This Paranormal Life - #259 HAARP - Has the US Military Built a Death Star in Alaska?

Episode Date: April 19, 2022

What do earthquakes, tsunamis, the Cuban US embassy attack, and mind control all have in common? They were all caused by a nefarious military machine called HAARP. Allegedly. There is no end to the list of global conspiracies supposedly caused by HAARP, but is there any truth behind the stories? Or are they just a product of the internet’s imagination? More importantly, is any of this actually paranormal? Time for Kit and Rory to investigate!Buy Official TPL Merch! -  thisparanormallife.com/storeSupport us on Patreon.com/ThisParanormalLife to get access to bonus episodes!Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTubeJoin our Secret Society Facebook CommunityAdvertise on This Paranormal Life via Gumball.fmEdited by Kami TomanResearch by Amy GrisdaleIntro music by www.purple-planet.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What makes you so sure you're awake right now? Humans can see more colours than dogs, but what animal can see more colours than us? Answers to these questions and more on this episode of This Paranormal Life! Hello! Yo! And welcome back to This Paranormal Life. This is the weekly comedy podcast where every Tuesday, me, Kit Greer-Molvena, and Roy Powers, who's sitting across from me,

investigate a different paranormal tale and get to the bottom of whether it's truly paranormal or not. Yo, yo, yo. How are you doing today, Roy? I'm doing great. Is that a true fact about dogs not being able to see as many colors as humans? They famously can only see black and white, I think. That's crazy. Movies never change from them.

They're still black and white. It's per bastards. What happens if you- Do they think they can see 3D? Surely they can see The Hobbit in 60 frames per second. What would happen if you gave a dog a bag of Skittles? They think they're rocks. No wonder those little bastards are so confused.

They think Skittles are the exact same sweets as M&M's. That is so sad. Those poor, poor guys. Because I'm pretty sure if they eat one of those, they die, right? Chocolate. And the point is, is that there's an animal out there that thinks that about us. That's crazy. They're like per bastards.

They think every blade of grass is the same color. We will have to postpone getting to the bottom of that particular paranormal mystery until maybe the end of the show because we have a big investigation to dive into today rory you think skittles are crazy what do you think alien candy looks like it's made of collapsing stars in every shade of conceivable element what and they also come in sour flavor so they're pretty wild a single sour candy from the andromeda galaxy contains as many calories as every grain of food ever eaten by a human in existence the calories for one single grain of alien rice could feed mankind for all of eternity but it is still rice to be clear

of course it's exactly the same shape and flavor and our flaming hot cheetos that's their bread our wildest food is their oatmeal they've eaten such crazy alien shit that our wildest flavors is their f***ing tap water. Our Four Loko is their Evian. Right. Yeah. Exactly. If we tried to drink their Four Loko, it's battery acid. That's what it is. It's jet fuel.

Rory, our story today takes us to Coffee County, Georgia in 2016. Wow. Have you been to Coffee County? Never been to Coffee County before in my life. I don't even really know where that is in Georgia. Sounds delicious. Yeah. And Sheriff Doyle Wooten is just walking back to his patrol vehicle after picking up, you guessed it, a coffee.

His receiver is going off. Never a dull moment. Yep, what's going on? Sir, we just got a call from the gun store on Dance Spike Road. The owner sounded worried. I thought I'd let you know as you're already in the area. Roger that. Let me check in with him. Thanks. He started up the patrol vehicle, U-turned, and headed towards the store.

Inside, the clerk looked relieved to see him. Oh, thanks for coming by. You'll want to look into this. What is it, son? About an hour ago, a real shifty-looking character was in here. Big Beard. I gave his description on the phone. He was trying to buy a lot of stuff. I mean a lot. He seemed real on edge. I made a joke and asked what he was up to, but he seemed spooked.

He wouldn't give me a straight answer, so I wouldn't sell it to him. But I'm worried he's got something planned and he'll get it from somewhere else, or a few places. Sure. Thanks for that. We're going to try and bring him in if we can. Anything else I should know? He just kept muttering something about the machine. Something about a machine. Just over and over. Alright, to start, I was on the side of this bizarre stranger. I don't think you have to justify purchases in a store

to be able to be sold them. I love as a guy from Georgia, you're already defaulting to just like, this son of a bitch is impinging on my second amendment right. It's like, you're missing the point of the story. I'm just saying, if I go into a gas station about the machine i'm just saying if i go into a gas station at 3 a.m pick up a case of diet cokes and a packet of hot pockets i don't need the cashier to be like when you eating those partner it's none of your business when i'm eating them or why i'm eating them

i you just sell me the don't worry about the machine, okay? This is me in co-op at 7 a.m. on a Saturday morning. Look, I don't need to justify to anyone why I need four packs of croissants. I've got a big family. They're like, I know you. I know you live alone. But if you are acting weird

