Speaker 1: High Strange is released weekly every Thursday, brought to you
Speaker 1: absolutely free, but if you want to bene the whole season,
Speaker 1: it's available right now on Apple Podcasts for all Tenderfoot
Speaker 1: plus subscribers. You'll also get exclusive bonus episodes throughout the season.
Speaker 1: For more information, check out the show notes. Enjoy the episode.
Speaker 2: The heart of Projects Strat is the broadcast operation. There
Speaker 2: are sixty thousand volts running through his basement, powering a
Speaker 2: signal that's been straight out into space. The possibility that
Speaker 2: something out there might hear and perhaps respond, keeps John going.
Speaker 3: Sending out a signal, trying out a lure, trying to
Speaker 3: get more information by luring the men close enough to
Speaker 3: get accurate electronic measurements. Contacted our local sheriffs department. They
Speaker 3: sent out a deputy. I showed them on the soil
Speaker 3: skull screen what was coming on? There shouldn't be that
Speaker 3: other frequency in there.
Speaker 4: That's not part of it.
Speaker 3: Something caused that amount of energy.
Speaker 4: I think something was attractive.
Speaker 5: Welcome the High Strange.
Speaker 6: There is nothing wrong with your television sector. You are
Speaker 6: about to participate in a great adventure. You are about
Speaker 6: to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the
Speaker 6: inner mind to the outer limits.
Speaker 3: The series of the Outer Limits back in sixty five
Speaker 3: sixty seven, the pilot episode called the Galaxy Being This
Speaker 3: the most incredible episode to spark your imagination. Top ten
Speaker 3: tunes brought to you by your boy buddy two oh
Speaker 3: on your radio dial. The guy worked at the radio
Speaker 3: station as at Tech. There's a transmitter shed back of
Speaker 3: the station.
Speaker 5: My name is Alan Maxwell.
Speaker 7: I am transmitting from a station on the third planet
Speaker 7: in the Solar System.
Speaker 3: He had to set up to send signals through the
Speaker 3: galaxy in the deep space.
Speaker 7: I am scanning the microwaves coming from somewhere beyond the
Speaker 7: constellation of Vegasus.
Speaker 4: And had this big glass chamber.
Speaker 3: You'd see these a psiloscope images and then you'd start
Speaker 3: to hear a voice come.
Speaker 6: Through planets beyond said pools.
Speaker 3: Its ghostly being with spots all over it that would
Speaker 3: appear inside this glass chamber.
Speaker 8: You must explore, you must reach out.
Speaker 4: I thought, what a great idea.
Speaker 3: Is the power of a radio station to reach out
Speaker 3: beyond the Earth in.
Speaker 4: The space to see if there's something out there.
Speaker 6: We now returned control of your television set to you
Speaker 6: until next week. At the same time when the control
Speaker 6: voice will take you to the outer limits.
Speaker 3: It was all science fiction up that point in time,
Speaker 3: but that really set my mind a blaze. I was
Speaker 3: working as a kid in a camera shop, and they
Speaker 3: couldn't resist going to military surplus places in Detroit and
Speaker 3: getting parts to build things. Learn how to look circuits
Speaker 3: together and meters and get lights of flash and things
Speaker 3: like that. I'd love to electronics. I love building big systems,
Speaker 3: making it all work, figuring out how to solve the
Speaker 3: technical problems to make these things work.
Speaker 5: What were you building, did you know or were you
Speaker 5: just going to explore.
Speaker 3: Or trying to duplicate that transmitter? I think in my
Speaker 3: back of my mind wasn't long before I was building
Speaker 3: more sophisticated equipment machines that could do something right. Around
Speaker 3: seventy three, in northern Michigan, there's starting to be UFO reports,
Speaker 3: all kinds of unidentified lights in the sky, objects, things
Speaker 3: coming down and hovering.
Speaker 5: It was really weird.
Speaker 3: I got to see some of the sheriff's supports in
Speaker 3: the Antre County Sheriff's Department, and they were interesting. I
Speaker 3: heard a tape interview they did with a fellow and
Speaker 3: was pretty intense.
Speaker 4: The thing came.
Speaker 3: Down hovered right over the roadway between Shandy Creek and
Speaker 3: Shush Mountain. It caused his electrical systemized truck to fail.
Speaker 3: During that time, I started thinking more about building some
Speaker 3: equipment to could send signals out into space. It wasn't
Speaker 3: long before I built the first transmitter. It was a
Speaker 3: high boldage output had a vertical direction so it would
Speaker 3: point up into the sky. Started in my bedroom and
Speaker 3: then it filled that Flora Saly started building bigger equipment,
Speaker 3: much larger and much more power.
Speaker 5: It got pretty big.
Speaker 3: Four hundred pound transformers and big converters and bullege regulators
Speaker 3: to story high one hundred and fifty thousand banks at
Speaker 3: power amps to produce the power the frequency of audio.
Speaker 3: To get a signal out for a greater distance, throwing
Speaker 3: out a lure seven to a signal, try and attract
Speaker 3: the intelligences behind these aerial craft, trying to lower them
Speaker 3: in to get a closer look at them.
Speaker 4: That signal may be picked up.
