Speaker 1: High Strange is released weekly every Thursday, brought to you
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Speaker 1: it's available right now on Apple Podcasts for all Tenderfoot
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Speaker 2: For more information, check out the show notes. Enjoy the episode.
Speaker 3: The first gate we're going here. This one is the
Speaker 3: main gate. Where we're going is an entrance, but it's
Speaker 3: about forty minutes from the base. This is an active
Speaker 3: base on people think it isn't it is. I've seen
Speaker 3: too many planes over the years. I've seen too many
Speaker 3: things they train. Look how many cameras That one rotates
Speaker 3: and watches us. That one sometimes will follow you, and
Speaker 3: then you have three cameras on that pullback.
Speaker 4: There you have a camera to the right.
Speaker 3: I don't know of any government installation of any kind
Speaker 3: in the country that goes to the level of secrecy
Speaker 3: this one does.
Speaker 5: This is it right here?
Speaker 3: If you cross, they will detain you. I hold you
Speaker 3: in federal prisons six months to a year.
Speaker 2: So you said, I probably shouldn't cross that stop side.
Speaker 4: Do not go through that gate. I'm not going with you.
Speaker 2: If you do, welcome to high stranger.
Speaker 4: Here.
Speaker 6: If you do ones like part of this mythology, it's
Speaker 6: just become the sort of mecca for people. For a while,
Speaker 6: they wouldn't even acknowledge there was such a place. We
Speaker 6: know it exists, but it's extremely secretive. The base develops
Speaker 6: our most advanced secret military aircraft, so we might not
Speaker 6: find out about something for years after it already happens
Speaker 6: at that base and they're test flying it, and it's
Speaker 6: very very sensitive because you don't want our adversaries to
Speaker 6: know about what we're doing. I mean, it makes complete sense
Speaker 6: that it would be secret. There's always people going around
Speaker 6: trying to peek in and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Hey that's me. Let's face it, though.
Speaker 1: The odds of getting a glimpse of anything extraordinary here
Speaker 1: are pretty much zero. But with all the hype around
Speaker 1: Area fifty one, this is a place that I still
Speaker 1: want to see with my own eyes.
Speaker 6: You get in big trouble if you try to cross
Speaker 6: fences and things that are all around that base.
Speaker 1: Indeed they do, at least that's what the sign says,
Speaker 1: And apparently in twenty nineteen it actually happened. A man
Speaker 1: with a quote cylindrical object in his hands, approached the
Speaker 1: base entrance and just kept on walking, and when he
Speaker 1: ultimately breached the security gate, he was shot.
Speaker 2: Dead on site by a guard. Yeah, we're not doing
Speaker 2: all that.
Speaker 1: Because of Area fifty one's place in UFO pop culture,
Speaker 1: it's attracted all kinds of people over the years. You
Speaker 1: might remember an event called Storm Area fifty one that
Speaker 1: happened a few years ago.
Speaker 7: Nevada officials are bracing for an invasion at Area fifty
Speaker 7: one by humans. Now the extraterrestrial hub is front and
Speaker 7: center thanks to a Facebook group dubbed Storm Area fifty one.
Speaker 7: They can't stop us all.
Speaker 1: In twenty nineteen, a Facebook event was made as a
Speaker 1: joke inviting people to raid Area fifty one.
Speaker 6: All these people logged into Facebook and said, yeah, i'll go,
Speaker 6: I'll go, I'll go, and it became this movement.
Speaker 1: Within a few months, the event had over two million
Speaker 1: people attending and the Internet was covered in alien.
Speaker 7: Memes, attracting more than two million fans. The movement quickly
Speaker 7: went from a joke to no laughing matter.
Speaker 6: The Storm Area fifty one declares we can move faster
Speaker 6: than their bullets.
Speaker 5: Let's see them aliens.
Speaker 6: I think it speaks to the frustration that people have
Speaker 6: that's been building up over decades, the fact that they're
Speaker 6: not told what we have, they're not given information by
Speaker 6: the government. This was sort of an expression of that
Speaker 6: they don't know what to do, but they don't know
Speaker 6: what to believe. Let's just go out there and protest.
Speaker 1: On September twentieth, twenty nineteen, the storm Area fifty one
Speaker 1: event really happened, but it was quite underwhelming. A few
Speaker 1: hundred people showed up, most in costumes and holding goofy signs,
Speaker 1: one reading clap alien cheeks what. As a result, six
Speaker 1: people were ultimately arrested, but thankfully no one was shot
Speaker 1: or killed.
Speaker 4: You work at Area fifty one, you're never supposed to
Speaker 4: tell anybody. You're not supposed to tell your loved ones.
Speaker 4: You have a contract that doesn't really exist.
Speaker 3: So somebody working at Area fifty one could work at
Speaker 3: Area fifty one their whole life and not know what's
Speaker 3: going on. They're entered into a room with security, they're
Speaker 3: working on at cog of the machine. They don't know
Speaker 3: what's going on in the room next to them. There's
Speaker 3: probably only a handful of people that really know what's
Speaker 3: going on in area fifty one at other places like it,
Speaker 3: and to that degree, it makes me wonder why, even
Speaker 3: if it was national defense, you still think that people
Speaker 3: that were working on it should know what they're working canon.
