Today, Ian Rogers recalls the string of events that led him on a path that changed his life and has kept us all wondering for decades now.

Who was Guardian? And was any of this even real? Let's take a trip down Memory Lane to UFO Town with Ian Rogers. Welcome everyone to Somewhere in the Skies. I am your host, Ryan Sprague. And today we are celebrating the... 30th anniversary of a, I wouldn't say famous, but probably infamous UFO case out of Canada. Somewhere we don't hear a lot of cases out of. We often look at this from very Western United States

eyes, but this is one of the seminal cases in Canada, infamous, like I said, for many reasons, which we are going to dive into tonight. This is the carp guardian UFO case. And with me today is UFO researcher and author, Ian. Ian, thank you so much for joining me on Somewhere in the Skies, brother. Hey, thanks for having me. This is great. Yeah, this is going to be fun, man. I mean, the first I ever heard about this case, I wouldn't even say the case, the video, was on one of those, you know, Fox specials back in the 90s with best video evidence of UFOs.

And there it was, the Guardian video. And it scared me when I was a kid, man. I remember being like, wow, this is one of the best UFO videos I've seen in a long time, kind of because you have to use your imagination of what's actually in that video. But I'm really getting ahead of ourselves here. I do want to talk to you all about this new documentary that you're featured in, UFO Town, on the CBC in Canada, and the entire Carp, Ontario UFO case. But before we do that, I have to get the origin story.

What is your Peter Parker moment of getting into this UFOs, being a paranormal and UFO researcher? Yeah, give us the origin story, if you don't mind. Well, my parents are big enablers. Like I said, it goes back to my parents. My mom loves horror movies. She loved ghost stories, all that kind of stuff. My parents are both from the East Coast of Canada, Nova Scotia, which is really rich in folklore ghost stories. Everyone's got a ghost story out there, and they all swear that they're absolutely true.

So my mom was just the really strong paranormal supernatural influence. And my father was constable in the RCMP. And his parents were both in the military. So it was very much a, you got the military, sort of the law enforcement side. Then you got my mom's side with ghost stories in the supernatural. And as I'm growing up, as I'm a teenager in the 90s, what's the TV show that's really popular? It's the X-Files. So it was just, it was like a TV show that was made for me.

You know, it was just a combination of these interests, ghosts, UFOs, unsolved mysteries, combined with this law enforcement element where it's like, if you had a government body to investigate these things, what would it look like? What would they actually do on a day by day case by case basis? So for me, that just, that was something that I always wanted to do. I was really just looking for a case that I could investigate myself. And as you say, a lot of these things don't tend to happen too much in Canada. I've read so many. books on UFOs. I'd watch so many TV shows and documentaries. And all of these things were always happening elsewhere, you know. And then one night I'm watching Unsolved Mysteries in the early 90s, and there's this, as you said, this really spooky videotape. I mean, let's talk about it. I mean, the reason why the Guardian tape is so spooky is because most UFO photos and videos are of a light in the sky. This is on the ground, and it's big, and it's in the dark. And then you've got these four flares on the other side. So it's, it's very unusual. And the providence of the siding is unusual, because this came via a videotape that was sent anonymously to investigators by this person

who's calling himself guardian. So it just felt like, it just felt like this bolt from the sky that said, this is, this is something that you have to look into. And when I realized it was only a few hours from my house, like I said, it just felt like it was a real seminal moment in my life. This was something that I have to look into. Even though obviously there are already other investigators looking into it, I'm thinking I'm going to go check it out myself. You know, it was a big moment for me. And that's what it was.

It was my parents and then that night of that Unsolved Mysteries episode. That's cool, man. Again, like you say, when these things happen in your own backyard, like you have to just take advantage of that. And you did. I remember in the documentary that we're going to talk about, you getting out there in your trench coat, just like molder, which I know exactly how you feel.

We all have those molder moments as UFO researchers of, oh, my God, like, we're actually doing what we saw play out on television in some respects. And I do want to get your opinion on X-Files later on in the conversation. But I guess, rewinding back to the Guardian case. Now, your introduction was the Unsolved Mysteries. Mine was this thing on Fox back in the 90s. but maybe give us, paint us a picture. I know, you know, there's some discrepancy between 1989 and, what was it, 1991, that kind of

culminate the entire Guardian thing. So would you mind kind of walking us through those first moments of when Guardian came around, which investigators were given these cryptic materials, as you said? And, yeah, maybe give us a little overview of what Guardian is. Yeah, certainly. Guardian first sort of came into the public prominence among UFO investigators in 1989, and he sent out, I think it was like a two-page sheet report that was describing a crash retrieval operation in the Carp, West Carleton area of eastern Ontario.

And accompanying this report was a photograph of what was supposed to be an alien, which looks very much like a guy in a mask in a field with sort of tall grass in the foreground. Not very convincing. And I believe some of the, it was either QFORN or Mufon investigator, Mufan Ontario investigators, Canadian investigators, sent someone up to the area. And I think one or two people reported seeing a light in the sky around the time that the Guardian described when the events was supposed to have taken place. But they pretty much wrote it off as a hoax.

No one else saw anything. The report talked about military vehicles coming in to remove this UFO. in this area and there was no evidence of any kind of military activity or roads being constructed to get into the swamp to access this thing much less retrieve it and move it out no flatbed trucks or anything so the there wasn't a lot to the 1989 material it was also sort of very right-wing conspiracy stuff like it was um i think uh i believe chris rikowsky got some of it and i think he had mentioned before that the the the guard The Cardian's manifesto, I guess, for lack of a better term, was very similar to white supremacist literature around the same time.

So I think there was just basically written off as like a crackpot, just your hardcore conspiracists who's got these beliefs. And he's also roping in some racism there as well, too, which happens with a lot of the right-wing conspiracies. And yeah, so nothing happened. They didn't really make anything from it. there wasn't really anything to see. Two years later in 1991, Guardian came back. Again, with more material, this time he's got what he says, our DND Department of National Defense documents with your classic blacked-out

censored materials like you probably saw in a movie, because that's not actually what censored documents in Canada look like. But that's what Guardian thinks they look like. Including all kinds of other wacky stuff. There was diagrams explaining how UFOs avoid our. radar and also this is the part this is just sort of bonkers like why they they need to have flares in a triangular formation in order to land why an alien spacecraft who's able to technology that they can fly this great distance but they need road flares in order to land on the ground but it's

there in his documents outlining it and he'd also included a series of playing cards um with all kinds of ramblings on them there's actually references to like richard doughty um other UFO whistleblowers and how they're all basically false. Only the Guardian knows that was what was written on them. So it was a real can of worms. It was a lot of really wacky material. And again, they probably would have dismissed it again, but this time he included a videotape.

And the videotape had a label on it that said Guardian with a thumbprint. And this videotape, this package of material was sent to various investigators. Chris Vakowski got some. Mufon, Ontario got some. Kuforn, Bob Exler, in the United States got some. The tapes were sometimes sort of different. Some people only got a couple minutes of footage.

Some people got like 10 or 15 minutes. I think Bob got some of the longer stuff, but his tape had no audio track. So weird little things like that. I don't know if it was done on purpose, but no one really believed that they got like a first generation quality of this tape. The footage, even as you can see in Unsold Mysteries,

it wasn't great quality. Not to mention you shooting at night. You know, so it's, it adds to the mystique and makes it spookier, but also makes it harder to identify exactly what it is. Lots of places can expose you to identity theft. Oh, no. That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second

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Terms apply. Yeah, exactly. And again, I mean, that's the problem we run into with any UFO investigation when it comes to videos or photos, especially today. Oh, absolutely. You know, it's all right. You can be fakes today. Like, this is why, like, you haven't seen a big UFO case in years.

