The Confessionals - RELOADED | 490: Montauk Project

Episode Date: August 18, 2025

In Episode 490: Montauk Project, we are joined by Christopher Garetano, the creator of the hit documentary Montauk Chronicles! He is a writer, producer, filmmaker, and the creator and host of Travel/Discovery Channel's Strange World, as well as the co-creator, host, and executive producer of History Channel's The Dark Files. He joins The Confessionals Podcast to talk with us about the Montauk Project and the rumors surrounding the legendary location of Camp Hero. In his film Montauk Chronicles, he was able to reveal that there was something deep under the ground, even though it contradicts the official narrative. Could Camp Hero have been the place where the mysterious MK Ultra experiences were conducted? Does the Netflix show Stranger Things depict something that really happened? We discuss these ideas and much more with Christopher!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/b8f76890Become 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/43mk8kZTony's Recommended Reads: slingshotlibrary.comMy 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

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mess in shopify.s. I guess it's time to go back in time. Are you telling me that 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. else. Time travel is possible.

This was all circulating around the base that a giant had to kill, but no one was supposed to talk about it. Boney 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 them up like this. Somebody else, shoot him in the face, shoot him in the face.

They basically decapitate him. I feel something pulling at my leg. And I look over, and there are two small gray entities. 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 it couldn't move. because I know I'm seeing a monster. Okay, I reload it.

Yeah. Welcome to the show, everybody listening to The Confessionals. I'm your host, Tony Merkel. Thanks for being here. If you've a crazy, wild experience, you want to share with me on the show, go ahead and shoot me an email. Or go to the website, the confessionalspodcast.com, hit the contact section, and you can reach me that way as well.

Either way works for me, just get a hold of me. If you want to hear more shows on a weekly basis, go to the Confessionalspodcast.com. Hit the join button and become a member. there you'll get access to all the Thursday bonus shows for members only, plus the Tuesday shows ad free and access to all the overtime content right there on the website and the Castosap. So if that interests you, hit the Confessionalspodcast.com, smack that join button and become a member today. All right, today we have Christopher Garantano on the show, and he is the one who produced,

edited, directed, filmed, everything, the Montau Chronicles, the hit Montau Chronicles. comes on today to talk about the development of that program and much, much more. We go down a lot of rabbit holes in this conversation and actually, to be honest with you, I didn't expect it. And he was actually quite the pleasure to talk to. And I really hope you enjoyed this conversation as well. Let's get to Christopher right now. All right, today we have Christopher Garantano on the show. How you doing, sir? I'm doing good. Thanks for having me today. So listen, man, I appreciate you coming on the show and holding conversation with me. I want to give you an opportunity before we even get into the topics of what we're going to get into today. I want to give you an opportunity to kind of promote yourself.

Now, you're somebody, you've done TV work, and you've been in the industry a long time. And you've been diving into these weird topics and stuff. And you and I are just having a little bit of a conversation. And it seems like you're similar in a vein as me where you enjoy the independence of being able to create stuff independently. So I know you're doing a lot of new stuff for yourself, including your podcast. So let the people know about some of the projects you're working on right now. Yeah.

So I, you know, previously I've made things for television, network television, executive producing, hosting, and directing stuff. And, but before that, and for life,

I'm a guerrilla filmmaker. And I believe in that. I believe in presentations with a vision. No matter how, the collaboration is all the people working with you. And everyone has a particular position. they should focus on it. But I think every good project in history has had a visionary or two or three visionaries

working together. But I don't think it can be made by 15 people trying to think in the same direction. So off to the witch is that it's all arcane subjects that I've been interested in since I was a kid. And I like finding people who haven't been interviewed before. I could get people that have been interviewed a thousand times and much more famous people than I've had on the show. But I think it's so much better for the audience to listen to a fresh perspective, new stories, things that people have experienced. And this is stuff that I'm genuinely interested in. So, as you know, your show is fantastic.

And it's your curiosity. That's the greatest thing about it. It's what you're curious about. And the audience is probably most likely curious of the same thing. So I get into everything from I interviewed the grandson of Anton LeVay, who created Satanism, to Stephen Bissette, who drew Swamp Thing for DC Comics on the second run with Alan Moore. And instead of just having him, pardon me, instead of just having him plug Swamp Thing again, we talked about what it was like when he was a kid and what informed that really textured artwork.

So he talked about going outside as a kid and turning over rocks and looking at the bugs and the eggs of insects. And now you can see that in his work. You go back and look at that. But the way he tells the story is fantastic. It's not some boring high school biology class. Like this is a guy who went out and did some weird stuff in the woods and put it into that work that drove everyone crazy. And so off to the witch is that. It's out into the arcane, into the bazaar, into the weird.

It doesn't particularly have to be paranormal stuff. There's a lot of that in there, but I want to know about what real people have experienced. And I think that ghost hunters are interesting, but I'd rather know what inform them to want to do that. So I get into it personally. And then a little bit of old radio in there. There's some story time in the beginning. There's a vibe to it and a style. And I try to keep it audibly only because I save the visual version.

It's called Off to the Witch Presents. It's my new docu-series. That's what I think I can bring the audience to a location, and they can see it and experience what we talk about in the show. And just trying different things. Because, again, when you have full control and you do over your stuff, it's just so much better. It just is.

Instead of having a committee try and tell you what's interesting. And I sat down with some interesting people. You know, the former president of MTV wanted to make a show with me just before the pandemic, great guy. But you're sitting down with this committee and they slowly say, we're going to do this, but they slowly start diluting every strong idea that you've had. And I don't understand the reasoning for that.

And so I'd rather stick to my guns and make what's in my heart and in my imagination. I think it's better for the audience. I did it with Strange World. But it gets quite chaotic when you're on the road for eight months almost. 17 hour days and you've got so many people chipping in. But I just proved that, and I'm about to show everyone, that I made something for $17,000 that is of better quality than even though it was an eight hour series for $3 million. And it can be done. And I can tell you exactly how it can be done. Obviously, you have to be sharp and you have to know what you're doing, but it can be done.