Speaker 3: It's more about what you don't see and what you
Speaker 3: don't hear about it, and why.
Speaker 4: They go to that level. I have no clue what
Speaker 4: do we know. We know nothing.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's all conspiracy opinion, so quite easily if
Speaker 3: they're hiding something here, this is a great place for it.
Speaker 3: There's nothing around it, so you could hide all kinds
Speaker 3: of stuff here, I was told by a sheriff. Once
Speaker 3: you enter the base through the gate, there's another gate
Speaker 3: five minutes in, another gate like ten minutes in, so
Speaker 3: you're passing by multiple gates after you get the first
Speaker 3: initial one. If you drive into it, and you're going
Speaker 3: to be surrounded right away.
Speaker 4: This is it rare.
Speaker 1: Our guide parked the suv a short walk from the
Speaker 1: second gate. Dusty water was pulling across the desert road
Speaker 1: from a rare recent rain in the area, so from
Speaker 1: this point we had to get out and walk the
Speaker 1: rest of the way.
Speaker 4: It's actually the dotted line.
Speaker 1: The entrance is surrounded by two massive hills in the
Speaker 1: perfect position for an amazing vantage point on pretty much.
Speaker 2: Anything down below.
Speaker 1: I mean, I knew we were being watched, but it's
Speaker 1: almost like you could feel it too. Throughout the course
Speaker 1: of the day, our local guide rattled off fun facts
Speaker 1: and interesting anecdotes about the base.
Speaker 2: He's personally been coming here for years.
Speaker 1: The stories he told kept the illusion alive that we
Speaker 1: were in some kind of spy movie.
Speaker 2: I didn't mind it.
Speaker 8: Now.
Speaker 3: About a year ago in April, I was coming to
Speaker 3: Area fifty one. On the right hand side of the car,
Speaker 3: there's a stealth bomber. Literally it's flying alongside of us,
Speaker 3: and I said, hey, can you guys record that? So
Speaker 3: they take video of it. When they send it to me,
Speaker 3: you could hear the stealth. No, there was nothing in
Speaker 3: that video. We should have had it in the video.
Speaker 3: How did they miss it? Was they edited the video
Speaker 3: or there was something blocking it from recording, But whatever
Speaker 3: it was, we should have had it in the video.
Speaker 2: I don't know about all that, but maybe I don't know.
Speaker 1: I will say this, my phone had no service the
Speaker 1: whole time, and it was a little glitchy, freezing and
Speaker 1: moving slow, and it seemed to stop when we left
Speaker 1: the base.
Speaker 2: Probably just need the new iOS update right now.
Speaker 3: I've been coming here for years, and about a month ago,
Speaker 3: I was about five eight miles up something like that,
Speaker 3: and all of a sudden we thought it was aircraft
Speaker 3: because it was super loud.
Speaker 4: So I'm like, oh my, is that a jet? And
Speaker 4: then I realized it's the tire.
Speaker 3: I got out of my car to get the tire
Speaker 3: in the back, and there was a black truck, share
Speaker 3: of truck that I've never even seen in this area,
Speaker 3: and he stopped and asked me if I needed help.
Speaker 3: I don't know where he came from, and I'm not
Speaker 3: kidding about that. I literally did not see him coming
Speaker 3: or going, and it shocked me that actually somebody was
Speaker 3: right behind me.
Speaker 4: It's a fifteen minute dirt road.
Speaker 3: You can see all the way around you for miles,
Speaker 3: so if you had like a black truck or anything, you.
Speaker 4: Would see it coming from miles. My opinion.
Speaker 3: Now, there could be an entrance you only could see.
Speaker 4: On the right angle.
Speaker 2: Hang on, let me get my tenfoil hat.
Speaker 1: This place is certainly mysterious, and even objectively so you
Speaker 1: could say all kinds of crazy things about it.
Speaker 2: But the fact is we truly know nothing.
Speaker 1: Even if they're just testing our own advanced aircraft here,
Speaker 1: it's not really a stretch to believe that they could
Speaker 1: take their security measures to James Bond level.
Speaker 9: Shit.
Speaker 1: Thinking about all this stuff starts brewing this internal question,
Speaker 1: do you want to be a skeptic, a believer, a
Speaker 1: complete neutral?
Speaker 2: Do you not care at all?
Speaker 1: For me, it's the idea of wanting to believe versus
Speaker 1: This sounds insane. As the sun was starting to set,
Speaker 1: we called it a wrap on our Area fifty one adventure.
Speaker 1: We saw no aliens or spaceships, but I got to
Speaker 1: witness firsthand a level of secure, already in flat out
Speaker 1: secrecy that I've never really seen before.
Speaker 2: And for the links that they go to in order
Speaker 2: to hide and.
