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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Daniel Drasen is an award winning documentary filmmaker and has

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Speaker 2: been a photographer and a media producer for more than

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Speaker 2: six decades. Since the early nineteen nineties, has featured in

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Speaker 2: his documentary Calling Earth. Daniel has been actively investigating the

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Speaker 2: field of after life communication through traditional mental and physical

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Speaker 2: mediumship as well as modern electronics. He lives in the

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Speaker 2: San Francisco Bay area and his brand new book is

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Speaker 2: a Science of the Afterlife, Space, time and the Consciousness Code.

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Speaker 2: Daniel Drasen, Welcome to Coast to Coast AM. How are you.

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Speaker 3: I'm very well. Thank you, Richard. It's a pleasure to

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Speaker 3: be here with you.

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Speaker 2: I want to start off with John Keele. You were colleagues,

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Speaker 2: and I had heard this story about John Keele and

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Speaker 2: people who are familiar with this, perhaps one of the

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Speaker 2: world's most influential ufologists, journalists, paranormal researcher, had heard this

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Speaker 2: story years ago, but I had no idea until you

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Speaker 2: and I met several months ago and talked about it

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Speaker 2: that you were also involved in this remarkable paranormal supernatural incident. So,

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Speaker 2: first of all, just maybe begin by telling us how

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Speaker 2: you connected initially with John Keel, and then we'll get

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Speaker 2: into this remarkable incident.

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Speaker 3: Okay, Well, this was back in the mid nineteen sixties.

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Speaker 3: I was living in New York City at the time,

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Speaker 3: and I found myself one day up at a place

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Speaker 3: called the Cloisters, which is a beautiful museum of medieval

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Speaker 3: art that's located on the upper west side overlooking the

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Speaker 3: Hudson River. And as I was up there, I noticed

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Speaker 3: a funny Looking out over the river towards the Palisades

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Speaker 3: of New Jersey, I noticed a kind of a funny

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Speaker 3: looking flying object that was flying in a northerly direction,

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Speaker 3: And having been a student pilot at the time, this

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Speaker 3: object attracted my attention, and particularly attracted my attention when

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Speaker 3: it stopped and reversed its direction instantaneously. That was, I suppose,

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Speaker 3: my very first actual UFO sighting. I had been interested

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Speaker 3: in the subject for many years, but this had been

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Speaker 3: my first actual experience of seeing something that I an

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Speaker 3: aeral object that I could not explain. So I've mentioned

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Speaker 3: it to a friend of mine who said, Oh, there's

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Speaker 3: this writer John Keel who's giving a talk tomorrow whytt

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Speaker 3: you go to his talk and discuss your sighting with him?

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Speaker 3: So I did, and long story short, we became friends.

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Speaker 3: He at the time was investigating I just begun to

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Speaker 3: investigate the phenomena that we're going on in Point Pleasant,

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Speaker 3: West Virginia, the moth man, right, a moth man, primarily

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Speaker 3: the moth man, but also a variety of other fascinating

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Speaker 3: and sometimes disturbing phenomena. Anyway, I accompanied John on four

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Speaker 3: of his trips to Point Pleasant. Met quite a number

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Speaker 3: of witnesses there who had seen the mofman and the

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Speaker 3: other phenomena, which included UFOs that flew over the town,

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Speaker 3: up and down the river. That's Point Pleasant. Point Pleasant

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Speaker 3: is located right on the Ohio River where the Ohio

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Speaker 3: and the Kanawa rivers come together. At the time, the

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Speaker 3: two states were connected by a bridge that had been

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Speaker 3: built in the nineteen twenties. It was called the Silver

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Speaker 3: Bridge because it was of at that time a novel,

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Speaker 3: very lightweight aluminum construction, and it was in a way

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Speaker 3: Point Pleasant's main source of economic support because the bridge

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Speaker 3: came right over the river right into the downtown business

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Speaker 3: district of Point Pleasant. So it was a sort of

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Speaker 3: a major feature of the town, so it was kind

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Speaker 3: of a crossroads of that part of the country. Anyway,

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Speaker 3: people there have been reporting seeing this quite startling creature

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Speaker 3: there for a period of time, notably to adolescent couples

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Speaker 3: who were out canoodling one night and one of their

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Speaker 3: automobiles out in a forested area, and when they heard

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Speaker 3: a disturbance around them, they turned their headlights on and

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Speaker 3: lo and behold, there was this seven or eight foot

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Speaker 3: tall creature with big glowing red eyes and wings that

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Speaker 3: levitated off the ground. Startled these kids. They put the

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Speaker 3: car in gear and skidaddled went down the main highway.

