The Confessionals - 333: Ghost Of The USS Forrestal

Episode Date: April 27, 2021

In Episode 333: Ghost Of The USS Forrestal, we are joined in the studio by Tony’s Uncle Mark as he discusses being stationed aboard the haunted USS Forrestal while serving in the Navy. The USS Forrestal experienced a tragedy in the 1960s when a missile was mistakenly launched onboard, resulting in many fires that claimed the lives of over 160 men. One of the men who escaped death that day, only to be captured as a POW a few weeks later, was none other than former senator John McCain. Needless to say, this aircraft carrier has sailed with tragic baggage throughout its history. As time passed, rumors circulated of apparitions of past sailors appearing on the ship; one was even seen so often that the crew named him George. Mark shares some ghost stories with us and describes what life out at sea was like for all those years. We discuss why he believes he never witnessed a UFO despite his many years at sea, and he also tells us about living with his family in a haunted house in Massachusetts, where a former owner died and odd things occurred. As a journalist in the Navy with over 20 years of service, Mark decided to pursue novel writing once he retired. He is now the established author of a book trilogy called the “Forever Avalon” series. Combining experiences from his Navy service with his love for sci-fi, he created a fantasy world that begins when a storm slams into a ship and pushes the characters onto an uncharted island – but not just any island. The family finds themselves in another world frozen in time, on the magical island of Avalon, a place of eternal magic where the descendants of King Arthur rule. And this is just where the “Forever Avalon” series begins! Mark Piggott Books:Forever Avalon: https://amzn.to/32CF1Kr The Dark Tides: https://amzn.to/3emL2QW The Outlander War: https://amzn.to/3vc4giQBECOME A MEMBER AND GET ADDITIONAL SHOWS: https://www.theconfessionalspodcast.com/join   SPONSORS:GET Hello Fresh: https://hellofresh.com/12tony Promo Code: "12tony" for 12 FREE MEALS!!! GET StoryWorth: https://storyworth.com/confessionals GET SIMPLISAFE TODAY: https://simplisafe.com/confessionals Get Emergency Food Supplies: http://www.preparewiththeconfessionals.com Get Beard Oil: https://bit.ly/2FbOhN5 CONNECT WITH US: Website: www.theconfessionalspodcast.com Email: [e-mail] Text Community: Text "YUP" to 844-215-0819 Subscribe to the Newsletter: https://www.theconfessionalspodcast.com/the-newsletter  SOCIAL MEDIA: Subscribe to our YouTube: https://bit.ly/2TlREaI Discord: https://discord.gg/KDn4D2uw7h Show Instagram: theconfessionalspodcast Tony's Instagram: merkificationFacebook: www.facebook.com/TheConfessionalsPodcast Twitter: @TConfessionals Tony's Twitter: @tony_merkel  SHOW INTRO: Show Intro INSTRUMENTAL: www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyub39AXxUw Show Intro FREE DOWNLOAD: https://bit.ly/2HxNcw3

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and the support of the service officials official. Spotikar.com. Hey, everybody, before we get into this week's show, I want to let you know that the unexplained occurrences tour has expanded to two more seats available. So if you are somebody who wanted to go on the tour, that we are doing the exclusive tour, if you don't know about it, go to the website.

We talked about it a few weeks ago, but go to the website and hit the unexplained occurrences tour tab on the website, read about it. But if you want in on this action, this exclusive tour we're doing on June 25th through the 26th, go ahead and reserve your seat today. Call Creed at Educated Wanderer. His phone number is 973-513-9-001. Or you can email them at Traveler at Educatedwanderer.com. Go ahead and do that now if you're interested because those two seats are going to get taken up real fast. All right, let's get to this week's show. This was all circulating around the base that a giant had been killed, but no one was supposed to talk about it.

I saw three long, bony fingers, reach up underneath the door, curl up to grab it, and then disappear. When he came over to me, dude, he slithered over to me. And this giant comes out of the cave, and they're all frozen. And he starts running and firing at this giant. With a giant move, he's got a spear in one hand and he's running really fast and spears, Dan, holds him up like this. Somebody else, shoot him in the face, shoot him in the face, they basically decapitated. Got prices, got place.

I feel something pulling at my leg. And I look over and there are two small gray entities cooling it. And they're literally, I'm getting pulled off the bed. I reached my hand into this bush and I touch air. Couldn't breathe and I couldn't move because I know I'm seeing a monster. Yep. Welcome to the show. Everybody, you're listening to The Confessionals.

I am your host, Tony Merkel. Thank you for being here. If you've had an encounter or a story like to share with me on the show, go ahead and shoot me an email. My email address is The Confessionals at the Confessionalspodcast.com. That's The Confessionals at the Confessionalspodcast.com. Or go to the website, the confessionalspodcast.com. Hit the contact section and you can reach me that way as well.

either it works for me just get a hold of me if you want more shows every week we release a bonus show to the website for members only every thursday so if you want to hear more of the show on a weekly basis go to the confessionalspodcast dot com hit the join button and become a member today and if you want to be prepared for that emergency in your life that you just never knows coming but you know it is going to come go to prepare with the confessionals dot com that's prepare with the confessionals com. And there you can get yourself emergency supplies and emergency food that will last up to 25 years on the shelf right there for you at prepare with the confessionals.com. Now, I also want to let you guys know we are uploading to YouTube now. We're going to upload the entire archive to YouTube.

It's going to take probably about five to six months of releasing one video a day to YouTube. And so if you want to go ahead and listen to the old shows on YouTube, they will be premiering. So there will be a live chat with people there, including myself. So go to YouTube, look for the confessionals and hit subscribe. we greatly appreciate it. The more the channel grows, the more I'm going to do with it. And I'm planning on some pretty awesome videos for you guys coming down the pike that you're not going to miss out. So go ahead and subscribe to YouTube. Hit that stupid alarm bell so you get notified when I upload. Also, we have a Discord now. Many of you have asked me to have a Discord for years.

And I just didn't know what Discord was and how to use it. So I never did it. And I still don't really know how to use it. But we do have a Discord now. And the link is in the description below that you can hit and go ahead and join the Discord and join the conversation 24-7 All Things Confessionals. Now, this week we have my Uncle Mark coming on the show and he came up from D.C. to record with me in studio in person. He was in the Navy for over 20 years and he was actually first stationed on the USS Forestall, which is a haunted ship. It's no longer active. But back in the 60s, there was a tragic fire that actually led to over 160 people dying and that ship has legends of hauntings. And he comes to talk about that, plus some of the other things that he and his

family went through in a home that was haunted in Massachusetts. So let's get to my Uncle Mark in this great conversation right now. All right, welcome to the show, everybody. We got my Uncle Mark in studio. How are you, sir? I'm doing good. Long drive from DC up to here, but it's a great day to do it. Yeah, I had Uncle Pally in the studio for Hammer Lane Legends. We were talking the dry you know done bar stories and things like that and it was the three of us down here and that was fun too but uh you know uncle mark we're going to be talking to the people today about uh the USS forestall and the excuse me the hauntings that it has and why it's haunted uh we're also going to talk about your personal experiences living in a house with Andrew Jean and the kids but i want to

start off with giving you the opportunity to talk to people about uh you're you're an author and you have a book series and go ahead and tell people what it's all about. Well, I'm, I'm a fantasy author. I've been writing for about 20 years now. Just published my third book. It's called The Outlander War. It's the third book of the Forever Avalon series. My series basically takes a look at the King Arthurian legends and does a what happened next approach after author's death. You know, so I bring a modern family to the island of Avalon where all magic now exists and tell the story of what's going on there through that family's interaction in this medieval fantasy world. And the third book actually is where the island reappears in the real world and comes into conflict with the U.S. Navy. So I was able to bring some of my Navy experience into that book and how the two worlds of modern military and medieval magic cross.

crossover, clash, and come to bear against each other. And so I've got those three books for my current books out. I'm actually trying to get two more books published this year, the fourth book in the Forever Avalon series. It's called the Prometheus Engine. I'm hoping to have that out this year. And then I started writing a new series, new kind of a, I think of it as a futuristic, fantasy, dystopian world. It's called The Last Megas. And so that's a new one I'm working on coming out. And I also have where my working project is kind of a steampunk historical fiction. It's called Corsair and the Sky Pirates. So I'm trying to my trying to cross over a little bit more into the sci-fi era with that.