and you're muttering about a machine and we didn't say what kind of... Do we say what kind of store this is? A gun store. Oh oh i missed that i thought this was like a fucking walmart okay never mind i retract everything that i just said ask questions ask many many questions i cannot stress enough we need to implement background checks ah holy shit yes very worrying it's bizarre that he was able to go into the store and leave with guns what a beautiful u-turn yeah yeah i know you mean if you go into a store and act like this

they should be able to confiscate the gun you already have yeah you should they should be able to perform a citizen's arrest uh yeah holy shit i forgot this was a gun store yeah who knows what the sheriff thinks at this point you know he wants to stop crime but he also wants to protect his citizens right to bear arms so uh we're yet to see we've got to see how big a problem this machine is i mean it's extra worrying as well because are you buying buying? How are these two linked? Is the machine alive now? Has it gone too far and you need guns to fix it? We're going to have to track this son of a bitch down and find out. Walking back to the car, Doyle's receiver went off again. Sir, good timing. Come over to Ambrose. We got him. You're gonna want to see this. Doyle drove over and couldn't miss the house where the action was taking place.

There were three cars lined up on the street. Inside the house, officers walked about snapping photos and taking evidence, with two men sitting handcuffed on the sofa in the living room. One of them, just as described, with a big bushy beard. He noticed littered around the house were maps, too, but not local ones. He could have sworn one was of the state of Alaska. Son of a bitch. What have we got? Take a look, sir. Holy shit. Laid out on the ground on a mat was enough firepower for a small army, more than Doyle had seen in one place for a very long time. A pile of weaponry, including four AR-15 rifles, four Glock handguns, a Remington rifle,

and between 2,000 and 3,000 rounds of ammunition, in addition to bulletproof vests and more. We're trying to work out what they had planned, sir, but they keep talking about the harp. Some kind of machine? They keep saying that God told them to go and blow this machine up. A machine that keeps souls so that the souls could be released. Okay. They said they were going to try and find a scientist, steal his car, an ID badge to gain access to the machine.

Any scientist. Yeah, that's about as smart as I assumed that these people's plan would be. Rory, I think we are as confused as Doyle in this moment in 2016 with no prior knowledge of what this thing is they're talking about and whether it's even real. Yeah, this is terrifying. Glad that they managed to put a pin in this before it got any further.

Scary stuff. I mean, like a machine that steals souls and then releases the souls. You could definitely be forgiven, as I'm sure these police officers did, of thinking these men were simply methed out junkies who had taken some kind of dream they had a bit too far. But what we'll learn over the course of this episode

is that harp is real. Rory, have you ever heard of harp before? That's spelled H-A-A-R-P. I believe I have. And i don't know whether it's because we talked about it on the podcast or not maybe it was an email submission from our listeners uh or possibly just popped up when you are talking about the world of conspiracies but from my limited knowledge i believe this is or is rumored to be, some type of machine that can influence or track the weather. That's right. There is lots of layers to what this thing is known slash purported to be.

Yeah. But that is definitely one of them. My research definitely didn't mention souls. The stealing of souls. And that seems quite crucial to the machine. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't know that the government knew or have proof of souls existence in the first place.

Let alone that the government is harvesting souls. Right. We would leap right past the fact that now scientifically souls exist. And apparently have some kind of value that you need to collect them. Exactly. It's like the government announcing, hey, we actually have been working on experimental craft that means mankind can now make it to Mars in a matter of six months. It's like, that's incredible technology like how does it work it's like well using uh capturing the power of children's wishes the engine is hold on yeah hold on now you're gonna have to loop back at the part where we capture the dreams of children oh sure it's a

it's a minor uh footnote we will simply uh don't worry no children will be harmed in the fueling of the vehicle. I didn't even consider that to be something. Create a creche on the ship and take a certain amount of children on the voyage. It'll be a fun time for them. And then just every night we ask the children to make wishes into the wish engine. And is this too much scientific detail for you? Am I getting a bit off track? It's borderline not scientific at all. It sounds like these children don't want to be here.

So we take the dreams and the dream engine turns those into a truly unbelievable amount of energy. All right. Now, this sounds like some sort of f***ed up Monsters, Inc. situation. Oh, no, no, not at all. The children, after they sacrifice their dreams, they get a glass of milk with a cookie. You must know that that's bad wording. You must know that that sounds... Is this getting a bit too scientific, a bit too kind of molecular detail?

It's not scientific at all. You're using words that aren't scientific. I'll step back and get a little more big picture to make this a little more... We take their dreams. We take the children's dreams and hopes even that you must understand all right in the engine all right you must understand these are all very threatening terms but the thing is children have many dreams and hopes and you can simply skim off the excess dreams and hopes uh and they're still left with a few you know all right i'm gonna ask a question

that i'm a little worried about the answer what happens to the children who do not want to give up their dreams? Oh, the children always give up the dreams on account of the enforcers. This is the first time you've mentioned the enforcers. So it's not just a ship full of children flying on dream power. There are men on this ship enforcing? Sometimes the children can also enforce. The children that have no dreams left

become the enforcers. We call them the husks. We call them the nameless ones. Shut it down, Mr. President. Shut it down. In 1993, the U.S. military began construction on a groundbreaking government project known as HARP, a.k.a. the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program.