Because a lot of that money doesn't, and I can tell you for certain, I mean, they're traveling and putting people up and paying people's salaries, but a majority of those salaries are going way above the line to people who never show up on set. And that's a huge portion of lion's share of the budget of those shows. I don't know if it's being done that way anymore because I'm looking at the quality of these shows on the networks and they're not very good. I mean, they were literally having people sitting on a couch watching, YouTube videos. That is not a show. So, yeah. On that note, we're going to change topics. I might want that person as a guest on the show because I know exactly who you're talking about.

No, but in all honesty, I do want to change topics because I want to get into some of these things here. Now, were you, you were the writer, editor, producer on Montau Chronicles. Is that right? Cinematographer, built the sets. and that was made that went into the film. I photographed it, edited, did a lot of the post-visual effects, and this was before I did anything for television. And I did all of that myself, and it cost, I think, what went into the film money-wise, because it was mostly equipment.

And it was enough equipment to fit in the corner of this room in a backpack, so it wasn't expensive stuff. And mind you, that was made between the final version that anyone saw, was made between 2013 and the end of 2014. So we're just talking about DSLR is a good one, you know, but it's not what we have now. And that's what I mean by, you know, you can make exactly or better what the networks are making

with the equipment at our disposal if you know how to use it right. And be fearless. Don't feel like you need 25 people to put up your Facebook pictures to make it look professional. The only thing that matters at the end of the day is what's on that screen and what the audience is watching. Take pride in the guerrilla nature of making your picture. And that doesn't mean you don't know what you're doing or it's going to be garbage.

What I mean by guerrilla is that you're going against their rules, you know, union rules, their money distribution rules and all of that. And that's how you beat them in the end. They don't want you to beat them. That's why they're trying to recruit you. Absolutely. Absolutely. I like you a lot.

I feel like we could have a long coffee. talk conversation. So let's, with the, the Montauk project, I think people over the years have heard a lot about it. But I think it's still, it's one of those topics I feel like,

like Skinwalker Ranch, you and I were talking about there earlier, it's one of those topics that I feel like you could bring it up and it's like, I heard of it, but everybody has their own idea as to what's going on with it. And when it comes to the Montauk project, what is the traditional thought as to what the Montauk project was? Because we've heard stories of monsters coming out of the facility to ET type stuff, to government mind

control things. Is it everything? What is, what, how would you define the Montauk project? As I was first introduced to it, it seemed like it was cherry picked from a lot of science fiction that I grew up watching, horror films, specifically Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, stuff like that, Oh, Forbidden Planet. And I was like, these guys just watch these movies and tried to make a little sci-fi book. And that was my first reaction. But the thing that really made me want to, there's one more element that's juxtaposed that you mentioned to the rest of this stuff.

So you've got this wacky little thin B-movie story of time travel and heroes letting the monster from the id, like in forbidden planet, out to destroy this base, this underground base, and you have aliens and you have time travel and all these monsters that are down there, different creatures from different dimensions and planets. But then there's this element of boys being kidnapped, beaten, raped, drugged. How does that one fit in? And that was really strange to me. And I knew some of the men that were telling the tale were elderly.

And I, you know, just like you, I grew up watching movies and stories of like, coming across this old man that has this crazy story to tell. And that's what I was interested. That's when I started the dock. I was like, that's how I'm going to start. I'm going to start with a clean slate. I have no interest whatsoever in adapting that book that came out because I felt like a lot of it was just bunk. And it was a very small book, the very first Montauk book.

And I was like, this is how I'm going to start. I'm just going to start fresh, clean slate. I'm going to go interview the old man. I went to Fort Myers, Florida. I lived in New York. and talk to this old man in his backyard. And he was telling me this crazy story. And with respect, you know, but it was weird.

It was really weird to sit there with this guy who must have been, Albulic, who must have been in his 80s, telling me the story essentially of three or four men who escaped this government program between 1971 and 1973, I'm sorry, in 1983. And they said that they worked there on and off. They were transported underground through a train system from something called Brookhaven Labs. So this is all the way on the very eastern tip of Long Island, New York, right on the Atlantic Ocean. It's kind of a remote town called Montauk.

But in the summertime, it's like a resort town. People go there for vacations. But five miles from town in the woods is this big sage radar station. It was an Air Force station on record. It was meant to protect the coast. But there's a lot of odd stuff about this. And again, I learned about this gradually. But the old man told me the story that he was recruited.

They were transported from Brookhaven Labs, which is fathered west towards New York City. It's like the middle of the island. And they would take that train and go underground to a facility beneath that sage radar tower in the woods. So anyone who is working topside, meaning the military that you could talk to now saying, nah, I was there, there was nothing going on.

They had no idea because this base was underneath that whole thing and they had no access to it or knowledge of it whatsoever. So within that base, the claims range from, there are reverse engineering of alien technology. There is time travel devices where you can travel interstellar interdimensionally through some kind of biarrhythmic technology that didn't believe. to us that we reverse engineered. And then there was this other thing.

And this other thing became gradually more believable to me over the years. I can tell you why. But this other thing is that there were runaway kids in the suburbs of New York at the time. And again, we're going back to the 70s and the 80s. So it wasn't really easy. If you look at the statistics, there was so many people that disappeared during that time period, kids, right? And so they saw them as easy prey, aka human subjects, to kidnap and bring down into this base for these mind control experiments.

And what that was derived from, and this starts to get complicated, and it doesn't apply to some little time, you know, sorry, some science fiction story, is that this was all derived from Nazi procedures that were taken from, you know, these guys, these assistants. scientists that we absorbed in Operation Paperclip. They survived the Nuremberg trials, and we took these guys and we made them into heroes, these Nazi guys who were destroying people and destroying lives and murdering people in Germany, we just took them over and said, all right, you're great. You can design rockets for us now. So allegedly, these gentlemen also had procedures of mind control, and they were experimenting on people during the war. And so we took those guys and they design these procedures where human subjects were used, they were beaten, their personalities were fractured, their minds were destroyed, so they could be rebuilt,

ultimately for the purpose of them doing the bidding of any trigger symbol or word that was put into their head. That's a long story. So allegedly that was happening at the basement of Montauk. So these kids were kidnapped, allegedly, brought down to the base. injected with enormous amounts of hallucinogens, beaten to the point where they were no longer themselves. And this is where another gentleman, Al Bielick is the guy I was talking about earlier, who I interviewed in the backyard. I went up to, you know, he calls himself, I am the reason why they wrote Doc Brown for Back to the Future.

