The Confessionals - RELOADED | 32: Fifty Feet From A UFO

Episode Date: June 2, 2025

Please pray for Tony's wife, Lindsay, as she battles breast cancer. Your prayers make a difference!If you’re able, consider helping the Merkel family with medical expenses by donating to Lindsay’s GoFundMe: https://gofund.me/b8f76890Description:In Episode 32: 50 Feet From a UFO, we welcome Steven to the show to share his extremely close encounter with a UFO back in 1981. In addition to his very detailed description of his UFO experience, Steven also reveals his encounters with poltergeist activity and ghostly images! Become a member for ad-free listening, extra shows, and exclusive access to our social media app: theconfessionalspodcast.com/joinThe Confessionals Social Network App:Apple Store: https://apple.co/3UxhPrhGoogle Play: https://bit.ly/43mk8kZMy New YouTube ChannelMerkel IRL: @merkelIRLMy First Sermon: Unseen BattlesSasquatch and The Missing Man: merkelfilms.comMerkel Media Apparel: merkmerch.comSPONSORSSIMPLISAFE TODAY: simplisafe.com/confessionalsGHOSTBED: GhostBed.com/tonyCONNECT WITH USWebsite: www.theconfessionalspodcast.comEmail: [e-mail] ADDRESS:Merkel Media257 N. Calderwood St., #301Alcoa, TN 37701SOCIAL MEDIASubscribe to our YouTube: https://bit.ly/2TlREaIReddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/theconfessionals/Discord: https://discord.gg/KDn4D2uw7hShow Instagram: theconfessionalspodcastTony's Instagram: tonymerkelofficialFacebook: www.facebook.com/TheConfessionalsPodcasTwitter: @TConfessionalsTony's Twitter: @tony_merkelProduced by: @jack_theproducer

Merkel. Medias. I guess it's time to go back in time. Are you telling me you built a time machine? Kind of a Dolion? Time is but a stubborn illusion. I have a lot of memories of the past. People are time traveling within themselves.

Time travel is possible. sacrifice your life. Okay, I reload it. Welcome to the show, everybody. I am your host, Tony Merkel, and I am really glad that you're here, and I'm really glad to be here. And as always, if you've had an encounter of any kind, it does not matter to me what it is. Bigfoot, UFO, alien, dog band, stick man, government conspiracy, it doesn't matter. If you have something you want to share on the show, go ahead and shoot me an email at, or go to the website, the confessuals podcast.com,

hit the connection section, and you can reach me that way as well. tonight we bring on Steve and Steve has had a very close encounter with a UFO. Plus, he shares some paranormal experiences that he's had throughout his life. I look forward to you guys listening to this show, so let's get to it. Okay, tonight I have a great guest coming on. Stephen DeVal. Stephen DeVal has contacted me through the email, and he shared with me an encounter story that he had published on UFOhunters.com.

Stephen, how are you? I'm great. How are you, Cheney? I'm doing good, man. we had a great time talking here before the interview started, and you shared some details with me about, you know, the UFOhunters.com article and then some hauntings that you had throughout your life. But I'm really interested in hearing about this UFOhunters.com article that you had written about you. I guess it's more like an encounter report, but I got a chance to read through it. And I just, I really want to hear you talk about it. So walk us into what happened that night.

Okay, basically, I was with my best friend at the time, Debbie, and unfortunately she's no longer with this. I miss her a lot, but she and I were living in this little subdivision that was kind of in the middle of fields. There were subdivisions kind of spaced around with large dark fields in between them and roads in between them. And we were walking down this road through a dark field. And the sky was very, there was no light pollution. We were like in a suburb of Tulsa, Oklahoma, basically. No light pollution. The stars were brilliant.

We were watching the stars. It was November and very clear. And we noticed what looked like a star, but it was traveling at a very steady pace from west to east. And a very steady pace, so we thought that must be, say, a sad light or something. But as we watched it, the star-like thing, the little pinpoint of light, stopped in the middle of the sky. And then another light came down from that light some distance and then started traveling east. And just as I was kind of mesmerized by these pinpoints of light really far. out, you know, either small and close up or probably large and far out.

They look like stars. She yelled, look behind us. And we both turned around and looked behind us. And probably 50 feet in the air was a UFO. It was flat on the bottom. It wasn't all brightly lit. It didn't have these, you know, sparkling lights or anything like that. But it was flat on the bottom.

on the bottom, probably 50 feet in the air. And we measured that because it was right above a telephone pole, which was just across the street from us. And it made a humming sort of whistling noise. I can see why people might think that they're silent if they're further away from them, but this made a very quiet kind of humming noise, which sounded very electrical. And it seemed like it was pinpointed.

us because we were the only two people out in this dark field at night. So basically what we did, we jumped into the brush that was beside the road to try to hide from the UFO. And as we were hiding from the UFO, we were kind of whispering things to each other, observations that we would see about the UFO like. We thought there must have been some sort of light. from above it because we could see the perfect outline of it was probably about 40 feet in diameter.

We could see a texture on the bottom of the UFO and look like cubes and something like ductwork on the bottom of the UFO. And we really had a feeling that it was watching us, observing us, maybe, I don't know, going to abduct us or something because we were the only two people out in the field at the time. And so that had us pretty uneasy as it was hovering above us. And it hovered completely still. It was completely still. And so this probably happened.

It seems like an eternity, but these things probably always do. I would say it was probably less than three minutes, four minutes maybe, that it was hovering above us. And it started slowly directing to the east. And as it reached it to the east, we were brave enough to actually stand up and start following it. We felt like maybe it had lost interest in this and was going to move on, so we wanted to follow it and watch it as long as possible. And at that time, my friends who seemed to be more observant than I was told me to look to our right.

