Somewhere in the Skies - Unsolved Mysteries: The UFO Stack Pack Hour

Episode Date: June 8, 2020

On episode 164 of SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES, Ryan is joined by listener favorite, Rob Kristoffersen, of the OUR STANGE SKIES podcast to break down the most memorable UFO segments from Unsolved Mysteries! Join the guys as they stroll down memory lane, discussing the Roswell UFO crash, the Socorro UFO landing, the Falcon Lake close encounter, the Allagash Four Alien Abduction, and of course... the Rendlesham Forest incident. With first-hand witnesses and experiencers coming forward, some, for the very first time ever on camera, to the highly accurate, yet sometimes hilarious reenactments. We cover it all in its unapologetically 80s ways as Robert Stack does what he does best; makes the trench coat cool and creeps us the hell out! Check out all of Rob's work over at: www.ourstrangeskies.com The updated and expanded edition of Somewhere in the Skies is now available! Order now in paperback or E-book. To purchase, and to leave a rating and review, CLICK HERE Website: www.somewhereintheskies.com Patreon: www.patreon.com/somewhereskies YouTube Channel: CLICK HERE Official Store: CLICK HERE Twitter: @SomewhereSkies Instagram: @SomewhereSkiesPod Watch Mysteries Decoded for free at www.CWseed.com Episode edited by Jane Palomera Moore Opening Theme Song, "Ephemeral Reign" by Per Kiilstofte SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES is part of the eOne podcast network. To learn more, CLICK HERE Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/somewhere-in-the-skies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Join me for these intriguing stories and more. Perhaps you may be the one chosen by fate to solve a mystery. So there are many reasons to have Rob Christofferson on your show, but I thought today we'd take a break from the news and the social networks and dive into something that always gets us excited and terrified. And that is unsolved mysteries. Now, you not only have done several roundtables on our Strange Skies podcast, Rob on this show. But you know more about these cases, probably much more than anyone else I know.

So today I thought we take a look back at some of the most memorable UFO segments to ever grace the Unsolved Mysteries television show. So Rob Christopherson, welcome to Unsolved Mysteries, the UFO Stackpack Hour. I love it. Thank you for having me on. Yeah, Unsolved Mysteries is where my UFO, education began. It has to start somewhere, man. I mean, hey, mine was probably, I'm trying to think, what was like the first thing I ever saw? Maybe one of these segments, it very well could have been. Definitely X-Files was a big one for me.

You know, made UFOs actually look cool for once. So, yeah. Yeah, that did it for me. But I'm astounded when you and I decided to do this. We went back and looked at pretty much all. all the cases they covered. I know there's some were probably missing, but there was so many first time witnesses coming forward on Unsold Mysteries. I had no idea. Like, it's astounding the people that they were able to get for each of these cases. Yeah, absolutely. I think there's

this correlation between the public exposure of UFOs and eyewitnesses coming forward, because because you kind of saw similar things happen after close encounters of the third kind came out. And there was this interesting article I read in an old issue of Flying Saucer Review. And the title of the article was called A Case of Rabbit Snatching. And it was about this guy who was in his 30s at the time. But when he was a teenager, he lived at an orphanage and he had rabbits that he kept. And these rabbits kept disappearing. and eventually he had this like extraordinary encounter in his bedroom with these beings that

materialized out of nowhere and it appeared at the like side of his bed and I don't understand how the guy wasn't freaked out but he wasn't freaked out about it and he saw it as a positive experience became a very spiritual person after that but he came forward to tell a story after close encounters of the third kind came out. That's interesting. Yeah, I'm sure there is an influx of reports that probably come in when stuff like this occurs, because it's now on the minds of people. And that actually came up with one of the skeptics in one of these episodes, which we'll get to, this idea that, like, these shows, they compel people. I mean, look at unsolved mysteries overall. I mean, they were solving murders and people drowning in quicksand left and right, am I correct? Yeah, pretty, I mean, that's definitely part of it.

Unsolved Mysteries and Rescue 9-1-1 with William Shadner, they definitely helped to make it seem that way. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, we kind of, we worship Robert Stack over here, but we're going to talk a little later about his actual thoughts on UFOs, because it doesn't really line up with a lot of what we're going to cover today, but that's a whole different story. But let's kind of, I guess we'll go in chronological order, Rob, if you don't mind.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, of course, they had to cover the mother of all cases, Roswell. In 1947, a strange craft crashed in a remote New Mexico field. The metal debris had startling property was covered with unusual markings. Witnesses claim it was a UFO. The military here at Roswell Army Air Base in New Mexico immediately announced that the object was a UFO. And within hours, changed their story and said it was only a downed weather balloon. And the military concealed the most astounding discovery of the century.

And we open on McBrassel, the main guy. The man. Yeah. So he's looking like a young Sam Elliott. And we might as well say right here, so they reenact everything on the show, which is amazing. And I mean, they do a really, really good job. So, yeah, we open on McBrassel. eating dinner during a thunderstorm and do that mustache that was something else yeah it was and

I actually wrote down exactly that this guy looks like sam Elliott oh my god really yeah it's it's pretty amazing uh yeah you get mac brasel just sitting there eating dinner there's a lightning storm going on all around and uh all of a sudden he just gets up and he's like that didn't sound like any just old lightning strike and he goes out to his front porch he's right and he goes out to his front porch to look out, see if he could see anything, and, uh, you know, it's, uh, it's a very nice dramatic shot. Oh, yeah. What a way to start this thing out. And I mean, so yeah, you know, he goes out there, he hears this. We know, uh, the Wilmots where some of the first have come forward and say they saw something going through the sky that night, um, and that it was kind of coming down and possibly

crashing or landing. And then we get, uh, we get one of the first interviews ever with Loretta Proctor. one of the ranch owners next door to Mac Brasel. And oh my God, man, she was a sweetheart. I would have loved to have met her. Yeah, absolutely. She's very approachable, down-to-earth kind of person. She attests to Mac Brasel being, you know, this kind of guy that wouldn't make stories up. He was trustworthy.

And, yeah, everything that's to come with the guy is probably definitely happened to him. Exactly, yeah. And I think that's going to be a running. theme to tonight is Unolved Mysteries loved spending time on like giving credibility to the people coming forward with this stuff like to the point where it was like, okay, we get it. They're a normal person. They're not crazy. We get it. We get it. Well, like, that's the thing. And I made this point on Twitter, I think last week. But it's like there are two categories of people that are UFO witnesses that are good. And they're either trained or

observers or there are people so mundane in the world that they couldn't possibly be making it up. Yeah, it is pretty, it's one or the other. It's one of the other. All right. So we see, oh, Kevin Randall makes an appearance in this with an equally epic mustache, I must say. Yes, he's bringing the mustache, you know, bring in the broad-shouldered suit.

I love it. Yeah, well, this was interesting. So for those who don't know, Kevin Randall is one of the leading researchers on Roswell, you know, along with Tom Carey, Don Schmidt. And I thought it was interesting. Randall refused to call the debris, the metal that was found in the desert that night, metal. He kept stating that the original description was like a shiny plastic. Yeah, yeah, I thought that was pretty interesting because even to me, to this day,

I think of all this stuff is having been metal, like straight up metal. Yeah, and even Loretta Proctor, because once Mac Brasel goes out, the next morning, which is July 3rd, 1947. He finds the debris field, which is about three quarters of a mile long and I think like a few hundred feet wide. He takes some of it. He goes to the Proctor's, his closest neighbors. And when I say closest neighbors, they're like 10 miles away or something like that.

And Loretta Proctor described the wreckage that he had as kind of wood. but then she would say if I talking about it today I would say it's more resembled like plastic but when they tried to light it on fire because I guess everybody just tries to light you know

random pieces of debris on fire it wouldn't do so they couldn't cut it and yeah I found that very odd like it's not metal it's plastic that's very strange to me it is it is

But, you know, I mean, that's what they saw and what they experienced. I thought this is funny, too, after they, like, tried to burn it, cut it and all that. They cut back to actual Loretta talking to us. And she's like, oh, yeah, I mean, McBrassel said, we should probably go out there and check out what it is. And then she says, we shoulda. We didn't. Just, yeah, we probably should go out there and see what crashed. But now, we didn't do that.

So great. They had other more important things going on than a crashed UFO on their... You got to get to tend to that livestock, man. You got to make sure that farm is running. Hey, that's a good point. Yeah, that is their bread and butter for sure. Yeah. So, I mean, this kind of follows the, you know, the narrative of Roswell.

