Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Noah.
Speaker 3: They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 3: super producer Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you
Speaker 3: are you. You are here That makes this the stuff
Speaker 3: they don't want you to know. Previously, on Stuff they
Speaker 3: don't want you to know, in our weekly listener mail program,
Speaker 3: which informs a lot of our future episodes, we were
Speaker 3: contacted by our fellow conspiracy realist Uncle Benny. And guys,
Speaker 3: I don't know if we all remember this, but it was, uh,
Speaker 3: it was late July this year when Uncle Benny hipped
Speaker 3: us to one of the most bizarre UFO stories in
Speaker 3: modern history. With full disclosure, none of us have been
Speaker 3: to New Zealand, is that correct?
Speaker 4: No, but y'all have been practicing your Kiwi accents and
Speaker 4: I can't wait to hear your roll them out. And
Speaker 4: do you like the Michael Caine off of Kiwi accents?
Speaker 2: Well, I think it's gonna come out accidentally as we're
Speaker 2: saying like names.
Speaker 3: Accent is how we Yeah, I only just got the
Speaker 3: hang of narr as well? Or is that just exclusively ausy.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's a big country, It's true. I'm sure
Speaker 3: there's someone.
Speaker 4: A lot of sheep apparently a lot of yes, yes,
Speaker 4: a lot of works to watch.
Speaker 3: Out for them.
Speaker 2: Everything I know came from them. What we do in
Speaker 2: the Shadows, Out of the Concords tv SO.
Speaker 5: And Lord of the Rings come on, you're leaving out?
Speaker 2: Yeah, but like they didn't have New Zealand accents.
Speaker 5: It wasn't New Zealand is set in Atlanta.
Speaker 3: Right right, right, Although that would be great, give us
Speaker 3: your head cannon, give us your fandom of Lord of
Speaker 3: the Rings being New Zealand.
Speaker 2: A remake with accents us.
Speaker 3: Make entirely with accents, right we maybe some bits. We'll
Speaker 3: get to that and that's yeah, we'll chount for the beats.
Speaker 3: Uh So, levels, folks, levels, we're doing levels tonight. We
Speaker 3: also want to, of course, as we're affectionately describing here,
Speaker 3: we want to point out that we do not have
Speaker 3: anything other than painfully American accents. When we may mispronounce
Speaker 3: or cartoonishly pronounce a thing. It is for comedic value.
Speaker 3: It is with great respect to our friends in New Zealand,
Speaker 3: especially our friends on New Zealand's South Island.
Speaker 4: So that was a mouthful, man, I could feel it
Speaker 4: rolling around in there.
Speaker 3: Well yeah, like an anzac biscuit exactly.
Speaker 2: I'd love to do a quick shout out here to
Speaker 2: a TV show that I think we've mentioned once or
Speaker 2: twice before, because a lot of us know what we
Speaker 2: do in the shadows, A lot of us know the
Speaker 2: Concords right. Not many of us, I think, know about
Speaker 2: Wellington Paranormal.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, fantastic show and fantastic
Speaker 3: in this episode, we're headed to Wellington. We're headed to Wellington.
Speaker 3: We also want to shout out our good friends at
Speaker 3: Hanti Donna and can I also shout out a podcast
Speaker 3: that is kind of nerd culture stuff from some lovely
Speaker 3: dudes called The Weekly Planet, and they seem to be
Speaker 3: friends with the Aunty Donna guys.
Speaker 4: So if you like their shenanigans and you're into nerd
Speaker 4: culture stuff, highly recommend the Weekly Planet podcast.
Speaker 3: And to be clear, our friends at Auntie Donna are Australian.
Speaker 3: Will get into this. But let us shinan together, folks.
Speaker 3: Tonight's episode takes us on a journey through time and
Speaker 3: earthly space to the final days of December nineteen seventy
Speaker 3: eight on New Zealand's South Island. We're gonna pause for
Speaker 3: a word from our sponsors. Here are the facts. Let's
Speaker 3: start by kicking some geography. Okay, So, since not everybody
Speaker 3: has a world map directly behind their monitor or directly
Speaker 3: in front of them while they're listening, New Zealand is
Speaker 3: not Australia. New Zealand is very close to Australia. It's
Speaker 3: often been called the Canada of Australia. And by often called,
Speaker 3: we mean specifically by us on this show.
Speaker 4: Oh okay, god, okay, who's saying that fighting words always
Speaker 4: have a specific source?
Speaker 2: Yes? But also it is pretty far away. There's a
Speaker 2: whole sea in between, right, And it's not like the
Speaker 2: Black Sea or some of the smaller seas out there.
Speaker 2: This is at it's pretty much ocean, y'all. But but
Speaker 2: it is close, right, But it's but it's not so
Speaker 2: close that you can just take a quick flight over
Speaker 2: the way you can, you know, in the UK and
Speaker 2: to a lot of other places in Europe.
Speaker 4: It's right remote, right, I mean it's it certainly still
Speaker 4: feels that way, at least looking at it on the map.
Speaker 3: It has an outsized global impression on culture. It's also
Speaker 3: most famous for a lot of non Aussi conspiracy realist
Speaker 3: or non Kiwi conspiracy realist by being a place where
Speaker 3: the world's current billionaires are bunkering up. And so you
Speaker 3: may hear it mentioned often in that reg guard in
Speaker 3: shows of a similar milieu.
Speaker 2: And when you're looking at this place from above right
Speaker 2: to the southeast of mainland Australia, there you're going to
Speaker 2: see two primary large islands. Essentially, I'm thinking a little
Speaker 2: bit of a comparison to Japan with the way it's
Speaker 2: set up there perhaps, And we are talking, as you said, Ben,
Speaker 2: about the south of those two islands.
Speaker 3: Yeah, by far the largest of the two islands. In fact,
Speaker 3: the South Island is technically the twelfth largest island on
Speaker 3: the planet. And if you're looking at the map overhead
Speaker 3: right you're getting sat NAV or something. This may not
Speaker 3: look Titanic from your perspective, but it's important to remember
Speaker 3: it's a big place and for most of human history
Speaker 3: it was very sparsely populated, but it's home to stunning
Speaker 3: geography and natural wonders. True story, folks, the South Island
Speaker 3: is home to something called the Southern Alps. That's how
Speaker 3: amazing the mountains are. That's why to your earlier point.
Speaker 3: Now they filmed Lord of the Rings there lush, you
Speaker 3: can get it.
Speaker 2: You can get a bit of a sense of it
Speaker 2: from the map. But like of that mountain range, but
Speaker 2: it is not. It doesn't look like that. It looks
Speaker 2: like Lord of the Rings.
Speaker 3: Yeah, especially because of the plains surrounding the mountains. That
Speaker 3: that's why it becomes so majestic. Our story tonight takes
Speaker 3: place in a curious area called the Kaikoura Mountain Ranges.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: This is spelled k a I k o u r A. Again,
Speaker 3: we're not doing the accents unless it's for comedy. Uh.
Speaker 3: And it's These mountains are named after a small coastal
Speaker 3: town also called Kaikoura. Uh. It's an interesting thing because
Speaker 3: the ranges here, the Paikoura Ranges, are two parallel groups
Speaker 3: of mountains and they're in the northeast of the South Island.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 3: They are so big because they're surrounded by plains. Right
Speaker 3: and rolling hills. They're so big that you can see
Speaker 3: them from the south of the smaller, much more populous
Speaker 3: North Island. And here we have a cameo from our
Speaker 3: pow James Cook. Captain James Cook. Excuse me who originally
Speaker 3: when he was one of the Captain Cook the yes
Speaker 3: of the of the Captain Cook famu to be confused
Speaker 3: with James Kirk. This is different. This is right explorer
Speaker 3: and not to be confused with Jesse Pinkman from Breaking Bad,
Speaker 3: which I just rewatched. I was watching it last night too.
Speaker 4: Was the episode where they're kind of weighing whether or
Speaker 4: not to execute that that crazy.