And as we looked to our right, a green ball of light about as big as a basketball, it looked like plasma, descended from the bottom of the UFO and drifted through the branches of of a leafless tree. This was November in Oklahoma, so the trees didn't have leaves. And this green ball of light drifted slowly to the ground. And when it got about two feet from the ground, it dissipated, like electricity, just discharging into the ground. And then we watched that. The thing was drifting.

UFO was still drifting slightly to the east, very slowly. We got up to follow it. And as we got up to follow it, suddenly, it darted off very, very quickly to the east and turned into a pinpoint of light. So it must have brightened up at some point. Turned into a pinpoint of light and disappeared to the east. So on the bottom of the craft, you said it looked like it had duct work. Did you get a sense that this was a very mechanical craft? or did you get a sense that maybe it was more fluent, like biological almost?

Because I know there's people that have described UFOs as almost like a biological thing other than mechanical. From what it sounds like to you, it sounds more mechanical, though. It seems very, to me, very nuts and bolts. Very nuts and bolts. To me, it seems very mechanical. I'm not sure if the, I really didn't see any symmetry or any sort of design to the texture on the bottom, but it did seem to have tubes that were protruding from the bottom. It seemed to have tubing or something that was going from cube to cube. That's all I could see because it was rather dark in the bottom.

But yeah, I would say it was a very nuts and bolts kind of, craft versus something more organic for sure. Okay. And you described the bottom with the texture. What do you mean with the texture? Like, was it like a texture as in real rough or was it more like like almost like a meshy kind of texture? Could you describe the texture a little bit more? Well, what I mean by texture, I think, is the actual cubes and the ductwork of the, bottom of it. I couldn't see that much detail because it was dark. There was a light shining from above. I think that came from the UFO, but I couldn't see a lot of detail on the bottom except for these three-dimensional cubes and what seemed like ductwork or lines or some kind of

linear patterns that were on the bottom. That's what I could see. All right. What year was this? This was 1981 in November. Okay. So you were what? High school? Yeah, I was 15. We were both 15 in high school in the 10th grade.

Gotcha. And it was in Oklahoma. Okay. Now, when you said that this thing started drifting, I think you said it was drifting away from you towards the east. Earlier you were talking about you and your friends seeing lights in the sky.

Were those in the east or the west? Those were coming from the west. They were coming from the west, and they stopped right in the middle, from my advantage point, right in the center of the sky. So to me it felt like, almost like they, well, they were continuing on their journey. And it felt like the ones that were so small that they looked like pinpoint, of light, detected that we were watching them. It almost felt like that.

And it felt like they were suddenly, I mean, in a flash, in the blink of an eye, they were right there above us. It seemed like the same one. And they continued on east. So they started from the west and they continued east. So, yeah, it was their trajectory, I think. So do you get the feeling that the craft that you saw that was behind you, was related with these lights that you were initially looking at?

Yes, yes. I feel like the they noticed that we were watching them because we were really the only people out in the field and we weren't lighted, there wasn't a street light or anything like that, but we were the only people out in this field and it seemed like that craft that was just behind us

And it was just behind us by just a few feet, you know, the width of a residential street. So just a few feet, just behind us. It felt like it came down from that constellation of U.S.Os. Like maybe it was the one that came down from the original one, possibly, very quickly. Okay. I'm following you now. So you said that you saw, I want to call it a green orb, but I don't think that's how you described it. How did you describe it, what you saw coming down from the craft?

Yeah, it was a greenish orb. It, as just as the orb started deciding, I guess, to, excuse me, to move off toward the east very slowly. A greenish orb about the size of a basketball, slowly drifted down from the craft. through the bare branches of a small tree, and then to the ground. It took a few seconds to do that. And then when it got about two feet above the ground or so, it dissipated into the ground, like it was electricity or something, that greenish orb. Okay.

So when you saw this greenish orb, you didn't get a sense that it almost had a mind of its own. It wasn't like acting off its own power. It was more like it was just dropped from a craft. it looked yes exactly it looked like a discharge like a discharge from the craft

like a byproduct or something like that it didn't seem to have a mind of its own at all that that actually happened later but yeah it didn't seem to have a mind of the tone at all it seemed to be

a discharge an electrical discharge okay so electrical discharge would that kind of be almost like if you would to describe it, would you related to almost like exhaust coming off of a car, like the discharge? Is that what you would think of it as? I mean, I'm trying to figure out like, this green, whatever it is, coming from the craft and then dissipating into the ground. I'm trying to draw an image of

to what it could possibly be because clearly the craft didn't need it because it left then. Well, considering that it was humming and hovering and didn't have a jet engine or a helicopter engine, my guess is that it was electrogravitic, and that would be very, very high amounts of electrical discharge. From what I read afterwards, of course, at the time I didn't know anything about any of this. I wasn't even interested in UFOs. So this was a all a big surprise. But it seemed like, like, I don't know, waste material or something like that. Exactly, like an exhaust from a car.

Okay. So after this incident takes place in your life, what does it do for you? I mean, did you talk to your friend about what you guys saw? I mean, there you guys were comparing notes and you guys were like telling each other what you were seeing so you knew each other weren't crazy. after this whole thing happened, did you guys continue to talk about it? Because I know there's times that people experience traumatic things like this, whether it's seeing a UFO or seeing a Bigfoot or a dog man. And the weird thing about it is, like sometimes people will see these in groups like you did, where you were with a friend, but nobody talks about what they saw. It's like they all saw it, it leaves, and then nobody talks about it. Is that what happened with you guys or do you guys actually talk about what you saw?

Oh, no. Not only did we talk about it, we started doing a lot of intensive research. As soon as it happened to us, we immediately started doing, you know, it was 1981. First of all, we tried to report it to a lot of different agencies. It was before the Internet. We didn't know that Project Blue Book had been defunct for 11 years. so that's how long ago it was. So we even tried to call the Air Force, everybody.