Speaker 1: Protect this place, you'd at least expect or even hope
Speaker 1: they're doing something pretty damn cool in there. Or maybe
Speaker 1: it's just a private golf course for senators.
Speaker 2: Who knows.
Speaker 10: We're going to talk about flying saucers. We're going to
Speaker 10: talk about them from the standpoint of reporters, not as Canadians,
Speaker 10: not as sensationalists.
Speaker 1: I've always had an interest in the subject of UFOs
Speaker 1: since I was a kid in the wouldn't that be
Speaker 1: cool if they were a real kind of way nothing serious.
Speaker 1: Not until I started making this show, going through cases,
Speaker 1: digging up old documents, and talking to witnesses that I
Speaker 1: start applying a more analytical approach to this thing. When
Speaker 1: it comes to UFOs, there's this common notion that the
Speaker 1: government knows more that they're hiding the truth. Most of
Speaker 1: the conspiracy stuff, in my opinion, is nonsense. But when
Speaker 1: you really peer down the barrel of the UFO topic,
Speaker 1: you'll find that this whole government secrecy thing is actually
Speaker 1: rooted in truth. Let's talk about Project blue Book for
Speaker 1: a second.
Speaker 11: In plain English, Project blue Book said there was a
Speaker 11: certain percentage of cases they could not explain.
Speaker 2: Here's Brian Bender.
Speaker 5: They said that that's fifty years ago.
Speaker 10: There have been a certain percentage of this volume of
Speaker 10: reports that have been made by credible observers of relatively
Speaker 10: incredible things. It is this group of observations that we
Speaker 10: now are attempting to resolve.
Speaker 11: From the late forties to the late sixties, Project blue
Speaker 11: Book was a public government wide effort led by the
Speaker 11: Air Force to look at this issue.
Speaker 6: The CIA convene this panel early nineteen fifties in which
Speaker 6: they decided to use ridicule and to use debunking as
Speaker 6: a tool.
Speaker 2: Here's Leslie Kane the tool.
Speaker 6: To get people to stop focusing on this so much.
Speaker 12: The United States Air Force has apparently clamped the lid
Speaker 12: on much information about UFOs and sought to ridicule such
Speaker 12: reports as it couldn't muffle.
Speaker 11: These agencies exist to withhold information.
Speaker 5: It is what they're about.
Speaker 11: They keep their weapons systems secret, how they work, sometimes
Speaker 11: even that they're developing them at all. They're not about
Speaker 11: spreading around everything they know. So if you understand that
Speaker 11: this is a culture built on keeping secrets.
Speaker 5: So that we have an edge over the bad guys,
Speaker 5: throw in the UFO topic.
Speaker 11: If they do know more things, but they don't know everything,
Speaker 11: what do you tell the world, Even if you did
Speaker 11: want to.
Speaker 10: Be transparent, There is no measurement that makes it possible
Speaker 10: for us to put them in any pattern for a deliberate,
Speaker 10: custom sort of analysis to take the next step.
Speaker 6: I don't like the term cover up. It has this
Speaker 6: connotation of sort of conspiracy theories. Nobody's disputing the fact
Speaker 6: that the government is withholding information.
Speaker 12: It's absolutely a fact private organizations exist that are wholly
Speaker 12: devoted to intensive investigation of every reported sighting of UFO's
Speaker 12: unknown flying objects. From their investigations have come certain tentative
Speaker 12: and disturbing conclusions.
Speaker 6: Project Bluebook used ridicule to make witnesses feel bad or
Speaker 6: diminish the issue. There's basically been some level of cover up,
Speaker 6: if you want to use that word, withholding of information
Speaker 6: from the public, providing misleading information to steer people away.
Speaker 2: In Layman's terms.
Speaker 1: Project Bluebook was created by the US Air Force in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty two to investigate UFO sidings, and among the
Speaker 1: hundreds of cases they looked into, many of them remained unsolved.
Speaker 1: The Air Force decided to try and lessen the public's
Speaker 1: interest in UFOs and embarked on a literal debunking campaign.
Speaker 1: They used the mass media to ridicule the topic, hired scientists, astronomers,
Speaker 1: and even celebrities to poke at this subject by putting
Speaker 1: forth ordinary explanations for the sidings, when in fact they
Speaker 1: themselves didn't know what they were and continue to investigate them.
Speaker 1: One line from the now declassified documents says, quote, we
Speaker 1: need to watch civilian UFO groups because of their potentially
Speaker 1: great influence on mass thinking. And this isn't a conspiracy theory.
Speaker 1: These are all facts from government documents that were available
Speaker 1: under the Freedom of Information Act.
Speaker 10: We have as a date come to only one firm conclusion.
Speaker 10: It does not contain any pattern of purpose that we
Speaker 10: can relate to any conceivable threat to the United States.
Speaker 6: The final closing statement of Project Bluebook said that no
Speaker 6: UFO has ever been a threat to national.
Speaker 11: Security, and then after that they said, well, we're done,
Speaker 11: we don't study this anymore. So why is there all
Speaker 11: this paper trail of UFO related things that were being done.