Speaker 3: Spoilers. I didn't say whether they did. Internet guys, we've
Speaker 3: said it in the past, just twenty years old at
Speaker 3: this point that I think we've reached.
Speaker 5: The statute of limitations on okay, well the Internet.
Speaker 3: Here's the thing, we've discussed it on the show in
Speaker 3: the past. Breaking Bad is essentially car stuff but with
Speaker 3: meth hmmm, got to get that pseudo getting that pseudo, Sorry, Captain,
Speaker 3: I'm sorry. He puts the chili pee.
Speaker 5: In the in the yes, Breaking Bad coded right.
Speaker 3: Now, So this has uh these pop culture references are
Speaker 3: hopefully valuable to someone and thank you for tuning in
Speaker 3: the The The thing is, the ranges themselves are still
Speaker 3: pretty rural. As of some of the most up to
Speaker 3: date information from the New New Zealand Census, there are
Speaker 3: a little less than two thousand people living there day
Speaker 3: to day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, crazy, and these ranges are really important. Not
Speaker 2: many people there. There are two towns that we have
Speaker 2: to focus in on, Wellington and christ Church. Wellington is
Speaker 2: on the very southern tip of that the more northern island,
Speaker 2: the smaller island, a heavily populated place, lots of air
Speaker 2: traffic control going on there, lots of radar, lots of
Speaker 2: checking out what's going on.
Speaker 4: And you may recognize the name christ Church, which the
Speaker 4: same way that I did. It was the site of
Speaker 4: a really awful terrorist attack back in twenty nineteen at
Speaker 4: two mosques and it was a huge deal because it
Speaker 4: was a horrible situation, but also just things like that
Speaker 4: just don't happen there and it's such a you know,
Speaker 4: rural very like you said, kind of what's the word
Speaker 4: adyllic kind of you know place part of the world
Speaker 4: that it was just really shock.
Speaker 3: To hear about something like that coming. But we're talking
Speaker 3: about two big cities. So christ Church has a population
Speaker 3: of over three hundred and fifty thousand or so, and
Speaker 3: that makes it the third largest city in the country. Uh.
Speaker 3: The first one is Auckland and the second is as
Speaker 3: we mentioned, Wellington. They have a lot of toys that
Speaker 3: are going to be important for tonight's exploration exactly.
Speaker 2: And because they have a lot of toys and they're
Speaker 2: on that more populous island up there in the north,
Speaker 2: there are regular standard flights, huge cargo plains that travel
Speaker 2: from Wellington with a bunch of stuff to christ Church
Speaker 2: and they land and then they turn around and they
Speaker 2: go back to Wellington and Kaikura. This mountain range we're
Speaker 2: talking about is kind of smack dab in between these
Speaker 2: two christ Church by the way, on that southern island
Speaker 2: past Kaikoura.
Speaker 3: In the mount you have to traverse the mountains right, yes,
Speaker 3: you have to find the mountain pass.
Speaker 2: Or essentially go right over the ocean there right next
Speaker 2: to them.
Speaker 3: Or skirt skirt. Yeah. So the issue here is that
Speaker 3: most locals, most New Zealand nationals know of these mountains
Speaker 3: to one degree or another, but they gain national attention on.
Speaker 3: You know, I was thinking of the way to say it.
Speaker 3: Kaikora Mountain Ranges. For a lot of people pre nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy eight in New Zealand, they were like the Grand
Speaker 3: Canyon in the United States. They were a wonder you
Speaker 3: knew about. Right. You might know about the Adirondacks, but
Speaker 3: you never visit, right because maybe I haven't at the time.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the chairs are mega uncomfortable, right, they're.
Speaker 3: No AAMS chairs. I agree. It's late in the evening,
Speaker 3: about eleven pm local time on December twentieth, nineteen seventy eight,
Speaker 3: when a guy named Ian Ulfindel of the New Zealand
Speaker 3: RAF Royal Air Force reports unusual lights in the sky
Speaker 3: and he says, I can do the voice. He says,
Speaker 3: three objects. There's one big one and there are two
Speaker 3: smaller things like orbes well lighty boys, and they're making
Speaker 3: controlled movement and they're flying in some sort of pattern together.
Speaker 4: And this immediately, you know, has credence to it the
Speaker 4: way like the tic Tac stories did, because of who
Speaker 4: it's coming from. It's not just some like crackpot, you know,
Speaker 4: stargazing and seeing some weird and they're telescope. It's like
Speaker 4: someone who is used to monitoring these types of situations
Speaker 4: and is absolutely qualified to say this is a little.
Speaker 3: Weird, right, yeah, yeah, and he adds they're not aircraft.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, at least they don't seem like it, right.
Speaker 2: And the craziest thing is that the person he's talking
Speaker 2: to when he is reporting this stuff is the person
Speaker 2: who's manning the radar, and that person is also seeing
Speaker 2: stuff out there. So it's not like some of those
Speaker 2: UFO sightings that we've heard about in the past, where hey,
Speaker 2: we're not getting anything on radar, but there are weird lights.
Speaker 2: There's something physically out there.
Speaker 3: It's pinging on the radar. And this is when we
Speaker 3: fast forward to the part of the lore that may
Speaker 3: be most familiar, or the origin story that's most familiar
Speaker 3: to ufologists. It's December twenty, first wee hours, nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 3: A small crew is flying cargo plane in Argacy, this
Speaker 3: type of plane and the company they're flying for is
Speaker 3: called Safe Air Limited. Weirdly enough, they're delivering creates of
Speaker 3: newspapers and they're flying and they start clocking strange objects
Speaker 3: that seem to be bird dogging their craft, and they say,
Speaker 3: you can hear the clips from the and the crew
Speaker 3: themselves where they're saying, look, this is they're calling atc
Speaker 3: air Traffic Control and they're saying, look, these there are
Speaker 3: things around us, these strange orbs in the sky. They're
Speaker 3: not uniform in size. One is as large as a house,
Speaker 3: and they are tracking us, and then they're disappearing, and
Speaker 3: then they're inexplicably appearing somewhere else minutes later, and they're saying,
Speaker 3: these are blowing red or orange orbs. Some of them
Speaker 3: are pulsing like white beacons. And it kind of goes
Speaker 3: back to what you were saying there earlier, NOL. It's
Speaker 3: oddly not that unusual for isolated groups of people, even
Speaker 3: aviation experts, to witness aerial phenomena they can't immediately explain.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it is pretty striking that this is all
Speaker 2: occurring on the same night. All of this is happening.
Speaker 2: So we've got an officer at a base seeing something
Speaker 2: that he thinks are just planes. Oh wait, those aren't
Speaker 2: just planes, but they are on radar. And then you've
Speaker 2: got actual human beings in a flight over these mountains
Speaker 2: seeing the stuff. Pretty nuts.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's one of the primary reasons so there are
Speaker 3: three big reasons why the Kaikora lights are different from
Speaker 3: most reports. First, as you said, Matt, they're clocked by
Speaker 3: air traffic Control, they're out of Wellington. The argasy crew
Speaker 3: naturally calls in the event and ATC is able to
Speaker 3: confirm something is there, which means something was material enough
Speaker 3: to ping on a radar. They show up on the
Speaker 3: aircraft radar as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you also have all of these human beings
Speaker 2: who saw all this stuff later gave interviews where they
Speaker 2: said directly into a camera and microphone exactly what they saw.
Speaker 2: So Ian Uffindel, John Cordy, the guy who was in
Speaker 2: the radar control room, they're in Wellington.
Speaker 3: Sure they're pilots, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Vern Powell and Ian Pierre Peiri, I think is how
Speaker 2: you say his name. They all will talk about it openly.
Speaker 2: It's not like this thing that everybody's nervous about, because
Speaker 2: we've seen that before as well, right with UFO reports.
Speaker 2: People are nervous to talk about it, or they feel
Speaker 2: as though they might be shunned or looked at differently
Speaker 2: for seeing something like this and then saying it out loud.
