Somewhere in the Skies - Witness Accounts 31 (LIVE from MONSTER FEST 2!)

Episode Date: July 8, 2024

On episode 363 of SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES, we bring you a very special LIVE recording of our Witness Accounts series, which took place in front of an audience at Monster Fest 2 that took place on June 29th in Ohio! Ryan and a very special surprise co-host, discuss several UFO cases they've both researched and investigated. Then they open the floor up to audience members to share their personal UFO stories as well. It's yet another powerful volume of witness accounts, with some fun interactions sprinkled throughout, that you won't soon forget! Special thanks to Small Town Monsters for making this episode possible. Visit all of their work at: https://www.smalltownmonsters.com/ Patreon: www.patreon.com/somewhereskies PayPal: [e-mail] Website: www.somewhereintheskies.com Store: http://tee.pub/lic/ULZAy7IY12U YouTube Channel: CLICK HERE Order Ryan’s new book: https://a.co/d/4KNQnM4 Order Ryan’s older book: https://amzn.to/3PmydYC Twitter: @SomewhereSkies Read Ryan’s Articles by CLICKING HERE Opening Theme Song, "Ephemeral Reign" by Per Kiilstofte Produced by LIONSGATE Copyright © 2024. Ryan Sprague. All rights reserved. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/somewhere-in-the-skies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Somewhere in the Skies with Ryan's bread. Hey guys, Ryan here. Welcome to a very special live recording of Somewhere in the Skies, witness accounts. I recently attended Monster Fest, too, an incredible event put on by the multimedia production company, Smalltown Monsters. Monster Fest covers everything from ancient civilizations to ghosts, cryptids, and even UFOs. The event took place in Canton, Ohio, on top. June 29th. There were guest speakers, film premieres, meet and greets, and live podcast recordings in front of an audience. And that's where somewhere in the skies comes in. There is no better way

to hear UFO stories than from those who experience them. So we open the door for our live audience to be a part of our highly popular witness account series. You'll hear several UFO stories, including my own, and even a dramatic encounter from our special guest co-host, who I'm keeping a secret until you hear the episode. As many of you know, it's been an extremely challenging time in my life recently. So getting to attend and take part in this event was exactly what I needed to keep going. So a special thanks to Seth Breedlove and the entire small town monsters crew for making me feel so welcomed. And to all of you who came out to meet me, including some of our Patreon subscribers and beyond,

an extra special thanks to you as well. It was such a pleasure and honor to put faces to names and to get to spend quality time with you and talk about UFOs. So let's not waste any more time, and let's get to our very special witness accounts episode, live from Monster Fest too. Hi guys, welcome to a live episode of Somewhere in the Skies. My name is Ryan Sprague. I host the Somewhere in the Sky's podcast. Is anyone familiar with the show?

Oh my gosh. Wow. That's awesome. That could be a very awkward moment. I've done these in the past. So yeah, I have been doing the Somewhere in the Sky's podcast for about, gosh, going on five, six years now. And we cover everything at this point. UFOs, the paranormal, the unexplained. I've had the entire small town monsters group on to talk about cryptids and everything in between. But I am primarily known as a UFO guy. I like to give kind of a origin story like my Peter Parker getting bitten by the spider moment for anyone who might want to know why I got into all this. I did have a personal UFO sighting like a lot of people here when I was 12 years old. in upstate New York.

I was fishing, and it had just turned dusk, and I was reeling my line-in from fishing. My dad went inside to watch a Yankees game, and my life changed within moments of reeling my line-in. I saw over my head a black triangle, as many people have reported throughout the years, a black triangle. UFO. It had white lights on each corner, one red light in the middle, and I didn't know what to think. I was 12. I knew what airplanes did and did not do, but it could have been anything. But I watched as this solid black thing just hovered over me silently. It made absolutely no noise. All I could hear was water hitting the dock that I was

fishing off of. It was scary. It was beautiful. The actual craft itself. But yeah, again, I was 12. I didn't know what the heck it was. I yelled for my dad. He came out from watching the Yankees game, which to get my dad away from a Yankees game is like a feat in itself. And he thought I fell in the water. So that's why he came out because I was yelling. I was screaming. And he saw it with me, which I, in the past, couple years have been able to really sit down with him and talk about it with him, which has been extremely vindicating for me because for many, many years, like many UFO witnesses experience, it's very lonely. You don't want to talk about it, but things are changing in the world of UFOs. I feel like Bigfoot cryptids are, they're on their way, but UFOs are like a mainstream

thing now. They're more accepted than ever before. The United States government is once again investigating them officially through the Pentagon. Make of that what you will. But yeah, the time for UFOs to be taken seriously is now. So I am loving what I'm doing with Somewhere in the Skies. And I run a series called Witness Accounts, which is where people call into the show and tell their UFO stories. When I first started that series, I didn't think anyone would get involved. And I had like over 20 submissions, which was incredible.

And since then, I've done 30 volumes of witness accounts, five to 10 stories in every episode. So that's hundreds of people who have now come forward and told me their UFO stories and by proxy all of you. And I was inspired to do the witness account series by Jim Harold. Jim has been a pioneer in the world of paranormal podcasting. I've been listening to him for, gosh, forever. And he really inspired me to start the witness account series through a series he runs called Campfire, where people tell their ghost stories and other experiences too.