Speaker 11: We know from the archival record there were sightings over
Speaker 11: a military bases, the security personnel on those bases. We're
Speaker 11: told to go look into this. There's obviously a paper
Speaker 11: trail for that. They've definitely been studying it.
Speaker 6: In the nineteen seventies, Wealth of Documents came out a
Speaker 6: document that came out known as the bold Under Memo,
Speaker 6: saying well, even though we're closing Blue Book, everyone can
Speaker 6: still continue to report the UFO cases that are relevant
Speaker 6: to national security through other channels. Basically, it's acknowledging that
Speaker 6: UFOs are a national security threat, and yet The final
Speaker 6: closing statement of Projects Bluebook said that no UFO has
Speaker 6: ever been a threat to national security. So you have
Speaker 6: these documents written months apart that are absolutely contradictory of
Speaker 6: each other, all.
Speaker 2: These years later.
Speaker 13: If they're saying there's things out there and we don't
Speaker 13: know what they are, with that distrust already there, do
Speaker 13: we believe them now or how do you factor that in?
Speaker 6: I just think they're not saying everything.
Speaker 5: There's no evidence that there are is.
Speaker 6: There's no evidence that they're Russian or Chinese, but they
Speaker 6: won't say these are not man made objects.
Speaker 1: A Chinese by balloon was shot down about a month
Speaker 1: before this show was set to release. In less than
Speaker 1: a week after that, the US military shot down another
Speaker 1: unknown object off the coast of Alaska, then the next
Speaker 1: day another shot down over Canada, then went over northern
Speaker 1: Michigan the following day. The first object shot down was
Speaker 1: explained to be a spy surveillance balloon from China. There's
Speaker 1: tons of pictures on the Internet and even eleaked selfie
Speaker 1: from one of the pilots clearly a balloon, but the
Speaker 1: following three objects still have no explanation, and the government
Speaker 1: has since said they've been unable to locate the debris.
Speaker 1: Looking back at the Roswell incident, it's hard to shake
Speaker 1: this little feeling of deja vu.
Speaker 11: There's a lot of distrust and healthy distrust in sort
Speaker 11: of American political culture.
Speaker 5: I think the government knows more, even just understanding how
Speaker 5: the intelligence agencies work.
Speaker 11: There's a lot of things that they know, puzzle pieces
Speaker 11: that they've collected that they don't talk about. But I
Speaker 11: also think it's often because they have something and they
Speaker 11: don't quite know what it is. They're not like you
Speaker 11: and me. They're not hey, let's tell people what we know.
Speaker 11: It's a complete opposite. So when in doubt the stamp.
Speaker 6: Classified, just classify, classify, classify. As we all know, in
Speaker 6: the Department of Events, there's a tendency to classify. Lots
Speaker 6: of times there's a good reason for it, but other
Speaker 6: times there may not be. Just the automatic response. It's
Speaker 6: the way Department of Defense operates.
Speaker 11: A lot of times it's ridiculous stuff. It's not even
Speaker 11: something that would help the bad guys, because the bad
Speaker 11: guys already know it. The popular perception, this narrative that
Speaker 11: the government knows so much more and they're just not
Speaker 11: telling us. Some of that is drawn from reality, a
Speaker 11: lot of it is not. It comes from movies in Hollywood.
Speaker 11: Popular culture shows or movies that are built on a
Speaker 11: real thing or a real phenomenon tend to kind of
Speaker 11: go off the rails. There is this gap between what
Speaker 11: is probably the logical reality that we can verify and
Speaker 11: this woo woo stuff that we see on TV and
Speaker 11: in movies.
Speaker 5: I think the truth is somewhere in between follow the facts.
Speaker 11: I just go by what I've seen and the people
Speaker 11: that I've met spent years with.
Speaker 5: Maybe I'm a complete dupe and they've snowed me over
Speaker 5: for twenty some years.
Speaker 11: But as a journalist who covers the Pentagon, no matter
Speaker 11: what the explanation is, they're all hugely big news stories.
Speaker 11: Whether you think their aliens or not, we should probably
Speaker 11: do more to try to understand what these six are
Speaker 11: if we don't know what they are.
Speaker 8: Hillary and I went to Hawaii in twenty eighteen to
Speaker 8: the Big Islands, where all the telescopes were on top
Speaker 8: of the mountain, you know, including the Keck telescope, the
Speaker 8: largest in the world, and several countries have scientific teams there.
Speaker 8: So after we toured the telescope. We went down and
Speaker 8: met with them and I said, do you guys argue
Speaker 8: about the likelihood of life and outer space? He said,
Speaker 8: we have huge arguments. I said you do, He said,
Speaker 8: oh huge. I said, what's the range? He said, there
Speaker 8: are those of us who think it's eighty five percent
Speaker 8: likely and those of us who think it's ninety five.
Speaker 8: It's very unlikely that there is not life.
Speaker 1: Not everyone out there is trying to prove the existence
Speaker 1: of aliens. The scientific community can be pretty split on this.
