Speaker 1: Hello, it's Richard mclin smith here, not the impostor you've
Speaker 1: been listening to on the podcasts, the real one. Join
Speaker 1: me for Unexplained TV at YouTube dot com forward Slash
Speaker 1: Unexplained pod. For almost as long as we've been able
Speaker 1: to think, humanity's relationship with the night sky has been
Speaker 1: filled with mystery. From astrological charts in ancient Babylonia to
Speaker 1: ten thousand year old cave paintings discovered in India's Chatterscar State,
Speaker 1: the idea that the stars conceal more than their appearance
Speaker 1: has been at the center of human spirituality for millennia.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until nineteen forty seven, however, that the possible
Speaker 1: phenomenon of UFOs truly captured the publican imagination as a
Speaker 1: coherent hypothesis. Up until then, the idea of visitors from
Speaker 1: outer space was a disparate notion. Evidence was scant beyond
Speaker 1: a few anecdotal cases of alleged witness testimonies that furnished
Speaker 1: the pages of tabloid newspapers. After the mysterious events that
Speaker 1: took place near the town of Roswell, New Mexico, in
Speaker 1: that year, people began to question whether there was more
Speaker 1: to the idea of aliens than really met the eye.
Speaker 1: This was in part due to Cold War paranoia and
Speaker 1: the subsequent fallout from what seemed very much like a
Speaker 1: bungled attempt to cover up the true nature of the
Speaker 1: event by the US military. What is clear is that
Speaker 1: the strange events of June fourth, nineteen forty seven opened
Speaker 1: the floodgates on the reporting of similar incidences over the
Speaker 1: next few decades, no doubt. Amplified by the popular science
Speaker 1: fiction boom of the late fifties and early sixties, writers
Speaker 1: like Ursula k Legwen and Philip K. Dick, the subject
Speaker 1: of this season's second episode, Desire Production, were among the
Speaker 1: first authors to capitalize on this new wave. The term eupology,
Speaker 1: referring to attempts within the scientific and skeptic community to
Speaker 1: coordinate the study of unidentified flying objects, was coined in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty seven, and over the next decade, organizations like
Speaker 1: the Mutual UFO Network or move on became hugely influential
Speaker 1: in the field. With eupology now beginning to gain traction
Speaker 1: as a somewhat serious pursuit for academic study, funding became
Speaker 1: available for determining the veracity of any eyewitness testimonies that
Speaker 1: predated nineteen forty seven. The so called Foo Fighters that
Speaker 1: were supposedly cited by the US four hundhundred and fifteenth
Speaker 1: Night Fighter Squadron during the Second World War were studied extensively.
Speaker 1: Ghost Flyers, as they were called in North America and
Speaker 1: Europe during the nineteen thirties, garnered significant attention, as well
Speaker 1: as the curious mystery airships which reputedly appeared over parts
Speaker 1: of Michigan in eighteen ninety seven. Despite the increased level
Speaker 1: of scrutiny around contemporary cases and the back dated analysis
Speaker 1: of older phenomena, some of the field's most extraordinary stories
Speaker 1: still managed to fall through the cracks, and after an
Speaker 1: initial wave of enthusiasm during the mid twentieth century, eupology
Speaker 1: soon began to be treated as something of a pseudoscience
Speaker 1: by the academic community at large. Official explanations began to
Speaker 1: be taken at face value, and a general weariness took
Speaker 1: hold as more cranks and hoaxes were exposed, But there
Speaker 1: was still a significant number of ufologists and authors doggedly
Speaker 1: willing to stake their reputations on pursuing what they saw
Speaker 1: as the holy grail of truth eufologists like Bill Chalker,
Speaker 1: who in the nineteen eighties uncovered what he believed to
Speaker 1: be among the most bizarre and significant UFO cases in
Speaker 1: Australian history. You're listening to Unexplained, and I'm Richard McLean Smith.