You know, I'm, I keep a toe in the industry. I'm not active as more anywhere as an investigator. But I like to keep track with what the big cases are. And there just aren't any. I remember the last time that everyone's, really excited about something where these so-called Roswell slides, which turned out to be a hoax, you know, big surprise, right? So it's, and ever again, I mean, like, oh, the Navy, the U.S. Navy is releasing reports that they're still interesting your post. Again, it's interesting stuff,

but again, it hasn't really amounted to anything. It's provocative, but doesn't prove anything. It's, it keeps the, it keeps the subject alive in the hearts and minds of people who are interested in that. But for me, going back to discovering Guardian in the early 90s, It was like the second renaissance of uphology. You know, the first was like the 1940s when like flying saucers, that becomes the terminology, Roswell. And then for me, the second renaissance was the 90s because you had the alien autopsy tapes. You had the 50th anniversary of the Roswell incident.

You had the X-Files. You had fire in the sky. Independence Day. UFOs and aliens had never been more in the pop culture than they were in the 90s, generated by real cases too, but also in entertainment and media. So it was just, I was in the right place at the right time, raised by the right parents to be in this place to try and make my mark on this case that fortunately was just a couple hours away. And my mom was willing to lend me her car. So really go into a ditch.

I talked to it. I touched on that lately. And I've had a few people email me since then. They said, I've got to hear the story about the car in the ditch. And later on, if you want to hear that, it's not UFO related. But it actually is pretty funny and relates to the town. and the attitude of the town because when the car went in the ditch, I was like, my mom's going to kill me.

What are we going to do? Not to mention the investigation is done. Right, right. Investigation over mom's car has been toned. Yeah, I get it, man. But, well, let's, I guess, okay, so a lot of these groups, I know, like, Mufon in Ontario and everything, they were very hesitant to really pursue this thing,

kind of from the start. I mean, a lot of people were like, this is like MJ12 all over again. Like, it's clearly meant to muddy the waters. Maybe it's a hoax perpetrated by people to either make fun of all these UFO people out there or legitimately maybe something did happen. But the RCMP did get involved with this. Am I correct in assuming that? Could you tell us a little about that?

Because, again, yeah, hoax is one thing. But when, you know, law enforcement gets involved, that's a whole other story. So what was kind of their peripheral, I guess, investigation into this whole thing? Well, yeah, I mean, as you say, I mean, like the RCMP does not investigate UFO. Like, there are no Canadian X-Files, unfortunately, or else that's where I'd be working today, you know. So my father over and over against the, no, you're going to have to get a real job. There are no RCMPX files. You're going to have to go to law school, you know, or, you're going to have to do something.

So the RC&P got involved in the Guardian case, because. because it was described in their documents. Again, you can request from access to information, the case files on this, or you used to be able to. I think it's been archived now, but I did. That's how I, that was sort of like my golden ticket to the investigation was the fact that I was able to get the constable's full case files, like censored, of course,

but everything, his notes, his interviews, his photographs, everything. They got involved because, as you see in the Unself Mysteries broadcast, after the Guardian events supposedly took place, there was a helicopter came over the area after the UFO departed, the classic black spooky helicopter, black-unmart helicopter, flying low in the area. And it turned out when we were investigating that low-flying helicopters in the area had been reported by a number of people,

even people who hadn't seen or had any interest in the UFO case, the area is on a flight path, and there is a military base nearby. But these were people saying that these helicopters were flying really low. They reported, some people reported damage to their property, damage to their roofs, damage to fields as long as they would land in fields to perform maneuvers, according to some people. So someone involved in the case made a complaint to the RCMP under some sort of act. Basically, these helicopters, they have to fly above like 500 feet or 1,000 feet or something. So that was largely how the RCMP became to be involved.

And because the low-flying helicopters aspect was so wrapped up in the Guardian case, the constable ended up sort of inadvertently investigating the UFO case as well, even though it wasn't really his mandate. But the two were so wrapped up together. It was like I said, it was about as close as you were going to get to a Canadian RCMPX file. So he investigated everyone. Bob Exler was involved for completely other reasons. Bob likes to work with,

government people for two reasons. One, it's, it's a ego thing. You know, look at me, I'm this investigator. I'm working with my buddies here in the NSA or in the RCMP. We're working together. And he also, he also thinks that if he helps them, they'll help him. You know, so it's like, oh, if I do this for you, you'll give me your secret, you know, classified, UFO files, but there aren't any, you know. So, I mean, he thinks he's like, he's going to get into them and they're going to reveal other secrets. In this case, there was a third reason why Bob sort of insinuated himself with the RCMP. And that was because he was trying to get Guardian, first of all, he's trying to find Guardian,

and then he was trying to get Guardian to confess to basically say everything. You have to understand, after 91, we have never received any more material from Guardian. I do not think Guardian thought he was going to get the response that he got, much less major United States television coverage. and there's not been a peep since then. So Bob was trying to use the RCMP kind of like as a cudgel to get Guardian to confess. You know, the idea was that this person that they suspected at that time,

the way they were going to go out, and the way that Bob wanted the RCMP to go at them was through something called the fraudulent check act. And because Guardian had sent out these DND documents that were very clearly forgeries, Bob's thinking was, well, this guy broke the law. you know, he's forged government documents. You should charge him under this act, and that'll scare him into confessing.

So, and the RCMP was like, yeah, we're not doing that. You know, not to mention at the behest of this person from the United States coming in and telling them how to do their job, right? Right. There's all kinds of reasons why, but I mean, it's right there in his case notes that he just, you know, not very meanly, but that he, you know, that he basically questioned Bob Exler's background and his motivations for what he's doing, you know. So it really says something that once you get outside of the field of uphology and people who like each other or don't like each other and they've got opinions about Bob, whether they're valid or not, you've got this guy, this RC&P constable who doesn't care a wit about euphology or much less UFO investigators or Mufon or anything. And he has the exact same opinion of Bob. So, I mean, what does that say? It's just, again, Bob passed away last year.

I don't want to speak of the dead. But, I mean, in a historical context, this is what happened. I mean, this is the story. It's on the record. I worked with Bob, you know, like I knew him, and I stopped working with him for a reason. So again, it's, I try to be very, I don't say clinical about it, but I guess about fair. You know, I try to remove a motion from it and how I felt and just get back to the investigation because that was how I got involved. So again, it's just like my issues aside with Bob, I mean, he did cast a lot of light on.

He had the TV contacts. That's how he was able to get unsolved mysteries involved, but he also really wanted to be involved. That's why he's like the face of the investigation. He didn't want anyone else to be involved. You'd think that he was investigating on his own. Graham Lightfoot is in the Unsolved Mysteries broadcast. But after that, it's just Bob, you know? It's Bob all the time.

