Tag Archives: Roswell

Greg Lawson on “Roswell: The After-Action Report”

We discuss “The Paranormal Detective” Greg Lawson’s new book, Roswell: The After Action Report. It’s a great primer if you’re interested in learning more about who the key players are in the most famous UFO crash of all time. With three decades of law enforcement experience, Greg creates dossiers of all the important figures who were involved in the crash and looks at the official transcripts through his skills as an interrogater to get closer to the truth.

Click here to find Greg’s book on Amazon.

250 – How To Be A Paranormal Detective: An Interview With Greg Lawson

After serving in the US Army, Navy, and Air Force (I guess the Marines weren’t recruting that day!) Greg Lawson became a Sheriff’s Deputy and Mental Health Officer near Austin, Texas and has now been in law enforcement for almost three decades. In that time, he’s also pursued his interest in paranormal research, dabbled in acting, music, and has written several books, fiction and non-fiction on supernatural topics.

His new book is called How To Be A Paranormal Detective and it’s a how-to book hoping to help would be Mulders and Scullys in using the same skills he learned in trying to find the truth behind crimes to try and get the best evidence possible of paranormal activity.

Greg looking like a badass

In this interview we cover:

  • Some of Greg’s most peculiar cases
  • How he investigates a haunted place (lots to learn from this one!)
  • The importance of finding the terrestrial explanations first before jumping to paranormal conclusions
  • His work interviewing Roswell witnesses

The story from the interview that most affected me was the one Greg tells from his Pizza Hut Assistant Manager days about his employee that had a seizure right after saying “They’re here…” (you’ll love that one!) It’s fascinating and terrifying and we used that energy as inspiration for this episode’s song, “The Captured Soul”.

They’re here
they appear
they feed
on fear
and what they say you don’t need ears to hear

You’re beamed
to a dream
you’re frozen and can’t scream
your consciousness outside the atmosphere

There’s no escaping
hallucinating
you can’t run
from your fate
inside your mind

A prisoner locked in
trapped and forgotten
the captured soul
with a body left behind

You can feel
the unreal
your brain a spinning wheel
you know they’re there but you can’t reveal

Immobilized
Paralyzed
Delusional and hypnotized
There’s no one you can beg, none to appeal

There’s no escaping
hallucinating
you can’t run
from your fate
inside your mind

A prisoner locked in
trapped and forgotten
the captured soul
with a body left behind

249 – The Flying Saucer Physicist: Remembering Stanton Friedman

The Betty and Barney Hill alien abduction. The Roswell UFO crash. The Majestic-12 documents. These are some of the biggest bombshells in UFOlogy and they all share one common denominator at their core. Stanton Friedman was involved.

Graduating with his degree in nuclear physics in 1955, Friedman worked at companies like General Electric and McDonell-Douglas in their jet propulsion laboratories before his interest in UFOs sparked him to delve full time into the field in 1970. From then on, he wrote several books on the subject and gave hundreds of lectures around the world.

You might have seen Stanton Friedman in a UFO documentary, you might have seen him on Nightline, you might have seen him on the Travel or History Channel in one of their hundreds of UFO documentaries. The thing is, if you’re into the UFO Phenomenon, you’ve seen him! I had my fanboy moment at the Michigan Paranormal Conference and I was just walking through the vendor room and I saw him sitting quietly at a booth just making small talk with an admirer. I hadn’t read the entire schedule yet so I didn’t know that he was going to be there, and from that moment I knew I had to make sure to see his presentation.

Allison and Stanton at the 2017 Michigan Paranormal Conference

And it was exactly as I’d hoped it would be. It was a professorial lecture and it was straight up nuts-and-bolts old school extraterrestrial hypothesis aliens are piloting UFOs and the government is covering it up. Stanton Friedman was the man who first did the heavy duty research into the Roswell flying saucer crash which is now the most famous UFO event of all.

In his 1997 article, “The UFO Challenge”, Friedman said there were four major conclusions that he’d reached after decades of UFO research:

“The evidence is overwhelming that Planet Earth is being visited by intelligently controlled extraterrestrial spacecraft. In other words, SOME UFOs are alien spacecraft. Most are not.”

“The subject of flying saucers represents a kind of Cosmic Watergate, meaning that some few people in major governments have known since July, 1947, when two crashed saucers and several alien bodies were recovered in New Mexico, that indeed SOME UFOs are ET. As noted in 1950, it’s the most classified U.S. topic.