So we were very open about it. We talked about it with each other. We did a tremendous amount of research once it happened. And, yeah, we continued to talk about it for sure. It really kind of changed our lives as far as what we were looking into, what we were researching. But again, it was before the Internet. So it was a matter of making calls. calls going to different libraries, doing our own research on micro-fiche with newspapers, historical

sightings, and so on. But it really changed our lives and got us both interested in the topic. Okay. Yeah, I mean, were people back in 81, were people accepting of your story? I mean, were people actually willing to hear you out or were people, you know, get out of here with that nonsense? I don't want to hear about it. I mean, because I, I was born in 1985. So this event happened four years before I was born.

And so... Right. I fell old. Thank you. I'm sorry. That was not why I said that. But my reason... My reason is saying that is,

you know, I went through my 20s in the years 2000s, you know? And so the culture has changed so much from the 80s to now where, you know, my adult, my teenage years and adult life, I saw TV shows about UFOs and Bigfoot and things of that.

Yeah, exactly. So it wasn't so, it's still taboo, but it wasn't as taboo. And I just wanted to know, living in Oklahoma, were people accepting of what you saw, or were people more like, I don't want to hear about that? Well, it depends on who we talked to. That night, we called the police. they never showed. We called the Air Force.

They said they don't investigate those anymore, which of course is a blatant lie, because we know that. Absolutely. They do investigate them when it's especially of defense significance. We call the airport. They wouldn't talk about radar, of course. So those people know.

Her family never really believed it, much of anything that we did. Her mother might have, but my mother did believe me as far as personally. My father thought that I was probably mistaken and had seen something and made a mistake, but he believed that I saw something. He just wasn't ready to believe it was a UFO. My mother called me three years later because there was a massive sighting, a daylight sighting in the same area and everyone was calling the radio station, so hundreds of people were calling in.

And I was away out of town, and she called you basically telling me, you know, I believed you, and hundreds of other people have seen it now, so there you go, you're validated. So I always had that support. I

always have, so personally, yeah, societally, we didn't bring it up. We didn't bring it up in high school. We were already kind of the smart kids, the creative kids, and we didn't want to be ostracized. So we didn't bring it up in society in general, I would say. But personally, some people believe this, some people didn't.

I got you. I just find it interesting how the different eras present different opportunities for people to either share stories or not share stories. Because I know, you know, just my personal life. life, people know that I, you know, do this show and I'm into these different topics. And so for me, if I were to see what you saw, it would be not a problem at all for me to go into work tomorrow and tell everybody in my break room what I saw the day before. And it is what it is. Whether the guys believe me or not is a totally different story, but I would personally feel very comfortable telling people. And that's partly because of just my nature. I just, I'm a talker.

And I just, if I see something like that, I got to tell people. It's just, it's just building me. I just, I got to talk about it. And I'm sure there's a lot of people out there like that. But I just, I know that it's, it's different for different areas of the country and different eras. And I was very curious about that. It was different for me later.

But I mean, now that I'm older, I'll talk to anybody about anything. Because, you know, you get older, I'm much older than you. So, you know, you know. you stop caring. You stop caring what people think. And it's a different time. And we've had UFO hunters. We've had UFO files. We've had ancient aliens for what that's worth. And, you know, the X file. So it's a different time. You grew up in a different time. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So when you saw this thing, the main craft, the big one that you saw real close.

When it took off, how would you describe the speed it took off? I know you said it was fast, but like how fast? Was it like a blink of an eye? And also, were you able to see anything as it was leaving the area, like a light trail or something like that? At first, of course, it was just creeping toward the east, just creeping slowly. That's when it released that electrical basketball-sized, you know, greenish. whatever orb.

But when it really decided to take off after we got up and started following it, it seemed to notice that we were following it, so they decided to take off. It was close to blink of an eye, but so we could follow it with our eyes. Does that make sense? So it wasn't like from here to there with nothing in between. It was from here to there with a light in between. There was no trail, but we could follow it. It's just that it went so fast from a standstill to disappearing in the east that I don't know of anything back then that we had.

Of course, I'm not, you know, a military expert. I don't know of anything humanly possible to have that kind of G-Force. The G-Force was incredible. It was practically a blink of an eye, but not quite. if that makes sense. Does that make sense? Absolutely. Okay.

Absolutely. Okay. Because we could still follow it. It was just so fast. It was so fast. But it disappeared. And it went, looked like it went 100 miles in a matter of a few seconds. I have a family member.

He doesn't give me permission to name him so I don't. But I have a family member that saw UFOs when he was a kid. and I want to say it was probably What was that? Plural? Yes, plural. More than one? Yes.

Wow. All at one time. He was a kid and they, I think it was about three or four of them, but they were just slowly hovering over a valley where he was playing with his siblings, I think it was. And they were just coming real slow, kind of like how do you describe? They were just kind of real slow. slow hovering. And I think he said they went in the house to get the parents. The parents come out. And as soon as the parents come out, and I'm not sure if the parents saw it or not, but when the

parents come out, these things just shoot off. And it was really very similar to how you just described it to me, where it was just, you could see them just shoot off. And I find it very interesting because in both situations, these things were hovering real slow, almost like they were focused in on the people in the area. And both times, the people in the area were young people, kids. And not in your case, but when the adults came out of the house, these things just shot off. I find it very interesting. I wonder if, I wonder if these crafts are similar in any way. I mean, people see so many different shapes and sizes, but I wonder if they're all made maybe by the same people or entities. And that leads me into my next question for you is, what do you think these

things are? I mean, this event shot you off into your own research back in the 80s. So from then until now, what have been some conclusions that you come to as far as your own personal opinion as to what this whole UFO phenomenon is? Followed the entire topic from, you know, 1947 until now, and even before that, you know, I'm very familiar with a lot of the cases, especially the cases having to do with our Saksite, you know, our military sites, the ones that kind of, you know, deprogrammed on missiles and things like that. I, with my case, I mean, at the very most mundane, it could have been a black project

from the U.S. government. I don't know why it would be flying over a suburb of a major city or checking out two normal people standing in a field. But it could have been that. It's just that we've never, in the 36 years since, ever seen a propulsion system like the one that we witnessed. That was a propulsion system that is still not in use today, still not public knowledge today. So it's still ahead. You know, they talk about black projects.