And he was this wacky scientist guy up in a shack, you know, and property in upstate New York in the mountains. I love those guys. his place. I have so many stories on this. So I went up to his name was Preston Nichols. Most of these gentlemen have passed away. So Preston, after showing me his lab and his healing machine and all allegedly derived from alien technology, had switches everywhere. He was playing Jimi Hendrix and wanted me to go in the healing machine and said it would change my DNA and everything, said that he was the guy that after the kids were recruited and they were beaten, after death and a lot of them died in these procedures, that he would start to rebuild them

into these mind-controlled and a lot of the cases, assassins. Now, if you do some research, and this is what started to encourage me to believe that these things might have been real at Montauk, because at first I really didn't. I was just interested in hearing these all guys tell me stories. And if you look up Holmesburg prison, that's exactly what was happening there. And there was a gentleman named Alan Hornblum who wrote a book called Acres of Skin. And they were lying under false pretenses approaching the prisoners in the prison and saying, here's 20 bucks. We want to test this bubble bath on you. Also, we want to test this drug on you. They were injecting these guys with high amounts of hallucinogens,

and they were doing the same experiments on them. They were trying to turn them into mind-controlled assassins. And Alan Hornblum's a real guy. He's not some wacky dude living in his backyard. He's a respected author, and I believe he has a PhD, and he's tried to expose these things. These things have happened all over.

So in the 90s, here's another one. Bill Clinton was apologized. for the government, the deep government facets of the past, you know, 30 years before. And he said, that wasn't us. It was these guys. And I want to apologize for them. Now, what he had in the forefront when Clinton apologized were some of the gentlemen from the Tuskegee medical experiments that were literally, annoyingly given syphilis over

time. They were told they were given free medical care. This is our government that did this. And they gave syphilis to their family. they were dying from this stuff. I mean, that's sick, man. That really happened. But during that time, Clinton was just focusing on the Tuskegee gentlemen.

There was several people who were approaching Congress. There were hearings. And there was a woman named Christina Dina Kola who came out and said, no, these were not radiation experiments. These were mind control experiments. So there's so much evidence ultimately to prove that that really weird chapter in this Montauk story is so believable. And there's so much to support that thing that it, not that I'm disregarding the idea of extraterrestrials or time travel or anything like that. I believe that's a very real thing too.

We just haven't, we haven't had that in front of us collectively, that tangible evidence. but these mind control programs have been proven. And what I think is possible is that the gentleman who wrote the Montauk books were trying to tell the true story, but they were afraid at that time that they may have been killed or they let that information out. Now everyone's talking about stuff like that. And it seems like there's conspiracy theories thrown left and right and you don't know what to believe.

And I definitely have raised my eyebrows several times at what's been happening in the last three years alone because there's a lot of odd behavior in the governments in the world a lot of weird things being said strange behavior on how they encourage us to do things it's hard not to be paranoid and especially being immersed in this Montauck thing all these years but those programs are very real so i think it was 2017 or 2018 i went with history channel made a sequel to Montau Chronicles but this time see where Montau Chronicles is a character study on the gentleman i'm telling you about and you learn about the story they're telling. The Dark Files was an investigation.

They put a CIA guy with me, who's ex-CIA. He's now an author. And a guy from the Washington Post, he was supposed to be the skeptic. But the greatest thing about that show is that he went to Holmesburg Prison, talked to Alan Hornblum, and then we went back to Montauk with a geophysical group. and they analyzed the ground with ground penetrating radar and something called electric resistivity imagery that actually showed in a vertical slice

in one area of the base that there is an underground facility there, not just sewer caps or something that might normally be under the ground. This was an enormous structure. He asserted, Mike from GeoView, asserted geophysicist, that there was this enormous structure there, that has been denied every single time you approach the government about it. They said, oh, there's no way it could even be there.

A lot of weird stuff I could tell you about, right? You know, we'll keep going, but I could be here forever telling you this. But that's essentially what it was, a deep underground-based operation that I truly believe there were the same mind control experiments that were happening in Holmesburg Prison were happening in the ground, deep beneath the ground in Montauk. Well, I'll tell you, first of all, you don't have to apologize for going on because people love it and you're here to talk about it. So it's all good. That's what podcasting's all about. So let me ask you, did you or anybody, like, if there's a, if you've been able to pinpoint,

yes, there's actually something there underground, why can't we get to it? Is it, is it off limits or is it like we don't know how to get down that far? What's the reasoning? Because I mean, it's like, hey, a building has a basement. You should have stairs somewhere to get to it, right? Sure. So there are guardians at that base, caretakers of the base, parks department guys who I believe are paid to keep everyone away. So when I was making Montauk Chronicles, I was renegade. I'm hopping the fence with a backpack. My buddy's looking out for me. I'm out there shooting all this stuff by myself. I go in the middle of the night. I'm in the dead of winter. But when you shoot for a history channel, you have to alert them of your presence. You have to get permits for everything you're doing. And so for the Dark Files, we had all this geophysical equipment. We had all these people there. We had restrictions. We went to places, a couple of places we weren't supposed to go.

And I can tell you what we found. But there was this guy, Tom Des, he's constantly keeping people out of there. That's his job. But he was, no, you're not going past the fence to use this equipment. You're not going here. You're not going there. And we couldn't. We just couldn't for the show.