Hidden high up in the most remote ice-covered Alaskan tundra is the world's most powerful transmitter facilities, a machine covering 33 acres. Whoa, whoa. Its operation was supposed to be kept top secret, but clearly it did not remain that way. Right off the bat, will I show you a picture of what it looks like? I didn't even know we were privy to that sort of information. Yeah, I'm imagining this picture was smuggled out by a rogue scientist.

One of the nameless ones, potentially. Even before you show it to me, I assume this is a screenshot from like a drone camera taken from outer space. That's as close as anyone's ever gotten before. I think it's important to show you because it's not going to be what you think it is. I had never seen it until researching this case. Yeah, I'm assuming a Bond villain-sized laser cannon. I thought this thing was so top secret that as soon as you show me a picture, a sniper's red dot sight appears on my forehead. My phone bricks itself and just a message comes up saying, turn yourself in. It's easier this way. Turn yourself in in uh wow kit just sent me a picture of what this looks like and you're right this is nothing like i imagined it just looks like a huge electrical grid almost

that's a good way of putting it uh what seems like telephone poles jetting up into the sky with uh some sort of wiring around them, almost like metal umbrellas poking out of the ground. And it looks like it just goes on and on and on. Yeah, it's definitely an array of whatever these transmitters are. Now, describing how this thing works is going to be tricky. So it's probably easiest for our listeners to imagine the first Pokemon movie, when they created Mewtwo in a lab, thinking they could harness his power,

but they were too busy thinking about whether they could to question whether they should. That's the kind of power we're dealing with here. HAARP was designed to affect and interact with the upper part of the Earth's atmosphere, called the ionosphere. This is about 30 to 600 miles up. Wow. They figured out that they can use this layer of atmosphere to beam signals across the entire globe, amongst other things. And this is what the U.S. military claim HAARP is being used for, for covert communication and surveillance, for, for covert communication and surveillance, which at costing at least $250 million for its creation is a pretty expensive little radio when we've already got a variety of different ways to

communicate globally. That's very expensive. And Rory, that's because this thing isn't just beaming morse code from Washington to Guam. It doesn't just communicate in the ionosphere. from Washington to Guam, it doesn't just communicate in the ionosphere. HAARP is capable of modifying the ionosphere. All right, well, you're going to have to elaborate what that means. They are modifying the Earth's atmosphere with untold consequences. Far from being a giant communication device, this is a planet-spanning superweapon,

a borderline Death Star-level piece of futuristic technology. And its number one tool of destruction is by controlling the weather. So the conspiracy theories that I'd heard early on are accurate. You nailed it in one at the beginning. This is what HAARP is most famous for, at least in conspiracy circles. The ability to affect the weather. Now, this sounds insane, but a ton of high profile individuals have

come out against HAARP claiming that it's been behind multiple extreme weather events. Let me tell you folks, you harvest enough souls, you can do a lot of crazy shit. Don't get me started on children's wishes. It took pretty much just one child's wish to make Hogwarts real.

So imagine what you could do if you harvest a hundred of them. Yeah, we saw what the screams did in Monsters, Inc. Now imagine the wishes. In 1996, a scientist named Rosaline Bertel spoke out, warning the public that HAARP was being deployed as a military weapon. One economics professor claimed that HAARP was, quote, fully operational and was already causing floods, hurricanes, droughts, and earthquakes globally. These are scientists? Don't question their

credentials. Too early on. The Russian military, who are- They've heard of the word scientist. Does that count? Who are maybe a little biased against the US military here, granted. They have claimed that HARP is armed and capable of flipping the Earth's magnetic poles so that down is up and up is down. All right, but what is that? As in gravitationally, that's it? Or what? Yeah.

It's not that I look up at sky. No, wait. It's not that I look up at down i it doesn't just invert my body controls you know yeah like a playstation game yeah i don't know what that means i maybe misspoke it's so that north would become south and south would become north you try and put milk in your cereal and it floats up into a pigeon's eyes everything's flipped you put milk in your cornflakes and they'll burst into flames that's what we're talking about here you think you live in east london that shit's about to be west baghdad okay you won't know black from white