Speaker 3: There's a possibility that they could detect it, and that
Speaker 3: possibility is there, It's worth trying trying to get more
Speaker 3: information by luring the men close enough to get accurate
Speaker 3: electronic measurements, some hard data, something on instruments, data to learn.
Speaker 4: That's what projects travels.
Speaker 1: Inspired by science fiction, John Shepper was determined to send
Speaker 1: a signal into the universe and make contact with alien life.
Speaker 1: John showed me an old photo album of all of
Speaker 1: his enormous machines. By the way, you could tell, the
Speaker 1: process he went through to build it all was truly
Speaker 1: a massive undertaking literally hundreds of switches, knobs and cables,
Speaker 1: different screens measuring signals. It looked like a Steven Spielberg
Speaker 1: movie set, except it was all real. He named the
Speaker 1: operation Project Strat, and when the neighbors caught win of
Speaker 1: his colossal homemade laboratory, the local news that has bought
Speaker 1: light piece on him. Everyone around him, like me today,
Speaker 1: was fascinated by it all.
Speaker 2: The heart of Project Stratt is the broadcast operation. There
Speaker 2: are sixty thousand volts running through his basement, powering a
Speaker 2: signal that's being straight out into space. Every day, John
Speaker 2: beams two signals out into space, one a digital pulset
Speaker 2: cook and the other a live radio show.
Speaker 3: Project STRAT, which stamps for Special Gelemetry Research and Tracking,
Speaker 3: which is an acronym for the technology and what we
Speaker 3: were trying to do. I took music and put it
Speaker 3: through huge power amps, very clean power amps that have
Speaker 3: a lot of power, eight to twelve hours a day
Speaker 3: of music broadcast, sending out something of our culture to
Speaker 3: see if it would attract them closer to where I
Speaker 3: was doing.
Speaker 4: This from.
Speaker 1: John's broadcast operation bore a striking resemblance to Nicola Tesla
Speaker 1: in eighteen ninety six. Tesla, one of history's most famous inventors,
Speaker 1: also where Elon got the name from, was doing his
Speaker 1: own high voltage experiments in the late eighteen hundreds. He
Speaker 1: made large power transmission towers that could produce artificial lightning
Speaker 1: and monitored signals in space. Tesla once wrote in his diary, quote,
Speaker 1: my first observations positively terrified me, as there was present
Speaker 1: in them something mysterious. The feeling is constantly growing on
Speaker 1: me that I've been the first to hear the greeting
Speaker 1: from one planet to another. He firmly believed that he
Speaker 1: made contact of his own with something else out there
Speaker 1: in the universe. In nineteen seventy two, at the height
Speaker 1: of John's operation in rural Michigan, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: there was a series of strange sightings in the sky
Speaker 1: throughout the entire state. Reports were piling in to local
Speaker 1: police departments of flying saucers. Simultaneously, John's machine began picking
Speaker 1: up frequencies that were not normal at all.
Speaker 3: They were getting reports at that time of objects in
Speaker 3: the area detected electromagnetic sturbances coming in over the power
Speaker 3: lines that were never there before. Contacted our local sheriff's department.
Speaker 3: They signed out a deputy. I showed him on the
Speaker 3: Soell scope screen what was coming on. Kind have a
Speaker 3: sixty per frequency there, and then you have something like
Speaker 3: one twenty fading in and fading out over the top
Speaker 3: of that. It shouldn't be getting one hundred and twenty
Speaker 3: one hundred and seventy hertz that strong when you're running
Speaker 3: a sixty artz system. There shouldn't be that other frequency
Speaker 3: in there. That's not part of it, doesn't belong there,
Speaker 3: simple as that. Something had to cause it, because it's
Speaker 3: normally not there. It just doesn't appear out of nowhere.
Speaker 5: So what theoretically could be causing that.
Speaker 3: The thing I thought it might have been was UFOs
Speaker 3: in the area of one or two of whatever.
Speaker 4: I don't know how many were there the.
Speaker 3: Magnetic fields emitted by these craft moving over power lines
Speaker 3: inducing that magnetic field, and the instruments were picking it up.
Speaker 3: Had to be something that caused that amount of energy.
Speaker 3: It was circumstantial. Sure, can't prove it, but it was
Speaker 3: occurring simultaneously of objects in there. So we add two
Speaker 3: and two together, maybe you get four. I think something
Speaker 3: was attractive.
Speaker 1: Did John really attract some aliens that night? Did he
Speaker 1: finally accomplish his goal? John himself seems to think so.
Speaker 3: Humans they are great explorers the curiosity. You want to
Speaker 3: explore what's below the ocean, what's up in the sky,
Speaker 3: what's at the top of that mountain over there. You
Speaker 3: have to keep an open mind. We propagate the species, propagate.
Speaker 4: Look at the Earth. How many forms of life there are?
Speaker 4: It's infinite.
Speaker 3: That infinity in the size of the universe, and the
Speaker 3: galaxy is in it, and all the worlds that are
Speaker 3: in there. The possibility life, some kind of life astronomical,
Speaker 3: the possibility is there.
Speaker 4: Keep an open mind here.
Speaker 3: If we think we're the only things in this whole
Speaker 3: huge galaxy or universe, oh it's a big waste of space.