We just were restricted. After that, I did an episode of ancient aliens, and they tried to get the permits. What I think happened was they saw my name on there and figured we were going to come back with geophysical equipment. And they didn't grant the permits to Prometheus Entertainment and makes ancient aliens. We still did the episode, but we didn't go do the investigation. The last time I was there was for my show Strange World, just the first episode. And we were so restricted. They wouldn't let us use any equipment.

they wouldn't let us check the same way again. And so one of the things that happened when we were making the dark files that I think sparked their focus on me to make sure we don't do that again, we were scheduled to bring equipment there and look around the base. And out of the blue, the Army Corps of Engineers,

this is the dead of winter. There's like 60 different Army Corps of Engineers scientists walking around the base, testing soil, drilling, doing all this stuff, was all meant, I believe, to keep us away from any area where we could see this structure. Because regardless of what anyone says, whether it be giant praying mantis people,

which has been said as underneath there, Junior, the monster that came from the other dimension, or the corpses of kids, or just any of those stories, as long as you can prove that there's a giant structure underneath there, a base, you're pretty much proving everything else, at least, at least the mind control experiments,

at least the fact that the U.S. government is trying to hide something because if once again, just like the Tuskegee Medical Experts or just like Holmesburg Prison, they were taking, or many other times before, by the way, that have been proven, they were taking human subjects off the streets, kids, runaway kids, and otherwise, you know, there's a lot to answer for.

There's a lot to answer for. That means people were murdered. And, you know, saying this stuff, I think intelligence is the biggest threat. The fact that we're having this conversation, you know, people ask me, are you afraid that someone's going to keep you from doing something? Maybe they have already. I don't know. A lot of weird stuff has happened over the years.

Nothing so blatant, you know, I'm still here, I'm breathing. But I think intelligence and an intelligent conversation is the greatest threat. they want to turn this into entertainment purposes only, you know, and Stranger Things is a great show, but Stranger Things is for entertainment purposes only. And now that base is a place where everyone visits because of the fiction. They're like, this is Hawkins Labs. This is great. This is the thing that inspired it, and there are tourists there constantly going there and taking pictures, and rightfully so. They love the show, and they want to go there and see what inspired the show. But nobody has gone back with that geophysical equipment, that particular geophysical equipment, that would prove

there is a giant structure underneath that base, 100%. And at least you can say, well, you've been lying about the structure all these years. I'm starting to assume, safely assume, you know, probability is high enough that you did other things in there. You know, I agree with you on all the, all the reasons why they are doing what they're doing. doing with this property. The idea that they were, that they were, that they're allowing tours going on right now, to you, does that, do you feel like there's even a structure there to find anymore? Do you think they could have built it in by now and just called it, called it today?

And that's why they're comfortable doing the tours there. Or is that the tours more of a controlled environment so they don't have to, worry about people wandering off because it's it's it's guided i'm assuming and and very controlled i think very few people have the access to the electric resistivity imagery and stuff like that and so it requires so the way it's done is that there are these electrodes pounded into the ground or into the pavement you have to go into the area number one where this thing might be underneath and you know there's several different computers that have to be set up i mean it's a whole operation And so you'll be drawing a lot of attention from Parks Department and they'll shut you down immediately.

So they feel confident in that. However, you could get away with it. If you go on a day, you sneak in, backpacks, you hop the fence, it's dead of winter. You go much closer to the base itself and you try to be discreet. I think you could pull it off or in the middle of the night. Now, do I think that they've somehow covered up a layer or something that could block that technology? I guess that's possible, but this is an enormous structure. And I saw them doing drilling, you know, the Army Corps of Engineers.

They were, I think there was more of a distraction to keep us away. But it's possible. I don't think they could extract the structure that's underneath there without, you know, a major operation. I mean, like, you know, everybody would know. Could they fill in the ground with something that blocks the radar? On that note, though, I mean, do you have any knowledge or maybe assumptions on how that structure got put there then? I mean, because it had to be a very major construction at some point in order to put it there. Have you ever come across anybody saying that they saw it being

built or anything like that? Or was that kind of done in secret as well? Yeah, it must have been done in secret and not sure when. Now, the way it's configured is so you know so one guy once told me oh there's nothing you're going to just strike water if you dig five feet well you've never been there because this thing is on a giant 50 foot cliff overlooking the ocean the hill is enormous um so something could fit underneath that hill for sure uh but no i don't um there's no record it's definitely been kept under wraps it's and and hey i understand secrecy within the government they could be developing things that might protect us or technologies that they need to hide from other militaries.

I get it. But the thing that has inspired me to want to look into this or encourage other people to reveal this is that if kids were being kidnapped off the street and murdered in this base, that's a different story. And we need a change of leadership, if that's the case, because they've been doing this for years

and we don't want those people, we can't trust those people running the show. It should be uncovered. It's dangerous. because obviously they don't want anyone to know about it. And like MK Ultra experiments or these other experiments, it came out against their will. The government did not want people to know the previous chapters of government

were doing this. And so I firmly believe that there's still weird things going on for sure, you know. There or just in general? In general, but I don't know. This is the thing. That's why I say allegedly all the time. We have not been able to prove it, however, that that one piece of information that came from GeoVue proves that there is a giant structure there that's not supposed to be there for sure. Did I prove there was an enormous base under there?

No. Just that vertical slice, but that's what the geophysicist said. He's like, this is only a vertical slice, and I'm already seen an enormous structure underneath the ground. And this is a man-made structure because he found elements of iron ore, which is rebar. And these are walls built. He said there's a ceiling. And it's, you know, that ceiling is 25 feet down. And from the ceiling to the ground inside the structure is another 30 feet.

That's what he was seeing. And again, it was a bridge somewhat for the two-hour special for History Channel. But I was there. I mean, and I always wanted it to be real. I never wanted to fake it or, you know, that's not what I'm interested in. And there was more of a push to do that on my show Strange World, which I, you know, I like the show and all. but it's just so much better when you're not faking it. Yeah.

