WEBVTT - The Ranch 0:00:01.240 --> 0:00:04.800 Strange Arrivals is a production of iHeart Radio and Grin 0:00:04.840 --> 0:00:06.480 and Mild from Aaron Manky. 0:00:07.120 --> 0:00:09.840 For the best experience, listen with headphones. 0:00:13.560 --> 0:00:15.640 But I sometimes think that there are some things that 0:00:15.680 --> 0:00:18.280 can't be explained in the ordinary way, and I want 0:00:18.320 --> 0:00:20.880 to warn you you'll best be prepared to cope with 0:00:20.920 --> 0:00:25.799 something perhaps supernatural. Oh but Inspector Craig, I know what 0:00:25.840 --> 0:00:28.280 you're going to say. There's no such thing that. From 0:00:28.280 --> 0:00:31.520 the viewpoint of science, all phenomena have a material basis. 0:00:31.920 --> 0:00:34.159 I've never yet met a case of ghostly interference that 0:00:34.159 --> 0:00:37.280 wouldn't stand investigation. That's why you're the man for the job. 0:00:41.560 --> 0:00:55.320 I'm Toby Bald and this is Strange Arrivals, Episode eleven 0:00:55.880 --> 0:01:06.440 the Ranch. You've probably noticed that there's a resurgence of 0:01:06.480 --> 0:01:09.960 interest in UFOs. There are a few reasons for this, 0:01:10.440 --> 0:01:13.920 including the number of UFO shows on cable television, the 0:01:14.000 --> 0:01:17.560 sharing of stories and footage on social media and so on. 0:01:18.600 --> 0:01:21.880 But the biggest reason I think is the US government's 0:01:21.920 --> 0:01:26.480 acknowledgment that it was to some degree investigating the topic. 0:01:27.520 --> 0:01:31.560 The interest was exposed in twenty seventeen through the national news, 0:01:32.080 --> 0:01:36.119 most importantly in the New York Times. When I talk 0:01:36.240 --> 0:01:39.640 to people about UFOs, they often point to this apparent 0:01:39.680 --> 0:01:44.720 official interest as validating the probable existence of mysterious craft, 0:01:45.200 --> 0:01:47.960 possibly not made by humans in our skies. 0:01:49.480 --> 0:01:54.400 Our initial goal was to basically talk about the United 0:01:54.400 --> 0:01:57.320 States government's kind of interest in the UFO topic and 0:01:57.440 --> 0:02:02.280 really dive into why UFO became such a popular thing 0:02:02.440 --> 0:02:05.280 in twenty seventeen after the New York Times article dropped. 0:02:06.240 --> 0:02:08.840 My name is m J. Baniyas. I'm a journalist and podcaster. 0:02:09.120 --> 0:02:12.280 I'm the host of Alien State, which is a podcast 0:02:12.320 --> 0:02:15.520 from Something Else and Sony Entertainment. I'm also a journalist 0:02:15.600 --> 0:02:18.200 with The Debrief as well as a whole host of 0:02:18.280 --> 0:02:21.800 other news outlets that set the UFO world in motion 0:02:21.919 --> 0:02:24.880 for the last five years, and what it evolved into 0:02:25.240 --> 0:02:28.760 was a much deeper dive into the fact that this 0:02:28.919 --> 0:02:32.240 UFO program that we all heard about via the New 0:02:32.320 --> 0:02:35.720 York Times was nothing new. What we learned as a 0:02:35.720 --> 0:02:39.040 result of doing the investigation in the podcast was there 0:02:39.080 --> 0:02:42.520 was a lot more to this UFO Pentagon program than 0:02:42.840 --> 0:02:45.160 we initially thought, and it really kind of muddied the 0:02:45.200 --> 0:02:48.440 waters of what was true and what was not true. 0:02:48.520 --> 0:02:50.320 When that article came out and just kind of the 0:02:50.320 --> 0:02:53.079 subsequent UFO news that's been released since. 0:02:54.880 --> 0:02:58.000 The article that spurred this renewed interest ran on the 0:02:58.040 --> 0:03:02.120 front page of the December seventeen, twenty seventeen edition of 0:03:02.160 --> 0:03:06.520 The New York Times. Its authors were Times Pentagon correspondent 0:03:06.880 --> 0:03:10.880 Helene Cooper and two other reporters with a deeper interest 0:03:10.960 --> 0:03:16.679 than UFOs, Leslie Kane and Ralph Blumenthal. We heard from 0:03:16.680 --> 0:03:20.800 Blumenthal earlier in this season talking about John Mack. In 0:03:20.840 --> 0:03:24.480 addition to writing a biography of Mac. Blumenthal is retired 0:03:24.520 --> 0:03:27.240 from a long career as a New York Times reporter. 