Speaker 9: It's fun to solve things.
Speaker 1: Here's Mick West, owner of metabunk dot com, a community
Speaker 1: driven form dedicated to debunking.
Speaker 14: With UFOs in particular, You're presented with an interesting little puzzle,
Speaker 14: You get a little video and perhaps some background information,
Speaker 14: and then you've got to try to figure out what
Speaker 14: this thing actually is. I've looked at literally hundreds of cases.
Speaker 14: Most of those UFO cases are not interesting. The little
Speaker 14: dots in the sky or little blobs and things like
Speaker 14: that just simply not enough of information. It could be
Speaker 14: a balloon, it could be a bird, could be a drone,
Speaker 14: could be some kind of other aircraft, could be some
Speaker 14: kind of secret technology. It could be an unusual natural
Speaker 14: phenomena like ball lightning. It could be like an alien spaceship.
Speaker 14: These are all possible explanations, but you start off with
Speaker 14: the ones that are most likely. It sounds easy to
Speaker 14: say it's unexplained, but that's not an explanation.
Speaker 15: You know.
Speaker 14: Just saying a UFO sounds much simpler, but it's really not.
Speaker 14: People have cognitive biases. If someone's looking for something, they
Speaker 14: might find it. They might tend to see it. If
Speaker 14: they are looking for a UFO, just a generic UFO,
Speaker 14: they're going to find him. There are lots of things
Speaker 14: in the sky that you can't immediately identify. To spend
Speaker 14: one hour outside just looking at the sky, you will
Speaker 14: see all kinds of things. You'll be able to identify
Speaker 14: a bunch of them. But at some point you're going
Speaker 14: to see a white cigar shaped object off in the distance.
Speaker 14: It'll be a plane, but you won't be able to
Speaker 14: tell this it's a plane, And if you were of
Speaker 14: the mind to be looking for UFOs, you wouldn't interpret
Speaker 14: it as a plane. You think there's a UFO. People's
Speaker 14: perceptions very greatly. They're perfectly honest. People are not lying
Speaker 14: in these accounts. Say what they saw, but what they
Speaker 14: saw isn't really what was actually there, is what their
Speaker 14: brain perceived.
Speaker 1: Obviously, not every strange sighting of an object in the
Speaker 1: sky is truly something unexplainable. Our brains are not perfect,
Speaker 1: and occasionally we can remember details wrong. Working in true crime,
Speaker 1: I've seen this happen time and time again. People have
Speaker 1: been charged for a murder that an eyewitness saw them commit,
Speaker 1: only years later forensic evidence proving it was actually someone else.
Speaker 14: A few months ago, pilots started seeing what they described
Speaker 14: as lights in the sky. They see what looks like
Speaker 14: planes flying around and a holding pattern a racetrack passion
Speaker 14: because he shaped like a racetrack. Some pilots started reporting them,
Speaker 14: and then loads of other pilots started reporting them.
Speaker 16: Several pilots lightly I've reported seeing objects that they cannot
Speaker 16: explain flying over the US.
Speaker 14: These flying objects doing these circuits and the sky, and
Speaker 14: some of them actually took video.
Speaker 15: I just happened to look out the right hand side
Speaker 15: at the starboard side of the aircraft. I look up
Speaker 15: and I see two lights and they were doing like
Speaker 15: a circle like a racetrack. Next thing I know, there's
Speaker 15: three lights and then there's four lights, then there's five lights,
Speaker 15: and I'm like, what the heck's going on? So I
Speaker 15: made a call to air traffic control.
Speaker 17: They're going out of every aircraft ronder.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know, you're not entering any military or
Speaker 2: space or anything.
Speaker 8: I'm not sure.
Speaker 15: I thought I saw a shooting star, but the weird
Speaker 15: thing was it actually stopped and joined the circle. We'd
Speaker 15: forty seven thousand feet nobody's above us, and they kept moving,
Speaker 15: and at one point they moved up almost.
Speaker 5: Over the top rore. I was trying to bend my
Speaker 5: head to look because they were so high above us.
Speaker 14: So you could say, well, maybe it's an alien spaceship.
Speaker 14: Perhaps it's time travelers from the future. These are explanations
Speaker 14: that sound simple, but they're really not. Eventually, a guy
Speaker 14: on my forum, metabunk, came up with the right answer.
Speaker 14: What we were actually looking at were Starlink satellites. We
Speaker 14: took the actual data of these satellites and some a
Speaker 14: video where we knew the location, and we were able
Speaker 14: to sync them up. Here is the flare of this
Speaker 14: satellite where he gets brighter, and here is an actual
Speaker 14: Starling satellite, and we could match them perfectly. What the
Speaker 14: pilots were seeing were starling satellites that are in their
Speaker 14: final position right over the horizon with the sun behind them,
Speaker 14: just illuminated by the sun, and we could match them perfectly.
Speaker 14: The pilots thought that these things were moving in circles.