Speaker 1: At just thirty three years old, Bill Chalker was already
Speaker 1: the most well known UFO researcher in his native Australia.
Speaker 1: Three years earlier, in nineteen eighty two, he'd been granted
Speaker 1: unprecedented access to the government's records archive, and what he
Speaker 1: reported from the interior of Canberra's Department of Defense Building
Speaker 1: was truly shocking. According to Bill, he saw references to
Speaker 1: a secret report from nineteen fifty four by respected nuclear
Speaker 1: physicist Harry Turner, in which comparative data between the Australian
Speaker 1: experience of UFOs and that of the United States showed
Speaker 1: clear evidence of extraterrestrial craft. Another document from October nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy three seemed to collate reliable witness testimony from two
Speaker 1: senior employees at a US communications base in Northwest Cape
Speaker 1: in Western Australia. Both apparently claimed to see a circular
Speaker 1: object measuring around thirty by thirty feet, flying in close
Speaker 1: proximity to their post. The two men noted how their
Speaker 1: experiences seemed almost to deliberately coincide with a full nuclear
Speaker 1: alert that was issued to American forces within the Pacific region,
Speaker 1: but more or less the precise same time. What baffled, however,
Speaker 1: according to Bill, was that quote what was seen by
Speaker 1: the deputy commander of the base and the fire captain
Speaker 1: was way beyond any kind of aircraft, drone or whatever
Speaker 1: was available to the military at that time, certainly according
Speaker 1: to their lieutenant commander. Following the publication of Bill's findings,
Speaker 1: first in the International UFO Reporter, then later several of
Speaker 1: Australia's mainstream news outlets, the Royal Australian Air Force took
Speaker 1: the bizarre and unprecedented decision to close its UFO files indefinitely.
Speaker 1: It's nineteen eighty five and Bill is firmly ensconced in
Speaker 1: his role as Mouffon's State representative for New South Wales
Speaker 1: in Australia. Having initially studied for a degree in chemistry
Speaker 1: and mathematics at the University of New England, Bill became
Speaker 1: more and more fascinated by fringe areas of science. His
Speaker 1: desire is to bring a more rationalist perspective to the
Speaker 1: sometimes discredited fields of eupology and paranormal research, going so
Speaker 1: far as to propose the influence of telluric currents low
Speaker 1: frequency electrical energy weights generated by mineral rich areas of
Speaker 1: the land to explain high rates of suggestibility and erratic
Speaker 1: behaviours among paranormal witnesses. He brings this theory to bear
Speaker 1: on several well known instances of unusual light activity in
Speaker 1: more arid rural areas of Australia. He even suggests that
Speaker 1: it might have something to do with the unusually high
Speaker 1: number of ghost sightings and supposed paranormal phenomena experienced in
Speaker 1: Australia's so called most haunted town, Kapundakapunda, established during the
Speaker 1: gold rush in eighteen forty two, gained its reputation as
Speaker 1: a mining town first and foremost. Bill suspects that the
Speaker 1: proximity of copper and other natural resources to large reservoirs
Speaker 1: of water may be responsible for generating low frequency electrical
Speaker 1: currents throughout the region. What Bill cannot take his mind off, however,
Speaker 1: is the letter he receives one morning at his home.
Speaker 1: He is just about to put on a second pot
Speaker 1: of coffee when the doorbell rings. It's the postman, with
Speaker 1: a pile of packages for Bill cradled under his arm.
Speaker 1: As Bill stoops from his hallway onto the verandah, he
Speaker 1: notes that one of the parcels the postman is carrying
Speaker 1: is not only thick, but hand addressed, it thinks Bill.
Speaker 1: As Bill thanks the postman and returns to his study,
Speaker 1: he takes a closer look at the hand addressed envelope.