like a fucking dog and slightly more trustworthy than the russian military is veteran politician and professional wrestler jesse ventura he's been an outspoken critic of harp and requested to visit the site to authenticate what was going on there but the air force rejected him for reasons that they never made public i don't think they need to be public. I think they're common knowledge. Every story I've heard involving Jesse Ventura is just him being denied access to facilities across the world. He just tweets the White House. I need to have a look around, guys. He's like, they declined my, no, they just didn't reply to your tweet. time he came up in a episode was when uh he was investigating the possibility of a humanzy a human monkey hybrid sure and he was the the episode was just him being denied entry to every laboratory he claimed was working on the creature until he had an interview in the jungle with alex jones and i was like all right i've seen enough

right it's like, I could claim that all the nightclubs I get rejected from because I'm too ugly are up to some pretty shady government shit. Yeah. Just because I'm not allowed in there. I've been denied entry from the McDonald's down from the road. Cause I wasn't wearing pants. That's not a conspiracy. You don't want me to know what's in the burger sauce. We just want you to put on some boxers. Wear some clothes. Admit it, the ice cream machine's never worked. It's all

a con. From a variety of sources, it's been claimed that HAARP has been responsible for, among many other things, thunderstorms over Iran, Pakistan, Turkey, Greece, the Philippines, the neutralization of satellites in space, the downing of aircrafts in mysterious circumstances. That's specific.

And while, sure, Jesse Ventura is a bona fide conspiracy theorist who probably believes a lot more insane stuff than this, one thing that is true is that at the very least, the state of Alaska and the European Union have both raised environmental concerns and questions about specifically the operations of HAARP. I guess that's fair, you know. That's kind of the

best of both worlds, where maybe they're not going as far to say, hey, this thing is specifically designed to inflict catastrophic weather events in other countries. But maybe they're going as far to say, hey, maybe it's doing that accidentally. Maybe there's some environmental repercussions that we don't know about.

A hundred percent. Like, I'm pretty sure mobile phones are killing the bees. So that antenna array, the size of 33 football stadiums put together, that's probably going to do a couple things to the birds. The birds are going to not know if up is done and down is up. But no one is claiming that mobile phones were created to kill the bees. Sure.

You know, that's the difference here. And you absolutely nailed it. That is a bonus episode, though. It will be, because I think Vodafone is actually made by wasps. And they're pretty intent on taking down their rivals. I called customer service one time, and there was a lot of buzzing in the background, I'll just say. I called customer service, I got honey in my ear. What?

Do you think they can pay off their customers with honey? That's what they're trying to do. So this is terrifying. There are truly two possibilities here, which you just outlined. One is that the military is carrying out legitimate experiments on the Earth's weather, and it's simply spiraled out of control, butterfly effect style. Or it's that they're waging full-blown weather war. Like, this bit is wild former president of venezuela hugo chavez blames america for causing the haiti earthquake he says

it was a direct result of a test conducted by harp of an earthquake weapon wikipedia is quick to point out uh that in this statement uh chavez did not elaborate on the source of his claim. Right. This might be a bit more of a gut instinct type claim, but alarming that the president of a sovereign nation, Venezuela, is claiming that the US military has an earthquake machine. Yeah. That's a hard one, isn't it? Because it's like, okay, sure. Hypothetically, let's say they have a machine that can make earthquakes. Presumably you still have to be in a location

that's prone to earthquakes, like near the earth's tectonic plates, right? You can't just like make an earthquake happen in downtown London. Right. It still have to be at a point where it's like a little volatile. I mean, there's a lot of places on earth you could try it out.

There's plenty of fault lines. That's true. But I guess this is the problem. It's like, did they have the earthquake because they were in an area that has a lot of earthquakes? Or were they an option to test out the weapon because that they were in a place that's prone to earthquakes? Chicken and egg. There's a good reason why America might target Venezuela with an earthquake,

and also why Venezuela would accuse the US of doing something like that. Yeah, I'm going to say, if you're going to go out and publicly say that a country has an earthquake machine, you better at least have some leaked documents to back that up, because that's quite a statement.

Who knows? Maybe he did maybe that red dot site was uh was on his back the whole time yeah that's nuts i was talking to my wife about it because she lived in london for a bunch of years before i did she went to uni here she says she experienced one back then i'm just googling it they're saying that the most recent one was only in 2020 i don't remember this at all but apparently there was a 3.0 richter scale magnitude earthquake wow which because the richter scale is like logarithmic three is nothing and five is the entire city would collapse yeah and london is one

of those cities that is not built to be safe from earthquakes. While the idea of the US military having an earthquake machine is about as terrifying as it gets, it actually doesn't even cover the full extent of what HAARP is supposed to be up to. Yeah, we really breezed past the souls part. Many believe that it's also modifying the atmosphere using very low frequency electromagnetic waves for mind control. Okay. Jesse Ventura was pretty adamant about this one too.