Speaker 2: We don't see that happening with this case, we don't
Speaker 2: see a lot of the telltale things that make more
Speaker 2: skeptically minded of us think, oh, well, this is probably
Speaker 2: a hoax, or this isn't real, or you know, the
Speaker 2: way those people are talking, it doesn't seem right. We're
Speaker 2: not seeing that here.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And the second of these three things is that
Speaker 3: these lights eventually are cited by hundreds of other people,
Speaker 3: not on the specific planes. And we're using the word
Speaker 3: planes as a plural on purpose because the third big
Speaker 3: thing that differentiates this event is that it is a
Speaker 3: series of events. There are multiple instances of these lights
Speaker 3: being observed over the next few days, with all of
Speaker 3: the doodads we just mentioned, so.
Speaker 2: Maybe we get into film cameras.
Speaker 3: The second most famous sighting, which is December thirtieth, same year.
Speaker 3: Just a few days later, it's almost nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 3: there's an Australian television crew recording a similar event, also
Speaker 3: a board of cargo aircraft. This one is flying between
Speaker 3: you guessed it, folks, Wellington and christ Church. This is
Speaker 3: where we introduce a three person team, reporter Quentin Fogerty,
Speaker 3: a cameraman named David Crockett, and Nigher Crockett. The audio
Speaker 3: tech who is also David Crockett's wife. They are literally
Speaker 3: on the plane because get this, they're shooting b roll
Speaker 3: for a TV show about the earlier sightings, and lo
Speaker 3: and behold, they witness their own Kaikora lights at the time.
Speaker 3: This time they're able to film on sixty millimeter from
Speaker 3: the plane in color and this is again confirmed by
Speaker 3: Wellington Air Traffic Control. It's being observed by numerous witnesses.
Speaker 3: Do we want to play a clip of Fogerty talking
Speaker 3: about this. I've been on the edge of my seat
Speaker 3: waiting for it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we have several clips here, and let's go ahead
Speaker 2: and cite the source. We found these on a YouTube
Speaker 2: channel called Marlborough Video Vault. The video is titled the
Speaker 2: Kaikora UFOs Dash nineteen seventy eight and at least according
Speaker 2: to attribution on the description there, it was written and
Speaker 2: produced by Paul Davidson. So thank you Paul for doing this.
Speaker 2: The actual clips here are from nineteen seventy eight, there
Speaker 2: in late December, and this is nuts. So this first
Speaker 2: one we're just going to hear from Quentin Fogerty, who
Speaker 2: is there. I've seen him cited as being a Channel
Speaker 2: zero or Channel O Reporter, but also for TV one
Speaker 2: also News at six, so.
Speaker 3: Change their name a couple times over the decades as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, to my understanding, it was recorded as part
Speaker 2: of a television news broadcast after they had heard of
Speaker 2: this original sighting.
Speaker 3: Yer twenty first is the one the public knew about. Yeah.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The producer there, Leonard Lee, got got permission to go
Speaker 2: up on one of these flights, on one of these
Speaker 2: Argacy flights. So let's jump to this. This is Quentin Fogerty,
Speaker 2: just during the initial trip, describing what they're seeing through
Speaker 2: the windows of the Argusy cockpit. Oh, this is one
Speaker 2: of the pieces of information we need to know. This
Speaker 2: is a cargo plane, so it's not like maybe a
Speaker 2: plane you've flown in where you've got windows all down
Speaker 2: the sides and stuff. This is imagine just a big
Speaker 2: metal tube and then you can see out the front
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 3: Does that make sense, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: So everything they're seeing is the cockpit through the windows
Speaker 2: that the pilots are using to fly the plane in
Speaker 2: real time. Yes, So here we go.
Speaker 6: The very first thing we saw was these sort of
Speaker 6: falls of light that would just appear in the sky,
Speaker 6: and I mean it was really just looking through small
Speaker 6: windows at a very very black sky and seeing pulsating
Speaker 6: lights that started usually as a very very small pinprick
Speaker 6: of light and then would go into like a great
Speaker 6: globe of light.
Speaker 3: Now, that's the so we originally said, the real time report.
Speaker 3: That is Fogerty looking back and recalling in an interview
Speaker 3: where a documentary we saw. But if you check out
Speaker 3: this thing, which is freely available any anywhere you want
Speaker 3: to look online, you will see the lights that he
Speaker 3: is describing, and he appears to be describing those with accuracy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can hear kind of in the moment him
Speaker 2: describing it, but it's just not as eloquent. It's just,
Speaker 2: you know, he as even states in those later interviews,
Speaker 2: he's kind of he's a bit flum mixed experiencing this
Speaker 2: whole thing and just trying to describe it in real
Speaker 2: time there, but he's just not doing a great job.
Speaker 2: There are several pieces of that you can here though,
Speaker 2: mm hmm.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And here's the kicker, folks, here's the badger in
Speaker 3: the bag. They land the plane and we'll get into
Speaker 3: more of this as we continue. They land the plane,
Speaker 3: and in this instance, one of the objects, these inexplicable orbs,
Speaker 3: appears to follow the plane right up until it lands.
Speaker 3: And when they land, their camera guy is reloading his
Speaker 3: film right, he's getting better film stock. We're working live.
Speaker 3: The plane takes off once more and now it's followed
Speaker 3: by a quote orb like object for another fifteen minutes,
Speaker 3: also caught on film.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and we have one more clip. You don't mind, guys,
Speaker 2: of that moment, because this is one of the actual
Speaker 2: film clips from nineteen seventy eight. It's the moment that
Speaker 2: they're in the radar room in christ Church and they're
Speaker 2: getting word from Wellington that the lights are still out there.
Speaker 2: And in this moment, you have to imagine what's going
Speaker 2: through the minds of you know, these pilots and this
Speaker 2: film crew in this moment, they are kind of terrified
Speaker 2: because of this thing. We have to mention here that
Speaker 2: happened very recently to the moment. This is happening in
Speaker 2: December nineteen seventy eight. What happened to Frederick Valentich in
Speaker 2: October of nineteen seventy eight, And this has happened in Australia,
Speaker 2: so not very far from them. As we said, where
Speaker 2: a pilot. There's a lot of scuttle but a lot
Speaker 2: of rumors about this pilot that radioed in that he
Speaker 2: was seeing something that was metal and not an aircraft
Speaker 2: right before he disappeared. So these pilots were aware of this,
Speaker 2: This news crew was aware of this, and now they're
Speaker 2: up there seeing these lights and interacting with them. They
Speaker 2: imagined that perhaps they might meet the same fate that
Speaker 2: Frederick met right just disappearing plane and all.
Speaker 3: Yeah, nineteen seventy eight. Checkout our episode from twenty twenty three,
Speaker 3: the disappearance of Frederick Valentich.
Speaker 2: Absolutely absolutely so. Here is a quick clip of that
Speaker 2: moment right before they took off for the second time.
Speaker 8: We're now on the radar room at christ Church Airport.
Speaker 8: It's about quarter to two, and in about another twenty
Speaker 8: minutes we intend to take off again in the agacy
Speaker 8: and retrace the route we took only a few moments earlier.
Speaker 8: We've just heard from Wellington Radar that there are still
Speaker 8: targets in the kai Kura area, So this time we're
Speaker 8: hoping to get at a film than we did last time.
Speaker 8: And all I can say is we'll see what happens.
Speaker 2: There we go and so you can almost hear the
Speaker 2: nerves there and it was such a heroing experience that
Speaker 2: the sound record is Gary Krockett, the wife of David Krogett,
Speaker 2: the cameraon chose not to go back on the return flight.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and again they're a freelance team, uh, not expecting
Speaker 3: this double tap. These are b roll They're there for
Speaker 3: b roll in interviews, you know, in situ in the moment.
Speaker 3: So we've got to applaud crocket there for being for
Speaker 3: being the person who said, look, I'm here in a
Speaker 3: professional capacity and I don't want to be one of
Speaker 3: those suckers in the first act of a possible horror film,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean?
Speaker 5: Can we also just acknowledge that it's badass that his
Speaker 5: name is Davy Crockett.
