Tag Archives: UFOs

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.

296 – Dark Skies: TV Fact And Fiction with Matthew Kresal

After The X-Files set the world on fire in 1993 and helped establish the fairly new FOX Network as a major player in television, other networks tried to jump on the bandwagon with similarly-themed paranormal shows. There was the small-town horror of American Gothic, the supernatural drama of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, the government conspiracy angle of The Pretender, and even David Hasselhoff got in on the action with his “paranormal investigation in paradise” show, Baywatch Nights (and Lou Rawls sang the theme song, c’mon!)

But the show that skewed the closest to The X-Files was a program called Dark Skies, set at the dawn of the UFO age and doubling down upon The X-Files’ pattern of taking real-life paranormal inspiration and turning it into fodder for fiction. The slogan for the show was: “History as we know it is a lie.”

By combining the government conspiracy paranoia of The X-Files with 1960s nostalgia, the Roswell alien craze, and the infamous Majestic 12. It mixed real historical figures with a science fiction story of extraterrestrial invasion and it ended way too soon. With a series pilot directed by Poltergeist and Texas Chainsaw Massacre‘s Tobe Hooper and the imprimatur of an appearance by Art Bell himself, it seemed like a sure bet, but it was cancelled after one season.

We talk with Matt Kresal about his new book on the series, finally learning what could have been, and also the real-life paranormal inspirations behind the series.

Some of the topics we cover in this discussion are:

  • How creators Brent V. Friedman and Bryce Zabel created the Dark Skies mythology
  • What did Ronald Reagan’s driver know about UFO disclosure
  • The plan for future seasons of the show to cover more real UFO cases in the 70s, 80s, and 90s
  • The government agents that approached the creators to try and “help them get the facts right”
  • How the CIA and Department of Defense was trying to infiltrate Hollywood to shape the alien narrative

We originally recorded this discussion for a special See You On The Other Side livestream and if you’d like to watch us talk (unedited, so umms and ahhhs intact!) then check out this video:

Matthew Kresal is an absolute wealth of knowledge of classic science fiction television and he was a pleasure to talk to, so you know why the produers and creators of Dark Skies were willing to share so much with him. You can pick up a copy of his book right here and we highly recommend it!

292 – Lights In The Sky: Personal and Listener UFO Experiences

Millions of people have UFO stories. There is a one-hundred percent chance that you know at least one person that has a story! So, we went to our listeners and in our own archives for this episode’s tales of UFO experiences.

Once again, join me, Wendy Lynn, Scott Markus from WhatsYourGhostStory.com, and my sister Allison Jornlin from MilwaukeeGhosts.com to talk about our own stories as well as great ones from our listeners. You can watch the unedited livestream of our conversation here if you’d like to see our pretty faces while we talk.

My sister, Allison, has her own UFO story and it happened to be on the day that my daughter was born, September of 2016. Here’s the exact text of the email she sent me and it came out about 15 minutes after the birth, she didn’t know about it yet and I didn’t have much time to think about it at the time!

I saw some UFOs today at about 7:25 a.m. and I couldn’t wait to tell you. Maybe it’s a sign. Is it baby time? Below is what I wrote for the kids today during our Quick Write: Something amazing happened to me this morning.

No, my brother’s baby didn’t come yet, unfortunately. It was something else.

I was driving to school on Hwy 43 Southbound when I saw something strange in the sky. Actually it was two-somethings. I wondered were they planes, but I couldn’t stop and look because I was on the expressway. That means emergency stopping only!

The objects were pretty high up. That’s why I thought they were planes. But I actually saw two planes go by this morning also. These other objects didn’t seem to be moving and they didn’t have the blinking lights that planes have to have by law. They were like two groups of three bright, white lights hovering there. One was much lower than the other and off to the right. What were they? I wish I could have stopped and taken some video. By the time I got off the expressway, the lights were in back of me and seemed to be getting smaller.

I think maybe they were flares, but I’m not sure. They seemed to fade out instead of coming down like they were on parachutes. They also didn’t really seem to move at all, just hanging motionless in the sky for at least 5 minutes. What do you think they were?

I’ve got my own UFO story too, not exciting like an abduction or anything, but interesting enough to me that I wrote it down the same day.