Speaker 1: It's wrinkled and faded, and postmarked from Queensland. When he
Speaker 1: sits down and opens it, he finds the text is
Speaker 1: written neatly in a small and even hand. It's a
Speaker 1: letter covering nearly ten a four pages front and back,
Speaker 1: and as Bill begins to read it, he puts the
Speaker 1: rest of his morning's plans on hold. Dear Bill Chalker,
Speaker 1: the letter begins. My name is Cecil Danny mc gann,
Speaker 1: and I'm a sixty seven year old cattle farmer from
Speaker 1: New South Wales. I hesitate in writing this letter, owing
Speaker 1: to your reputation, but I feel that I have nowhere
Speaker 1: else to turn with my experience of something that has
Speaker 1: haunted me for almost sixty years. It's a Barmey spring
Speaker 1: night in nineteen twenty seven in Fernvale, a small rural
Speaker 1: settlement about fifty miles west of Brisbane in the outback
Speaker 1: of eastern Australia. The mcgans, a hardy and diligent bunch
Speaker 1: who for several generations have made their way as sharecroppers,
Speaker 1: run a two hundred acre dairy farm on the outskirts
Speaker 1: of the village. The land forms part of an estate
Speaker 1: owned by one of the biggest landlords in the county.
Speaker 1: Ten year old Cecil is one of six McGann children
Speaker 1: who have grown up on the farm. They don't have
Speaker 1: much money, but life is good, especially getting to be
Speaker 1: out in nature all day and night. They love that
Speaker 1: more than anything. Cecil doesn't remember how his family came
Speaker 1: to be at fern Vale exactly, only that when his
Speaker 1: family were first looking at the property, some locals had
Speaker 1: warned them about the land being cursed, but the family
Speaker 1: simply laughed it off and moved in anyway. That Barmey
Speaker 1: spring night, the family is out on the verandah, having
Speaker 1: finished their day's chores, when Cecil's younger sister points suddenly
Speaker 1: to something high up in the distance, it looks like
Speaker 1: a star moving erratically in the eastern sky over the horizon,
Speaker 1: only it seems to bob and weave in a way
Speaker 1: that is out of keeping with normal astrological activity. Cecil's father, Thomas,
Speaker 1: regards it stobically for a moment, its weather beaten, brow
Speaker 1: creasing as he squints to see through the dark. Seeing
Speaker 1: the confusion on his face, Cecil's sister becomes suddenly frightened.
Speaker 1: It's okay, it's nothing to be worried about, he says, warmly,
Speaker 1: telling the children to get off for bed. The following morning,
Speaker 1: Cecil wakes to find the house in an agitated state.
Speaker 1: One of the families heard has gone missing from the cowshit,
Speaker 1: even though it was locked when his father first checked
Speaker 1: it that morning. The family quickly saddle up together and
Speaker 1: charge out into the countryside to look for her. It's
Speaker 1: hours later when they finally come across the cow, miles
Speaker 1: from anywhere she could have gotten on foot, and something
Speaker 1: clearly isn't right. The heifer seems wildly disorientated and petrified.
Speaker 1: The others watch on as Thomas dismounts and approaches her
Speaker 1: with caution. Then he stops, there's something wrong with her eyes.
Speaker 1: It's almost as though they've been physically removed and put
Speaker 1: back in, like they're on the end of their stalks.
Speaker 1: As Thomas draws closer, the cow becomes even more erratic,
Speaker 1: almost arranged, thinks the farmer. Horrified at seeing her in
Speaker 1: that state, he feels he has no other option. He
Speaker 1: grabs his rifle from the saddle, takes aim at the cow,
Speaker 1: and fires. Over the next few nights, the family can't
Speaker 1: help but speculate about how one of their prize heard
Speaker 1: had escaped in such a way. In the end, they
Speaker 1: chalk it up to bad luck and try to put
Speaker 1: the incident behind them, But then things get even weirder.