They phone Roswell Army Airfield. Jesse Marcell comes out to take a look. And this was cool. They showed an interview with Jesse Marcel Sr. from a documentary, which, they didn't really do often on unsolved mysteries, like use other footage from other things. So I thought that was pretty cool. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, they really don't. You know, sometimes you'll see like a map that's like computer generated that they draw or something like that. But like, yeah, it's never usually other video footage. So I did enjoy that part of it for sure. They were just fragments strewn all over the area, an area of about three quarters of a mile long

and several hundred feet wide. So we proceeded to pick up the parts. See, I tried to bend this stuff. He says, it will not bend. I even tried to burn that. It would not burn. See, that stuff weighs nothing.

It's not in the thicket than tinfall in a pack of cigarettes. He says, we even tried making a dent in it with a 16-pound sledgehammer. Still no dent in it. One thing I was certain of, being familiar with all air activities, that it was not a weather balloon,

nor an aircraft, nor a missile. It was something else of which we didn't know what it was. Yeah, it was a great interview. I think you can find it online in its entirety. This is a pretty condensed version. But, yeah, so, I mean, Marcel goes out there with a sledgehammer.

He starts going to town on this thing. I'm just imagining, like, a military guy in uniform, middle of a desert, like, going nuts on a piece of plastic, you know? Right. I love how, yeah, they've got shared and Cavett holding it and Marcel's just like trying to smack the hell out of it. It's so great. It's like all the dudes in the first Thor movie trying to get the hammer out of the calendar.

Hold my beer. Oh, man. All right. What else? Oh, Jesse Marcel Jr. as well. We get his story about his dad bringing wreckage home. There's these eye beams with weird etchings on them. And then we get a sweet phone acting between.

Walter Hott and Colonel William Blanchard about the flying disc. It's so great, too. Yes, sir. Oh, yes. What do you want, sir? They're so angry over the phone with one or another. It's like, just do what I tell you. Here's my question.

Stack says that the wreckage was flown to Rightfield, Ohio, which is like what most of us know. But they made the stop in Fort Worth, Texas. Now, Rob, I know this was, I think this has been proven, but do you know, why some of it was brought to Fort Worth before they went to Wright Patterson? Not really, you know. It's just like, we're going to make a quick stop. It doesn't really make sense unless they decided, I don't know, in the air or something like that. Maybe word got to them that they had leaked or had gone to the press to say, oh, we recovered a flying saucer. Maybe they got word in the air. I'm not sure. Yeah, I don't know.

I mean, but Kevin Randall even says in this episode, like, he thinks stuff was getting shipped everywhere. He says Langley, CIA headquarters, McDill Air Force Base in Florida. Like, what the? What? Why? Why is some of it going to Langley, some to Florida, some to tech? I, this is interesting.

Maybe it was all a plan to, like, keep all the stuff separated so that no one could find out where, like, the one true source was for what they found. I don't know. Maybe, but, like, it makes sense to go to. field because I mean air technical intelligence command is there these are the people that basically study like reverse not reverse engineer well they kind of reverse engineer like enemy technology and stuff like that so it made sense at the time but like it doesn't really make sense to ship things here there and everywhere when you have one area that does that it's it's not

like a lot of experimental stuff goes on at the basis that they were talking about but But a lot of people have added on to the Roswell narrative ever since this came out. And it should be noted, like, this is the first time that Roswell was broadcast to a general public. This is where it blew up is on Unsolved Mysteries. And, like, it aired and the season premiere was, I think, September of 89. and they re-aired it in January of 1990 and it got even bigger ratings the second time. So like the idea of like UFO crashes was something that even in the UFO research world

was kind of like shelved for a long period of time. It's like no, UFOs didn't crash. The government doesn't have anything. It's all just, you know, this identified stuff. And then, you know, in 78 when. Stanton Friedman gets the first inklings of a UFO crash and has told to talk to Jesse Marcel. That same year is when Leonard Stringfield delivered his presentation about crash recoveries. So it all started to come out at the same time.

And then this is where Roswell started to become a household name. Right. Yeah, you're so right, man. like without a few chance encounters and like rumblings here and there from Friedman and Jesse Marcel Jr. and everyone. Like this may never have seen the light of day again. So yeah, I think we have a lot of people to thank for that. And they do have Stanton Friedman in this episode. And, you know, this was the first time I'd seen him in something or heard him, Rob, since he passed away. And just hearing his voice and seeing those eyebrows, it brought back

so many good memories. Oh man, yeah I had a smile on my face I'm like God I love this man He just his convictions He sticks to him It's so so great so great I think what's interesting here too is

Hot takes the press release physically to like the different news agencies and the radio and all that stuff So I found that kind of interesting You know instead of like sending out a wire Or something like that You're hand delivering it personally That's interesting

That is yeah you gotta wonder like hopefully like nothing gets lost in translation like it has to be word for word you know i wonder if that had something to do with it we'll never know um no that's a good point though that brings up the whole you know controversy with this headline comes out r a a f captures flying disc and ranch near roswell and then the next day it's retracted we all know that story by now you mentioned something rob about adding on to the roswell story and they kind of did this and the episode with this dude Barney Barnett. Now, this wasn't a story I'd heard of.

This was an engineer out of Socorro, which we'll get to. Just a coincidence with that one. But, yeah, this dude from Sequoara in New Mexico, he finds a circular craft and bodies. So now we've raised the level of Roswell, not just debris, not just whatever, metal plastic, but bodies. Four bodies on the ground in spacesuits, he said. So, yeah, had you heard about this dude, Barney Barnett? Yeah, he was a kind of a big guy in St. Friedman's book, Crash at Corona. And the thing about him is, like, the stories about Barney Barnett coming upon the crash site are always second or third hand.

But apparently he told a lot of people about this. And what's interesting is, like, later we're told about the MGA 12. documents in the memo. In particular, it says in the memo that the crash site was discovered, I think, like two or three miles from the debris field. Well, the thing about Barty Barnett is that he wasn't two to three miles away. He was like 75 miles away on the plains of St. Augustine, which was kind of the central thesis of crash at Corona is that at the Corona site, you had the debris field, you know, right outside the ranch that Brazzell was working on. And then 75 miles away, you add the actual craft there. And like the narrative has kind of changed over the years to

some say it's two craft. And then some say, well, no, the craft was discovered, yeah, a couple miles away from the ranch. But like, that's the thing. It gets kind of confused here. But I had heard Barney Barnett's story before. And I'd also heard the story of the archaeology students that stumbled upon it at the same time that he did. And there's kind of an update later. It's maybe like three or four years later in the same episode that we're covering another story from in this episode. But there was another witness that allegedly went out there and saw the bodies too.

But yeah, Barney Barnett, he's kind of just this infamous guy known by name. because he uh it stanton friedman never met him he died in 1969 but like everybody just came forward uh when stan friedman was doing the initial research for on this case and just basically said oh yeah i talked to barney barnet he talked about the story all the time there you go there you go well let's uh let's stay on stan friedman for a minute here rob i've never actually asked you this. And I can't believe it hasn't come up in conversation, but Majestic 12 makes an appearance in this episode as well. And what are your thoughts on MJ12, these papers? Have you ever looked into it? Do you think there's any credence behind any of it? Yeah. What, what is it,

first of all? Would you mind telling some of our listeners who might not be familiar with it? What exactly this thing is? And should we even pay attention to it? So following the Roswell crash, allegedly Truman put together this group of 12 members that were allegedly designed to cover up aliens' existence and the Roswell incident and all this stuff. And I don't put a whole lot of stock into it just because, like, I know Majestic 12 was a thing. I just don't think it was designed to keep UFO secrecy in place. I don't think that's what it was there for. I think in my conversations with M.J. Benayas, he pointed to other documents that indicate that MJ12 was more related to atomic fallout.

But the thing is, is that the way that the documents became known is through Bill Morrin. Jamie Shandra and you know Bill Moore he went on later to just basically you know spoil his career in uphology and hung it up in 89 so like you kind of got to look at those documents you know with a grain of salt because like it's almost cinematic when you read about the way that these documents were dropped off because it's basically Jamie Shandra was sitting at home and this package just like is like shove through his mail slot and he he gets this envelope and inside it there's like film and they develop it and it's like oh there's these memos like right here and like it's something that's built on over the years like the Psalm 101 manual is part of the MJ12

documents there are like other documents that even came out just like a few years ago so it keeps getting added on to but I just don't I don't put a lot of stock into it but I mean, Stanton Friedman did everything that he could to try to authenticate those documents. Even John Tenney helped with that back in the 80s, I guess, like, when they were trying to test, like, the typewriters that they would use, he offered up his typewriter with a sample. So it's, yeah, it's part of that 80s disinformation age of stuff where you have to take that information with a grain. of salt. There are good cases out there, and some of them are going to be featured in this episode. But yeah, I just, I take them with a grain of salt. I don't put a lot of stock into them, but they're an interesting part of this crazy UFO history. Yep, absolutely. It's all part of it

somehow, whether we want it to be or not, you know. And of course, I knew Tenney had to be somewhat involved with Majestic 12, somehow, some way, six degrees of John Tenney. Probably will find a way to connect him to every case tonight. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. Well, we get a good testimony from Captain Pappy Henderson, who said he flew with this stuff and saw bodies, this, that. I don't know, Rob, anything else in this episode that you really thought was worth bringing up before we move on? No, I think we've hit on the major points.