0:03:28.480 --> 0:03:31.560 Leslie Kane is a researcher and reporter with a lengthy 0:03:31.600 --> 0:03:34.960 history in the UFO world. She wrote the twenty ten 0:03:35.000 --> 0:03:40.600 book UFOs Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record. 0:03:41.640 --> 0:03:46.160 According to the obituary of abduction investigator Bud Hopkins run 0:03:46.200 --> 0:03:49.440 by The New York Times on August twenty fourth, twenty eleven, 0:03:50.160 --> 0:03:53.920 she was Hopkins' companion at the time of his death. 0:03:54.920 --> 0:03:58.880 She also wrote the twenty seventeen book Surviving Death, a 0:03:58.960 --> 0:04:04.040 Journalist Investiga Gate's Evidence for an Afterlife. The Times article, 0:04:04.280 --> 0:04:06.600 which you can find on the Internet under the title 0:04:07.040 --> 0:04:12.440 Glowing Auras and Black Money. The Pentagon's Mysterious UFO Program 0:04:12.760 --> 0:04:16.279 describes a Pentagon program that had received about twenty two 0:04:16.320 --> 0:04:19.760 million dollars from two thousand and eight to twenty and 0:04:19.839 --> 0:04:24.440 eleven to look into reports of UFOs. That money was 0:04:24.520 --> 0:04:28.479 largely used to pay a contractor, an aerospace research company 0:04:28.520 --> 0:04:34.320 called Bigelow Aerospace to oversee the work. Bigelow Aerospace was 0:04:34.360 --> 0:04:37.719 owned by Robert Bigelow, who we heard about earlier this 0:04:37.880 --> 0:04:41.560 season when he funded John mac and Bud Hopkins' alien 0:04:41.600 --> 0:04:47.080 abduction survey. The story also reported that Bigelow had augmented 0:04:47.120 --> 0:04:51.520 some storage facilities in Las Vegas to how's materials recovered 0:04:51.560 --> 0:04:56.160 from UFO crash sites. It quoted an engineer named Harold 0:04:56.200 --> 0:05:00.400 put Off, who had done research on esp for the CIA, 0:05:00.000 --> 0:05:05.040 as saying our understanding of these materials was like, quote, 0:05:05.279 --> 0:05:08.400 if you gave Leonardo da Vinci a garage door opener. 0:05:09.440 --> 0:05:12.800 It's a good line, definitely, But none of these materials 0:05:12.800 --> 0:05:17.400 have been shown to the public anyway. Time has dampened 0:05:17.440 --> 0:05:22.080 the initial enthusiasm for the claims in this article. Specifically, 0:05:22.480 --> 0:05:25.520 there was initial excitement that this was the first step 0:05:25.600 --> 0:05:29.120 in what was referred to as disclosure with a capital D, 0:05:30.040 --> 0:05:33.800 a government acknowledgment that it has evidence that UFOs are 0:05:33.839 --> 0:05:39.279 real and aliens have visited Earth. This hasn't happened, but 0:05:39.360 --> 0:05:41.839 at the time it seemed as though things might be 0:05:41.920 --> 0:05:43.080 changing drastically. 0:05:44.400 --> 0:05:46.440 The whole New York Times article, as well as the 0:05:46.440 --> 0:05:49.040 subsequent releases, kind of are indicative of that. You know, 0:05:49.560 --> 0:05:52.200 there's a lot more to the story than people realize, 0:05:52.320 --> 0:05:56.000 and it's been going on for decades and decades now 0:05:56.200 --> 0:05:59.320 with kind of a similar cast of characters who all 0:05:59.480 --> 0:06:01.640 have been in government work at some point or another, 0:06:01.680 --> 0:06:05.200 but also are fascinated by the UFO topic in some way. 0:06:06.760 --> 0:06:09.680 When Benias and others began to tug at the strings 0:06:09.680 --> 0:06:13.160 of this story, they found a connection that suggested that 0:06:13.200 --> 0:06:16.720 the government effort included more than just an investigation into 0:06:16.839 --> 0:06:22.320 UFOs as physical craft in the skies. Like John Keel, 0:06:22.640 --> 0:06:26.280 the modern government funded investigation was looking at a broader 0:06:26.400 --> 0:06:29.640 range of phenomena, which they theorized were all connected. 