I was on a vacation in January of 2008 visiting a place called Cabo Rojo which is an incredible white sand beach on the southwestern shore of the island, opening up to the Carribbean sea with a very famous lighthouse.

There was an object far away in the sky that almost looked like a blimp, but it was tremendously high in the sky, so high and so far away that we couldn’t be quite sure of what it was. It definitely didn’t look like a cloud, even though it was completely white and high enough to be a cloud. But the rest of the clouds had some kind of softness and transparency to them and this cloud didn’t. It was definitely unusual and I thought it might be a UFO, what I really thought it might have been was some kind of alien or government ship that was up there and it was meant to be disguised as a cloud, but it was just different enough so if you looked you couldn’t tell. I dunno, I wanted to take a picture of it but I was so enamored with the natural beauty of the place that I forgot about the unnatural beauty of what we were seeing. It probably was a cloud or a blimp that was very high, but it looked just different enough from the other clouds to be interesting. 

My journal, January 3rd, 2008

Funny enough, as we were getting back on the road and driving towards our next location, just what road do we end up driving on? Yeah, that’s some kind of synchronicity. I see something weird in the sky I can’t explain on the same day we randomly decide to drive Puerto Rico’s Extraterrestrial Highway.

This episode is chock full of weird lights in the sky stories, including:

  • Once again, our Patreon Dr. Ned tells us an interesting UFO encounter he had in the 1960s
  • We’ve got high strangeness on a military base from our Patreon C.E. Martin’s book Stranger Than Fiction.
  • A Chicago UFO sighting from Illinois MUFON state director, Sam Maranto
  • A Bermuda Triangle story from near Cabo Rojo where we were in Puerto Rico
  • and lots more…

Well, something I said in this episode is that I’m gonna punch the next person that says the phrase “Space Brothers” to me, well guess what, it was me. The most ridiculous UFO hunt I’ve ever been on was at the Michigan Paracon in 2017 where we all stood outside in the parking lot while Andrea Perron sang “Sentimental Journey” and it was as ridiculous as it sounds. The only reason I took it even a little seriously at first is because Dave Schrader from Darkness Radio and The Holzer Files and Amy Bruni from Kindred Spirits both said that Andrea could really make some crazy stuff happen. Well, I don’t know what they were smoking, but here’s our immediate reaction afterwards…

Okay, so obviously it was hard to take that seriously, so for this episode’s song, we decided to ask our alien friends for a favor. Here’s our Sunspot paranormal track of the week, “Space Brothers”.

You must be talking at light speed
from that black hole you got on your face
cuz when you open your mouth, time slows, and
and I just want to escape.

Oh, you piss me off on a cosmic scale,
So I don’t want ET to come in peace,
the first thing he should do is abduct you, and get you off this planet for keeps.

All these lights in the sky
just watching us like a zoo
and if the Space Brothers wanna do something for me,
I wish they would anal probe you

I dunno why spacemen love butts.
Who can read their alien brains?
But if they’re looking for the biggest asshole in the world
well, I can give them a name.

All these lights in the sky
just watching us like a zoo
and if the Space Brothers wanna do something for me,
I wish they would anal probe you

All these lights in the sky
just watching us like a zoo
and if the Space Brothers wanna do something for me,
I wish they would anal probe you

268 – What Really Happened To Jimmy Hoffa? Psychics, UFOs, and The Irishman

July 30th, 1975. Former Teamsters Union President James R. Hoffa is scheduled for a 2PM meeting at the Machus Red Fox Restaurant in Bloomfield Township, Michigan with reported Mafia members, Anthony Provenzano and Anthony Giacalone. At 2:15pm he calls his wife and expresses his annoyance that no one is there. At 3:27pm, he calls his friend Louis Linteau and says he was stood up. After that, no one hears from him again.

Jimmy Hoffa

In a mystery that has never officially been solved by law enforcement and has been the basis of massive speculation as well as the source of a million late night comedy jokes over the years. Jimmy Hoffa, one of the most well-known figures of all time in organized labor politics, just vanished without a trace.