I mean, it was nice to... Stan Friedman comes out and basically says, well, the reason that... they would want to cover this up is because we just went through a second world war and nobody would be able to handle the existence of extraterrestrials at the time which god bless that man i love that man for coming at us like that but like yeah maybe maybe not that's why the rosswell uh mystery endures is because there is no definitive answer and yet there are more people and more accounts that keep getting added onto it after this. And, I mean, there's been countless books written about it.

So definitely the classic case example of what uphology can offer up. Absolutely. And, I mean, you still have idiots making television shows about Ross. Wait, wait, what? Wait, wait, isn't that you, Ryan? I thought there was someone else in my studio here. Never mind. It's just a mirror.

Whoops. Anyways, moving on to actually not moving too far. Year-wise, yes, but not location. We're moving to Socorro. Socorro, New Mexico, 1964. It began as a routine police pursuit, just a wild teenager tooling through town. And ended with one of the most remarkable UFO episodes in history. A close encounter still impossible to ignore.

Rob, I know this is one of your favorite cases. So this is going to be a fun one. We open on Lonnie Zamora, literally parking at the police station. A car whizzes past, and he immediately gets back in his cop car and starts pursuing this car for speeding. That dude, whoever was in this car, had a lot of guts speeding past a police station like that. Yeah, and I love it because, like, if you look at the guy on the screen, he doesn't look like he's going all that fast. No, no, no, no. He doesn't.

But, man, Lonnie Samora was ready to meet that quota, wasn't he? He had severe regrets about not meeting that quota at the end of the day. And it makes him so much more human. But yeah, I like how they set up this like cinematic approach here. At the beginning, you got Lonnie Zabora just exit against vehicle. And he turns around dramatically. He's like, I got to catch that speed. It was a slow day.

I think he even admitted that in this episode. But at the same time, he's pursuing this dude. Like, what I would assume was for a real. long time. They're going through the city and then they're going out into the desert. So, I mean, whoever was, you know, in that car was not stopping for Lonnie Zamora anytime soon. No, he wasn't. He was just like, I'm wondering if the guy was just completely oblivious to the fact that he was being chased by a police officer and says, I'm just joyriding, you know, I got my top down. I can't hear anything. Is that a police siren? Oh, well, let's just keep going. Let's just keep going. Or let's get really conspiratorial.

Maybe he was leading Lonnie Zamora out to where something is about to happen. What do you think? Right, right. It almost seems like a setup in many ways, especially when you read the account in any book that you want to pick up. It's just like, was this dude set the fuck up? You got to kind of wonder, and I'm like, I don't really want to feed the skeptics because fuck the skeptics at this point because their other explanations are dumb. Yeah, yeah.

We'll get a few of those dumb explanations as we go on here. But so let's kind of paint the picture for anyone in the audience that doesn't know about this case. We have Lonnie Zamora, who is, we should mention, a cop, if that wasn't clear already, after what we just talked about. But they got him. They got him on camera. And he's recounting this event. And I just love hearing him tell this story. So, Rob, would you mind maybe giving us the Cliff Notes version of what happened once he got out there and noticed something in the sky? Yeah, so as they're approaching the edge of town, Lonnie Zamora sees this kind of like blue flame up in the sky and he hears this roaring sound. So he knows that he's in the approximate location of where a dynamite shack owned by the mayor, which just sounds like the beginning of like a zany ass fucking comedy here. But like he's like, oh, it must have exploded.

So he turns off onto this gravel road, and it leads to kind of an arroyo. He crests this hill. It takes him a little bit to get up there. He has to try a few times. But as he crests the first part of it, he sees what he thinks is an overturned car to a couple of people. Have ways I could see a white object to my left there. I thought it was a turnover car. When I got up on top of the mesa there, I looked down and I seen this big white object on the ground.

I could see something around the craft there. I could see some figures look like they were walking around the craft. They make it seem like he saw these people the entire time on the show when, in fact, he actually didn't. Our research, when we did the episode on Lonnie Zamora showed that he only saw these humanoid figures for probably. about three or four seconds. Wow. I did not know that. Wow.

Good work. Yeah. In real time, he lost sight of him for about 35 to 40 seconds. And he comes around this clearing and he can see not a car, but what looks like an egg-shaped object suspended on legs sitting in this Elroyo. And he stops, he gets out, he looks at it. And then all of a sudden he hears this, it's like a low-pitched sound that goes to a high-pitched sound. He hears a roaring sound that begins then.

And he sees this blue-flamed shoot up from underneath this object. It lifts up. And it doesn't lift up very high in the air, about 20 feet. But he's looking at it from the safety of being behind his car, essentially. And he watches it kind of slowly. float away, like barely clears this neighbor, this mayor's dynamite shack, and then just speeds off into the desert. At first, you know, after I got to my census, I said, did I see it or didn't I, you know,

what happened, you know, and that's it. And from that point, he radios a deputy, Sam Chavez, who come out, they inspect the landing site, They find these bushes that are singeing, but when they go and they touch them, they're actually cold to the touch. They also find circular indentations in the ground and a couple other burnt areas. So there's a few things I just want to interject here, Rob, in terms of how detailed, wow, I almost said mysteries decoded. Jesus Christ. Blah, wrong show. Unsolved mysteries.

how they covered the craft itself. It looked so good, first of all. Yeah. The special effects were amazing. And second, when he first gets sight of this egg-shaped craft, you can see the reflection of the craft in his sunglasses. Like, dude, they went all out for this one. This is probably the best example of when Unsolved Mysteries really puts their dollars into making a story,

really good because if you look at some of the earlier ones, dear God, the CGI was terrible. We'll get into some of those. But like, this is probably the best example of a UFO. It even has the insignia that he claims to have seen on the side of this thing. And it kind of just like looks like a beat up egg just like hovering in the air. But it doesn't look hokey. It looks kind of real. And then, yeah, it speeds off.

But the guy that they got to plays Zamora plays his part perfectly well. And what I love, too, is the interview segments, they interview all these people against the backdrop of the desert, which just, you know, adds a little more authenticity to it. But, yeah, it's definitely the best example of UFOs in Unsolved Mysteries. Absolutely. I couldn't agree with you more. And, I mean, yeah, like you mentioned the symbol. Now, I know this is something you've looked into a lot as well. Now, in the episode, they have, they describe it as a vertical arrow with a horizontal line beneath it and a crescent-shaped line above it.

Now, I know this episode is pretty old and there's been some, you know, debate on what the actual symbol was on this thing. How do you think they did with that, Rob? Is that what, you know, Lonnie says was on there? The thing is, is that in the research that we found, there was an individual by the name of Captain Moody. I think he was a captain. But he was a member of Project Blue Book. And at the time, mysteriously, he was at White Sands Missile Range working on a project called Project Cloud Gap. Now, Project Cloud Gap was ruled out in the initial reports as being responsible for,

the sighting here. And in fact, they went, uh, the project blue book folks went into detail trying to figure out, well, is this a lunar lander that was being tested out that just managed to fly into this Arroyo. And there was 11, allegedly 11 of them in production at the time and none of them matched the description. But, uh, Moody was kind of a spearhead in this investigation early on. Like, uh, it wasn't, uh, until a few days later that,

Blue Book actually took over the investigation. It started with the FBI, who was also mysteriously in town that day, doing something else. But one of the rumors and one of the things that we think he did was he told Zamora to lie about the symbol. And basically that if he did that, we would know if there were other eyewitnesses that came forward what the real symbol was. So one possibility is that the symbol that he drew is intentionally the wrong symbol to throw people off to, you know, for any other additional I would come forward. Right. The other symbol and what may be the actual real symbol looks like an A with three horizontal lines running through it. Interesting. Okay. All right. I can, I can kind of see the logic behind that. You did mention other witnesses.

And we did get a sense of that in this episode, which is pretty cool. had this this dude Jim grinder who was 13 at the time. He was traveling with his family and they stop at a gas station. And they tell the gas station attendant like, what? What do you got going on in your town here? This thing, this oval-shaped thing, like passed right over the hood of our car. So, I mean, if this is true, if this is another testimony to the event, at least we now know it doesn't just rest on the shoulders of Lonnie Zamora. There was that eyewitness.

and I think there was a, there might have been another eyewitness that claimed to have seen it too, but, uh, yeah, it lends a little more credibility. I mean, Jim Grindr was a teenager working at his parents' gas station. So it's great, it's great story. But, uh, that has actually been one eyewitness account that has been kind of bolstered. And it's one that is considered trustworthy when it comes to this case. So yeah, it's, it's good that's somebody else seem to have witnessed it. They kind of attested to the fact that they saw Lonnie Zamora or they claim to see a cop, you know, running in pursuit of it. So, yeah. Interesting. Yeah, if we can connect those dots, you know, game over, man.