So I had our resident nerd and beloved researcher, Amy, check the science behind this. And she claims that this checks out at least a tiny bit. There's no way. There's no way. In 2018, an experiment on real working brains established that these low frequency waves of around 12 hertz can affect memory, hormone production, and the expression of certain genes and tamper with brain waves themselves. She says, granted, this research was carried out exclusively on males. And furthermore, all the participants

were monkeys. Okay. But apparently they are close enough that this probably applies to humans too. I'm already starting to see some red flags here, okay? Because you don't just have a machine that can create earthquakes and also control minds. Turned out that was a little quirky side effect

that it also can do. No, those are two incredibly powerful abilities that a machine would possess. And there's no way that they would accidentally be able to do both. This isn't some sort of Swiss army knife type weaponry that can do a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Well, I agree with you in many respects. But it is tough when we're talking about electromagnetic waves here, because electromagnetic waves is like f***ing everything. I've mentioned this fact before, that if the electromagnetic spectrum was mapped out proportionally from New York to Los Angeles,

the spectrum of light that humans can see would be like three yards. The rest of it is every other possible wavelength of electromagnetic waves. And within that includes microwaves, x-rays, radio waves, and a million billion other kinds of energy, including radioactivity. Like there's a huge difference between the electromagnetic waves that make us pick up the radio station to let us listen to music and the electromagnetic waves that will melt your insides from a piece of nuclear material. Got it. Got it. It's a big spectrum. Yeah. So is it possible that this machine can cause earthquakes and tell you to go eat McDonald's? Maybe. I don't know. This machine can shake your jiggly ass all the way straight into a McDonald's takeaway line.

But yes, Rory, you might be sensing we're getting into f***ing chaotic grey area territory here. There is seemingly no end to the amount of things caused by harp. A weapon of this scale could be doing anything. Like, for example, we could do a whole other episode on the hum. Have you come across that? No, never. Really?

The hum? The hum? It is an entire other episode, which we won't get into. But it's a mysterious noise heard around the world by thousands to millions. And its source is completely unknown. Many think HAARP could be the culprit. Is there any explanation as to what it is trying to achieve? The hum?

It could be a f***ing side effect. Who knows? Right, right. Even the Cuban embassy event where embassy workers in Havana were attacked by a sonic weapon. These are exactly the kind of things that would beavana were attacked by a sonic weapon. These are exactly the kind of things that would be possible with some kind of electromagnetic weapon. Ironically, the only thing I haven't found in my research anyone else say it can do is steal souls. That was just those guys. That was just those two guys. Yeah. Don't, don't read into that too much. That

was a, I mean, if anything, that's that's an incriminating look into some of the believers of the HAARP conspiracy. So I'm sensing a bit of kickback, Rory, from you about some of the alleged things that HAARP can achieve. Despite, let's face it, this thing is clearly an incredibly expensive, incredibly powerful US military device. Yeah, I think, you know, hey, I love a good conspiracy. incredibly powerful US military device. Secrets for the public is definitely no surprise. But I think when we're talking about something like this on this scale, usually the conspiracy is a little more refined.

That this thing would serve one purpose and one goal. Whereas today it kind of feels like Harp is a bit of a boogeyman that's being blamed for a lot of different events from earthquakes to mind control to soul stealing to just a hum right if this was uh in britain we'd be blaming harp for the size of freddo bars yeah a hundred percent oh my f***ing tea's cold damn it harp damn you and your microwaves you know literally anything you could be blamed for the immigrants are making harp to keep the borders open or something like that you got you go down to the pub and you're like can i get a guinness please and they're like sorry i just got to change the barrels damn you harp damn you in your mysterious ways does anyone the humming the humming is deafening I'm starting to think that maybe some of the real believers in this are just looking for an excuse to blame parts of their lives on this object.

This is probably a good time to say that I know I tried to big up the credentials of our believer friends who are accusing HAARP of all these things. But I think if I'm being honest with myself, there are more scientists with better credentials on the side of saying, this isn't exactly what you think it might be. For one, Stanford University professor Amran Inan told Popular Science that the conspiracy theories surrounding HAARP were, quote,

completely uninformed, explaining that there's absolutely nothing we can do to disturb the Earth's weather systems. Even though the power that Harp radiates is very large, it's still minuscule compared to the power of, say, a lightning flash. What you're not saying is that he delivered that speech with no pupils in his eyes and a hum blasting in the background. There is nothing wrong with harp. Harp is good and healthy for mankind. Harp's energy is minuscule to that of a lightning flash or children's dreams, which have been known to alter earthquakes. Get him off stage. Get him the f*** off stage. And maybe most damningly, Austin Baird, writing in the Alaska Dispatch, said,

quote, I guess that makes sense, you know, because, sure, if you have a government facility that is like, hey, we're NASA, we're all about going into space, exploring the universe, come on, kids, why don't you have a little school trip and we'll show you what a telescope looks like. There's not exactly a bunch of kids who are queuing up to find out how microwaves affect the Earth's atmosphere.

