Somewhere in the Skies - UFOs & Folklore: Black Triangles, Squonks and Birthing a Myth

Episode Date: September 22, 2025

It’s a crossover you don’t want to miss! In this special episode, Somewhere in the Skies teams up with Gods, Ghosts, and UFOs for a wide-ranging conversation on UFOs, cryptids, and the unexplained. From Ryan’s dramatic black triangle UFO sighting as a kid, to the latest UAP Congressional Hearing and the controversial Hellfire missile video, we explore the mysteries that continue to challenge our understanding of reality. Along the way, we dive into folklore like the Squonk and the invented legend of the Bog Squatch, asking what happens when myths and mysteries blur together. At the heart of it all, we reflect on disclosure, witness testimony, and why sometimes the most powerful thing we can do is live with the mystery. ⏱️ Episode Timestamps 00:00 Intro & crossover setup03:07 Meet the hosts & Ryan Sprague04:30 Ryan’s journey into UFO research06:13 The 1995 triangle UFO sighting10:34 Birth of Anomacon conference12:11 Cryptid spotlight: The Squonk19:51 Creating the Bog Squatch24:14 UAP hearing & Hellfire missile video32:56 The three orbs mystery34:59 Disclosure, defense & secrecy36:34 Witness testimonies & triangles40:15 Black triangles worldwide42:06 Why triangles want to be seen44:59 Triangles & abduction reports47:25 Ryan’s father breaks his silence49:27 The human side of UFO encounters50:26 Coping with UFO uncertainty52:33 The illusion of government disclosure54:18 Personal disclosure & living in the mystery55:39 Why the journey matters most57:52 Closing reflections & outro Subscribe to Gods, Ghosts, and UFOs: https://open.spotify.com/show/2rng747nSCoPZtMnRtPRC8?si=6c5c97f2d7fb407d Please take a moment to rate and review us on Spotify and Apple. ANOMACON 2025: http://www.anomacon.com Book Ryan on CAMEO at: https://bit.ly/3kwz3DO Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/somewhereskies ByMeACoffee: http://www.buymeacoffee.com/UFxzyzHOaQ PayPal: [e-mail] Email: [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 Proud member of SpectreVision Radio: https://www.spectrevision.com/podcasts Read Ryan’s articles at: https://medium.com/@ryan-sprague51 Opening Theme Song by Septembryo Copyright © 2025 Ryan Sprague. All rights reserved. #UFOs #UAP #Disclosure #paranormalpodcast #Cryptids #BlackTriangles #UFOCommunity #HighStrangeness #uaphearing #AlienDisclosure #UFOsighting #ParanormalMysteries #Folklore #PodcastCrossover Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Bad advice? You talking to me? Kayak, got that right. Specter Vision Radio. our government's official position is not to speculate on this subject, we can choose to let our minds explore other possibilities. To use our imaginations, for if we consider that astro-scientists agree on one point, that the possibility of life elsewhere is not only quite probable, some feel if is there without a doubt. Let us suppose them that these objects are real space vehicles, extraterrestrial origin, and not an illusion of the mind.

I'm Ryan Sprague, and you are now Somewhere in the Skies. Welcome to Somewhere in the Skies. I am your host, Ryan Sprague, and we have a very special episode for you guys this week. We don't do this often, but I couldn't think of a better team to have this fascinating discussion. We're doing a crossover episode with the Gods, Ghosts, and UFOs podcast hosted by Jordan, Tom, and Mallory. Now, technically, I was the guest on their show, but afterwards, we decided that we should drop this on both of our main feeds, since we're both Spector Vision radio shows. So I am so honored to be their neighbor over at Spector Vision, and I was just so honored to be one of their guests on their show. We talked about so many different things, from birthing myths to the mysterious and depressing squawk.

Yeah, you guys ever heard of the squank? well, you will in just a few minutes. We talked about the UAP hearings, the Hellfire Missile UFO video, aliens, ghosts, you name it. We talked all about it. It was a fascinating discussion. You can hear it right now over at God's ghosts and UFOs,

or you can listen to it right now on somewhere in the skies. But I cannot recommend their show enough. Make sure you go subscribe to God's Ghosts and UFOs on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. And the same goes for us. Please take just a few moments to rate and review somewhere in the skies on Apple Podcasts or leave us a rating on Spotify as well. Wherever you get the show, those ratings and reviews go a very, very long way.

So thank you to all past, present, and future ratings and reviews. We truly do appreciate it. You can find us wherever you get your podcasts. You can find us on YouTube. and all the links for everything is in the show notes, including a link to God's, ghosts, and UFO. So let's get to it. Keep looking up.

My name is Jordan, and today I am not only joined by my attractive, indomitable co-hosts, Tom and Mallory. We've also got Ryan Sprague with us here today. Yay. Hello, Ryan. Hi, guys. Thanks so much for having me. I've been a listener for a while now,

and it's a true honor to be here, so thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Ryan, for anyone who doesn't know of him, is a prominent UFO investigator, a best-selling author, and a fellow podcast host in the Spectrevision Radio neighborhood. His book, Somewhere in the Sky's A Human Approach to the UFO Phenomenon, reached number one on Amazon, and his podcast by the same name has spent time at the top of Apple's charts. And now, Ryan, we're thrilled to finally welcome you as a guest on the biggest podcast in the universe, which we know has been your North Star goal all along. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. As soon as I saw the title of your show, I knew I was going to become a fan.

It's purple. We just really tried to keep it very tight and focused, you know. It's too wide a net. Oh, humble. Ryan, can you tell us a little bit more about the genesis of Ryan's break? Oh, yes. So when two parents love each other very ill. Oh, my gosh.