But, well, let's move back to the, I guess we could say the military investigation with this. So within 90 minutes of the incident, army officials from White Sands Missile Range show up headed by Captain Richard T. Holder, who they actually got on camera as well. Again, go unsolved mysteries, like just bringing out the big guns with these things. Well, my first impression was that it was something from the range that needed possible help. You know, first aid, attention, or at best security. The more I got into it, the less convinced I was that that was a case. To try to find out if we could see any evidence of anything, it would make us think it was a hoax. We found nothing.

You know, there's people that gathered around the site at this point. and this is interesting. We get a reenactment of the captain. He goes to a branch on a scorched tree and literally tastes it. And that was the extent of the investigation. He's like, uh, nope, cordon this area off. And then, yeah, there's a, there's a small group of, uh, you know, onlookers out there, including one little kid who's apparently selling like popcorn or peanuts out there.

I'm so happy you saw that too. Okay. What the hell was up with that? I mean, get your peanuts, get your popcorn. What the hell is this kid doing out there? Right. Like, do we need this type of concession stand out at a UFO site? Like, maybe there's a lost economic opportunity there.

I'm not exactly sure. But I feel a little bad that this kid was shut down. I know. Yo, that is an entrepreneur. newer. I mean, I will tell you this, man, whenever, like, um, not to get dark or anything, but when 9-11 happened, like, the next day, there were people on the streets selling t-shirts, you know, like, right, stuff like that. So, I mean, that stuff happens. I just, what an Easter egg in this episode? Like, what is this kid doing in the middle of the desert at

a UFO site? Hocking cigarettes or popcorn or something? Um, right. Man, man, man, I'm glad you caught that, too. Let's see. Um, um, Well, the army captain that we mentioned, he backs up Lonnie Zamora. Everything we saw seemed to support the story that Officer Zamora recounted. My impression of talking to him was that he was mystified. He wanted an explanation. Nothing gave me the slightest hint that he did this as a hoax or cooked it up for fame or fortune. That's the thing is like everybody that's talking about this case is like,

I immediately thought it was this. And then when I found that it wasn't this, I was like, well, he experienced something. I just don't know what it is. It doesn't make any sense. And I'm like, that's the perfect encapsulation of like any legitimate UFO encounter. It's just something happened. But we have no fucking clue. And I mean, this is what's kind of heartbreaking.

We know this event kind of really affected Zamora and his career. And, you know, he was getting hounded by reporters after this from all over the world. He was sick of talking about it. He didn't want to be known for this and kind of drove him to retirement, if I am remembering correctly. Yeah, he ended up retiring and running a waste treatment plant. This taught me all over town and wanted to know this, wanted to know that. And then I got phone calls from all over the world. and I was getting, you know, disgusted with it.

There you go. Hey, we all have a second life in us somewhere. So, you know, he probably does regret following that speeder out there or not speeder, has it looked like in the show. But, yeah, man. Oh, but we also got, like you said, Blue Book came out. We get probably our first ever televised reenactment of Jay Allen Heineck. Before Aiding Gillian, there was there.

actor on Unsolved Mysteries. And I'm not counting close encounters because he was not himself in that. Yeah. I remember, oh, man, this is, yeah, this is an interesting memory that I have after watching this because, like, Unsolved Mysteries is like a family thing for us. So it was usually on a Friday nights. So the family would gather around, watch it. I think Rescue 9-1-1 was on Tuesday nights, if I remember correctly.

I think you're right, yep. On Fridays, we would watch it. I remember this case affected me a fuck ton at the time because it was just like, this is a cop. He fucking saw this shit. Everybody's attesting to the fact that he saw something that they can't explain even to this day. They can't fucking explain it. But like we were doing this project in middle school. And I think it was in sixth grade at the time, sixth or seventh grade.

And in our English class, we were doing this project that. where we were like kind of breaking apart the lyrics of we didn't start the fire and just like and doing a presentation about all of the shit that was like in there. So like, you know, it was pretty much kind of broken down by decades. So the teacher gave us like, okay, you go research this by the decade and that by the decade. But the other part of the project was, well, what would we add to it? you know, what could we replace some of the lyrics with? And I distinctly remember, because

the computer system that we had at the time was new, I went to the search engine and I typed in the fucking name, Jay Allen Heineck, and I'm like, it never came back with anything, but I'm just like, that name never left my consciousness after that.

I really, to this day, I can't fully explain what it is about this case, but it was just like, it just, it rocked my young adolescent mind. We all have that case, man, and mine is coming up in a little bit here. Yeah. But yeah, so, yeah, that,

Sicoro is one of the best cases out there and has genuinely mystified even the most hardened of skeptics. So, and that has a lot to do with the credibility of the witnesses, which is, you know, big with these things. And that couldn't be more true than our next one. And this, this is an interesting case. We have Falcon Lake May 20th, 1967. So we are moving over to Canada, Manitoba.

By his own admission, Stephen Mickelak is an ordinary man who leads an ordinary life. But in 1967, Mikalak claims that his life was turned upside down when he had an extraordinary encounter with a mysterious flying craft. We get, you know, nature-loving, bird-loving Stephen Mickelac. right at the start of this one, which was so refreshing. I wasn't expecting to see him on camera for this case. So yeah, yeah. Did you know anything about this case, Rob, prior to this episode? Uh, yeah.

I, man, like, Stephen McIllack is probably, well, sorry, Stefan McIllack. Because they call him Stephen McIllack in the episode. His name is Stefan McIllack. Oh, that's good to know. Yeah, he's from Poland. So he's probably one of the most interesting. interesting UFO witnesses that I've, you know, ever researched or anything like that. But he was a, he was an amateur geologist, you know, he did it on the weekends.

And basically what he would do is you'd go into the Manitoba wilderness and he'd look for quartz fains because quartz fains would often lead to silver deposits. So this was his amateur hobby in 1967, May 20th, 1967. And he decided to go out into the wilderness. You know, he told his family, see you. I'm going to look for silver. And he goes up the night before, and he sets out early the next day to go and look. And shortly before, I want to say, it's like 9 o'clock that morning, he finds a quartz vein. And, you know, he's just going to town, going to town.

He has lunch and then gets back at it. And a few minutes after lunch, he notices that there's some geese that are just like going nuts, you know? And he looks over at him to see what the heck startled him. And he looks up and he sees these two what he describes as cigar-shaped objects with a bump on the top of them. And one of them flies off, but one of them starts to come down closer to where he is. And dear God, the CGI on these UFOs is terrible. What are you talking about? No, like, it looked fake as fucking, you can tell.

This is probably, in terms of the UFO coverage on Unsold Mysteries, this was probably the worst CGI they did. I can admit that. Yeah, yeah. And this UFO lands on this rock field near where Stefan Mikalak is. And the general shape of it that they got on the show is correct. That's exactly pretty much what he saw. So he goes up to it and he thinks at first that this is an American experimental craft and

it's having some kind of trouble. So he goes up to the craft and he says, hello there, Yankee boys, having trouble? Thinking of USA, I said, okay, Yankee boys. A Yankee boy. To me, you are in trouble. You got troubles. I'll help you. Come on out.

We'll see what we could do about it. And when he doesn't get a response in English, he starts talking in German, Russian, Polish, Italian. There were a bunch of languages that he knew. My God. When his English received no response, Stephen tried Russian. Then Polish. And finally German. Deutsch?

Come in here out. Come out. I'm here out. I'll get the hell of you. And he just like yelled it at this fucking UFO. So a door on this thing just opens up. Like it just, he said it like kind of just like slid open to the side. And he kind of approaches up close. to it. He has a welder's goggles on. He's a welder by trade. He's an industrial mechanic. And he puts down the visor to look into this thing and the CGI inside this goddamn craft, it's terrible.

Right. And I think he even admits, at least his son does later on in a book that his son helped co-write that, like they kind of just made that up what was in the craft. Because he didn't really actually see too much inside of it from what I remember. No, no, because it was like a, you know, really bright light coming from inside. But he described hearing what he thought were voices. And the way that he does it and the show is so fucking great. I love it. There was a gritty, gree, gree, gree, gree, kind of shrieky talk like a, like a kid's in problem or something.