0:06:30.800 --> 0:06:33.919 I don't think it's unusual all in this world for 0:06:34.160 --> 0:06:38.039 people to have these eufology theories of everything, right that 0:06:38.120 --> 0:06:40.960 they kind of tie all of these phenomenon together, whether 0:06:41.000 --> 0:06:46.680 it's like Bigfoot or ghosts, or UFOs or cryptids. I'm 0:06:46.680 --> 0:06:50.000 Travis Tritten. I'm the Pentagon Bureau chief and the deputy 0:06:50.040 --> 0:06:55.200 managing editor for Military dot Com. There's this tendency to 0:06:55.200 --> 0:06:59.680 try to find some universal solution, and the way that 0:06:59.720 --> 0:07:02.719 you phenomenon started, I think was with a group of 0:07:02.760 --> 0:07:06.160 people who thought that they had found that universal solution, 0:07:06.560 --> 0:07:08.480 specifically in Skinwalker Ranch. 0:07:10.200 --> 0:07:13.680 Skinwalker Ranch is a mainstay of shows about the paranormal. 0:07:14.360 --> 0:07:19.520 It spawned books, podcasts, movies, and television shows. It's a 0:07:19.600 --> 0:07:22.880 huge tract of land in Utah that some people claim 0:07:22.920 --> 0:07:26.680 as a setting for a wide wide range of paranormal phenomena, 0:07:27.320 --> 0:07:31.240 including UFOs, but other strange things as well, as we 0:07:31.360 --> 0:07:36.760 will see. The ranch's supposed paranormal properties first became publicly 0:07:36.840 --> 0:07:40.440 known when it was owned by Robert Bigelow, the same 0:07:40.520 --> 0:07:43.720 Robert Bigelow who, according to the New York Times, was 0:07:43.760 --> 0:07:47.840 creating storage spaces in Las Vegas for UFO crash debris. 0:07:48.680 --> 0:07:51.920 He doesn't own the ranch anymore, but he originally bought 0:07:51.960 --> 0:07:55.360 it in order to study the strange events that supposedly 0:07:55.400 --> 0:07:56.119 occurred there. 0:07:57.800 --> 0:08:01.120 Well, yeah, I mean it seems like fairly obvious that 0:08:01.720 --> 0:08:05.520 it's not just simply UFOs the researchers are talking about. 0:08:05.920 --> 0:08:08.760 It goes far beyond that. The simple data point is 0:08:08.800 --> 0:08:13.440 Skinwalker Ranch. There's just so much intertwined with Skinwalker Ranch 0:08:13.440 --> 0:08:17.920 and Robert Bigelow in particular. My name is Mick West, 0:08:18.200 --> 0:08:21.720 and I'm a UFO investigator. I also investigate a whole 0:08:21.760 --> 0:08:25.520 bunch of other things, like conspiracy theories and strange phenomena, 0:08:25.960 --> 0:08:29.720 but most recently I've been into investigating UFOs, which I 0:08:29.760 --> 0:08:32.600 really enjoy doing. My background is that I'm a video 0:08:32.600 --> 0:08:36.199 game programmer. I worked on the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 0:08:36.360 --> 0:08:40.160 series like a long time ago, and I kind of 0:08:40.240 --> 0:08:43.400 semi retired and just kind of been pursuing my own interests, 0:08:43.440 --> 0:08:47.920 including writing and investigating things. If you look at Robert 0:08:47.920 --> 0:08:52.679 Bigelow's interests, they're not just UFOs. They are life after death, 0:08:53.080 --> 0:08:58.120 and they are entities like ghosts essentially, and the supernatural, yeah, 0:08:58.400 --> 0:09:03.760 essentially magic interests of the people associated with those, people 0:09:03.800 --> 0:09:08.600 like Bigelow kind of naturally like include those things. They entertain, 0:09:09.040 --> 0:09:11.920 these broader aspects. So there might be some kind of 0:09:12.240 --> 0:09:16.920 reality distortion field or some kind of essentially Poltergeist type activity. 0:09:18.480 --> 0:09:19.480 Travis Trittan. 0:09:20.679 --> 0:09:26.000 I think that project really began with book skin Walkers 0:09:26.000 --> 0:09:29.360 at the Pentagon. I had just kind of a personal 0:09:29.360 --> 0:09:32.520 interest because it involved the military and being somebody who 0:09:32.559 --> 0:09:36.480 covers the military. The Pentagon. It was it was really 0:09:36.640 --> 0:09:39.720 just kind of the way out there. It was so 0:09:39.920 --> 0:09:43.720 far out. The answer kind of put together some of 0:09:43.720 --> 0:09:45.600 the pieces and the answer some of the questions that 0:09:45.640 --> 0:09:49.200 I had had before about where's all this UAP stuff 0:09:49.240 --> 0:09:53.040 like coming from? And I thought, this is just too good. 0:09:53.320 --> 0:09:54.880 I need to get to the bottom of this. I 0:09:54.920 --> 0:09:57.079 need to figure out what is the truth here and 0:09:57.240 --> 0:10:00.920 like what is the fiction as were it guarded. 