I'm right. I don't know anything about it. It sounds like a 70s concept record. No, sorry, Valerie, I had to. I had to. I'm originally from Syracuse, New York, born and raised. I was a baseball player for most of my life, actually, thought I was going to go pro, play for the Mets or the Yankees or the Blue Jays. My life was kind of heading that way. I played up until college when I got injured, actually. I ended up taking up theater in college instead, to my father's dismay. But he came around eventually. But I grew up. a love for the arts after that and appreciation for it. And I actually became an actor and playwright. And that led me to moving to New York City and kind of doing the whole cliche starving artist thing. And I spent years auditioning and producing writing plays. And yeah, that was kind of that part of my life. But when I was actually 12 is when I got interested in UFOs, 12 years old. And I had a UFO

sighting with my father. Very sort of dramatic experience for me personally and kind of led me on this splinter path of my life where I became a UFO researcher. I actually interviewed my first UFO witness one year later when I was 13 years old and that's kind of where my my UFO investigatory work kind of started one year after my own what I call an initiation when I had my own UFO sighting. So So, yeah, a lot of different kind of ways that my life went, but I found ways to bring them together and converge all of my passions. And that's led me to where I am today talking to you guys. So, yeah, that's the express route, I guess.

Can you give us a brief description of what you saw with your dad? It was 1995. We were in central New York. And I was fishing off a dock off of the St. Lawrence River. It was turning dark that night, so I reeled my line in. And when I'm reeling my line in from fishing, I see three white lights in the water. Like, what is that? So I start leaning over the dock and looking in the water, and then I realized it was a reflection.

So I flip over on my back, and I'm looking up at this huge triangle, just a perfect equilateral triangle, one white light on each point of the triangle and one kind of hazy, orange, reddish, ball in the middle, and I just laid on my back staring up at this thing. It made no noise. All I could hear was the water hitting the dock at that point. And I just watched it float over me. It was huge, the formation. I didn't see like a craft, I guess, a machinery of any kind, but I couldn't see anything behind it, stars, you know, the moon, nothing like that. And it terrified me. So I got like a little kind of prepubescent squeal out in my dad. He comes running out of this motel that we were staying at the time in the summer.

And he thought I fell in the water. So he just bolts down to the dock and he sees me laying there looking up at the sky. And he looked up too and he saw it. And we both just stood there watching this triangle for like, I don't know, maybe a minute, two minutes. When these things happen, like time is the last thing. Right, right, right. I feel on your mind. Two minutes is 15 seconds or.

You talk about being afraid, which is perfectly understandable. But I wonder, did you have any sort of associated thoughts or feelings witnessing this craft that may have been in collaboration with the craft? I didn't have any sort of download or sort of anything like that. I didn't have a communion with this thing of any sort, communication. However, I went through every. emotion in the span of those few minutes. I was scared.

I was excited. I got really emotional at one point, I remember, almost like I felt like I wanted to cry looking at this thing. I started laughing for like half a second because of how ridiculous and weird it was. And my dad is freaking out too. He's just like looking up at this thing shaking his head. And I keep going, what is it? What is it?

And when your father cannot tell you what it is you're looking at, That's when I got really scared. Yeah. So that unsettled me once again. And then, oh, my God, man, it was just every spectrum of the emotional rainbow within the span of those two minutes. But yeah. I feel like you had the most human reaction possible, the most human reaction to something like that, which is so unknown and potentially threatening, but also wondrous. And just, I mean, if I didn't already believe you, hearing you talk about your experience would be.

make me believe you because of the authenticity of your reaction to it. And I also think we're going to be coming back to that particular kind of craft and that subject. Yeah, it's a pretty good, Ryan, right? Well, before we get into the sort of topics today, I want to give you an opportunity to plug your conference because I know from the listening data that only about half of our audience makes it to the end. So I want our whole audience to hear your plug. Oh, my God. That's very kind of you. Yes, you know, ever since I started the podcast, I've been wanting to, and I speak at conferences, I've volunteered at them for decades at this point, you know, the big ones, the contact in the deserts, the UFO Congress, stuff like that. And I wanted to see if I could just do one. So three years ago, I reached out to a couple friends and colleagues and said, hey, you want to give a presentation at a virtual conference.

It'll be just like we're doing today, you know, just two rectangles talking to one another or in this case, just one rectangle. And I had so many people that wanted to do it. I was so honored. I think we had something like 35 speakers, the first one. And I somehow pulled it off, producing this entire two-day virtual conference on my own. It has grown every year. We're going on to our third year now. I have scaled it back tremendously.

But yes, it's called Anomicon. Oh, that's a great title. That's a great name. Yeah, after anomalous, you know. And yeah, I just thought it would be. be a good way to bring these communities together. UFOs, ghosts, the paranormal, supernatural, cryptids. Because at the end of the day, if you zoom out far enough,

I do truly feel that all of these anomalous things are somehow intrinsically linked. And that's what I wanted to do with Anomicon. So thank you. I appreciate you giving me the time. It's going to be September 20th. And it's free online, right on YouTube on my YouTube channel, just somewhere in the skies.

And we've got something like 15 speakers this year talking about everything. Like I said, ghosts, conspiracies, UFO, sea monsters, even. It's going to be a good time. Good time. Yeah. Oh, I'm hearing. I'm hearing no excuses. That's what I'm hearing. I'm hearing no excuses. Yeah.

Put a link in the show notes. So, you know, no one has any excuse not to show up. Well, Ryan, with you here, this is the perfect time for us to finally dive into the most recent UAP congressional hearings, which were just last week. But as I was prepping for this episode, I could have sworn they were a month ago. something something time isn't real anyway also Ryan you told me there's a pretty meaningful overlap between some of the biggest headlines from that from those hearings and your own personal history with UFOs which we heard part of just barely so

obviously I'm dying to hear more of that but first Mal's got a story that I'm pretty sure came out of a Dr. Sue's book okay is am I the only person who didn't know what a squawk was before this weekend I mean the only what's the The only person in what group? The whole world? I suspect no. Did all three of you already know what a squawk was? This is my first time knowing hearing about it.