So, I mean, even though there was all these other people involved in the case. So he wanted to own it. You know, it's just, it happens with a lot of UFO cases where sometimes there is just one investigator who's doing all the work. But sometimes they just get territorial and they just, they only want to be that person who is involved. So if you're going to talk to someone, if the media's going to talk to someone,

it has to be me, they want to be the face of this thing. I'm the one that's going to write the book. I'm the one that's going to, I won't even say monetize it, although sometimes they do make money from it. I mean, Bob was selling the Guardian tape for 35 bucks a pop out of UFO magazine,

you know, and of course, it's not his property, right? I mean, you do not take ownership of this videotape, but he had his own little investigation, obviously his own little tape that he had set up with the guardian footage on it, but I mean, it didn't take him very long to package this and start selling it, you know? Yeah. And well, Ian, you bring up a lot of good points. I think you're right. I mean, first of all, you've got this guy from the United States coming in, you know, to, you know, basically into carp and everywhere around there and, like, taking control of this

when clearly there were enough investigators, whether through Mufon or independently, who could look at this case and might even know some of the witnesses. But I think you're right, you know, not to speak ill of the dead as Bob did pass away. But it's quite clear. I think the documentary makes it clear his involvement with every television event that covered this, that he wanted to be front and center. And you're right, there are certain investigators who kind of hang their hat on that one case and they want all the attention. And in some ways, I understand. And in some ways, I understand. understand it, but in others, I, I don't know. Maybe it's just the New Yorker coming out in me, in me, but like if some dude from the U.S. came over there and was like, all right, I'm in

control of this. I'm the face of it. I would be like, get the hell out of here, buddy. Like, we got this cover, but, um, well, I'll tell you two things about it. Um, from, from the documentary point of view, this was one of the reasons why I feel the documentary is really good as well. Um, they, they weren't out to, um, to speak of anyone, whether it was Bob or the witnesses or anyone. It's a very respectful documentary because the people who made the UFO Town are very respectful people. They're really, really good. When I first met with

them, somebody a year ago was when we first started this year ago, January, when we met with them, or when I met with them. And the first thing for me was, like, I want to know what their intentions were with this documentary. Because if they're going to come out and say this was real, I'm not involved. Like, I'm just, even if they're going to say, well, maybe it was aliens and they want to be ambiguous, I'm not interested. We were very

firm with our conclusions based on this case. And I did not want to be involved in something like a sort of like a like some of like the fox UFO shows where it was really outlandish where they're chasing guardian down the street and stuff really sensational like um but i found out very very quickly um when i was meeting with um harriet luke and and nick uh nick crow the producers um they're good people and they had really really good intentions and um i can't consider them friends to the state these aren't just people that i worked with this was this was an experience you know like this was something that i'm always

always going to remember. It wasn't just, oh, it was nice and they produced a good product. These are good people. They're artists. It's a beautiful documentary. It's beautifully shot. The tone that they get where they're picking up the Guardian story that people didn't get after unsolved mysteries. Unless you go online, you go to find the old Mewophone reports, no one really knows what happens. Did they ever find Guardian? Did you ever send anything else? No one really knows. So I feel one of the things that UFO Town does really well is it tells the rest of the story that no one has had for 30 years in the public. And then it also gets to explore on a larger level belief systems. Why do we believe the things that we do? And even Guardian, you know,

even if this was a hoax, and I think it really comes across that we still believe that it was, why did Guardian do the things that he does? So it's just, it opens up all these really cool questions without being really judgmental about it. And that's what I liked of it. It's not bitter. It's not, it's not, it's not melodramatic the way that sometimes you see other UFO documentary. it's not like this documentary version of clickbait where you're getting something different than what you think you're getting. It's just a solid documentary, you know,

I'm proud to be a part of it. And the other thing I was going to say about the investigation was when Bob came up, when you're talking about how he was with the Canadians, Canadians weren't really even going to go up and check it out. When Guardian sent the second batch of stuff, like we already knew who Guardian was, right? So we weren't going to waste our time.

But Bob had got a copy of the tape. So he contacts the Canadians and says, well, I'm going to come up. I'm going to go check it out. Maybe we can do it together. You guys can help me. You can show me around. So I think that there might have been some people who are going to go check it out anyway. But now that Bob was coming up, a large group of Canadians, Canadian UFO investigators go up. So one of the things that they really noticed, again, I don't really adhere that Bob was guardian or that Bob was more deeply involved. Maybe he was, but there's an impression that Bob seems to know his way around, like he's been there before. And, and And there was definitely when they were tromping through the swamp and like mosquito hay, like, no, may, like it's the thaw, right? It's messy that the bugs are out. They're going through the swamps of like West Carleton, trying to find this landing site because Guardian had included a map of the area and his second batch of material.

And the Canadians were just tired. And like, this is stupid. Like this is a hoax anyway, you know, so they just all, most of them peeled off and left. They went off to get something to drink. And they're cracking jokes like, oh, yeah, you know, Bob will show up and have. an hour and say that he found the landing site, right? And sure enough, you know, he came back, hey, I found it, right? And it's like, I'm from a tape at night, right? I mean, with no context, there's not even really any sense of scale in the, in the video. So, but he comes back and says,

oh, yeah, I found it, you know, because he found what he thought were irradiated juniper bushes, which were just basically bushes that had been, you know, driven down to the ground from the thaw and probably snowmobiles, big snowmobiling in that country. But he sees them, he thinks that they've been irradiated, you know, so I mean, that's just immediately, that's Bob to a T. Like, he would just jump to these conclusions. And, and when you see him on the Unsolved Mysteries broadcast, he's, he's very skeptical of the alien images. Why would Guardian basically taint this great UFO footage with these aliens that could be just someone in a mask? But then two seconds later, in his, in his video that he's selling for 30 bucks, he's come around. He says, oh, well, the aliens

actually might be real because it appears that they're blinking between frames. It's like, well, Bob, they're stills. Like, how do you know that they're not just, you know, changing the eyes or anything. I mean, it's still very, like, me and my friend, me and my teenage friend faked to those photos in a farmer's field with, I was wearing a full black body suit and white latex gloves and a white garbage background with, with a construction paper eyes of various diameters. So they would look like blinking. And it took two seconds, you know, like it was just, it didn't, it didn't take any effort. But that was something like with Bobby would say, this is really convincing based on like little to no evidence. He would just assume the grand

thing, like, well, must be aliens. When there's all these other more likely possibilities, it was his reasoning. It was just his reasoning in my mind was flawed as an investigator, is what I would say. Yeah. And I think that flaw comes with, like you said, a want to believe. And that often clouds the judgment of many investigators, whether it's in the UFO field or anything unexplained, the paranormal, supernatural, cryptids, that trying to separate your beliefs from an investigation, It's hard to do. I totally understand why some investigators get caught up in that.

It's like a religion. It's like a religion. You know, like you can't. It's just funny because you're dealing with something scientific versus something that's religious, which some people would say are opposites. But it comes, like, people feel it's like, what do they say when someone has a ghost encounter and they've got nothing to back up. It's just a story. Well, I don't care. I know what I saw. That's what they always say, right? It's just like, well, you know what? Human beings and our perceptions, you and our five senses are so fallible that. there's all kinds of reasons about why what you experience might not be at all what you think, but we always feel so strongly. And I admire that. I admire, I think, our passions and, and those things that way we feel are one of our great strengths. But it's like, it's a double-edged story. It can also be used against us because then it could be like, well, it was actually this, this and this, but you were, you know, this is the logical thing. So it's hard. I mean, I don't, I don't try to come down too hard on the believers. But as an investigator, I don't have that luxury of saying, yeah, you're right. It probably was aliens. I have to be skeptical, you know,

So I always say I started in this like a Mulder and I became a Scully by the end of it, you know. And I think that that's the reason why that show was so successful. That's why they made such good partners. Mulder said it more often than not, you keep me honest. That's what you used to say to Scully, you know, like she always, she always feels like she's driving him up the wall. And he's like, no, no, no. I'm doing this to you. You keep me honest in this work, you know, or else he'd be like a wacko UFO nut that day.

It's like all things in life, right? It's the balance. Right. Right. We'd all end up in the basement, like the lone gunmen, you know. I get it, man. And you're right. I think as investigators, it's not, I always tell people who want to get involved with

UFOs and everything. I'm like, don't go out there trying to prove that aliens exist. That's not your job. Like, leave that to the scientists, leave that to the many people who have studied every various scientific field in that realm. Your job is to try to find a prosaic. explanation for what somebody saw, you know, and when you're left with no other answer, then it's still unexplained. Maybe it's alien or maybe it's a million other different things.