Well, okay. Well, while you're on that, Rob, dude, this guy is like, he is a performer. You know, he is. He's a good storyteller. So, like, having the actual witness on there and having him be that engaging, I think only adds to the story. And some people might think that's a bad thing. But for me, I'm like, damn, like, this dude is passionate about what he saw. And, like, he is reliving it as he's telling this.

Oh, yeah. Like, you can catch him, like, when he's describing looking up at it for the first time and he's on camera describing it, describing it, describing it. He's looking up as if he's reliving it at the time. And like he is he's very passionate about the story and it's something that carries on even

after the initial encounter. But like after you know he kind of peers in a little bit the door on the craft closes and it kind of lifts up a little bit and it rotates and in front of him is this like grid of

it looks like an exhaust grid. Yeah, like portholes almost. Yeah. Yeah. And he is shot in the chest with hot gas, and it immediately catches his shirt on fire, to which he rips it off and stuff. And to make the point, this craft was landed on this rock for approximately 30 minutes. So he was actually able to sketch this thing out in his notebook before he even approached

the damn thing. But, you know, he starts to wander out. And then I decided to say, now is the time for me to buzz off from here. Go out. So I start going. He's like half naked. Kind of trying to the woods. Yeah. And like I just want to note that the guy that is stumbling in this episode has clearly never stumbled a day in his life. And you can fucking tell. Yeah. He didn't really. get the director's note on how to stumble correctly. What's up, guys, Ryan Sprag here, and I'm just dropping in to remind you about our Patreon campaign.

Somewhere in the Skies is always free to consume, but it's not free to create. So if you want to help the show on a monthly basis, we have tons of rewards for you in return, including shoutouts on the show and website, bonus content and episodes, and free merge. Want to be my guest or pick a topic for the show? you can do that too.

So if you'd like to learn more and to help support the show, visit patreon.com slash somewhere skies. Thank you and keep looking up. Well, before we get to the next step, Rob, I have to say, I don't mean to laugh at this guy getting caught on fire, but the way they did it in the show was just so comically over the top that I had to stop the episode because I was laughing so hard. But that being said, like, if, if that,

actually happened to to mickleck that is terrible yeah it is it's not one of the best experiences that you ever want but yeah it is kind of comical in the way that it uh happens but um yeah he uh he he essentially stumbles to his pack to find his uh compass to figure out how to get back to the road because he needs medical assistance he's in a lot of pain he's nauseous and he finds that uh His compass is just spinning wildly. He doesn't know why. So it takes him a little while. I think it takes him like an hour,

but he finally stumbles back to the road. And what they don't tell you in the show is that there's a car that passes him. And he tries to flag it down. And initially, just drives by. And then it comes back. And it's an RCMP officer. Okay.

And he explains what happened to him. He explains that a UFO. fucking shot him in the chest with some gas. Basically, a UFO farted on this guy because he smelled like sulfur. So we know, you know, this UFO farted on him. It's disrespectful. UFOs should not be farting on people.

It's a real problem in this case, and I hope it never happened to anybody else. Yeah, it's a cosmic crop dust. Yeah, it really is. And this RCMP officer listens to his story, and he turns to him, and he says, sorry, I have other duties to perform and he drives away.

What the hell? Yeah, this is in the original articles that Chris Rukowski actually wrote for Flying Sauce Review and for NYCAP. There's PDF copies available out there, but

the report is just wild, but yeah, he claims that's what the RCMP officer told him, and he drove off. Wow. It took Micklech somewhere in the neighborhood of four hours

to stumble back into town he was doing his best to kind of keep his distance from people because he thought he was like radioactive or something like that but he ultimately buys a bus ticket

to go back to Winnipeg where he's from and he's taken to a hospital and where they kind of like they don't really do a lot for him they give him medications for like his nausea

and for some other symptoms, but they don't really know what's causing it. And they ruled out radiation poisoning, which is weird because the guy has kind of like symptoms of radiation by and large. Right, yeah, we should stress. Like, he had these circular burn marks on like his lower abdomen that matched what he says was the same like grid on the portholes of the craft. So if you're right, if that exhaust came out, burned him, like, it matched perfectly to the sketch he made of the craft that he saw. So, yeah, interesting. Absolutely.

And eventually, he actually ended up going to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. And they studied him for about a week. He goes back and, like, for a while, he actually had to fight to get his medical records because they never sent them to him. He actually, I believe it was John Keel and another researcher named Bertolt Schwartz, who actually helped him fill out like medical release forms in order to get his stuff, but they never found anything, you know, out of the ordinary. But what he noted was like every, I think it was like every three weeks, the like grid pattern burn that was on his abdomen would just would come back. it would disappear and then come back and the symptoms would come back from it too,

which is wild. Yeah, that's pretty weird. But the investigators did end up going back to the site where it had occurred and they found that there was like radioactive ore running underneath it. But they found that there was like a large burnt area on this rock where it was black.

So, you know, some physical evidence there. they found, I think there were like some trees nearby that had branches that were taken off to. But there was also a year after the incident happened, Micklech returned to the landing site again with a friend. And they found this like very strange kind of like silver that was coated with radioactive ore that a lot of people think was like planted for some reason. Yeah, yeah, they found it like not too far below the ground. I think, but enough where people are like, oh, it looks like it was kind of freshly dug in there. This is one of the biggest mysteries and one of the biggest puzzles, and skeptics have pointed to this as the reason why the case should be discounted. Why would particles and metal fragments of this size

and radioactivity have been missed by all previous investigators? And this is one mystery that we don't have definite answers to this day. You have that going on, but I mean, otherwise, this is like a pretty solid case. It is. It's solid. And I think, you know, the Canadian Air Force got involved with some people from the U.S. They came down to investigate. And, you know, like you mentioned, Chris Rikowsky was a big part of this entire thing. And, you know, to this day, says it's one of the best cases Canada ever had. And I'd have to agree. I mean, you know, there's some bumps along the way with some dubious researchers that Mikulak got involved with. But that happens to any UFO witness.

You know, you got to be careful who you end up working with because their intentions might not be as, how would you say, altruistic as you'd hope they'd be. But one of the other things, Rob, I thought was interesting in the book written by his son, he remembers when Unsolved Mysteries came to film his father for this. and during breaks one of the guys, one of the crew members kind of passively said to the father, man, this must have been the most difficult and, like, most remarkable experience of your life. And his father shook his head and said, no, being in a concentration camp, escaping to America, joining the army and going to Germany to translate and dismantle concentration camps was the most difficult part of my life. Holy shit, dude. So at this point, like, all of the unsolved mystery,

his crew are gathered around and he's like regaling them with these other stories. So I mean, even this dude might have witnessed being sort of another world land, but he can even say to himself, like, I've experienced much more difficult things in my life. Yeah, absolutely. He's, I love that man so much. I do. Yeah. And the fact that he spent, how many languages could the dude speak? It's just crazy. Like, I wish I could have met this guy. You know, unfortunately, he did passed away. Yeah, he passed away, I think, in the 90s at some point. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, we kind of only have his story to rely on at this point, but like I said, his son has been very vocal. He co-wrote a book with Chris Rukowski and his father about all of this. So definitely I think

people should check this one out. It is definitely one of the most underrated cases, I think, out there. But here's one. Here's our next one, Rob. August 20th. 1976, the Aligash abduction. I hate this one so much, Ryan, I hate it. You hate it? Well, too bad, brother. We're going,

we're going full, full on dude nude with this one. Who are they? And where do they come from? Are they real or imagined? In recent years, hundreds of people have come forward with startling accounts of abduction

by alien beings. And the fantastic saga of the Alagash fore four young men who claim that they were abducted by aliens during a camping trip in the Maine wilderness. Their chilling story may seem unbelievable, but more and more people have become convinced that such accounts are based in fact, not fiction. Al-A-Gash abduction. This episode covers a bunch of different UFO-related stories, but this one actually focuses this segment we're talking about on the Al-A-Gash-4 case out of Maine.

and it opens immediately with we get one of the men Jack recalling that he wakes up in this unfamiliar room and he's completely naked and to his left he sees a inner trance almost his brother Jim and their two friends Chuck and Charlie and then it just goes full on

alien abduction from here man do you want to run through this one or you want me to do this? I'll I've covered it, so I'll run through it a little bit. God bless you. Essentially what happened is that Ray Fowler was doing this UFO, like, talk. It was like a conference somewhere in Massachusetts where it was in this small, like, church or something like that. And it was kind of like a cult stuff.

And he was there selling books and giving presentations. while he was selling books. It's Jim Wiener, one of the witnesses in this case, comes up to him and says, I've been having these dreams. I think they correspond to this time. I was camping with my buddies in 1976, and we had this UFO encounter. So essentially, Fowler does the heavy lifting on this one, and he finds that through hypnosis with all these guys and hearing their story, they went out into the Alarajash wilderness of Maine, which is very remote. And in the places where they ended up and camping and stuff, the only way to get in there is through airplane.