Definitely not. Definitely, definitely not. I have heard the Steely Dan song, any major dude. And that word just always sounded like gibberish to me, and I assumed that Steely Dan made it up. A squawk for the listeners who might not know. like I didn't know, is a cryptid. Basically, it comes out of lumberjack lore in Pennsylvania.

It's said to live in the wild hemlock forests of Pennsylvania. Basically, you take a pig and you trim it down a little bit, and you give it skinnier legs, longer legs, and you take away the pig face and you give it like this grumpy cat slash person, and then give it loose, leathery, backy skin covered in warts. I do not like this creature. I do not. This creature doesn't like itself. It's like the thing that the squawk is so famous for is for weeping and wailing in the woods because it's so ugly.

It's so sad. It's so sad. My first question. And I know, I'm sure you've got more to say to us. Sure, sure. I did a lot of research, actually, as much as one can. My first question is, how would people know? That that's why it's weeping.

Would they just, do they just put two and two together? Like, oh, well, it's so ugly. And it's crying. It must be because it is ugly. You know, based on everything that I've read, I didn't get anything about the squawk speaking, so it must be an intuition. They must be a type of intuition that someone would have with the squawk.

You can just tell by the net, by the tenor and tone of the whales. That is a self-pitying cry. It's like how a mother knows when a baby's crying because it's hungry or when it's, oh, I can tell it's. self-hatred whale. I know a self-hatred whale when I hear one. I've made that same sound myself. Yeah. I'm a little about us. I'm imagining it with a hand mirror in front of itself all of them. Yes. Yeah. Well, the, okay, so the most fascinating thing about the squank to me is, first of all, the, I tried to look up any actual accounts of people seeing the squand. Right. That was my question.

Couldn't find any. But the fascinating thing is how many people have latched on to it. over the course of time since it was first introduced in a book called Fearsome Creatures of the Underwood written by William T. Cox in 1910. Then after that in 1937, it appeared in the tales of Paul Bunyan and his great blue ox. They talked about catching it in a bag. And this is part of the squawk lore. Okay. Okay. It will dissolve into tears. So they caught the squawk in a bag and then they were so excited to show people and they opened up the bag and it's just full of tears. And, you know, Paul Bunyan is fictional. But it showed up two years later in Henry Trekk. Ryan's book called Fearsome Critters. And he also shared another detail about the squawk that I find just delicious.

With time, it developed webbing between its toes, but only on the submerged left feet. Hence, on entering the water, it could swim only in circles and never get back to shore. Fossil bones stretched from these lake bottoms reveal the thousands perished of starvation in this manner. It's like, and then we... Wait, wasn't they're claiming... They're claiming fossilized evidence of thousands of dead squawks. Yes.

Yes. In these books that I'm assuming we're written for adventurous little boys in the 30s, right? Like that's what I'm getting from the tales of the squank. That it was fun to talk about the creepy epeas in the woods. But for some reason, we needed this. Like, so many cryptids are actually quite fearsome. Like, we're afraid they're going to drink our blood or steal our children. But this is something else.

This is something else entirely. and people seem to really like it. It shows up in three books. And then two very famous songs, Steely Dan, any major dude. And then also in 1976, two years later, a Genesis song by Phil Collins called Just Squawk. Ever came to you. Stop your tears from falling. The trail they leave is very clear for all to see at night, all to see at night.

Because apparently that's how you hunt a squawk is by following the trail of tears. Then the last thing that is very very. very, very, this is why the article was written that I read this weekend. There's a town in Pennsylvania called Johnstown that is now throwing its fourth, next year will be its fourth annual squankapalooza, which is essentially an all-ages cryptid festival celebrating the squawk and other creatures of Appalachian and Americana folklore and cryptosology. And there's a squawk mascot, and you need to look at the picture of this squank mascot hugging a child. It's the best thing I've ever seen. But yeah, my take is that I think that we like this cryptid, the way we like listening

to a sad song in the car and crying. Like a lot of cryptids activate a sense of wonder or even a sense of fear that's almost kind of exciting because it implies that there's more mystery and kind of enchantment in the universe. But this one seems to activate our compassion and possibly some kind of bullying. I'm not sure. I'm feeling. I'm still on a little bit like a bully right now. I'm better than the squank. Oh, that ugly squawk in the woods. At least I'm not a squawk.

Like, there's got to be, it's just a very different emotion that it activates. I immediately thought of that cartoon Chowder. Did you guys ever watch Chowder when it was on? It was terrific. And there was a character on there called the Sin a Mini Monster. He wasn't weeping like the squawk, but he was unattractive and sort of permanently unhappy. Here, I'll show you a picture of him here now. There he is.

He's just, he can't. And he size a lot. Where am I? He size a lot. I want the squawks tears to be like, you know, I often wonder like, what is a legitimate cryptid and what is a mythic creature, right? Right. Like a quote unquote, legitimate cryptid is something that could be an animal, you know,

a big foot or, you know, the Ogopogo could be a giant eel, I don't know. But we're pretty sure squawks aren't, you know, having squank families and eating berries or what, you know, they seem more mythic to me, which is great. There's definitely crossover in the Venn diagram between like folkloric and cryptid. And, you know, there's the spectrum of like concern too. So on one end you have the squawk who's like, no one really cares if the squunk is real. It's like doing all the things he needs to do by just being the folklore. And then all the way on the other side, you have creatures who are tantalizingly close to being proven. They exist. You know, you have like actual zoologists out there, like looking for, like, devoting their careers to looking for one specific or whatever. But yeah, the squawk seems to be like very purely a folkloric instinct. It's like a much funnier version of like the quote unquote snipe, which I was a boy scout. I was told when I was very young that there were snipes out there and I believed it. I didn't know what they were. Nobody knew what they were. And then they canonized the snipes in the movie up when he tells them to go look for a snipe. He finds this like wild colorful bird. And he's like, I found one.