So I thought it would be awesome to bring Jim in as my co-host today. Do you want to introduce yourself, here? Yeah, hi, I'm Jim Harold, and a long time. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. A longtime podcaster. And, you know, Ryan to me is one of the, I always used to say he's one of the, you know, really young guys out there. But you're getting older, Ryan. Not anymore. I'm feeling it right now. But Ryan is awesome. He's one of my favorites, both personally and professionally. I think he does a great job in everything he does. people ask me why I got into this and there's a couple things I credit a show that I'm looking around the room

I think if you may have watched back in the day in search of with Leonard Nimoy and the other thing was there were a couple of great family stories and one of them was a UFO story so I just mentioned literally as aside to Ryan and he said well why don't you tell it to kind of get the ball rolling because we're going to try to get some folks to come up or get the mic and join in with some of their UFO stories.

Well, this happened to my parents. My family was from West Virginia. And this was when I, like, in 1912 when I was about a year old. And anyway, they were visiting the grandparents. They dropped little Jimmy off. And my mom and my dad went off to some secluded kind of area that they drove to. and I don't want to know why they were doing that. This is a PG show.

But I'm sure they were going to contemplate the mysteries of the universe. But then they encountered one. So anyway, they pulled to this secluded spot, and you know if you're from a rural area, when it's dark, it is dark, right? So anyway, it's dark. All of a sudden there's a huge sustained flash of light, 30 to 60 seconds.

And my dad was driving like a 68 Buickless saber. you know, one of those land yachts. And it had the old big speedometer on it, and I had the analog clock. And he said, and my mom backed him up, that he could read every number on that clock and that speedometer for 30 to 60 seconds. Then my dad looks to his left,

and he says he saw what he termed as a man with a welding mask on who held up his hand. and then they decided okay it's time to leave now so you know my dad kind of hustles out there and then i'll say it as best i can approximating my late mom's west virginia accent then jimmy i saw the biggest birds on the side of that hill that i ever saw my life and i think that the birds they said that the wingspan was like i don't know five feet wide or some crazy number like a thunderbird it sounded like. And they fully expected the next day they would go home. They would hear something

on the news. This is probably, you know, definitely early 70s. And they never heard another thing, never knew what to make of it. And the thing is, is that years later, you know Mike Clelland, you've interviewed Mike Cleland about owls and so forth and how the messengers and how owls show up and there might be an idea of screen memories and things. And I was interviewing one time, I was talking to him, and I'm going to try to cut this short so we can get to your stories. But it occurred to me that maybe what my parents had was a screen memory of some type. The man in the welding mask, the bird's, and the thing was, my mom, until she passed, she told that same story. And she was not really a supernatural person.

My dad's 88, still tells the same exact story. So I believe it. So I think Leonard Nimoy and my parents' stories kind of merged to get me involved in the, the paranormal in all these different fields. But yeah, yeah, I thought that was a pretty wild UFO story. Yeah, I don't think I've ever heard that before from you. There you go. Have you personally ever seen a UFO?

The only thing I think I saw was space junk one time. Actually, Dar, who is with me now, excuse me. We were driving on a main road in an area in Cleveland where I'm from, and we saw a big green fireball. And it was about like 545 at night, but it was, wintertime when it's dark. And the funny thing was we were listening to some talk radio. And some guy goes into the talk radio station.

He's like, I'm traveling on such a road. And I just saw a green fireball, like, enter the atmosphere. And the host is like, ah, what are you smoking? Next caller. But I don't think that was anything, you know, kind of supernatural. I think that was some kind of meteorite or space junk or something. But that's it for me for UFO stories. Well, it's hard because everything's a UFO until it's not.

Yeah. Until it's identified. You know, and I at this point have, I mean, literally, I can show you my email. I just got like four email submissions from folks that have been here who sent me their stories within the span of 24 hours, which is incredible. I used to have to like really dig for this stuff. And now with all of this Pentagon UFO stuff happening, all of these, you know, all of these, military pilots coming forward admitting that, you know, they were outmaneuvered by a craft of unknown origin. It vindicates a lot of individuals. Whether you're military or not, a trained

observer or not, I remember interviewing the chief radar operator of the now famous 2004 Nimitz UFO encounter. You guys probably have seen the video all over the news of this oblong-shaped UFO that was caught on camera that several top gun pilots chased. And this was an incredible story. But it all started with this chief radar operator who had been tracking these UFOs on radar for days. And every time he went to his superiors and told them there's a ton of things over this training area that we're in right now. and it's very concerning. And they tell them,

stop. Like, no, there's nothing here. Like, we don't see anything. Nothing's going on. Erase the tracks, start anew. And for days and days this happened. And then finally, one of these damn things, excuse my language, came out of the water.

Yeah. And went up to 80,000 feet in the air to one of the fighter pilots, shot down back towards the surface of the water and then shot off into presumably space. None of them talked about this for years and years and years. The chief radar operator spent many years questioning what he had done,

should he have come forward with what happened? Kevin Day was his name. I should give his name. And it really tore his life apart. People made fun of him, called him like a UFO weirdo. He became very depressed. and solitary, and basically this event ruined his life. Until he turned on CNN one day, and there were the two fighter pilots

that went up to investigate the thing that he had been tracking, and he just started crying, and he said, finally, finally, I'm not alone. And that's why I do this. No one's alone, whether they've seen everything from a light in the sky, a claimed close encounter, a claimed abduction experience. I'm not here to give them answers. I'm not here to judge anyone who's seen anything unexplained,

whether it's a UFO, a cryptid, a ghost. I'm here to hear your stories and to get them out to people so that you in turn can feel empowered to come forward if you've seen something. I think that's really important because every single person who comes forward makes all of these topics more normal and accepted to talk about. And look, I'm one of these

people who doesn't believe we're ever going to get the truth from the government. And I'm surprisingly not like a big conspiracy dot for what I do. But I do not trust the government when they say what they say about UFOs because

of the years and years of cover-ups that they have been caught in when it comes to this topic. All this being said, that's why I do what I do, because we're never going to get the truth from the military. We're never going to get the truth from the government. It's going to come from grassroots

efforts like this, like Monster Fest, like all these UFO conferences that we go to, from our books, from these podcasts. I really think the power is still in the people's hands when it comes to the unknown and the unexplained. Don't expect in a

governmental body to do it for you. So yeah, that's That's kind of what inspired me to do what I do. And I bring all of this up because everyone has a story, Jim, right? Whether it's seeing a ghost or a UFO. I can't tell you how many times when I tell people what I do. I was afraid to tell people what I did. Like, oh, what do you do?