I know, I absolutely agree. I absolutely agree. And that's why, like, like building my show from the beginning, you know, because I'm driving around Philadelphia,

Pennsylvania in a tractor trailer, trying to game plan, what do I want my podcast to sound like? And what should it be about, you know? And I always just came back to the, the foundation of true stories, real stuff,

real conversation. That's why I strive to, and I say I strive, meaning I still strive for this to be as close to a Joe Rogan-type paranormal podcast as possible because I enjoy just the authentic back-and-forth conversation of people just coming on and talking. And I think a lot of people enjoy that as well, obviously. For sure. Now, with this whole thing, let's put aside the more sci-fi stuff.

Let's just stay on the brain, the mind control topic here. The other stuff, by the way, I dig it. I love that stuff. And you're talking to a guy that, well, maybe. I'll say maybe. Same. Same. So with the mind control stuff, first of all, the Bill Clinton reference you had earlier

and stuff, I was under the assumption that when he was talking, he was talking about MK Ultra. Are you saying that he was talking about Tuskegee the whole time with that whole apology? Yeah, because the gentleman, right, he was focusing on that. And the gentleman, and that was hard. horrible in itself. I mean, think about it. It's not that much different. It's just as screwed up. But the gentleman standing next to him was a survivor of the Tuskegee Medical Experiments when he was

explaining that. And he did side-reference some of the other things, but he wasn't focusing on that because he didn't want everyone else to focus on that. But simultaneously, there were hearings happening at that time where people were tied, not just MK Ultra, but things that happened after other programs. These programs were all over. And it makes you wonder, like, what was the end game in this? And some of the people in the Montauk Project or other people I talked to said, the end game is the people you see running out, you know, arbitrarily just going out

shooting people. Like, that's what you're seeing. You know, you're seeing assassins. You're seeing people run out and disrupting our way of being. Do you think it's just simply, it's in to go out and shoot people and die by, cop? You know, there's something weird about that. You have to question it. Why? Why in such abundance? Why, if it's just human nature, why haven't we, we just copied people doing that all the time, you know? And it happens all in clusters as well. And this is something, I'm glad you brought this up, actually,

because it's something I haven't talked about on my show recently at all, actually. With these shootings and stuff. So one would say, well, so going back to M.K. Ultra, and the idea that it's been discontinued and stuff. Like, I don't personally believe that at all. I believe that if anything, they just call officially by a different name. And they can, like, why would they stop just because they think people know about it? Like, just change the cover of the book. Keep the contents going.

And if that's true, then you look at these shooters and stuff because a lot of them are young guys. I mean, they weren't at Montauk. but that said, if the programming is still happening, maybe even new tactics of programming, which I go with on the whole mainstream media stuff, I think there is mass programming and manipulation done to people through media their entire lives. And there are certain people who are, like,

when I say mass, I mean everybody. And then there are certain people in that mass, group of people that are specific types of people that when they're exposed to that kind of manipulation, it does something different to their brain. And so when you start throwing trigger words out during election season, like, we need more gun control, we need this, we need that. There's certain things that click in people's heads. And all of a sudden, you have these psychopaths conveniently at the right time when all of a sudden we're just, all of a sudden, it's hot topic in the in the news and media today. And oh, look, we got a mass shooter.

Oh, next weekend we got another one. How about that? And then just keep it. going. It's like they're, you're a hundred percent right. And what you're talking about was first developed in these programs. They found out what you just deciphered in these programs by using human subjects saying this is how they're going to react. Now let's put it into play in the public now. Let's use this for because what are these experiments for? They're being developed for some kind of use. They just need to understand how they can apply it. And now what I believe, and for some years now, is it's being applied. You're seeing it happening before our eyes. You know, what they were developing is now being applied. That's a theory, but, you know, it makes sense. It's fact in my book

and on this show. It's fact. No, but I agree. And I even think that it's happening, not just on our national level, but a global level. And you were referencing the, the Nazis and things like that. I mean, this is stuff that I think is happening globally. And it really might have a big say as to why the world is the way it is today. Now, with the idea of Stranger Things, how connected have you been to that show with what you've done? And I asked that question referencing me, basically, has anybody with Stranger Things ever reached out to you to pick your brain as far as, Like you're researching it a topic or anything like that? No, unofficially.

I mean, clearly they saw, I mean, my documentary is out way before they even developed the idea. They saw it, you know, my trailers were out years before. And they were getting a lot of press. I mean, Huffington Post was posting my trailers years ago, you know, years before Stranger Things was even developed. So I obviously had some kind of, because I was the only person to interpret that book and the look of it did leak into Stranger Things a little bit from Montau. Chronicles. And, you know, there are people that then juxtapose scenes from Montauk and scenes from

Stranger Things and there's some identical things. But that happens all the time, man. I'm inspired by Italian horror films. I'm inspired by Spielberg and Kubrick and all these great for Spike Lee, you know, all these incredible filmmakers. And we get influenced by stuff. So I didn't, Stranger Things is very much its own show and I like it. There was a gentleman who made a short film after I put my movie out and he tried to. sue Stranger Things. And then press was interviewing me about that, saying, you know, how do you feel about this? I said, he should go and make a movie. Stop. You know, stop trying to sue people. But while I have you, let me tell you about Montauk Chronicles. If they're asking you

questions, use that press to promote yourself. That's the way I look at it. Sure. And I did, you know, I mean, you know, networks were already wanting to make shows with me before Stranger Things came out. But it helped for sure. And, you know, whatever. I mean, I'm not going to sue them for what? Yeah, I think sometimes people get, I honestly think people think that sometimes that they're more important in the grand scheme of things than what they really are. And so they place more importance than what they have,

they should on what they do. Not saying that our work is unimportant, but listen, like I've had, I've had things happen over the last six years of me doing this, where, you know, I felt a certain way about certain things.

Like I felt like maybe I was kind of taken advantage of or somebody scoop me on something after I told them about certain things that I told them in confidence. And all of a sudden, I see it popping up to other places. I'm like, oh, isn't that interesting? But at the end of the day, it's my job to create cool crap. And so that's why on my, on my Instagram, that's what I say in my bio, I create cool crap. You know, so if somebody scoops me on it, it is what it is. I'm just going to have to go find something else to create even better, you know, and challenge accepted. Yeah, they're going to, listen, if you're doing something good, they're going to steal from you.