He wasn’t an angel. Hoffa had already been convicted of fraud and illegal wiretapping and had served several years in prison, and he several of his associates had admitted that they were in the mafia. In order to unify local trucking unions and rise to power, he had to cut deals with organized crime figures who were central to the running of the unions. He was the focus of Robert F. Kennedy’s corruption investigations in the early 1960s. Jimmy Hoffa was surrounded by criminals and eventually he angered the wrong people. But who did he anger and how did he disappear? That’s the mystery.

And the story is back in the news because it’s one of the central tales in Martin Scorcese’s new film, The Irishman, coming out this month. It’s based on the life of Frank Sheeran, a union leader, Hoffa associate, and a hit man for the Bufalino crime family. Sheeran claims to have killed Hoffa in his book, I Heard You Paint Houses (which was the code phrase people used to approach him to perform an assassination.) While that’s one theory of what happened to him, we delve into far-out ones in this episode. Some topics we cover:

This week’s track, inspired by the idea of vanishing without a trace is called “The Disappeared”.

When I say your name
There’s no answer on the way
I forget you were erased
because you were here one day
and it’s almost like I imagined

It’s a mystery
how you disappeared from my history
Oh It’s like you never existed
Oh It’s like you never existed.

Exit reality
to only remain in my memory
oh It’s like you never existed
Oh It’s like you never existed.

Just a fantasy
a phantom limb that itches me
Just a missing piece of meat
a sailor lost at sea
vanished and abandoned

It’s a mystery
how you disappeared from my history
Oh It’s like you never existed
Oh It’s like you never existed.

Exit reality
to only remain in my memory
oh It’s like you never existe

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

This Week’s Best Paranormal News – February 1st, 2019

We’re finally out of the Polar Vortex today and I’m putting my shorts on to enjoy the 18 degree weather we’re finally warming up to in Wisconsin. 

But even though we’ve been kept inside like a bunch of hibernating were-bears, we still have our eyes on the weirdest news that we can find!

https://newatlas.com/brain-signals-into-speech-algorithm/58253/

Advanced AI system converts brain signals into speech

In a landmark breakthrough, scientists have demonstrated a computer system effectively translating brain signals into intelligible speech. The extraordinary experiment presents a proof-of-concept that could pave the way for a large variety of brain-controlled communication devices in the future.

https://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/uri-geller-to-use-telepathic-powers-to-stop-jeremy-corbyn-becoming-prime-minister-1.479364

Uri Geller says he will use ‘telepathic powers’ to stop Jeremy Corbyn becoming PM

Uri also told the audience he once told Theresa May that she would become Britain’s leader. Was Uri also behind Brexit?!

https://www.wsj.com/articles/tony-romo-play-predictions-super-bowl-11548805802

Tony Romo Calls Plays Before They Happen. How Often Is He Actually Right?

The voice of the Super Bowl has become known for his eerily accurate predictions. The Wall Street Journal watched nearly 50 hours of game tape to calculate Romo’s hit rate. Read this article. This is the kind of scrutiny we should put to paranormal claims!

https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/nation-world/national/article225284585.html

How did 3-year-old NC boy survive days alone in woods? | Idaho Statesman

This is the kid that said a bear took care of him in the woods. Did Baloo really save this little guy’s life? Or could it have been my man, Bigfoot?

https://nypost.com/2019/01/30/jose-canseco-says-that-aliens-can-teach-us-how-to-time-travel/

Jose Canseco says that aliens can teach us how to time travel

Former Oakland A Jose Canseco claimed on Twitter that aliens want to share the secrets of time travel, but they’re having trouble getting in touch… what?!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ng6LdHmFmdA

Jeff Mills – UFO (Axis — AX-024)

Techno whiz and cosmos enthusiast Jeff Mills has announced the debut of The Edgar Mitchell Affair – a new party created by that honors NASA astronaut Edgar Mitchell’s six-day mission to space on the Apollo 14.

The party will be held at the music venue Ampere in Antwerp, Belgium on February 9 which marks the 49-year-anniversary of Mitchell’s return to earth. On his return almost half a century ago, astronaut Edgar Mitchell became a recognized and outspoken personage on the existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life. That sounds like the coolest part around and we wish we could be there, but instead here’s one of Jeff’s old school techno tracks, “UFO”.