But it's just I, it's part of who I am as a writer. I just love the sci-fi fantasy genre. So being able to express myself through my writing is great. So you said the magic word to me, dystopian. Yeah. So I, listen, I'm not a big movie. buff and I'm not really into, you know, Hollywood and stuff as far as TV shows go. But if I'm going to sit down and watch a movie, it's going to be some kind of dystopian flick because, you know,

people who listen to the show, they know, like, my mind goes there. I think we're heading towards a dystopic future. Yeah. And do you kind of go into like, how deep into the dystopian idea do you go into with that book? Well, the idea behind it is kind of, if you've ever read Terry Brooks, the Sword of Shinarah Chronicles. His book was basically, that series was set in the American Northwest in a future where the world has become one of magic and everything. So I kind of got inspiration from that. And I had a singular event that caused the explosion of magic in the near future and creates this world, this new world of magic. I'm kind of, again, going a sort of a steampunk theme with more of the magic side because it's where machines and everything

operate by magic and everything. So I'm kind of crossing in that path. Some of the places will seem familiar, but I've given them new names because of where, you know, where it's thousands of years into the future. Things have changed in that respect. But I'm just, I wanted to base something but make it different and unique in that respect. So that's where I came up with the idea for this. It's like, well, I mean, machines operating off magic. It's almost like alchemy combining science and magic. Absolutely. And that's one of the things I love when you get that kind of a crossover of magic and fantasy

and science fiction. You get that cross. You can do something like that. That's what's great about the genre is that the sky's the limit. You know, I can try to explain things through my ideas and how things are done. But at the same time, I can go any route I want to. That's one of the great things about being a fantasy writer. Yeah.

Yeah. How long have you been writing fantasy? Well, I've been. Because I know you started after you retired, like, at least as far as like the whole. As a serious writer, I started. I started after I retired. But I've actually been doing stuff like this since the 70s since I was a kid. Really?

I mean, when I was growing up, I collected comic books and I wanted to be the next Stan Lee, the next Jack Kirby. So I was creating my own characters, storylines. I even started drawing. I wanted to go that route, but unfortunately, my art, what didn't pan out as well as I liked. So I focused on the writing more so and everything. So I've developed my writing through there. And then, of course, when I joined the Navy, I became a Navy journalist.

So my right, even though my writing was more focused on news releases, feature stories, things like that, about the different commands and things I was stationed at, places I was stationed at and the places I went to, it was still, you know, that still helped develop my skills as a writer. And then I started writing this story during my last deployment in 2001. So that's where the story started developing. And then I, by the time I finished it and then started, it didn't get published until 2009. So it took a while after that. But I did start writing this during, you know, during my time when I was active duty. That's cool. That's cool.

And talking about active duty, I mean, you retired. How long were you in the Navy? 23 years. 23 years. One of three years. I joined in 1983, retired in 2006. And now you work for the FBI. No. That's all right.

The CIA. HUD. Department of housing and urban development. So it's a lot different aspect as a writer-editor, you know, doing that. But it's actually I found it a lot more fulfilling in my job because the fact of that, you know, the people I work, with our goal is helping people who less fortunate get housing and be able to have a roof over their heads. And I found, you know, that job crosses all political boundaries and what have you. So I would, I would have been able to, you know, really get into this job as doing, you know,

just a basic thing of taking a complex rule and regulation and trying to make it where it's more legible for the everyday person to read and understand. That's, in a nutshell, it's what I do. Yeah. But it's just be the rewarding part of it is that knowing that the work I'm doing is helping these, you know, less fortunate families that really is, it's beneficial to me is my own self. Yeah. Worth more or less. But we were talking about that before we started recording and stuff about giving and giving of yourself. And it's just like, you don't understand what that does for you on a personal level

until you start doing it. And the more, it's just like, I always think about the, I don't know if you've ever really got into that TV show, Friends back in the day. Yeah, a little bit. Lindsay watches it all the time still. That and the office are her two go-toes for comfort shows. And there's, there's this one episode where Phoebe is saying that, you know, she loves giving this, that and the other. And Joey's like, there is no selfless good deed. And she's like, no, there are good selfless deed. are good selfless good deeds. And they spend a whole episode focusing on, you know, Phoebe doing these good deeds.

And then he's pointing out why it's, it's not selfless. And, uh, but the, the idea and the feeling behind actually giving back to, whether it's a community, individuals, if you can do such things, it's so rewarding on a,

on an individual level where you absolutely grow so much personally. And like I said, you know, I've been with the Navy, I, as both active duty and a civilian for over 30 years. years. And, you know, when I transitioned from the Navy, uh, going to work for HUD, even though it's same, it's still a government job, but the time is just, you know, I thought that there was,

I was stepping into a lot of bureaucracy and you don't. It is, you mean, yes, it's there, not going to lie. It's there. But again, the people who are there, their, their main focus of concern is just helping people with housing and making it easier to get people into housing. And that's, that's a big part of it. Yeah, that's cool. So where can people get your book? Well, my books are readily available on Amazon, but they can also find me at author, markpigot.wordpress.com.

I do my own blog where I talk about everything from writing advice to everything geek, because that's what I'm into. So I talk about a little bit of everything week to week and just, and also about my books, but it's all there. So it can find me there and there'll be link. There's links there to buy my books as well. I've had authors on the show before. And I don't know my audience as well.

Sometimes I think I know my audience. And I had one guy on the show, Charlie Robinson. He's written a few books. One of them is right here, the Octopus of Global Control, my kind of style. But he said that when he came on the show, he said, you know, his book sales went up a lot. And so apparently my audience are readers.

So I'm welcoming anybody. And just if I can do a one selfless plug is on Saturday, June the 5th, I will be at the Moravian Bookstore in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania doing a book signing from one to three. So everybody's welcome to come out and be happy to meet them and sign a copy of the book for them. Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Yeah. Absolutely. That's cool.

And you're coming up from D.C. to do that, huh? Well, you know, it was one of those things of when it, uh, I, I've always come up and done the stuff since I'm originally from Phillipsburg, New Jersey, though, you know, so I'm part of the Lehigh Valley more or less. Yeah. You know, I always come up and do stuff up here since families all around here. Yeah. I've donated books to my high school and spoken to the high school kids about being a writer and about my Navy career as well.

And so, you know, I always try to do that and talk and inspire future writers. Yeah. in that sense. Yeah, one of my one of my inside dreams is to be asked to come back to my high school and speak to the students about being successful entrepreneur. Hey, that's, that's the dream and it's, it's a great thing to do. Yeah. So that's awesome. And I highly encourage people to check it out and stuff as far as your books go. Forever Avalon is a book series you've been working on for a long time. So let's talk about, let's switch some gears and talk about some ghosts. And Now, are you the kind of guy that kind of gives weight into these things? Or was it like something that you had to, you know, see it to believe it kind of thing when it came to like these ship stories?