And, you know, when it comes to the Guardian case, the big thing was, okay, we've got this video, cool, but we don't have any witnesses. Like, no one's really coming forward. And then, you know, lo and behold, there were certain people who claimed to have seen that craft, land, in the forest. Can you tell us a little about Susan Gill, this woman who was featured in the documentary on CBC, a little bit about her and her involvement with all this? Susan Gill was, I mean, we didn't know her. Well, her name wasn't made public originally. She was going by a pseudonym at the time. In terms of the TV shows and stuff, I think it was Sarah Jeanneal was the name she was using. But yes, Susan Gill was her real name. I believe

Bob found her. She was, she lived in the area. and Bob was trying to find other witnesses to either to the Guardian event or to other UFO activity in the area. Susan Gill is always very interesting because not only did she claim to witness the event, but there's also an abduction component to it. She claims that she was brought aboard the craft. What was also interesting about the Susan Gill case is there's been some disagreement about whether or not her event was actually part of the Guardian case or whether or not Bob was just trying to take sort of disparate events in the area and make them part of the Guardian narrative. So it seems very clear to me that people were seeing stuff in West Carleton, even before.

There's newspaper reports of people seeing weird entities and UFO sightings before 91, before the Guardian tape even came out. So independent of the Guardian event. So people did seem to be seen something in that area. So Susan could have totally had a legitimate experience. and maybe it wasn't even connected to Guardian, but Bob either maybe coerced her or suggested to her that it was. I had also heard from another investigator that she had actually been writing a novel about alien abduction and that it wasn't, her experience wasn't even a real event.

It was actually a fictional thing. And then Bob was the one who was trying to make it sound like it was real. So it's just, again, you've gone into a UFO case. It's a hall of mirrors. I was never really sure. I never spoke with Susan directly myself. It was more some of the other Canadians. And it just reached a point where she was not happy with Bob.

She didn't want to talk to the Canadians either. She was just sort of done with it. But I think there was when Bob was reporting on this, and I think it was UFO magazine or UFO something. It was one of the magazines at the time. But some of the openings had these descriptions of this abduction encounter. And it turned out that those, these parts of these, at least parts of these articles

were actually pieces of Susan's novel or her writing, whether it was her experience or whether it was a fictional novel. But if you look up the Mufo on Terror Report, I believe that there was a point when Susan was upset with Bob and she was actually going to sign an affidavit saying that she hadn't had this experience the way that he described it. He would basically was trying to

Buffalo her, you know, sort of make it more part of the guardian event. And I don't think she actually did that. I think she was just sort of fed up. And frankly, I don't blame her. You've got all these strangers coming onto your doorstep. And they've got different motivations for it one way or the other. But it's so hard to say now. It's one of these things where it's like, did she actually have this experience?

Maybe, you know, like, I mean, she seems sincere. She seems like a nice person. I mean, I never actually got the chance to meet her grandson who's featured in UFO town. But he seems like a good guy, you know, like it's, I believe him. You know, like it's, it was very convinced. scene. This is just a guy who cares about his grandmother and his grandmother had this experience. But again, it's so hard to say, right? I mean, there's really no proof beyond someone who says something that happens to you. So me as the investigator, I just say, hey, that's really

interesting. Is it proof of anything? Not really. But again, it's just, it's what I say in the documentary. It's like no judgment. It's not for me to start going, you're a liar or that's not enough. It's just, I just collect the information. You know, like, I want to hear the stories. I want to get what I can get. It's really hard to draw conclusions for many of these things. even when you do have a videotape or a photograph. What conclusions can you really draw, right? Especially today, I mean, where you can fake a UFO video with the apps on your phone. You know, it's just there's a, there's no video today that I would see that that's going to convince me.

Nothing. Nothing. Like, if someone actually sends me a video and says, hey, it's alien, it's cool. You know, that's neat. You know, it's not proof of anything. It's, it's, I think the Guardian tape was about much about who I was at that time as it was the fact that. this was pre-internet and it's this video and it's really spooky. Today I look at it as like, oh, yeah, it could have been this or it could have been that.

And maybe it's because I'm older and I'm a bit more jaded as you get when you're, when you're older. You're more skeptical and maybe you don't believe as much as you did when you were a kid. But I tell you, when I still watch the Unsaul Mysteries footage and I remember showing it to my wife for the first time. It's still spooky, you know, I mean, and it's a good show. I mean, we still, we just, we keep watching it. We've been going through all the old episodes because it's, it was just a fantastic program. So it was just a moment in time, man. It was just like I was in the right place at the right time.

Like I said, raised by the right people. There's so many other people like Chris Rikowsky, Tom Theophonis, Errol Bruce Knapp, Drew Williamson, people who did much more investigative work boots on the ground. Like it was so much already, a lot of it had already been done before I got there. Mine was really more the RCMP angle. Because my father was in the RCMP. When I was, when I connected with Bob,

I didn't know about the history club. I didn't know about anything about him. I just knew that he was the one in all the TV shows. That's why I contacted him first. The minute that he knew I was a Canadian, I wasn't working with Mufoan Ontario, I wasn't part of QFORN. He was trying to get me to get the declassified file,

the RCMP file. He didn't get it because he's an American. He can request it from access to information. The Canadians, when they filed their requests, all that they were getting was this 10 to 15 page final report. It was just, they knew there was more. They knew that there was like all of this material that the investigator had, but they didn't know how to make the proper request apparently or something to that degree.

My father obviously being in the RCP said, this is how you do it. This is exactly what you ask for. And yeah, then one day I get this giant envelope in the mail with like this 200 page document and it's all photographs or photocopies, but it's like it's photographs. It's his handwritten notes. It's all the reports, interviews, all this material. And again, it's all censored. But if you know who the players are, it's really easy to fill in the blank.

So that's what I was doing. A lot of it was just filling in the next. And I even met with the constable. He agreed to meet with me at RC&P headquarters when I went up there with a friend of mine. And I mean, it was really interesting for him too. And he was very gracious. You know, like he just answered all of our questions. And the RC&P, his standing, was that was a helicopter.

And I think that it's even more prosaic than that even more mundane. I think the thing in the tape is just a pick up. truck with a floodlight, you know, and four flares. I mean, it's, and it's not even just the fact that it looks like a pickup truck if you know what you're looking for. I mean, there is, there is a guardian suspect who had a truck that looked very much like that. I mean, like, there's a whole part of this case that we just didn't really have the time to get into. And of course, you can't name names and stuff in a documentary because you don't want to. It's privacy, right? I don't want to name these people. I could be wrong for all I know, right? So these are real people with real lives, but,

I mean, I absolutely have my ideas of, I'm pretty sure. I mean, it's a small town, man. So I'm like there was a ton of suspect. That's a good point. People talk, you know, so I will say that, and I'm not going to name him, but the person who they thought was the guardian suspect, coming back to this investigation 30 years later and kind of re-investigating it again because I just kind of had to. You know, you sort of realize that the wiring is still there, it still works.

So I couldn't help but sort of investigate again. What I will say about the previous guardian suspect is having more recent information. and I don't believe he had anything to do with it. It's just, I think he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, the person who sort of, I guess you would say, outed him to the UFO investigators. There was a reason why this was a person who actually has a great deal of interest in UFOs, but he was not the guardian. You know, he, again, it was just he's, you've got someone there who's just sort of,

it's sort of like circumstantial evidence, you know, it points this certain way, but it doesn't mean that it's true. So, but again, it's, you've got a documentary that's 44 minutes. it's you can't get into these tangents, right? Because you have to sort of have this focus. So, yeah, the RC&P investigation isn't touched on and other things aren't touched on, not because they're secret, but because there just isn't the time. You know, the information is out there, obviously, if you want to Google it and find it

or have someone on your podcast, who knows it. But again, it just comes back to, yeah, I have a pretty good idea who Guardian is. And it was really cool being able to come back after 30 years and still learn new things. and to have this experience with these documentary people who just treated the subject matter with such respect for everything. Like I said, even the people who may not come across so well in the investigation itself, they were just so gracious. You know, like this wasn't a hit piece or a smear piece. They've just really, really, it really turned into something really cool, which was just something really interesting could have been happening in this area. The Guardian stuff is almost certainly a hoax.

but the fact is other people were having his experience is completely independent. They had nothing to do with Guardian. I think her name is Lee Cole, one of the women who was interviewed in the documentary. She's the classic case, though, right? She had an independent experience. The Fox Network tried to rope it into Guardian. And she's right there on film saying, that's not true. They said that and that's not true.