That's a bit of a harder sell, you know? It's a great point. I honestly didn't even really think of it in this way until they laid it out like this. Imagine for a second if NASA wasn't as forthcoming with what they were doing. And all we collectively knew as a society is that every few months a rocket goes up. Yeah, yeah. And sometimes they don't come down sometimes they stay up there you can just imagine there would be all sorts of theories about their the elites are are leaving earth and they're starting a new community on mars and we need to

sneak onto that rocket yeah that's right Get as many guns as you can. We're going to take a scientist's pass. Shoot it down. Shoot down the rocket. Take the gold that's inside. It would get out of control very, very quickly. It runs on souls. There's no other reason why.

It must run on souls. Whereas NASA is, as you say, unbelievably transparent with everything that they do. As you say, they borderline do run summer camps for children to do internships who dream of being astronauts someday and exploring space. They just run like 24-7 webcams

on their space bases and rovers and satellites and things like that. And the worst part is they do all that and the conspiracy still exists. People are like, oh yeah, you'd like us to send our kids to your little brainwashing seminar. So if you have a facility that doesn't open its doors because either it's impractical or possibly dangerous, these are the kind of theories you're going to get.

Now, interestingly, in 2014, the U.S. Air Force decided they were withdrawing their support from the HAARP project. In a Senate hearing, their spokesperson said they were, quote, taking their ionospheric research in a new direction. And since then, HAARP has been run by the University of Alaska. Wow. Now, as either a skeptic or a conspiracy theorist, you could take that in a bunch of different directions. Maybe HAARP is evil and they were getting too much heat for that particular project. So now they're starting up some underground harp where they can really carry out their shit. And now they just let the harp that we've all come to know and love be the friendly face of atmosphere research.

friendly face of atmosphere research. So the harp that you showed me a picture of that a lot of these stories are about is the one that is now in control by a university, not the US government. That's exactly right. And now since 2016, trying to change their image, they've started holding annual open days where visitors can tour the complex. Allegedly as part of the open day, the researchers run a drone petting zoo where the public can get up close with all

the different kinds of drones the facility use. Why are they... Which is incredibly f***ing Black Mirror-esque and dark. Yeah, that's very cyberpunk. Well, children, gather round. This one's called the Predator Drone, and it has been known to take out many high-profile targets in the Middle East.

It's very f***ing weird. I don't know. Yeah, that's spooky. I don't like that. Not that these are necessarily military drones, but this was a military project at one point. But it is just hilarious to think that they are trying to rebrand on this level. I get it.

I get it, right? They've got a weird history and a strange reputation, and they want to change that, especially if you're part of an educational institution. So Rory, I think me and you are on the same page that the concept of HAARP has clearly gotten out of control in the conspiracy theorist circles and really highlights just how dangerous some of these ideas can be when purported on the internet given that it almost drove two men in georgia to uh start a militia with this sole intent of freeing souls from the borderline yugioh shadow realm dimension yeah and i appreciate that some of the scientists involved and people in these industries have come out

and tried to clear the air and assuage people's fears that really there's nothing crazy going on here. But what I will say is they only have themselves to blame in terms of the secrecy that led to these kind of conspiracy theories because it turns out HARP was created by an agency called DARPA. What? I don't know if we've talked about them on the show before. No, no, never. DARPA stands for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. It was established in the 50s and really all you need to know, Rory, is that this is their logo,

Really all you need to know, Rory, is that this is their logo, which is kind of just conspiracy theorist fuel. Yeah, just their name boldly imprinted in front of a globe. A globe. It looks extremely generic and loosely sinister. But this is an incredible organization on the sheer level of how it has influenced society since its creation. Isn't that the name of the shady organization from Lost? I've never seen Lost, but isn't that DARPA? I'm pretty sure it is. Like the DARPA initiative or something?

The Economist once called DARPA the agency that shaped the modern world, agency that shaped the modern world, pointing out that they are responsible for the creation of satellites, GPS, drones, stealth technology, the personal computer, the internet, and the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. DARPA? They invented all, there's no way they invented all that. Are they claiming credit for it? Basically, whenever we u.s government has funded a project or invented something it's darpa or the shadowy organization behind it creating all these things right right right we all know that some of the biggest technological leaps of the last 50 70 100 years have been militaries very often the u.s military making technologies for themselves that then have uses out in the real world. And sure, all the inventions I just mentioned are really useful and good. I like GPS.

I like the internet. You said drone, you said stealth drones at one point in there, which I don't think has done the world a lot of good. But just to illustrate why people would be worried about an organization like DARPA, I'm just going to read you Wikipedia's list of active DARPA projects. I am so scared. Right off the bat, this one's just called Combat Zones That See. What? This is a city that tracks everything that moves. What words are you saying right now? There's one just called The Big Mechanism. The Big Mechanism, Blackjack, Insect Allies, which is surprisingly a genetically modified bioweapon, not to be confused with remote-controlled insects. A DARPA executive watched the film Bugs Life

while high off his ass and pitched this at the morning meeting. What if bugs were our pals here's 200 million dollars make it happen uh neural implants for soldiers that's just bad satellite listening system c-train what these are this is a list of inventions i would make after a night of smoking weed and watching Pineapple Express. Sea Train? That's a boat, friend! Mind's Eye? Atlas the humanoid robot?