Speaker 1: Over the next week, three more of the McGann's animals
Speaker 1: go missing. The difference this time is that when they're
Speaker 1: eventually found, the cows turn up dead. When a local
Speaker 1: vet is brought out to assess what happened to them,
Speaker 1: he seems as baffled as the family. The only thing
Speaker 1: he feels sure of is that each of the cows
Speaker 1: appear to have been scared to death. One night, their neighbor,
Speaker 1: mister Smith, turns up at the door wanting to speak
Speaker 1: to Cecil's father. Cecil watches from the stairs as the
Speaker 1: solemn looking man follows Thomas and his wife Sarah into
Speaker 1: the kitchen, where he proceeds to tell them that he
Speaker 1: and his wife have decided to leave their farm for good.
Speaker 1: Cecil and his siblings uddle close to the kitchen door
Speaker 1: to eavesdrop on the conversation. What they apparently hear astounds them.
Speaker 1: One night, Smith was walking home from the local primary
Speaker 1: school when he saw some kind of apparition on the road,
Speaker 1: something that had apparently frightened him so much that he
Speaker 1: lost his boots trying to get away from it. His
Speaker 1: only your memory of the night was the fear he felt,
Speaker 1: and that he was sure he'd seen something terrible, and
Speaker 1: when he finally found himself back home, he was horrified
Speaker 1: to find that hours of his life had gone missing.
Speaker 1: A few days later, three of the mcgans pigs disappear.
Speaker 1: Although one is never found, the other two are eventually
Speaker 1: located dead. Both apparently have puncture wounds around the neck
Speaker 1: area and have been completely drained of blood. When the
Speaker 1: mcgans later returned to the farmhouse, they find a herd
Speaker 1: of cows gathered in a circle around an enormous pool
Speaker 1: of blood. When the vet finally arrives, he confirms that
Speaker 1: the blood on the ground is pig's blood, but there
Speaker 1: is more to it. He also finds bits of hair
Speaker 1: and pig carcass among the waist, suggesting these are perhaps
Speaker 1: the last remaining vestiges of the pig that was still missing.
Speaker 1: That night, ten year old Cecil and his siblings are
Speaker 1: woken by a strange, incessant rumbling that seems to emanate
Speaker 1: from somewhere outside the property. As the noise continues, the
Speaker 1: family's terrified farm docks can be heard whimpering from out
Speaker 1: of the darkest corners of the house. Cecil's father, Thomas,
Speaker 1: grabs his gun and bolts outside to see what an
Speaker 1: earth is making the noise, only to find himself standing
Speaker 1: on the porch with nothing but the darkness of the
Speaker 1: night stretching out all around him. Inside, Cecil's mother, Sarah,
Speaker 1: listens anxiously to the sound. She's almost certain that beneath
Speaker 1: the noise she can just about make out what sounds
Speaker 1: like a multitude of voices talking to each other. The
Speaker 1: strange hum continues for two days. On the second night,
Speaker 1: Cecil's father, driven to distraction, is just on his way
Speaker 1: outside again to try and find its source, when he
Speaker 1: sees that the front door is wide open. Staring at
Speaker 1: the floor in shocked disbelief, he sees what appears to
Speaker 1: be muddy footprints heading back into the property, but there
Speaker 1: is no sign of an intruder. A few nights later,
Speaker 1: Cecil and his older brother Tom are playing among the
Speaker 1: trees that border the eastern flank of the farm. The
Speaker 1: sun steadily sets as they make their way home, blanketing
Speaker 1: everything in a surreal haze of neon, pinks and orange.
Speaker 1: Just then, the boys spot what appears to be a
Speaker 1: person holding a lantern in the distance. As they get
Speaker 1: closer to the house, they soon realize it is in
Speaker 1: fact some kind of machine that seems to be hovering
Speaker 1: above the house. Cecil later describes it as a massive
Speaker 1: metal cylinder of some sort in the shape of a
Speaker 1: giant biscuit tin. Just as they're about to reach it,
Speaker 1: the craft suddenly shoots off to their left and lands
Speaker 1: in the paddock. The boys rush inside the farmhouse to
Speaker 1: find their parents and two of their neighbors waiting for
Speaker 1: them in the living room. Boys, they say, thank God
Speaker 1: your home. When the mcgans and their neighbors go out
Speaker 1: to observe the paddock. The next day, they find a
Speaker 1: huge patch of burnt grass near to where the brothers
Speaker 1: had apparently seen the strange craft land. It isn't long
Speaker 1: before word gets back to the village of Fernvale, but
Speaker 1: something but cute ulia is happening at the mcgan's farm.