0:10:02.400 --> 0:10:05.800 The twenty twenty one book Skinwalker's at the Pentagon by 0:10:05.840 --> 0:10:10.800 James Lakatski, Calm Kelleher and George Knapp, begins with the 0:10:10.840 --> 0:10:15.600 experiences of a senior aerospace engineer in Naval Intelligence who 0:10:15.640 --> 0:10:21.120 is given the pseudonym Jonathan Axelrod. Axelrod we are told 0:10:21.760 --> 0:10:26.840 was quote well versed in investigating anomalies, utilizing a thoroughly 0:10:26.920 --> 0:10:31.240 professional approach. The book opens with him accompanied by two 0:10:31.320 --> 0:10:35.800 other military men on Skinwalker Ranch. They reportedly are struck 0:10:35.840 --> 0:10:38.680 with feelings of fear and dread as they are hiking 0:10:38.720 --> 0:10:41.640 at night. The source turns out to be a dark 0:10:41.720 --> 0:10:47.160 oval shape quote radiating a menacing presence, only visible using 0:10:47.200 --> 0:10:50.959 a night scope. We'll hear more about the consequences of 0:10:51.000 --> 0:10:54.480 Axl Rod's visit to the ranch later. Suffice it to 0:10:54.559 --> 0:10:57.960 say that Skinwalker Ranch was reputed to be the site 0:10:58.000 --> 0:11:02.200 of a wide range of paranormal phenoma, including UFOs and 0:11:02.280 --> 0:11:08.559 glowing orbs, crop circles, poltergeists, huge animals, impervious to bullets, 0:11:08.600 --> 0:11:09.199 and so on. 0:11:10.480 --> 0:11:12.560 It's a fun book, right, It kind of gives you, 0:11:12.600 --> 0:11:15.800 like the creepy tingles. It's like Stephen King novel or 0:11:15.800 --> 0:11:19.320 something where you know it's a little bit cheesy, but 0:11:19.440 --> 0:11:21.679 still you get a little bit creeped out. And that's 0:11:21.760 --> 0:11:23.280 kind of the feeling I got from that. It was 0:11:23.280 --> 0:11:26.240 like a really like fun read. But you just have 0:11:26.320 --> 0:11:29.640 to ask yourself. I mean, people are seeing were wolves 0:11:29.679 --> 0:11:33.200 in their backyards. There's just a variety of just really 0:11:33.400 --> 0:11:38.680 crazy stories. There's cryptids, you know, strange creatures. There's the 0:11:38.760 --> 0:11:42.680 blue orbs that travel through people's bodies and caused health effects. 0:11:44.440 --> 0:11:44.680 MJ. 0:11:44.800 --> 0:11:49.280 Benaias investigated the Skinwalker Ranch in the late twenty teens. 0:11:50.360 --> 0:11:54.160 Skinwalker Ranch has held a really long history within the 0:11:54.280 --> 0:11:58.440 UFO lore, but it's been fairly silent. Skinwalker Ranch entered 0:11:58.480 --> 0:12:01.320 the UFO picture in the nineties, but not a lot 0:12:01.360 --> 0:12:04.200 of people talked about. It was kind of whispered about, 0:12:04.320 --> 0:12:05.800 sort of hush circles. 0:12:06.600 --> 0:12:09.680 The ranch became more publicly known with the two thousand 0:12:09.720 --> 0:12:13.200 and five publication of the book Hunt for the Skinwalker 0:12:13.640 --> 0:12:16.160 by Colem Kelleher and George Knapp. 0:12:17.840 --> 0:12:22.400 My journey there occurred after twenty seventeen. There was a 0:12:22.480 --> 0:12:26.440 documentary that was released called Hunt for the Skinwalker, and 0:12:26.480 --> 0:12:30.160 it was released by a filmmaker named Jeremy Corbel, and 0:12:30.720 --> 0:12:34.480 it basically explained that the ranch was sold by Robert Bigelow, 0:12:34.520 --> 0:12:36.760 who was the original owner of the ranch in the nineties, 0:12:36.960 --> 0:12:38.800 and he sold it to a sort of mysterious player 0:12:38.920 --> 0:12:41.120 and nobody knew who he was, and to be frank, 0:12:41.120 --> 0:12:44.320 the documentary films kind of discombobulated it weird, but it 0:12:44.440 --> 0:12:47.880 kept the owner secret and it didn't really expose what 0:12:47.960 --> 0:12:49.920 was going on on the ranch. It kind of maintained 0:12:50.000 --> 0:12:52.280 the mystery of the ranch and it created the drama 0:12:52.400 --> 0:12:53.960 of the ranch, but it didn't really get into