I mean, I see the, look, sometimes I'm doing things and all of a sudden I see it in other network shows, even some of their advertisements show. Like, what is you doing now? It's like, well, I don't want to work with you anymore. I don't mind collaborating with the network down the road. It has to be good, though. There has to be a reason for it. I mean, I'm, you know, I'm salty, man.

I don't know. I have, I'm not enchanted by, oh my God, a network wants to work with me. Woo! It's like, I'm going to make my stuff. We have this great opportunity right. now to create your stuff and then distribute it to the world. And if you want to talk about finances, all that stuff's going to come back to you, whereas you have this set salary that will be paid by the network.

And it doesn't change. That's it. You might be able to increase it a little bit depending on how your show does. But you're at the mercy of them. They can sit and tell you you're the new face of the network. Trust me, I've heard it. And then some guy will wake up on the wrong side of the bed for some. some reason and pull your advertising because they're afraid of the success of the show and they know

if you get advertising this is going to be a big success. So that happens. I don't want to be at the mercy of that. I want to be in control of my hard work, where it goes, who sees it? And guess what? They don't want you to know this. But if you break through and that'll be through your hard work, creativity, everything you're applying, you can do so much better than you ever would working with them, ever and reach more people. It sounds like you're described. the cats out of the bag and they're scrambling trying to keep it a secret, you know. Look at them. They're falling apart these now. Yeah, the industry has to change. It has to evolve. They know it deep in their heart. They're just trying to hold on the old model because it's been so great for them.

But I look at it in a very similar vein as the sports industry with college athletes. So for years, people have been like, college athletes need to get paid. If you're making this much money off their abilities, they need to get paid. and they're like, oh, well, it's a free scholarship. It's like, eh, that's cute. But we're talking about the value of what, $200, $300,000 over a four-year period, whereas you're making, like, you're making a lot. And a lot of those athletes, over time, you learn that they're not interested in getting a degree. They're there for one year, maybe two, and they're trying to go professional.

And they're jumping ship. They're not interested in that. And so what we saw, and whether you're for that or against it, I really don't care. It's listen, I don't, I don't really care what other people do with their money. I don't care how other people make their money. It's not my business. But at the end of the day, the industry of college sports had to change. They saw the writing on the wall and they changed.

Now athletes can make money and stuff and still be participating in college sports. And it's a similar thing with the entertainment industry. I think we're in a transition period. And I think, like I said before, lack of better terms, old Hollywood is just scrambling, trying to hold on and eventually they're going to have to, and they will come up with a new model of how to do things that it's more equal and successful for everybody or else they're just going to wind up dying off because there's people like you and I who can are showing we can do this without Hollywood influence. And I also think that in today's world, especially my audience speaking

for my audience, there's a big chunk, a very large chunk of my audience who is starving for content that isn't coming from these places because of what is driving these executives and down to the spiritual nature coming out of the industry. So there's a lot of people that are like, you know what, I don't feel very safe turning on the Disney Channel anymore for my children and I'm hungry for something that I can give my kids to consume that isn't coming from those people. And so they're shooting themselves in the foot a lot these days. They are. This is a true revolution. You know, you're in the middle of it, it's hard to step back from the campus and see it. But as you know

history and you do, you can, I know you know what's going on. And what you're doing, that's the reason why you're so successful is because it's a, it's part of a revolution. And so if you were going to work or collaborate with a network to stand your ground, I'll do the same. I mean, like, I've had a lot of offers since 2020. And I, and I'm not trying to be offensive to people that want to work with me. I'm just saying, listen, I'm going to do a much better job. Let me create these models. then you can take a look at them. And if you want to collaborate with me

on a very similar thing, let's do it. If not, that's okay too. I, you know, my goal in life is not to win an Emmy or an Academy Award. That's for people, that's for your ego. That is not because your desire to create, affect an audience or even make money. That is literally like,

I'm going to take this statute to the grave. To me, I would throw it in the garbage or give it to my mother. Like I, I don't, I think that's against the energy that I'm creating every day. Because what you're saying is, I'm not validated until I win that stupid statue. No, man, you got to wake up. That's not what this is.

I agree 100%. And with the industry, this is the way I look at it. They have something that I want. I want their money so I can do more. I want their money so I can do a big project because, but they want me because of what I've done, what I've created and what I'm able to create. And so it just needs to be, in my mind, a very simple thing. You give me your money.

I'm going to make something really cool. I'm going to give it to you and you can broadcast everybody, put the commercials on or whatever you got to do, make your money. But that's his bottom line is where I'm at. I'm just like, I create something cool with the money you give me and then we all are happy. You know, but tell them, tell them straight. Let them know exactly what you want in the beginning and get it on. paper. That's it. Papers. And even that they might try and change. They were like, oh, you didn't

read the backside of the left corner. The paper in the smallest writing. Yeah, I'll bring my magnifying glass to the sit down. But. Yeah. So let's switch gears here a little bit. And I did bring this up a little bit. I don't want, you don't need to go into great detail about it. But it was the very first time that has ever been brought across my desk by somebody else outside of my years ago, I came across the story of, and I think it's pronounced Polybius, that video game system in Portland. I think it was in Portland, but, or maybe the story circles around out there, but definitely a Portland story. Yeah. Yeah. So like, I remember, I, I, maybe it was a listener. Somebody tipped me off to the story. And I found something to listen to I was driving with it. And I,

like, bingeed on. I was like, this is, maybe it's a podcast. Maybe there's a podcast called plebeous or something that started it. I don't know. But like, I was totally taken back by it. And then I found out that it wasn't real. But is it real? Like, you've talked to some people that maybe have different opinions on it or what? So that's a really good question. So if you, if you talk to a committed skeptic, he's going to tell you it's not real. But that's what he does. He has a very narrow way of thinking. And I'm referring to somebody that I talk to, nice guy and all. But this is what he does for a living. I'm a skeptic. Okay, good. Let's not talk about weird shit. And so But I talked to Noel Bushnell, who was the co-founder of Atari.