Speaker 1: Despite a welcome influx of support from some within the
Speaker 1: local community, others seem to treat the event with skepticism.
Speaker 1: Theories begin to circulate about what is taking place, everything
Speaker 1: from government experiments with new kinds of aircraft to the
Speaker 1: suggestion that the mcgans are faking the whole thing for attention.
Speaker 1: Some time later, Cecil is returning home from school. A
Speaker 1: few hundred feet away from the front door of the
Speaker 1: school is a small wooded glade. As Cecil nears the trees,
Speaker 1: he's suddenly startled by something perched high on top of
Speaker 1: one of the branches of a huge fur that seems
Speaker 1: to be watching him. He guesses it's about six feet
Speaker 1: tall and appears to have the features of a man,
Speaker 1: but also enormous wings like a bird. It's plumb glints
Speaker 1: in the sun. Cecil is transfixed, but the longer he
Speaker 1: gazes into its eyes, the more fearful he becomes. After
Speaker 1: running home to tell his parents what he'd seen, Cecil
Speaker 1: is shocked to discover how calm they both are, just
Speaker 1: simply nodding their heads as Cecil relays his story. That's
Speaker 1: the birdman, says his father. Finally, it's what mister Smith
Speaker 1: saw just before he left. Despite everything that had taken place,
Speaker 1: life went on as normal for them Agans. Being sharecroppers,
Speaker 1: they had no choice but to just keep on working
Speaker 1: as hard as they always had and work the farm
Speaker 1: as best they could. Cecil and his siblings were still
Speaker 1: expected to do their allocation of chores. His mother and
Speaker 1: father still rows at dawn every morning, Thomas to tend
Speaker 1: to the animals, and Sarah to keep the house clean,
Speaker 1: prepare the family's food, and look after the finances. It
Speaker 1: was some time later when Cecil and his brother were
Speaker 1: finishing off repairs at the farm's perimeter fence when they
Speaker 1: observe not one, but two of the supposed bird men
Speaker 1: flying low overhead. The boys watch aghast as the creatures
Speaker 1: seem to regard them, speaking to each other in a
Speaker 1: strange language. Back in Bill Chalker's home, Bill takes off
Speaker 1: his glasses and rubs them on the hem of his shirt,
Speaker 1: then stares again at Cecil's extraordinary letter. He isn't quite
Speaker 1: sure what to make of it all, but there's no
Speaker 1: doubting the profound solemnity that seems to emanate from the pages.
Speaker 1: Bill takes the coffee cup from his desk and heads
Speaker 1: out to the verandah. He stands thinking for a moment
Speaker 1: in the quiet of the mid afternoon, as the carda's
Speaker 1: chirrup and the sun. There's no question he'll have to
Speaker 1: pay Cecil McGann a visit as soon as possible. He
Speaker 1: also knows that in order to substantiate his story, he'll
Speaker 1: need to conduct a series of extensive interviews, not only
Speaker 1: with the man himself, but with any one in Fernvale
Speaker 1: who might remember the story. And so between nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: five and eighty six, Bill and Cecil work closely together
Speaker 1: on the narrative of the Outback Birdmen. When Bill eventually
Speaker 1: publishes the tale in nineteen ninety two, the Fernvale u
Speaker 1: FO becomes the most significant and divisive close encounter's story
Speaker 1: on the Australian public record. The contentiousness of the case
Speaker 1: is further compounded when in nineteen ninety nine, Cecil gets
Speaker 1: back in touch with Bill, this time sending him a
Speaker 1: typed document called Terror on the Tweed. In this letter,
Speaker 1: Cecil apparently provides Bill with additional details of things the
Speaker 1: family had seen in nineteen twenty seven, including the appearance
Speaker 1: of a strange man in an immaculate white suit, whom
Speaker 1: they had apparently seen one night standing in the dark
Speaker 1: in the living room of their house. Cecil McGann would
Speaker 1: go on to detail that during the time of the
Speaker 1: strange encounters, he developed a mystery growth on his leg.