like 0:12:54.080 --> 0:12:57.680 what Skinwalker Ranch actually was as a thing. At first, 0:12:57.679 --> 0:12:59.960 I didn't care very much, but I was able to 0:13:00.240 --> 0:13:02.600 look There's a picture that was posted online of a 0:13:02.640 --> 0:13:05.800 private aircraft that was owned by the owner of the 0:13:05.880 --> 0:13:08.640 ranch with a tail number two missing, and I was 0:13:08.679 --> 0:13:10.719 able to use that photograph, as well as some other 0:13:10.760 --> 0:13:14.240 clues that were in the documentary, to basically figure out 0:13:14.280 --> 0:13:17.000 that the owner of Skinwalker Ranch was a Utah real 0:13:17.080 --> 0:13:20.400 estate mogul named Brandon Feugel. Connecting those dots. I just 0:13:20.400 --> 0:13:22.720 simply reached out to him. And I was a journalist 0:13:22.760 --> 0:13:25.000 for Vice at the time, and I just simply reached 0:13:25.000 --> 0:13:26.280 out and said, listen, I know you're the owner of 0:13:26.360 --> 0:13:29.400 Skinwalker Ranch. I'm writing an article about it. Do you 0:13:29.440 --> 0:13:30.080 wish to comment? 0:13:31.559 --> 0:13:35.120 This resulted in a series of conversations during which Fugal 0:13:35.200 --> 0:13:39.280 offered benaias a couple of exclusives and an invitation to 0:13:39.400 --> 0:13:40.200 visit the ranch. 0:13:41.600 --> 0:13:44.439 My editor and I took the deal and we decided 0:13:44.440 --> 0:13:47.280 to run an exclusive feature about the ranch, which was 0:13:47.280 --> 0:13:50.640 my first trip out there in twenty eighteen, I think. 0:13:51.080 --> 0:13:53.840 And then a few months later we did an exclusive 0:13:53.840 --> 0:13:57.200 interview with mister Fugal where we sort of exposed his 0:13:57.280 --> 0:14:00.480 identity and he gave us the exclusive there. So that 0:14:00.600 --> 0:14:01.920 was my first trip out to the ranch. 0:14:04.640 --> 0:14:08.160 Let's take a step back. How did the Skinwalker Ranch 0:14:08.400 --> 0:14:15.160 become so prominently connected with the Pentagon funded investigation into UFOs? Well, 0:14:15.559 --> 0:14:19.960 not too surprisingly, it results from a confluence of power, money, 0:14:20.360 --> 0:14:24.960 and a paranormal experience. Initially, it was set up when 0:14:25.000 --> 0:14:28.480 a Pentagon official approached Harry Reid, who was then the 0:14:28.520 --> 0:14:32.680 Senate Majority leader. The official had been to Skinwalker Ranch 0:14:33.240 --> 0:14:37.560 and had had what Mickwest describes as quote essentially a 0:14:37.600 --> 0:14:38.880 mystical experience. 0:14:40.160 --> 0:14:42.520 He was in the kitchen of this house there and 0:14:42.560 --> 0:14:46.240 he's awesome. What looked like tubola bells the materialized in 0:14:46.280 --> 0:14:48.520 the middle of the kitchen, and then he realized that 0:14:48.560 --> 0:14:51.560 there was something freaky was going on, and so he 0:14:52.000 --> 0:14:55.640 kind of persuaded Harry Reid to set up this program. 0:14:57.280 --> 0:14:57.480 MJ. 0:14:57.640 --> 0:15:03.720 Benaias you had one individual in the entirety of the DIA, 0:15:03.800 --> 0:15:05.240 which has thousands of employees. 0:15:06.040 --> 0:15:09.440 The DIA is the Defense Intelligence Agency. 0:15:10.560 --> 0:15:13.760 He had one individual who was interested in the possible 0:15:13.800 --> 0:15:20.000 security implications of a phenomena he personally witnessed at Skinwalker Ranch. 0:15:20.760 --> 0:15:24.200 This individual then went to a senator who he was 0:15:24.400 --> 0:15:27.600 he sort of knew was also interested in the paranormal 0:15:27.880 --> 0:15:32.160 and the UFO phenomenon and had that senator broached a 0:15:32.200 --> 0:15:34.760 sort of contact with Robert Bigelow, who owned the ranch 0:15:34.760 --> 0:15:37.360 at the time, to kind of work together, and the 0:15:37.400 --> 0:15:41.080 three of them patched this plan to create a proposal 0:15:41.080 --> 0:15:44.480 and a contract with the DIA to study what they 0:15:44.480 --> 0:15:47.800 called advance like weapons and weapons application systems. 