So I know, like, I don't think you were ever stationed on the forestall, right? No, I know. I was. You were. That was my, the forestall was my first ship. I was stationed there from 1984 to 1989. And that's where I found out about these stories and everything. Because to understand that you have to first go back in time to, July 29th, 1969. That's when the foresaw was off the Gulf of Tonkin during the Vietnam War

and they were about to launch a strikes, set of series of strikes and there was a misfire on one plane that misfired a rocket. That rocket went into another plane and these planes were loaded with fuel and bombs and that caused a chain reaction

explosion that rocked the entire flight deck. The flight deck became flooded with burning fuel bombs dropped from the planes onto this burning deck, and then you just had one explosion after the other. And the ship was very, very much had a chance of sinking. There was a good chance that ship was not going to make it back. But it was because of the fortitude of the crew that they were able to get the fire under control and save the ship. unfortunately you had 166 crew members lost their life at that day.

And so after that incident happened, the ship then limped back to the first of the Philippines to do what repairs they needed to. And then they made the journey back to Norfolk, where the ship was home port at the time and everything. But when they got to the film from Vietnam to the Philippines, the crew members who had perished, their bodies had to be stored in the only place they could be stored, which was the refrigerated eatants. That where they kept food.

So those became a makeshift morgue. And that's where most of these ghost stories that have been told to me take place. It's all within that area. That's where they see things and here. I've heard things have happened. And I got this firsthand because the fact of that the sailors who served in the and survived that fire. When they, if they stayed in the Navy, when they came back to a ship, they only came back to the forestall.

Okay. I met dozens of sailors who basically, every time they came, when they had sea duty assigned to them, you know, you wrote, just give a general idea for those who might not know. In the Navy, you rotate between shore duty and sea duty. And so when you would rotate back to sea duty, you would get assigned to a ship or to a squadron, something that's deployable. And so these sailors always came back to the forestall. Because that fire just did something to them into their psyche, into their mind, that we would only serve at sea on board this ship. Probably a survival. I would say a good survival instinct on their behalf and everything.

So they always came back to the forestall. And it's through them that I heard all of these stories about one incident. and I can tell is that one guy was down in the, let me back up just a bit of a sec, to lay out to understand. The storage for food and cargo and things like that basically is in the lower decks, probably about six decks down from the main deck. If you look at an aircraft carrier, the hangar deck, that's the main deck. That's the lower deck.

The flight deck, of course, is about four stories up from that. So the hangar deck is the main deck. Then you go six more decks down. that's where the cargo areas are. And to get to those cargo areas, you have a shaft that's about, oh, four by four. That is just a long, thin shaft down with a hatch in between each one. They would stretch a cargo net between each part of the hatch. Sailors would sit in that cargo net and pass cargo down from one deck down to the next,

down the next until it got down to those lower decks. So we'd be passing stuff down all the time. And so you'd have to go down there to get stuff, get passed back up, of course, for when you needed stuff for food. Yeah. So down those lower decks of the refrigerated areas. You have to get, the only way to get down there is through that access hatch. So there's no, you get down there and you start walking around.

There's, you know, in one deck down there, there could be about three or four different refrigerator units just or dry storage cargo areas, just all in one area. So one story was told to me was a sailor went down there. He was doing, getting some things, looking some things. And he saw somebody out of the corner of his eye walk by and go. go into a refrigerator area. And it's like he waited and waited. He kept doing his work and that guy never came out.

I was like, guys, he's going to be cold in there. What's he doing? So he goes in there, looks for the person. Nobody there. Nobody there. And there's no other way out. They had to come out, go past him to come out. Nobody came out.

Another story heard is that, you know, down these decks, we use sound powered phones. These are audio phones that basically your own sound of your voice is what powers them. and sends the signal through from one phone to the other. We use these communicating between the upper deck saying, okay, ready, pass it down and down to the lower decks, but when they're ready to start passing stuff down. So phone rings, guy picks it up saying, and he hears screaming, help, help.

They yell down the shaft saying, hey, what's going on down there? What are you talking about? Nothing's going on. Oh, my gosh. These are some of the stories that I've heard from sailors on, you know, on the forestall about this. and everything. I mean, this, this story, you know, this was something, it was offhand at first,

and then we actually started getting newspapers inquiring about this. Even the national, a story on this appeared in the National Enquirer about the Ghosts of the forestall and everything. So this is something that has made big news. And I have to say, when you look at other ships from the, from World War II in era where there has been death, death or something like that on board, you'll find ghost stories, the intrepid up in New York, the battleship New Jersey, which is here, which is over in New Jersey itself, the USS Yorktown, the aircraft carriers down in North Carolina. There have been reported ghost sightings, because those are now museums.

So even to this day, there are people who are on there who are watches or on their later, they still say there are sounds and things that they can be heard. You really have to think about the fact that how some of these sailors died. Yeah. Especially on the forestall because the one thing you have to understand it is the explosions and everything and the fire was first started on the flight deck. But when those explosions went off, it ripped through the flight deck down into the deck below. Now, on an aircraft carrier, right below the flight deck are birthing areas. That's where sailors sleep, especially those who work on the flight deck or in a squadron.

They sleep right below the flight deck. When those explosions went off, it killed a lot of sailors in their sleep. Wow. Wow. I mean, it's got to be, it's such a disaster. I mean, 166 sailors die during that one time. I was reading about it a little bit. And is it true that John McCain was the pilot?

Like, I mean, he was, he was in one of the squadrons. I was on the forestall. He was actually in a plane that was caught up in when those explosions started. happening. The fire started explaining. He was in his plane ready for launch. And when you, there's a video, the video, I think I sent you the link of that trial by fire. That's a trial by fire was a training video that every sailor had to see when I first joined the Navy because that was, that demonstrated that everybody needs to know how to be firefighting. And that's, it was actually because of the incident that happened on the forestall that we created firefighting schools for,

Every sailor to go through it. Back then, only if you were part of the firefighting team for either the flight deck or the ship, did you get firefighting training? Now, every sailor gets it because this incident proved that because the firefighting team, the flight deck firefighting team was wiped out at that first explosion. When that first thing started happening, they were the first ones heading out there. They were the first ones trying to put the fire out. And then when those bombs started going off, they were the first ones killed. Jeez. And one of the guys, he's actually an inspiration for the main character in my book series.

The flight deck firefighting chief, his name was Gerald Ferrier. The firefighting school in Norfolk is actually named after him. And he was awarded the, I can't remember if it was the Medal of Honor or if it was the bronze star, but he was awarded for his gallantry because what he did was he saved John McCain's life. Really? He ran out there on the flight deck and he had what we call it. It's a PKP bottle. It's a chemical fire extinguisher for fuel fires.

So he went out there and started spraying it down, trying to push the claims down so the pilots could get out of their aircraft and escape. And it was because of Chief Farrier that John McCain survived. So he saved his life. And he even credits that. John McCain's book, he actually, I have a copy of John McCain's one book, and where he talks about the four-st- all fire and he basically credited Chief Farrier for saving his life. That's incredible. Yeah, because I was, I was really shocked to see his name come up there. And then in the article that I was reading, it said that just like a couple weeks later, he actually, that's when he crashed and became a

prisoner of war. Yeah. Because they, because how lucky can you be? That's just a fortune of war. And again, also of the time and everything, because a lot of the pilots there, they, if they wanted to stay in the fight, they just transferred to another ship to another squadron and they continued on. That's what he did. Yeah. And everything. So. Unreal. Unreal. So when this fire broke out, all these guys are fighting the fire. From the video you sent me, it seems like there were a lot of guys that really didn't know the exact procedures to follow. Yeah. Because like I said, back then sailors were not trained in firefighting unless you were on a firefighting team. Like I said, that changed from this.