Yeah, where is that thing? It's a snipe. There's that thing as a snipe. I love that idea of such kind of birthing a myth, too, right? I was in Nova Scotia recently. I've been working over there doing a ghost hunting show, of all things. When we were out in the bogs one night, like right out in the swampy area in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, one of my investigators and I were like, let's create a cryptid out here.

like let's see if we can do this and we did we created bog squash and we started going around the town and asking people you know the locals at the bar the waiter at the restaurant have you ever seen the bog squash we had literally just made this thing up the day before and we started having people be like oh we've heard stories we have heard stories of the bog squash and i'm not kidding you guys it got to the point where we put a couple like joky articles online and the The International Cryptid Museum reached out to us and said, hey, do you have any information on the Bog Squad? If you do, we'll put it in the museum. And that's when I really started looking at this whole cryptic thing as like, you know, is this something we're creating, like a Tulpa almost.

Are we able to think these things into existence through these stories that we tell and stuff like that? I love that idea. I mean, if your branding is good enough, Bog Squatch is such a good name. It really is. It's a very, it's a hooky name. I got a trademark that. Yarmist motion bog squash. Are you kidding me?

Oh my gosh. I already want to subscribe to that newsletter. I'll get on it. I'll get on. We just had this conversation with Kelly Chase about the co-creative nature or relationship that people can have with the mystery. And I think about the people who invented a ghost where they got together and they said, let's just make one up. Let's make a person up. And they made him up.

They gave him a name. They gave him a life. started appearing in these seances that they had. Like it became a thing. And was it Joshua Cutchins who was talking on Kelly's show on Cosmosis about what is it, fourth wall phantoms, where writers of fiction have encountered their own characters, IRL. And so somebody might take a very blurry picture of a bog squash. Yeah.

Somebody might get eaten, by the way. So, yeah. It's popular enough. In terms of weeping entities, give me, you know, squank over La Yerona any day. Mm-hmm. Because she's scary. 100%. Yeah.

The squank is something that I would be very happy to suggest into reality because it apparently just inspires people to write nice songs and cute books about adventures. And then we're just like relating to a creature. I think that's what it's making me think of most, especially with what you were just saying, Ryan. That whatever is going on, it's about all of us and what's. being communicated because whether it's about reality being a lot more suggestible than we think, or it's just about us connecting over something that we want to be true, that we're all kind of searching and yearning for a bit more because we know there is more. But all of us know that

there are more pages in this book and we need to keep turning them together. I think either way, something magical is going on. And I like that a lot. My main takeaway from this segment is that now wants to manifest into existence, a creature that hates itself so much, it dissolves into tears. So I don't know. I want it to exist. I'd be happy to mute squank. I'd sit down and have a good cry with a squawk. The Summer in the Sky's podcast is free to listen to every week. But if you would like to help support the show, we have a very active Patreon page where you give what you think the show is worth. In return, you'll get early access. to the main show, bonus episodes, and priority to ask our guests your listener questions.

Your support truly makes the show continue and grow. So to learn more and to join, visit patreon.com slash somewhere scouts. You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? Enough. Enough to get lost. Or you could book a stay with help.

Welcome to your oceanfront room. Just steps from the water. The Hilton sale is on now. Book on Hilton.com or the Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected. When you want savings, not surprises. It matters where you stay. Hilton for this day. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. fit for your ambition for citizens bank let's move on to much unhappier topics which is the very unhappy intersection between you know the defense department and congress and anomalous phenomenon as we know or as as you should know the house held a congressional hearing on Tuesday September 9th about unidentified anomalous phenomena, which is prosaically known as UFOs.

And there were a number of witnesses and a number of quite compelling statements, and a video was submitted by Representative Eric Burleson, a Republican from Missouri. Now, it should be noted that according to Burlinson, the footage was presented as received from a whistleblower, and that, quote, an independent review is ongoing. But what that tells me is that there's no traceable or verifiable chain of custody. We just have a video. That looks military. You know, shrug.

Now, a contemporary article published by TWZ or The War Zone, which is a pretty reputable Defense Department magazine, online magazine, gives a good bit of context. It was published the same day as the hearing, and I'd like to read excerpts from that piece. quote, the footage shows the purported AGM-114, which is a missile fired, called a hellfire missile, which was shot at this UAP, striking the object and causing some debris to go flying, then deflecting away without detonating. The object which had been shown traveling along a steady path before the attempted intercept is seen continuing on, despite being struck, until the clip ends. The video feed also prominently includes the text L-R-D, L-A-S-E-D-E-S, which would point to one M-Q-9 laser designating the target for the other Reaper to engage, which is a drone, with a laser-guided hellfire variant.

This is also known as buddy lazing. Now, what is known is that, yeah, everyone have their buddy. The Houthis in Yemen have been engaged in on-again-off-again attacks on ships and in around. the Red Sea, as well as targets in Israel, using ballistic and cruise missiles as well as long-range kamikaze drones since October 23. This video was taken off the coast of Yemen on October 30th, 2024. Prior to the announcement of a ceasefire between the Houthis and the U.S. government in May, American Air and Naval Forces were very actively engaged in responding to those threats, as well as targeting the Iranian-backed militants in Yemen. MQ-9s were a fixture in those operations,

with the Houthis claiming to have shot down dozens of them. American Reapers have been operating over and around Yemen in general for years now. The journalist George Knapp was a witness during this House hearing, and he responded to Representative Berlinson's request for a comment by claiming to have known about but never actually seen this particular video. And then he went on to say, quote, there's a whole bank of these kinds of videos that Congress has not been allowed to see, that the public has not been allowed to see.