Speaker 3: It would seem kind of strange. We can't be the
Speaker 3: only ones, and the more you search, you may end
Speaker 3: up with more questions and answers. But what answers you
Speaker 3: do get are going to open your horizons of knowledge,
Speaker 3: and knowledge is an important.
Speaker 5: Thing for us.
Speaker 1: All the whole time we were talking with John, we
Speaker 1: were surrounded by all kinds of fun synthesizers and different
Speaker 1: musical instruments. So I asked if you could show us
Speaker 1: around a bit and maybe play something for us.
Speaker 4: It's amazing what you can do with synthesizers.
Speaker 3: That's all kinds of effects.
Speaker 5: Space music. The sound seem to come from all around
Speaker 5: us in the room.
Speaker 3: That is a real dream machine for creating totally exotic sounds.
Speaker 4: And you want to go exotic, you work with one
Speaker 4: of those.
Speaker 1: As I'm hearing this strange music, I can see shelves
Speaker 1: upon shelves of books about aliens, old pictures of John,
Speaker 1: and magazines. Not to mention, the speakers themselves also looked
Speaker 1: like aliens.
Speaker 3: Sound cells is the name I gave them, But they're
Speaker 3: handmade and they're made with two by ten wood, but
Speaker 3: inside I put high power, really good quality ten inch wolfers.
Speaker 1: He played us some of his original music which he
Speaker 1: has uploaded to band camp. You can check it out
Speaker 1: yourself at John Scott Shephard dot bandcamp dot com. I
Speaker 1: also put the link in the episode description, Oh my
Speaker 1: husband's home high honey sound band, I think in here
Speaker 1: where we're here nerding out over?
Speaker 4: Oh, it's been so much fun, the whole thing.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, for financial reasons, John eventually had to dismantle his operation,
Speaker 1: putting most of his old equipment in storage. But five
Speaker 1: years later, in nineteen seventy seven, someone else received the
Speaker 1: same puzzling frequencies that John did. The Ohio State University
Speaker 1: Radio Observatory, also known as Big EAR, received a strange
Speaker 1: signal of their own. One day, an astronomer was reviewing
Speaker 1: the computer printouts when they noticed a loud two minute
Speaker 1: transmission that was extremely powerful, So powerful that he circled
Speaker 1: the readout in red pen and wrote wow. And it's
Speaker 1: now known as the Wow signal. Nice. Ohio State University
Speaker 1: ultimately determined the signal was not from a satellite, any
Speaker 1: military craft, commercial aircraft, or broadcast stations, just a weird,
Speaker 1: loud signal from deep space that remains unexplained to this day.
Speaker 1: The UFO topic has clearly attracted a wide array of
Speaker 1: interesting people over the years because it sits right on
Speaker 1: the friends of real world science and flat out conspiracy theory.
Speaker 1: The range of eclectic characters you get with this subject
Speaker 1: is absolutely fascinating. After a meeting with John Shephard, I
Speaker 1: felt compelled to go down this road a little further
Speaker 1: and explore the lives of other interesting people in this realm.
Speaker 5: Just how weird does it get?
Speaker 6: You?
Speaker 5: Guys? Tell me if he bites me? Okay?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 5: Why?
Speaker 1: That is a big ass alligator and that is not
Speaker 1: a sound effect.
Speaker 9: People think alligators are dumb, but they're actually one of
Speaker 9: the smartest animals.
Speaker 1: It's actually the same alligator from the Adam Sandler movie
Speaker 1: Happy Gilmour, the one that bit Chubb's handoff.
Speaker 5: I peach ups.
Speaker 4: You could actually come in here and pet him and
Speaker 4: he wouldn't mind.
Speaker 9: But he remembers the days when I used to catch
Speaker 9: him to move.
Speaker 10: Him around or at a cold.
Speaker 5: I am a con him in eight years. But he
Speaker 5: holds a drout.
Speaker 2: You remember Scota go boy?
Speaker 8: Yeah you.
Speaker 5: Oh boy?
Speaker 6: Yeah, as you are.
Speaker 1: If you were to drop me here randomly with no context,
Speaker 1: I would never in a million years think that I
Speaker 1: was here to talk about UFOs.
Speaker 9: We are in the mystic San Luis Valley.
Speaker 1: This is Jay Young, the one who tricked me into
Speaker 1: getting way too close to that alligator.
Speaker 9: The San Luis Valley is eight thousand square miles, which
Speaker 9: is roughly the size of Massachusetts. This place is known
Speaker 9: as Colorado Gator's Reptile Park. It was begun in nineteen
Speaker 9: seventy seven as a tilapia farm by my parents are
Speaker 9: Winning then Young. What makes it possible is access to
Speaker 9: geothermal water. We got some alligators to be garbage disposals
Speaker 9: for the fish in nineteen eighty seven. They got big.
Speaker 9: People wanted to see them. So now we're a tourist
Speaker 9: attraction that does animal education.
Speaker 4: And animal rescue.
Speaker 9: Surrounded by fourteen thousand foot peaks, it is the largest
Speaker 9: alpine valley in the world, and it is now known
Speaker 9: as the Mystic Sandlos Valley because it's a mystic place.
Speaker 1: I'm here in southern Colorado because for literally thousands of
Speaker 1: years there have been more reports of unidentified flying objects
Speaker 1: than almost any other place in the country.