One story that, because being a Navy journalist, you know, every year on the anniversary of the fire, I wrote a story about this because we got new people rotating into the ship. And one of the, there was one of the officers, he was actually an enlisted man back in Vietnam. He became an officer. He told me a story about how there is this one kid. He was sitting there with his hose shaking, pouring water into this hole and everything. And they could not get him to move or to let go of that because he said he just, as long as he had that hose in his hand, the fire wasn't going to touch him. And so he just sat there and just kept pouring water into the hole.

There was more flooding damage, honestly, than anything else from this incident. Because, again, inexperience from the sailors who were not trained properly. But at the same time, I think a lot of it was that feeling of just survival is that I've got this hose. I'm not going to let go of it. And this one is he told the story. This kid just would not let go of the hose. He just kept pouring water and just trying to make it because there was still smoke coming out. And so he just has, I got to keep fighting this fire.

or else I'm going to die. Wow. Yeah, no wonder why the place is freaking haunted. I mean, even guys who didn't die, just the emotional energy that went into that day is crazy. Now, I heard, I think it was on one of the articles you sent me, I was reading these different accounts and stuff. And one thing that kind of struck me is, and I don't know if it's the entity, George, that they talk about. But, like, there's a couple times where you see that something is is acting but in a very physical way where like the one the one guy said that he saw something walk into through a door but it opened the door to walk through it and then there's another one where something grabbed the package when they're putting stuff down that shoot that you're

talking about something grabbed the package and it's just like holy crap like that that's like not just seeing something but it's actually touching and moving stuff well george yeah george was the nickname that basically anybody who worked in on the mess decks and and I you know I did my turn down there every every sailor when you're when you're a young seaman and you're get on ship board ship for the first time you do what we call mess cranking which is basically you go for six months you're down in the mess hall and you're working helping cook the food serve the food you know you know cleaning up doing the dishes moving the cargo the the food stores around you're doing all of that.

And so I did my turn. I was a part of that at one time. And so anybody who worked down there, they knew about George. George was the name that they gave the ghost that was down there. They just, it was probably could, you know, I don't know if it was multiples, ghosts or what have you, but they just, they always just said, oh, it's just George. Yeah. And everything that's just referred to it.

But yeah, the things opening, things moving, hearing footsteps, things falling off of shelves, that that was a constant thing down there. people if they had to go I was the one thing I was always told is if you've got to go down to the dry stores or the refrigerator don't go by yourself they always say go take somebody go down there with them that way you know there's two of you yeah because it gets a little freaky yeah I can imagine I can imagine I remember working uh in a in a pretzel factory in Reading PA when I was in college and I was working a double shift and they put me in the back and this is an old old building and they put me in the back and I was making the dough, but I was the only one there.

And it was just creepy back there, you know, and I can't imagine being out on a ship, you know, going down to those refrigerators, I wouldn't want to go alone either. Yeah, it's, there's a lot of places. I mean, I said, I've been on four different aircraft carriers, two of the older ones between the Fort Stahl, and my last ship was the Enterprise, which was, you know, they just retired after 50 years. So, you know, I've been on two of the older ships, and there are places and things you hear and see and hear throughout that. Yeah, it's possible as many times it's happened. You know, this is a question I asked you years ago, and I got to tell the audience, you're going to be disappointed. My uncle Mark has never seen UFOs out at sea. I even tried telling him. I try telling him, it's okay. You can talk about it now. They're coming out and they're saying stuff, but he said he's never seen anything, which means he's seeing stuff. He's just not willing to talk about it. You know what, though, the thing is you have to understand is that on an aircraft carrier, it's going 24-7, especially when you're deployed. And at night, when we're doing night flight operations, we switch our lights from to not a red.

It's like an orangish color. But it's night lights more lights is where you can go out there and you can see things on the deck. But it's hard to see at a distance. you know, and everything. So, so the, the ship is constantly lit. The only time I've ever been on the deck, it was actually, I was on the forestall. We had just, we had just finished a four-year yard period. I got to the ship at the tail end of that.

They did what they call it a service life extension program is at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard down in Philly. And so I was there for the last year of that. And then we started doing seed trials. So when you're going out for sea trials, you're mainly worried about the ship. We had no aircraft on board and everything. So one night, my first class, Lenny Molloy, great guy. He said, here, I want to show you something.

And he took me up to the flight deck. And it was pitch black. You couldn't see anything. But we were in the middle of the ocean by that time. We were out in the Atlantic. And by the time my eyes adjusted and I looked up, I could see more stars. that I could ever see in my lifetime because out there, there's nothing. There's no city lights.

There's nothing. No, no, nothing to bother you. And you just saw, I just saw the veil of heaven, you know, from, from horizon to horizon. And it's one of the most beautiful things I will, I will ever see in my life, seeing that. Yeah. It's incredible, you know, so that's the only time you can't see things otherwise. I mean, you just can't. Yeah.

And everything, because the interference from the lights on the ship, it's just, it's, it prevents that. That makes sense. I mean, I think, at least I do, I often think, you know, Hollywood version of, you know, aircraft carriers. And so, you know, at nighttime, it's dark at it to see and you can just look in the sky and see whatever's out there. But it makes sense. I mean, it's almost like if you're being, if you're in the middle of a parking lot, the nighttime, the lights are on all the time and, you know, it's kind of hard to see past that light. And that's, it's also a safety issue because you have sailors up there, even when, if we're not launching at that time, they're up there, you have the squadron guys up there, sometimes doing some maintenance, last minute

checks. So if we got launches the next day, you got security just walking around up there, making sure that people aren't wandering or doing things they're not supposed to be or be where they're not supposed to be up on the flight deck, because it's a safety issue. So, you know, it's one of those things of that. It was just always something going on up there. Security. I never really thought about these ships having security.

Oh, yeah. we have ships have a have their own security force really we have yeah we have our own police force on board the well man because you're going to you're all in the same team right but the same time is when a fight breaks out what's going to happen or you know things like that that does happen that happens a lot or and and i can say this now you know because it wasn't on my first ships but on my last ship because when i was on enterprise enterprise was the first ship that we had women on board And so you had, I'm sorry, I'm going to say, but yet, especially when they're 18 to 21 year olds, men and women together and bored out of their minds when they're at sea. Nothing around.

Things happen. Yeah. They're not supposed to, but it happens, you know, and everything. So, you know, that's why you have a security force and everything. Yeah. So again, also it's- Two people romping and you're like, hey, break that up. You're not supposed to doing that.

I never caught. The worst I ever had is my office was right under the flight deck and you had to go through the arresting gear room, one of them for the barricade. The barricade was basically if a plane couldn't get its hooked down to catch one of the wires, the arresting gear wires, you got to take it in the barricade. If you want to see a barricade in action and watch the movie The Final Countdown, that's the one with the, It was made in the late 70s with Martin Sheen and Kirk Douglas. It's about the USS Nimitz going back in time right before the attack on Pearl Harbor. It's a great, it's, that's one of those great Navy science fiction movies you got to watch, you know, to watch. But on there, they had to rig the barricades.