They're still all just jets. The just jets. So this to me could have been anything from that most mundane of a black project, which I really doubt, to interplanetary. And, you know, there are the naysayers, the debunkers who say you can't get here from there. But they're thinking with our 21st century science, not with science, it might be a million years ahead of ours. So there's that. Maybe it's interplanetary with a society that's a million years ahead of us, or a thousand or 100,000, or interdimensional. Or what if sometime in the future humankind learns how to time travel?

Is that out of the question? I wouldn't see so. We don't know. We don't know. Yeah. No. So maybe it's that. Maybe it's time travel. Maybe that's why they're humanoid. Maybe that's why they have evolved to still look like us. Maybe they're from the future. I don't, those are, those are good questions and I have no idea because I didn't see the occupants. So I can't, I cannot say. I can't say. That's fine. I was just curious. You know, I. Yeah, but those are my thoughts on that.

I've heard stories of, for instance, I heard this one guy sharing a story that his wife saw a UFO before they were married, before he even knew her, I think. And it was so close to her that she literally was able to see the occupants flying the craft. And I'm not even going to attempt to describe what she saw because I don't remember it very clearly. I just remember. That was my next question. Yeah, I know. I know. That's why I said it.

I just remember him telling that she actually saw. And maybe he didn't go into the detail. Maybe that's why I can't remember. But I remember him saying that she actually saw what was flying inside. And, you know, it takes me back to some questions where it's like, who built the pyramids, you know? Because these, and we're just here philosophizing. You're just thinking out loud. But I know that they say that the technology.

that we have today to say we wanted to replicate the pyramids today. We could. We have the technology to. We don't have the money to. It would be incredibly expensive to do so. But technology-wise, we could. And I forget what the process is or the technology is that actually would allow us to build the pyramids the way they're built today. But that technology didn't come around until 1964 is when we developed the technology to be able to say, hey, we could actually replicate these pyramids now. And so it makes you wonder, where do the pyramids come from, you know? Was there, was there a technology that we lost somewhere along the way that, you know, they used to build the pyramids or did they have the assistance of some kind of other

entity? You know, maybe these UFOs. I don't know. But, you know, when it comes to this whole topic of UFOs. It's just so mysterious because nobody has a solid grasp on what they are. Other than the fact that we all see these things, they fly, they're in the sky, and we have no idea what they are. You know, other than that, we have no idea. And, you know, people have seen them for a time and memorial. You know, we have woodcuts from the 1600s in Switzerland, from the Middle Ages in Europe. We have art from the Renaissance with UFOs. We have art that's further back from caves that look like UFOs. So, you know, their time is probably very different from that time. And we've probably been very primitive and growing while they've been very technological. So who knows how long they've

been visiting. Yeah. And you bring up the good point of the whole time travel thing. Just the idea of time travel itself, I find it very fascinating. And I think the more, the further long we get in our understanding of physics and even quantum physics and things like that, the more we can fathom the idea of time travel. And I do believe that, I do believe it is possible. We just don't know how to do it yet. Well, I just say the general public doesn't know how to do it. Maybe, you know, there is some kind of black operation where they've they've already done it, you know? Like the, um,

what it's called? I think it was called the Philadelphia experiment. I think it was part of, uh, project Montauk. Uh, the Philadelphia experiment, you know, they, they set out to do one thing, which I'm not even going to try to describe what they were doing. Because I, like, for life, me, can't remember right now. But I know that they... I think it was like to cloak, to cloak the ship. That's right. Yes. Originally.

But the ship, this is what they say happened, uh, that the ship actually actually was gone and it appeared in the bay in Virginia, I believe it was. And when they, when they found the ship again, some of the people that were on the ship were infused into the ship itself. Like they're they de-particleized and then reparticolize. I know that's not scientific, so my, please don't jump on me for that. But they're actual particles that make them up. Yeah, I know. It's like everything kind of. separated and came back together and they became infused into the ship. I mean, is that time travel? I don't know if it's time travel as much as, I don't know, relocation.

There you go. Teleporting. But it's very fascinating. And even if, even if that's not true, just the idea of it, it just, I don't know. It's just something about 2017. I feel like, we have technology that we didn't have 20 years ago that makes things so much more fathomable. Of course. And think about, you know, if we're talking about time travel, then what about a thousand years from now? Can you imagine? You know, I can't remember who it was who says that, you know, technology is sufficiently advanced to our culture is indistinguishable from magic. So it'll look like magic to us, the kind of technology that we will have.

have a thousand years from now, will that include time travel? And if it does, then are they coming back here? It's very interesting, very, very interesting. And then you start thinking about all the things you see on TV with the repercussions of time travel, creating alternate timelines and messing up the current reality. Like, if you go back in time and you do one thing wrong, you come back to the president, and all of a sudden your brother isn't your brother, your brother's now your sister, and all of a sudden you're like, wait a second, I had a brother before. Why do I have a sister now? And, you know, things like that.

It's just very, very odd. And there's just some, it seems like there's a lot of consequences that could come along with time travel. But who knows? We may never know. You'd have to be careful. You have to be responsible. Yeah. But that's the thing.

But then people with power are, in my opinion, seldom responsible. Absolutely. know. Maybe that's just me, but what I see. I feel like the more I see that, which you just said, people with power are less, how did you say people with power are less responsible? Are completely irresponsible. Completely irresponsible. Something like that.

Yeah. Now, that itself, I see more and more. Maybe it's just because I'm getting older, so I have more time behind me to see. but I feel like there's something, something happens to people when they get power, you know? Power corrupt. Power corrupt, absolute power corrupt, absolutely. Yes. And you see it time and time again.