I'm like, oh, I host a podcast and I write. Like, about what? Stuff. I used that to get out of jury duty once. Yeah. I remember I lived in New York City for a really long time and back in my single days

I'd go on first dates and every time I told them I was a euphologist there was never a second date that's changed like it's okay to do what we do now and I love we're working on it that's the biggest mystery of all

yeah so yeah I think now is the time to come forward if anyone has ever seen anything like that. But Jim, I want to know from you, before we get to maybe, if any of you want to share a story that you've had, I would love that. But if not, we have plenty to talk about Campfire. Tell us a little about Campfire. And do you think that there could be any sort of connections between what you do and what I do? Well, on Campfire, what I've tried to do over the years is kind of leave it very kind of.

like the big temp philosophy so we will have not a ton but we will have some UFO stories um i think somebody's trying to hand somebody ready i'm sorry oh yeah that's me there he is oh you can just leave it back there man yeah oh that's awkward that's awkward this message is brought to you by the kitchen service of the hilton double tree canton This is why we do live podcast recording. I love them. Sorry, you guys. They're feeding us now.

Thank you, brother. Do you, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. Do you guys? I'll be right, right, right? Do you guys just want to watch me eat? Well, I'll tell you what, if you want to eat, I can talk a little bit, then you talk a little bit, then you take another bite and we'll go back and forth. No, no. Where we're worried?

I'm not sure. camp that is that's funny this i'm keeping all this in by the way none of that's getting cut when the show comes out anyhow campfire so campfire is the big temp philosophy we certainly do ghosts we do some cryptids and we also choke up and UFOs and whatever people and a lot of them fall like they're tweeners they're they're what i call head scratchers they don't really fall into a category which are as some of you know who listen that's kind of my favorite

category. But I do think there might be some connections because what I used to think was UFOs or aliens from out there, ghosts are dead people, cryptids are animals we haven't discovered yet or hiding. And now my feeling has become more nuanced, not that the things I just said aren't true, but I think there's also alternate explanations. So I guess it has evolved over time. I'm more convinced stuff is going on. I'm less convinced I know what's going on, if that makes sense.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Like, I, again, I've done the podcast, I've written books, I've done like the television shows. And they will sometimes be like, oh, what do you want to be credited as UFO expert? And I laugh because I'm like,

I don't know what UFOs are. I'm no closer to an answer than I was since I was on that Doc in 1995 and saw what I saw. However, I think that is the mystery. Like, we live in the mystery. Will we ever know the answers to what Bigfoot was, UFOs? There's probably a million different answers for each of these things.

Maybe. Maybe I'll know what I saw, but I'm not going to know what you saw, what you saw, what you saw. And that's kind of the beauty of it, I think. It has given my life purpose. And I am so thankful that I saw what I saw. A lot of people regret having UFO sightings. My uncle, who's in my first book, former U.S. Navy guy,

had straight up close encounters of the third kind experience. He was driving, the thing went over his car, stopped his car, hovered over him, went away, his car started again, came back. very classic flying saucer-esque disc that he saw he was on his way to start working at a new Navy base he got to the base and before he even checked in he went to the bar and had a couple drinks

and never talked about it again until I started doing what I do and I was the only one he told his story too but the big thing about his experience is I asked him like would you ever want to see something like that again or what do you think it was and he was like I don't know what it was I don't want to know what it was and I'm okay never talking about it again whereas someone else might come forward and want all the answers we'll want to tell more people about it and try to find answers

so I never like judge anyone for you know not coming forward but there's a famous UFO researcher that Jim and I have had the honor and pleasure to speak with, Stanton T. Friedman, who, when he used to go around to colleges and all over the world, he would speak. The first question he would ask is, how many people have seen a UFO? I'm actually going to do it here today. How many people here think or have seen something they consider a UFO? That's a good amount. How many of you reported it somewhere, anywhere? Wow. There you go. That's the prime example right there. Stanton Friedman, he'd do these lectures in front of hundreds of people and, you know, 90% of the people would raise their hands. And then how many reported it? Maybe one person, which is awesome, by the way. So if you have seen something, you don't have to report it to, you know, you can report it to the local police department. You can report it to Mufon. obviously the most visible civilian-run UFO organization. Or you can come to people like Jim and I. Again, we're not going to be the ones to explain what you saw, but at least it lives somewhere now. And it also, I think, does another thing,

because if somebody listens to Ryan's show or my show and they hear a person's experience, first of all, they think, oh, I'm not alone. somebody else experienced it. And then they tell their story and becomes this like virtuous circle that extends out.

So by telling your story you don't know how many people you can influence and there can be maybe tens, hundreds, thousands of people who feel more comfortable sharing their stories because you told your one story. Well in the other big, I'm so happy

you brought that up. One of the most popular cases that I talk about in every one of my lectures. It's in both editions of my book. Happened in, is anyone from or around Cuyahoga Falls by chance? One of the most popular cases I've ever investigated happened in Ohio.