It was perfect. That's one of my favorite moments in the documentary. Because, like, there you go. To me, that is the case. That's Bob to a T. Like he was trying to find things that would reinforce his narrative, which will really help when he was going to write his book, I'm sure. But it kind of collapsed beneath him because one, there just wasn't there.

You can't make a, you know, a silperse of a souser, as they say. Yeah. And you had the Canadians actively saying, you know, not even debunking him. You know, they're just, they're not going to let him swindle the public on this. And like, this is our town. This is our province. This is our country. You know, we're not going to let you do.

this and make a buck off it, you know, for something that's blatantly false. So I think that that's, that's another reason why UFO town succeeds because it's not trying to make the guardian case something that it isn't. It's trying to show that maybe there was something going on in this area. And this person who was guardian, this sort of a hardcore conspiracy person, took advantage of it, you know, so it's, that to me is much more likely. When you see the people that were involved were like hardcore into UFOs, I mean, I remember. remember when you see the literature, if you go online, I think it's out there, some of the other guardian literature. Like it's spooky. It's the stuff that would have got along really well with the

Q&N nuts these days, right? It's just right at home. It was like predicting this stuff 30 years ago. I remember going up there and it was either the RCMP constable or one of the other Canadians were telling me that the people that they were suspecting to be involved in this hoax, they're not just obviously you're the kind of right-win conspiracy people. They don't like the government. You know, they're anti-government. You should be careful.

And of course, I'm not thinking, I'm thinking, okay, it's like, and especially don't tell them that your father's the RCMP, right? So I'm not even thinking. You have to remember me and my Mulder Trenchcoat. I'm in the woods. Yeah. One of the things to this guardian case was there was all these kinds of weird signs on some of these rural properties like DND killing fields,

nuclear testing ground, but spelled wrong. So it looked like war games. like maybe paintball or child or teenage war games are going on out there with people that had very strong anti-government beliefs. So I'm here trying to get photographs of these signs in my Mulder coat tromping through three feet of snow. And the signs are like, this is hunting territory. The signs are all full of buckshot and stuff.

And as a 16 or 17 year old kid, I'm not even thinking that I'm not wearing a blaze orange hunting vest. You know, like I could get shot out here, you know. And it's just, but that's what I think today. You're like, I can't believe some of the stuff that I did as a kid when you would just, like, you would approach these people. And the person who we thought was guardian at the time, I'm going up and I'm knocking on his door to see if he'll talk with me. And, of course, there's no one there, so I leave him a note. And, you know, I'm trying to be very polite.

I'm being very Canadian about it. I know how to this guy, you know, but I sure would like for him to talk with me, not realizing that this person could be unhinged. You know, this person could just jump you or something. But, again, it's just sort of like the callow youth. You know, you don't really realize what you're what you're getting into. in this case, it was just so wacky. I mean,

I've said it so many times, I think I said it in the documentary, but it sounds like a cliche, but it's true, but it's like it's a movie. It felt like I was in a movie. In the UFO lore, like there's just nothing like the Guardian case.

This mysterious person with this name, this cool sounding name, sending out this material, and there's maps, and you have to track down the location to where the crash UFO was and the bunker and everything. It's just,

it was cool, you know? Like, it was just, I would have done it anyway. But, like, there was, there was an X-Files-E-Molder component to it. Like, I liked the coat, you know, don't get me wrong. It wasn't just, it wasn't just an affectation.

I come by all that stuff very honestly. It wasn't just like, well, I really like the X-Files. I was like, well, I like the X-Files, but this is the reason why. My dad's an RCMP. He's a federal agent, you know, like, my mother is, like, hardcore and a ghost in the supernatural. It's what I was raised on. It was like, my dad had all these national geographics, and my mom had Stephen King

Novels line around the house. That's my upbringing. I mean, that's why you've got 16-year-old UFO investigator, gets wrapped up in the Guardian case, and today you've got 44-year-old horror novelist, you know? So, you know, like, you know, he sums it up more than that, man. I mean, that's right. I could just draw a line, you know, it's like, oh, Twin Peaks, X-Files, Guardian, shake that for 30 years, and you've got me, you know.

That's what you got today. What a journey, man. Well, I mean, you're, you bring up so many good points. I mean, one, it's like, this area. was clearly activity was going on, whether it's UFOs or, you know, like you said, there is military,

there is a military base somewhat nearby. So clearly something was going on. And it was so good in the documentary to see these everyday, all walks of life people saying, yeah, I mean, like, I don't know if it was what this guardian thing was, but I saw something. or you've got another witness saying

he saw a helicopter come down, guys get out and get back in and leave. And he's not saying, look, it was a UFO. He's saying, this is what I saw happen. And I think it was really good

that the documentary made that point, like you mentioned, with the one witness who said, I saw something like four years after the Guardian event, but they said that it happened at the same time. That happened so often. I think, you know,

we're creatures of pattern. We want to make patterns out of things, whether that's subconsciously or maybe in Bob's case, consciously, trying to lump everything together to make it more than it actually is. Well, let me let me tell me why it was so hard. Let me tell me why it was so hard to find that pattern, though. Perfect example is the tape itself. This weird thing with these four flares, RCMP says it's a helicopter. And yet in the RCMP report, the investigator spoke to a bunch of military guys, a bunch of helicopter pilots as part of his interviews in there. They're all saying, oh, yeah, could be this helicopter could be that.

But the thing is, is those, the flares don't fit. If this was military maneuvers and they're doing night maneuvers and they're practicing like flying as low to the ground as they can get without landing or in this case landing, they don't use red flares. They use infrared flares. They only show up in infrared. So the flares don't match. So it's like anytime you try to find a pattern or a logic, this is why I get that the RCP

constable, and he was on encounters. Like he was actually like he's, I guess I could name him, but I'm going to leave him alone. So, but I mean, he was involved in one of the Fox programs. And they're adamant that it's a helicopter. And for me, it's just like, I don't even think it's anything that cool. I think it's a pickup truck, you know, and the guy's got a couple of road players he got from Canadian tire home hardware or something. So I think it's someone was trying to go.

I think it was one of the unselfed mysteries people or someone who was like, oh, yeah, to a fake this, it would have cost $100,000. And we're like, no way. There's no way. But again, it's supposed to, it's a line that you give that's supposed to add to, it's aliens, you know, it's just like, it's, it's supposed to back up that. And that's not evidence. You just, you can't throw a figure like that and then say, oh, it's aliens. Like that's, unfortunately, that's the way that some people hear it, right? I mean, people believe what they want to believe. Um, I don't

have that luxury as an investigator. This is the reason why, um, on the X-Files, just to talk about that show, how often was Scully ever right? You know, she's never right, you know, because again, if she's right, if she's right, they don't have a show. It's a pretty boring show if every other week, even if it was 50-50, right? Every other week, Scully turns out, oh, it's not a monster. It's not an alien conspiracy. It's something mundane. You don't have a TV show.

No one wants to watch that TV show. And so the reason why believers are attached to themselves to cases like this is because the mundane is boring. Life is generally fairly prosaic. It's not uneventful, but movies and TV shows are way more exciting. It's way more fun to believe, right? It's helicopter pickup truck. It's not interesting, you know.