0:15:49.200 --> 0:15:51.920 The idea was that they were going to be researching 0:15:51.960 --> 0:15:55.200 the weapons of the future, or at least that was 0:15:55.320 --> 0:15:56.720 the story. 0:15:57.040 --> 0:15:58.880 What they were really doing, though, was using the government 0:15:58.960 --> 0:16:04.120 money to investigate anomaloust phenomena on Skinwalker Ranch as well 0:16:04.120 --> 0:16:07.920 as other locations around the United States, chiefly a handful 0:16:07.960 --> 0:16:12.680 in Brazil, to figure out what UFOs were, with the 0:16:12.720 --> 0:16:15.640 intention of returning to the DIA and saying, listen, you know, 0:16:15.720 --> 0:16:19.280 we've spent this money and we've figured out that UFOs 0:16:19.320 --> 0:16:21.760 are some sort of advanced technology that we can utilize 0:16:21.760 --> 0:16:22.400 and weaponize. 0:16:23.760 --> 0:16:29.320 Again, Mick West, the real aim of the project was 0:16:29.560 --> 0:16:32.800 to investigate what was going on at Skinwalker Wrench and 0:16:33.000 --> 0:16:36.720 investigate the ghosts and the UFOs and the strange happenings. 0:16:37.720 --> 0:16:42.360 So somehow the government, the Pentagon ended up spending money 0:16:42.600 --> 0:16:46.720 on this high strangeness, that skinwalker wrench, which is some 0:16:46.800 --> 0:16:50.360 degree kind of normalized that type of thing the government 0:16:50.400 --> 0:16:52.360 might spend money on the UFOs. 0:16:53.800 --> 0:16:58.600 The funding for this program was short lived MJ. Benias. 0:17:00.000 --> 0:17:05.080 Actually that never happened. Quickly, various other parties in the DIA, 0:17:05.240 --> 0:17:08.920 who are responsible for making sure the job you've been 0:17:08.960 --> 0:17:13.040 contracted to do is getting done, realized what was going 0:17:13.080 --> 0:17:17.160 on with the money and decided, after the initial sort 0:17:17.200 --> 0:17:19.959 of surge of twenty two million dollars, to cut funding 0:17:20.000 --> 0:17:24.440 and just say there's no intelligence value here. Generally, there 0:17:24.600 --> 0:17:26.480 was a consensus sort of at the top levels of 0:17:26.520 --> 0:17:28.760 the DiiA that this was a silly thing to do. 0:17:29.280 --> 0:17:32.400 Chasing werewolves, for example, in Utah is not a good 0:17:32.480 --> 0:17:36.160 use of taxpayer dollars, especially from an intelligence standpoint. 0:17:37.800 --> 0:17:40.199 When The New York Times picked up the story, the 0:17:40.320 --> 0:17:45.760 Pentagon not surprisingly did not emphasize the skinwalker ranch aspect 0:17:45.800 --> 0:17:48.880 of the program. Mick West. 0:17:50.040 --> 0:17:51.880 When it came out in the New York Times that 0:17:52.000 --> 0:17:53.840 something had been happening, they didn't really talk about the 0:17:53.840 --> 0:17:56.320 ghosts or anything, and they just talked about possible foreign 0:17:56.359 --> 0:17:59.119 craft in ours Bace and how it's a national security issue, 0:17:59.160 --> 0:18:01.480 but really underlying it at all, it's this really weird, 0:18:01.880 --> 0:18:06.400 deep strangeness that drives the current push over the past 0:18:06.480 --> 0:18:09.720 few years. Has grown in momentum because there's been more 0:18:09.720 --> 0:18:13.360 and more interest from the press, there's been more lobbyings, 0:18:13.400 --> 0:18:16.359 and more politicians are being convinced that they should do 0:18:16.400 --> 0:18:19.000 something about it, which I don't really think is based 0:18:19.000 --> 0:18:22.800 on good evidence. I think it's based on compelling testimony 0:18:22.840 --> 0:18:24.400 from compelling people. 0:18:25.520 --> 0:18:30.040 Compelling people whose beliefs about UFOs and the paranormal are 0:18:30.119 --> 0:18:36.600 not what you might expect. After the break, strange arrivals 0:18:36.800 --> 0:18:53.439 will return in a moment. Coverage of the Pentagon funded 0:18:53.560 --> 0:18:57.440 UFO program that came to light in twenty seventeen focused 0:18:57.480 --> 0:19:01.480 on what you can think of as traditional UFO physical 0:19:01.520 --> 0:19:06.359 craft buzzing around in the sky. Again, MJ. Benias. 0:19:07.680 --> 0:19:11.680 With any subculture, you're gonna have divisions in ideology, right. 