Speaker 9: This valley has had so many sidings, there's been books
Speaker 9: written about it, and I've had half a dozen unexplained sidings,
Speaker 9: or more myself. All the experiences I've had have been different.
Speaker 9: Strange things happen and I can't explain them.
Speaker 1: For whatever reason, this seems to be a UFO hotspot.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's the good weed out here, or maybe the
Speaker 1: sky's just more open and you can actually see th.
Speaker 4: I was a big skeptic. I didn't believe much.
Speaker 9: It was always easily explained. Until I was about twenty
Speaker 9: five years old, there was no earthly explanation for what
Speaker 9: we saw. Cliff and I were driving to Alamosa from
Speaker 9: the Alligator Farm off to the west, over the San
Speaker 9: Juan Mountains. There we saw these strange silver objects, giant
Speaker 9: silver needles, floating in the sky, parallel to each other,
Speaker 9: but not perpendicular to the earth. You see right there,
Speaker 9: see those mountains. That peak is over seven thousand feet
Speaker 9: taller than where we are. These silver objects were almost
Speaker 9: as tall as the mountains, so they were about five
Speaker 9: thousand feet tall, and as the sun went down, they
Speaker 9: descended down, and had they been made out of metal,
Speaker 9: they would have hit the mountain and stopped and fallen
Speaker 9: over or something like that. They just disappeared into the mountain.
Speaker 9: It was like some weird refraction of light to another
Speaker 9: dimension or something.
Speaker 8: I don't know.
Speaker 9: I never even heard of anything like that before. After that,
Speaker 9: I was more open to believing things and not being
Speaker 9: as much of a skeptic.
Speaker 5: It opened up the.
Speaker 9: Possibility that there's a lot out there that we don't understand.
Speaker 9: You just have to take it with a grain of salt.
Speaker 9: You weren't there, you didn't experience it. You might not
Speaker 9: believe me because you didn't see what I saw.
Speaker 4: I know what I saw.
Speaker 9: The older you get, the more you realize that you
Speaker 9: didn't know anything, and now you know less than nothing.
Speaker 9: We know more about the surface of the Moon than
Speaker 9: we do the bottom of the ocean. We're finding new
Speaker 9: species of animals all the time. We know so little
Speaker 9: about our own planet. It's just inconceivable to think that
Speaker 9: we know what's out there beyond our planet. It's just
Speaker 9: ludicrous to think that we're the only intelligence species in
Speaker 9: the universe. Did we even consider ourselves intelligent? I try
Speaker 9: to keep an open mind. I'm a skeptic, I guess
Speaker 9: even now, but I know there's things I've seen that
Speaker 9: are not explainable through any conventional means. Most sightings are explainable,
Speaker 9: but not all of them are. This valley has had
Speaker 9: so many sightings Judy built a UFO watchtower here.
Speaker 1: The real reason I came all the way out to
Speaker 1: the Mystic Valley of Colorado is to visit their world
Speaker 1: famous UFO watchtower. This is the UFO Watchtower, about a
Speaker 1: five minutes drive down the street. Is a metal, two
Speaker 1: story structure made simply for viewing the sky. The watchtower
Speaker 1: has a complete three sixty view of the valley. If
Speaker 1: you followed my other podcasts, you might remember I came
Speaker 1: here for a brief moment in twenty nineteen during Up
Speaker 1: and Vanas season two, Crystal Anne Risinger went missing from
Speaker 1: the small town of Crestone, about fifteen minutes from here.
Speaker 11: We've had sightings during the day as well as at night.
Speaker 11: Everybody thinks it has to be at night, and it doesn't.
Speaker 11: If you look up, you're going to see something bizarre.
Speaker 11: It's just that simple. My name is Judy mess Line.
Speaker 11: I moved to the valley to raise cattle and horses,
Speaker 11: but from the time we had moved here, all we
Speaker 11: heard were UFO stories from the locals. They've had documented
Speaker 11: sightings in this valley since the fifteen hundreds. One of
Speaker 11: the farmers was in one day and he said, you
Speaker 11: know what, Judy, you need to put up that UFO watchtower.
Speaker 4: You've giggled about it.
Speaker 11: You'd have fun. Well, I've had twenty two years worth
Speaker 11: of fun.
Speaker 5: I mean it is fun.
Speaker 1: The size of the sky compared to the watchtower in
Speaker 1: this valley, surrounded by fourteen thousand foot mountains, really puts
Speaker 1: some perspective how small we are.
Speaker 11: The best idea I had in this world was putting
Speaker 11: this up because I've gotten to meet so many neat people,
Speaker 11: and most of the folks who come in here are
Speaker 11: open minded.
Speaker 5: Can you recall your first UFO sighting?
Speaker 11: Yes, it was between here and the mountains in part
Speaker 11: way down I called a cigar shaped. It was narrow
Speaker 11: and really long, and it went zip like that. That
Speaker 11: was eleven o'clock at night. We had over a dozen
Speaker 11: people here. Everybody saw it.
Speaker 4: What was it?
Speaker 11: That's what we keep saying, What the heck was it?
Speaker 11: I myself have seen thirty There's some people you know
Speaker 11: that are really skeptical.
Speaker 4: I don't blame them.
Speaker 11: I mean, unless you've seen something yourself, it's hard to
Speaker 11: believe that something is going on. There's people who think.