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New podcast episodes come out Monday nights, we’ll see YOU on the other side of the weekend!
Mike

https://othersidepodcast.com/donate

This Week’s Best Paranormal News – January 25th, 2019


Whew! January is unbelievably almost over. Sometimes it seems like the most paranormal thing is how fast time flies out here. We just released a new podcast about last week’s most interesting paranormal stories (including the Smiley Face Killers, Oumuamua, Glenn Miller’s disappearance solved, and the conspiracy behind Martin Luther King’s assassination) and here we are with more weirdness from this week!

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/01/oumuamua-interstellar-harvard-astrophysicist/580948

When a Harvard Professor Talks About Aliens

Abraham “Avi” Loeb has been the subject of a number of high-profile stories lately and last week he was just in The New Yorker. This week he’s in The Atlantic. It’s time to learn why this Harvard Professor becoming the new face of UFOlogy and this time it’s less about Little Green Men and more about radio telescopes…

https://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/military/ufos-warp-drives-stargates-freedom-of-information-query-reveals-secret-list-of-pentagon-research-projects/news-story/0c1fcffd8aa60239744648eb5c56dded#.h1y0j

Secret Pentagon projects exposed

The United States Defense Intelligence Agency has one great fear: that someone, somewhere, has an unknown advantage … a secret weapon that could topple the world’s sole superpower from its perch. So when it hears talk of UFOs, stargates and warp drives — it takes it seriously. We’ve interviewed members of the DIA before, and they’ve seen some WEIRD stuff!

https://www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/coventry-news/witchcraft-demons-child-abuse-religion-15709791

Witchcraft and demonic possession link to Cov child abuse

Government statistics have shown that social services identified 34 potential abuse cases in Coventry linked to faith or belief in 2018. Parents that think their child is a witch or bad luck or possessed by demons. What the Hell is going on in Coventry?

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/long-fuse-big-bang/201901/the-paranormal-can-new-science-explain-old-phenomena

The Paranormal: Can New Science Explain Old Phenomena?

The new field of Epigenetics transforms the impossible into the possible. It’s always nice to see a Fortean story in a respected publication!

https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/9k4exv/china-starts-hunt-for-aliens-in-2019

China to Seriously Start Hunting for Aliens in 2019

Astronomers think extraterrestrials could be trying to communicate with us so Chinese scientists built a huge telescope to find out. But with a government as tight-lipped as the Chinese are they going to be any more free with the alien goods than the U.S.?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jo3F29JSfs

Pixies – Motorway to Roswell

In the mood for some classic Alternative Rock that talks about aliens? We thought you were, here’s the Pixies with one of their most fun tracks. 

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See you on the other side of the weekend!

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232 – Shiny Space Pancakes: Big Bands, Assassination Conspiracies, Smiley Face Killers, and Oumuamua

When The New Yorker runs an article called “Have Aliens Found Us? A Harvard Astronomer on the Mysterious Interstellar Object ‘Oumuamua'”, people are going to listen. It’s one of America’s most prestigious magazines, which is probably why they were a little combative in their discussion with Avi Loeb (who’s been popping up all the time lately) about the possibility that the interstellar Oumuamua object is artificial, perhaps created by an alien race to probe the universe, much like our Voyager and Pioneer spacecraft. My sister Allison was so excited about the article, she couldn’t wait to talk about it in this episode.

Of course, Avi Loeb is no slouch, he’s the chair of the Harvard Astronomy Department stranger to aliens, he is also involved with the Breakthrough Initiative, the $100 million search for alien intelligence founded by a Russian billionaire which we discussed in episode 50. In the past year, he’s become the poster child for real scientists talking about the possibility of alien life in the universe. He’s tenured, so they can’t fire him for having these ideas. And he’s well-respected, so he’s not coming out of left field.

Painting of Oumuamua as a pancake-shaped object. Copyright 2018 William K. Hartmann

Since we discovered it after it was already out of range to get an actual picture of it, all the details have to come through what we can observe and mathematically derive from the data coming through the radio telescopes. So, why do they think that it might be artificial and what’s interesting about it?