“None of the arguments made against conclusions One and Two by a small group of debunkers such as Carl Sagan, my University of Chicago classmate for three years, can stand up to careful scrutiny.”

“The Flying Saucer story is the biggest story of the millennium: visits to Planet Earth by aliens and the U.S. government’s cover-up of the best data (the bodies and wreckage) for over fifty years.”

Stanton Friedman, “The UFO Challenge”

Those were the tenets that he stood by and he argued with debunkers, clashed with other UFOlogists, defended his research from live events to TV shows, and stuck by his guns until the very end. Stanton Friedman passed away on May 20th, 2019 at the age of 84 and he remains a giant in the field of UFOlogy and highly respected by the people who knew him.

And to remember him, for today’s episode we’re bringing in Stanton’s friend and fellow Roswell researcher Don Schmitt, who co-authored The Truth About The UFO Crash At Roswell which became the basis for the 1994 Showtime film, as well as investigative researcher and Illinois MUFON director, Sam Maranto, who was directly influenced and inspired by Friedman’s work.

Don’s latest book (coming out June 1st) is a updated version of UFO Secrets Inside Wright-Patterson: Eyewitness Accounts from the Real Area 51 and it features a foreword written by Mr. Friedman, the last thing he published before he passed away.

Stanton Friedman will also be remembered at this year’s Roswell UFO Festival, where he served as an advisor to the museum and festival, along with Don.

A phrase that we struck on in the podcast was “UFOG”… The Unidentified Flying Original Gangsta. Stanton Friedman was one of the earliest scientists who took the UFO phenomena seriously back when it wasn’t cool to be on the side of the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis. He debated the debunkers in worldwide forums long before the History Channel or Tom DeLonge made flying saucers culturally hip. He listened and validated the experiences of abductees before the rest of the community took them seriously. His bravery in taking the plunge is an inspiration to everyone of us who seeks the truth and this song is dedicated to him. Here is Sunspot with “UFOGs”.

Someone had to light the candle
someone had to fire the torch
someone had to lead the way

someone had to forge on forward
someone had to stay the course
someone had to be brave

hey these UFOGs
weren’t afraid to take the blame
hey these UFOGs
the truth was more important than their name

So when can’t take anymore
and your heart is on the floor
You can stand your ground
on the shoulders of the ones who came before

threats and disinformation
coverups and lies
we have to stay unafraid

we look to them for inspiration
to keep our eyes on the skies
now it’s up to us to take the reins.

hey these UFOGs
weren’t afraid to take the blame
hey these UFOGs
the truth was more important than their name

So when can’t take anymore
and your heart is on the floor
You can stand your ground
on the shoulders of the ones who came before

182 – Saucer State: A Unified UFO Theory with Paul Cornell

Working in TV, comics, and novels, writer Paul Cornell has created stories for some of the greatest fictional characters of all time. Doctor Who to Robin Hood, Sherlock Holmes to Batman. He’s a Hugo award winner, has a podcast about Hammer Horror Films, and has an encyclopedic knowledge of UFO lore and mythology. Paul and artist Ryan Kelly have used that knowledge in an original creation that brings the most UFO lore I’ve ever seen in one place, the critically acclaimed comics, Saucer Country and Saucer State. 

Focusing on Arcadia Alvarez, the Mexican-American governor of New Mexico and Democratic presidential candidate, Saucer Country is all about her possible alien abduction experience and the strange events that occur around her candidacy. All along, they recount stories from real UFO lore like George Adamski’s visits with Venusians, mystery airships from the 19th Century, Betty and Barney Hill, and much more.

The sequel, Saucer State, is all about what happens once Governor Alvarez becomes President Alvarez, and the collected edition has just been released.  From Jefferson Airplane to the Pioneer plaque, the references come fast and furious and besides Taken, the Steven Spielberg-produced SciFi channel mini-series from 2002, this is the closest thing I’ve ever seen to a “unified theory” of UFO mythology, a fictional story that ties everything together.

In this interview, you’ll learn all about the real UFO lore that inspired Paul Cornell to write Saucer State and Saucer Country. We even cover a little bit of ghosts and fairies as well.

If you’re interested in learning more about Paul, including links to his works, please check out his website right here.