And this happened in Cuyahoga Falls in, I want to say the mid-70s, to a former Coast Guard operator who was at a drive-in movie theater in Cuyahoga Falls and he he was waiting for the movie to start with his buddy. They're in their car

just chilling, waiting for the movie to start and all of a sudden all the power in the entire driving movie theater went out like just flat went out. And all of a sudden everyone's cars that were on at the time shut off. We're talking hundreds of cars. This was

a packed driving movie theater sold out and everyone's cars shut down. which is crazy. That's amazing. And they're all like, what's going on? What the hell is it going on? And over the screen, the movie theater screen, comes this massive black crescent-shaped object.

Completely silent, sleek. And it just went over the screen, went over the parking lot, over all the cars, everyone's just kind of looking up in awe, goes off into a field in the distance, disappears. and once the craft was no longer visible to Scott, the witness that I spoke to, all the power went back on. Everyone's cars started. But you would think in that moment,

like people would freak out, be asking each other, what the heck was that all about? Scott remembers seeing the UFO. He gets out of his car to go use the restroom. And he's waiting in line, and nobody in line is talking about what just happened. Like, what?

Wouldn't you want to just talk about a UFO coming over? And God, who knows what it would have done? And he found that odd. So he gets back in the car, and he and his friend also didn't talk about what had just happened. They played the movie. They watched the movie. Everyone stayed, and then everyone went home after that. Do you think that this was just, you know, kind of like people go on about their lives?

or do you think something about the craft or its inhabitants influenced the people, almost like a hypnotism kind of thing, that just kind of said, don't worry about it, don't worry about it. Everything's cool. Do you think it's something like that, or do you think it's just people saying, hey, I went to see a movie, this weird thing happened, on to the next thing? Right. That was my first question for him. And I remember him telling me, I didn't actually remember seeing the UFO until I, I think he said something like 20 years later.

He had totally blacked it out of his mind. And it took going to, I think like a library, he picked up in Edward Rupelt UFO book, who's a famous Project Blue Book investigator. He saw the UFO on the front of the book and it just triggered a memory in him. And it started flooding back. He started having panic attacks.

What the heck was that? Oh, my God, what's going on? And the other thing was, there were hundreds and hundreds of people there. Yet Scott was the only one who came forward about this event. And I asked him, I'm like, well, can I talk to your friend who was in the car with you? He's like, I haven't spoken to him since that night. Wow.

I reached out to, you know, I went into the old newspapers in Cuyahoga Falls. I'm like, did anything get reported? I found nothing, absolutely nothing. I, you know, I tried to find other witnesses that might have been there. Absolutely nothing. So I told Scott, I'm like, This is a great story. I wish I had more witnesses to corroborate it.

But yeah, I'm going to put it in the book. Like, this is awesome. But that really weighed on him that he was the only one. He wanted vindication that this happened, that what he'd seen was something very highly unusual. And it did affect his life. Like, you know, when that memory came back, I can't even imagine what that would have been like.

So I just remember working with him after the book came out to try to find more witnesses, nothing. And it really did affect him. He became very depressed. I became very close with Scott because he was such a good witness. And I could just see it weighing on him. And then when the second edition of my book came out, like I said, I get these emails every day.

I rarely checked my spam folder, but I happened to do it one day. And all I saw was the subject line in my spam folder. it said drive-in movie theater UFO and I was like what is this so I click on it and lo and behold a woman one town over from Cuyahoga Falls said I saw exactly what he saw on the same exact night with my boyfriend and my sister one town over and I just want that guy to know he's not alone and I did see it and I also didn't remember it till many many many years later So I sent the email to Scott and the dude just like big, big, you know, brooding former Coast Guard guy and he just started bawling his eyes out. Wow.

Because he'd finally been vindicated that this happened. So, again, the power of more people coming forward can drastically affect a witness who thinks they were alone. And, you know, the fact that another witness now came forward with it is important too. And she said that she had the same after effect. She didn't remember it until many years later. later, the sister didn't remember it at all. So I do think whatever that intelligence was behind that UFO here in Ohio had some sort of, I wouldn't even know what to call it, psychic control over people, immediately able to black them out.

Again, none of them reacted when it was happening or after. They just watched the movie and everyone went on with their lives. Yeah, we've had some weird stories where people should have reacted to ways and things. In a new campfire book, we have one. And some people think it might be alien abduction. A kid went to school, all of a sudden they subject him to all these different tests and things. And it's these people they'd never seen before in white lab coats. And they said that they wore sunglasses.

And they went through all these physical tests and all these things. this one kid, the guy who called in Ray from Ohio, he said that they pulled him aside. He thinks because he was doing well in the tests. And they gave him more like mental tests and things. And then they took his blood. So the next day he goes back to school and he says, how are we doing a test? Ask the teacher. And this was the whole school.

They called the kids out grade by grade. It was very weird. No notes home, nothing. Anyway, he said, how did we do in a test? And the teacher's like, what test? And nobody else, except for him, remembered it. But he knew it happened because, remember, they drew his blood, he still has a scar to this day. And it was right near the Ohio, West Virginia border.

But the thing is, is that these reports in different people, you know, have heard that story and speculated, was it a government experiment? or was it maybe like a mass alien abduction? And the fact that he said it was very bright that day and these people seemed to wear sunglasses. Maybe they were aliens? I mean, I know it sounds out there, but the whole story is kind of out there. Yeah.