And he believes that it's very possible because the government was working with Atari and asking them how are they designing their games, making suggestions, either for simulating training for a tank, or can we give you some suggestions, can we work with you? So these stories come from somewhere. And with all of these mind control projects out there, what better way to manipulate the youth? What better way to manipulate the masses?

People were going to arcades and droves at that time. Why not? Definitely keep an open mind to it. But when you have the co-founder of Atari suggesting that this could be a very real thing, was Polybius itself real? I have no idea. But the concept of manipulation in these games for the purpose of manipulating the player and suggesting something to them is real.

That's definitely a thought in the minds of designers and in the U.S. government at least, and I'm sure elsewhere. So, you know, you speak to people, what did I go? I did an episode of my show Strange World. So not only did I speak to Noah Bushnell or Atari, I spoke to several scientists who were developing games to play with the mind now.

Think about NeurLink for a second. That is, there's so many beneficial ideas attached to that. Elon Musk is going to introduce that for human purchase within a year or two. And everyone's going to end up getting it now. The sale to us is going to be very tempting because, yes, it'll stimulate things, it'll help with tinnitus, it'll help increase abilities for people that are slightly on the spectrum or even further on it. But it's also going to be sold for entertainment. It's going to be the matrix eventually. You know, you're going to have this thing installed in your head. They're going to make it really cheap. $2,000 for the hardware. That includes

the daytime operation, and you walk out and you're a cyborg. And it's happening. And most people are going to submit to that because who isn't going to want to, it's going to be like total recall. You're going to just going to like, where do I want to go? I want to be on a yacht with 50 women and a party and everything. I mean, I'm just saying, most people take that and say, I just worked 15 hours on road construction today, I'm going to go have some fun. See you. And then everyone's going to check out and go there

because they're not going to know the difference between reality. I so much agree with you. Listen, when this kind of revolutionary stuff comes out and is what you said, cheap, it's because you're the product. It's not because the product's cheap. It's because they want the product to buy,

Give them money to be the experiment. And I want to say on this side of time and on this side of Neurrelink and all those kind of things that I would not get it because I have very deep concerns about it. But there might be a day that comes where I freaking get it. And I don't know how or why. On this side of it, I'm just like, no, I'm not getting it. But as these, how these things go often, it's like they present something down the road that maybe I have no choice in the matter. I have to do it.

You know, a way that maybe they build a system on an economy around these kind of things so that if you literally, if you can, if you need to survive, it's literally a matter of survival. Like when it comes to currencies and the digital currency that they're going to be dropping here. and I think they're even talking about this year, December, I think they were talking about starting to roll it out. Like, when we're talking about getting rid of paper money and going digital, it sounds convenient until you start looking into the fact that this money is programmable. They can program it and they can give your money more value or less value than somebody else. And when they're talking about making this whole currency exchange equitable,

we're talking about you're no longer, hey, being, like, here's the weight of the digital currency in your efforts. It's no longer measured like that. And so it's a very dangerous thing that on this side of things, I'm like, I would never want to participate in that. I don't want it. But at the end of the day, if you are going to buy. anything, you're going to have to have digital currency. And so it's things like that that kind of like keep me up at night and scare the hell out of me. But with Neurrelink, it's in the similar vein. I don't want it. I don't have any plans on getting it. But, you know, as a father, and I got two

kids, a four-year-old and a two-year-old, it's easy if I was just me and my wife. And I'm just like, no, we're not going to get. I'd rather starve to get to death and get something like that, right? but at the end of day, am I willing to watch my children starve to death? Well, surely it's not going to get to that point. Well, maybe it does. But also, maybe they view you as somebody and they portray you through manipulation of the media as an extremist that is abusing their children by not letting them eat. And so they take your children away.

And so now it's like, all right, so am I willing to watch them come and take my children away and put my children in a system that I don't agree with? and then somebody can say, well, I'll never let over my dead body. No, literally, over your dead body. And then your kids are put in the system anyway. So at some point, you look at things. You're like, you know, if they push the right buttons, I might be willing to do certain things. It's going to be the great temptation. Because it's as far as your imagination can go. Not many things have that phrase attached to it. This is literally as far as your imagination can go. Think about all of the endless possibilities, including it repairing things in you, like Parkinson's disease. Yeah. You know, it's going to be hard to not take it eventually. You know, what you just said about Parkinson's, I just saw this video of him yesterday. So Michael J. Fox, he's deteriorating big time.

And so it would be people like him. Now, I'm not saying he's getting, I don't know, but I'd imagine he probably has, probably doesn't have a problem with that. I'm assuming he's not as crazy as me with conspiracies and stuff. So, like, say somebody like him gets Nerling, it cures him, and all of a sudden you see this guy, Michael J. Fox, who we knew from the 80s, this... You'll see it. This beautiful young man who was good-looking, athletic, the up-and-coming star taken out by this disease, his entire career off-railed, and all of a sudden he's back. And he's being put in movies.

And it's just like we're getting a dose of Michael J. Fox. We've been missing for 30 years. Like that is going to be a huge sale. Yeah, Ozzy Osbourne does the New Black Sabbath. He's back on stage jumping around after he gets Neurlink. Yeah. I mean, yeah. But that's, okay, so we've been primed for many years to see these people deteriorate.

And now we're going to see them come back to life. Again, it's going to be nearly impossible to resist the list of things that will come with it. But then it's, okay. now you have relationships, adventures, family, whatever you can imagine is all happening in that other world now. What does it do to this and what is this anymore? And do we eventually just become part of that upload? Is that what we live for? Our house is getting smaller.

Science fiction has prophesied this. So everything from the Matrix to strange days to we can go down the list has predicted, this exact thing, ready player one, all of it. It is, it's happening. It's going to happen. We will be in that matrix. And a lot of it's going to be amazing.

But the other parts of it, the nefarious parts will also exist. You're going to be monitored. Your thoughts will be monitored. You're going to have suggestion put into your brain because now you're linked all the time. So you're going to have, you know, McDonald's advertisements in your sleep.