Speaker 1: The growth seemed to lead to debilitating illness, which local
Speaker 1: doctors were baffled by and to which they could ascribe
Speaker 1: neither a cause nor a cure. Though Cecil was assailed
Speaker 1: by frequent fevers and long bouts of bed rest, he
Speaker 1: swore that when he was alone in the house one evening,
Speaker 1: he observed what he took to be small gray elephants
Speaker 1: at a distance from the farm. Since then, people have
Speaker 1: questioned Cecil's experiences, wondering why he only chose to come
Speaker 1: forward some sixty years after the events had taken place.
Speaker 1: It wasn't so much that his testimony was disbelieved. Though
Speaker 1: the provision of additional details did raise some eyebrows or
Speaker 1: that they doubted Bill's impressive credentials as an objective researcher,
Speaker 1: it was more the fact that they believed any number
Speaker 1: of credible explanations could be given for what the mc
Speaker 1: gann family had experienced. Suggestions have ranged from sightings of
Speaker 1: the strange and alien like Cassowariburt or the even rarer
Speaker 1: shoe Bill Stork, to what Bill Chalker himself has speculated
Speaker 1: that perhaps it was telluric currents that caused the family
Speaker 1: to hear and see inexplicable things. Whatever the cause of
Speaker 1: the strange events that supposedly occurred at the McGan ranch
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty seven, the convergence of both an apparent
Speaker 1: UFO and cryptid sighting, as well as the extensive number
Speaker 1: of supposed animal mutilations, certainly leaves more questions than answers.
Speaker 1: In light of recent declarations made by NASA and the
Speaker 1: Pentagon in the United States regarding what is now referred
Speaker 1: to as Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena or UAP activity, this almost
Speaker 1: one hundred year old case is receiving renewed interest. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: Given the passage of time and the fact that Cecil
Speaker 1: McGan has long since passed away, the mysterious case of
Speaker 1: the so called out Back bird Men will likely forever
Speaker 1: remain unexplained. This episode was written by James Connor Patterson
Speaker 1: and produced by me Richard McLain Smith. James is a
Speaker 1: brilliant writer and poet. His debut collection of poems, titled
Speaker 1: Bandit Country, Exploring the Hinterland between the North of Ireland
Speaker 1: and Republic, was shortlisted for the twenty twenty two T S.
Speaker 1: Eliot Prize and is out now to buy. Do check
Speaker 1: it out. Thank you as ever for listening to the show.
Speaker 1: Please subscribe and rate it if you haven't already done so.
Speaker 1: You can also now find us on TikTok at TikTok
Speaker 1: dot com, forward slash at Unexplained podcast Unexplained as an
Speaker 1: Avy Club Productions podcast created by Richard McClain smith. All
Speaker 1: other elements of the podcast, including the music, were also
Speaker 1: produced by me Richard McClain Smith. Unexplained. The book and
Speaker 1: audiobook is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase
Speaker 1: from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones and other bookstores. Please
Speaker 1: subscribe to and rate the show wherever you get your podcasts,
Speaker 1: and feel free to get in touch with any thoughts
Speaker 1: or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show.
Speaker 1: Perhaps you have an explanation of your own you'd like
Speaker 1: to share. You can find out more at Unexplained podcast
Speaker 1: dot com and reach us online through Twitter at Unexplained
Speaker 1: pod and Facebook at Facebook dot com. Forward Slash Unexplained Podcast.
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