That's not my quote. I can't take credit. Who's, whose quote? I don't remember somebody very famous, but it's a philosopher or someone like that. but it's true. Absolutely. I mean, you just look through history. And it's, man, if there wasn't a truer statement,

anyways, we're veering off course here. So let's bring it back. Yes, yeah. Okay. All right. So that was your UFO setting. I find it very fascinating. And you did tell me you had some haunting experiences.

Would you want to walk us into some of those experiences? Sure. I guess the first haunting I had, and it really wasn't, I don't know, these kinds of experiences for me, I know there are some people who have these kinds of UFO experiences throughout their lives or hauntings throughout their lives, and they seem to follow them around. And I think mine are more situational, so it's not like they follow me. It's sort of like I stumble up on a house or stumble on the wrong street at the wrong night or something like that. But my best friend since I was 12, her name is Sandra.

I don't think she would mind my giving you her first name. And I moved into a dukeler. It was a flat, basically, it upstairs, downstairs, duplex kind of flat, you know. Our friend was upstairs. We lived downstairs. And it was in college. It was after our first year of college when we could move away from the dorms. and it was an old house built in 1937.

And the first things that happened, well, when we first were looking at the place, the landlords were showing us the place to move in, and we just felt like it was occupied. We felt like somebody was there, and I hadn't felt that in other places. It was older, but not that old. But we felt, I don't know, like it was occupied.

So we move in, basically. And the first time, I'm lying on my bed with my back to the door of my bedroom, and I hear footsteps coming down the hall. And they stopped right at my bedroom door, and the cat, my cat and petting, looks up. So I'm sure that someone is standing in the doorway because I've heard them walk up to the door and stop at the door. So I turn around to tell my roommate, something, my best friend since I was 12, and there's nobody there. And in fact, I creep around and go to her room and she's actually asleep. So that was the first thing. And I started hearing the bathroom

door knob turned by itself. It would just turn and click and turn and click and turn and click. and then one night in the same house, I started hearing a conversation, and I've heard of this before with hauntings, where you hear a conversation between a couple of people, but you can't really hear what they're saying. You just sort of hear the conversation. I heard this conversation between a man and a woman, and at first it sounded pretty innocuous, you know, pretty standard,

which I guess shouldn't have been, since I shouldn't have been hearing two voices talking to each other, but we at least didn't sound threatening. And then suddenly they started sounding threatening. And I think my roommate from her room asked if I called her because she had heard her name being called at the same time that I was hearing this conversation. and before that, I think I heard her calling my name. So I don't know how this is hard to think. It's kind of convoluted, but we were hearing each other's names called when we weren't calling each other's names, basically. So she was hearing her name being called in my voice.

I was hearing my name being called in her voice, but we weren't calling each other's names. At the same time, I was hearing this really menacing conversation between this man and this woman. So we were kind of a little on alert because of this. So she slept in my room that night. We kind of kind of huddled up, you know, in my room in the dark, and decided we were going to go to sleep and try to sleep. And suddenly there was a crash that sounded like someone had taken a baseball bat and pounded a window unit air conditioner that we had as hard as they could.

It was like a tremendous crash in the middle of the night, and both of us woke up and we were scared to death. We couldn't move. We couldn't turn on the light. We couldn't do anything because we had already had this weirdness that had happened earlier in the evening with the footsteps and the voices and the doorknobs and all that. And so it took us until almost morning to turn on the light, and it turns out that whatever it was, was had pushed a couple of boxes off of a shelf. They were very solidly placed. There was not, you know, I placed them very solidly.

And basically it was polder died's activity or something, that something was pushing boxes around and knocking them off of shelves of its own accord. And then the biggest thing that happened is this particular place was we had a friend who lives upstairs. She went to college with us. And I was at home alone, downstairs one evening. And she was upstairs. I'm sorry, it wasn't evening. It was afternoon. There was still daylight. And I heard she had a, she had, she had, she was upstairs. So she had an indoor stairway. There was a door at the bottom, stairs with a landing that went all the way up to the top. And her apartment door was at the top that she kept.

lost, but she kept the bottom door unlopped so you could walk up and knock on the door, but it was all indoors. I heard what sounded like, my friend who lived upstairs, it sounded like she had a huge box of pots and pans, and she and the pots and pans had fallen all the way down the stairs. There was the loudest racket I've ever heard. I felt it. It sounded really horrible. You know, you can imagine a huge box of pots and pans.

falling all the way down a really long stairway with a landing and falling all the way down. So I thought, you know, for sure she had injured herself. So I got up as quickly as possible and ran out my door, ran to her bottom stairwell door. And as I opened her bottom stairwell door, she opened her top stairwell door and said, and we both said, did you hear that? And we both said yes. And there was nothing in the stairwell. Nothing.

It was clean. There wasn't a pot. There wasn't a pan. And she certainly hadn't fallen down the stairs. But she heard that just as I had. And that was probably the most alarming thing that had happened at that house. But there's more. I moved from that place.

and I lived in a house in West Hollywood that had been built in 1926. It was a four square, basically like a duplex, but two on the bottom, two on the top. And one night I woke up, and my room actually was not very dim because there was a streetlight that's shown right into my window, which I liked. I like being able to see kind of around. I really, after the things that had happened, I like a little light, you know. So I woke up one night and there was a figure of a man standing at the foot of my bed, staring at me. And he was, I guess, what is considered now the classic shadow figure.

He looked like black velvet. It was three-dimensional. I could tell exactly. I could see how tall he was. I could see the kind of hair he had. I could see the outline of his clothing. I could see everything about him except for his features as far as his face because he was a shadow figure. And he was staring at me as I lay there.