But I got interested because it's interesting. but I stayed an investigator because I had the wherewithal to realize that even if the conclusion isn't satisfying, it's still the truth. And that's what you have to accept. I think that's why a lot of investigators burn out because it's not what they want it to be, maybe. For me, it was just the Guardian case was the biggest case I was ever involved and everything's downhill after Guardian. This episode is brought to you by Netflix.

Most valuable promotions in Netflix are hosting a blockbuster triple headliner Saturday, May 16th. Rhonda Rousey returns to face fellow woman's MMA pioneer Gina Carano in the main event. Plus co-main's Nate Diaz versus Mike Perry. And the best heavyweight in the world, Frances Ngano versus Felipe Lins. Watch Rhonda Rousey versus Gina Carrano, live only on Netflix. Saturday, May 16th at 9 p.m. Eastern Center time, 6 p.m. Pacific time. Well, you bring up a, you had a good line. I don't remember if this was in the documentary or in the article you wrote over at the CBC,

but it was something to the lines of, you know, sometimes the mystery is better. Yes. And I think for many people, that is the case. You know, I got into UFOs not to solve the mystery or find out that aliens have been visiting us. I just love pursuing a mystery. And I think a lot of people like that. They like that journey. It's not really the destination they're worried about.

It gives you some sense of meaning. And I think all humans can, why else are we here? You know, the biggest questions in life, why are we here? You know, what happens when we die? Is there life elsewhere? And a lot of us are trying to figure out the life elsewhere. Other of us want to know why we're here. And I think this topic gives meaning and purpose to a lot of people out there.

So I think that's kind of what the whole guardian thing, like you say, represents this want for something more. And I think that's why a lot of these conspiracy theories nowadays are so big because people want to feel like they know why things happen. When in reality, we don't know why things happen. There are also, I find the conspiracy theories these days a lot. I mean, my wife and I were rewatching the X-Files recently. And it's like, we're just talking about how quaint the conspiracies of the 1990 were today. Like today, it's like no one trusts anyone. Everything's fake news.

Everything's a false flag operation. You can't trust anyone. It's like, it's just like when you think about Roswell or even the JFK conspiracy, and you can't trust the government, it's always seen as like this sort of the shadow government, this group of people within the largely good government. But these days, it's just like you don't even want to leave the house. You can't breathe the air. You can't breathe the air.

everything's fake news. It doesn't matter how many facts you've got. All you have to say is that that's not true. And half your audience will believe you, just based on those words. It's not even proof. So the conspiracies of TV shows and movies from like pre-9-11,

like I said, they're almost adorable. They're almost precious, precocious, compared to what you have to deal with today. Like today's stuff, it's not entertainment. It's spooky. I don't want to watch that stuff. Like the X-Files today, even with the reboot, or not the reboot, but when they brought them back

for a couple of those later seasons, it was like, how do you do the X-Files today and still make it entertaining where it's not just scary? Like, not scary in a good way. Like, it's not, it's no longer escapism scary. It's, I don't want to watch an episode about that. I just saw, I just read that on CNN. I'm watching this because I'm like,

the warwolf for even the alien conspiracy was a lot more quaint than, than stuff that you would see in the news today. It's, uh, it's, it's, it's just too close to home now, you know? So it's, uh, yeah, it's something that I was just wondering. Like, what would the, like, what does it look like today? What would those X-Files look like today? It's like, no, no, it had its time, you know, like in the 90s. Like I said, that second renaissance of, of UFOs and aliens in the media.

I mean, we have different shows today that are popular, so it's fine. But I mean, even with UFOs, like I said, it's just, it's still a subject. I mean, there's still the occasional blip, but it's, it's not what it was, you know, it was before, you know. Right. And I think you're right. I think, you know, even with Guardian, there's this sense of playfulness of, almost to it and almost an innocence, even if it was a hoax. You know, it's like, ah, we got them. But nowadays, you're right. I think why the ex-files didn't really land as well with those last two new seasons they did

is because they tried to set it in real world 2019, 2018, up until today. And it's too terrifyingly real. And I think that's why it didn't really work for today's audience. No, and that was my take too. I mean, with the exception of a couple of episodes, it's usually standalone, like the ones that Darren Morgan writes, who's always the funniest one, he writes the funny ones. My takeaway from it was, yeah, it's never as good as it used to be,

but it's still nice to see the two actors together. They've got great chemistry. I love them both. So it's like, I'm willing to forgive them that they're not as good as the original. It was still nice to see. I mean, it's never going to be as good as the original. But yeah, it's sort of like, in what world did they think that they'd be able to do something,

business, it's still going to be entertainment. It was just like, no, it's too close. This is like, you're like, no. I want that escapeism. I knew that, I knew when I got you on here, Ian, that this would turn into an X-Files episode. Because as soon as I saw you in that trench code, I'm like, I'm going to, I'm going to get along with this guy. But I guess, I mean, kind of, I guess, bringing it back a little to, to Guardian, in terms of evidence. This was a question some of my listeners had. I don't know if you have an answer for it. if any investigators do. The thumb print.

I mean, was this ever analyzed or tested? It's almost like a, you know, literally a kidnapper leaving their calling card. Anything like that? It was. There's blowups of it in the RC&B documents. So, I mean, I believe, and I think this was something, it's not, they didn't run his print in the document,

or in the RCN report itself. but I believe I'd asked the constable about that when we met with him. And again, this was, it's 91. It's not like they are collecting fingerprints of everyone, you know, contrary to what some conspiracy people might think. And anytime you touch a penny, your DNA and your fingerprints are in the record. I think all they determined was that he didn't have a criminal record. I mean, if you didn't have a criminal record, it didn't match anything.

It just didn't come up. And all they had was a thumbprint, right? They didn't have a full set of prints. So assuming that it was actually Guardians Print and it wasn't like his mom that he got to do it, you know. I mean, that's what they always said with the old Zodiac letters, right? The Zodiac killer in San Francisco was, oh, well, he, you know, when they were trying to pull DNA off the envelopes, oh, well, he did, what if he didn't lick the envelopes? What if he knew about DNA? I was like, well, it was the 1960s.

You know, there was no DNA. Like there was in the public consciousness, right? But even if he didn't, again, it's just like, yeah, it's circumstantial, right? You pull DNA off of something. And all it proves is that that person had contact with that object. So it doesn't necessarily mean, like say in this case, if this fingerprint matched someone, all it means is that that person touched that label. That label could have been in a drawer for years.

And then a guardian typed out guardian on it and slapped it on. So again, from an investigating point of view, that's something where I would say, I thank my dad a lot, is that I've got that investigator's mind, very, very skeptical. And it's just like, oh, yeah, it could be this, but it also could be that, that, that, and that. I just, you know, people sort of want their own internal narrative, especially when a lot of people who come to uphology, they want to be moulder, you know, and I want to be molder too. But again, I've got this, my dad background going, it's got to be a real investigation.

You have to do this, this and this. It's not a TV show, Ian. So I never jumped to conclusions about it. I tried to be as methodical and scientific about it as a 17-year-old kid can be with limited resources for a case that everyone utterly had dismissed as a hoax. But I think even for me, it was just, I think even at that age, I was a lot more interested in the psychological aspect to it, too. It wasn't even that I thought the Guardian case was necessarily real.