So the barricades, they stretch across the plane basically to catch the plane if it couldn't land by itself or had issues. Like trouble with its landing gear or in this case, it's hook. But anyway, so I'm going through the barricade room to my office. And as I'm walking through, some of the guys who work in the, you know, men and women who work in their resting gear, they're there. And you had this one female sailor sitting on the lap of a male sailor. And I immediately stopped and said, you need to get up right now. I don't want to see this again out here.

Or I'm going to be talking to your chief. And they were like, yes, chief. And so they stopped and everything. But, you know, that's as far as. I got, you know, in those kind of instances. But it does happen. It's, you know, men and women, it's like I said, 18 to 21. Yeah.

You're not going to stop it. No, no, especially these things are huge. I mean, I don't think people totally understand how big these ships are. Yeah, absolutely. It's a floating airport. Yeah. It's, I think about it. But again, the thing with the on the flight deck, security on the flight deck,

it's primarily a safety issue because you cannot be walking around out there where, you know, in an instant you don't know where you're stepping. you're going to walk and then fall right overboard. Yeah. And you are three stories up. That's like falling off a three-story building and hitting that water. It's hitting concrete. That's what it feels like.

That's what I've been told by people. I mean, I've had, we've had guys who are flown, blown off, they are on the flight deck and an aircraft turns the wrong way. The jet wash blows them right off the flight deck and they hit that water. And that,

what hits you with such an impact. And we lost a guy one time like that. From the impact. From just, Well, he hit the water, and then so we had a man overboard. We circled. We couldn't find him. Really? Because he got, because the impact just hits you, so that can hit you that hard. Wow, that's crazy. Like I just don't, I guess I think about our military and our Navy. And I'm like, no, we're not losing any men at sea by accidents. I mean, you know, this isn't Christopher Columbus days. It happens all the time. Wow. It does. Either by accident or things just happen.

Jeez. So I, I, uh, when I, I used to drive down to Philadelphia, uh, shipyard a lot. And so I'm in a tractor trailer, you know, driving around down there. And, uh, you don't realize how big these things are until you're in a tractor trailer and you feel like an ant. Like, I, and these, the ships that I was driving by weren't aircraft carriers, you know, I, I'm assuming aircraft carriers are even bigger. Yes. It's just like, I think the ones down in Philadelphia, those that's part of the what they what we call the ghost fleet that's for an appropriate name but yeah those are decommission ships who are basically waiting for disposition of what's going to happen to them and everything so they're just sitting down there for storage more or less i got you

i i used to take my cruisers i think i think most of them i once what what what's a cruiser like what well if you got the for for ships smallest ship that we have on is you go frigate destroyer cruiser battleship aircraft carrier. Gotcha. So it's kind of in the middle. In the middle, yeah. Okay. So, I mean, shoot, if that's in the middle, I can't imagine being near an aircraft carrier. That's crazy. Because I would take my lunch break sometimes right on the port where, I mean, I'm literally just looking straight up at the ship. And I'm thinking, this things are huge,

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Well, it's all done for you through Heller. Hello Fresh. Now, this is the best part of this ad, friends. I'm telling you, go to hellofresh.com slash 12 Tony and use the promo code 12 Tony for 12 free meals, including free shipping. Let me tell you that again, 12 free meals when you go to hellofresh.com slash 12 Tony. That's a freaking amazing deal. I don't know why you wouldn't take advantage of that. So go to hellofresh.com slash 12 Tony right now and use the promo code 12 Tony for 12 free meals, including the free shipping. Go now. All right. So have you ever heard of the Philadelphia experiment? Yes. Oh, yeah. What do you think about it? Do I believe it happened? Absolutely. I think that they were testing, you have to understand at that time in World War II,

especially, we were testing everything we could. They were trying different, different experimentations on things and blocking radar was a big, big issue, trying to help save lives. So do I believe, yeah, I absolutely believe the Philadelphia experiment happened. Not like the movie they did in the 80s. Come on now. I want that. I want that one. The linking and the time travel.

That's what I want. I know. That would be cool. That would be cool. But I do think I've read the stories of the sailors who were on board and what happened to them. The Eldridge, I believe, was the ship, the USS Eldridge, and I, and hearing and seeing what, what, what, they, they tapped into when they, when they were experimenting like that. I mean, you have to think, when you think about every kind of military experimentation through the

years. I mean, you know, you, testing the nukes. Yeah. That. Holy crap. I mean, even, you know, something I, I, my last, uh, command I served with was the submarine force. And so I found out that about the USS Alligator, which you probably never even heard of. USS Alligator was actually a first submarine before the Hunley, before the Confederates tested the Hunley. The union had the alligator and it was tested off of Philadelphia. And they think it sunk somewhere and it sunk. And they think it's still somewhere they're off Philadelphia. Really?

Yeah. And I never heard about it before until I served with some people who are actually on a project trying to find and salvage the alligator. Wow. So somewhere off of Philadelphia in the Delaware River somewhere, there is a hall of a union submarine. Wow. Have you ever been on a submarine? Oh, yes. Yeah?

Oh, yeah. I've been, I, again, part of my job, I did public affairs for the Navy. So part of my job was escorting people out on media and such out on different ships. And being I was with the submarine force, I was the one who took them out on the submarines and out there. So I've been on a fast attack. It actually took Terry Bradshaw on the USS Pittsburgh. Really? For an overnight submarine.

We went out, dove down, came back the next day and everything. But that was fun. And I've been on the ballistic, the big ones, the ballistic missile submarines. I'm more comfortable on that because those are like big for, you have a lot of room compared to a fast attack as tight quarters as that is. I imagine. No, on the big ballistic missile submarines, I was able to walk around without any. issues. Yeah. And how tall are you? You're like six four. Yeah. So I mean, you're a little bit tall there. Yeah. Now, since you have experience with submarines and obviously being out of ocean and stuff, we talk about

sometimes, you know, how mysterious the oceans are because they're so unexplored. Now, I've heard that 95% of the oceans are unexplored as far as. Is that something that's absolutely feasible to you? Absolutely, because we can't go to some of the depths that is out there. I mean, the Marianas' trench just for an example you think about how many I don't know the number off the top of my head but that's miles and miles deep we can't even get down the pressure down going down that deep is too great I mean just for these guys that go up to the titanic um sunken ship and everything going up there they those are it's so limited as how deep they can go and how long they can stay down I mean, there is so much unexplored of the ocean that we haven't even gotten near enough and don't have that capability yet.

It's just the technology factor that we don't have the technology to do it. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. When you think about it, we just can't go that deep. I have a hard time wrap my head around that. I mean, we shoot ourselves into space. We're talking about going to Mars and we can't figure out our own oceans. Well, it's more of a thing of pressure.

It's like I said, it's not about where space is. absent of pressure down in the ocean, you have too much pressure that it just crushes, crushes you like a beer can. It's just, you can't do it. And we're, I know we're working on it. I know they're trying to develop more and more for that because even I think that, you know, we need to be doing more with the ocean and everything. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure you do. You spend your whole life on it. Yeah, absolutely. So with the ocean, Do you think that there could be, like, let's just call it generically sea monsters where there's just, there are creatures down there. We've never laid eyes on there. And absolutely huge because, you know, they live at the deepest of depths. Is that, is that a possibility you think?

I mean, you look at some of the giant squids that they're finding and everything. Though that's just, that's just one creature. You don't know what else could be down there. I mean, it is as unexplored as it is. You can't, because they're used to that depth. They're not used to art the sunlight. So they stay down there and trying just to coax them out. And again, being a fantasy writer as I am, you know, these are the stories that have been passed on from the early days, from the first sailors. Yeah. And everything.