Speaker 14: It turns out this was kind of an optical illusion,
Speaker 14: because what happened was the satellites were moving across their
Speaker 14: field of view, and they were get seem brighter and
Speaker 14: then dimming, and then another one would come along. It
Speaker 14: kind of looked like from their perspective, it was just
Speaker 14: one thing that was moving in circles. I think that
Speaker 14: tells you a number of interesting things. I mean, one
Speaker 14: is that eyewitness accounts aren't always going to be reliable.
Speaker 14: Sometimes people mess up, sometimes equipment fails. We know these
Speaker 14: things happen, and we know coincidences happen. We know that
Speaker 14: sometimes something happens on the same day as another thing
Speaker 14: that seems really weird. Sometimes you see something on TV,
Speaker 14: then you see the same thing down the street. The
Speaker 14: weird coincidence they happen. Is that actually stranger than the alternatives.
Speaker 14: If I give an explanation that requires a few hoops
Speaker 14: to be jumped through.
Speaker 9: Say, it requires the radar.
Speaker 14: To be faulty and someone to have made a mistake,
Speaker 14: to have misperceived something from their flight. It sounds like
Speaker 14: I'm having to jump through a whole bunch of hoops.
Speaker 14: But is a radar failing and someone making a mistake
Speaker 14: and someone else misperceiving something and someone else taking a video?
Speaker 14: Is that actually stranger than the discovery of a new
Speaker 14: alien race visiting Earth with their spaceships. If UFOs are
Speaker 14: something like aliens, that would tell us something really significant
Speaker 14: about the universe. Monumental is significant in terms of human's
Speaker 14: place in the world. A lot of human society is
Speaker 14: based upon religion, and religion is kind of predicated on
Speaker 14: the idea that God created man and the universe for man.
Speaker 9: And it's just that.
Speaker 14: If all of a sudden you get these aliens thrown
Speaker 14: into the mix, that's going to upend a bunch of
Speaker 14: people's perceptions about the way the world works. It'll also
Speaker 14: upend things like technology, how do we get to the stars?
Speaker 14: You know, how do we extend our lives? How do
Speaker 14: we know what happens after death? So there's all these
Speaker 14: questions that people are just fundamentally super interested in that
Speaker 14: look like they might have answers if some really advanced
Speaker 14: alien civilization came here.
Speaker 9: It pushes a lot of buttons.
Speaker 14: You want to avoid being an advocate for one explanation.
Speaker 14: And I think a mistake people make when they're investigating
Speaker 14: things is they think of this is what it probably is.
Speaker 14: They decide in their minds, you know, this is where
Speaker 14: it is, and then they spend all their time trying
Speaker 14: to make an argument that it is that thing, which
Speaker 14: is kind of a bad approach. If anything, you should
Speaker 14: be doing the opposite. You should be trying to disprove
Speaker 14: the human brain is wired to recognize patterns. Paridelia is
Speaker 14: seeing patterns where patterns don't exist, like you see patterns
Speaker 14: in random data. You see faces in the knots of
Speaker 14: a tree, you see Jesus in this slight toast. It's
Speaker 14: just a natural human thing. It's not hard to get
Speaker 14: something that's simply unidentified. If you just see a white
Speaker 14: cigar shaped object moving in the sky and it's like
Speaker 14: thirty miles away, it's probably going to be a plane,
Speaker 14: but it's a UFO because you can't tell exactly what
Speaker 14: it is.
Speaker 1: According to the Pentagon, they've cataloged over five hundred UFO
Speaker 1: sidings in recent years, and over three hundred of them
Speaker 1: were in twenty twenty two alone. Out of these new cases,
Speaker 1: six of them were ruled to be airborne clutter, twenty
Speaker 1: six were drones, and one hundred and sixty three were
Speaker 1: likely balloons. That leaves one hundred and seventy one cases
Speaker 1: that have no explanation at all.
Speaker 14: UFOs are really only compelling to me if they do
Speaker 14: something interesting. If you see a white cigar shaped object
Speaker 14: zip across the sky, stop at one point to the sky,
Speaker 14: zoom down to the ground, and shoot off into space,
Speaker 14: be really compelling. I think you've always got to keep
Speaker 14: an open mind. You've got to recognize that there is
Speaker 14: a possibility that some of the cases that don't have
Speaker 14: an immediate and obvious explanation could be some kind of
Speaker 14: advanced technology, could be something that a foreign power has developed.
Speaker 14: It could be a secret US military program, It could
Speaker 14: be visiting aliens. These are possibilities that we shouldn't eliminate
Speaker 14: just because they sound really outrageous, but you've got to
Speaker 14: keep them in the context of where the evidence actually is.
Speaker 14: If we have something that unambiguously demonstrates advanced physics related
Speaker 14: by a reliable source. That would be a real strong
Speaker 14: pointer towards it being something new, that there was something
Speaker 14: going on.
Speaker 6: What makes it case credible is when there's a lot
Speaker 6: of data. Definitely, multiple witnesses is a basic criteria. If
Speaker 6: the witnesses are military and highly trained, that gives it
Speaker 6: another level of credibility, as opposed to like guys at
Speaker 6: three in the morning drinking beer on their back porch.