I really just wanted to find Guardian, you know, and I was searching for him, too. I wanted to talk to him and find out why he had done this, if there was anything legitimate and maybe it got, you know, taken out of context. It was as much for me finding that on that level than it was really trying to find a UFO crash site in the woods. You know, like I wasn't really expecting to find anything. But again, it was fine. you're there, you might as well do it. It's an adventure, right? I'm not, I'm not expecting to find anything. I know that I'm, even though I say it feels like I'm in a movie, I know I'm not in a movie,

you know, even at that age, I was mature enough to, to know that much. So, but I was still there. You know, I was still doing it. So, I mean, maybe on some part of my mind, I thought I'd find something. Crash UFO, probably not, but maybe something, you know, maybe, maybe something. There's a lot of weird stuff out there, you know, like, it's just, that's what I will say. Like, those weird military signs, like fake military signs, they were, they were just as spute. is some of that stuff on that table. Like, who was making these things? You know, there was supposedly, like, there was a shed on a piece of property where a lot

of these signs had been collected. I was trying to find the shed, too. So who was doing this? Like, was there more than one guardian? What was their agenda? You know, and it's just, I just wanted to crack it open. It wasn't even just about trying to find aliens. It was, it was trying to find the aliens among us, you know, trying to find the people,

you know, that was just interesting, if not more so, you know. Exactly. And I couldn't agree more. I think, you know, when we get involved with UFOs or the question of aliens, it is kind of a mirror on ourselves. So we're not really looking for what is out there. We're looking at who we are and what role we play in all of this. And I think that's what a lot of this UFO community represents is a need to want to know

and a need to want to find out who we are. So let's think of the other and how they would perceive us. You know, you look at like the contactee movement back in the 50s, the 60s, you know, stop what you're doing. Don't build nukes. Like, we got to all get along. Peace love. And it's like, yeah, we don't need aliens to come down and intervene and tell us that. We should know that as human beings.

But it is. I think it says a lot more about us than it does whatever happened in carp at that time. But I got to ask you, besides Guardian, a lot of. of my Canadian viewers and listeners, they were so thankful that this documentary came out that highlighted something that happened in Canada because they don't get that that often, like we said at the top of the show. Are there any cases that you were turned people to that have happened in Canada that really make you think there's something going on here? Well, you know what? Like I said, I don't like to hog the spotlight for this just because

I sort of know so much about Guardian. I mean, I had a part to play of the investigation, but like I said, the other investigators that I named who did a lot more of the grant work than I did. But in terms of other cases, Chris Rikowsky has got this great book about the Falcon Lake incident, which is probably the biggest. I mean, Garty is definitely the most infamous, but in terms of like something actually happened here, I couldn't even tell you what it was, would be the Falcon Lake incident in Falcon Lake, Manitoba. There's also Shag Harbor, Nova Scotia, where there was allegedly a UFO that crashed into

the harbor. That's what that was even like almost dramatized in like a like a Marvel comic book, I think. There was a comic book component to it where they had wrapped it up in some, some story. It almost immediately became part of the pop culture. So there's definitely, we do have cases in Canada that are quite provocative, you know, quite interesting and for people to track down. So maybe, maybe not as much as there are in, say, the United States or abroad, which was something that again that I noticed before a guardian was it was always happening so far away it was like roswell or uh uh rendersome forest you know in the UK um great cases but uh for stuff happening in Canada much less in Ontario in my in my neighborhood my neck of the woods um I don't know

I'm trying to think of more in Ontario nothing really that big that I can think of other than the guardian it's nothing that really comes to mind again like I said like I've been I keep a toe into it um for what's going on more recently but going back to like the classic literature, I haven't really dug up into my old UFO books in a number of years, but the big ones would be, yeah, Falcon Lake in Manitoba,

pick up Chris Rakowski's book on that one, which is like the definitive guy. He wrote it with The Witnesses' son. Right, and Mickelach, I believe it was. Yeah. And Shag Harbor. I don't know if there's a definitive book on that. I think there's a lot less evidence,

probably because it's supposedly crashed in the ocean and you can't really investigate out there. but there still is there is a good story to that one too those would be the two biggest I would say if you're trying to get a crash course and the big Canadian cases I would say those are probably two of the biggest

yeah I would definitely have to agree well let's talk about Ian Rogers today you know we left UFO guy behind we're now a published author with many books and novellas under your belt tell us a little about your horror writing if you don't mind man I love to see

like what happened then and how it brings you to where you are today. So tell us what you're up to you nowadays. Yeah, well, like I said, it's funny. Like my mom is that was a really strong influence, in terms of horror fiction. She, she always had Stephen King books and Dean Coon book, Dean Coon's books land around the house. And even in terms of like movies, like my sister and I, we used to watch horror movies all the time, even as kids. My dad wasn't, wasn't a really big horror fan, but my parents really just didn't believe, they didn't really believe in censoring us. I mean, within reason, we were pretty much allowed to watch whatever we wanted. The only real rule was from my dad that if it gives you nightmares, you're cut off.

That's it. And I mean, even as kids, I remember, like, the only movie that we ever had to turn off and rewatch the next day was, I think it was like Sam Ramey's The Evil Dead, you know, just a really terrifying movie. We just didn't tell my dad. It was like, no, don't tell everyone else we're going to get cut off. So it was like, we started. was really scared. We turned it off and finished it in the morning. But yeah, I mean, it was just, that's the horror influence from a kid. It's like, you've got this stuff. And for us, I think just because we knew it was movies, even though we were scared, we knew it wasn't real. So it didn't really, I don't think it did. It didn't warp us

the way that some people think media like that can do that to kids. So, I mean, it's funny. I mean, for as much as I was interested in UFOs and aliens, I didn't go into writing science fiction. I write horror fiction. I have written one UFO novel that I actually haven't sold yet, which was funny because that was something that my agent was talking about recently was, it's too bad. This book isn't ready when your UFO documentary is coming out. That's the book we should be selling right now, but I'm shopping a different book right now. And yeah, I do some work with, I've got a lot of stuff that's been optioned by Hollywood for film and television. So always waiting for something like that to take off. You never know. It's always a crapshoot with

that kind of stuff. But I've got people that are interested in that regularly. you know, I consider my work, which is always nice. Yeah, so it's mostly like supernatural fiction, haunted house fiction. I do a series called The Blacklands. It's sort of a supernatural detective noir series. I call them super noir trills. It's basically a world where the supernatural just exists. It's been around since the 1940s.

Actually, I used a UFO event, the disappearance of Flight 19. So these ships go off into the, you know, to do an exercise bombing run off of the Atlantic coast to Florida, and they vanish. So in my world, sort of I guess you would say as alternate history, they've come across these portals, this is the arrival of these portals. So it's almost like reality has been, you know, raked over a cheese grater. And all these portals start to appear all over the world. They're invisible.

You can't see them. And they open onto a world that lies right next to ours. And it's called, they call it the black lands because there's no sun over there. It's always this perpetual night. and it's filled with every supernatural creature you can think of all the stuff that comes from our superstitions. This is where it comes. It's this other world that sort of lies next door to our own. So the world for the past 70 or 80 years has learned to live with these portals.

So most of them, or there's, I would say, there's a large concentration of them off of the Atlantic Coast, which is what the Brune of a Triangle is. So it's like, it's a no shipping, no fly zone. You're just not allowed to go out there. There's too many of them you can't see. them, then they start showing up on land. So the government's responses around the world is they put fences around them. They can't destroy them. They can't fill them up. And more of them are appearing every year. So they're not, I wouldn't say there's so many portals that there's like one in every town. They're still fairly rare, but they're real. It's a reality that people have to accept.

So I just want to see, what would it be like in a world where, you know, you couldn't tell your kids that monsters don't exist. They're going to learn about it in school when they're old enough. It's part of our history now. So you're still probably, it's like a shark attack. You're still probably more likely to be hit by lightning than you are to ever be killed by a supernatural creature. But the reality is the fact is it could happen.

So I just really wanted to have this sort of a regular world where the only thing that's different is that the supernatural exists and we're still afraid of it. We're not using it. People aren't using magic to do their taxes or walk their dogs or anything. It's still this menace that's hovering over their head. So one of the characters in the series is a private investigator named Felix Wren. And he just investigates supernatural cases. It's whatever, all of his cases have got some sort of a supernatural bent.