  • As it spends every eight hours, it’s brightness changes by a factor of ten, that means it’s probably ten times longer than it is wide
  • That means it might be cigar shaped OR pancake shaped!
  • It deviates from an orbit that physics would dictate for a normal object around the sun
  • There are no gases coming off it like a comet, so it’s not being propelled by anything

Here’s one of the best quotes from the article:

I do not view the possibility of a technological civilization as speculative, for two reasons. The first is that we exist. And the second is that at least a quarter of the stars in the Milky Way galaxy have a planet like Earth, with surface conditions that are very similar to Earth, and the chemistry of life as we know it could develop. If you roll the dice so many times, and there are tens of billions of stars in the Milky Way, it is quite likely we are not alone.

Professor Abraham “Avi” Loeb

Avi, you’re my man! He’s the guy who’s saying that it’s unscientific to completely rule out the idea of extraterrestrial intelligence. He even brings up the old Sherlock Holmes chestnut “When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” I like him and if he ends up being a disinformation agent, I’ll be super sad,

The real Dr. Hynek and his TV counterpart J. Allen Littlefinger

Something I found really interesting this week was all the talk about the new Project Blue Book TV show on the History Channel starring Littlefinger from Game of Thrones (and Tommy Carcetti, I haven’t forgotten about you, The Wire fans!) Everyone on my Facebook feed is talking about it because it uses the real-life character of Dr. J. Allen Hynek (who we talk about extensively with author Mark O’Connell who wrote a book about him called The Close Encounters Man) who investigated UFO reports for the real Project Blue Book and turns it into X-Files style fiction.

Okay, so that is a lot of fun, but The New York Times this week also wrote an article about the real life Project Blue Book and how it was nothing like it’s described in the TV show. Those are the same authors who wrote the 2017 article that blew the lid open on modern military research into unexplained aerial phenomena. Okay, we know Hollywood is gonna Hollywood, but why are we so predisposed to believe that the government is okay lying to us?

David Crosby is one of The Truth and Reconciliation Committee members looking for new answers to the political assassinations of the 60s.

Well, I think we can thank the government of America’s Golden Age, the Happy Days of yore, because they were super good at lying to the American people. From the Tuskegee experiments to the Gulf of Tonkin, the Mid-20th Century US government wasn’t afraid to deceive its own citizens to accomplish a goal. And it’s one of the reason that on Martin Luther King Day this year, a group of 60 activists who are calling themselves the Truth and Reconciliation Council are demanding a new investigation into the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr, and Malcolm X.

Celebrities include Alec Baldwin, Oliver Stone, Martin Sheen, Rob Reiner, famous walrus-man and musician David Crosby, as well as relatives of both Robert Kennedy and Dr. King. King’s family has long believed that James Earl Ray did not act alone and RFK Jr. himself has said that Sirhan Sirhan’s trial was a “mockery”.

There was just an invincibility and an impunity about that era of government that’s almost terrifying. From J. Edgar Hoover’s personal fiefdom of the FBI to the CIA’s mind control experiments, how many unelected officials wreaked havoc on American citizens “for our own good”? Might these assassinations be another example and we can’t learn the truth until the Boomers finally pass on?

Glenn Miller says “I gotta trombone for ya, baby.”

Wendy this week thought that it was fascinating that they think they might have found the wreckage of Glenn Miller’s airplane. One of the most popular musicians in America during Word War II, Miller’s plane disappeared over the English Channel on December 15th, 1944. There have been several theories to the disappearance:

  • Because of the freezing conditions, his plane’s engine iced over and they crashed on the way to Paris
  • British bombers returning from an air raid were told they needed to jettison their unexploded bombs over the Channel and Miller’s plane was accidentally in the way and killed by friendly fire
  • Miller made it to Paris, but had a heart attack while in a brothel, and they “disappeared” him to save the famous musician’s family embarrassment

Well, a fisherman now claims that he pulled up the remains of Miller’s plane in 1987. He says that he was advised to let it back into the deep, but he recorded the coordinates of the exact spot. What I wanna know is WHO TOLD HIM TO PUT IT BACK?!? That seems to be the missing piece in this journalism for me.