They literally had to be flown in there. And they basically hopped from site to site to site. They were basically, you know, canoeing by day and then camping at night. So they end up having this UFO experience not long. It was like two days into their trip And they make it seem in the episode Like all of them have seen all of them saw it But I think it was only Jack Weiner that had seen it that night

But he sees this light just above the trees And it just kind of like implodes and disappears But a couple nights later They're on I believe Eagle Lake And they're on this camping site It's just the four of them And they don't have enough food with them at the time. They went fishing

during the day, but they didn't catch anything that was really all that edible, so they were going to do some night fishing. So they go out on the lake. It's probably like 8.30 at night or something like that, and they build this huge, like a massive like bonfire

to mark their camping site. So they're out there for maybe 15 minutes and the guy of the rear of the boat, Chuck Rack, he turns around because he feels like, he's being watched and he sees this light above the trees. I had a feeling that there was someone staring at me from behind me.

I turned over my right shoulder like that and I saw this large round globe of light that looked exactly like what we had seen two nights previously. So he calls out to the rest of the guys and he's like, hey, over there. And automatically they just know where he's pointing to, where he's looking at this thing. They all turn and they look in the area. and they see this light above the trees. So it's Charlie Fultz at the front of the boat who has this brilliant idea that he's going to take the flashlight that they have with them and signal this thing. Okay, PSA time here again.

If you're going to signal a UFO with a flashlight, there are right ways to do it and there are wrong ways to do it. Now, in two cases, there are two individuals that used the SOS to signal UFO. And in both cases, they were abducted. In this case, it's the Alagash guys. In the second case, it's Terry Lovelace and the guy that he was with. They signaled SOS. And you know what? Those UFOs that came and they took them.

Don't signal SOS. Well, when the light started coming toward us, my curiosity was satisfied. And I just dropped the flashlight. The only thought in my mind was to get to shore. I never looked back. I remember looking over my shoulders. or trying to keep an eye on this object as it was coming up behind us

and it was getting very close. I mean, it was almost on top of us at this point. And I remember thinking that we're not going to outrun this thing. There's just no way. It was coming too quickly. So if you are signaling SOS, that UFO is going to come and pick you up.

And you know what? It's going to cost you trauma. It's going to cost you trauma. They're very, uh, they're very literal, uh, aliens. Yeah. You know? Very. literal aliens. They thought they were in trouble. So they abducted these four guys. And the thing is,

at the time, they're in their canoe and they're paddling as quick as they can to shore. And it's almost like a cut scene in a movie where they're all, they're in the boat. And then all of a sudden, they're on shore and they're looking up at this UFO. And they assume that they had just, like, outrun this thing. But like, you're thinking deep down in your mind, there's no way that four guys in a canoe could outrun a UFO. that's just like flying it can go as fast as it really wants to so this episode this incident gets forgotten for years it's like over a decade before uh it's jim weiner he has this like house household in uh accident he falls off a ladder and through it he ends up um he comes down with um i think it's like um

temporal lobe epilepsy it develops and he starts having these weird dreams and then he starts talking to his brother and he realizes that his brother is having these dreams so they come forward to Ray Fowler they

go through hypnosis and they find that these four guys were abducted and a lot of them described coming up like this tube which is interesting because in many cases when abductees talk about their being taken, they're never usually describing the process.

They're usually it's just like, hey, there's some aliens. They're taking me somewhere and then boom, you're in the ship. But these guys describe being taken up into a room. They were led to another room in which, you know, they were stripped naked and they were subjected to medical tests. Now, three out of four of these guys are lifelong experiencers. So Jim and Jack Weiner, interesting because they're twins. So they were

experiencers. And if you read Ray Fowler's book, The Alligash Abductions, which is fucking terrifying, you know, especially for the pictures that are in it that make a fucking appearance in this fucking show. Right. Yeah, yeah. What you find is like they're all subjected to medical tests by and large, but like they kind of vary a little bit. They do some interesting stuff with Charlie Fultz

who was the only non-lifelong experiencer among them. There's like this chest plate that is put over him, and it almost scans his body. And when Chuck Rack describes it, he describes it as being embedded into his chest, and he claims that it looks like it's for sucking something out of the body. Fucking, no, thank you. All four said they were taken aboard the craft.

the aliens forced them to strip naked and seem to be conducting medical examinations. The aliens apparently took samples of the men's skin and body fluids, their blood, urine, and semen. Man, just in this episode, they play some of the audio from the hypnosis sessions, which I don't recommend. Don't do hypnosis. Hypnosis is terrible in these situations. Just don't do it. Yeah. I will have to second that.

And, you know, I have written in the past about regression in my book specifically and those who underwent it. And I even featured some of the therapists who have done it. And while I respect them as individuals, I don't personally condone this way of dealing with these things. I think Chris Cogswell says it best. Go to an actual therapist if you think this has happened to you. not someone who claims to be an alien abduction therapist. So yeah, let's get that out there before anything. But you did mention, yeah, they play some of the audio from the regression, which was terrifying.

Their face is right in my face. I don't know why. I don't want to know. I don't want to know what they want. They're saying things. they're explaining things with their eyes in my head

they're saying don't be afraid we won't harm you do what we say just do what we say um they show the sketches that a lot of the dudes made of the aliens and what they experienced so i mean

we're getting hit from every angle with um with what these men endured if any of this is true, you know. Yeah, and I mean, these guys all met through art school, so every single one of them are artists. Yeah, which always made me a little hesitant with this case, to be honest, because if you know anyone in art school, like, this is what you do. You try to create your grand opus, and maybe this was like a big performance piece. But I, you know, I have no basis for that whatsoever. But when I did hear that they were all involved in the arts somehow, that did rub me the wrong way.

I don't blame people when they are hesitant when they hear something like that. Yeah. And if you look at some of the earlier editions of Ray Fowler's book, you can actually order some of the artwork to have in your home in the back portions of the book. Yeah, just what I want hanging over my bed at night. Yeah, exactly. And like, when you look at them, the most terrifying images that are drawn are drawn by Jack Weiner. And in fact, if you look at the book, a lot of his art dominates it. And a lot of stuff happens to Jack Weiner, including, you know, additional experiences after this incident in his Vermont home. And there's like incidents in their childhood that they have experienced together and separately. But the most terrifying parts are the stuff that you don't even realize because it's not included in this episode because you only have so much time. So when they were in the middle of doing all of this regressive hypnosis, Jack Weiner would have dreams that these beings would appear to him while he was doing mundane things with like Jim and Jack. Like there's one dream in particular that fucking freaks me out.

but he talked about how they were like at a play taking in a performance and he's sitting next to this curtain and this alien head materializes into the curtain and basically says stop the hypnosis. We don't we don't want them knowing anything. So like it continues like after this like this being materializes two or three times tell them to stop doing this. but like, yeah, I'm like, no, no, no thank you. But there's, um, with these segments, Unsolved Mysteries usually has a skeptic come in and say, uh, you know, how they don't, they don't trust it. The guy's name is Dr. William Cohn and he believes that

abduction experiences are just basically people ripping, uh, sci-fi movies from television and making them a fixture in their own minds and John Mac comes on the screen and says, oh, it don't work like that. Usually these are people who have no interest in abductions, have not read about it, are even unfamiliar with the nature of the beings, and are shocked and astounded when they hear someone else has had these experiences as well, or that there is material in the media about it. Yeah, which is great, because they kind of have this like back and forth between, you know,

like psychiatrists, basically. Yeah, which is great. So in short, fuck this segment. I hate it. Really? Okay, that's good to know. I mean, I've met Charlie Fultz, and he's a really, really nice guy. Yeah.

If you were to tell somebody 40 years ago that they would be able to see on an invention called a television set, which didn't exist, a meteorite crashing into a planet that they can now watch at home. That's a reality check, folks. And yet 40 years ago, that's science fiction. This happened. If you'd believe it, that's all right. If you don't believe it, I don't care. I don't care because it did. I know, you know, in the past few years, there's been kind of a falling out with these guys.

I don't know much about it. I never really, really got involved with this case research-wise. But I guess one of them came forward and said it was all a hoax. or something like that. Well, the interesting thing is, yeah, it was Chuck Rack. Okay. And he came forward like maybe four years ago now, and he said that it wasn't the UFO sighting.