And I was completely wide awake, of course, as one would be as someone saw that staring at them. And he probably stood there and stared at me. for a good minute or two, and I stared at him. I didn't really have the courage to say anything. And then finally, he drifted toward the ceiling and disappeared. And I did one of those things that people usually think that they wouldn't do, which is I just went back to sleep because I thought, I guess I thought at the time, I don't know if I thought, but he didn't seem.

menacing. He seems curious. So it didn't bother me. So he went back, I went back to sleep. I don't know where he went. And the clencher on that one is, you know, maybe I was seeing things. I don't know. I've never hallucinated before, but as the day we were moving out, my roommate and I in this West Hollywood apartment, I told him about that encounter or the the shadow figure I saw, and he got a huge shiver and then proceeded to tell me that he saw what he described, I let him describe it first, as exactly the same figure standing in his open

closet doorway, staring at him as he slept. And he felt, you know how you can feel someone's staring at you, he felt this person staring at him, and he turned to him. over and said, go away, yelled at him to go away, and he disappeared. And so this to me sort of independently validated my sighting of this shadow figure in this apartment. And we did a little research and found out that just about a decade before we had lived there, a writer who had, I guess, the most famous show had written. was one day at a time back in the 70s, which is way before most people's time

and hope you listen to this. He died there about a decade before we moved in. And I think that might have been who it was. That's interesting. I wanted to ask you back of the first place you were renting while you were in college,

the roommate that you had that experienced a lot of the stuff with you. Yes. That person, was that the same person that saw the UFO with you? No. No, we were all friends, and we were all friends from when we were really young. No, that's the one who lived with me in college with Sandra, and the one who experienced the UFO with me was Debbie. Okay, got you.

I was just wondering, because I was thinking, man, you guys experienced a lot together. Yeah, no, it was a... different, two different people, but yeah, altogether we experienced a lot. Yeah, absolutely. So let me ask you about the first apartment. Did you ever bring it up to the landlord? You know what? We never did. They were really kind of, how am I nice? They were country people. And so we figured, we figured they were probably, This is a little tiny town in western Oklahoma that happened to have a very liberal college and a university in the middle of it.

So they were from the town. And so there was a little bit of a culture clash. And I don't think that we really wanted to broach that kind of subject with them. They probably would have thought it was evil. Gotcha. Okay. That makes sense. Yeah, absolutely. It does make sense. I was just wondering because, I mean, was this apartment that you were renting?

Was this something that was rented a lot by college students? Yes. And as a matter of fact, we knew the names of the very first people who ever rented it who went to college. The college I went to used to be a college only for women. It was started in, I think, 1909, back when that was just to like a prairie. you know, wild country. And they, uh, the two people who had, who had rented it very first when it was completely, you know, when it was first built, their names were Summi and Lewis.

And, uh, it was built in 1937 because they signed the porch to that porch when the cement was still wet. So we knew the history of it. And yes, it was definitely college student after college students who had rented it. Yes. In fact, upstairs, a college professor had lived as well. Okay. When you were in the house and all this stuff was going on around you,

how did you feel on your everyday life going in and out of the house, going to class, coming back? Did you ever reach a point where you were dreading about going home? Yes. I think that you bring that up because, and it had to do with the cat, actually, because the cat would hear we, the cat and I, and my roommate sometimes when she was there, would hear someone walking down the hallway,

hear the door knob on the bathroom being turned. The cat would look up as if to expect someone to appear in the doorway, and when they didn't, she would go into the hallway, check it out, and then follow something to the back door and stare at the back door. And so that felt, I don't know, for some reason, that felt a little creepy. Yeah, I felt creepy because it always did so like there was a presence there. And my roommate would go to her parents' house during holidays and things like that because they lived close by.

Mine did not. So I would stay there by myself. And it was kind of oppressive. It was a little oppressive, yeah. I can imagine. Now the cat's going in the hallway, checking things out, and it seems like it was following something over. I think you said to the doorway. The back door.

The back door, okay. Mm-hmm. Now, the way you described that, I want to say, do you think something was trying to lure your cat away from you? Oh, I hadn't thought of that. I thought the cat was just being very observant, but that's a good point. I hadn't thought of that, but it's very possible. I just, you know, it's just something that, you know, I just thinking, you know, for whatever reason, who knows why, but I mean, if it wants to separate you from the only thing that gives you a clue if it's around you, you know? Yeah, the most observant thing around me is my, was my cat.

Right. That's a really good point. That's scary. I didn't mean to be scary. I just, you know. No, that's okay. I'm over it. I'm not there anymore. Right. Because, you know, people have the same experiences with dogs, you know. And that's what they feel comfortable with their cats. So they're dogs in the room because they feel like if something's up, they'll know it because the animals will alert them in one way or another. But if the animal isn't there, then the game changes. Mm-hmm. That's a very good point, and I haven't thought of that, but that really sounds like a very plausible explanation. Yes, because it really did tend to lure it, maybe lure it to the back door, often, and it would sit there watching. Was it always the same door?

Yes. Okay. That's very interesting. Very, very interesting. See, I have three cats at home here. And they're clueless. I think if something was going on around me, they would just, they would be clueless. As long as I, as long as I feed them, scoop their litter and pet them, they don't care about anything else. Oh, mine are very aware. I have four all together. I'm a rescuer. And mine are pretty aware.

And my dog is, too. I have a chihuahua. Gotcha. Yeah, they're very aware. But that cat was very aware. the entity that you saw at the other place you were renting the shadow figure could you describe it again for me as far as what it looked like to you sure excuse me a man about 510 medium bill kind of thin a little thin he was wearing a jacket

he had shoulder length hair but it wasn't all one length It sort of kind of flipped out, charing a few inches above the longest layer. That makes sense. So it wasn't just smooth down like a bob, basically. I couldn't see his face. He was just all black. But that's about it. He was a completely black figure.