I mean, that's where, you know, when you think about everything from the Bermuda Triangle to, you know, the. the depths of the ocean and what's down there, we don't know. We haven't done it yet. We haven't been there and been part of that and everything. What are your thoughts on the Bermuda Triangle? Okay. Well, no, I believe something's happening.

But I also tied that into my book because in my book series, Forever Avalon, I said that the only way to access Avalon was going through the Bermuda triangle because it was the barrier that kept Avalon separate from the outside world was weakened by storms. And so everything that disappeared in the Bremurit Triangle ended up on Avalon. That's where Outlanders, people from the outside world came. You know, they lived there.

I mean, one of the characters was actually in within my book was Lieutenant Charles Taylor. He was the one that led that squadron, Navy squadron that flew out over the Bermuda Triangle and disappeared. He was actually a character in my book, you know. So I'm a firm believer in that because I think there is something weird out there. You can't just have these aircraft and ships, so many of them that just disappeared and not know what happened to them. Again, it's just, it's one of those great mysteries that we still, we still don't have answers to. And that's the thing. I mean, you hear about, and I don't know if this is true or not, but I've heard stories of, you know, say a ship or a plane goes missing and then it shows up like 70 years later, like almost like a time slip or something.

Yeah. That's trippy stuff to me. That's really trippy stuff because we have, I always forget. his name, I think his name is Edward Mnays. He's a like a nuclear physicist or something like that. And he's been on record and he says that our science does dabble in parallel universes. Like I'm thinking myself, hold on a second. Like this is no longer the 1990s, Tony's a little kid anymore, thinking that, you know, wouldn't be cool. Now we have mainstream scientists coming out talking about how, yes, we dabble in parallel universes. So you're telling me there's a parallel universe then.

like, yes. And I'm just like, holy crap, man. Like, what are the possibilities? Well, I mean, to me, it's a thing of that when you think about the progression of science, I mean, you look at how many, you know, it took us how many decades just to go from a gas powered stove to the electrical microwave that we have, the gap in that. But at the same time, we've gone from a computer that took the man to the moon to one you can hold that that's 10 times as powerful that you can hold in the palm of your hand and in a shorter amount of time. So I think we're progressing faster when it comes to technology. And so I think these ideas, you know, are becoming more of a reality. I mean, it's like said, you know, you thought about the theory of relativity. Nobody thinks about

that. Yet we're progressing towards that actually being possible in the ideas. of space travel and such. Yeah. You know, you're starting, the things that were science fiction of Star Trek were, are now becoming reality. So we're, I think we're crossing that platform, that generational gap. And I think it's becoming more and more reality. So people are starting to think more that way.

Yeah. I've definitely noticed that. Towards a possibility of that being out there. Yeah. It's crazy, man. It's like, I'm fascinated by the mysterious. universe that we live in this world. I mean, there's so many mysteries and, you know, kind of backtrack a little bit to the oceans and stuff. You know, there's a lot of people out

there that, and it sounds to me like you probably don't really get into a whole lot of UFO but there's a lot of people out there that believe that UAPs or, you know, UFOs might submerge submers themselves underwater. And that's how they remain undetected. And I, to be honest with you, I have photographs that was sent to me a guy. This is when I first started the show. He is from Canada. He lives off of a bay, and there's a storm coming through. And he was taking video of this storm and the lightning coming down.

And afterwards, he was going through it trying to get a still frame of just the lightning striking the water. And he noticed that in like the same frame as the lightning, there was this thing shooting out of the water. caught it three different times in a very short period, like maybe like a second, you know. And you see it like it's coming out of the water, then it's, it's halfway through the sky, then it's up leaving the frame. Yeah.

But it looked like a thin, flat disc shooting out of the water. And it's just like the idea that, man, if there were crafts, you know, these, whether they're extraterrestrial or, you know, by our own government, the freaking ocean would be a great spot to hide it if we had the technology from getting it crushed like a can, like you said. Yeah, but again, we're thinking on the lines of technology of that type that exists. It may not exist for us, but who knows who it exists for and everything. I mean, it's the same concept when you think about we are trying to understand what life is at. How can a crab that's this big survive at the bottom of the ocean yet we can't?

You know, and things like that. The same thing goes if you think about What was? Europa And everything You know, they know that that planet is Is water underneath all that ice They're down deep enough

Could there be life? Absolutely there could be some kind of life down there. We don't know. Until we get there, we can't, Until you can get there and see it and be in an experience it for yourself, I don't think we're ever going to ever get past the skeptics. Yeah, I know, I know. But I think that we have technologies that our military government has that we just don't have for civilians.

I mean, it just only makes sense. I mean, I talked to this one guy I was doing a delivery. He owns a casket place. I mean, he sells caskets. And I'm talking to him. And he said back in the 60, he was an engineer and he was working on, you know, like technology that he said they're coming out with today back then. He said that even down to the night vision and stuff like that.

So I just think that, you know, shoot, man, maybe it's, it's our own government and they have technology we're just not aware of because they don't want to talk about it. Well, I mean, if you think about it, the, within the Navy right now, we're testing the rail guns. And that, to me, that rail gun was something that. Tell people what rail guns are in case of them. Rail gun uses electromagnetic energy to propel a shell at supersonic speed. So you're shooting a shell, but instead of shooting it with gunpowder and an explosion behind it, you're using electromagnetic energy to propel it and propels it faster, more lethal. And over a greater, and over a greater distance. And again, back in the 80s, this was science fiction to me.

Yeah. This was something I used to do a lot of role playing games when I was a teenager in the 70s and 80s. And, you know, one of the space games I used to play was called Space Opera. I believe it was name of it. And one of the weapons I had was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, you know, playing the game and such. Yeah. And then just recently, the Navy started, has been testing over at Dalgren, which is, uh, the weapons

testing facility. It's in Maryland, I believe. I want to say it's on the, on the eastern shore of Maryland, but they're testing real, the rail gun out there that could be, you could see that on our ships in the next few years and everything. That's incredible. And I mean, we're. already using that, the new aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald Ford, the new class of carriers.

They have electromagnetic launchers for the air. No longer steam. It used to be steam powered. Nope. They're using electromagnetism to launch aircraft and to recover aircraft. So that technology is being used already on our ships, on the new class of aircraft carrier. They're doing away with steam and hydraulics and converting everything to electromagnetism. It's funny because you bring up the science fiction in nature.

We're back in the 80s, a lot of this stuff was science fiction. And you talk about the rail gun and the technology behind it. Now, I dive into deep underground military bases. Fascinates me. I know they exist. And it's not even a secret. I mean, like Raven Rock is here in Pennsylvania. You can look at it on Google Maps.