The UFO sighting happened. And everything, including, like, the UFO, like, shooting a beam down and them, like, running back to sure happen. But he just basically said the abduction stuff didn't happen. Okay. And what's interesting is, is if you read Fowler's book, whenever they do hypnotic regression on Chuck Rack, he never gives them much of anything. He never, like, Fowler kind of chalks it up to him being just like a very strong personality. But I guess Chuck Rack is kind of, he has kind of a very strong personality. And some are saying it's because he didn't make enough money off of this and stuff like that, which, you know, could be, it's very weird because, like, his explanation is kind of strange. I was like, oh, no, all that stuff happened.

We just didn't get abducted. Like, okay, dude, okay. You mean 95% of the story? Yeah, okay. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, that's tough, man. Because, yeah, I mean, if they did make up the whole abduction part of it, like, that just taints the initial sighting, which is just as exciting, you know, in my opinion.

Like, why make it any more, uh, I mean, I shouldn't say more. why make it less credible, to be completely honest? Like, I'm going to believe a UFO sighting over an abduction any day. And I do believe that some people probably, maybe, possibly have been abducted. I can't say that for sure, obviously. But they believe they have been, you know? So if that whole thing was made up, that really sucks. And at the same time, if it wasn't made up, like, clearly there's gaps being filled in from memories they don't remember.

And we know memories faulty. no hypnosis doesn't really help. So, yeah, that was an interesting case. All right. So the last one we're going to cover here, Rob, is another benchmark case and episode, I'd say. And this is Rendell Schum. December 26, 1980, a U.S. Air Force Security Patrol told of seeing a mysterious, unearthly visitor near their air base in England.

During the next two nights, a rash of sightings astounded even the most skeptical military men. For years, these sightings were close. in secrecy until tonight. For the first time, former Air Force personnel go on counter, the tell of a close encounter for what they believe were UFOs. I had Nick Redfern on the show last week talking all about this, so why not dive back into this goddamn case for the millionth time? You can't escape it.

I can't, I can't, man. For those who don't know, my first dive into the Rendlesham case was I was trying to write a play about it back in the early days with our... our mutual colleague and friend Peter Robbins and Larry Warren, one of the, and I'm using air quotes, witnesses. No, those are heavy air quotes, man. Happy. I think I just broke my index finger. Yeah, sounds about right.

That being said, the play never saw the light of day for obvious reasons. But rest assured, I am still working with Peter Robbins on something having to do with this. So stay tuned for that. as any good writer says. But let's get into this one. For the very first time, some of the military people involved with this came forward on unsolved mysteries,

just like with Roswell and Sikoro and everything else. So, yeah, I don't think we've really got to get too much into the events. I think our listeners know about it. Three consecutive nights of UFO activity over two joint military bases in England, 1980. Well, yeah, this is the first time we hear from John Burroughs. Yeah, absolutely. I love how, like, one of the first things that he says is,

who would come out in the middle of the woods outside an Air Force base and make a Christmas display? Right. He's talking about the lights they see in the forest. I'm like, that's great. You really thought it was a Christmas display? Okay. There have been so many explanations for what it could have been. And that is a big part of this, you know, this happened over the holidays, at least for us Americans.

even they were over in England and a lot of people think yeah maybe it was some sort of Christmas display which is kind of ridiculous but uh yeah yeah I think they would have noted that you know in their logs and shit like oh we found a bunch of idiots

out there you know putting on some fucking Christmas show and we shut that shit down we shut it down no more Frosty the Snowman so okay so yeah we got Airman first class John Burroughs and Jim Penniston and a few others, they go out to investigate these strange lights that had been reported.

And an interesting side note that they add into this, Rob, is the men all had to leave their weapons behind when they went out to investigate because they were out of U.S. jurisdiction in the forest where this event initially occurred. So that was pretty interesting. Could you imagine going out to investigate like a downed aircraft or even possibly a UFO and not having any sort of protection? Man, you better have a strong-ass bag light for that shit. Yeah, exactly.

Throw that shit at the aliens or whatever it has. But this was interesting, too. The object was cited on radar at Heathrow Airport, or a object, and it was tracked over these military bases. This is what they told John Burroughs, and then it disappeared off radar. So these things were tracked on radar, which a lot of people didn't know either. Yeah, absolutely. For a period of time before they lost sight of it, most likely because it, like, came down too low to actually be detected by radar.

But yeah, they came across this object in the middle of the woods. And it was fascinating about this experience. And my first real kind of familiarity with it was Nick Pope's book that came out a few years ago that he wrote with Penniston and Burroughs. But one of the things that Burroughs describes is how time seemed like it was moving very slowly when they were near this thing. When it was happening, everything seemed to go slower. We seemed to be in like a, I wouldn't say a time warp,

but like everything appeared to happen slower to us. And everything felt different. But when it was all, when it disappeared, it was like everything was normal again. The perception of the ground, the air, the sky, the stars, the whole nine yards were different. So like, are you in a different reality when you're close to this object? Like, what is going on? You're experiencing time differently than other people. And like, what they claimed is that when they went looking for this thing,

they had been gone for like 45 minutes and searching for it. But to them it only felt like, I think for Burroughs, he said it felt like it was like maybe 10, 15 minutes. But for Penniston, because he got the closest to this thing and even touched it, He claimed that it felt like it was only like a few seconds or something like that, like it only a few minutes. But yeah, these guys like experienced time very differently in close proximity to this object. And I must say on the show, it did not look anything close to what is described or what is on your screen at the time. What they described seeing was like a triangular shaped object with a triangle on top of it, basically. And what's interesting is that they would go on to find circular impressions in the ground.

But the way that Burroughs talks about it, he didn't feel like it was like land. It wasn't sitting on the ground. It was kind of just like hovering above it a little bit. I was hoping when I got out there that basically I would see nothing. There would be no telltale evidence that possibly something happened. That would make it easier for me. Because if there's nothing proving that something happened to me, you can just kind of check it off. But when you get out there and you find damage to the trees,

depressions in the ground and stuff, that makes it even more unexplainable. That's an interesting feature of it. And then, yeah, like the next night, Hot had heard of this, you know, earlier in the day saying, you know, it was kind of a joke around the base. Like, a couple of guys saw a UFO.

Oh, dude, I have to mention, when they did that scene in this, though, they reenacted the scene where Charles Holt, like, comes on to base. What's going on? Colonel, you're not going to believe this, but Burroughs in Penniston were running around the woods last night chasing after UFOs.

Oh my God. The laugh that that guy made was so weasily. He was such a little dick. Like, that kid in school who would, like, make fun of you for wearing, you know, off-brand sneakers or something. Yeah, yeah. It was a good reenactment. Like, I wanted

to punch him square in the nose for that, but. Yeah, but, you know, they end up going out the next night. And, you know, there's reports of lights in the woods again, and they end up taking light-alls out into the forest. I was very skeptical. I found what had allegedly taken place hard to believe. And I was really going to debunk it, quite frankly. And as events unfolded, I became more and more concerned that there may be something to this. I kept telling myself that there had to be some type of an explanation for it. But I certainly couldn't find one.

And even to this day, I can't explain what happened. They just go out and they investigate this thing. They kind of do this, like, it's like a cat and mouse game for like a while. And they follow it through the forest into this clearing. They see these, like, it was initially this like red object, not even an object because it looked. I think what they had on. on screen at the time was pretty accurate to what they ended up seeing. It's like this like orb of light, kind of like almost egg shaped.

But he described it looking like kind of an eye. And it kind of got close there for a little bit and then it took off. So they followed this thing through the forest into a clearing. And in this clearing they see like three smaller objects in the sky. They kind of doing this, these maneuvers. and some of the eyewitnesses claim that they were doing like almost search patterns, searching grids looking for something. And eventually one of these objects kind of just breaks off,

comes near them and drops a beam of light down at the ground, not far from where Halt is. We could very clearly see it. It's sort of danced the bat in the sky and it sent down beams of light. I noticed other beams of light coming down from the same object following different places on the base. My boss was standing in his front yard at Woodbridge and he could see the beams of light falling down.

And the people in the weapon storage area and several other places on the base also reported the lights. So he says that's the closest he ever got to it. And even Burroughs claims that he went out the second night to see, you know, he could see anything. He wasn't involved in, I think, in the initial investigation, but he was nearby with some other people, and apparently this blue light, he witnessed, came down and actually flew, like, they made it seem like a flu right through their truck,

but the light all that they had that wasn't working, it lit up briefly for like a second when it came down, so that was interesting. Yeah, there was just a ton of shit going on. It was like pandemonium in that forest for three nights, which is interesting. And, you know, I talked to Nick Redford a lot last week about just all the crazy stuff that was going on. And like you mentioned earlier, the time slowing down aspect, every witness seen something differently. Like, it does lend some credence to some of the theories Nick's bringing forward on like hallucinogens or a hologram. Like, if you don't buy into any of the stuff that Nick Redford said, at least we could all admit, like, there was some crazy stuff going on there. This was not just.

one object in the sky over these military bases, you know? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's a bunch of different things. But, I mean, like, Nick always has a different angle with which to come at a lot of these stories. And, I mean, he's got his angle with the Roswell incident. And there are these cases that people interject their, like, weird kind of angles at them. There's, for instance, with the Antonio Villazboas abduction from 1957, there is one eyewitness that came forward saying that it was a CIA led operation to, like, kind of like an MK Ultra kind of thing, to see how they could take LSD and turn it into like an alien abduction or something like that.