He looked like the darkest black. And he didn't have to be because, like I said, my room wasn't that dark. It wasn't like I was seeing, you know, how your eyes can play tricks on you when you're in complete darkness. Yeah. It wasn't even close to complete darkness. There was a constant streetlights streaming into that room and my curtains were pretty thin. So, no, he was very three-dimensional, five-thens, kind of longest share. almost to his shoulders, medium to thin build, and he had a jacket on.

And I couldn't see his arm, like maybe he had them in his pocket. I'm not sure. What was the style of the clothing? Could you tell, like, now, when you're describing this coat, are you seeing just like an outline of the coat because that itself is a black shadow as well? Or could you see the details of the clothing it was wearing? No, I just saw the outline. But it looked to me like 80s, maybe 80s, early 90s, like a sort of one of those nylon kind of sporty, you know, jogging kind of jacket, that kind of thing.

But I could only see the outline, yeah. Okay, I got you. But there was a ton of detail. I mean, I could see every inch of the outline. I just couldn't see facial features or anything like that. and it just left on its own, or did you tell it to leave? No, your friend told it to leave before, right? Yeah, he yelled at it, actually, and I don't know when that happened.

He just told me that it happened, but I never told him to leave. I just sat and stared at him until he floated toward the ceiling and disappeared. As he floated toward the feeling, he started disappearing feet first, not head first. as if his head were going through the ceiling, but feet first. So it's going towards the ceiling, and as it gets closer to the ceiling, the less you see of its bottom half, which is closer to you. Yes. Well, that's different. Yeah, I noticed that because I thought if he's going toward the ceiling, I would see his head disappear and so on as he went through the ceiling, but he seemed to disappear from the bottom, on the bottom up, as he was going.

if he were dissipating at the same time that he was floating upward. That's very interesting. That's very interesting. Oh, and I forgot to mention that my cats noticed him, too. I had two cats at that time. This was 10 years later than my college days, but they were awake as well. I think they might have woken me up, if I'm not mistaken. What were your cat's reaction? Did they just, look at it and that's how you knew they saw it or did they growl at it what do you what do you mean by they saw it no they just noticed him they just like they were sleeping and they got up and and looked at him like a little bit startled but they wouldn't be the type to growl or anything

like that but they woke me up i think because they were moving around because they were sleeping and they rose to to look at him and and get you know they were surprised i guess but they didn't hiss or arch their best, anything like that. They just, you know, noticed him. Okay. That's very interesting.

So what do you think these things are? Both experiences, we're talking about the first house where you had a lot of poltergeist kind of things happening, loud crashes, doorknobs, jiggling,

things like that. And then you see this entity. Do you attribute this stuff as same source, different source? What do you think this stuff is? I mean, as we're wrapping this interview down here, I would like to get your opinion on what you think this whole extra realm is. Well, as I kind of stated with the UFO thing, there are some possibilities. I don't tend to believe that we have an intact soul that will survive our body after death. In other words, it's kind of a mission, you know, our spirit, our soul, whatever that is, to me, is who we are, and it's fed by energy.

And once that energy stops, of course, you can't kill energy, but it can certainly disperse and become true. trees and flowers and worms and whatever. So I don't necessarily believe in a soul that exists intact beyond death. Now, that's just my release, but as far as these things are concerned, could they be a looping time? What if sometimes, I don't know, maybe there's another, either another universe. earth or another time. Does that make sense? Because this person lived there at a different time. Maybe, have you seen the film The Others? This sounds really familiar, but I don't think I've seen it.

Nicole Kidman, it's really good. It's a really, I can't tell you the ending of it, but it's worth watching. It's a psychological kind of thriller. But are we the ghosts or are they the ghosts? Do they make sense? are we impeding upon their time or are they impeding upon our time are they living out their lives as normal and sometimes there's an overlap um is there a different universe of parallel um or are they intact souls of people who used to live there so i can't say i don't know enough about it to to say but i believe that, like, for instance, the person that I saw who was watching me, I believe he was connected to the person who lived there before he died.

Okay. If that's his soul, then that's his soul. Or if he's still living there, if he's still living there in an alternate universe, did he not die in an alternate universe and he still lives there? Or is it time travel once again? Maybe they're all connected. That's a very possibility. Is that an unsatisfactory answer?

No, that's absolutely fine because, I mean, it's everybody's opinion and everybody's opinion counts. And you bring up a good point. I mean, I don't really thought, I don't think I've ever really thought about it as whose reality is real reality. I mean, the way you described it, you know, are we impeding on their reality? So on our end, it looks like, hey, something's coming into my reality. It's not normal. but, you know, are the roles reversed actually? You know, that's a very trippy concept to think about.

That's what I think about a lot, yeah. Maybe we're impeding upon their reality. Yeah, maybe. Who knows? Who knows? I don't think very many people do know. No, no, that's the whole point. I have no idea.

Right. I just know what I experience. And I trust my senses because I don't tend to hallucinate. Most people don't. I think that's what you just said there is interesting because a lot of skeptics will write off somebody as, oh, they're seeing things or they hallucinate. I can't tell you how many times I hear skeptics say things like that. You're seeing things.

And not everybody can be hallucinating. No, debunkers drive me crazy. The bunkers drive me crazy. I don't know who's paying them to say these ridiculous things. things, but they drive me crazy. Not skeptics. Skeptics are okay. The bunkers, you know, the Shermers of the world, who don't ever look at the details of

the case and then just tell you it's swamp gas without ever looking at a detail. Those people drive me crazy. Absolutely. And I've said this before on the show, but it's just a, it's a thought process that I personally work through on a lot of these different things. And that is when it's... Like when it comes to the topic of Bigfoot, you know, the way I look at is this, I've never seen one. And I more than likely will never see one because they are that rare.