What the hell is that? I think I have to rush in to say that I had, I have listened to an interview between, we were actually just before we started recording, we were talking about the Andy McGillin, the host of that UFO podcast who had one of his listeners on who claimed to be a weapons expert, worked with these kinds of munitions a lot and was very familiar with the type of footage that was being shown and the type of ballistic information you could see. And upon inspection was just not convinced that this was anomalous at all. that this looked like a fairly standard sort of test firing type situation where you're just trying to sort of see what the hellfire missile might do in this type of circumstance against this type of object, etc.

I have to say that even on my first couple of watches of that video, I didn't see anything super compelling either, mostly because I don't, I'm blind to it. Like, I don't, there's not enough visual information there for me to hook onto to say one way or another what this thing is. It feels like a very obscure artifact to me. But listening to that interview with that guy, who we should say also, wanted to be anonymous and also emphatically not a debunker, somebody who thought that there are very compelling examples of UAP videos elsewhere, but that this doesn't seem like one of them to him. I've spoken to George Knapp on several occasions prior to him and his partner, Jeremy Corbell,

releasing a lot of these videos. I've been a colleague of Jeremy's for years now. So it's always interesting to get their perspective on these things before they go public. I can tell you right now, they had no idea this video was going to be shown at the hearing. I think they were a little taken back at that as well. But I listened to that interview that Andy McGillan did with the Ammunition Expert, I believe it was, who is quite familiar with the Hellfire missile, the several types that they are. And the big thing a lot of people are arguing is it never exploded.

You know, the missile never upon impact did not explode. Exactly, Tom. Now, that could be for many different reasons. To me, it seems like the impact was not great enough even that the missile, would explode or it just was not a hellfire missile that does explode. There are ones that don't detonate either from what I've been told. So for me, I hate to say this, but I do believe there is probably a prosaic explanation. My big question with every one of these videos is why. Why are we watching this? Why was this captured? And we don't know the why to any of these videos, the tic tic Tacs, the Go Fass, the

Gimble. This one, the Baghdad Phantom that came out, you know, not too long ago. We don't have enough data to really look at it. In the minute that Berlinson said, this was sent to me anonymously with absolutely no information or metadata, I'm like, then why are we watching? Why are we watching it? Yeah. Seriously. It's a double-edged sword, guys. Like, for me, this video is being shown worldwide. It's on ABC News, CNN, Fox. Like, you name insert mainstream media here across the world. This video is being shown. What's not being shown is the incredible testimony of the four witnesses that testified at this hearing. So that kind of disappoints me to be on. Well, I mean, this is conjecture, obviously, but we've seen this play out this exact way so many times

that it would be sort of a mistake not to apply Occam's razor and to say the likeliest explanation for why this video is being shown is as a distraction. Because the best thing you can do to get people to not pay attention to the thing that matters is show them something that's showing. shinier and more exciting that matters actually less. And that if you can get everyone talking about this video and then eventually later on, and you don't even need to debunk it, but you could probably, if you wanted to later on, say, oh, we actually know what this is and it's not anomalous at all, then suddenly the whole entire thing, the air goes out of it and no one cares anymore.

And nobody's watching the hearings. And nobody's listening to the witnesses. And nobody's because it's like, oh, well, you already categorize that entire thing as having been debunked. So like it doesn't matter anymore. We've seen that happen again and again and again and again. To me, that's the most likely explanation for why we're seeing this video is because If there hadn't been a video, then all we'd have to talk about would be the testimonies themselves, which are a lot more interesting.

But before we get to that, there are two things that struck me about the video. One, who says it's a UAP? It's moving, it has ballistic motion. It's not doing anything whackadoodle like turning 180 degrees on a dime. It's just gliding over the sea. But it was weird to me that the missile did not detonate. Okay, there are dummy missiles or whatever. Practice, I don't know.

Okay, fine. The three bits that come off the thing and. stay with it, almost in a triangular or a delta form, is damned odd. Yeah. And so if it was a drone and something struck it with force and pieces flew off, you wouldn't see them. They certainly wouldn't continue tagging along. That just seemed very, very odd to me.

I had the same thought that if you were listening to me, that's when I was like, oh, because that to me, but then I, when nobody brought it up, I'm glad you said something just because I was like, well, maybe that's like a tracking, like something. happening with the video and I just don't know how to look at this footage. But I thought the same thing. I was like, are three little drones popping out of this drone? And like three little baby. Seems like debris.

People talk about orbs and threes. They talk about craft and threes all the time. And it actually looks like it could be four. But it just doesn't, it looks very, very strange. Like something shook other, also flying on the same trajectory at the same speed pieces, loose. That's the thing that I thought was. as well with my extremely layman's eyes, you know? Right, what's your take on that?

Yeah, the three orbs, I guess, as people are calling them, that broke off of the main object are very compelling. I have gone back so many times and watched that, and it does look like after it impacts that main craft that continues on, those three things almost lock into a triangular position and start following the object. That is very strange. Very strange. Anomalous, I don't know. But what I, what could be even more compelling is, was it not a test of the missile, but a test of that object? Is that object the technology of the United States or some black budget program Lockheed Martin? I don't know. Something like that. And they're seeing will the objects within the mothership, I guess, continue on if something were to happen?