The good news is that he’s given a team of researchers the coordinates, so that if they can get the money, they can send divers down there to investigate. Because Miller’s plane is the last of its manufacture in the world that’s unaccounted for, if they find it, they’ll know it’s his and maybe the mystery can be solved.

Why so serious?

The first time we had Scott Markus on the show, we were featuring his documentary, The Hidden Truth?, which was about a series of mysterious drownings that happened in La Crosse along the Mississippi River from the 90s to the Aughts. Police claim it’s probably just drunken misadventure, but La Crosse’s Deputy Chief Medical Examiner had some other ideas and he wanted to see if their might be a paranormal explanation.

Which leads us to Scott’s topic for the week, the premiere of Smiley Face Killers: The Hunt for Justice on the Oxygen Network. In 2008, retired New York City police detectives Kevin Gannon and Anthony Duarte proposed that these drownings were the work of a “Murder Club” that they nicknamed “The Smiley Face Killers” because they seemed to find smiley face graffiti near where each of these poor victims went into the river. They postulated that these murders were planned and organized by a dark web of thrill killers throughout the country.

Their ideas made some news for a little while, but it was a popular theory to debunk because of the sheer audacity of it. The FBI even made an official statement about it. However, do you think that’s going to stop the producers of reality TV?! Hell no. Oxygen has developed a series about the detectives’ continuing investigation into more mysterious drownings. What did they find and do you find their evidence convincing? Well, you can be the judge by watching the first episode online right now.

Hush now baby baby don’t you cry…

Finally, this week’s Sunspot song inspired by the conversation is just a straight up punk tune about how easily we’re manipulated. From Vladimir Lenin’s “useful idiots” to the latest stories like the Covington High School video fracas, interest groups and factions vying for power and wealth have worked over the narrative so that the “common people” will come to their way of thinking. We fully expect propaganda in advertising, but we hope that our news sources at least attempt objectivity and our elected officials are at least telling us the truth sometimes… but we know that’s not true. Sometimes, you just get sick of people in authority saying they know what’s good for you and “Father Knows Best” is just a load of bollocks.

It’s a little story that story that they wrote for you and me,
keeping out the best parts for our own good, don’t you see?

The program is designed so that the masses will obey.
We’re all the same, it’s just a game, and we don’t get to play.
Worse than Illuminati or lizard conspiracy
for who controls the narrative, controls all the money.

Father Knows Best and our trust becomes a weapon.
Mommy’s bedtime story is mind control and thought suppression.
You can’t fight the power while you’re busy getting screwed
Hey Rube, sometimes the truth ain’t good enough for you.

I guess we’re just not smart enough to grasp at the big picture,
we just get the Cliffs Notes and they tell us that it’s scripture.

They’ve got the dials all set to outrage no matter what side that you choose
When it comes to facts, no one retracts, they just play fast and loose
It’s pissed-off vegan communists or truck driver redneck hicks
It’s about the bottom line, and everything is fine, as long as they get the clicks.

Father Knows Best and our trust becomes a weapon.
Mommy’s bedtime story is mind control and thought suppression.
You can’t fight the power while you’re busy getting screwed
Hey Rube, sometimes the truth ain’t good enough for you.

231 – The Man Who Knew Too Much: UFOs, Conspiracies, and Murder

This week, there was a plethora of exciting UFO news (well, probably as exciting as we’re going to get until they finally land in our backyard) so we wanted to bring back one of our favorite guests, [Robbie Graham]. Robbie authored the fascinating and insightful book, Silver Screen Saucers as well as editing UFOs: Reframing The Debate, which is one of the most comprehensive looks at the subject of the last decade. Wendy and I talked with Robbie and Scott Markus from WhatsYourGhostStory.com joins us again for the discussion.

Starting out, we had to talk to Robbie about what it was like being on the History Channel juggernaut, Ancient Aliens! He was on the latest episode and he told us what it was like being brought into the study of a millionaire’s home (to make it look a little more intellectual) as well as being remotely directed in London over the Internet from Los Angeles.

Robbie on Ancient Aliens

But just in the news this week, we had to discuss the new article about former Nevada senator Harry Reid coming out of retirement to lobby for more investigation into military reports of UFOs. Roll Call is not your normal UFO publication, it’s a political blog, so it’s always nice to see something weird in there. But why does Harry Reid care so much and why now? The best quote of the entire article is when he talks about Area 51.