And we thoroughly recommend Saucer State, this is the fictional work that’s putting Tom Delonge’s Sekret Machines to shame! He even promises that unlike another fictional property that uses real life UFO mythology as an influence in 2018 (ahem, Mr. Carter), there is an ending in mind and the story will be completed in the next volume.

pioneer 10
The Message on the Pioneer 10

One of the groups vying for power that we talk about in Saucer State are the Bluebirds, who take an extremely materialist view toward the UFO phenomenon, an approach that they call “Nuts and Bolts”.

see the light, don’t close your eyes
go to sleep, you’re paralyzed
somewhere the dreams and memories mix
and our little friends are playing tricks

a violation of our sentience
Like the old hag sits on your chest
when they put you into program mode,
don’t think that you’re a guest.

Nuts and bolts and nuts and bolts and nuts and bolts and nuts and bolts and

Wet machines with lucid dreams
Are we just hardware under the seams?
When you feed your head with magic beans
Will we find out who’s behind the scenes?

a violation of our sentience
Like the old hag sits on your chest
when they put you into program mode,
don’t think that you’re a guest.

Nuts and bolts and nuts and bolts and nuts and bolts and nuts and bolts and

Wet machines with lucid dreams
Are we just hardware under the seams?
When you feed your head with magic beans
Will we find out who’s behind the scenes?

96 – An Atheist In Heaven: Paul Davids and the Ghost of Forrest J. Ackerman

Forrest J. Ackerman was the editor of the Famous Monsters of Filmlanda magazine that he founded in 1958 to discuss his favorite thing – fantasy, science fiction, and horror movies. The magazine would go behind the scenes with special effects and stories on the people involved with the production.

famous monsters #1
The first issue of Famous Monsters of Filmland

The modern definition of a geek is someone in a circus sideshow who would run after chickens and bite their heads off. They would eat anything and this is where the modern idea comes from. We geeks love to learn anything and everything about their favorite pop culture. I used to devour books about Doctor Who when I was a kid, reading production diaries and stories about the set in addition to the actual shows and novels. The Internet makes it easy today to keep up on your favorites, but back in the 50s when Famous Monsters of Filmland came out to cash in on the first wave of classic Hollywood monster films finally hitting the TV airwaves, it was the only place to hear more about your favorite films.

x-files humbug geek
Jim Rose and The Enigma from the classic X-Files’ “Humbug” episode, featuring the original circus sideshow definition of a geek

As a young Paul Davids grew up in the Washington D.C. area in the 50s, he fell in love with the fantasy and science fiction films of that era. He made home movies and sent stills in to Famous Monsters magazine which would publish them and encourage building a community of aspiring imaginative filmmakers. After he grew up, he joined the Hollywood Circus during the American New Wave of auteurs (a movement that spawned legends like Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg.)

Paul Davids Forrest J Ackerman
Paul Davids and Forrest J. Ackerman at a Comic Con signing

Davids became a personal friend of Ackerman (who everyone called ‘Uncle Forry’) and spent a lot of time at the “Ackermansion”, the editor’s Hollywood home with massive amounts of movie memorabilia that he would open to visitors on weekends.

forrest j ackerman ackermansion
Forrest J. Ackerman surrounded by a little of his movie memorabilia

Paul Davids would go on to become production coordinator on the original Transformers cartoon (one of my personal favorites!) A few years later, a personal UFO encounter in Los Angeles (which he describes in the episode) would lead him to produce the Showtime movie, Roswell (which we talked about in-depth with Don Schmitt about in an earlier podcast.) His close friendship with Ackerman would lead to the production of a documentary called The Sci-Fi Boys as well in 2006, detailing the influence that Famous Monsters had on a generation of filmmakers from John Landis to Peter Jackson who would end up taking over the blockbuster film industry.

Roswell Movie
The 1994 Roswell movie that introduced the most famous UFO crash to the modern generation

While both Paul Davids and Forrest Ackerman loved their fantasy and science fiction films, neither of them were religious and Forry himself was an atheist who didn’t have any belief in the afterlife. Which is why when he jokingly told his close friends that if there was some kind of life after death, he would try to communicate with them, they all had a good laugh.