Speaker 3: I just can't. Sorry, Well, I think we were all
Speaker 3: working it more impressive to us. Maybe maybe probably he
Speaker 3: was a little sick of hearing about it.
Speaker 2: Dave noted that there's some weird stuff when they got
Speaker 2: off the plane the first time, where he states that
Speaker 2: the exterior the exterior of the plane seemed to be
Speaker 2: magnetized or energized in some way, and like he it
Speaker 2: just felt weird.
Speaker 3: He says this after the fact.
Speaker 2: He does say it out after the fact, but he
Speaker 2: says he noted getting out of the plane and even
Speaker 2: was talking to his spouse at the time about how
Speaker 2: weird even the plane felt after experiencing that stuff.
Speaker 3: Right, was something too close to the craft. So from here,
Speaker 3: the case Garner's international attention and the December thirtieth incident
Speaker 3: is really responding to a spate of multiple instances that
Speaker 3: have been reported on some level from the twenty first
Speaker 3: to the thirtieth. The authorities feel they have to respond,
Speaker 3: and so the local police, the Carter Observatory out in
Speaker 3: Wellington again, the town with all the toys, the Royal
Speaker 3: New Zealand Air Force, the Ministry of Defense. It's like
Speaker 3: our Department of Defense here, or excuse me, kaugh cough,
Speaker 3: Department of War cough cough. And so they all get involved.
Speaker 3: And then this is in addition to scads of amit
Speaker 3: to our ufologists, established scientific experts with a lot of
Speaker 3: bona fides and related fields. The New Zealand Air Force
Speaker 3: literally puts a Skyhawk on standby in case we need
Speaker 3: somebody to scoop scoop for further sightings and half a
Speaker 3: world away, our friends at the company are analyzing later
Speaker 3: reports from a Lackey P three Orion, a real spoopy
Speaker 3: doop ship that was sent to monitor the area. Those
Speaker 3: two things, the Skyhawk and the Ariot, those occur away
Speaker 3: from the public eye. And right now as we're recording
Speaker 3: these lights, whatever they may be, they get sighted or
Speaker 3: reported every now and again in the year sense, often
Speaker 3: toward the end of the year, with sub reports being
Speaker 3: as recent as twenty to fifty makes you wonder makes
Speaker 3: first question would be, is this due to a recurrent
Speaker 3: meteorological condition, right that happens around that time of year,
Speaker 3: or something like.
Speaker 4: That ghost lights type situation or like swamp gas not that,
Speaker 4: but like that, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean this news report went out to the public,
Speaker 2: so people got to see the actual filmed footage of
Speaker 2: UFOs in nineteen seventy eight above this area. So you
Speaker 2: have to imagine that's increasing traffic maybe to look for things,
Speaker 2: more eyes on the skies as it were.
Speaker 3: It's it's priming interest.
Speaker 5: It's priming interest, but it could also be priming perception.
Speaker 4: You know, there could be same thing, right, right, And
Speaker 4: it also reminds me of the drone situation where we
Speaker 4: had a Jersey I believe, where there were drones sighted
Speaker 4: and these weird lights sighted and it was determined to
Speaker 4: be like an array of drones or whatever. But by
Speaker 4: virtue of all the reporting, more amateur dronists got their
Speaker 4: drones out there and just added to the situation, therefore
Speaker 4: upping the number of people citing them.
Speaker 3: It's just like kind of a self feeding system. Yes,
Speaker 3: it's a social dynamic. It's related to It's actually one
Speaker 3: of the primary reasons law enforcement never likes to say
Speaker 3: a serial murderer unless it's unavoidable. So we have a
Speaker 3: mystery afoot here or a sky if you like, dude, awesome,
Speaker 3: that worked out. We can keep that part that So
Speaker 3: there's While there has been to date new material evidence
Speaker 3: recovered or at least publicly disclosed, this case checks all
Speaker 3: of the other boxes for a good UFO instance. We
Speaker 3: have multiple occurrences, we have a contained region, we have
Speaker 3: multiple witnesses, some of whom are aviation or radar experts.
Speaker 3: We have electronic confirmation, you name it. We've got everything
Speaker 3: but the physical evidence. And so it must be no
Speaker 3: surprise that almost half a century after that initial December twentieth,
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy eight clocking. People around the world are still asking,
Speaker 3: what on or off earth happened? Can we explain that
Speaker 3: Kaikora lights?
Speaker 5: Maybe we'll try, after I ward from my sponsor.
Speaker 3: Here's where it gets crazy. I thought it was already crazy.
Speaker 3: Ben thought it's been crazy this whole time.
Speaker 8: Just now.
Speaker 3: It's where we get to the explanation. Fair for uphold,
Speaker 3: and so often the well we have a soul to uphold.
Speaker 3: So often the uh, the conspiracies are found in the
Speaker 3: attempts to cover up things, right, not the original act.
Speaker 3: So uh yeah, it depends upon whom you ask. If
Speaker 3: we want to be technical, we'll get to the official
Speaker 3: conclusions and why experts still question those, But maybe we
Speaker 3: spend some more time on the primary source information about
Speaker 3: the sightings. The first person to visibly clock those lights, Yeah,
Speaker 3: that would be Bill Startup. That's his name.
Speaker 4: That's his name, Bill started We got Davy Crockett and
Speaker 4: Bill start old Billy Startup. But he was not a
Speaker 4: tech bro. In fact, when Bill and the crew first
Speaker 4: reported the lights, he was at a loss for what
Speaker 4: this thing might be. He did not have words to
Speaker 4: describe it. So he was left a bit flummoxed, much
Speaker 4: like the fellow in that clip we heard, and so
Speaker 4: he said, what it was?
Speaker 3: We do not know? That's all I wish I knew.
Speaker 2: He's one of the pilots, along with Bob guard right, who.
Speaker 3: Was in the clip though, Matt, did we hear from
Speaker 3: this guy?
Speaker 6: We have not heard of.
Speaker 3: We haven't heard from Bill startup? Bill Bill startups. The
Speaker 3: pilot who has to who has to call this in
Speaker 3: and it has to say, as you as you do, Oh,
Speaker 3: what it was? We don't know?
Speaker 5: I had to say, we do not know.
Speaker 3: It's so intense. I wish I do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, yeah, it's so interesting to see those guys
Speaker 2: in interviews after a long time and recalling it and
Speaker 2: just saying, dang, I really wish we knew what the
Speaker 2: heck that was, Like, yeah, that would be awesome if
Speaker 2: we knew what that was.
Speaker 3: They're not pissed, they're professionals. They're not wing nuts. They
Speaker 3: are people trying to do their job. And when you're
Speaker 3: doing when you are working in aviation, your least favorite
Speaker 3: thing is an unanswered question. That's that's the issue, because
Speaker 3: if you know what a problem is, if you can
Speaker 3: identify what's happening. Then you you are on third base
Speaker 3: to the home run of figuring out how to fix
Speaker 3: it right. But if it's inexplicable, then you don't know
Speaker 3: which questions to begin asking. So let's go to John
Speaker 3: Cordy briefly mentioned earlier. This is the radio operator out
Speaker 3: of Wellington on the first night of the sightings, and
Speaker 3: he had a bit of humor about the strange event
Speaker 3: because atc guys are so cool man, so stressed out,
Speaker 3: but you gotta let stress roll off your back like
Speaker 3: water off a duck. So this guy says, we saw
Speaker 3: some little targets on a radar just Dowt off of Blenheim.
Speaker 3: Part of my pronunciation Cape Campbell Way. And we joked
Speaker 3: there was Father Christmas having a practice run with Rudolph
Speaker 3: in the front because it was just before Christmas. And
Speaker 3: I was like, oh, come on, man, you're cool. I
Speaker 3: was that always does this.
Speaker 5: Live updates, stand up there having a laugh, Give.