Can it create some kind of field that, some kind of containment field or whatever. Here's where I'm coming from with this. We've spent so much time we being a kind of a collective waiting for, you know, Big D disclosure. But Big D disclosure is almost certainly not going to happen. Why? Because what this really is about and has been about for almost 100 years now for crying out loud, 80 years, is the Defense Department. So like if something is disclosed, it's going to be.

how shitty we've been with the CIA. It's going to be how terrible we've been in competition to create weapons of war, to weaponize maybe off-world or technology created by non-human intelligences. The last thing is going to be is some kind of list of those intelligences or what they actually want or need, because every time we're getting these videos or this kind of stuff involved, it's about these craft appearing in war zones or over sensitive areas, infrastructure, missile silos, that's all Defense Department stuff. Their posture to it is one of fear. Can it kill us? Can we kill it? Most people don't feel that way. And so I had learned a wonderful word recently and it's called conciliance. And conciliance is an agreement between approaches to a

topic of different academic subjects, especially science and the humanities. So the conciliance here is not just spooky videos of tick-tacks or whatever or stuff that comes out in dribs and drabs for some reason, right? But like the other end of it, and we talk about this, we talked about this with Kelly, are eyewitness reports, right? And that is an entire body of data that not only adds to and complements what we already know from other sort of lines of inquiry, but actually is in many ways like reinforcing of certain truths that we can extract from this. And the reason I bring up conciliance is what Ryan was talking about at the beginning when he was 12, and he saw this triangular craft, which, by the way, I think those things have names.

I mean, those things are seen so common, and I wanted to tell a personal anecdote. When I was around the same time, I was on the road with my band, and we stop somewhere on the road, and I pick up USA Today, and there's a picture of a freaking flying triangle over Phoenix in 1997. And I'm like, what in God's name? Like literally, they're like, here's a UFO. Everybody saw it. Here's a picture of the Phoenix light, what they call the Phoenix lights, before they were very lamely tried to be explained away with flares or something silly. And Ryan, I know you wanted to talk more about that as it pertains to this congressional hearing. Sure. You know, and I'm happy you brought up Kelly Chase because her work with witness testimony

echoes the work that I do in the UFO field as well. And we did hear some really good testimony at the UAP hearing, but like you said, Tom, all of it was military base. And, you know, that's fine. Like that boosts the credibility in a lot of people's minds when it's trained observers seeing things that they cannot identify. I get it, I get it. One of those witnesses was a gentleman named Dylan Borland who testified.

Former Air Force worked for geospatial intelligence as well. guy was very smart. He knew not just what was in lower Earth orbit, but high Earth orbit as well, and witnessed one of these triangles that we'd mentioned and had an extremely profound experience in witnessing this over Langley Air Force Base. And as I began walking towards the light, towards the flight line and the track, the light then flies across the base, across the flight line, and as it flies to me, a triangle manifests around the light. I can't tell you if his active camouflage, I can't tell you if it appeared around the light, but I can tell you that it was a white light and then it was a triangle. It stopped about 100 feet in front of me and approximately

100 feet above me. My telephone got extremely hot, completely froze dead. I remember how thick it was. It was between one to two stories thick, equilateral triangle. I could never see the top of it and the edges were 90 degrees. There were four lights in total. one light on each corner and a larger light in the center, two to three times the size of the corner lights. But what was really odd was the outside, the best way to describe it is, like, looking at a James Webb telescope picture, where you have the colors and then the black background. So the craft itself was this black metallic flake paint, but on top of the craft was this gold, lava, plasma, some type of fluid going over and around the craft. I'm under this for about two to three minutes.

And then the center light flashes two to three times, no sound, immediately shoots up to commercial jet level minimum, in my opinion. And I immediately feel static electricity all over my body. And then I smell the smell of after a thunderstorm or lightning storm. He was very affected by that event. You can tell he's petrified to be testifying before Congress because of the reprisals that could come with something like that. The stigma is shedding. within the military community when it comes to reporting these things. But outside of the military, it's still hard for people to come forward and report these things.

And like me, at age 12, I didn't talk about seeing that thing for decades. Because the minute I told my friends, they started making fun of me. Or the minute I brought it up at a family birthday party, they're like, uh-oh. Like Ryan's the crazy one in the family now. So it's hard. But the reason I bring that up is I think it's very important, Tom, like you mentioned, for every military UFO witness, there's a thousand people around the world having these experiences. And that data is not being accounted for. When it comes to the

quote unquote government trying to explain these things, they don't care what Sue saw in Michigan or what, you know, Pat saw in Detroit or whatever. Wow, those are two very close places. I could have done much better than that. But you get the gist. I live in Michigan and Detroit. That brings me to my question, though. Am I correct in thinking or remembering that these very large triangular craft have been witnessed hundreds and hundreds of times? Yeah.

They are probably one of the most commonly reported UFOs, yes. I mean, I have several in both of my books. actually, probably a majority of them are these black triangles. And whatever they are, they're being witnessed both by military people at military installations and by the public all around the world. Phoenix Lights is probably one of the biggest mass UFO sightings to have occurred with a boomerang-shaped craft, some saw a V-shaped or triangle. And then there's several cases in my books that just completely blew me away when it comes to this stuff. And I think those people need to be heard too, not just these military people.

This is what we bang on about constantly, which is data aggregation, which is like, take everybody's witness statement, judge no one, look at the patterns that emerge, discard the outliers, whatever it is. And the thing that's so mind-blowing, particularly about this craft, your experience, I think is his name Borland, that gentleman's experience, that witness's experience, is that these things are not in a hurry. They don't care that they're seen. They sort of glide along almost leisurely, completely silent.

The Phoenix lights were wanton. They just floated along down the valley, and everyone's out there taking pictures and shooting videos. And so my question to you is, and of course it's speculative, are they ours? Ultimately, like, is this like some product of whatever, Lockheed Martin, reverse engineering, something, something, something? Or why are people getting so freaked out when they float over military sites? What's going on? So I recently spoke to David Marler. He's the head of the National UFO Historical Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

They are the repository for all UFO documents, QFOS, Mufon, every UFO investigation that has ever been done. All the files, mostly all the files, have been donated to this gentleman, David Marler. And they're all located at one place now where you can go visit and research these things. things. Including Blue Book and stuff like that or not? Yes. Yes. Wow.