Hey, everyone. Ryan Sprague here, host of Somewhere in the Skies. If you've ever thought about supporting us, we have great two easy options for you right now. If you listen to the show on Apple Podcasts, you can click the subscription. button at the top of your Apple feed. Or you can join our Patreon at patreon.com slash somewhere skies. Both of these options give you the same benefits, early access to the main show, bonus episodes,

and content, and priority to ask our guests, your listener questions. So to help support somewhere in the skies, click that subscribe button on Apple or visit patreon.com slash somewhere skies. Thank you so much for your support. And keep looking up. I mean, and they are. I mean, I get everything from like a simple light in the sky. Right.

To claim to abductions, mass abduction experiences. And, you know, I value every story the same. It doesn't matter if you've seen just a light or if you've claimed an abduction. Was it, where was that, was it South Africa or Africa? That's school in the 90s? Yes. Rua Zimbabwe. I spoke to one of the children. I mean, she's now in her. I don't want to age her, but she's an adult. And who did the movie on? Was it Nickerson? Yes. There was a documentary that came out recently.

Yeah. Of a case where, like, 60? Yeah. 60 school children in Rua Zimbabwe witnessed a craft land in their school yard. beings came out and interacted with the children. And they drew pictures? Yeah. So what happened was they you know once the beings or whoever they were supposedly made contact with the children

they got up into the craft the craft ascended into the sky and disappeared. They started bringing in like legit psychiatrists and counselors to work with these children one of which was Dr. John Mack who was a Harvard psychiatrist at the time, flew all the way to Rua Zimbabwe

to interview each of these children individually, had them draw pictures of what they had seen separately, which is very important, and every child started drawing what they saw, and the resemblances were striking. Right, because they separated them and had them draw them separately. And this was, what, early 90s, wasn't it?

94, I believe. So it was really before the Internet took hold. So it wasn't like something that kids saw on the internet or something. I mean, really remarkable. It was a fascinating case. And, like, I've spoken to several of the children since that day. And some of them became, it just destroyed their lives. Like, psychologically, their parents didn't believe them. The news in Zimbabwe and whatnot made fun of the children and said they made it all up. It was like a prank that they pulled or a mass hysteria sort of thing. But almost every single one of those children, to this day, stand by the story.

some of them became very unfortunately depressed or alcoholics stuff like that trying to black out what had happened to them while others embraced the experience and did incredible things with their lives

a woman named Selma Sadiq I interviewed was one of the school children and she went on to do just incredible things in her life and she says that because of that experience and what those beings had told her about you need to help the world, the world's in peril,

these messages that a lot of people claim to get from an intelligence, from a UFO, of like, stop what you're doing to this planet. We care about you guys. We want you to be a part of the Galactic Federation, as it were. And I mean that. I'm not trying to make light of it. Stop what you're doing.

And she went on to just, she's like a civil rights attorney, I believe. She does a bunch of environmental work. And again, that's what I love is that experience can change the entire course of someone's life. And it did for me. I didn't think I'd be up here with Jim Harold recording a podcast and paying for my food in the middle of it. That's once in a lifetime. I thought I was going to be a professional baseball player.

So that was a little rough for my dad when he learned, yeah, my son's no longer playing baseball. he's hunting UFOs. Yeah, but you can have a much longer career. Very true. Maybe not as lucrative. So let me ask you this. You talked about the abduction case and so forth, and the message to this woman was that, you know, we want to help you.

We want you to become part of this galactic federation or whatever it is. But then you hear the very scary stories going back to Betty and Barney Hill or Whitley Streber of, a very kind of different experience, a very frightening experience. So in your opinion, with all the work you've done over the years, is it the case that they're all bad, they're all malevolent, all, quote, aliens, and they're just kind of putting a good face on it for some people? Do you think that they're all good and these people are just mistaken? Or do you think the most likely scenario is just like people, you know, there's people who rob bank,

and murder people and then there's people who do great acts of charity where on that continuum do you fall on regardless of where they're from are they all good, all bad, or are they a mix? I often use like the

ant-hill scenario where a child might look at an ant-hill and think wow, that's incredible like what's going on there I kind of want to just observe and see what's going on there. Another child's going to kick it to see what happens and destroy it and kill the ants because you can. You have the power to do that.

I think whatever these advanced intelligences are, they are so far ahead of us clearly if they're visiting here. And they're able to communicate telepathically, allegedly. All of those things. I do think that I also think, I don't think we're dealing with one intelligence. obviously. I mean, people have reported so many different types of aliens or occupants or phenomena even that, yeah, I think just like human beings, they all have different motives,

different intentions. I mean, look at each of us. We all have a reason we do what we do, why we communicate with someone on a day-to-day basis, and there's constant negotiations going on every moment that every human being is interacting

with one another. I think it's the same with these beings. I think they're here for different reasons, maybe some good, maybe some bad. But I will say, except for the psychological impact that a lot of these events can have on people, I've never come across a case where someone felt like they were in peril, in danger. It's terrifying. I can completely understand that. And sometimes they claim that they've had experiments done on them. that's extremely evasive, that's extremely intruding on your life. Again, psychologically, I can't imagine. But I have personally never come across a case where someone was like,

I thought I was going to die or I thought they wanted to harm me. That's not to say that's not happening. Again, I'm no expert. But yeah, I do think there are different reasons for all of these very famous UFO incidents to have happened. and the ones that just like I had or your parents had or somebody here might have had. Does anybody here have one?