That's a cartoon character. You're just saying things now. The DARPA shredder? Boomerang? Which is sadly nothing to do with the fun Instagram feature and is a technology for detecting snipers in combat situations. Jeez. Project Exacto.

These are Marvel villains. A sniper rifle that can fire smart bullets. Okay, this is ridiculous. This one's just called Mayhem. Needless to say, they are working on some dark shit. Some really weird, weird stuff. Remote-controlled insects? Are you kidding me?

Smart bullets? So my takeaway here is conspiracy theorists like the gentleman who tried to overthrow HAARP using Glock pistols and free the souls. These are wrong and bad people. And they should be a canary in the coal mine for conspiracy theorists everywhere but at the same time the u.s military needs to be a lot more uh either need to be a lot more clear or a lot more secret and don't tell us about these

projects yeah of course don't tell us about these projects. I feel like I could work at this organization. If all it takes is to spout out some nonsense like that, I could work there pretty comfortably. I would sit there, drink a four pack of Bud Light, smoke a joint and then say, boat hat. Ice magnet. Pocket sausage. It's a sausage.

It's in your pocket. Plant mine. Exactly. Grass's a sausage. It's in your pocket. Plant mine. Exactly. Grasshopper wizard. I don't know what that is yet, but write that down, Michael. He's like, these are all great ideas, Rory. Great ideas? I was just listing prog rock bands I've been into lately.

I'm on a roll here. Can we get some coffee in here? 3,000 ants. Deliver you a Starbucks here. Can we get some coffee in here? 3,000 ants deliver you a Starbucks latte. Thanks, guys. Oh, can I get some sugar? A bowl of sugar just materializes out of vapor. This is f***ed up.

This is wild. This is great. This is why conspiracy theories are dangerous. It's because they're so f***ing fun. It's so exciting to think of the nutty s*** that world governments are out there working on. I mean, we've covered episodes before with people like Uri Geller, who this kind of s*** makes it believable that they're supposedly hiring psychics. It's insane, yeah.

Some of the stuff you find out about makes you just realize that, one, people aren't as secret as they think they are a lot of this stuff becomes public knowledge very fast and two the government all these people in the secret organizations in the world are just as stupid as every other human in the world i remember there we were talking on an episode uh maybe it was about the moon landing and it's like by the way there was a real military operation considered called nuke the moon which i think was to just see what would happen if they did it and you start to realize humans are humans they're idiots they're trying to make they're trying to remote control a beetle they're just like they've gotten a blank check

and they're f***ing around with all of these wild inventions and missions. Yeah, we like to tell ourselves that the people in charge have a much greater understanding of what's going on. And okay, maybe they do in specific areas, but at the end of the day, we're all monkeys getting our minds controlled. We're all humansies getting hunted down by Jesse Ventura. Please free us, Jesse. Rory, I have taken you on a strange journey.

I appreciate, and maybe I did catfish our listeners slightly by dangling the prospect of a paranormal soul-capturing machine run by the U.S. military. But I think you can appreciate that whilst, ultimately, the story hasn't ended up being particularly paranormal, it's still a fascinating and wild journey into the strange and bizarre world of what's going on at the upper echelons of science and military. Yeah.

And, you know, it was only a matter of time before we covered harp on the podcast. As we said, it's one of the big ones and it's come up a lot of times before, but I think we always return to this ending. Anytime we talk about these popular conspiracy theories on the podcast is one, a lot of the time they're nonsense or two, a lot of the time they're actually quite damaging and they're easy to obsess over and uh can lead you down a very bad path where the fun and excitement of the conspiracy trumps logic and science and what's really going on and next thing you know, you're getting busted by Sheriff Doyle Wooten for possession of a huge amount of firearms and, I don't think I mentioned

before, a small amount of meth and weed. Yeah. So, let this be the warning. Now, at the end of every episode, we of course have to come down on a yes or a no, whether this week's episode was paranormal or not. What do you say, Rory? I say, unless when Sheriff Doyle kicks down that front door,

you realize he actually looks a bit like a grasshopper. Then I'd say the conspiracy might have some truth to it. If his lieutenant is a ladybird, if his deputy is a worm, then maybe think that the conspiracy might have an ounce of truth to it. But until you're taken to the station on the wings of a worm, then maybe think that the conspiracy might have an ounce of truth to it. But until you're taken to the station on the wings of a butterfly, I think it's safe to say that the conspiracy theories that we've tackled today, I don't really believe there are any truth to them. We all like to see a government facility like this and think that there's something

malicious behind it. But honestly, with today's case, I don't think that's the truth. Ironically, the closest thing to a paranormal yes we had was Project Insect Ally. Every single DARPA project you listed off, you just said the name of our next 25 bonus episodes over on Patreon. We have to do one on every...