Speaker 4: That we are it.
Speaker 11: Well, if we are, that's a sad state of affairs.
Speaker 11: We can't just be it. There has to be life
Speaker 11: someplace else. It says in the Bible that God made
Speaker 11: the heavens and the earth. Well, if he made us,
Speaker 11: he definitely made them. After having this open for a
Speaker 11: month and hardly anybody came, and you know, I'd done
Speaker 11: over two hundred and fifty radio interviews before opening, expecting
Speaker 11: the cars to be lined up to come in here,
Speaker 11: well they weren't. So I got out front here one
Speaker 11: day and I just yelled, all all right, you guys,
Speaker 11: this was your big idea. I need help. I need
Speaker 11: at least one hundred dollars a day. From that day forward,
Speaker 11: I did one hundred a day. When the Psyche started coming,
Speaker 11: they said that we needed to put in the garden
Speaker 11: for a place for people to go sit, relax and meditate.
Speaker 11: Then folks started heading to it, and now we've got
Speaker 11: thousands of things out there.
Speaker 5: So what kinds of things do people lead in this garden?
Speaker 5: Whatever is in their car?
Speaker 11: I can't believe what people pull out of their cars,
Speaker 11: Like that stove door from you see it there it's
Speaker 11: an antique off of.
Speaker 5: A wood burning stove.
Speaker 11: You know, there's stories with some of this stuff. Some
Speaker 11: young people who came in and said, our mother totally
Speaker 11: believed in UFOs and aliens. She was killed in a
Speaker 11: motorcycle accident. We're leaving a motorcycle helmet in the garden.
Speaker 11: I've got another guy. He was in yesterday or day before, anyway,
Speaker 11: he left the ashes from his dog. Lots of folks
Speaker 11: come and leave ashes from their loved ones. There's been
Speaker 11: so many people who have benefited from this garden, and
Speaker 11: I have people who come just to ask for help here.
Speaker 11: There was a fellow that I knew over in Colorado Springs.
Speaker 11: He called me and he said, do you remember this
Speaker 11: Hispanic lady coming there with her family. I remembered. They
Speaker 11: helped her get out of the car. She could hardly
Speaker 11: even walk, and they took her out here and put
Speaker 11: her on the bench over here, and they were there
Speaker 11: for a long time, and it was like they were praying,
Speaker 11: you know. And he said, well, she swears to God
Speaker 11: that your garden healed her cancer. And I said, Hallelujah,
Speaker 11: praise the Lord, because I certainly hope that's what happened.
Speaker 11: People believe in this garden, they really do, and they
Speaker 11: most of them take it serious, you know, which is good.
Speaker 11: I'm glad. The extraterrestrials as a whole have some healing powers.
Speaker 11: If people would just open themselves up with love, they'd
Speaker 11: find out them.
Speaker 5: Love is the whole key.
Speaker 11: And when you see a UFO, you should send love
Speaker 11: and light to them to let them know that they
Speaker 11: are welcome. They say that it's a portal to a
Speaker 11: parallel universe and it's full of energy, and these are
Speaker 11: energy for Texas. We've got two of them out front here.
Speaker 11: So if you need any type of help in your life,
Speaker 11: you're to go in the garden and ask for it.
Speaker 11: The psychics told me that the Palladians are here to
Speaker 11: protect the entrances to the vortexas the Pladians, they'll help,
Speaker 11: and they're extraterrestrial, and they say that this whole place
Speaker 11: here is protected by the Pladians. I believe that. I
Speaker 11: totally believe it because we haven't had anything really bad
Speaker 11: happen here. I've had some statues stolen, but that's kids.
Speaker 11: So I'm very grateful. I'm very grateful.
Speaker 5: Have you ever seen an alien.
Speaker 4: Now just didn't.
Speaker 11: In my head, I kind of picture what it looked like. Yeah,
Speaker 11: you know, I do believe that they are here. I
Speaker 11: really do. And we can't see them there in another dimension,
Speaker 11: but I feel that they are here protecting good. I
Speaker 11: need protection.
Speaker 1: So if I wanted to walk into the garden today
Speaker 1: and ask for some sort of healing, how would I
Speaker 1: do that?
Speaker 11: You just go in there and ask. It's just that simple.
Speaker 5: All right, Let's see what this garden can do.
Speaker 11: People leave things out here to get their energy here
Speaker 11: as well, because they are energy vortex as. I even
Speaker 11: have folks who come and lay down in the garden
Speaker 11: to soak up the energy. And it's funny. In one
Speaker 11: area over here, when you lay down, it feels like
Speaker 11: you're getting pulled down, kind of crazy. That's right over here.
Speaker 11: That's where the compass goes nuts. You can stand here
Speaker 11: and the compass says that north is where north is
Speaker 11: supposed to be, and you move over there and north
Speaker 11: goes east.
Speaker 1: I regret to admit that unfortunately I do not own
Speaker 1: a compass, but my iPhone as one. Maybe it's not
Speaker 1: the most scientifically accurate way to measure this, but let's
Speaker 1: just entertain.
Speaker 4: It for a second.
Speaker 5: Okay, compass app is open. It's like, this is north,
Speaker 5: which seems to be correct.
Speaker 1: I pulled out the compass apps walker, stood still and
Speaker 1: turned slowly until it.