Speaker 3: Me a break, it's amazing. He continues in a more
Speaker 3: serious tone too, after he does the Father Christmas bit,
Speaker 3: which again, nice one, John, He says, this target then
Speaker 3: moved toward the argacy. Let's remember that's our cargo plane
Speaker 3: carrying the newspaper crates. The target quote turned with it.
Speaker 3: The argacy then quote tracked it with it for a
Speaker 3: good twenty to thirty min files. The target and the
Speaker 3: aircraft were at ninety degrees to each other the whole time,
Speaker 3: and Vern Powell's aircraft said that they could see a
Speaker 3: big red light that was definitely airborne, and we got
Speaker 3: to hit that factor real quick. There was another aircraft
Speaker 3: that was close enough to observe this as well. So
Speaker 3: now we don't just have one group of people in
Speaker 3: the skies. We have two planes in the sky.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Vern Powell and Ian Peiri, they were the first
Speaker 2: plane that saw this. Those are the fellows right that
Speaker 2: were actually hanging out with John Cordy in the very beginning,
Speaker 2: having that communication. Then those other two officers startup and guard.
Speaker 2: They are pilots. When the news crew went up on
Speaker 2: the thirtieth and.
Speaker 3: I think we have another quote da ling. Yeah, fast
Speaker 3: forward to the thirtieth. We mentioned that TV crew on
Speaker 3: the plane. We mentioned one of them, the journalists, Quentin Fogerty,
Speaker 3: and he is like everybody else on the craft, he
Speaker 3: is watching in alle bewilderment and no small degree of
Speaker 3: helplessness as these lights are. And I keep using this term, guys,
Speaker 3: it's just perfect for it. The lights are bird dogging
Speaker 3: their craft like Foo fighters in World War Two. Totally.
Speaker 5: And we do have a quote from Fogerty where he
Speaker 5: says the word pin pricks.
Speaker 4: I think again, And I'm sorry, guys if I didn't
Speaker 4: clock the audio of that, because that, to me is
Speaker 4: the classic test of a Kiwi accent. But here he
Speaker 4: says on the flight down, I'm not going to do
Speaker 4: the voice as well. What we basically saw were pin
Speaker 4: pricks of light that turned into great globes of light.
Speaker 4: We did hear him talking about globes of light earlier,
Speaker 4: and they were airborne and they were between us and
Speaker 4: the coast because we could see the coast and we
Speaker 4: could see the sea and we could see these things
Speaker 4: shining down. There's a lot of seas there.
Speaker 3: And then we have another sound clip we'd like to
Speaker 3: play from you from again to some of the footage
Speaker 3: we were referencing earlier.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can find this on the Kai Kora UFOs
Speaker 2: Dash in nineteen seventy eight, written and produced by Paul Davidson.
Speaker 2: Find it on YouTube. Here is a clip of these fellows.
Speaker 2: I think it's a couple of different people describing what
Speaker 2: they were seeing on that return flight from christ Church
Speaker 2: to Wellington.
Speaker 7: They were brilliant white, silvery white starbus.
Speaker 1: Was unusual that they were going vertically up and down
Speaker 1: at a rate that, in my view, precluded.
Speaker 3: Them from being any thing that I've known about, like
Speaker 3: helicopters already.
Speaker 7: I'm now looking over towards the right of the aircraft
Speaker 7: and we have an object inferred by Weddings Breda. It's
Speaker 7: been following us quite a while. It's about four miles
Speaker 7: away and it looks like the very faith start. But
Speaker 7: then it's a very bright, white, brillant light.
Speaker 6: I said, this is just a little bit fine.
Speaker 2: Then there we go.
Speaker 3: Mmm. Yeah. So again we're hearing different instances of people
Speaker 3: reporting very similar experiences.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the first voice you heard was Bob Guard, who's
Speaker 2: one of the pilots on that flight. And then you
Speaker 2: hear Quentin Fogerty replying with exactly what he's seeing doing
Speaker 2: the reporter in situ thing.
Speaker 3: And so now we have people with firsthand experience speaking
Speaker 3: with specific knowledge and specific description of what they witnessed.
Speaker 3: The witnesses here all report seeing similar things. They're not
Speaker 3: changing or really embellishing their stories, and it doesn't sound
Speaker 3: like they had time to work together right and hatch
Speaker 3: some sort of universal narrative. They all are saying there
Speaker 3: are large, brightly lit things that are moving to high speeds,
Speaker 3: that are making sudden turns which would be impossible for
Speaker 3: physical human made craft at the time type stuff.
Speaker 4: They're behaving in ways that science cannot fully explain. The
Speaker 4: speed with which they go from the water to the air,
Speaker 4: and then this, you know, the speed, the way they're
Speaker 4: maneuvering exactly.
Speaker 3: Where they appear to and they're explained from their perspective rights.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it should be noted that many of the witnesses
Speaker 2: saw one larger bright light and then several at least
Speaker 2: two smaller lights. Yes, that were they're seeing at the
Speaker 2: same time, and those three lights would come together, and
Speaker 2: sometimes they would shoot off into different directions and then
Speaker 2: return back together.
Speaker 3: Very strange.
Speaker 4: That's like that's close encounters type vibes, or like that's
Speaker 4: the way we've seen UFOs depict.
Speaker 3: I think there was an episode of The X Files too,
Speaker 3: where there were those kids that were.
Speaker 4: Kind of spying on the site where there were these
Speaker 4: like spinny light things kind of moving around, and then.
Speaker 3: I forget exactly how that episode went. But well, the
Speaker 3: idea too is we're telling you the most consistent stuff.
Speaker 3: So the number does change based on the eyewitness accounts.
Speaker 3: We're not even counting the hundreds of folks on the
Speaker 3: ground who confirm sightings multiple sites around the same time.
Speaker 3: It's definitely not counting the count I can't believe here
Speaker 3: with that. It's not counting the countless other folks, including
Speaker 3: experts who later analyze the film footage from the plane
Speaker 3: from the ground, especially after so many people are primed
Speaker 3: to expect this right, are turning their eyes to the
Speaker 3: night sky and wondering if they two, we'll see something incomprehensible. So, riddle,
Speaker 3: is this, what do the authorities say after it gets
Speaker 3: after it gets past a certain threshold of attention, you
Speaker 3: as the government do have to make some kind of response,
Speaker 3: even if you just say, nah, it's a windy house,
Speaker 3: no ghost here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you saw what your eyes thought were UFO, but
Speaker 2: really it was an illusion.
Speaker 3: Michael David blamed them, Yeah, David blained and David blamed
Speaker 3: them because the Ministry of Defense publicly initially said, Hey,
Speaker 3: these sightings are merely optical illusions, perhaps the result of
Speaker 3: atmospheric phenomena. How many of you are meteorologists, bump bump up.
Speaker 3: But witnesses who are involved, especially our primary aviators, are
Speaker 3: protagonists to the story. They're not having it. They feel
Speaker 3: if we're being honest, they feel there's an attempt at gaslighting,
Speaker 3: and they're professionally offended. Yes they should be.
Speaker 2: Well, somebody came over and said, you've forgotten about the
Speaker 2: radar You.
Speaker 3: Exactly exactly, I mean Startup in particular, just for that,
Speaker 3: I just love the name. Startup in Particular went on record,
Speaker 3: and you can hear him. We're jumping around time a
Speaker 3: little bit, but you can hear him listening out various
Speaker 3: proposed explanations. He's like, Oh, they said it was v
Speaker 3: they said it was Jupiter, they said it was harbor
Speaker 3: lights or squid boats. But I saw these lights doing
Speaker 3: like one hundred and forty knots, and harbor lights don't
Speaker 3: do that. Usually they're stationary if they're built the way
Speaker 3: they're supposed to be built.