Speaker 17: Right.
Speaker 5: It's like any detective story.
Speaker 11: The more people that have seen it from different vantage
Speaker 11: points have similar testimonies, the credibility of those people.
Speaker 5: What are the facts versus what is just opinioned.
Speaker 11: The most interesting cases are the ones that fit into
Speaker 11: that category.
Speaker 5: Lots of people reported seeing it, Lots of their testimonies
Speaker 5: are similar what they saw and when they saw it.
Speaker 11: Cases like that, you can't just dismiss them.
Speaker 18: This is Woodbridge Airfield, an American Air Force base in
Speaker 18: eastern England.
Speaker 5: Woodbridgefield was the sight of.
Speaker 18: Something that witnesses say seemed to be taken from science fiction.
Speaker 1: Around Christmas time in nineteen eighty, multiple UFOs were reported
Speaker 1: over a United States military base in eastern England.
Speaker 18: This official US Air Force report obtained under the Freedom
Speaker 18: of Information Act documents two UFO incidents that were intensely
Speaker 18: investigated by the Air Force. A triangular luminous flying object
Speaker 18: with a red light on top and a series of
Speaker 18: blue lights underneath. A circular, translucent ground hugging disc various
Speaker 18: lights moving erratically about the night sky, one of which
Speaker 18: occasionally beamed the shaft of white light downward.
Speaker 1: It is now known infamously as the Rendalsham Forest incident.
Speaker 1: The event occurred over three days and involved multiple witnesses
Speaker 1: in the military that were stationed on the base. What
Speaker 1: these men encountered in the Rendalsham Forest in nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: remains unexplained to this day. I was able to track
Speaker 1: down one of the witnesses, a retired military officer who's
Speaker 1: now in his late seventies.
Speaker 9: I'm just gonna put this in.
Speaker 17: Front of sarted.
Speaker 1: If you want to start, maybe you could just tell
Speaker 1: us your name of the retired rank.
Speaker 16: My name is Charles Halt. Thirty one years ago. I
Speaker 16: was in the Air Force Deputy based Command during the
Speaker 16: nineteen eighties and was witnessed to an unusual event that's
Speaker 16: kind of left mark on me. What happened in the
Speaker 16: forest over three nights. In our contacts, what we know unexplainable.
Speaker 16: It's a burden. There's so much nonsense, so much clutter.
Speaker 16: There are more, how shall I say, people on the
Speaker 16: fringe of this subject than you can believe.
Speaker 5: I meet a lot of them. Believe me.
Speaker 16: I certainly haven't looked for fame or money. I haven't
Speaker 16: ask you for any money. My biggest concern is that
Speaker 16: the truth is out there.
Speaker 1: Charles Holt's story begins on December twenty seventh, nineteen eighty when.
Speaker 16: I walked into the police station. The desk sergeant started
Speaker 16: a laugh. I said, what's so funny? Thinking it's you know,
Speaker 16: he's been working too long, and it's on holidays and whatnot.
Speaker 16: He said, Carl, you're not going to believe this. Last night, Burrows,
Speaker 16: Peniston and Cabanasac were out in the woods chasing UFOs
Speaker 16: all night. I know it wasn't one of our aircraft.
Speaker 16: The following night, we were having.
Speaker 9: Our Christmas party.
Speaker 16: We were at the Woody barr all forty two officers
Speaker 16: with the exception of Bruce Ington, who was the on
Speaker 16: duty police lieutenant. We had just finished dinner and we're
Speaker 16: getting ready for dessert, and he came into the club
Speaker 16: white as a sheet. He said to me, we need
Speaker 16: to talk. We went into the coch room and he
Speaker 16: said it's back. The UFO's back. We get gassed up
Speaker 16: across the base. We go down the East Gate Road
Speaker 16: back into the forest. Meantime, my mom my little cassette
Speaker 16: recorder I carried with.
Speaker 1: Me everywhere throughout the night. Holt recorded his experience on
Speaker 1: a cassette tape. He's had this audio for over forty
Speaker 1: years now, and the tapes you're about to hear were
Speaker 1: the actual recordings from that night.
Speaker 19: Heyin some kind of mechanical prod, I just sent back
Speaker 19: into the white take.
Speaker 16: The range to gar Kier and we're milling around and
Speaker 16: discussing it. England tells me two nights ago, the guy
Speaker 16: saw this object in saw where landed and there's indentations
Speaker 16: marks in the soil.
Speaker 17: Okay an now approaching area within about twenty five thirty Peek,
Speaker 17: what kind of reasons do we get in the fine
Speaker 17: pine or clicks?
Speaker 4: And we get updated.
Speaker 16: We go into the forest and we do find these
Speaker 16: three indentations. There are about an inch and a half deep,
Speaker 16: about ten or twelve inches across equidistance apart. We get
Speaker 16: the geyer Kinder right, and we find out that the
Speaker 16: radiation readings are about nine times higher than background radiation
Speaker 16: in the indentations.