Let's do it. I would love to open it up to the floor as part of our witness accounts. Yeah, yeah, we don't have a crazy amount of time because Jim and I are podcasters and we talk forever. How is this going to ask you said about the not? Yes, in Brazil. Yeah. Good point.

Case in point. That was a very unfortunate incident where a visitor from elsewhere was shot and killed, if I'm not mistaken, by the Brazilian government. I'd be a little mad if I came all the way here to make contact and maybe be peaceful, and our first reaction is to boom. So, yeah, yeah. And there have been other cases like that. So again, there probably are cases of malevolence. I personally just haven't come across any of them, Tony. But yeah, they've got to be out there.

Does anyone want to share a UFO story? If you feel comfortable, we'd love, if you can, we have an extra microphone here. It's just a short. Yeah, totally. Hi, everybody. Jennifer, I'm from Toledo, Ohio. and had experience in Houghton Lake, Michigan. So my brother and I, we have a podcast,

and we went up for like a UFO convention in Houghton Lake. And when we were up there, there was a gentleman I can't mention his name. But he had a very, I'll just say he shouldn't have this military-grade binocular, but it was just one. Monocular. That's what I didn't know what it was called. And he wouldn't even let me touch it, but he let me look through it.

And looking out over the lake, it's been reported in Houghton Lake that there's been sightings of UFOs in that area. And I was able to look through this monocular and saw things in the sky that you couldn't explain. It wasn't space junk. It wasn't comets or what would you call them? asteroids, I saw something moving at the most quickest speed of light that you could even imagine. And it was there and it was gone and just zipped across the sky. And with this device, which he shouldn't have had, he said, you could see just thousands and thousands of stars that you couldn't see with the naked eye.

So I don't know. Joe, did you look through that as well? Yeah. Yeah. It was amazing. You could just. We're used to like satellites. but these things would stop, change.

Directions. They stop, change directions. You know, just at the wing of an eye. Yeah. I'm glad you said that because a lot of reports I get are often attributed to the international space station or, yeah, satellites. SpaceX is like our biggest enemy right now with all of their launches. I get reports all the time because it looks very weird when Elon's putting those

things up there. So I'm glad you said, like the erratic behavior, the moving back and forth, like satellites don't do that. So that's very interesting. I should mention too, I know exactly where you're talking about. I've spoken at that Howland Lake event, and I've seen things over that lake. And my UFO sighting happened over water. The chief radar operator, all of the Nimitz crew had their experience over water. So there's got to be something there too. Well, you know, the thing that gets me about that is I'm sure you've seen the recent news reports of Harvard researchers coming out and talking about crypto terrestrials. What is that?

Yeah. Well, this idea that they're here, I mean, we've always, I mean, I know, like I said, going back to in search of them, I'm like, oh, they're out there, little green men. What if they're here? What if they're underground? What if they're interdimensional where they're like there's one sitting right there in front of you, sir? And we can't see him. But really, I mean, and the thing is, particularly with U.S.Os and these transmedium craft

that can go from the ocean to the 80,000 feet in the skies, you were saying, I mean, maybe we've been too focused on out there and not focused enough. And it really hit me in the last couple. I mean, I've been aware of this. There was a guy, Mack Tannies, who did work on this, who passed away. I mean, this is not an entirely new thought, but something the last couple weeks when I saw that in the news, it really hit me because it was always like number 72 on the list of possibilities in my mind. And now it's like, well, wait a minute, maybe we've been thinking about this the wrong way.

And that might be where it's tying in with other areas of paranormal because maybe there's a trickster element to this and maybe some of the ghosts we see. Or maybe, and I never believe this before, but maybe some of the crux. cryptids that we see. Because I always thought, I've always been a flesh and blood guy. They exist, but they're flesh and blood. But I wonder, maybe I was being too hasty. What do you think? I was talking to these guys, I'm going to point them out right now, earlier.

And one of their favorite cryptids is Mothman. And we were talking about Mothman for a while. And one of the most iconic cryptids of all time. Mothman. They made a movie about it. Richard Gere, loved the guy. Grew up in my hometown. No big deal. And we were talking about how many different things happened in Point Pleasant at the time. You had the Mothman. You had a crazy boom in UFO activity.

You had the unfortunate bridge collapse. So much was going on at the time. Seth covered it in his Mothman documentary so well, so brilliantly. So shout out to Small Town Monsters. So I do think there is a connection. You can't tell me that all of those things just happen to be going on at the same time by coincidence. Maybe, but I've learned in the UFO field there's rarely coincidences. Everything seems to be happening for a reason.

Even if you don't think it is and what you saw was complete happenstance at the time, it really, the meaning you put behind it, I think, is what's most important. Well, it's interesting because I interviewed a gentleman, been on my show multiple times. His name was Jim Willis. Now, there's a James Willis here in Ohio. He's great. I've interviewed him. But this is a different Willis. But I just recently interviewed him on NDEs. And unfortunately, within a few weeks of that interview, he passed. But he had a great quote on his Facebook page. And I think it's one of the things that I've come to believe. And this may, this, been a famous quote from someone, I don't know, but the universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine. And I think that's the truth. I think that we are seeing through, what is that the same? And I think that we're just getting little tiny glimpses. And the funny thing to me is I could see a scenario. So we all give ourselves a big hand. The two or three hundred years from now, people are going to look back

and they're going to say, you know what? These people at these conferences and these paranormal podcasters, they were on to something with all these big deal scientists thought that they knew everything. And these guys were kind of getting it. They didn't have it, but they were on the right track. I think that's kind of a neat thought. I love to think that what we're doing here today will live on forever. This will be immortalized now. Especially the paying for lunch part. Yeah, that's it.