But then there's another character, Jerry Baldwin, and he's a real estate agent. He sells haunted houses. He sells haunted property. Because in a world where ghosts exist and haunted houses exist, someone's got to sell those houses. So it's almost like the Guardian case, though. I really tried to find as realistic approach as I could. while still keeping it fun. So it's like, well, if these houses are so dangerous, why would he sell them?

It's like, well, there's definitely something he's not allowed to sell. The feds don't let himself these certain houses. They're off the market. They're purposely left empty. But other people, you're going to tell me that if someone, there were real haunted houses, there wouldn't be someone. Maybe some rich weirdo collects them. Like, they would absolutely.

Or they'd be so cheap that people that can't afford a regular house would buy it. So they would just deal with the bleeding walls or the rattle. in the middle of the night, you know? So it was just, and he just spins it. Like, he's, he's, he's not a, he's not a sleazy guy. Um, he believes in his work. He, he thinks the supernatural is great. Um, so he's really trying to find the right people for the right home.

In this case, the right haunted house for the right home. It's, it's a certain people that go with it. But his stories are, uh, are a bit lighter. Um, but that was the idea with the series that each character, um, it's the world that's the recurring character. Um, I can tell all these different stories. I can tell a standalone story with none of these characters, I can tell a story with the real estate guy, or I can tell a story with the private investigator.

There's a third character who's a, she's like a federal agent. She's sort of like a Clarice Starling meets James Bond, you know, because if you've got a supernatural crime in this world, well, you're going to need a new agency. You know, you can't be the FBI. You can't be the RCMP, so they've got the paranormal intelligence agency, you know, so it's the PIA in this world. So she's an agent of the PIA and she investigates supernatural crime on a federal level. So again, it's kind of like the X-file. meets James Bond. So again, I'm trying to make it seem as realistic as it would be like, if this really happened, what would be the world's response? What would the government's response? What would the industry like? Like, I've got a short story and it's like, it's the fishing industry and the Bermuda triangle.

Like, how dangerous is it? You know, what does it actually look like? You know, like it's just these are the things where it's just that you're trying to, you're trying to find really cool ways to tell stories that are almost believable, even though they're supernatural. I think that's one of the reasons why someone like Stephen King has always. has done so well is he's always been able to take ordinary people or ordinary things in the world and just tweak them with the supernatural, right?

Because his characters are very believable. The settings are very believable. And that's why his books are scary. If you can make your world believable, the minute that you start to insinuate horrible things, they also seem believable. And that's why they're scary. That's why they're scary. If it's so fantastic, no one cares.

It's just you're disconnected. But it's like, well, a dog gets. rabies because that's a horrible thing that happens. But what if it's a giant St. Bernard, right? Those dogs exist. People like them. And that's scary. So a rabid dog is scary. A rabid St. Bernard is terrifying.

And that's what Stephen King understands. You know, so. And that's what I hope that I've sort of learned from him, if anything. You know, I mean, I'm obviously I'm a huge fan. There's a number of writers that that I love and I admire. But, you know, King always sort of overshadows everything. A lot of people grow up with him. And for me, that was it wasn't just the thought that he's

famous and that he's a he's a really good writer even though he is for me it was always um the believability of his work you know it's like it's like well yeah you know like if if vampires were going to insinuate themselves in a town and they could get away with it in some like a quiet little new england town that's what salem's lot would be you know they would just take it over you know it's just it's very believable i think that's the key to his success is you know it's you know it's it's supernatural you know it's it's not true but there's a party that if it did exist though that's how it would that's how it would go down. You're right. It's always like one step beyond what is actually happening. That sounds

awesome. And I'm definitely going to have to check out that series because I think again, it kind of encapsulates everything you've kind of done in your life in terms of once being, you know, at the center of this UFO event and investigating it. And there's that other part of you and the other part of me that goes on day to day, whether it's menial tasks or going to work or, you know, doing what you're doing in your relationships in your life. And then there's this other part of your life where it's like, this person claimed they're abducted by aliens. So I got to go deal with that right now instead of, you know, how I'm going to pay the next bill, this, that. So it's like these two worlds colliding. So that's pretty cool. I, um, I did read the, like I said, I never wrote

the book on Guardian. I said, that doesn't really have a five. act because it's not satisfying because it's not aliens right it's not even so i mean there's no that's that's why i never wrote the guardian book but in a fictional way i've definitely i guess you could say taken some things cannibalize some stuff from the whole guardian thing and thrown it into one of my science fiction books which will hopefully be published by it's never it's not finished but it was like this is too good you know and it's just like i've got to use it so it's it's not it's not literally the case but i mean uh there are definitely components anyone that knows the guardian case and who would read this would be like, oh, yeah, that's guardian.

You know, that's, that's from that Unselfil Mysteries episode because why not? It's such a great story, you know? Yeah, it is. Well, I guess kind of wrapping things up, Ian. What do you hope people will take away from both UFO town and the Guardian case overall? What's like the one thing you hope that viewers will take and listeners will take away from all of this? Well, I hope first and foremost is that anyone who is coming to it because they're familiar with the Guardian case, whether it's from the Unsolved Mysteries episode or from just reading about it online, I hope that they are getting as much of

the full story as you can really get with still maintaining some of the fun mystery to it all. But I'm also hoping that they, even the people don't know anything about the Guardian case, just really enjoy UFO town for what it is, which is just this really quality, respectful examination of belief and why we believe the things. that we do, why mystery is so compelling, and why we don't always need the answers. You know, it's just, it's sometimes it's just nice, just to sort of luxury and the fact that you're not going to know everything. And that's okay. It's, it's hard to believe that, you know, because I'm the kind of person who usually wants to know everything. But I can tell you, man, after 30 years,

even though I'd say, like, I'm like 97, 98% sure of everything that happened to my satisfaction, there's always going to be stuff that you don't know. And whereas as 16, 17, 17, year old kid that would have driven me right up the wall. No, I'm just like, hey, that's cool. I'm good. I'm good. I love that. Live in the mystery. And you're right. There's always that like 1% of this UFO mystery that remains open. And that's what keeps me going. You know, 99% of it is probably explainable in some prosaic or even anomalous way. And then there's that 1% that just keeps people going. That's so cool, man. Well, I do want to let our viewers and listeners know. I know I have a lot of Canadian listeners and viewers. We are on the E1 podcast network out

of Toronto. So if you do want to watch UFO Town, you can stream it for free on the CBC GEMS streaming service. So please go check that out right after this if you haven't already. But, Ian, in terms of everything you're up to, brother, where can we find all of your work and keep continuing to follow this journey you're taking, man? Yeah, I mean, I'm active when all the social media channels, you know, look me up on Facebook or Instagram, Twitter. One more shadow is my handle, most places. I have my writing website, which is eanrogers.ca.

I'm pretty much the most Googledable Ian Rogers. There's an Australian chess master who's named is Ian Rogers. So it's me and him. We're both battling for dominance of Google right now. But yeah, if you Google me, you really much find me everywhere out there. And, yeah, I mean, drop me a line about UFO town. guardian or my writing. I've got all kinds of stuff that's available to read for free online if you want to take out some of my stuff. And yeah, I mean, usually I've got some good writing news coming.

There's lots of stuff happening this year that I hope to report on. UFO Town is something I'm just really, really proud of, and it's just the tip of the iceberg. Lots of cool stuff coming. So, yeah, definitely hope people will stay in touch. Awesome. Well, I got to thank you for kind of demystifying a lot of this for us tonight, man. I think we needed it. I hope people will check out the dock. Check out all your work. And, of course, I got to thank you for coming on

Somewhere in the Skies tonight. Well, thank you for having me. Somewhere in the Skies is produced by Third Kind Productions in association with the Entertainment One podcast network. Hey, guys, Ryan Sprague here. And whether I'm researching, working on the podcast, or skywatching from my roof late at night, I need something to keep me awake, alert, and ready to tackle the mysteries in our skies.

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