Speaker 5: Locked into North. Still says North. As I crept.
Speaker 1: Forward in a straight line, keeping the compass aligned with North,
Speaker 1: the arrow would start spinning around.
Speaker 5: North is like shifting.
Speaker 1: I reset and did it several times until I found
Speaker 1: the precise point where it seemed to all go haywire.
Speaker 5: I've not moved my phone at all, and it's saying
Speaker 5: North is this way.
Speaker 1: For whatever reason, when you stepped into this specific spot
Speaker 1: would start spinning around.
Speaker 5: It's right and here weird.
Speaker 1: I'll be honest, I have no clue what this means,
Speaker 1: but it was a fun little experiment.
Speaker 12: There's just this range of attitudes towards this. I think
Speaker 12: you're going to always have that. I think there are
Speaker 12: people that will never believe it because they don't want
Speaker 12: to believe it no matter what.
Speaker 5: You tell them. Here's investigative journalist Leslie Kane.
Speaker 12: There's all kinds of reasons that people will not believe it.
Speaker 12: And then there's all these true believers who have been
Speaker 12: believing things for seventy years that we have no way
Speaker 12: of proving just absolute true believers on the opposite side
Speaker 12: of the spectrum who just want to believe everything be
Speaker 12: nice if there was this sort of steady center, which
Speaker 12: we have more of now than we did before twenty seventeen,
Speaker 12: for sure, And I think the more that comes out,
Speaker 12: the more people will be drawn to that because they'll
Speaker 12: be willing to accept official scientific data. There are plenty
Speaker 12: of people that don't. I mean, there are people that
Speaker 12: don't accept data, such as who won the election. You know,
Speaker 12: people can just choose what they want to believe and
Speaker 12: don't believe. I'm not a psychologist, but I think fear,
Speaker 12: perhaps if they're really really frightened of what this might mean,
Speaker 12: it's too much of a threat to their psychology or
Speaker 12: their religion or their way of looking at the world.
Speaker 12: Probably that's what underlies it all, is some kind of
Speaker 12: fear of it. People's belief systems, their whole identity is
Speaker 12: tied up with their belief system.
Speaker 1: In a world already so polarized, how is anyone going
Speaker 1: to be convinced what's true and what's not anymore? And
Speaker 1: I mean, seriously, what does it actually take a part
Speaker 1: of me honestly feels like at this point, an actual,
Speaker 1: literal alien spaceship could land on the White House lawn,
Speaker 1: little green men stepping out and shaking their President's hand
Speaker 1: on live national television, and that still wouldn't do it
Speaker 1: For some people. And I'm not even saying they're wrong
Speaker 1: in thinking that way. That would be a little suspicious.
Speaker 1: But my point is, even if something that insane happened,
Speaker 1: as a society, we'd probably still be split on it,
Speaker 1: those who believe that what they're seeing is real and
Speaker 1: true and those who think it's all part of some
Speaker 1: bigger conspiracy. For some of us out there, even when
Speaker 1: shown the evidence of anything, it still isn't enough. The
Speaker 1: only way to really convince anybody of anything in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three is to experience something firsthand yourself.
Speaker 8: People have belief systems when it comes to usos.
Speaker 5: Here's Politico journalist Brian Bender.
Speaker 8: Very difficult to change their minds. I found that when
Speaker 8: I went to Roswell, I had never been to Roswell,
Speaker 8: and it's like going to like a religious festival. It's
Speaker 8: not religion in the way we think that people innately
Speaker 8: believe certain things, and no matter how much you'd say, well, hey,
Speaker 8: what about this, keep an open mind. It's like, now
Speaker 8: the government has alien bodies and they're in Area fifty one,
Speaker 8: and you can't tell me otherwise.
Speaker 4: I'm innately curious about the world around us.
Speaker 8: I mean, we've been exploring our own planet pretty much
Speaker 8: since the beginning. It's only natural that we started thinking about, well,
Speaker 8: what else is out there? It's our DNA. It is
Speaker 8: that thing that we see in the night that we
Speaker 8: can't explain, maybe from some other place. And I think
Speaker 8: our popular culture reflects our DNA, but then also takes
Speaker 8: it up a level. A lot of us are conditioned
Speaker 8: to believe things that aren't really objectively provable, yet we
Speaker 8: believe them anyway.
Speaker 5: But that's true of religion too, right.
Speaker 8: I mean, a lot of people are religious and they
Speaker 8: believe in things that you can't see or feel or understand. Necessarily.
Speaker 8: This problem that I think exists in the world, but
Speaker 8: it exists in the UFO world even more, which is,
Speaker 8: for lack of a better term, Charlatan's who purposely put
Speaker 8: out misleading, fake stuff.
Speaker 4: Just to get a rise, just to get clicks.
Speaker 8: A lot of them are just out to sort of
Speaker 8: make a buck, and they don't really care about the
Speaker 8: facts what's true. That just makes it all that much
Speaker 8: harder for the people that really want to try and
Speaker 8: get some answers. What is a good case, what is not,
Speaker 8: what's made up? What's maybe half true but the other
Speaker 8: half is kind of taken on a life of a tone.