It's a military base and the only opening is going into the ground. Like, you can see it. but I'll have to look at that one. Yeah, I'll show you when we're done. Yeah. It's interesting. And I mean, there's, they have T-shirts, Raven Rock. You know, it's, it's, it, I could go there right now as far as, well, the area. You can't really get too close because it's, you know, a problem. But, um, so there's, there's people that say that, you know, they, they were involved in, you know, secret space programs, this, that, and the other. And they, they, they talk about traveling from

underground military base to underground, underground military base underground. But one of the things that they talk about is how they get from one place to another. And it reminds me a lot of the technology behind the rail gun. Yeah. Because they say that, you know, they could, let's just say

you're starting in Philadelphia and you're some underground military. Let's just say Raven Rock. You're at Raven Rock and you're going to Dulce and you're there in 20 minutes. And they say it's like, it's like this this it just like shoots you there and it just makes me feel like the rail gun technology could it be something like that now i know i'm probably talking like chinese to you and stuff but

no no i i i i absolutely believe that i mean i i've i've delved into you know like i said being being a writer as i am i research a lot of the stuff myself and everything when i'm looking at it so yeah i that that that is a definite possibility i mean electromagnetic rail that's they use that for for for high-speed trains and things in Japan. So yeah, it's, it's, all of that's possible. The technology is there. It's just getting to use it and how to use it. Yeah. Is where you have to. Without turning into a pancake. Yeah. Holy crap. Can you imagine like, I mean, imagine the speed and force your body would be under to go from one in the country to another in 20 minutes. That's like it's insane. Like I think you, you'd come out of that looking like a yolk, an egg yolk. It's probably

the same force as when you're launching, because I've launched, off of the deck of a carrier. But when you're doing it, you're sitting with your back to the front of the plane and you grab your straps and brace yourself back because that that lurch, that launch does that to you. But it would probably be something like that. But for a longer period of time than just that short 20, 10 seconds that it takes you to launch off the deck of a carrier. Yeah. I'm fascinated by the deep underground military bases and the stories that come out from people. But yeah, when we're done recording, I'll show you, I'll show you Raven Rock on Google. It's pretty cool.

But I mean, that's a fact because we've had those since forever. Yeah. I mean, there's always been, I mean, especially from World War II and on into the Cold War, we've had those secret installations where nobody could. I mean, we all know that the stealth bomber and the stealth fighter all came out of, you know, secret military installations in New Mexico. Yeah, we know that. Because there's pictures of them.

Yeah. So we know there, we know those places are out there. It's, it's just that what are they doing now? That's the question. Sure. Yeah, I mean, I'm a big fan of Bob Lazar. Do you know who Bob Lazar is? I'm afraid I don't. He came out back in, I think it was the 80s. And he said he worked in, in area S4, which is part of Area 51. And on these, actually this drawing right here on a documentary he did, that's a craft that he said he worked on. And he signed it for me. but um oh wow he said there i think he if i remember correctly he said there were like nine different

and they said he said they all looked completely different and one of the interesting things about what he said back then is he said that uh they they worked with anti-gravity in the sense that these crafts would almost like eliminate the gravity in front of the craft and it would fall into a into like a gravity less space and that's how it like propelled itself forward but like very rapidly extremely fast and he said in order to do that these things would stand up almost vertically. And then when we see the videos that were coming out over the last couple years, a Tick-Tac UFO, that's kind of what you see in this and how it's acting. It kind of really kind of gives him a lot of, you know, more credit as to his story from back in the 80s. But it's just,

it's very interesting those kind of things to me. And, you know, sky and sea are some of the most mysterious things about what we do in our military. And now we're talking about space force. Holy crap. What do you think about space force, man? I mean, well, I mean, it's a logical next step because we know that's where where things are headed. I mean, again, you have to think about the world as a whole and the geopolitical situation we're in. And do we want to be the ones up there first or do we want to let somebody else do it first? I mean, imagine China being first. No, thanks.

I mean, that's the thing you have to think about is, you know, you can laugh at it all you want. But the fact is is that, you know, if, you know, if, you know, if. If we don't do it, somebody else will. And then that's going to be a bigger threat we're going to have to play catch-up to and everything. We don't want to do that. Yeah, I agree. And who knows? Maybe they know something we don't know.

Maybe there's other countries that are right on the verge of that kind of stuff. And that's why they're like, yo, we got it kicking in a high gear here. Absolutely. So let's shift gears a little bit. I want to hear about this house you guys lived in Massachusetts because I didn't know about this until Anthony said, make sure you tell them about the house. Well, I was stationed in 1995. I was assigned to the Naval Air Station, South Wemouth, Massachusetts.

It's now been actually, the base has been closed and everything. But we were stationed there. And when we moved up there, we had to find a place to live. And with Massachusetts, one of the weird things is there's not a lot of apartment complexes like what you think of today. Okay. And seeing a lot of people rented their houses or rented like, part of a house as an apartment or things like that. So we were, you know, wife, three kids, we had to find somewhere.

So we found this, we were looking around for about a week and we couldn't, it was hard, couldn't find anything that was approachable for what we were going to do. And then we found this house. It was over on High Street in East Waymouth. And it was an older house. I don't know how old. I didn't really get into details about the owner. guy's name was John.

And so he was in the process of finishing, fixing up the house and everything. And it was old, but it was like, you know, hey, we can make this work, you know, and everything, since we're going to be here. It was the school was nearby. It was a good neighborhood. We figured, okay, this will work fine. So we rented the house. And after we started moving in, it was when the weird thing started to happen. We had one instance where, you know, I'm at work one day.

I get a phone call from Georgine saying there's flies all this one window in the upstairs bedroom which is just completely covered with flies. It's like, you know, and so she had to open the window and try to get them out as quick as possible. And, you know, and that incident happened. We called an exterminator. They looked, no, they thought maybe a dead animal somewhere either in the attic or underneath. Nope, nothing there. And that was weird enough.

Yeah. But then she, she was actually taking courses from at that time. And so she would stay up late. When I would go to bed, she would stay up late and do her work. And she would always hear voices and hear sounds. And it was and even, you know, the house you just felt uneasy in. You really did. It was not, we were not, I don't think, I don't think either one of us ever felt completely comfortable there and everything.

And we later then found out that the guy who rented us house, the owner, his wife had come down with cancer. And she was bedridden and she actually died in that house. And he was trying to finish fixing up. This was supposed to be their house together. So he was trying to finish fixing it up before she died. And he never did. And so, but we found out this after because she was like, Georgian was cleaning out this one drawer and she found an article about, that was in there about her dying.

And it was like, she died in this house. It freaked us out completely and everything. So it was just one of those weird experiences in this house, you know, that when you're just sitting there and you hear sounds and, you know, and she had mentioned this to you that there were times, you know, we were upstairs with our two girls, the bedrooms of stairs. There was another bedroom that was downstairs. And that's where we had Zachary and we had the baby monitor. So he was right next to the kitchen. So you could go down the way it wouldn't disturb other the other kids or one of us. One of us would go down and take care of him if he would wake up in the night and we heard things.

And it got to the point of where, you know, when he would cry to everything, he'd say, okay, your turn to go. No, it's your turn because another one of us wanted to be downstairs by ourselves. You know, even though my son was, you know, that made me sound like bad parenting. But, I mean, it was just that kind of weird feeling. Yeah. And you see, most parents are like, no, you go because they don't want to do the diaper. You're like, I don't want to deal with the ghost. That's what it came down.

to. The one, I guess, I don't know if it's a saving grace or whatever it is with the end of that was that. We actually found out that he was taking the rent money for me, but he wasn't paying the mortgage. And I got to call one day for the mortgage company saying, we're foreclosing on the house. You need to get out of there. Wow. So I actually had to call to my base CEO. We actually got then shifted and got moved on to base housing and everything. So we were kind of more preferable? In this case, yes. Yeah.

I'd say so. Definitely in this case it was. It was a lot more preferable. Yeah. Yeah. So that was one of those weird instances. You just never had an easy feeling while we were living. And we lived there for about close to a year, almost a year.

That's interesting. That's really interesting. Well, I'll tell you, the audience has heard me tell my grandfather's stories throughout the years on and off. I've played recordings from him in the hospital when I recorded back in the day before I had podcasts, right? Yeah. And it was just really interesting hearing Andrew Gene relay some of the stories that I've heard before. I'm just like, man, like, it's just confirmation for me that those experiences were legit, you know? Like, my dad tells me the stories Andrew Gene did. Pappy told him to me, and it's always the same stories. And I'm just like, man, that's, it's crazy.