Speaker 2: Oh, you know, and that explanation in particular, calling out
Speaker 2: other planetary bodies. That's something that came into play with
Speaker 2: Frederick Valentich over in Australia. The primary explanations of that
Speaker 2: early on were that he got really confused when he
Speaker 2: saw some of the planet lights. He thought they were
Speaker 2: following him, and then he put his plane into basically
Speaker 2: a downward spiral as he's watching these lights that are
Speaker 2: now reflected off the ocean. But you know, come on,
Speaker 2: that just seems I mean, I get it that people
Speaker 2: are looking in this instance, the mod Ministry, defense, whoever
Speaker 2: that's looking at this stuff is trying to find an
Speaker 2: explanation that makes right. It doesn't have to be anything weird, guys,
Speaker 2: it could be this, but it just seems so insulting
Speaker 2: to anybody who can fly a plane like that, right.
Speaker 3: Right, and again, if you listen to our episode on Valentich,
Speaker 3: you will see similar proposed explanations for what occurred in
Speaker 3: that tragedy. His body has yet to be recovered, by
Speaker 3: the way, here in twenty twenty five as we record.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what I'm saying. It was the exact same
Speaker 2: explanations given just a couple of months before this thing
Speaker 2: went down.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and the idea here is battle of narratives. Perhaps again,
Speaker 3: please do check out that episode on Valentich. I agreed,
Speaker 3: there's an eerie parallel which makes us worth a re listen.
Speaker 3: We also know that, as we're going to learn after
Speaker 3: our break here, the official initial conclusion of the Ministry
Speaker 3: of Defense was not entirely true, very Emily Dickinson style,
Speaker 3: tell the truth, but tell it slants, because you see,
Speaker 3: the whole time they were saying this to the public,
Speaker 3: New Zealand and a few other groups, few other friend
Speaker 3: groups were intensely interested in figuring out what the heck
Speaker 3: was going on, and so away from the press, they
Speaker 3: launched that inquiry we mentioned earlier. We'll take a break
Speaker 3: for a word from our sponsors and tell you what
Speaker 3: they found. We're back first theories, squid votes, all right,
Speaker 3: just the bubble here real quick, because I don't know
Speaker 3: about you guys. I was really excited in the very
Speaker 3: downtrodden when I learned that they did not mean squids
Speaker 3: piloting squid made craft. I know I was thinking that too.
Speaker 3: It was a fun image. Though that's a cool We
Speaker 3: always have that moment where we thought we will always
Speaker 3: have that moment. Well, squid boats are cool, though sure, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: they're a big part of the maritime economy. There's that
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, we're trying to be cool dads, all right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, let's talk about why they thought maybe that was it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: squid boats use big old lights shining down into the
Speaker 2: water to try and attract squid. So you can imagine
Speaker 2: that if there's some kind of reflection in glass. If
Speaker 2: there's some that's usually one of the proposals. Right, The
Speaker 2: pilot sees light that's actually on the water reflecting off
Speaker 2: their glass, and it appears to be moving around if
Speaker 2: the plane changes course in any way, it's like, oh wow,
Speaker 2: it's moving across my screen.
Speaker 3: There, or reflecting off cloud cover. M you know what
Speaker 3: I mean. This is the thing I do with with
Speaker 3: my cats. You know, you take a shiny mirror or
Speaker 3: reflect light and they chase the image of the light
Speaker 3: the way they chase a red dot or something like that.
Speaker 3: So the explanation is similar there, and we can see
Speaker 3: why that would be offensive to some professional aviators and
Speaker 3: the other thing. Okay, so this inquiry doesn't end in
Speaker 3: a specific, ironclad conclusion. It ends in something like a
Speaker 3: pitch meeting. So they say, oh, you don't like the
Speaker 3: squid boat explanation, Well, what about this? What if they're
Speaker 3: like unburned meteors.
Speaker 2: Ah, now we're getting somewhere, because that would clock radar, right,
Speaker 2: unlike the squid boat reflection. We don't get radar from that. Okay.
Speaker 2: And there was a meteor shower around that time in
Speaker 2: that area.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, okay, sure, big swing. Getting closer as far
Speaker 3: as explanations go. And then they said something, you know,
Speaker 3: very similar to the squid boat idea. They said, this
Speaker 3: could have been lights from trains or other earthly vehicles,
Speaker 3: atmospheric shenanigans, cloud physics. You guys know about planes. About
Speaker 3: how much do you know about astrophysics?
Speaker 2: Huh, cold, cold, they are right.
Speaker 3: And then they said, or what if it was light
Speaker 3: from planets like Venus and Jupiter. And at this point
Speaker 3: the pilots are going, I hate you guys. Why are
Speaker 3: you like this?
Speaker 2: Why aren't you do this? Can it just be we
Speaker 2: saw something crazy that we don't know about yet?
Speaker 3: Yeah, right exactly, which would be the Okham's razor of it.
Speaker 3: Governmental institutions generally do not like admitting they cannot explain
Speaker 3: a thing, right, So by this point there's the mass
Speaker 3: of the public. The Hoi polloi right, the vox popular.
Speaker 3: The Kaikoro lights have become a cultural phenomenon. So from
Speaker 3: the eighteen nineteen eighties, sorry I'm dating myself the nineteen
Speaker 3: eighties to now, even the most skeptical of locals in
Speaker 3: Kiwi communities will occasionally look up into the night sky
Speaker 3: around December and they'll say, hey, maybe it'll happen again,
Speaker 3: Maybe I'll see some UFOs visit at the end of
Speaker 3: the earthly year. Before we go, though, we do have
Speaker 3: to give a shout out to, of course, various researchers
Speaker 3: who have analyzed the footage. Countless people have done this.
Speaker 3: You can see it all over the internet. One of
Speaker 3: the most prominent is a moufon guy scientist named doctor
Speaker 3: Bruce mccabee.
Speaker 4: That's right, doctor Bruce maccabee, American scientists and ufologist with
Speaker 4: an MS and PhD in physics. Got some bona fides there,
Speaker 4: who's also just you know, as a little bonus an
Speaker 4: optical data processing expert.
Speaker 3: He concluded that the footage had.
Speaker 4: Captured the images and movements of the genuine article UFO.
Speaker 3: H yeah, and we've got quotes from him you can
Speaker 3: again read these or see them in various documentaries. He
Speaker 3: notes some of the same stuff we're saying that a
Speaker 3: big differentiator here is that radar plays a role in
Speaker 3: these sightings, So unlike a lot, here's what you get.
Speaker 3: Often you will often get UFO reports that are radar
Speaker 3: only right, so there's an ATC somewhere, or there's a
Speaker 3: totally legitimate thing abroad for some reason that gets a
Speaker 3: little pupupew on its radar and there's no eyewitness accounts
Speaker 3: because it happens in a place where people don't usually
Speaker 3: hang out.
Speaker 2: Yes, and you know who has really good radar technology, militaries,
Speaker 2: So it's often a military that goes, hey, what the
Speaker 2: heck is that over there, as in the instance in
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty three with Felix Monclaw where there was a
Speaker 2: radar blip in an area where there shouldn't be a
Speaker 2: radar blip because it's controlled airspace. So you send out
Speaker 2: a pilot to go check out what's going on, and
Speaker 2: in Felix's case, he and his plane disappeared. But that's
Speaker 2: beside the point. The whole point is the radar sightings
Speaker 2: occur a crazy number of times that we will never
Speaker 2: hear about.
Speaker 3: Right, because they're internal and there as a result, they're
Speaker 3: something that would maybe not be helpful to report to
Speaker 3: the public because in doing so, you're revealing your surveillance capability,
Speaker 3: your collection methods, all your fun stuff. Going back to maccabee,
Speaker 3: the next thing he reports is that it is more
Speaker 3: interesting to see. So we've got two things, right. Our
Speaker 3: only identification often internal for governments, and we've got visual
Speaker 3: only identification, often associated with civilians or non aviation experts.
Speaker 3: And when they are reporting something, there's often not a
Speaker 3: lot of instrumentation. We're not dismissing, we're just saying there's
Speaker 3: often not a lot of instrumentation that would confirm what
Speaker 3: they were saying happened at that time. So this means
Speaker 3: that we've got a golden goose here. We've got a
Speaker 3: ven diagram of a radar visual case. Witnesses are reporting
Speaker 3: something going in the same direction, obeying the same dynamics,
Speaker 3: the same trajectory and path as a target identified or
Speaker 3: a thing identified on radar. This is winning the lottery twice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, man, because that's why this one is so exciting.