Including Blue Burke files as well. Yes. And I was talking to Dave and I asked him that very question. Like what is going on? It's like Seinfeld. What's going on with the triangles? He told me the most commonly reported UFO and the one UFO that wants to be seen. And that gave me chills thinking about that.

Whatever the triangles are, they want to be seen. why I don't quite know, but they seem to have a lasting effect on people more than other UFOs too, I've noticed. There's one case in particular in Michigan that I investigated personally with a mother and a daughter, and they both saw one of these triangles above their home over Lake Michigan. And what's weird about this is they both were staring at the same triangle, and the mom turns to the daughter, and she's like, oh, my God, it's so amazing. It's silent. It's burning white. It's beautiful. I feel so good. So euphoric. Are you feeling that? And she looks over at her daughter and her daughter is on the ground in the fetal position covering her ears.

And she's like, it's so loud. It's so loud. And she said, it's, it's so black. It's, it's evil. It's evil. So I just, that just blew my mind when they told me that. I sat down with the mother and the daughter. And to hear them have a completely different experience. Can I ask how old was the daughter? The daughter at the time was, I want to say, 14 or 15. Okay. So she wasn't a little kid. No, no, no, no.

And it was just crazy, man. They had completely different perceptions looking at the same exact thing. And then on the flip side of that, another guy I interviewed back in 1974. that case, the Michigan one, 2006. I'm like, okay, yeah. But then back in 1974, a gentleman saw the same exact craft over a drive-in movie theater that hundreds of people were looking at that. It's so often the case with these things.

They're so heavily corroborated, which is wonderful, unless you're in the fetal position having a big freak out. Are any of that particular craft associated with abduction experiences? Yes. Oh, great. Okay. Yeah. They have, which bothers me because a part of me wanted to believe that the triangles were human tech, complete human tech, and that's it. Stealth bombers. I mean, my sighting in 95, I'm like, totally could have been a test of a stealth bomber or something. But when I'm hearing that these triangles were being witnessed back in the 70s and even earlier, David Marlter has cases from the 30s, the 40s, these triangles were being. Wow.

Yeah. Okay. When it comes to abductions, I have had reports come to me where people said that it was a triangle that took them or they saw before they had some sort of experience of something being taken or going aboard a craft or whatnot. You know, I don't know. I can't pretend to know what that means. But yeah, the triangles are one of the most baffling things I've come across. And maybe that's because I have a bias when having had seen one myself. But, yeah.

I remember watching Borland's testimony, and he said it was two stories high. And I'm like, Christ, what would that? Does that conform to your sighting, that size, that scale? To an extent. What my father and I saw was very big. It took up a huge portion of the sky. Now, the problem is, you know, obviously I was 12. Memory's faulty.

I just don't know. But to me, it's. seemed very large just by the amount of sky that it seemed to black out behind it. And this is common, too, that it just blacks out the sky. He also mentioned, too, he had, like, physiological effects, Borland that, like, in electricity seemed to be surging through him when he witnessed that craft at Langley. I do feel that I had some of that when I saw the triangle, that I felt like this, like, vibration, almost going through my body. It could have been adrenaline, fear. or I don't know, but that resonated with me when he said that,

that he could almost smell like this ozone smell when the craft was above him, and he felt these like electrical surges going through him. That like subconsciously hit me in a weird way. So I don't know. I don't know what to make of that. What happened with your dad? Did your dad ever talk about it? And do you talk about it still?

Yeah. So my father never spoke of that night until 2017. when that New York Times article came out. It's crazy. Even with all the UFO work I've done throughout the years. I mean, he's come to see me give a couple talks here and there and been like, yeah, good job. Still, you know, I don't know, I don't know, but he refused to talk about it. And then in 2017, when that New York Times article hit and UFOs basically kind of were all over the news,

I had traveled home to Syracuse to visit my family, and we went out to a bar. And I just remember, unprompted, mind you, he just out of the blue was like, you remember that thing we saw? I'm like, do I remember that thing we saw, Dad? Yeah, look at what I'm doing with my life. I think I remember. Yeah, yeah. Do you see me playing for the Yankees? No.

I'm a euphologist. And we talked for hours at that bar about that night, about everything going on in the UFO world. And look, if that's what it's going to take for him to find him. finally embrace that something truly anomalous or unexplainable happened to us. Awesome. Like, everyone works on their own time when it comes to these profound experiences. It changed my life that night. But I think it took him a little while to realize these things were actually happening

and that we were not alone. What he needed was a permission structure, right? So he's not going to say a damn thing about it until the gray lady comes out. You know, the paper of record comes out and goes, Hi, they're real. And then he's like, oh, okay, I can do this now. I can talk about it. But like, as we all know, experiences have been ridiculed and dismissed for decade after

decade after decade, including active suppression by our own government of like, no, it was Venus. And by the way, you're crazy. And what we are primarily concerned with, apart from really wonderful stories that spook you out a little bit, is the community aspect of it. and the strategies that the individual can take in terms of kind of getting over the ontological shock and feeling that they can share the stories and connect with other people regarding these kinds of experiences. For me, at least, that is what's primarily important. I don't care what the Department of Defense does or does not do with this as much as I care about what human beings are able to glean from it

and how they can handle it emotionally where they are more interested. integrated people. I feel very much the same way, and I've been really impressed with your patience and your overall, like talking with you feels enriching and positive to me, Ryan. And I'm curious about how you cultivate that attitude when it feels like so much in this space feels either genuinely scary or extremely defeating. Like, what motivates you and what would you recommend to those who might be feeling some ontological shock or overwhelm in the face of.

what looks like. Apparently something massive is going on, but I feel kind of gaslit always. Yeah. Number one rule, and I've talked to Kelly about this on several occasions. I think her and I have been on a similar journey in the UFO world in terms of getting an inside look at the intelligence apparatus and their kind of intrusion into this topic. and how they can use that to their advantage and use us to their advantage as well. When you have former intelligence people coming out and saying they ran UFO programs and, hey, I know the truth. I'll give you little breadcrumbs here and there. My suggestion to anyone looking into this topic is do not listen to anyone else but yourself.