I want to do a whole one on darpa now that is so funny we can just rattle through some of those projects a sniper rifle that shoots smart bullets what does that even mean i'm still looking at the list there's sea shadow there's some there's a shadow there's something called system f6 which is a quote, fractionated free-flying spacecraft. So it's a whole world. I recommend looking up the DARPA Wikipedia. No, don't. Don't.

Go on to Patreon.com and hopefully in a month or two, find the episode that we have done on DARPA. Because I want to go through the entire list. It's a double no today, folks, but I hope you have enjoyed this week's investigation into HAARP. Thank you to Amy Grisdale for researching this episode and to Cammie Thoman for editing it. I'm feeling thirsty after that one because Northern Irish listeners will know that HAARP is our national beer.

So we got to wrap up and get a frosty pint of sea shadow. Whoo! We do. It just hit, it literally hit six on the dot. So ladies and gentlemen, it is quitting time

and it's time to wet our whistles down at the local tavern. I need to- So we'll be at the commune bar tonight, folks. I need to put away

this f***ing list. I just saw one that's just called Wolfpack. All right. Moving on. folks i need to put away this fucking list i just saw one that's just called wolf pack all right moving on uh wolf pack not operation wolf pack project wolf pack wolf pack all right there's 25 million dollars presumably that's what darpa calls uh what their office does at 6 p.m on a friday which is the wolf pack hit the bars for frosty glass of harp um if you did enjoy this week's episode why not just uh go into your app of choice spotify apple podcast

google podcast whatever it is and hit the bit where you can give us a review or a rating yeah it helps us enormously in making the show some of the biggest jumps in the success of this show and our ability to reach new people have been because you guys have been kind enough to leave us glowing reviews, which we, as we mentioned before, personally get delivered every week by this email service. They warm our hearts

and they shoot the podcast up the charts. And it really does help the show grow and help us continue to make it. I borderline have a panic attack every Sunday night waiting for the review email to come in and see what the damage is. But luckily, because you guys are so lovely, the majority of the reviews that we receive are very nice and we really appreciate it. So thank you for those who have done it and for those who haven't, please do consider.

Please do. It's fantastic for new people finding the show, which is great because whenever we do find new people, they're always bloody lovely and we can't wait to go out and meet you in person over the coming year.

Of course, if you can't get enough of This Paranormal Life, you know where to get extra episodes. It's the DARPA of This Paranormal Life. Oh, yeah. Or Patreon. Oh, yeah. It's the shadowy organization behind the shadows just quietly releasing dangerous content onto the internet.

Where for just, except instead of being behind some kind of secretive government agency, you just got to pay $5 and you get carte blanche access. It's very true. For as little as five bucks, you can get access to 50 sea shadows recorded over four years. The episode titles of our bonus episodes are worryingly close to DARPA projects.

Genuinely, there are some close ones there. So head on over to patreon.com forward slash thisparanormallife to access those. Whoa, Kit from the future here, just diving in to say we did actually go ahead and make that episode all about DARPA just for our listeners on Patreon. This bonus episode is out this month. Here's a clip from it.

Next up, project number two, the mechanical elephant. Oh, f***ing hell. During the Vietnam War, DARPA made plans to create a giant mechanical elephant to transport soldiers around the battlefield. According to some sources, when the director heard of the plan, he scrapped the, quote, damn fool project immediately in the hope that no one would ever hear about it. They were

going to make a Megazord. I love the idea that the person who came across this was just like, you know we have a f***ing civil rights movement going on in the country right now. If they f***ing find out that the government is spending its time developing a mechanical elephant, they're going to lose it. It's like, we just told

them there's no budget to overhaul the school system.'re going to lose it. It's like, we just told them there's no budget to overhaul the school system. We have to hide this. Well, you see, the mechanical elephant will be able to overcome the obstacles created by America's crumbling infrastructure.

Potholes are a thing of the past once you're on board the beast. It's like, no, no. Yeah, f***ing. President's up for re-election. I can see a mechanical elephant in the driveway of every suburban family in America. Four more years. Someone's like, please just give us healthcare.

Robo-elephant, go get him. What? What? What? Mechanical elephant for me is, in terms of practicality, I'm going to give that one a four. Yeah, this feels like a real half-hearted effort and a definite good advertisement for why you need code names for your projects and not just what the project is. Speaking of code names for projects, this is maybe one of my personal favorites. Project Exacto. All right. Not getting a lot to go on here.

So remember to check back in on Tuesday when we'll be back with a brand new paranormal tale and hopefully a double yes next week. And until then, remember to live fast, investigate, and die young, baby!