It's crazy the reality of this world and the fact is we really don't have it all figured out. We think we got a good handle on things, but this world is just really strange and we don't have it remotely figured out at all. I mean, the one thing I can relate to during my Navy career was one of the regular ports of call for a ship on the East Coast is when you go do a Mediterranean cruise is Naples, Italy. And so from Naples, they would offer tours to sailors of different sites and things around the area. So I always did Pompeii. I loved Pompey. I loved visiting there because every time you went there, they had uncovered something new and everything about that. But when you walk around there and you can just feel the impact of that, of being in a place like that, that was once covered completely.

And the people that just died died like the way they did. It really hits you even more so. I mean, I can't say, you know, I had any kind of experience there, but just walking through there, you know, because we only went during the day. But I can imagine what that place is like. And just every time you go, I'd go back there, you'd just get more and more of that feeling. Yeah, I can imagine. Before we wrap this up, let me ask you a question. In the 23 years that you were in the Navy, did you ever have a close call that you felt like this might be my time? Like, I mean, with all the, the different military exercises that we've, our governments have been involved in desert storm,

things like that. It was ever a time that, like, you, did you ever see battle or anything like that that kind of made you feel like, ah, I love my family. I hope they know that. Yeah, a couple times. I mean, on the forestall, when I was on the forestall, we were, we were hip deep in the Cold War. And the one time went through the, went through the Suez Canal and everything.

and then you go through the, you pass down. And at that time, when you come around and when you're coming out of the Red Sea and coming into the North Arabian Sea, which is just outside of the Persian Gulf. Okay. You come around there, that's called the Bob El Mendeb Straits. We used to nickname it the Barberman-Drell Straits. So it was a joke, you know, for everybody. But when we were passing through there, we actually had to be at general quarters

because the Russians, at that time, were in Yemen. And so when you're passing through there and you've got Russian tanks sitting on the coastline, that's, that's, that's, you know, a bit of a, of, of an, of a scary thought when you're at general quarters and you're doing, and you're doing that. The other time I had experience like that was that basically was after 9-11. Mm. Because I was deployed during when 9-11 happened and everything. And we, the enterprise was actually the first ship to launch strikes against al-Qaeda targets in Afghanistan. Okay. And so after we were relieved, we got extended about a month.

That was because we were at the end of our deployment at that time. So we extended about a month. And then we were relieved. When we were relieved, we had to go back through the Suez, of course, to come coming back home. This time going through the Suez, we were basically at high security alert the whole time. You weren't even allowed. Usually when you go to the Suez, you're allowed on the outside of the ship and everything. You're allowed to look at the sites and see things, take pictures, you know, hey, I'm going through, you know, because with the Suez, you know, if you've seen the Suez, you know, if you've seen the,

the picture recently of that cargo ship that was stuck there. You know, think of an aircraft carrier doing the same thing, but going, you know, you've got basically about 40 feet, 40, 50 feet on either side. Jeez. That tight. Wow. And everything. I mean, you could basically jump off the ship into the water, swim over.

You could be there in Egypt or, you know, on the other side. So, you know, we're going through there and everything. And it's just tight security because you don't know if somebody was waiting. while we were passing through if something was going to happen to us. Wow. So that was just tight security. Did they ever get that ship out? I haven't.

Yeah. They finally got it out. They finally got it maneuvered out of position, I believe. There was like cheering where the other ships were blowing because they got stuck because there was ship stuck there. I can imagine what it was like. I know. Can you imagine if that happened, you guys were trying to pass through?

Oh, we would have gone the other way around. the Africa, the Horn of Africa, we'd had to go around that way instead, which I think a lot of ships got rerouted to doing that because of that. The only time I think it got to the point of in fear of my life was I was on the USS George Washington. We were deployed. It was late at night and General Quarter sounded. Didn't know what was going on. I went to my General Corps Station, which was a repair locker with firefighting team group. locker, which was on the hangar deck and the main deck.

Here, a firehead started back aft on one of the fantails, which is on Sponson, excuse me, on the Sponson. Sponsonsons are basically like platforms that come out from the side of the ship. And we use it for storage, you use it for, you know, gun areas, things like that, depending. This was an area which normally would be a, was a storage for what, for fuel that was used for the tractors. and other equipment that didn't, you know, non, you know, more like, this was like, this was basically barrels of gasoline were stored there. Somebody went out there and decided to have a cigarette. What?

And basically a fire started. Yeah. The fire got to the point where it spread up the side of the ship. It went in through ventilation because, and right there under there, there were ventilation shafts. And so it went into the ventilator. It started affecting birthing areas in the back, started coming up with a flight deck. So, you know, this again was one of those, you think back to the forestall. When there's a fire at sea, you have to fight that fire or you're going to die because there's nowhere to go.

Yeah. You know, you're not at the pier or anywhere you can just step off. No, you either you're going to save the ship or you're going to be swimming. Yeah. So we were at general quarters for probably most foremost. from till about three in the morning. Okay. Almost,

almost eight hours at general quarters. And we got the fire out. Everything got under control. You know, no lives lost, thank God. Yeah. You know,

so, but that was probably one of the scariest times of I, I, I had at sea. I mean, I've done, me, I mean,

like said, you get to general quarters when you're doing different, different maneuvering too close to the coast and things like that. I, you know, my time on the forest off, you've ever,

back to the 80s, Omar Gaddafi in Libya. He had that line of death out there that if the Navy crosses it, you're going to be, we're going to attack you. Well, we crossed it. And I was on the forestall and we crossed the line.

I even have a patch on my one jacket says, I cross, yeah, I have a patch says, I crossed the line of death. Wow. Because we did that, you know,

that was the kind of thing. I've participated in, you know, uh, Cold War exercises where we were buzzed by Russian aircraft. Oh, my first deployment on the forestall. We were leaving.

There was a, Russian trawler waiting for us as we were pulling out and, you know, and everything. And he started following us and captain came over the one MC said, we're going to go up to flank speed and put this sucker in our wake. And we did. But, but, you know, a little Russian trawler with a, no. No way. But, but I mean, that, that was about as intense as it got sometimes, you know, doing exercises

like that and everything. But that fire was probably the worst. man that's yeah that's intense stuff man that's intense stuff but uh i want to i want to say thank you for coming on the show i'm i'm happy to do it anytime this is great yeah and uh let's tell the people again where they can get your books at uh if you visit my uh my website author mark piggott p i g g ott at dot dot wordpress dot com and the links are there to buy my books a lot of people wind up going to amazon right away to purchase books is it there yeah, it's on Amazon. It is all over Amazon. Awesome. Very cool. Well, thank you very much,

sir, for being here. Thank you. I appreciate it, Tony. Well, that's the show, everybody. I really hope you enjoyed it. And if you did enjoy it, please share the show with your friends. I don't care where or how you share the show. Just share the show if you enjoyed it, because that's the best thing you can do to help this show grow. And go ahead and check out my Uncle Mark's books. They are on Amazon, and I did put the links into the description below, so you have ease of access. So go ahead and check that out. And I I hope you guys enjoy those books because the storyline is awesome. All right, guys, until next week, stay safe, take care, and remember the truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.

Bye. Like you, I'm just drifting, probably right beside you, all the abyss, control form of what did we miss? Now we laugh with the scars. We love the lows, but hate the highs. Is the other side of the song? With all this glow. It's hard to hide. The Lord's behave the heart is the other side of the song.

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