Speaker 1: The topic of UFOs is so nuanced today, more so
Speaker 1: than ever, we have the tendency to boil it down
Speaker 1: to something so black and white. I believe or I
Speaker 1: don't believe, And until any of us have an experience
Speaker 1: of our own that challenges what we know, understand, or
Speaker 1: believe in, it's going to be hard for a lot
Speaker 1: of us to get there. Trying to siphon the credible
Speaker 1: stories from the deep muddy waters of the UFO subject
Speaker 1: is incredibly hard, and trust me, I've been doing it
Speaker 1: myself now for over a year and it hasn't gotten
Speaker 1: any easier. You don't have to go far on the
Speaker 1: Internet to find people who claim they've seen aliens up
Speaker 1: close in person in the sky or on the side
Speaker 1: of the road, usually at night, in a.
Speaker 5: Grainy, flip foam video.
Speaker 1: Even though it's twenty twenty three and it would be
Speaker 1: stupid to just blindly believe everything you see and read
Speaker 1: all the time, right, But for the ones that have
Speaker 1: the most evidence of something truly strange happening, accounts from
Speaker 1: otherwise seemingly ordinary people, you can't just immediately shoot those
Speaker 1: down either. For me, one of the general rules of
Speaker 1: thumb is the amount of people who saw it who
Speaker 1: weren't on drugs, leaving a grateful dead concert. A large
Speaker 1: group of people who actually saw the same exact thing
Speaker 1: as a journalist, to me, that's a story. It's something
Speaker 1: to investigate. Do their eyewitness accounts add up? Is the
Speaker 1: timing the same? Do they have physical proof of what
Speaker 1: they saw? Imagine a valley full of people all seeing
Speaker 1: a huge spacecraft flying over Phoenix, Arizona, their phones and
Speaker 1: cameras all capturing the same thing, A bright, colossal craft
Speaker 1: just floating there in the sky. Sometimes fact is stranger
Speaker 1: than fiction. The Phoenix Light this is nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 8: Over the course of much of the day, thousands and thousands.
Speaker 4: Of people claimed to have seen the same thing.
Speaker 1: Witnesses first part of the craft in Nevada at seven
Speaker 1: to fifty five pm that night, Then twenty minutes later,
Speaker 1: a former police officer reported seeing it over two hundred
Speaker 1: miles southeast and from there the calls around Phoenix started
Speaker 1: rolling in.
Speaker 8: A lot of the testimony is similar at very dark,
Speaker 8: triangular shaped craft with lights along it, very large, totally quiet,
Speaker 8: made no noise, and no seeming engines or propulsion system.
Speaker 8: The governor of Arizona saw it and was willing to
Speaker 8: talk about it.
Speaker 1: The Governor of Arizona held a press conference about it.
Speaker 1: He actually brought out one of his aids in an
Speaker 1: alien costume, making light of the situation. But a decade
Speaker 1: later even he said on CNN that he actually believes
Speaker 1: it was quote some form of alien spacecraft. Something strange
Speaker 1: happened in the sky over Arizona that still hasn't been
Speaker 1: fully explained, and in reality, we may never know exactly
Speaker 1: what happened that night.
Speaker 8: America West pilots flying into Phoenix Airport, Man, nothing is huge.
Speaker 8: What the hell is that I could land on it?
Speaker 1: There's these lights, six lights and the shape of a
Speaker 1: triangle right over the airport.
Speaker 4: The actor Kurt Russell.
Speaker 1: According to him, he was about a half mile from
Speaker 1: landing his plane when his son asked him what these
Speaker 1: strange lights were in the sky. Russell looked over and
Speaker 1: saw six bright lights in a V shape coming his direction.
Speaker 1: He called the tower to report it, and they responded
Speaker 1: saying they saw nothing on their radar.
Speaker 8: Evidence is not proof, right, It's just more data, it's
Speaker 8: more facts. But I think the more they pile up
Speaker 8: and the more they match. I think the question of
Speaker 8: evidence is at the heart of all of this audio video.
Speaker 8: Talking about it in national security terms, not talking about
Speaker 8: it in science fiction terms. As a journalist, I'm always
Speaker 8: interested in what did they say the day they saw it.
Speaker 1: One of the most credible accounts of a UFO siding
Speaker 1: I found actually happened in more recent history. This particular
Speaker 1: incident was recorded live as it was happening in December
Speaker 1: of nineteen ninety four. The accounts of dozens of witnesses,
Speaker 1: most of which police officers, were captured on tape at
Speaker 1: the nine one one Dispatch Center in Trumbull County, Ohio.
Speaker 1: Through Fouer requests, I've been able to obtain the actual
Speaker 1: tape from that night.
Speaker 11: Can I dispatched my health?
Speaker 6: Okay?
Speaker 9: Who she is?
Speaker 7: I mean?
Speaker 5: I got a first view where I'm asked. I just
Speaker 5: can't quite make it astromize an ocular. I came down
Speaker 5: it just duped over it with a big glowing object.
Speaker 1: Roy Anne Randolph was working as the nine one one
Speaker 1: dispatcher that night.
Speaker 13: We started getting a couple of phone calls about people
Speaker 13: who were seeing a light in the sky. Then the
Speaker 13: calls became more and more frequent.
Speaker 1: For hours, she was fielding chaotic calls from residents and
Speaker 1: police officers throughout the entire county.