Speaker 2: So then you've got this amazing person, Macabe who's looking
Speaker 2: at the film footage that this camera person, Davy Crockett,
Speaker 2: Dave he saw and filmed again with a handheld film
Speaker 2: camera in a cockpit that's you know, in an airplane
Speaker 2: that's in flight. And if you're serious, like a sixteen
Speaker 2: millimeters yes, insane, So imagine the heft and weight of
Speaker 2: this huge film canister above the lens.
Speaker 3: And he's.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, and he's leaning over people and through instrumentation
Speaker 2: to try and get footage. And when you look at
Speaker 2: the footage, it looks like that what you're imagining, crazy jumpy. Uh,
Speaker 2: you do see objects as he's trying to get focus
Speaker 2: in the black sky with a tiny little thing.
Speaker 4: When you're bouncing around like that and you're filming items
Speaker 4: that are way off in the horizon, you're gonna get
Speaker 4: all kinds of.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So that's why it's massively important and incredible that we
Speaker 2: have the words here of mister maccabee, who is a
Speaker 2: specialist in checking out that kind of stuf. Knowing, Okay,
Speaker 2: is the is that a lensing effect, is that the
Speaker 2: movement of the camera, Is that the actual shape of
Speaker 2: the object or is it out of focus? He's he's
Speaker 2: looking at all of this stuff. And he continues with
Speaker 2: a quote saying.
Speaker 4: These New Zealand sightings may be the most quote unquote instrumented.
Speaker 4: What's unpack that in civilian ufology with multiple witnesses, two
Speaker 4: independent tape recordings made during the sightings, color movie film,
Speaker 4: and ground and air radar instrue.
Speaker 5: I guess he's just referring to like.
Speaker 4: All of the cross check kind of like you know,
Speaker 4: parallels and and verifiable data points.
Speaker 3: Objective non qualitative confirmation that.
Speaker 4: Line up, and that there's like a timeline that can
Speaker 4: be confirmed for that is a big doub I'm shocked,
Speaker 4: guys that I'd not heard of this outside of this discussion.
Speaker 3: This is seems like it would be a bigger deal that, Yeah,
Speaker 3: the radar has has one opinion, yes this is here
Speaker 3: or no this is not. It's not going to give
Speaker 3: you some sort of laborious interview process about how it
Speaker 3: felt when a clock to a thing going from a
Speaker 3: to his head exactly exactly.
Speaker 4: And frankly, I mean the reports from these guys are
Speaker 4: pretty dispassionate too.
Speaker 3: We're not seeing a.
Speaker 5: Whole lot of like hyperbolic kind of talk.
Speaker 4: They seem real, steadfast, and they're you know, reporting their observations.
Speaker 3: You got to keep it together, ye crying. Crying is
Speaker 3: for when you land.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, and you see a real desire to know
Speaker 2: what the heck happened. In later interviews, several of the
Speaker 2: pilots were approached by Maccabee with you know, his findings
Speaker 2: after he analyzed the footage, and these pilots had given
Speaker 2: initial estimates of like how large they think the object
Speaker 2: is in the moment, how far away they think it is,
Speaker 2: and how fast it's traveling. One of the pilots comes
Speaker 2: forward and says, Maccabee told him that the object was
Speaker 2: around five miles away from your plane and it was
Speaker 2: probably as big as a two story building. After he's
Speaker 2: analyzed the optics, which again you have to take an
Speaker 2: expert's you know, viewpoint and say, Okay, that expert knows
Speaker 2: what they're talking about, knows what they're seeing. You also
Speaker 2: are taking into account the pilot's you know, vision and
Speaker 2: their estimates based on knowledge and wisdom. But at the
Speaker 2: same time it does make you realize, in the moment,
Speaker 2: when a human being, any of us, is experiencing something
Speaker 2: like this, we're trusting our eyes and our ears and
Speaker 2: all of our senses, but they may be a little
Speaker 2: off right, and you may also remember it a little off.
Speaker 2: But having a piece of footage and that radar like
Speaker 2: that let somebody even out of space and time observe
Speaker 2: it and say, oh my god, I think it was
Speaker 2: this because of you know, X, Y and Z.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And we also, as we mentioned with his bona fides,
Speaker 3: doctor mccabee is a as a career long member and
Speaker 3: champion and move on. So that might put some folks
Speaker 3: in the crowd automatically off, but we can tell you
Speaker 3: his findings. And he wrote a ton of stuff, by
Speaker 3: the way, not just about this but about other dodgy
Speaker 3: cases of UFO observations. And he was publicly ignored by
Speaker 3: the government of New Zealand. So you could say, hey,
Speaker 3: this is a cultural moment like Mothman out in Point Pleasant,
Speaker 3: West Virginia. You could say that, except that in twenty ten,
Speaker 3: the New Zealand military released a treasure their own Project
Speaker 3: Blue Book, really a treasure trove of previously classified reports
Speaker 3: that dated from two thousand and nine all the way
Speaker 3: back to nineteen fifty four, which means it naturally includes
Speaker 3: the Kakolites, and was released due to the Official Records Act,
Speaker 3: which is sort of the New Zealand version of FOYIA,
Speaker 3: the Freedom of Information Act. It's heavily redacted. Everybody got
Speaker 3: a deal on black highlighters right when they made these laws,
Speaker 3: so that you won't see a lot of specific names
Speaker 3: or other sensitive material. But we're talking two thousand pages
Speaker 3: of documents, most of which involves weird stuff in the sky,
Speaker 3: weird lights of the sky. And we found a we
Speaker 3: found a funny moment from from just prior to the
Speaker 3: release of this from the Royal Air Force themselves, and
Speaker 3: they were trying to get in front of it so
Speaker 3: hard we can we do the quote.
Speaker 2: Air Force Squadron leader Cave Tamriiki said the Defense Force
Speaker 2: did not have the resources to investigate UFO sightings and
Speaker 2: would not be commenting on the files contents.
Speaker 3: Mike, come on, come on, I hate when people do that,
Speaker 3: right Like, Hey, I'm gonna tell you something and that's
Speaker 3: it and no more questions. So speaking to the dominion Post,
Speaker 3: Tamriki notes, quote, this is understandable, all right, I'm being
Speaker 3: a jerk. This is understandable. Quote. We've just been a
Speaker 3: collection point for the information. We don't investigate or make reports.
Speaker 3: We haven't substantiated anything.
Speaker 2: In them, but here you go.
Speaker 3: But here it is. So we're not in charge of this.
Speaker 3: We have no comment. But you asked, have we complied?
Speaker 3: You can see why they wanted to get in front
Speaker 3: of it. The documents have a lot of wild stuff,
Speaker 3: again none of which is co signed by the Air Force.
Speaker 3: Alleged examples of alien writing, drawing, draw it, yeah, I know,
Speaker 3: drawings of flying saucers. And then here's one for the
Speaker 3: stargate fans in the crowd, in depth descriptions of extraterrestrials
Speaker 3: wearing Pharaoh mask.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's amazing. That's amazing. It's a good story from
Speaker 3: what the Air Force is telling us here. They for
Speaker 3: decades they got these reports and then they just put
Speaker 3: them here. Let me get one. They put them in
Speaker 3: a file folder. You know what I mean. I'm holding
Speaker 3: up a file folder, all right. That one's about cattle.
Speaker 8: So the U.
Speaker 3: So any agency, of course, is going to take pains
Speaker 3: to say, look, we just got what came in because
Speaker 3: we drew the short straw right and we didn't verify anything.
Speaker 3: But they also spend a lot of time in these
Speaker 3: documents on kai Kora specifically, on Kaikora specifically. The evidence
Speaker 3: gives lie to the original story. Guys. The original story
Speaker 3: is that New Zealand said stop panicking over weather phenomena.