Speaker 17: Of the area, and they can seem kind we get
Speaker 17: out there on the scale, I guess renown of the
Speaker 17: high ten scale. The beater's definitely give them that. It's
Speaker 17: a fast to flex neil I've seen yet.
Speaker 16: There's rub marks or scratch marks on the trees, like
Speaker 16: something to rub them. When we look up, we can
Speaker 16: see branches broken. You can see the sky like something
Speaker 16: to come down.
Speaker 5: Through the trees.
Speaker 16: We take radiation readings on the trees and are higher
Speaker 16: on the inside toward the three indentations than they are
Speaker 16: on the backside.
Speaker 17: M h th be that.
Speaker 9: Well, that's kind of funny.
Speaker 17: That's that's you're right about your brain. I've never seen
Speaker 17: are that's full. I never seen a pine tree, but
Speaker 17: damage react to put that in. Yeah, well you're gonna
Speaker 17: stamp the bottle. We'll just.
Speaker 16: While we're meling around, somebody says, look out there, there's
Speaker 16: this glowing red object.
Speaker 17: You just find light that the other way where in
Speaker 17: a pendent position here three the heads in between the
Speaker 17: t There it is again, it's thread the head off
Speaker 17: my fast right there? What there it is? Yeah, I
Speaker 17: see it too. What is it?
Speaker 16: We don't know, sir, We don't got the east and
Speaker 16: in the farmer's field between us and the farmer's house
Speaker 16: is a glowing red objects.
Speaker 17: A strange small red light. Look to be that maybe
Speaker 17: a quarter to a half now, maybe before they're out.
Speaker 16: When we first saw the glowing object in the field,
Speaker 16: barnyard animals went wild.
Speaker 17: We're hearting, very strange sounds out of the farmer's burning ard.
Speaker 12: Animals were very very active, making lefflot of noise.
Speaker 16: It looks like the farmer's house is on fire from
Speaker 16: the reflection you see in the windows. We watched it
Speaker 16: for several minutes and it moves into the forest through
Speaker 16: the trees, obviously under intelligent control. I'm thinking, what am
Speaker 16: I going to tell people? I have no choice now.
Speaker 16: People know I'm out here. The command posts heard all
Speaker 16: these comments. They know something's going on. They're gonna all
Speaker 16: want an answer. This is just beyond anything I know that.
Speaker 16: I can't explain it. I don't have any answers.
Speaker 17: Let's start.
Speaker 19: It's the first light where we've seen for about one
Speaker 19: hundred and fifty two hundred yards fight just definitely call
Speaker 19: there's some type of strange.
Speaker 17: Fish and red light and still I saw I y'll
Speaker 17: look in in it.
Speaker 19: Too weird it it appears that you may you move
Speaker 19: a little bit this way. It's better than aspect hill.
Speaker 19: It's coming this way. It's definitely coming his way.
Speaker 16: It goes back out into the farmer's field directly overhead
Speaker 16: a very high speed. At least fifteen people in the
Speaker 16: weapons storage areas saw the objects in the sky, one.
Speaker 17: Front, one left each kind bykes off. You're something very
Speaker 17: very strange. It's better than aspat.
Speaker 16: I said, let's try and approach it. We move up
Speaker 16: to the edge of the forest and when we tried
Speaker 16: to get close, it went back out into the field.
Speaker 16: It knew we were trying to get close.
Speaker 17: Harry comes from the sop. He's not a turist now
Speaker 17: because it.
Speaker 16: Sparks are coming off so bright.
Speaker 5: It was like looking at the sun.
Speaker 4: The ground.
Speaker 16: This is beyond anything that work from where with.
Speaker 7: Her for a specie, Nika White, that's your name in habitat.
Speaker 4: And when that is das Nigga lives gets it, you
Speaker 4: know smoke a lot of greine, need a weed play,
Speaker 4: didn't take a lean with a lean and steeping on
Speaker 4: the g is a bean back. I've been going gene
Speaker 4: because of cool.
Speaker 3: Unless she was over see pen bet he goes depending
Speaker 3: bits of superty, show Snee top ton avert.
Speaker 2: Riding, then you well, you can kind of being down
Speaker 2: and saying the park.
Speaker 17: We've been a down.
Speaker 3: Coma and I helped those boom Nata guys a Nati devil.
Speaker 1: High Strange is an eight part series released weekly for
Speaker 1: free every Thursday. But if you'd like to beinge the
Speaker 1: whole series right now, you can subscribe to Tenderfoot plus
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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. High Strange
Speaker 1: is 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 make Up in Vanity, Set,
Speaker 1: sound design, mixing and mastering by Cooper Skinner. Additional production
Speaker 1: by Mike Rooney, Dylan Harrington, Eric Quintana, Sean Nurney, Meredith Stedman,
Speaker 1: and Sidney Evans.
Speaker 2: 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 tire Glass, Sergio Kitchens, Leland Tyler,
Speaker 1: Wayne Alan Ritter and Jack Quiz 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
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Speaker 2: Thanks for listening, SA