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Speaker 3: This creature followed them, hovering, flying over the over their car,

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Speaker 3: and as they approached the lights of the town, the

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Speaker 3: creatures sort of peeled off and disappeared. So they reported

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Speaker 3: this terrifying incident to the local sheriff's department, which turns

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Speaker 3: out had received quite a number of other reports of

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Speaker 3: sightings of this creature. Nobody knew what it was, where

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Speaker 3: it was from. It was missing from the annals of

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Speaker 3: cryptozoology as far as anyone knew. It was quite a

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Speaker 3: unique kind of creature. Wasn't a bigfoot or anything like that.

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Speaker 3: So anyway, long story short, dozens of people saw this creature.

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Speaker 3: I spoke to a private pilot at an airport across

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Speaker 3: the river in Ohio who had seen this thing in flight,

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Speaker 3: and he says, well, at first I thought it was

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Speaker 3: some kind of a small airplane. I got closer to it,

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Speaker 3: and my god, it was this flying critter. And this

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Speaker 3: guy's thaught of the earth, you know, local price, this pilot, Uh,

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Speaker 3: he didn't impress me as making making the story up.

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Speaker 3: So while I did not myself see this creature, I

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Speaker 3: have certainly have no doubt that it existed. People have

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Speaker 3: very strong emotional responses to encountering it, sometimes in broad daylight,

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Speaker 3: actually at all hours of the day and night in

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Speaker 3: that general area. Now when I say that general area,

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Speaker 3: I'm talking about the the Ohio River area, mostly north

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Speaker 3: of the town of Point Pleasant, which actually has a

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Speaker 3: history of paranormal phenomena going back at least into the

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Speaker 3: last century.

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Speaker 2: Uh.

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Speaker 3: There are there were tales about a Native American chief

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Speaker 3: called Chief Cornstalk having put a curse of some kind

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Speaker 3: on the land. People believe that that this was, you know,

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Speaker 3: partly the cause of some of these phenomena. Now, not

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Speaker 3: only was the Mothman scene, but as you probably know,

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Speaker 3: a number of individuals were witnesses to the so called

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Speaker 3: men in black, and they were what I guess upologists

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Speaker 3: would consider the classic men in black of they were

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Speaker 3: kind of a swarthy complexion, dressed in dark business suits,

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Speaker 3: and they would often show up driving vintage vintage automobiles

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Speaker 3: from maybe twenty thirty years in the past and looking

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Speaker 3: brand news if they'd just come off the assembly line,

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Speaker 3: and they would, they would either subtly or very directly

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Speaker 3: threaten people to not talk about their experiences. And again

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Speaker 3: I never personally witnessed them, but I spoke to a

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Speaker 3: number of people who had. One of them was one

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Speaker 3: of the kids who had first sighted the offman, and

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Speaker 3: that on that terrifying evening. She and her boyfriend eventually

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Speaker 3: married and they had a young child, and one day

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Speaker 3: these men in black showed up in a vintage Buick

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Speaker 3: limousine with carrying an old sort of nineteen forties vintage

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Speaker 3: press camera and offering to photograph their child. And this

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Speaker 3: is something that had John Keel had run into in

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Speaker 3: the past, the utterly bizarre kind of situation. These strange

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Speaker 3: guys were sent away and they never came back, They

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Speaker 3: never made good on any sort of threats. So, you know,

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Speaker 3: what are these things about? And a question that I

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Speaker 3: ask about a lot of paranormal phenomena, or so called

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Speaker 3: paranormal phenomena, including the whole question of an afterlife, is

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Speaker 3: is this really paranormal? Do these things go on much

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Speaker 3: more frequently? Do people have these experiences much more frequently

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Speaker 3: than we give credit for? Is our social norms really

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Speaker 3: responsible for the definition of paranormal or supernatural? We say supernatural?

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Speaker 3: You know, what are the limits of nature? We think

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Speaker 3: something is supernatural? We're sort of arbitrarily putting limits on nature.