I just so happen to be part of a community of a lot of people who come together who have seen these things so they have an outlet. But in reality, in the real world, most people don't see these things. And so the fact of reality is I probably will never see one. But my reasoning, one of my biggest reasons to believe that these things exist is because, there are so many people who have said that they've seen these things and they describe them in detail and a lot of the details are the same. And not everybody can be lying or misidentifying a bear. And all it takes is for one person to be telling the truth for these things to actually exist. Right. My uncle saw a female Bigfoot with a baby crossing a mountain. That side of my family

lives in Oregon in the middle of the Cascade Mountains, which is, you know, Bigfoot Country. And he swears he saw one in the 60s, a female big foot with a baby. I believe in. You know, and you live in good country actually to see one if you were to get out there. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, there are so many sightings all over this country. And it's funny because when you look at a map of all the sightings,

one of the bare spots is where you're from, that the flat plains, the Oakland, Oklahoma area up north, there tends to not be as many sightings. And I just feel like it must be something to do with the flat plains that they just don't really care for. I haven't spent a lot of time in the Midwest, but, you know, are there a lot of forests or is it a lot of just farm lands that are flat? Well, I, yeah, I've lived in L.A. for 20 years. But where I'm from, no, there are actually mountains in southeastern Oklahoma. They're sort of almost an awesome. shoot. You know, you've heard the legend of Boggy Creek, right? Absolutely. That is, that's the kind of country that southeastern Oklahoma is. Lyle Blackburn and, yeah, that's Lyle Blackburn's country.

You know, he's the cryptosurologist. Yep. So there are a lot of big sightings in southeast Oklahoma, but that's an altitude with trees, all that stuff. Where I'm from in Tulsa is kind of rolling and green. Um, uh, the, the, the, the, the, the, western half of Oklahoma is just the like the golden flame, you know. But southeastern Oklahoma definitely a lot of Bigfoot sightings and Lionel Blackburn is an expert on that. That kind of melds into East Texas and western Louisiana. So there's a lot of Bigfoot. There are a lot of bigfoot sightings there and that's where Bargy Coup's happened. Gotcha. Okay. Yeah, but I just find a very interesting that people want to write other people off just because it's outside their realm of

normal and it makes them feel uncomfortable. So therefore, it just can't be true. I just find that so fascinating. Oh, yeah, people are very close-minded. Yes, very much. Well, Stephen, I really appreciate you coming on tonight and sharing your stories. I really found the UFO encounter fascinating because it was so close. So it's so rare to find people to talk about a UFO setting that they saw as close as you saw it. Now, I've been fortunate that I've done, officially put out 29 episodes so far for the confessionals. And in those 29 episodes, I have two interviews that somebody saw a UFO up very close. And that's a rarity.

Really? Yeah, yeah. Oh, wow. Wow. Episode two and episode. episode five. Okay. Episode two is Roger, and Roger had an extremely close sighting. I would encourage everybody to go check that out. And that's citing. Honestly, Roger's citing, it's up there to one of the most detailed sightings I think I've ever heard. Is he the scientist who saw the one in episode?

Canada when he was hunting? No, Roger is just your normal guy that I think Roger lives in the state of Washington or Oregon. And what he saw was just phenomenal. And it's episode two for that one. I wish I could redo that interview because I was just learning how to interview people and I probably could have asked so many better questions. But he did a great job drawing out the details for that show. And then episode five. Well, you know, I might. Roger has some other stories that he would love to share, so we might have him back on in the future.

And then episode five is art. And art, actually, I think back in 1985, I think he said. I think it was back in the 80s. He was in Florida, and he saw a UFO, as he describes it, the size of a football stadium. and it was hovering over his head and he saw it in great detail. But it's a very rare thing. I mean, a lot of times people see these things doing very fantastic things from a distance,

you know, maneuvers that you just shouldn't be possible. But to see it up close is it's a rare thing. And so you'll be joining some elite company with your encounter. I had no idea. I mean, I'm going to go back and listen to those. I might have. I don't think I've heard them already. but I had no idea.

I thought this was more common. No, not as far as I've seen. I mean, granted, I've gotten my start and all this with the Bigfoot stuff and I've kind of migrated into these other different topics. But from what I've seen for, you know, whatever it's been now, a year, year and a half that I've been looking into this stuff, I haven't seen a whole lot of accounts that people describe in detail up close what they saw. Because a lot of times it's either at distance and these things, these are lights in the sky and they're multiplying and they're coming together and they're doing crazy stuff, but it's at a distance. Or it just happened so fast that they couldn't get the details of what they saw. But to see something that's as close as you saw it, as long as you saw it, as it was moving slowly, it's a rarity. It's a rarity.

So, you know, you join some of the elite company. I feel lucky. Yeah. You should. You should. I feel lucky. Yeah. I wish I could see it again. Yeah, I wish I could see what you saw. With a camera. Absolutely.

We didn't have smart phones back then. You didn't? No. Not unless you're time travelers. Yeah, well, you know, you see those pictures online of people, you know, back in the, what, 60s or 20s walking down the street with cell phones in hands and makes you wonder. Right. Right. Exactly. Who knows. He knows. Yeah. But who are they talking to? Could they get service? Well, maybe they're time travelers from the future where they don't need cell phone towers to talk to the person they want to talk to. Oh, wow. That's a great idea. I can't even

think outside the box. All right, man. Well, Stephen, I really appreciate you coming on the night. Thank you. If you ever happen to have any other experiences, you're more than welcome to come on and share them with us. But thank you for coming on. I will. Thank you. All right, man. Take care. Okay, you too.

Well, that's the show, everybody. I really hope you enjoyed it. And I want to give a special thank you to Stephen for coming on the show and sharing his experiences. He found our show through the YouTube channel, Conflict Radio. So a big shout out to Conflict Official for being a sponsor of the show and sharing our episodes on his channel. Thank you very much for that.

Whatever podcatcher you guys are listening to the show on, go ahead and give us a rating and review. I would greatly appreciate that. I hope you guys have a great week. Take care, friends.