Speaker 3: The real story is that internally they lost their bag
Speaker 3: over this. You know, they launched this inquiry because they
Speaker 3: were concerned. And I love the point of context we're
Speaker 3: bringing up here. It's still Cold War, right, They're concerned
Speaker 3: that there might be some vaguely described intruders. They don't
Speaker 3: define the intruders. They just say intruders, sort of like
Speaker 3: when your dog barks, it just says stranger.
Speaker 5: And anytime someone comes into my house, whether it's my
Speaker 5: kid or to Frida, I.
Speaker 3: Just go intruder, show yourself. You know, that's do you really?
Speaker 2: I do.
Speaker 3: It's sort of a bit. It's a joke. That's why
Speaker 3: I'm so paranoid.
Speaker 6: Man.
Speaker 3: We used to hang out. I would. I would get
Speaker 3: in front of your house and then text you to
Speaker 3: let out. You know, I was there before I touched
Speaker 3: the At.
Speaker 5: Least I didn't have one of those like paint cannon things.
Speaker 4: You remember those security cameras that would like pelt like
Speaker 4: intruders with paintballs.
Speaker 3: That's kind of cool. Oh, we talked about it. It
Speaker 3: was a really bad idea. It was like some strange
Speaker 3: news thing we talked about. Well, mack, cool idea. Well,
Speaker 3: depending on which side of the door you're on, So
Speaker 3: the inquiry here does make some Again, they end with
Speaker 3: a bunch of pitches laying well, maybe it's blah blah
Speaker 3: blahor moybees blah blah blah have you thought about blah
Speaker 3: blah blah. But their inquiry reaches one interesting thing. They
Speaker 3: eventually say, okay, we'll play if then. So the if
Speaker 3: then game. If the objects did exist, and if the
Speaker 3: multiple observations of those objects are correct, if they are accurate,
Speaker 3: then those objects logically have to be traveling at around
Speaker 3: ten eight hundred miles per hour, which for anybody playing
Speaker 3: along at home, is pretty fast.
Speaker 2: Yes, maybe too fast for a lot of the stuff.
Speaker 2: You know, we were going to bring in stuff about
Speaker 2: drone technology that we talked about that was in full
Speaker 2: effect in the eighties and they're been tests on like
Speaker 2: radio controlled drone like things since World War Two. So
Speaker 2: like there's all kinds of weird stuff that could be
Speaker 2: up there that maybe some other governments operating and testing. Sure,
Speaker 2: sure would be weird to be testing it that close
Speaker 2: New Zealand if you're another country.
Speaker 3: But you know, I don't know. I mean, if it's
Speaker 3: Cold War, right, and it's the Allies against the Axis,
Speaker 3: you know, just think.
Speaker 2: Again, nineteen seventy eight is like high time there.
Speaker 3: For some of that stuff. Maybe it takes a village
Speaker 3: later later Nole's friends at the company, the CIA will
Speaker 3: do you like I just three, I mean the US there.
Speaker 3: That's so they they analyzed this stuff on their own
Speaker 3: and they said, similar to what doctor mcabee said, who
Speaker 3: I suspect may have had some conversations, they said the
Speaker 3: quote large amount of docum minary evidence includes the recollection
Speaker 3: of seven witnesses to tape recordings made during the sightings,
Speaker 3: the detection of some unusual ground and airplane radar targets,
Speaker 3: and a sixteen millimeter color movie. So while they reached
Speaker 3: similar conclusions to those of New Zealand, the case is
Speaker 3: still out there. There's a curious wrinkle because we're telling
Speaker 3: you about this now declassified report as of twenty ten,
Speaker 3: or anthology of reports, but the documents, the original documents
Speaker 3: those reports are based on, are currently sealed up, still
Speaker 3: classified in New Zealand's national archive. Unless something changes, some
Speaker 3: of these original reports are not going to be released
Speaker 3: until twenty eighty. Are we still going to be making
Speaker 3: the show in twenty eighty? Guys? What are we? What's
Speaker 3: our situation?
Speaker 2: Who are we?
Speaker 7: Man?
Speaker 2: What is this?
Speaker 3: What even are we?
Speaker 2: Well, we've got less than two thousand days until the singularity,
Speaker 2: according to some, So you know, we'll see what happens there.
Speaker 3: Whenever we say some we meet according to us in
Speaker 3: an earlier episode of our show.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, Well all those billionaires hanging out on
Speaker 2: New Zealand might get a real close encounter. We'll see
Speaker 2: what happens with all of that stuff. I do want
Speaker 2: to point really quickly just to that original broadcast that
Speaker 2: happened in nineteen seventy eight. I couldn't find an actual
Speaker 2: clip of that recording or an archived version of that.
Speaker 2: Did you guys locate that anywhere? Just a full stop.
Speaker 2: This is holding in one video.
Speaker 3: It's been You can find clips of it in larger things.
Speaker 3: I think that's what we both found.
Speaker 2: We are looking for the original one. We're not sure
Speaker 2: if it is titled UFO The Closest Encounter, if that
Speaker 2: was the original broadcast or if that was like a
Speaker 2: rebroadcast right as we talked about, this footage was shown
Speaker 2: many many a time. If you can gain access to that,
Speaker 2: or you find it, please send it our way. We'll
Speaker 2: tell you how to contact us in a minute. But
Speaker 2: we want to see the full thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and for now, we'd love to ask for some
Speaker 3: help from our Kei week Conspiracy Realist spelled with ks.
Speaker 3: Do people in your neck of the Global woods still
Speaker 3: think of the Kaikoro Lights? How do people typically explain it?
Speaker 3: Is there anybody on the South Island who you know? Pops,
Speaker 3: open some wine or get some coffee as December waxes
Speaker 3: on and spend some time looking at the night sky?
Speaker 3: Why are certain things still classified? Was there at least
Speaker 3: some point stuff New Zealand didn't want you to know.
Speaker 3: We can't wait to your thoughts. You can always send
Speaker 3: us an email, especially if you want a random fact.
Speaker 3: You can call us on a telephone. You can find
Speaker 3: us on the line.
Speaker 4: Do find us in all of those places first and foremost,
Speaker 4: not necessarily foremost, but first at least all on the
Speaker 4: lines at the handle conspiracy stuff where we exist on
Speaker 4: Facebook with our Facebook group. Here's where it gets crazy
Speaker 4: on x FKA, Twitter and on YouTube with video content
Speaker 4: galore for YouTube peruse and hopefully enjoy on Instagram and TikTok. However,
Speaker 4: we're conspiracy stuff show.
Speaker 2: Yes, one tiny little piece of information we forgot to
Speaker 2: add into this thing. There was a moment when these
Speaker 2: pilots with the journalists were flying and they're attempting to
Speaker 2: capture these lights. There's a moment when Wellington Radar told them, hey, guys,
Speaker 2: just heads up one of the lights. One of the
Speaker 2: objects is immediately behind you now so you can't physically
Speaker 2: see it, and it's doubled in size, so you know,
Speaker 2: get home safe.
Speaker 3: Do with that information?
Speaker 2: Yeah, just imagine call us, tell us how you would
Speaker 2: feel in that moment. That would be amazing. Call one
Speaker 2: eight three three st d WYTK. When you call in,
Speaker 2: it's a voicemail system. You've got three minutes. Give yourself
Speaker 2: a cool nickname and let us know within the message
Speaker 2: if we can use your name and message on the air.
Speaker 2: If you want to send us an email, you can
Speaker 2: do that.
Speaker 3: We are the entities that read each piece of correspondence
Speaker 3: we receive before we get to the rest of that.
Speaker 3: We have talked about the official inquiry some of those documents.
Speaker 3: If you'd like to read more on your own, you
Speaker 3: can find by emailing us directly. We'll give you the link,
Speaker 3: which is awkward to just announce on the air because
Speaker 3: it's government stuff. But if you yourself want to engage
Speaker 3: with the Official Information Act Request of New Zealand, just
Speaker 3: go to FYI dot org dot NZ and while you're online,
Speaker 3: hit us up for random fact here in the dark
Speaker 3: conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
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