Oh gosh, don't remind me. I'm going to have to check my bank account after that. Does anyone else want to share a UFO story? Yes, come on down. My name's Sue. I'm from Canton right now, but I'm originally from Canfield, Ohio. And back in the 60s, it was a small town. We lived in the woods, and all I can remember for my childhood is being terrorized by aliens.

I had a balcony off my bedroom, and it was in the back of the house, and I was surrounded by woods, so there were no lights. But I would be so paranoid before I went to bed. I would keep checking to make sure that the patio doors were locked. But most of the time, they'd be unlocked. and I was aware I was young enough I was aware that something was under the bed at nighttime and so even to

this day I will not get close to a bed I will jump in several feet away so that went on for years and my life has been nothing but bizarre I'm 65 and there's nothing that's ever been normal in my life

but I've always been a loner because no one could understand me I'm pretty convinced that the aliens planted a chip in my shin bone, and every couple of years it'll start hurting, but there's nothing there, there's no scar, and especially my daughter and I were doing research on the Ananakis and Samaria, and my leg started hurting where that chip was for probably about a year, and then we got off that topic, and it stopped hurting, so I don't know. why it hurt. But to this day, I always have a voice in my head talking to me. It's different people.

So when somebody alive or real talks to me, I'm like, what? Wait, I have to tell this person, you know, I have orbs in my house. I have fairies in my house. I have shadow figures. I bought a haunted house that I was flipping and the man from the 1700s tried to kill me. And he conjured up angels and I got all this information from Stark County history. And I realized that the angels that he was conjuring in the basement were the fallen angels, which are demons. So, of course, I had demons in my house where I was living. I had a paranormal investigation done by Rokes Hollow, paranormal group. The people from Mansfield Reformatory that run that program, they also do Amy Bruney's Kindred Spirit show there up in Cleveland.

They came and investigated my house. They could not get rid of the man. He was so evil. He had been a human at one time. But it was probably the demons that were the hard ones to get rid of. So if you ever come face to face with a demon, you turn to God like right now. So I pray all day long. I talk to Jesus.

I've also had three near-death experiences, the last one last fall. I was with Jesus, and he showed me a movie of my life. and he focused on when I should have said no to ex-husbands. And I came back to life, but I've had three different kind of experiences in those near-death experiences. Right. Well, those are that, to me, near-death experience is one of the most fascinating things. Ryan, I have a question. Thank you.

I don't know if you have more questions. Thank you so much. Thank you for sharing. I have a question for you, which the storyteller brings up. And you ask me, so I'll ask you now. Do you see a connection between ghosts, UFOs, cryptids, and things? I mean, do you, is that an emerging theme? I mean, for example, I remember Brad Steiger.

I interviewed quite a few times the great Brad Steiger. And he told me that over the years of decades of doing this, he came to realize that he was very siloed. Are you coming more to that realization? Yes, primarily because I'm now doing a ghost hunting TV show. I've worked with Amy, Bruni in the past as well. I am primarily a UFO guy, but I've had the opportunity for the past three years to travel to Nova Scotia in Canada and investigate the most haunted places out there.

And man, it is a creepy. It's like out of Stephen King, honestly. And I was extremely intimidated. I'm not a ghost hunter. I don't know how all that works, but I learned and I stumbled through it. and now I'm on my like fourth season and I feel like I'm finally grasping like how

to do it, like how to try attempt to communicate with something but at the same time I was brought in for a reason. It wasn't because I was a ghost hunter. It's because I am a UFO hunter. And the people in the show prior to me were starting to have

a lot of things happen that were not just in the haunted house. The hitchhiker effect. They had the hitchhikers. They UFOs were being seen during some of their investigations over the haunted house. So when they told me that, I was like, I'm all in. Like, I want to, well, you go in there and try to communicate with a spirit.

I'm going to go outside and see if there's a UFO activity. And let's see if we can connect these dots. And I'm starting to really feel that, yes, all of this is somehow connected. I spoke to a mother and daughter in Michigan who had, a triangular UFO sighting, similar to mine, but directly after that event, they had crazy poltergeist activity in their home. Their power would go on constantly, so much that they had the electrician come to try to fix the power, and the electrician had a dramatic UFO sighting over their home as well. He tiled it out of there. He's like, I'll find someone else to do it.

I don't want to be a part of this. And then they started seeing shadow figures in their home. and this all started, allegedly, from this initiation experience of seeing a UFO over their home. So I do. I'm starting to really think all of it somehow can. The more you zoom out, it has to be. I'm not saying Bigfoot's flying a flying saucer. But he might be. Actually, that's one of...

I got to share this real quick. One of the best, somebody called in, and we don't know who it was. I don't know how they got my phone number. They called and left a voicemail for me, and they're like, Bigfoot's out here in his mining uranium. I have no idea. But anyway, I'm sorry, I just remind me of that. Yeah.

But I agree with you. And I also wonder sometimes if something's messing with this, the trickster. The trickster element to all of this fascinates me. It keeps me going because the minute I think I know what's going on with any of this stuff, I don't. the one, you know, I thought I had explained away some of the ghost stuff I'd experienced, and then, no, I was proven wrong, literally by the evidence. So that was interesting. So many people who think they knew what they saw UFO-wise will then come to the realization

that it was something completely different. And it really depends on the lens in which you look at the experience. If you are a spiritual person, if you do see a U.F.O.S. UFO, maybe that was a spiritual experience. You go all the way back to the famous, what was that citing, that the kids saw what they thought was the Virgin Mary? Oh, you know what it is. Fatima.