“Oh sure, I’ve been to Area 51. I know Area 51. I don’t know if I should say many times, but lots and lots of times. I know Area 51 quite well, I know what they’ve done there,” said Reid. “I don’t know in recent years, of course, but I know what went on there.”

What went on there, Harry, for God’s sakes, what went on there?

But that brings up a bigger point, the existence of extraterrestrials is in the news more than ever. Since the New York Times article in 2017, aliens have snuck more and more in the news, from the latest fast radio bursts from space to the strange Rama-like space objet Oumuamua. And the go-to guy for astronomer credibility seems to be Harvard Professor, Avi Loeb. Now this guy is no slouch when it comes to academic credentials, but he sure is talking about aliens a lot. Is that because they’re getting us ready for disclosure?!

Party On Wayne

More likely, they’re just in it for the clicks. Those stories get shared more than any other and in a quickly shrinking media landscape, views mean money.

But another story that came out this week that I was particularly interested in was the official pronouncement this last week that conspiracy theorist Max Spiers who passed away in Poland mysteriously in 2016, actually died of a drug overdose.

Max Spiers
Max Spiers

It was a tragic end for a young guy (well, kinda young, I would be less than a month older than him, so it hits home for me) and the salacious news stories were filled with tales of cryptic messages sent to his mother and girlfriend in the UK as well as descriptions of him vomiting black bile before expiring. It didn’t help that his friends were telling people that extraterrestrials were mind controlling his behavior. I’m all for a good conspiracy theory and I fully understand that our government isn’t afraid to assassinate people but was a guy who talked about Nazi bases on the moon really getting too close to the truth?

Fascinatingly, that leads to a story from Robbie about how he once was paranoid about his phones being bugged and that he might have been being watched by the CIA while he was investigating another mysterious death, that of Hollywood screenwriter, Gary Devore. First of all, Devore wrote Timecop, the greatest of all Jean-Claude Van Damme films, so we all owe him at least a tiny bit of gratitude for that.

But in the mid-90s, Devore was working on a screenplay about the 1989 U.S. Invasion of Panama. That’s the one that was ordered by former CIA director, George H.W. Bush to capture former CIA operative Manuel Noriega.  My favorite part of the whole invasion (if one can have a favorite part of something that killed 23 US soldiers, 150 Panamanian soldiers, and over 500 Panamanian civilians) is that the U.S. military famously played “We’re Not Gonna Take It” by Twisted Sister at an earsplitting volume outside the Vatican Embassy, where Noriega had holed up after being driven from the Capitol.

Could Dee Snider have been in the CIA as well?

While Devore disappeared in 1997, he was on his way to deliver a copy of his latest script, the one about the “real reason” for the  Panama invasion. He never made it and a year later they found his Ford Explorer at the bottom of a California aqueduct. His body was there, but strangely his hands and the script were both missing.

Robbie became obsessed with the case and along with his colleague, Dr. Matthew Alford, they authored an article in The Guardian newspaper talking about Hollywood and the CIA and specifically talking about Gary Devore. Was Robbie getting too close to the truth? Well, in 2012, CIA operative Chase Brandon, who knew Devore well  because he was the CIA liaison to Hollywood, wrote a book called The Cryptos Conundrum. It’s supposedly fiction, but he makes a lot of claims (particularly about Roswell) and in one of the  “fictional scenarios” makes up an investigative journalist who starts exposing too many of the CIA’s plans and then mysteriously suffers a fatal heart attack. The name of this fictional journalist? Robert Graham.

THAT’S $%^ING NUTS. You can read the passages right here in the Google Book version of The Cryptos Conundrum. It’s not really very subtle.

Alford went on to make a documentary about the case in 2014 called The Writer With No Hands.

And speaking of Hollywood, Scott’s favorite story this week is the upcoming 61st anniversary of the Black Dahlia murder, where poor Elizabeth Short was found naked, mutilated and cut in half. It became one of Tinseltown’s most famous and shocking unsolved cases. Los Angeles homicide detective Steve Hodel believes that the killer was his own father(!), Dr. George Hodel, and the new TNT series I Am The Night, will be based on Hodel’s theories. Steve Hodel has also implied that his father was the Zodiac Killer. Happy Father’s Day, yikes!