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Speaker 3: You know, maybe the whole thing is natural. So get

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Speaker 3: into some of of what I get into in my

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Speaker 3: book about language.

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Speaker 2: Right, But I just wanted to get to the incident.

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Speaker 2: It was a just I believe, just before or just

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Speaker 2: after the collapse of the Silver Bridge, and you're in

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Speaker 2: New York with John Keel and he receives a visitor.

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Speaker 3: Right, Okay, let me just go back a little bit.

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Speaker 3: On our last trip to Point Pleasant prior to this

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Speaker 3: particular day, John was given us sort of a prophecy

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Speaker 3: by a psychic woman in the town, and it was

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Speaker 3: to the effect that she said that there will be

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Speaker 3: a disa on the river the night that President Johnson

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Speaker 3: likes the White House Christmas tree. So on that particular night,

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Speaker 3: and in December nineteen sixty seven, John and I were

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Speaker 3: back in New York. I was at my home, he

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Speaker 3: was at his, and we agreed that I would come

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Speaker 3: up to his place. We'd turn on the TV, watch

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Speaker 3: the news reports and see if anything happened on the

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Speaker 3: Ohio River. So I go up to John's place and

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Speaker 3: he lets me in and he introduces me to a

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Speaker 3: friend of his, a guy named Joe, who has been

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Speaker 3: an old, old friend of John's. But John hadn't seen

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Speaker 3: him in years and had sir lost contact with him.

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Speaker 3: And yet Joe appeared at John's door on this very

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Speaker 3: interesting and unusual evening. I met Joe. Big guy. I'm

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Speaker 3: about six foot one, He's at least six foot two,

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Speaker 3: strong guy, dark hair, mustache, looks as if he was

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Speaker 3: in his forty late forties.

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Speaker 2: I shook his hand.

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Speaker 3: I shook his hand, and the thing about it was

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Speaker 3: it was one of the strongest handshakes I've ever experienced.

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Speaker 3: The guy was really strong. And anyway, we chatted for

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Speaker 3: a while, we turned the TV on. There was no news,

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Speaker 3: So John and Joe went out to dinner and they

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Speaker 3: actually went to a UFO conference that was held in

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Speaker 3: Manhattan that evening. I went back home, got home, turned

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Speaker 3: my TV on. Just at that moment the network feed

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Speaker 3: was interrupted from the news from Point Pleasant with the

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Speaker 3: news from Point Pleasant that the Silverbridge had collapsed into

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Speaker 3: the Ohio River in the middle of this is a

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Speaker 3: Christmas season rush hour traffic. It was a huge tragedy.

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Speaker 3: There wasn't anyone in the town who didn't know someone

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Speaker 3: who was killed in that grin, right, and so that

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Speaker 3: you know, that's that's a you know, a part of

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Speaker 3: them Offman's story that everyone seems to know. It was

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Speaker 3: feature in the Richard in the Richard Gere movie, which

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Speaker 3: is a very very loose adaptation of the story. But

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Speaker 3: the interesting thing was that I didn't think, I didn't

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Speaker 3: think much more of this fellow Joe that I met,

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Speaker 3: until John found out a couple of years later that

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Speaker 3: Joe had been dead for two years hm.

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Speaker 2: Hm, prior to your meeting Joe.

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Speaker 3: Yes, yes, uh and uh. Following that meeting, Joe was untraceable.

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Speaker 3: John tried to reach him as phone was disconnected and

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Speaker 3: so on. Uh. And the only way he found out

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Speaker 3: about this was a couple of years later, he was

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Speaker 3: happened to be in Macy's department store and ran into

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Speaker 3: Joe's wife, and I said, oh, hi, you know how

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Speaker 3: how's Joe? I saw him a couple I saw him

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Speaker 3: two years ago. I haven't been able to find him.

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Speaker 3: And she said, oh, you know, don't don't mess with me, John,

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Speaker 3: Joe's been dead for five years.

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Speaker 1: Oh wow, and so on, you know.

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Speaker 3: She he he died in my presence and and I

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Speaker 3: went to a funeral and all that.

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Speaker 1: Of course, listen to more Coast to Coast AM every

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Speaker 1: weeknight at one a m. Eastern and go to Coast

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Speaker 1: to coastam dot com for more