Forrest J. Ackerman passed away in December of 2008 at the ripe old age of 92, but he had the last laugh. Within two weeks of a special tribute to Ackerman at Hollywood’s Egyptian Theatre (a place we also talk about in our Ghosts of Hollywood Boulevard episode), strange things started occurring to his friends. Davids himself started getting weird messages and synchronicities and after too many of them occurred, he started taking his evidence to any scientist that would listen. By 2010, he’d already written an article for FATE magazine detailing his experiences.

an atheist in heaven
Cover of An Atheist In Heaven

The result of his research and all the strange occurrences are his documentaries,  The Life After Death Project Volumes 1 and 2 where he gives all of his proof of what he’s experiences since his friend’s death.  Davids also recently completed a book with Dr. Gary Schwartz (a scientist who doesn’t shy away from researching the afterlife) called An Atheist In Heaven: The Ulimate Evidence of Life After Death

For this week, we thought it would be fun to try a Nerdcore song as part of our tribute to one of the world’s greatest geeks, who continues to influence, even from beyond the grave! This Sunspot track is called “Behind The Curtain”.

For a whole generation
he was the inspiration
stoked the imagination
of the Monster nation

Didn’t buy predestination
or a soul relocation,
No belief in Heaven,
or any reincarnation

But at his end of aspiration
his human cancellation
they think he’s playing tricks
afterdeath communication

So they put this complication
under examination
and now they give the Afterlife
reconsideration

Please pay attention to the man behind the curtain,
Because he’s somewhere in between,
Please pay attention to the man behind the curtain who,
you’ll hear from the dark side of the screen.

So this famous monster
is now an Atheist in Heaven.
And he’s still having fun
and he’s still making puns

He said he would come back someday
that he would communicate
but no one could anticipate
his paranormal wordplay

And if you think they’re cracking,
they lost their comprehension,
That there ain’t no action,
no final destination.

These guys have a conviction,
that his spirit is still living,
It’s really their Uncle Forry,
Scientists believe the story.

Please pay attention to the man behind the curtain,
Because he’s somewhere in between,
Please pay attention to the man behind the curtain who,
you’ll hear from the dark side of the screen.

37 – The Roswell Slides: Donald Schmitt and America’s Most Infamous UFO Crash

The Roswell Slides are on all paranormal lovers’ tongues this week as they get ready for a huge unveiling in Mexico City on May 5th. Well, to get ready for it, we’re going in on the grandaddy of all US UFO cases, the famous crash in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. It’s the story that’s been made famous by countless television recreations on shows like Unsolved Mysteries or Sightings as well as several books about the event.

Mike and Wendy Lynn go deep into the history of the case for those of you who might not know all the theories and the stories, starting with the “flying saucer mania” of 1947 that started it all, to the debris found by Mac Brazel, to the press release sent by the Roswell Air Field saying they found a flying saucer and later denial, saying it was just a weather balloon.

The history of the mythos surrounding Roswell as we know it really starts in 1980 with the publication of a book, The Roswell Incident, and that’s where it starts to get interesting, rumors of alien bodies taken back and dissected, pop culture mentions in Independence Day, Alien Autopsy specials on FOX in the 1990s, controversy with the investigators (including today’s interviewee, Donald Schmitt), stories about mutant children, hey look, it’s even former President Bill Clinton chiming in!

Once we get through the history, we do an in-depth exclusive interview with Donald Schmitt who has investigated and will be part of the team presenting the Roswell Slides on May 5th at an event in Mexico City hosted by Jaime Maussan, sometimes known as the “Mexican Art Bell”.

Schmitt’s first book, UFO Crash at Roswell, was the basis for the Golden Globe-nominated Showtime film, Roswell, (starring Kyle MacLachlan and Martin Sheen) and we talk about how he went from UFO investigator to UFO author to a consultant on a major film.

Then we get into what everyone’s been waiting for, the Roswell Slides, which are Kodachromes that might show non-human bodies being worked on in the 1940s and the pictures were originally taken by someone with a connection to President Eisenhower. We go in deep on the slides, how they were found, how they were investigated, and a preview of what the big presentation is going to be on May 5th.

Roswell Slides Links:

Roswell Investigator, Thomas Carey and Donald Schmitt’s website

BeWitness May 5th Live Streaming from Mexico City Pay-Per-View

This Week’s Song: “Don’t Shoot First” by Sunspot

don’t believe everything you read
don’t believe everything you see
you don’t have to understand
you don’t have to be my friend
you might not like what I have to say to you
but that don’t mean it’s not the truth

don’t shoot first
this messenger has traveled
so far from home
don’t shoot first
I only came to tell you
you’re not alone.

when you just can’t see past your nose
you think that all your doors are closed

you don’t have to understand
but one day you’ll have to comprehend
You might not like what I have to say to you
But that don’t mean it’s not the truth

don’t shoot first
this messenger has traveled
so far from home
don’t shoot first
I only came to tell you
you’re not alone.