0:19:11.880 --> 0:19:15.439 Everyone within the UFO subculture kind of has similar linguistic background, right. 0:19:15.440 --> 0:19:17.520 We all kind of use the same terms when terminology 0:19:17.560 --> 0:19:19.800 to describe what's going on. But you know, there's different 0:19:19.800 --> 0:19:23.359 ideologies that exist within the UFO community. You have some 0:19:23.440 --> 0:19:25.240 individuals who believe in a sort of very nuts and 0:19:25.280 --> 0:19:28.520 bolts technological these are aliens from other planet and they're 0:19:28.560 --> 0:19:31.560 flying here in spaceships that are, you know, constructed like 0:19:31.600 --> 0:19:35.280 we would construct spaceships with fancier, shinier technology than we have. 0:19:35.400 --> 0:19:37.080 But you know, they're just more advanced and that's it. 0:19:38.640 --> 0:19:42.080 This belief was exemplified by a number of the classified 0:19:42.160 --> 0:19:46.479 Pentagon videos that were made public, videos that showed fuzzy 0:19:46.480 --> 0:19:58.200 images from specialized cameras, often accompanied by the pilot's audio transmissions. 0:19:57.960 --> 0:19:58.879 There's clean up. 0:19:58.880 --> 0:20:03.920 I looked on the assay, Oh my gosh, are going. 0:20:03.800 --> 0:20:04.440 Against the wind? 0:20:04.480 --> 0:20:06.240 The winds one hundred clients in the west. 0:20:06.960 --> 0:20:11.080 Oh. 0:20:11.119 --> 0:20:13.600 But there is another school of thought about UFOs. 0:20:14.720 --> 0:20:16.919 You have other people within the UFO community who believe 0:20:17.000 --> 0:20:19.320 that this is sort of a much more spiritual or 0:20:19.400 --> 0:20:24.080 mystical concept, that whatever the source of UFOs are are 0:20:24.119 --> 0:20:28.320 a manifestation of some larger system, not just space aliens 0:20:28.359 --> 0:20:30.800 for another planet flying here in a space ship. So 0:20:30.840 --> 0:20:33.800 I would say the founders of the DIA program, the 0:20:33.840 --> 0:20:37.200 ones who kind of brought it to fruition, have some 0:20:37.240 --> 0:20:40.480 sort of interest in all aspects of the paranormal pantheon 0:20:40.520 --> 0:20:43.680 of beliefs, whether they believe in like a consciousness being, 0:20:43.680 --> 0:20:44.960 you know, you know, I don't know. I mean, there's 0:20:45.000 --> 0:20:46.840 going to be kind of divisions amongst all of them, 0:20:47.080 --> 0:20:50.240 but they all clearly view the phenomenon not as a 0:20:50.359 --> 0:20:55.320 nuts and bolts thing, but as a spiritual thing that 0:20:55.480 --> 0:21:01.080 could be utilized and reverse maybe not inered, but reverse 0:21:01.200 --> 0:21:05.760 spiritualized for some sort of gain, whether it's technological gain, 0:21:05.960 --> 0:21:08.000 monetary defense, whatever. 0:21:09.760 --> 0:21:12.520 As we saw last episode when we looked at John 0:21:12.600 --> 0:21:16.200 Keel's beliefs. The idea is that there is a phenomenon 0:21:16.560 --> 0:21:19.920 that presents itself in different ways, and it has been 0:21:19.920 --> 0:21:24.400 doing this for centuries. Its manifestations the result of people's 0:21:24.440 --> 0:21:27.119 expectations of what the paranormal would look like. 0:21:28.440 --> 0:21:32.040 The same things that are the sources of ghost sightings 0:21:32.119 --> 0:21:34.520 or sightings of elves back in the fifteen hundreds, or 0:21:34.800 --> 0:21:37.560 vampire sightings or werewolf sightings or all of those things. 0:21:37.960 --> 0:21:43.439 It's a merger of spiritual concepts that present themselves in 0:21:43.520 --> 0:21:45.520 different ways at different times. 0:21:46.960 --> 0:21:50.679 But Nias is about to mention pan spermia. We're not 0:21:50.720 --> 0:21:54.359 going to get into it, but briefly, it's the idea 0:21:54.440 --> 0:21:57.639 that life is distributed throughout the universe and can be 0:21:57.680 --> 0:22:02.520 spread by space, dust, comets, and so on. It also 0:22:02.560 --> 0:22:05.520 suggests that life on Earth may have started with microscopic 0:22:05.680 --> 0:22:09.200 organisms from space. It's definitely fringe. 