For this week’s song, we were thinking about the tragedy of Max Spiers’ death and also Robbie’s own story of possibly being surveilled by an intelligence agency while investigating a cover-up. Whether or not you believe in conspiracy theories, from Q Anon to secret supersoldiers, our intelligence agencies wield a scary amount of unchecked power. While a majority of their actions might be in the service of protecting us, is the truth worth getting in their crosshairs?

You wear the truth like a tattoo
You look over your shoulder is there someone right behind you?

Walking too close to the Left Hand Path
Living with a target on your back.

Whispers in the night are beckoning,
to a black magic reckoning,
hidden hands are pulling strings,
and watching everything.
Steer clear of the dangerous kind
a death warrant has been signed.
Don’t fall in love with
The Man Who Knew Too Much.

Just like in Catch-22
Just cuz you’re paranoid don’t mean they’re not out for you.

Just what will you give up for the truth?
Even if it ends up killing you.

Whispers in the night are beckoning,
to a black magic reckoning,
hidden hands are pulling strings,
and watching everything.
Steer clear of the dangerous kind
a death warrant has been signed.
Don’t fall in love with
The Man Who Knew Too Much.

This Week’s Best Paranormal News – January 4th, 2019

Hey!

It’s 2019 and we hope your New Year is starting off most excellently (party on Wayne!) If you wanna say goodbye to the old year, we’ve got a podcast about 2018’s most exciting paranormal stories that you can listen to right here.

But moving forward, we’ve got plenty of paranormal news to kick off a brand new annum!

A UFO was filmed over Kiawah Island

A mysterious glowing orange sphere evidently appeared above Kiawah Island over the Christmas holiday, a phenomenon that turns up in this area every so often.

https://observer.com/2019/01/pope-francis-exorcism-demonic-possession-culture-wars/

Exorcism and Demonic Possession Are Now Tools in the Culture Wars

This article takes the tack that exorcism is all BS, but this goes to something we’ve been talking about for awhile, the paranormal vs. hardcore atheism is part of the new culture wars and it’s in a completely different way than the hippies vs. squares generational conflict of the 60s.

https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2018/12/27/youtuber-shot-dead-in-lahore-after-social-media-prank-goes-wrong/

YouTuber shot dead after social media prank goes wrong

This is what I’m always afraid is going to happen when people see those Zombie Pub Crawls. One of these days, someone’s gonna freak out and start shooting the participants. That’s what happened in Pakistan.

https://www.nationalenquirer.com/photos/psychic-predictions-hollywood-2019/

Psychic Predictions: What’s In The Stars For 2019

Psychic predictions from The National Enquirer’s team of mystics for 2018 included accurately foreseeing Clint Eastwood’s retirement from acting and Khloé Kardashian’s humiliating relationship woes. What will they predict for our favorite (and not so favorite) celebrities in 2019?

https://www.wkrg.com/entertainment/mt-hood-meadows-cryptozoologist-spots-sasquatch/1678332481

Mt Hood Meadows: Cryptozoologist ‘spots’ Sasquatch

Sasquatch was spotted near Mount Hood Meadows — or so say the people connected with Mount Hood Meadows. Take a look at the pictures and you decide if that looks like Bigfoot to you. 😉

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6539849/Has-mystery-Britains-Roswell-finally-solved.html

Has the mystery of ‘Britain’s Roswell’ finally been solved?

Dubbed ‘Britain’s Roswell’, the Rendlesham Forest incident in Suffolk, has intrigued UFO enthusiasts since taking place in December 1980. You’re not gonna like what this article says…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2WqYidC_0Yh

Tenacious D – Sasquatch and Trippy Mushrooms

Since we’re talking about Bigfoot again this week, let’s go back to one of the best scenes in Tenacious D’s much-maligned flick, Tenacious D In The Pick of Destiny. Is it a great movie? Well, it didn’t win any Academy Awards, but if you like Jack Black, then you get a whole heaping helping!

New podcast and paranormal song are coming up early next week, so subscribe in iTunes and we’ll see you on the other side!