Take what other people say and come to your own. conclusions because nobody has the answers to any of this stuff. The United States government has absolutely no idea what is going on when it comes to UFOs. In my personal opinion, I could be completely wrong, but at least from what I've seen from both the inside and the outside, they have no idea what UFOs are. But they can control the narrative. And that could be very disheartening. And it's made me want to quit looking into this topic because I've been promised certain things and I've been promised the answers and they never ever come and I don't think they're ever going to come from the government whatever the hell that means like what is that

what does that what does disclosure even mean right every person who's uh yeah what would it look like exactly how are you like have your own exposure it's a rainbow it's a rainbow go ahead and try to chase it you know it's like it exists technically it exists but you're never going to find it it's an apparition. It's something that exists as a sort of phantom. And even the idea of what the government even is. And I think the older that I've gotten, and I'm not old, but I'm not young anymore, you realize, oh, the government is not the government. The government is not one thing. The government is a massive conglomeration of interconnected organizations that are all with all kinds of different incentives and ideas and objectives. And to ascribe an action to the government is, it's

meaningless. It's like, well, who are you talking about? And what are you talking about? And so So when he comes to disclosure, capital D disclosure, yeah, it's a rainbow. It doesn't exist. It's an emergent sort of illusion from the misunderstanding of what the government is and what it's for and how it works. Representative Berlinson's preface to showing that video was to complain bitterly about how he can't, he's been gaslit and they can't get the hold of all the stuff they've been asking for and blah, blah, blah, blah.

Big D disclosure, it ain't coming. And it's not going to come from that kind of hierarchy. But it's not a consolation prize to say literally that. we have the truth ourselves. The community of people and experiencers are the ones who have, one, a completely different posture toward this phenomenon than somebody who's worried about whether it will blow them up or they can blow it up. And they're in some kind of like war with whatever, China or Russia. Most of us don't feel that way at all, you know. So experiencers have these stories to tell and we can, all we do is just listen and bear witness and truths will

emerge that are immediately available to us. Once people feel like, like your dad, feels like, okay, I can talk about this and you talk for hours. There is understanding available there. Everyone has their own disclosure at whatever point in their life they're going to have it. Everyone's seen something weird or experienced something. They just cannot readily explain, whether it's a ghost, the UFO, Bigfoot, like, you name it. That's a disclosure. It doesn't have to be a UFO or an alien. It's just something that changes what you once thought. And I think that's what life is all about. It's just like adapting to the next mystery.

And I love that. I love chasing the mystery. I love chasing that rainbow. And I do look at it as a rainbow. That's why I don't get disheartening, Mallory. That's why I don't, like, give up. Because every person who comes to me with their story inspires me to keep looking for the answers, but never expecting them. I don't care.

I'm going to be completely honest with you guys. I don't give a shit what UFOs. are or aren't at the end of the day. I've made some of my best friends through this topic, whether they're artists, musicians, scientists, academics. This topic challenges you. It makes you think, it makes you learn. That's what I love about it. Is the government ever going to tell us the truth about what crashed in Roswell? Probably not. That'd be pretty cool. But I'll tell you this, if they gave us the answers to all these UFO mysteries, we probably, A, wouldn't believe them because they've been covering it up for so long, whatever they do know.

And B, we probably won't like those answers. So I love just living in the mystery and like imagining what it could be. I think maybe one of the other healthy and optimistic ways to look at the government, quote, unquote, relationship with disclosure is that it's one set of stories. It's one set of experiences. And it's going through a filter of like chaos and subversion and siops and gaslighting and infighting and infighting and all. kinds of stuff. It really is like watching a circus. And it's not to say that nothing in the circus matters, but it certainly isn't the only thing that matters. I love that there are hearings. I love that they're going on. They have gone on. They're still going on. I want them to continue going on. Not because I think that I personally or the people that I care about are going to get all the answers we want from them, but because it's one of the important sets of stories that's going on. But there are so many other great and important stories, way more important stories, frankly, to me, than whatever is happening in Congress. Like, I don't. like Eric Burleson. I like this guy. I like watching him go through this experience. I don't consider

him the government, but he is part of the government. So like, he is one of the people in the government circus that is going through this experience. And we get to watch some of that happen. And that's, that's fun and cool. But it's not the answer with capital A. And it's never going to be. The big takeaway for me is that Ryan Sprague is a fellow traveler and friend of the show. Amen. Amen. Ryan, I mean, you're magical. Really, I can't even tell you how many notes I took as you were talking.

And I grew up very religious. And the way you talk is shockingly similar to where I've landed when it comes to spirituality in many ways, which is that truth claims and certainty actually ruin everything about faith, spirituality, connecting to others. And there's something about uncertainty. And like, I think the way you phrased it was living in the mystery, which I mean, amen. brother. Amen. There's something about uncertainty that unlocks the best in humans. It unlocks our faith and our hopefulness. You can't be hopeful with certainty. You can't because you know what's going to happen. And so we're forced into a place of beauty. And man, you live there full time. So thank you for sharing that with us.

And thanks for coming on, man. Your hail fellow well met, seriously. No, I love having conversations like this. And it's It's so refreshing to not talk all the government stuff all the time. Because like you guys said, it's a tiny portion of what's going on in this conversation. So you guys are doing fantastic work. And like I said, anytime, I would absolutely love to continue traveling. Oh, he said it. He said it. You're not getting out of now, man.

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