I don't, and this has been parroted around for cases like V.S. Boas, Betty and Barney Hill, the Pascagoula guys, it's like, yeah, I don't, I don't totally buy it, but like, you know, I don't totally shoot it down either. Yeah. But there's kind of where I land to, you know, putting it out there. I'm on the fence. It's interesting, you know, saying there's an alternate explanation for all of these cases. Of course there is. We haven't solved them. They are unsolved mysteries. Bam! Yeah, fuck.

We're bringing it full circle, God damn it. What else do we? Oh, okay. So they did their due diligence. They got a skeptic on this one. And guess who it is? James McGehey is an astronomer and noted UFO skeptic who was director of two private observatories.

And the burden of proof for any event that is extraordinary is upon those making the claim, not upon those who look at it from a skeptical perspective. Where is the evidence? Show me the evidence. And that's what science is all about. Lots of places can expose you to identity theft. Oh, no. That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats to your identity,

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Terms apply. McGe Hayes in the house. The worst skeptic they could have found to be involved with this case. Fucking, oh. It sucks, man. I'm sorry. He does. I'm all for, like, bringing someone on to, like, debate this case.

But holy shit. Like, he had no. he had nothing to add to it. He had, okay, he had one interesting thing that he said, and I think you brought this up in one of our earlier cases. So you had the first night, there's UFOs reported, that's fine,

all right? He says, like, the nights after that, they, everyone has it in their minds that they're going to see a UFO. So that's obviously going to influence their perception of what's going on out there. Same with like going into a haunted house. If you're going in expecting to see or hear something, you're probably

going to see or hear something. But he used the whole lighthouse explanation for this, which I think has been pretty much debunked at this point. I forget, but there was like a, it was a special on it might have been Josh Gates's special on UFOs that he did a couple years ago. He went to that site and he found that like there was a panel on the back of it that wouldn't have even ended up aiming toward the forest. so it kind of just shot it down. Nice. Yeah, so the lighthouse has been debunked a million times over. I mean, with any of these cases, they are still unsolved to this day, like we said.

But I'm glad they did Rendelsham. I thought it was good overall. It brought a lot of people out of the woodwork to come forward with their experiences. And I was interested to ask you this, do we know the Halt tape? this must have come out like after this right because i i feel like they would have included that in this episode which they did not so that must have come out a lot later after this episode had been created i assume yeah i think it was kind of like a yeah it was kind of like an update or something like that but yeah yeah another truly creepy thing to listen to but um oh yeah yeah something

that wasn't creepy to listen to rob was your conversation with john texie For those who know who John is or don't know who he is, he's one of the leading weirdos out there looking into everything paranormal, UFOs, the occult, you name it, he's done it. And you had him on the Our Strange Skies podcast to talk about his involvement with unsolved mysteries. And a question, a burning question he had for Robert Stack, the host, like, do you believe any of this stuff? And if you don't mind, I'd love to play a little bit of that right now for the audience to hear. Is that cool? man, go for it. Cool. I was going to Wayne State University.

I thought I would be a history teacher, specializing in folklore. And I got a call from a friend of mine who was a researcher on Unsolved. And he said, you know, we need another person to pick up some slack. We're getting into these weirder episodes because originally Unsolved was mostly murder mysteries and unsolved kidnapping cases. And as that show evolved, you know, eventually at that time with no internet and, you know, you literally ran, you literally. ran out of cases of unsolved murders. And so they started turning to the paranormal and the supernatural and discussing things like Lizzie Borden or the Gulf Breeze UFO sightings, things like that. And so a friend of mine contacted me and said, do you want to pick up some of the slack on some

of this research that we have that is really weird? They knew that that's what I was into. And so I spent probably, I think two years doing research and kind of reconnaissance for unsolved. That's pretty, that's, that's honestly really awesome because, uh, Robert Stack, um, I think haunted my dreams for a certain portion of my childhood. He was just, he had an air about himself, the way he projected himself on that show. Uh, it just scared the bejesus out of me. Um, what was he like? And I mean, I've asked you this question on Twitter before, but like, what kind of person was Robert Stack like? Because like, like, the, I mean, mythology. my head about the man and I don't know. I probably won't go anywhere. No, your mythology about him

is right, but it's your, the mythology that people have about Robert Stack is like at a four. And he was always at like a 10. I mean, he was old school golden age of Hollywood. So when he walked anywhere, like he commanded this presence. But at the same time, like in old Hollywood, you, everybody was drunk all the time. And so like there's a lot of times. And so like there's a lot of times, if you listen to the voiceovers in episodes of Unolved Mysteries, where you can hear him kind of struggling to get through the voiceovers because he's been drinking. But he was, you know, classic Hollywood.

He knew that he had been around for a long time. He knew that people loved him. And there was one time I had a discussion with him because I had been working and researching for them. And my thing was like, does Robert Stack? believe in anything that he's saying. And so I had a chance one time where I asked my, I pretty much just put it like that. I was like, you know, Mr. Stack, as when you're talking about all this stuff, UFOs and ghosts and

psychics and murders, you know, unsolved murders, like, do you believe in any, do you have, you ever had any supernatural experiences? And he was kind of coy about it, but he kind of, he lapsed into this story about a really good friend of his who had worked for the Navy and had recounted to Robert Stack how he had seen while in the Navy UFOs flying around under the water, well, you know, unidentified submerged objects underneath the water and they would burst through the water and out into the sky. And Robert Stack was like, you know, this guy doesn't have any reason to lie to me. So I believe what he told me. And then he launched into another story about how his wife had gone and seen a

psychic when she first moved to California and the psychic told her, you know, I don't really see very much in your future, but you're going to end up marrying someone who looks like Robert Stack. And she actually ended up marrying Robert Stack. So when I, when we left that conversation, he was like, you know, so I don't doubt what my friend told me about UFOs and I also don't doubt that the psychic was right. So I guess those are the types of things I believe. And he kind of just left it there. Yeah, so I thought that was a really, really interesting appendix to bring to this episode, Rob, but I think we covered a lot here, man. This was super fun to do with you, but we're not done. We're not done. A little news, Netflix is rebooting Unsolved Mysteries with the executive

producers of Stranger Things. Hopefully, someday soon, who knows with everything that's going on in the world, but um... I think it comes out July 1st. Oh, sweet. Okay. Do we know who's hosting it or anything like that? No, we don't know a whole hell of a lot about it, which I'm kind of upset about. They've kind of kept it close to the chest, so I guess we'll see, you know, what it comes out. We haven't even heard if there's, like, a host or what the format is going to be. Is it just the, yeah. Yeah, is it just the name on Solved Mysteries, or is it going to be like it used to? So, It should be interesting.

That's a good point. Yeah, we don't know if there's even going to be a host. I mean, it looks like they're only covering one Unsolved Mystery every episode. Yeah. So that'll be cool. You know, we'll get a really in-depth look at these things. Probably Jordan Peel. I'm going with him. He's done Twilight Zone. He might as well do the show next, right? Yeah, he'd be perfect for it. I think he'd be good, yeah. Rob, that's going to do it here on the Unsolved Mysteries UFO Stack Pack Hour on the main feed.

but Rob, you're going to stick around and cover a few more really good cases of Unsolved Mysteries with me for a Patreon episode for our somewhere in the sky's Patreon. Subscribers, it'll be up there for either right when this comes out or just a little bit after. But before we go here on the main feed and go over to Patreon, Rob, where can we find everything you're up to? What do you got going on with the podcast, with your Patreon? Yeah, give it to me, man. The best places to keep updated for new episodes and all that is Our Strange Skies.com. You can also follow me on all of the social media platforms, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and all that stuff. Just search Our Strange Skies.

And you will be updated with UFO news and all other sorts of crazy crap. I love it. I love it, man. And you just did a true crime episode that literally blew me away. So I definitely suggest people check that out too. I don't do it often. but sometimes I'll step away and do something that isn't so much UFOs. But, yeah, most of the time, UFOs.

Yeah, maybe another podcast host should follow your lead on that and stop talking about UFOs for once. Again, I'm looking in the mirror. This keeps happening. Anyways, let's head on over to Patreon. And Rob, thank you again, man, for joining me on Somewhere in the Skies. I appreciate it, man. Thank you for having me back on.