Fatima? Thank you. Yeah. I mean, that's a prime example where the famous UFO researcher Jacques Valet went back and looked at the interviews with these children and looked at what other people reported during the Fatima sightings. and he said, dude, this is a UFO. Like the way they described what the quote unquote Virgin Mary looked like,

it was a eclipse, it was circular, it was golden, it shined, it hovered, and then it flew up into the sky and disappeared. A situation like that. So, I mean, you can go back to like antiquity. And what one person thought was maybe something, was something completely different. The Bible talks about chariots. Yeah. chariots of the gods.

It's such a, the thing I love about these topics is you can literally just go down the rabbit hole and can go in so many directions. That's why I think it is cogent to have a UFO person or a ghost person or people of different kind of parallel or adjacent things to a cryptic conference because there are those connections. I think many of us who have the interest in cryptids also are very interested in ghosts and UFO. So that's why I think it's such a natural fit.

And honestly, like, cryptid people are the nicest people I've ever met. I go to so many UFO conferences and some of those things end in like fistfights. But, like, I didn't know what to expect coming to this event. Honestly, I'm a UFO person. I didn't know, you know, if anyone would care what I was doing here. But this has been one of my most favorite experiences I've ever had. And everyone's been incredible. Honestly. So I think we're at our time almost. Does anyone else want to share maybe a brief

last UFO story? If not, it's totally okay. Yeah. Yeah, please, please. Come on down. Come on down. You get a car. So this one? Okay. So my name's Samantha from Rochester, New York. Relatively big skeptic, but I've had a couple of experiences. I guess UFO and paranormal that I can't explain. This one was, I don't remember a few years ago. I was visiting my parents in Rochester, New York. They live in a dead end street. There's woods on a couple of sides. You have

the Orondicoight Bay, Lake Ontario. And they have a split level, so I'm in the basement. I'm used to headlights coming in when the newspaper gets delivered. Deer hitting the handle or hitting the window, looking at their eyes. So I've been woken up by lots of things. But it was probably

2, 3 o'clock in the morning. And I was, I had the shades drawn, pitch black, these three big purple lights illuminated the room. So I was like, this is a weird color. So I opened up the blinds, looking out, and it's three big triangles. They're moving pretty quick. I've lived with airplanes going overhead. Like, I know the height differences, but it was very low, very big. I didn't even have enough time to get my phone to record anything because growing up with my dad always got to take pictures, always got to record, so I knew, but I couldn't even get to them. And it was one of the first.

of those just really jarring. What did I see? Why was it purple? Why were they triangles? Where were they going? Didn't last very long. I've had another experience that my husband and I disproved. We're like, okay, no, Starlink that was going out that night. So we knew like, disprove that. This was, nothing was talked about. Nothing was published. I was like, I don't know what it was. Just one of those things where these really big, bright purple lights, distinct shapes lit up the entire sky. And I couldn't find out any information after that. Do you want to know what it was? I always like to ask people.

I like to learn, so it would never freak me out to find out. But it was just one of those things. That's why I looked it up. Like I shared my dad in the morning. I tried to find out if I could learn anything new about it. Nothing was reported. No, nothing was going out into outer space that night. But just three huge triangular lights moving in a pattern.

And it was a weird, bright purple light that I had never seen in the sky before. Wow. Yeah. That's so interesting. Thank you. Thank you for sharing it. It reminds me of the early food fighter phenomenon. Not the band, but back during World War II, all these pilots, whether they were ally or Axis, were reporting these orange orbs, circling their planes and shutting down their instruments.

And everyone was like, is that you? No. Is that you guys? No. And they never figured out what the firefighter phenomenon was. And then you saw it again in the six. these Robert Salas, Malmstrom Air Force Base, shut down those ICBMs, which reminded me a little bit of the drive-in because it shut down the cars. And they seem to have an interest in military things, for sure.

They do. And the reason I brought up the food fighters is because there seems to be an intelligence behind these things, whether it's just lights, in like a choreographed dance, almost, which always fascinated me, that you're not just dealing with, like,

a satellite doing a, you know, what it should be doing. You seem to be dealing with things that are circling around one another, going in the same direction. And then it's almost like what drones can do today, but they're clearly not drones. These things have been reported since World War II. So that's interesting.

I'm really fascinated by that. Yeah, I think we'll start to wrap things up here. We're going just about to our time. But Jim's going to be doing a live podcast recording later today. Yes, we'll be doing Camp Fire at 4. 4030 live. We'll welcome ghost, crypted, UFO, head scratchers. And we hope to, if you haven't expressed a story here, you hope you'll come back and express some stories. And we'll get some storytellers and get a good, nice warm campfire going.

Oh, get it crackling. I'll get the stories. 430, 430, yeah. I want to thank you guys, those who shared, those who came to this. It really does mean a lot to me. Witness accounts is my most popular series. So you guys are going to be listened to. by a lot of people. But if you do want to share a story with me either privately or publicly, you can always reach out to me. I've got a table over there.

If you want to come tell me your story over there, or if you want to just email me, I would love to hear your stories. They eventually become books too. So you'll also live on in book perpetuity. But yeah, you can check out everything I do at somewhere in the skies.com. This is where my heart truly lay.

It's with the stories that people bring to me. So again, I want to thank you guys for coming. And I hope to see you again, Somewhere in the Skies. Thank you. The Somewhere in the Skies podcast is part of the Lionsgate Sound Network. Please take a moment to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever possible. Thank you for listening. You're great at protecting your data, but lots of places could still expose you to identity theft.

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