0:22:10.560 --> 0:22:16.879 Whatever the phenomenon is in this, like panspermia, like UFO concept, 0:22:17.400 --> 0:22:21.399 like the unified theory of everything. Paranormal UFOs are just 0:22:21.400 --> 0:22:26.040 a manifestation of whatever the phenomena is. And it's just 0:22:26.800 --> 0:22:30.800 today manifesting itself as UFOs because we are more technological 0:22:31.040 --> 0:22:33.680 as a species compared to let's say, four hundred years 0:22:33.680 --> 0:22:36.919 ago when people would see ghosts and monsters roaming around 0:22:36.920 --> 0:22:38.800 in fields and imps and whatnot. 0:22:40.200 --> 0:22:43.600 And it's not just four hundred years ago. Earlier in 0:22:43.640 --> 0:22:46.920 this episode, we heard about the naval intelligence officer given 0:22:46.960 --> 0:22:52.200 the pseudonym John Axelrod. He had encountered a mysterious presence 0:22:52.240 --> 0:22:55.919 at Skinwalker Ranch. But if you believe it's a count, 0:22:56.400 --> 0:23:00.840 physically leaving the ranch didn't end his interaction with strange forces. 0:23:01.840 --> 0:23:04.120 About Axelrod, Benaiah says. 0:23:05.200 --> 0:23:08.119 We know, for example, who that individual was. I'm not 0:23:08.160 --> 0:23:10.520 sure how public his name is, so I won't say 0:23:10.520 --> 0:23:13.080 it on this podcast, but he was employed by the 0:23:13.119 --> 0:23:16.840 Office of Naval Intelligence, he's well established and well respected 0:23:16.840 --> 0:23:17.919 within the intelligence. 0:23:17.560 --> 0:23:19.240 Community and within the sort of the US. 0:23:19.119 --> 0:23:24.320 Government is a high ranking civilian intelligence official. But there's 0:23:24.320 --> 0:23:26.600 also that aspect of belief, and I think that that's 0:23:26.600 --> 0:23:29.679 what really plays a role in all this. I've been 0:23:29.680 --> 0:23:32.520 to Skinwalker Ranch twice and not had an experience at all. 0:23:33.080 --> 0:23:36.160 Nothing's followed me home. People, for example, told me stories 0:23:36.200 --> 0:23:38.400 about hitchhiker effect and all these things where if you 0:23:38.480 --> 0:23:41.960 try to upset the whatever is on Skinwalker Ranch, it 0:23:42.000 --> 0:23:44.399 will purposefully try to come after you. 0:23:45.720 --> 0:23:49.720 The hitchhiker effect. This is the idea that even once 0:23:49.720 --> 0:23:53.600 you've left the ranch, there's a possibility that the phenomenon 0:23:53.640 --> 0:23:56.639 will attach itself to you, that it will follow you 0:23:57.080 --> 0:24:01.760 and make its presence known. According to the book Skinwalkers 0:24:01.760 --> 0:24:06.160 at the Pentagon, the family of the pseudonymous Jonathan Axelrod 0:24:06.320 --> 0:24:10.760 experienced this effect at their home in suburban Virginia. His 0:24:10.840 --> 0:24:14.119 wife reportedly saw a dark figure in their bedroom and 0:24:14.160 --> 0:24:18.040 herd footsteps in the house. One of his teenage sons 0:24:18.040 --> 0:24:20.920 saw glowing orbs in his bedroom that he felt were 0:24:20.960 --> 0:24:25.879 under intelligent control. More bizarrely, his wife looked out the 0:24:25.880 --> 0:24:30.520 window to see a quote huge wolf like creature unquote, 0:24:30.960 --> 0:24:35.720 standing upright and leaning against a tree. Days later, the 0:24:35.800 --> 0:24:39.480 two sons saw the same creature again, standing on two 0:24:39.600 --> 0:24:42.600 legs and then dashing into the forest. 0:24:43.440 --> 0:24:45.480 We were doing all that stuff, walking around the ranch 0:24:45.480 --> 0:24:48.040 in the middle of the night, you know, insulting it, 0:24:48.160 --> 0:24:52.480 being mean, calling it names, like trying to get some 0:24:52.520 --> 0:24:55.840 sort of reaction, and nothing occurred. But I also don't 0:24:55.880 --> 0:24:59.000 believe that Skinwalker Ranches home to anything but a couple 0:24:59.000 --> 0:25:00.560 of cows. Actually a lot of cows. There's a lot 0:25:00.560 --> 0:25:02.600 of cows on the ranch, to cows and sort of 0:25:02.640 --> 0:25:04.760 a caretaker couple as well as just the people who 0:25:04.760 --> 0:25:05.920 work there. You know. I think it's just a plan 0:25:06.000 --> 0:25:07.919 old ranch in Utah. 0:25:08.440 --> 0:25:11.760