Yeah. Yeah. Those will be your dreams now. You won't have dreams anymore. You're no longer human. And what does that mean for those of us that believe in a soul? You don't have to be religious to believe in a soul. It's like we are a soul.

There's something else here. Do we become like the Borg and Star Trek eventually? Because now we're just slowly losing our front personalities. We don't care anymore about this. What is this? I want to go back in the neuralink. There's so much there for us. Everything we ever wanted is in there.

So I'll work at this job. I'll do whatever I have to do to, to be this guy who can go into this other world now, where I love everything there, including my fake family that lives there and my fake wife and whatever's there. I can be whatever I want to be in that world. Most of the populace is going to be absorbed by it, for sure, 100%.

I definitely would be like you. I would resist it for a while because I want to see what's happening, but then you can get sick. And they're going to say the only cure for that is, of course, Neurling, you can cure it right now. Yeah. And at some point, like, I also come to the understanding that, like, hey, at some point I got to die.

Like, we all got to die at some point, right? And there are certain things that on a spiritual level, I'm not, like, everybody has those lines. Like, I literally have lines I won't cross. Like, like, I know some people say that and they're like, eh, you know, like, you know, oh, we're drawing a red line here. And we keep backing it up. Like, I literally have lines I won't cross.

And so if I ever get a sense that something is, as a Christian, the mark of the beast. Like, listen, I've already pre-conditioned myself for years before my kids even existed and continued to that if something that would ever happen, I am like, I'm not, listen, whatever, my kids, my wife, it doesn't matter. I have certain convictions. I'm not going to go down, right? But if I don't feel like this is a spiritual thing, I draw those lines, but I also know

that that line I'm willing to cross because of. certain other things, mainly my family and my kids. Is it going to affect them kind of thing? And so those are lines that everybody has to draw individually. And that's the thing that that people have to understand. They get all up in arms and they get grumpy with everybody else. And you like, oh, how could you? Everybody has their own thresholds. And we have to respect that. You know, certain people are all about it. Oh, yeah. And, and that, hey, that's their life. Like, we get so mad about governments telling us what we can and cannot do, what we can and cannot say, but then we turn around and do the same freaking thing that people we don't agree with.

And so it's just like, listen, I don't freaking care. It's your life. You do what you want to do. I have my lines. You have your lines. That's it, you know? And I guess that's my little monologue there just so that the audience understands. Save your emails. Okay. I'm not even going to see them anyways. Any nasty emails that come in, my wife deletes them before I see him because she knows always time responding. So, but yeah, man, listen, this is a good conversation. It kind of took different that I wasn't expecting, and it's, it's, it's, it's kind of refreshing. I didn't, I, you know, I didn't know, uh, you know, what angles we were going to go with and stuff, but, uh, that's kind of what we do anyways with the show. I just sit down with people and say, all right, let's go.

Let's see where it goes. That's what it is. It's a great conversation. I think we talked about some important stuff today. Definitely things to consider because we're on the precipice of the things we're talking about and the other things are happening, or happening. I don't know. Yeah. It's what you, what you're inside is. You know what? Before we, before we get out of here, it's just hit me. this is a great example. When Facebook came out as meta and they came out with the Oculus, there's a lot of conspiracy guys.

They're like, I'm not getting that. I said, I'm going to get it. And they're like, why, how could you? I'm like, well, how could I not? Like, do I believe that it is going to turn me into a raging psychopath? No. Do I think that I could learn a lot about the future of technology and the dystopian future I say I believe is coming?

could I learn a lot by having that technology in my hands and understanding how it works? Yeah. And so I got Oculus for that reason. I wanted to see how easy could this really become part of our life? And let me tell you something. Just the Oculus.

And it is baby right now. It is nothing. I have one. I almost brought it into the office today because I thought I'd be bored. You know? No, it's great. Well, think about what we can do in there.

That's the thing. And I know you have. We could screen our documentary. in there, in big screen, set a private room, start inviting people in the lobby. You can walk in and talk to all these people to say, hey, guys, you want to watch a great doc, punch into room, bop, bop, or put it on your social media. And anyone that has an oculus is now in the theater with us. You can introduce the film.

And we're all watching it on a big screen together from all different parts of the world. We could do that right now. I didn't know that, actually. Are you serious? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, we need to talk after this. Not, man. Oh, we should.

We should do a little film festival in there. Yeah, absolutely. I didn't know that. See, we're learning things together here on the professionals. Anyways, before I take another hour, before we get out of here, though, tell people where they can find you and your podcast, any future projects you're working on. Tell them where to tune in. Sure, you can look me up anywhere. My name is Christopher Garretano. You can go to my YouTube channel, Garatano 7-G-A-R-E-T-A-N-O number seven. My podcast is off to the witch. And you can find it just about anywhere where you find your podcasts. Just look it up.

I have to revamp my website, but it is Off to the Witch.com. And I have a new docu-series coming out called Off to the Witch Presents. And the name of it, the first one, is A Haunting We Will Go, kind of a fresh and traditional perspective at the same time on hauntings. And definitely the antithesis to what you keep seeing on these shows, these ghost-hunting shows, no offense, but they've been done to death. and I wanted to do something fresh. So that's the first in the series.

And you've got a lot of other projects happening. But just keep an eye out, try to follow me on social media. I'm on all the good stuff, I guess. And hope to see you soon. Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate you being here. Anybody listening, just look into the description of this episode. All the links are going to be there.

And yeah, thanks for being here, man. Thanks, man. I really appreciate it. Well, that's the show, everybody. I really hope you enjoyed it. And if you did enjoy, 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

the show grow. And go ahead and check out those links in the description for Christopher Garantano. Make sure that you hit them up on social media. I'm definitely going to make sure I put the Instagram in there for you guys so you can go follow him on Instagram. Instagram is my favorite platform, so I like pushing everybody else on Instagram as well. All right, friends, until next week, stay safe. Take care and remember the truth will set you free, but first we'll piss you off.

Bye.