Speaker 13: I where a guy orror called in on an unidentified
Speaker 13: object ever liberty or.
Speaker 11: Call I for all on an unidentified flying objecting basketball.
Speaker 5: Gas fucker has not moved.
Speaker 10: He could find like up in the air, falling and
Speaker 10: getting hurt their way from me, I couldee a red
Speaker 10: glow up the guy.
Speaker 11: With huge I heard about ten other people were to
Speaker 11: go swearing up and now they hat UFO.
Speaker 8: Thought there I watched it. That haven't gone any direction
Speaker 8: since I.
Speaker 13: Haven't watched it, And all of a sudden other police
Speaker 13: units in the general vicinity start seeing it.
Speaker 5: Well, watching it right through the pasty field.
Speaker 4: You're kis turned to But what did you really think
Speaker 4: it was?
Speaker 9: I don't know any AIRMENY came a convict he whatever
Speaker 9: hate the pig, and I could pet.
Speaker 7: I put the avenue on the other pride.
Speaker 2: I couldn't like.
Speaker 5: Fop in that air.
Speaker 13: These are seasoned police officers, fifteen year officers, people who
Speaker 13: have great credibility, and now they're seeing some things. I
Speaker 13: would like to think it could have been something from
Speaker 13: the air base.
Speaker 4: Do you know if anything that should be in our
Speaker 4: air bake at times of.
Speaker 6: The ground Look at the fred belt, But no, I
Speaker 6: go like from my own diameter or a young knocking out.
Speaker 5: There oat O create through mis on oscular but I
Speaker 5: can't quite make it out. His favorite color from white,
Speaker 5: the red, the green. There's colors of plants, pile fuck
Speaker 5: that has not loved.
Speaker 1: One officer in particular was dispatched to be first on
Speaker 1: the scene.
Speaker 10: As I was en wrapped, five or six calls start
Speaker 10: coming in.
Speaker 14: By a huge light in the sky. I was at
Speaker 14: a stop sign. A big beam of light came upon
Speaker 14: my vehicle.
Speaker 5: All at once.
Speaker 14: My car, shut off, my computer, my radio. I saw
Speaker 14: a huge light in the sky just hit in my car.
Speaker 14: I had no idea what it was. I slammed my
Speaker 14: car in the park, got out of the car.
Speaker 10: There was no sound. I couldn't hear anything. It lit
Speaker 10: this whole street up, discovering there no sound.
Speaker 5: Oh my god, I hope that's Applian for you.
Speaker 10: Oh Gie, I please you Appliant Hall, please find You're ready.
Speaker 8: For this ship.
Speaker 5: Space Wait, that's your name? Inhabitat lit smoke Weed play,
Speaker 5: did take a lean It she been on g This
Speaker 5: is a bean bag. I've been going Gene because a
Speaker 5: cool right now. She was over penning up.
Speaker 9: I've been talking Yo Japan in the bends of super
Speaker 9: T shirt sleeve, budding top turn of vert riding.
Speaker 5: Then you whether you gotta bend down and saying the parapet.
Speaker 5: We's been a doncom and good sweaters. John Na and
Speaker 5: nine helped. It was boom out of guys, we are
Speaker 5: not a devil.
Speaker 1: High Strange is an eight part series released weekly for
Speaker 1: free every Thursday, But if you'd like to bene the
Speaker 1: whole series right now, you can subscribe to Tenderfoot plus
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts to get all the episodes right now.
Speaker 1: Follow the show on TikTok and Instagram at high Strange,
Speaker 1: and you can follow me on Twitter and Instagram at
Speaker 1: Payne Lindsay. If you have your own UFO story, email
Speaker 1: us at tips at high strange dot com.
Speaker 5: High Strange.
Speaker 1: It's a production by Tenderfoot TV in association with Cadence thirteen, created,
Speaker 1: hosted and edited by myself, Payne Lindsay. Executive producers are
Speaker 1: myself and Donald Albright. Editing by Mike Rooney, Cooper Skinner
Speaker 1: and myself. Original score by Makeup and Vanity Set, Sound design,
Speaker 1: mixing and mastering by Cooper Skinner. Additional production by Mike Rooney,
Speaker 1: Dylan Harrington, Eric Quintana, Sean Nurney, Meredith Stedman, and Sidney Evans.
Speaker 5: Our cover art is by Polygon.
Speaker 1: This episode features the song space Cadet by metro Booman
Speaker 1: featuring Gunna, written by Wesley tyre Glass, Sergio Kitchens, Leland Tyler,
Speaker 1: Wayne Alan Ritter, and Jack Queis Webster, performed by metro
Speaker 1: Booman featuring Gunna courtesy of Republic Records under license from
Speaker 1: Universal Music Enterprises for metro Booman in three hundred Entertainment
Speaker 1: for Gunna. Special thanks to Orrin Rosenbaum and the whole
Speaker 1: team at UTA, the Nord Group, Station sixteen, Beck Media
Speaker 1: and Marketing, as well as Chris Corcoran and the team
Speaker 1: at Cadence thirteen. Check out the show's website at Highstrange
Speaker 1: dot com and if you're enjoying the show, please help
Speaker 1: us out by rating and reviewing the podcast and share
Speaker 1: it with your friends.
Speaker 5: Thanks for listening.